Chapter 20

Once Ricard had settled the rankings, some things at Beringen Academy changed, while others stayed the same.

The biggest change was the disappearance of the so-called tribute. The culture of exploitation perpetuated by the higher-ranked students was no more.

What had not changed was that newcomers still had to undergo initiation, lower-ranked students still had to yield when they met someone in the aisles, and Volka was still the students’ leader.

With the exploitation gone, the students could finally stand on their own feet. Regardless of rank, everyone could work hard to earn money, attend classes, and move toward a future.

And so the students of Beringen Academy lived by their own traditions and rules. Even if the place was a chicken coop.

Ricard freely taught any student who wanted to learn. He made no distinctions between high ranks and low. To him, they were all much the same anyway.

Volka worked hardest of all. He kept busy going back and forth between the dormitory and town, and trained harder than ever.

All he had needed was a scrap of hope. Hope that would give him a reason to try.

Now, Ricard hated all that talk about talent, but whether he liked it or not, talent certainly existed.

And apparently, there were some things even he could not manage.

“Why can’t you do this?! This!”

At the training ground behind the chicken-coop dormitory, Ricard’s eyes blazed as he swung his sword down hard through the air, shouting at the top of his lungs.

Beside him, Boribori stood holding a practice sword awkwardly, looking crestfallen.

Even Ricard, whose composure rarely faltered, had finally lost it while teaching Boribori.

An entire day of instruction changed nothing. Everything was wrong from head to toe to begin with, and when Ricard corrected each mistake, getting one part right only made another part wrong, and vice versa.

Boribori simply made no progress. This was already the third day. Surely Ricard deserved some admiration for his patience thus far.

The funny thing was, the students watching him teach Boribori picked things up over his shoulder and improved faster.

Everyone else ran into the towering wall that was Ricard, while Ricard had been stopped by the low wall that was Boribori.

“Ah... Please, Bori. You’re killing me.”

Ricard squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“S-sorry. I’ll try harder.”

“Trying matters, but get it right, would you? Getting better is the whole point of trying. You said you wanted to be an adventurer, didn’t you?”

“... I want to be good at it. I just can’t...”

The sight of Boribori looking so dejected soon made Ricard feel guilty again. Right. It wasn’t as though he wanted to be bad at it. He couldn’t be doing this just to torment him.

“... Sorry I got angry.”

“N-no. I’m the one who’s no good...”

Ricard looked at Boribori uneasily. A thought occurred to him.

When people called him a genius, he had thought they were wrong. He had believed he was better than others only because of his experience in his previous life, not because he had any particular talent.

But that wasn’t true. He really was a genius. Had been from the start, even in his previous life.

In his previous life, Riki could grasp the essence of anything with a single glance, and understanding came quickly. Not only could he refine existing techniques, he was creative enough to devise better ones and master them in no time.

Ironically, he had never had a chance to realize he was talented. With no time for practice, he had been thrown straight into life-or-death combat and spent his whole life fighting bloody battles.

Die or survive. On that razor’s edge, there had been no time to debate whether he had talent.

Only now, looking at Boribori, did Ricard realize that those things had been talent.

In any case, what was someone without talent supposed to do? He thought it over, but there was no particular solution.

“Let’s take it slowly. There’s no rush.”

“Okay...”

“Let’s take a break.”

“Okay. But I have to cut grass.”

Instead of entering the dormitory, Boribori went around the training ground to the overgrown area behind the inner fortress, the academy’s main building.

Beringen Academy stood on a flat expanse atop a rocky cliff. The grounds were larger than one might expect, but more than half were as thickly overgrown as a forest.

Now that it was spring, plants were growing rampant, and they had to start cutting the grass. In summer, it was practically a daily chore.

These jobs fell to the lower ranks, or to the so-called “bottom-dwellers” who had no rank at all. Unfortunately, Boribori was a bottom-dweller.

Wherever people lived, there was plenty to do: cleaning, laundry, cutting grass, and all the rest.

Students were already cutting the overgrowth with sickles. Those without sickles carried the cut grass away and tossed it over the cliff.

Ricard rolled up his sleeves and joined them. Even now that he ranked first, he did not shy away from dirty work.

The students had been awkward around him at first, but people grew used to anything once it became part of daily life. Three months had already passed since Ricard enrolled. Born in April, he was now eleven.

He had arrived at just ten years old and beaten everyone considered strong, then taken first place after defeating the seventh-ranked student even in a fight with real swords.

It was such an extraordinary debut that one had to wonder if anything like it had ever happened in the academy’s history. As far as the students were concerned, they were simply relieved that their current number one was easygoing and unpretentious.

Someone else might act as leader, but the personality of the first-ranked student set the tone for the entire academy.

Some had ruled like tyrants; others had squeezed the students dry like vicious lords.

The students could not have put their finger on exactly what had changed, but they could certainly feel it. A great deal was different.

As he worked, Ricard’s clothes became filthy with dirt and bits of grass. The other students were in much the same state.

He gave his clothes a cursory brushing, swept aside the debris on the ground, and sat down to rest. Boribori came over, fiddled with something, then held it out.

“Hold out your hand.”

When Ricard did, Boribori sprinkled something from his pocket onto his palm. It was hard bread crushed into fine crumbs.

Not plain crumbs, though, but a sort of snack mixed with salt and wild herbs ground into powder.

Ricard tipped the whole lot into his mouth and worked it around. As the crumbs softened, their salty taste and subtle fragrance filled his mouth and nose. It was quite edible, in its own way.

Boribori tipped some into his own mouth and chewed as well. Then he looked off to one side and frowned.

“Can’t you beat them up?”

Ricard turned his head. Ice’s gang was talking among themselves in the shade.

Just as Volka had said, Ice’s gang had no interest in the academy.

Whether students died, threw a party, or Ricard took first rank, they simply kept to themselves. But that wasn’t wrong, was it?

“Where did that come from?”

Boribori did not normally act like a fox throwing its weight around under a tiger’s protection, but he seemed to dislike Ice’s gang in particular.

“It’s not out of nowhere. They’re bad people.”

“On what grounds?”

Boribori leaned over and whispered in Ricard’s ear.

“They’re heretics. Heretics.”

“Huh?”

“I happened to see them last time I went to town. They met some bad people and did this. I saw it.”

Boribori spread his fingers and covered his eyes with the back of his hand. Ricard had seen that gesture somewhere before. Had it been Daisy’s mother?

“Isn’t that the Church of Judgment or something?”

“Exactly! They’re heretics!”

Everyone approached religion differently. Boribori was not especially devout, but apparently he recoiled at anything heretical.

“Sorry, but I’m not an inquisitor.”

“Even if they might eat the other kids’ hearts and livers while they’re asleep at night? If they borrow evil powers, even you won’t be safe, Riki.”

Ricard gave Boribori a look of exasperation.

“You believe that stuff? Where did you hear that idiotic nonsense?”

“My mom told me.”

“... Well, it doesn’t hurt to be careful. But picking a fight for no reason isn’t right. If you hate them that much, go fight them yourself.”

“Th-that’s...”

“Which is why we need to get serious about your training.”

“All right...”

Boribori answered glumly, still chewing. Ricard roughly ruffled his bowl-cut hair, despite Boribori being two years his senior.

“Let’s wash up first. Wash our clothes, too.”

“Okay.”

Ricard and Boribori went to the well in the courtyard. Students had already gathered there and stripped to wash. Girls lived in another building, but there was nothing to be done about that.

The boys who had matured early and already developed sturdy builds actually enjoyed the attention of the girls watching from distant windows.

Ricard and Boribori stripped too and hauled up a bucket. A bucket full of water was quite heavy, and pulling it up by a rope took considerable strength.

Daily life itself was physical training. That included everything from climbing the cliff stairs to traveling back and forth to town, six hours away.

As a result, not a single academy student was fat. Most had lean, muscular builds.

Ricard was a little taller than others his age, at about 160 centimeters, while Boribori was shorter than average at 150. For the record, fifteen-year-old Volka was in the high 170s.

The students differed in height, weight, looks, birthplace, and upbringing. What they shared was that their families had cast them aside.

Ricard alone had come of his own choosing. Perhaps because he had grown up in relatively good circumstances, there was something subtly different about him.

He had not intended it, but that foundation of his character might have helped shape the current atmosphere: within the academy, at least, they were all fellow students.

After washing, Ricard hurried inside with the others.

Those with towels dried their wet hair and bodies, then lent them to friends. Ricard simply dried himself with his change of clothes and put them straight on. A violet was embroidered on one side of the chest.

The weather was gloomy today, so they lit a fire outside and hung their washed clothes nearby. A few students stayed to watch them.

Ricard had recently moved to an upper bunk near the middle of the room. There was no particular reason beyond its being far from both doors. It was inevitably distracting when lots of students were coming and going.

“No, I swear! It really was the swordsmanship professor! I was on my way to work when he came out of a pigsty, so I asked what he was doing there! And there he was, covered in shit, saying this!”

Everywhere had its joker who liked to make people laugh. One boy was chattering away excitedly in the nude, gesturing with hands and feet, his privates dangling as he moved.

The others crowded around, grinning as they listened.

“How strange. I could have sworn I made it home after drinking last night. I saw a pale backside and thought it was my wife...”

Whether it was true or not, his imitation of the professor’s solemn voice and manner was hilarious.

“Hahahahaha!”

Sure enough, the boys roared with laughter. One even rolled about on a bed, clutching his stomach.

“But you know, I don’t think he was drunk.”

“Then what?”

“He went in there on purpose.”

“Ugh.”

“Is that really true? You know I’ll ask him!”

A little way off, Ricard lay the wrong way round on his bed, smiling as he watched them chatter.

Scenes like this always reminded him of his army days. Put people together, and they were all the same.

Then, abruptly, the boisterous laughter and chatter fell silent. Ice’s gang had entered.

They never actually bullied the other students or anything of the sort. It was simply the air they carried. And with the so-called change in power still recent, the others felt unnecessarily wary around them.

The trouble was, Boribori was coming in from the opposite end after hanging up laundry. Perhaps the students gathered in the middle had blocked their view, because he and Ice’s gang came face-to-face.

Ice silently looked down at the shorter Boribori. Then Ricard heard his voice for the first time. They only ever whispered among themselves, so he had never heard it before.

“Move.”

In complete contrast to his pretty face, his voice was low and masculine.

Boribori flinched and hurried to step aside, then stopped. Without moving out of the way, he said,

“N-no. You move.”

To the wider world, it might have been nothing. Within the academy, however, the gravest possible situation had just arisen. Children had a world of their own.

When Boribori refused to yield, Ice lifted his gaze to Ricard, who was watching from his upper bunk a little distance away.

Neither glared at the other. They simply looked. Yet neither looked away, and the atmosphere grew strange.

Tension filled the air. One second, two—as time passed, the situation seemed to spiral ever further out of control. The dormitory, so noisy a moment ago, was deathly quiet.

Then Ice looked away first and stepped aside. For an unranked bottom-dweller.

Now that Ice had actually yielded, Boribori did not know what to do. Stiff and awkward, he squeezed past, hugging the opposite side of the aisle. He looked dazed.

His heart was pounding so hard the others could practically see it.

Even after reaching Ricard’s side, he still looked bewildered, apparently trying to calm his racing heart.

Ricard waited for him to settle, then spoke without letting any emotion enter his voice.

“Bori.”

“Y-yeah?”

“You’re my dearest friend. I like your innocence. I don’t care if you can’t fight, or whether you’re useful to me or not. But rules are rules. From now on, you step aside.”

The words themselves were kind, but his tone was firm. And commanding.

Ricard did not judge people by their rank, but he believed order and rules mattered when people lived together.

The dormitory was so quiet that everyone heard him. At last, it was firmly driven home to the academy’s students: power had changed hands. Ricard was number one.

“Okay...”

Boribori answered glumly. Only then did Ricard smile.

“Come here. It might be a chicken coop, but it’s nice being able to stay close to each other, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“You know, I saw you drawing on the ground the other day. You’re good. So what if you don’t have a talent for fighting? A talent for drawing is plenty. I’m jealous, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. If I could draw well, I’d draw my mother so I could look at her often.”

“Want me to draw her?”

“You’ve never seen my mother.”

“I can if you describe her features. Making people look beautiful is what matters in a drawing anyway. Even if they’re ugly in real life, they can look handsome or beautiful in a picture. Everyone likes it.”

“Is that so?”

There was something odd about that reasoning, yet in a way it made sense. Strange.

As Ricard and Boribori began chatting quietly, the sound of friends talking rose from the other beds as well. At some point, rain began pattering outside.

Still, what would have happened if Ice had refused to move?

The students found themselves wondering.