If it had been another student, the response would have been, What kind of nonsense are you talking about? But Diret, as a fifth-year student, understood immediately.

“Did the Skull Principal leave it off because you have too much mana?”

“Yes.”

“……”

An awkward silence hung in the air.

Diret thought hard about how to comfort this junior, who already had it rough enough, but nothing came to mind.

“I’m fine, Senior.”

“…Hey. You shouldn’t be fine… How can this be something you’re fine with?”

“I’ll be able to avoid them. …Probably. And you’re doing fifth year too, Senior. I can do it too.”

“That’s not the same thing…”

Diret nearly said, “How is the fifth year I chose of my own free will the same as a high-difficulty mode forced on you by the Skull Principal’s malice?” but gave up.

Even if Diret pointed it out in detail, it would probably only make the junior feel worse.

“Whew. Fine. Let’s drop it. Nothing will change anyway. The reason I came here is because I was worried about you.”

“Mm, exactly what part are you worried about?”

“……”

There were so many applicable answers that the junior did not even seem able to guess which one Diret meant, and Diret pressed fingertips to the forehead.

“…Let’s start with the lecture schedule. Though I don’t know if we’ll finish it all today.”

“Ah. But Senior, I have something urgent I need to do today.”

“Starting today? What is it? Research? A commission? Some pro… some insane professor didn’t call for you already, did they?”

Even while asking, Diret felt a sense of foreboding.

With the junior in front of Dire, it would not have been strange at all if a professor had summoned him from the very first day.

“No. I was going to move around the goods we smuggled in.”

“…You’re serious?”

Diret stared at Lee Han as if unable to believe it.

That inspection this time had been absurdly difficult, and yet Lee Han was saying he had brought smuggled goods in.

It was impossible to believe.

“How did you bring them in?”

“I was lucky.”

“This inspection wasn’t the sort of thing luck could get you through… Well, whatever. Good for you. Glad it worked. I’ll help you move them.”

It did not sound like a particularly difficult task, so Diret readily offered to help.

And while helping, Diret intended to say the things that needed saying.

“There’s quite a lot of it.”

“That doesn’t matter. I’ll just make my summons do it.”

“Then I’ll gratefully accept. Oh, right. You should take some too, Senior.”

“No need.”

Diret waved it off.

What was the point of coveting a second-year’s tiny smuggled stash?

In the first place, from fifth year onward, one became half professor already rather than student, so the need to obsess over supplies dropped sharply.

Besides, with the inspection difficulty this year, there was no way the amount brought in would be that large…

*****

“…Were you a mage?”

“You’re a mage too, Senior.”

Diret was so shocked that the question slipped out—a question no mage should ever ask.

The sheer amount of smuggled goods, enough to look as if they had been hauled in with several carts, left Diret bewildered.

“How in the world did you…”

“I can explain.”

“No. Later. I am curious, but if I listen to that today, all our time is going to vanish.”

Diret shook head and wings to regain focus.

To be honest, Diret was curious, but today Diret had come to help a worrying junior, not to hear the legend of Einroguard smuggling.

There would probably be time later.

‘…Probably?’

For a moment, Diret felt the sorrow of a fifth-year who could not be certain of having any free time at all, and the shoulders slumped.

That was fifth year: it would not have been strange in the slightest if, after today, Diret never got to come outside again.

“Hide in the darkness and move the cargo.”

“Watch the path ahead.”

“Sense hostility.”

Diret summoned a variety of undead servants and prepared for the work.

It was only a simple evening walk, but one could # Nоvеlight # never let the guard down in Einroguard.

Detecting enemies, expanding sight, concealment, camouflage—those were the basics.

“Is there anything I can help with?”

“No. I do have some pride as a senior. Did you prepare your lecture schedule?”

While leading the way down the corridor with porter golems following behind, Diret asked the question.

“Yes.”

“As expected. You used the Calendarium, didn’t you? That huge clock artifact Yukbeltire made.”

“You know about it too, Senior?”

“Of course I do. It’s such a convenient artifact. There was even a classmate who tried to steal it.”

“……”

It was the seniors’ sordid history Lee Han had not wanted to know.

When Diret gestured for the lecture schedule, Lee Han pulled out the one he had written down.

“This is what I got for now.”

“Hmm… it’s almost exactly the same. I was worried, but as expected, an artifact made by Yukbeltire really is accurate.”

“It malfunctioned a few times.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m taking too many lectures…”

“……”

Diret pretended not to hear and brought the topic back where it belonged.

“What matters is that it finished accurately in the end!”

“Yes. …Wait, Senior. What do you mean, almost exactly the same?”

Lee Han felt puzzled.

For something to be called the same, there first had to be something to compare it to.

But his lecture schedule had just been put together today while talking with Yukbeltire, so what exactly was Diret comparing it to?

“Ah. The one the professors made.”

“…?”

Lee Han tilted his head.

He did not understand what the senior meant.

“The professors… made what?”

“Hm? Well, the professors discuss your lecture schedule and contents so they won’t overlap with each other, don’t they?”

“Wh-what?!”

For the first time in a long while, Lee Han felt pure shock.

Where had such an evil scheme been secretly plotted?

“Y-you didn’t know?”

“Of course I didn’t know!! Where in the world was such an evil plot being devised?”

The junior’s air was so murderous that Diret answered in a slightly flustered voice.

“In the professors’ lounge?”

“……”

Now that Lee Han thought about it, when professors talked, of course they were not going to do it in the castle of some wicked devil duke.

Naturally, they would talk in the professors’ lounge.

Recovering a little calm, Lee Han asked,

“Tell me in detail, Senior. About the conspiracy those most wicked devils of hell are weaving.”

“Umm… It’s closer to a conversation the professors had, but…”

Among the authorities Diret had gained upon becoming a fifth-year was permission to visit the professors’ lounge.

In truth, it was closer to an obligation than a privilege. Diret had to go find professors and report on things ranging from research to lecture-related matters.

And during this visit to the professors’ lounge, Diret had found one unusual room.

Actually, it was less that the room itself was unusual and more that what was inside it was unusual.

There was only a single bulletin board in the room, carved from wood and left standing there by itself.

Monday

9:00~11:00

11:00~1:00

1:00~3:00

Everyone, it seems nothing has changed from last year.

Hasn’t it? My lecture order changed.

…I meant the break times, Professor Verdus.

There weren’t any last year either, and that was fine, wasn’t it?

I would rather not take Bibele’s side unless I absolutely had to, but this year I truly have no choice. This is what it looks like even with only the genuinely necessary lectures. Didn’t Professor Garcia remove several easy lectures as well?

I removed them so Student Lee Han could rest!

I’m sure you did. But you could have removed difficult lectures instead, and yet you removed the easy ones, did you not, Professor Garcia? Admit it. At your core, you are fundamentally no different from the other professors.

Below that, there was a massive shattered mark where someone had apparently smashed it with a fist.

And beneath that…

…Everyone, do refrain from provoking Professor Garcia.

“There was a board like that.”

‘…That’s strange. Why does this feel familiar?’

Lee Han felt a bizarre sense of recognition, but now was not the time to figure out why.

“And then? What happened?”

“I asked a professor. Apparently, since the professors kept fighting over stealing one another’s time, they changed it so they just reached an agreement like that from the start.”

It was a fairly rational method.

Rather than professors vilely stretching their own lectures at will and interfering with the professor scheduled next, they could prepare proper lectures within time that had been agreed upon in advance.

…Except for the fact that Lee Han’s free will was nowhere in the process!

“No, why are they making agreements among themselves?!”

“Well… that’s true.”

Diret was left speechless by the junior’s entirely valid point.

Come to think of it, Diret should have found that odd back in the professors’ lounge, but since the junior was such an abnormal existence, Diret had simply thought, Well, to match his schools, I guess it would have to be done like this, and walked away.

“But Junior, to match your lecture schedule, isn’t it almost fixed anyway? Remove the easy lectures and keep only the difficult ones…”

“You can remove difficult lectures too.”

“What kind of nonsense are you talking about? You should take the lectures that help you the most.”

Diret dismissed it as if telling him not to say ridiculous things.

Lee Han was newly reminded that the senior standing before him was, after all, a fifth-year student.

“So the schedule the artifact gave me matches the schedule the professors made.”

“Yeah…”

“……”

Rarely, Lee Han grew visibly dispirited.

Of course, since he prioritized efficiency, he would not have arbitrarily altered the lecture schedule anyway, but to think his fate had already been decided in advance.

Diret flapped wings in a panic as the junior who was always bold and confident suddenly deflated.

“B-but still. Here… here this empty space… Ah, there isn’t any empty space. Then these lectures here and here—they aren’t ones the professors chose, so you should be able to swap them for others you want!”

“…Thank you, Senior.”

Lee Han came back to himself with a bitter smile.

His chest ached with a sense of defeat, but he could not stay like this forever.

‘Right. I can’t afford to sit around in despair.’

It might have been slightly better not to know, but in the end, almost nothing changed.

He would simply attend all the lectures he had to and get the best grades possible.

“Feeling a little better?”

“Yes, Senior. Over here.”

Lee Han summoned a water orb into the air, caught it with one hand, flipped the body upside down, and walked several steps along the ceiling.

While Diret stared speechlessly, Lee Han kept going. Then he recited a spell.

“As an honorable student of Einroguard, I swear that I shall never trust a professor, never be bribed, and never inform. And I shall be especially suspicious of the Skull Principal above all else…”

“……”

At the junior’s bitter, grudge-filled incantation, Diret blinked, then came to the senses and looked around.

‘There was a hidden room here?’

It did not particularly surprise Diret not to have known. There were more hidden rooms in Einroguard than the Skull Principal had years.

RUMBLE!

‘This is pretty nice.’

Diret looked inside the neatly organized secret base and felt impressed.

Since old graduates had used it, it was quite a decent place. Traces of complex magic remained all over it.

“Could you put the smuggled goods in this storage room over here?”

“Sure.”

Diret had the summons sort the cargo. The smuggled goods piled up neatly inside the storage room in one corner of the base.

‘This looks richer than the Kitchen Club’s storehouse.’

“This is…?”

While looking around at the traces of magic, Diret discovered an empty notebook fixed to the table.

It was a type of notebook Diret had seen many times before.

“What is this? It looks familiar.”

“Ah. That’s the communication artifact that senior told me to use to check whether I was taking dark magic.”

“……”

Inside, Diret regretted bringing it up at all.