“…It’s not like you did anything wrong. You did well.”

Lee Han let out a sigh and praised Phoneig.

He should have assessed things properly and given specific orders. From ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) Phoneig’s perspective, hadn’t it done a good job without overexerting itself?

Of course, he hadn’t expected it to do this well…

“I look forward to working with you, new striker.”

“I feel a little pressured, since you seem to be expecting a lot.”

At those words, Karnella nodded seriously.

“Normally I should say I’m not expecting anything, but honestly, it’s true that I am a little excited. That can’t be helped.”

The existing members of the Einroguard Jousting Club weren’t drastically lacking in skill, but compared to Karnella’s passion for victory, the difference was heaven and earth.

If the striker position was vacant, they should have been thinking about how to fill it themselves. Instead, they had that lazy attitude of, It’ll work out somehow.

In a situation like this, if Karnella didn’t get excited over a younger student who had shown up as a griffin rider, that wouldn’t be a person. It would be an undead.

“Right. Junior. What was your name again?”

“…Senior. Don’t tell me you didn’t even know my name. I’m Lee Han of House Wardanaz.”

“Ah. Right. I’ll remember it. Everyone kept calling you ‘that guy,’ so I forgot.”

“……”

At the sight of an upperclassman kindly explaining a reason he would rather not have known, Lee Han shook his head.

“By the way, Senior. There’s one last thing I want to ask.”

“The next training schedule?”

“No. If I remember correctly, even Phoneig here had to leave with its curse still in place because of the mass limit or size limit. Is your cerberus all right?”

“Ah. That’s because that’s coward’s jousting.”

“?”

“Wardanaz, Wardanaz. To think you’d know this little about jousting… There are two kinds of jousting. One is jousting where the mounts are subjected to mass limits or size limits. That’s called coward’s jousting.”

“Is that what the Empire calls it?”

“No. That’s just what I call it.”

“……”

“Anyway, it’s true, isn’t it? The other kind is true jousting, where you don’t put petty restrictions on the mounts. That’s the kind I do too.”

“…So griffins, hippogriffs, and cerberuses all come out in their original forms?”

“That’s right!”

A smile spread across Karnella’s face as it seemed the junior was slowly starting to understand the appeal of jousting.

So this really was a genuine madman.

Lee Han vowed to keep some distance from the Jousting Club for a while.

*****

Professor Willow will be in the forest this week!

I’m so happy!

Lee Han felt joy for the first time in a while when one of his lectures got pushed back to next week because of the professor’s circumstances.

Of course, he knew perfectly well that when a lecture got postponed at Einroguard, that burden simply came back to the student the following week, but he couldn’t help being happy anyway.

“BWAHAHAHAHA!”

“?”

Gainando was reading a magazine and bursting into laughter. Wondering what was so funny, Lee Han asked,

“Did you find something interesting?”

“Ah, Lee Han. Look at this. Somebody wrote a joke about mages!”

“…One day, a master had too much to teach a disciple, so the master said this.

—I need to teach you quickly, so in the morning I’ll teach you four things, and in the evening I’ll teach you three.

At that, the disciple got angry and said that was ridiculous. Seeing that, the master changed the offer as if there were no helping it.

—Then how about I teach you three things in the morning and four in the evening?

The disciple was very satisfied to hear that…”

“Isn’t it hilarious?”

“…Are you even keeping up with your assignments?”

“Ah, they haven’t even been assigned yet!?”

Gainando was flustered by his friend’s sudden remark.

Of course, since Gainando normally didn’t do assignments properly, being suspected was unavoidable, but wasn’t it still the beginning of the semester?

“If they haven’t been assigned yet, then you should at least be previewing the material. What are you taking? Bring me your lecture list.”

“……”

While Gainando got pinned down in a corner of the year lounge and grilled like a rat, the other friends swiftly cleared away the chessboard and mage card set, then hurriedly ran off.

An hour later, Lee Han headed off to attend the lecture <Poison, Bone, Blood>. The pleasant mood he had been in earlier had long since turned completely upside down.

Which bastard submitted that?

It was so suspiciously well timed that he almost suspected one of Einroguard’s professors had sent it in.

Lee Han shook his head.

Get a grip. It’s just a coincidence.

If a mage started falling into suspicions like this, going mad was the easiest thing in the world.

It was already a profession vulnerable to insanity, so a person had to be careful at all times.

The lecture hall for <Poison, Bone, Blood>, located on the second underground floor, was dark and smelled musty, as if all sorts of ingredients had been mixed together.

Students from other schools of magic might have found it hard to adapt, but Lee Han had already received basic training in the dark magic group all throughout last year, so he sat down without much disturbance.

“?”

As he waited, Lee Han began to feel slightly puzzled when he didn’t see any familiar upperclassmen from the school.

What? Did I mix this up with one of Professor Voladi’s lectures?

He even considered the somewhat more plausible possibility that he had simply entered the wrong lecture hall, but that wasn’t it.

Not long after, a student entered for the first time. At the sight of the familiar upperclassman, Lee Han suddenly felt a surge of emotion well up inside him.

“…Senior Diret!”

“Junior.”

Diret and Lee Han looked at each other again.

As if they were staring into a mirror, both of them had exhaustion hanging heavily beneath their eyes.

One had advanced to fifth year, and the other was taking classes and clubs in every direction, so in a way it was only natural.

That person is really pitiful.

This kid is really pitiful too.

Without knowing that each was pitying the other, they both opened their mouths.

“Senior. Have you been well?”

“No. Absolutely do not make it to fifth year. Have you been well?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t lie.”

“……”

With a bitter expression, Lee Han said,

“I think this is still manageable. Not yet…”

“…Right. If you say so, then I suppose so.”

Come to think of it, since it was still the beginning of the semester, there was a good chance club activities hadn’t properly started yet.

There weren’t many clubs that handed major responsibilities to brand-new members.

Thinking of it that way, it wasn’t completely wrong for the junior to say things were still bearable.

The lectures, too, had not yet truly gotten underway, so for a junior who had survived last year’s brutal schedule, this much would probably be tolerable.

“But why is nobody else coming?”

“I think it’s just the two of us. Our school didn’t have many students to begin with, so it’s not unusual for there to be only one or two people in a lecture hall.”

“…I-Is that so.”

As the junior looked flustered, Diret smiled bitterly and said,

“It’s fine. You don’t need to worry about it. Speak comfortably. You belong to the dark magic group now too.”

Unlike first year, when a student could easily give up after taking the basic lectures, continuing to take dark magic group classes even after advancing to second year practically meant that person officially belonged to it.

From here on, switching schools of magic became fairly rare.

“In that case, Senior. If our school has so few students, shouldn’t you be increasing the numbers? Or is the professor just not interested?”

“…That sounded a little too comfortable…”

Diret was taken aback at the sight of the junior stabbing straight into Professor Mortum’s vital point.

If he said something like that in front of Professor Mortum, the professor might collapse from shock.

“Ah. I’m sorry. You told me I could speak comfortably.”

“No. You can speak comfortably in front of me. Just be careful in front of the professor.”

After saying that, Diret got up from his seat and walked to the front, stopping beside the lectern.

Seeing that, Lee Han asked in confusion,

“Why are you standing there?”

“I’m teaching this lecture.”

“……”

Only then did Lee Han realize that Diret hadn’t come as a student taking the class with him, but as the professor teaching it.

A chill instantly ran down Lee Han’s spine.

So when you reach fifth year, you have to teach classes too!

“D-Do students have to teach too once they reach fifth year!?”

“Hm? More or less. Even before fifth year, fourth-years sometimes…”

As Diret spoke, he flinched at the junior’s eyes, which had turned so murky and dark.

It was the look of someone who had learned, too early, a truth about the world that he should not yet have known.

“…Forget what I just said.”

“I have a feeling I’ll end up doing that job.”

“All right. What kind of lecture is <Poison, Bone, Blood>?”

At Diret’s clumsy attempt to change the subject, Lee Han shook his head back and forth.

Still, this wasn’t really the senior’s fault.

It was the fault of evil Einroguard!

“We learned a few spells that used poison-element or bone-element magic last year. Blood-element too.”

“Right. You learned last year… Hm?”

Mid-sentence, Diret flicked the black wings sprouting from his back.

“You shouldn’t have learned blood-element magic.”

“Ah. More precisely, I did learn basic blood magic.”

“…Was there perhaps a mad professor at our school?”

Startled, Diret blurted out the obvious question.

What kind of lunatic taught blood magic to a first-year student?

Before Professor Voladi could get dragged to the punishment ward, Lee Han quickly explained.

“It wasn’t that I was taught how to use blood magic. It was because…”

The principle of amplifying mana by using blood itself was clean and efficient, but blood magic was rarely used because of how dangerous it was.

There were not many people reckless enough to learn and teach a technique that could devour the mage the moment even a slight mistake was made.

But Professor Voladi had taken note of Lee Han’s high mana capacity and gifted him a basic blood magic book.

Even without amplifying his mana through blood magic, Lee Han could cast those spells using the large amount of mana he had been born with, so Professor Voladi had judged that it would suit him well.

“…Professor Voladi said that even if I didn’t use blood magic itself, I should at least learn the spells that applied its principles.”

Don’t curse. Don’t curse.

After hearing the junior’s explanation, Diret squeezed his eyes shut.

A fifth-year student could not curse out professors in front of a junior.

“…I see. Right. I see. That could happen. Right. Of course. Sure.”

Did he break?

While Lee Han worried slightly, Diret recovered from the shock and opened his mouth.

“In truth, what we’ll be learning in this lecture isn’t all that different from what you just described. Poison, bone, blood. All of them are powerful reagents, and… some of them are efficient elements too.”

Diret summoned a piece of chalk and continued explaining as he drew diagrams across the blackboard.

Poison and bone were, in themselves, elements with powerful combat strength, and blood, though a little inefficient and therefore not used often, was undeniably a powerful and ancient reagent.

The goal of this lecture was to learn how to use all three as reagents and as elements, and to become skilled in linking them together.

“Even within the dark magic group, the paths branch in all kinds of ways, from golems to curses. Because of that, students often fail at surprisingly simple dark magic. I think that’s because their fundamentals are lacking.”

Diret spoke in a serious voice, like a dark mage walking further down that road.

If you only learned the convenient and easy-looking spells right in front of you, then later, when you tried to learn difficult spells, you would fall into a helpless state where you no longer even knew where to begin practicing again.

The lecture that had been prepared to avoid that was precisely this <Poison, Bone, Blood>.

It was a little irritating that the other students in the dark magic group weren’t attending, but even Diret couldn’t grab them by the collar and drag them in.

The fact that the junior Diret had the highest hopes for was taking it was more than enough to satisfy Diret.

“I see. I understand. Then I’ll need to thoroughly practice the basics of each type of magic over the course of this semester.”

“No. You should just start with the difficult spells.”

“……”

At the sight of his senior overturning what he had just said as casually as turning over his palm, Lee Han felt betrayed.