347. Now is the time to stand alone (1)
“Mr. Zeto, do you have something to say?”
A girl with bluish hair shows a bright smile as she eats a spoonful of parfait.
Lucia Windless.
She is the eldest daughter of the Windless family, but was pushed out by Rikua in the line of succession, and is the only non-heir among the children of the four elemental families in the Academy.
“Can you finish it quickly…? Other people keep looking at me…”
Lucia becomes aware of the other cadets in her cafe and her body shrinks.
She has a weak temperament and is very timid, so she has an aspect that is not typical of an aristocratic child who is usually oppressed by others.
Lucia is literally the worst when she is an ally.
She often panicked during battle, so when she was an ally, she was easily treated as a ‘bomb’.
However, Lucia does not become competent just because she does not panic.
When it comes to battle, her magic hit rate is low, less than 5%, but she has a unique property where her hit rate is noticeably higher when dealing with Amon, so when correcting her in the past, the opponent is treated as Amon. I suggested recognizing it, and thanks to that, I was able to achieve good results.
But the special class is a different story.
If you enter the special class, you will not experience the cozy fantasy of Edward, but harsh real-life battles that will make your blood splatter and your bones break.
In actual combat situations, it is not surprising if someone dies.
In that sense, putting Lucia in a special class is honestly very risky. A bomb that could explode at any moment is placed in a dangerous location where it could kill people.
I have no intention of getting caught up in that explosion.
In the first place, I think that with Lucia’s poor skills, it would be difficult for her to even pass the special class exam.
“Mr. Zeto…?”
But what if Lucia has a secret here?
What if all of this is actually an act and Lucia is neither stupid nor weak at all?
There was once a time when Lucia was seen behaving strangely. Keraf said she handled her magic with such precision that Lucia erased the ink from her letters.
Immediately after that, his letter that she sent to Lucia was delivered to Yuri, and as a result, a fight broke out between Yuri and Izel, who kidnapped me.
Besides that, I felt Lucia’s presence late at night when I was at the Cheonseon Academy. She was confronting an unknown person, and soon the unknown person disappeared from sight.
Although she was far away, I felt her magical energy and thought she was dead from Lucia, but I remember just ignoring her because her body was not found.
She is one of the most mysterious people within the Innocence Academy.
That’s because the Lucia she met in her game was no different from this girl who was trembling in front of her right now, covering her small face with her palms.
I came to the cafe with Lucia as soon as class ended. Without saying anything else, I called him over to talk for a while. I told her I would buy her a parfait and she happily accepted.
“Miss Lucia.”
“Yes, yes…?”
Lucia gently removes her fingers that were covering her eyes and peeks at me.
“Did you listen to Instructor Edward’s explanation?”
“You’re talking about a special class…?”
“There will be a separate announcement later, but from what I heard, all four members of the Yuan Shao family must pass the special class. I think they made such an agreement because of the scope of the special class’ activities.”
“Um, everyone?!”
Lucia is startled and stands up from her seat.
As her voice resonates, the attention of other cadets in the cafe is focused.
“……”
Lucia, unable to overcome their stares, sat down again and continued speaking in a cautious voice.
“…If you enter the special class, you’ll be fighting demons, right? I heard you could die…?”
Lucia is already scared, even though she isn’t dead yet. I gave her one suggestion, calming her down with my calming voice.
“If you don’t want to go into it, I can talk to the chairman. It was a matter discussed with the Kingdom of Altarix in the first place, but there is a high probability that the head of the Windless family would not have agreed.”
“How can Mr. Zeto do something like that…?”
“I received a direct request from the chairman. I asked him to admit Lucia Windless to a special class. Her instructors seemed to have already agreed, perhaps because they thought I could do it.”
“Ah… It’s just because of me, Mr. Zeto…”
Lucia muttered in her somber voice and lowered her head.
It will be a very difficult task to get Lucia accepted into her special class.
Even if she somehow manages to get her to pass, she causing trouble in class A at the academy and causing trouble within the special class will be on a different level of seriousness, so her passing may actually be poison to the special class.
Due to unavoidable circumstances, including political issues from high-ranking people, she was forced to hope that she would pass, but no matter how I look at it, I don’t think this is right.
The problem here is that Lucia is hiding her secret. But with Keraf not by her side, there is no way to find out what secret she is hiding.
How about changing your perspective here?
If Lucia has her secret, what is her purpose in hiding her secret? Is there a reason why she’s acting like such an idiot?
She believes that there is no acting without purpose.
Acting is the act of disguising oneself in order to be seen by others.
So, she can at least know that Lucia has a purpose that she doesn’t know what it is. This is assuming that she is hiding her secret.
From then on, my stance was decided.
“I do not intend to help Miss Lucia.”
“Yes…?”
Lucia raises her head and opens her eyes round at my firm voice.
“Even if I help Lucia pass the exam, my dependence will only increase. And there is a high possibility that it will become a hindrance to special class activities.”
“Yeah, but… Just now…”
“Either the scope of activities will be reduced or the special class will be disbanded. However, I think that we cannot put all the cadets who will be in the special class at risk just because of Miss Lucia.”
“……”
Lucia’s lips closed tightly as she let go.
It no longer mattered what her purpose was.
If she had a hidden secret, now was the time to bring it to the surface, and if she didn’t have a secret, joining a special class wouldn’t do her any good.
Furthermore, since this exam is said to be an open exam, it will not be possible to pass it like the entrance exam.
It was time to compete based on skill, not luck.
“It’s not that I hate Lucia, but I think it’s time to get serious. There’s a big difference between inside and outside the walls of the academy.”
I was about to finish the conversation and get up.
“…You’re being uncharacteristically stubborn, Mr. Zeto.”
Lucia, whose mood changed in an instant, stopped me as I was about to leave her seat.
“……”
A voice that has lost its tremor and is left with only relaxation.
The light in his always bright blue eyes had disappeared.
“I’m going to enter a special class. I can’t disappoint the head of the family anymore.”
“I’m glad you changed your mind, but I…”
“I don’t need help. Isn’t this what you wanted to hear?”
Something was very different from the Lucia I knew.
It was the first time Lucia revealed a side of herself that she had been hiding.
Honestly, I didn’t expect it.
Would it be more appropriate to say that I didn’t want it?
Part of me hoped that Lucia’s brightness would last forever like the sun in the sky.
“……”
She wasn’t desperate or frustrated, but it was true that she was quite shocked, so she couldn’t think of anything to say, so her lips closed.
[ Ah…? ]
Sierra must have been equally shocked, covering her open mouth with her sleeve and floating in the air in a daze.
There was silence for a while, and then Lucia started laughing as if she had never done that before.
“Are you already looking forward to life in the special class?!”
“…I guess so.”
I reluctantly agreed to her rhythm.
I thought she was good at acting at least as much as Eisel, but it seems like that wasn’t the case at all.
***
It was the very next day after that conversation with Lucia.
The classroom was buzzing about Lucia’s remarkable progress. Lucia, who was stuck in the 5th circle, reached the 6th circle overnight.
“Congratulations, Lucia.”
“Is this the Lucia I knew?”
“Lucia has become stronger, but what about me?”
Does she remember Lucia saying that her mana amount is amazing? Even though she could create as many circles as she wanted, she wasn’t creating them.
“hehehe, it’s all thanks to Zeto’s special training…!”
Lucia, who was scratching her head, gave me her thumb.
You didn’t get any special training.
“I believed it.”
From Noble mtl dot com
Even Edward, who arrived in the classroom, patted his nose with a proud look and praised me.
I looked at Lucia who was fooling everyone, and at a loss for words, she slightly shook her head. Because there are times in life when it is more beautiful not to reveal lies.
The problem is that it is not only Lucia who has changed overnight.
Knock knock.
At that moment, someone taps me on the back.
“Huh…?”
If it were normal, I would have called her name casually, but out of surprise, the first word came out of her mouth.
“Ah… I’m sorry, Cadet Zeto. I was just curious what kind of special training it was.”
I soon heard her voice and turned around.
Kaen was standing there with her hair in pigtails as usual.
The others were so preoccupied with Lucia that they didn’t notice the strangeness in her reaction to me, but she seemed to have noticed it right away and was subtly raising the corners of her mouth.
A siren sounds in her head, signaling a crisis.
I haven’t been able to sense Kaen’s presence since a while ago.