‘I really thought I was going to die.’
No matter how much I made use of the evenings and early mornings, it was still overwhelming. A half-day of training raised it by 0.4 points, but after making the potion, the time I had left was only five days.
Only after being absent three times did I barely achieve the proposal with nine hours remaining.
Fortunately, the increase in the strength and endurance categories was large, so at times I could gain more than 0.4 points.
Ding—!
Congratulations!
‘Proposal 2: Achieve 0 points in “health”’ successful!
‘Route 1 — 〈 Chapter 3 Special Reward 〉’ has been confirmed.
‘Now I’m curious what’s going to come out.’
Chapter 3 special reward
Is there a Trait you want? We prepared this just for you!
‘Trait?’
Looking at that line, a memory flashed through my mind.
‘No way… I said I wanted the exchange student trait back then, and this is what came out….’
From now on, I really need to be careful even with my thoughts.
I watched the pure white cluster of light appearing before my eyes.
The light began to take on a fixed shape and soon formed a pile of notes.
They looked like pages torn from a book and folded. On creamy-white paper with a vivid texture, tiny black letters were densely written in ink. Because the light was flashing, I couldn’t make out the contents.
‘So here… I just pick one and open it?’
Frowning, I reached my hand into the pile of notes.
Before I could properly unfold one, pure white letters appeared before my eyes.
Ding—!
Congratulations!
The ‘charm’ Trait has been added!
What?
Dumbfounded, I burst out laughing without realizing it.
Does charm put food on the table? A mage lives by magic, not by eating charm…. Is this a joke?
‘Bad luck.’
Having something was better than having nothing, but… was this really something I needed right now? No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t shake the skeptical feeling.
With complicated emotions, I summoned the charm trait.
Charm Lv.1
— ‘I want to get closer!’ Favorability of a specific target increases by 2 points
— ‘You must be right.’ Persuasiveness increases by 20%
— 2.0 points until next level
I take back what I said about it being a joke.
I was too narrow-minded. I shouldn’t have judged it hastily just by the name.
Favorability, and a 20% increase in persuasiveness.
Favorability is nice, but the persuasiveness effect is especially appealing. It’s a trait worth investing in long-term.
‘Not bad.’
Satisfied, I dismissed the window.
***
“Narke! It’s the day Narke comes!”
Pai ran excitedly around on my shoulder, shouting.
The reason this guy was here was… because he found it fascinating to meet someone he could actually communicate with, so he kept warping into my room using Holy Power.
After repeating the act of taking him to the administration office eight times, a staff member contacted Narke and explained the situation. Narke left word that as long as I was fine with it, I could just let Pai roam free.
Since I had to be alone from midnight onward, having one more animal around didn’t seem like it would make things too mentally distracting, so I accepted.
And… while living together, I also managed to extract a lot of information about Narke. I had decided to make him an ally, but since I hadn’t even had a proper conversation with him yet, caution was necessary—the more I knew about him, the better.
There was no need to ask about Narke first.
Pai rattled off information about him on his own.
Recalling the useless fact that Narke came from a seminary and didn’t like eating flour-based food, I muttered,
“Lucky you.”
“Lucas thinks so too, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Well, it would be nice only after getting somewhat close. Still, I played along.
“Narke will like meeting us too~!”
“I see.”
After putting him in a cage, I told him not to follow me and headed to the classroom. A cage wouldn’t really work on someone who could warp using Holy Power, but at least I kept up appearances.
I pulled open the slightly ajar classroom door.
Students were gathered noisily in the very back row, chatting.
“Class 1 must be nervous.”
“We sent third place before the first-year finals too and dragged the average down. We don’t really have the right to criticize.”
“They don’t remember stuff like that. As soon as midterms hit, they’ll just blame our class’s exchange student.”
“Let them talk. But we have to win first before they can trash us….”
“Narke! Anything you’re especially good at? We have a tournament before vacation.”
When someone cut in and changed the topic, the student sitting in the middle answered with a smile.
“Not sure. I’m confident in most things involving a ball.”
“Hey, we won. It’s over.”
“Why are you putting pressure on him the moment he arrives?”
This school had exactly two classes per department.
If there were more, it might be different, but being split into just two created a subtle rivalry between the classes. From the number of students selected for the special class, to class averages, to all kinds of competitions—there wasn’t a single area that wasn’t compared. Sometimes even the professors encouraged competition, saying it helped improve performance.
‘It couldn’t help being intense.’
Even in high school, where classes were divided more, people would joke—or sometimes seriously argue—about whether they were doing better than other classes.
That obsessive fixation on winning prizes at school sports festivals had simply shifted to grades and various competitions.
On top of that, since this place gathered only the best of the best from across the country, the students here were definitely more obsessed with performance than those at other schools.
Unfortunately, in our grade, ever since the first exam after admission, the neighboring class—Class 1—had maintained slightly higher scores.
I handed out notes to the students sitting in a row next to my seat and sat down.
“Nice work. Let’s do our best today too.”
“…Mm….”
As usual, the students responded with murmurs, faces looking half-dead.
At that moment, I made eye contact with a student sitting in the far corner of the back row. When Narke met my gaze, he grinned and waved.
The classroom fell silent, as if cold water had been splashed over it.
They alternated their gazes between Narke and me, then moved their lips as if about to say something to Narke.
Creak—
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, sir.”
At the professor’s greeting as he entered to conduct the morning assembly, the students quickly returned to their seats and greeted him. After announcing the day’s schedule, the professor brought up Narke.
“Today is the exchange student’s first day of attendance. He’ll be studying with us for a year, so let’s have him introduce himself.”
The students’ attention turned to Narke once again. Smiling, Narke stood up.
“Hello, my name is Narke Farnese, and I’ll be joining you from this semester onward. I look forward to working with you.”
“He consistently received good grades at his previous school. I hope he achieves good results here as well.”
“Yes, thank you.”
After the first class following the assembly ended, Narke approached me.
“Lucas.”
Narke whispered.
“I got the message. Sorry for leaving Pai with you. He must have been pretty annoying.”
“No, it was fine in its own way.”
“Thanks for watching him. If it’s okay with you….”
“Narke.”
A student carefully called out to Narke from outside the classroom door.
Narke went outside, then returned a short while later with a smile, raising his eyebrows slightly. I asked what that subtle gesture meant.
“What was that?”
“They told me to be careful because there’s a rumor going around that you’re Pleroma.”
How kind of them.
I let out a small laugh.
“What did you say?”
“I said I didn’t think so.”
“…….”
You really do give interesting answers every time.
After thinking for a moment, I asked,
“After dinner later, could we talk for a bit?”
***
“Lukas.”
Narke opened the door to the dormitory lounge and walked in.
I lifted the cage with Pai inside and placed it on the table.
“I brought Pai.”
“Narke!”
“Thanks. Have you been well?”
“It was fun!”
Narke didn’t answer further and just grinned.
I placed a cup of tea in front of Narke and sat down.
“Here.”
“I’ll drink it well. Thanks.”
“It’s nothing. Did you get an introduction to the school?”
“Yeah, the class president helped me. They said I can use a personal training ground starting today. I’m going later—want to come?”
I needed to tell Leo about Narke first, so no.
I lightly shook my head and changed the subject.
“No. By the way… there’s something I’m curious about.”
“What is it?”
“What kind of animal is this one?”
“Oh, Pai? He’s a saengt rabbit.”
A rabbit?
I stared at Pai, unable to hide my shock.
“…You’re a rabbit?”
“Strictly speaking, he’s different from an ordinary rabbit. He looks like a rat, right?”
“Yeah.”
More like a hamster than a rat.
“That makes sense. The color and size fit perfectly. Anyway… don’t you have something else you wanted to say besides this?”
“I do.”
I took a sip of tea and spoke.
“First… I feel like I should say this, so I’ll say it upfront. I can understand what he says.”
“Huh? Cough—!”
Narke turned his head and coughed. After coughing hard with an expression that made it hard to tell whether he was laughing or flustered, he looked at me and asked again.
“What?”
Looks like even Insight couldn’t tell him something like that.
Well, if a level-2 ability could reveal everything, the whole world would already be in his hands.
“Seriously… no, so it really is true that you can hear him. I knew you used Holy Power, but I didn’t think it would work on Pai to that extent.”
He must have used Insight just now to confirm it.
And… it seems long-distance communication with Pai is impossible. If it were, Pai would’ve already babbled to Narke about how he could talk with me.
I extracted various bits of information from Narke’s words and etched them into my mind.
Pai, who had been on Narke’s shoulder, jumped down onto the table.
“Now there are two people who can understand me~! I wish there were more!”
“No. Then the Holy See wouldn’t leave you alone.”
Narke smiled as he stroked Pai’s head. Then he looked straight at me again and asked,
“You have other questions too, right?”
As expected, it’s nice how fast this goes.
“Yeah. I have a lot I’m curious about regarding you. It’s sudden, but it’s important to me. Can you answer my questions honestly?”
“Sure. You saved Pai, after all. That much is fine.”
I nodded and continued.
“What was the basis for thinking that other people shouldn’t know I can use magic?”
“That conversation from that day. Well… if I say I felt it through intuition, can you accept that? It’s hard to explain.”
Intuition, huh.
In a way, Insight could be judged like that too. It’s not much different from the information in the Status window.
I nodded.
“And the reason you think I’m not Pleroma?”
“Oh, that one’s definite. For starters, you’ve never died.”
On this point… most people think the same, so it’s nothing particularly special.
Rather than believing I’m Pleroma who came back from being a corpse, people think I’m someone with Pleroma’s traits. There are those who follow Pleroma’s will without having died, so it’s an understandable assumption.
Narke stared off into the distance, lost in thought.
“The rumors about you were something like… you drank animal blood at four years old, and killed a servant at five, if I remember right. There were also rumors that you steal the magical power of people around you.”
“You know a lot.”
“Your story is a hot topic even in the Papal State.”
Narke drank his tea, hesitated for a long moment choosing his words, then looked straight at me.
“You’ve never willingly drunk blood. You’ve never committed murder either. If you ask for the basis for this, it’s all my intuition. But this is the truth. You know that now too, don’t you?”
“Now?”
“Until recently, you probably believed those absurd rumors were true yourself.”
“…….”
The corners of my mouth rose on their own.
Well, of course. It was possession.
A strange glint passed through Narke’s golden eyes.
Narke clasped both hands together and asked me,
“Adrian Askanian isn’t an ordinary person, is he?”
“…….”
“To pin his own murder on his younger brother—no sane person could do that.”
Adrian Askanian was… my older brother’s name.
I answered while maintaining my smile.
“Yeah.”
The more I talk with him, the more clearly I feel it.
This person must be made an ally, no matter what.
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