Chapter 99: Interlude – Tangled Fate

Thanks to Iris’s healing magic, I was discharged from the infirmary much sooner than expected. Now, for the first time in what felt like forever, I was enjoying a leisurely afternoon on the sofa in Professor Kane’s office.

Flipping through some paperwork with a fluttering sound, Professor Kane shot me a sharp glare. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I simply shrugged while peeling one of the tangerines sitting in a box at the corner of his office. Apparently, it was a gift from Professor Bianca.

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m a passionate cadet who came to the professor’s office after class to ask questions about things I didn’t understand.”

Professor Kane pressed his forehead with a sigh, as if I were giving him a headache. “You little punk. Your suspension just ended, and you’re already acting up again. Aren’t you going to Yuren’s training ground today? Lately, you’ve been holed up there nonstop.”

“I’m currently banned from entering it.”

Professor Kane squinted at me, tilting his head. “Banned? Don’t tell me. Did you and Yuren get into a fight?”

“Huh?”

He teasingly said, “Heh heh heh. You’ve been acting like an old man, but it turns out you’re still full of youthful fire!”

“What are you even talking about?”

Fighting with Yuren, no Yurina? As if. Just yesterday, we were still exchanging messages; she even asked if I had eaten properly, reminding me to sleep early tonight, and so on. However, now that I thought about it, that didn’t sound like a conversation between friends, more like a doting mom talking to her mischievous child.

Anyway, although I had been barred from entering the training ground under the excuse of needing rest, Yurina and I were still in touch regularly.

Suddenly, Professor Kane drifted into a nostalgic mood. “Ahh, I used to get into fights with my friends all the time when I was your age.”

I held back a snicker and asked, “What did you fight about, mostly?”

“Well, fights usually start over the dumbest things when you look back later.”

“That’s true.”

“Like when my buddy ate a limited-edition snack from the academy store without asking.”

“That’s way too trivial.”

Seriously? Not even grade school kids fought over stuff like that anymore.

“There was also this time we argued over whether a female cadet in our general education class was pretty or just average, and it escalated into a brawl.”

“Interesting. By any chance, what was her name?”

Professor Kane kept quiet.

“It was Professor Bianca, wasn’t it?”

Everyone knew that Professor Kane and Professor Bianca were cadets from the same year.

“I-I voted for average, just so you know!” Professor Kane said.

“Sure, sure. I believe you,” I replied.

Honestly, this guy was hopelessly devoted.

Grinning, I asked again, “So, how are things between you and Professor Bianca these days?”

“I have no idea why you’re asking such nonsense. But anyway, we’ve both been busy. We haven’t talked much lately. The fourth-year cadets just finished their Hero Field Practicum, after all.”

The Hero Field Practicum was the first course for fourth-years, where they temporarily joined a guild affiliated with the academy and spent about two months observing and learning from active heroes.

“Hero Field Practicum, huh!”

It didn’t bring back the fondest memories for me.

“Tch! If only those brats hadn’t been out on practicum, the demonic monster outbreak during the Sealing Festival could’ve been dealt with much faster,” Professor Kane said, then returned to flipping through the mountain of paperwork.

He wasn’t wrong. If the fourth-years had been around during the incident caused by Astaroth, things would’ve been resolved far more swiftly. This year’s fourth-year cadets were considered some of the most exceptional talents in the five-hundred-year history of the Hero Academy.

In fact, many of the heroes who would go on to become central figures in the war against the Demon God’s army came from that very class: Aaron Baek, the Meteor Spear; Bella Leonhart, the Spectral Sword; Raios Ryu, the Thunder Emperor; Sophia Evergreen, the Archmage, and many others. This generation of fourth-years produced a host of heroes who would later become legends.

However, the most infamous cadet from that year wasn’t one of those names. Among all these towering figures, the one who left the deepest impression on the continent wasn’t even one of the Final Five Heroes like Senior Sophia.

It was the Witch of the Night, Laneige Maramm, who had frozen half the continent and also willingly accepted the Demon God’s blessing. She had become the most monstrous demon of all, responsible for the massacre of millions. In the end, she had met her death at the hands of the Undying Fiend, Dale Han.

But all I had done was finish off the dying witch. It wasn’t me who had brought her to that point; Yuren and our other comrades were the ones who had cornered her. This time, I obviously had to act before she froze half the continent again.

But I couldn’t just go and kill her now. There were too many eyes at the academy, and if I provoked her carelessly, the dormant witch’s power inside her could go berserk. If that happened, the entire academy could become a frozen wasteland.

I shook my head, recalling the endless snowy plains I had seen far too much of in my past life. It was not time to make a move on Laneige yet. There was no need to rush. She would become the Witch of the Night and accept the Demon God’s blessing only fifteen years later.

The one I needed to find before Laneige was a small-framed woman with fiery red hair. Her face naturally came to mind. Though her looks were cute, her personality was fierce and prickly. But beneath that, she was more caring and loyal than anyone else. Every night, she taught me magic, and whenever I made a mistake, she would whack me on the head with a staff taller than she was. I found myself smiling faintly at the memory of her.

As I thought about her, I unconsciously muttered, “I need to go see Senior Sophia.”

“Hm? Who are you going to see?” Professor Kane asked.

I shrugged. “No one.”

Standing up, I asked, “Professor. Are all the fourth-year cadets back on campus now?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Why do you ask, all of a sudden?”

With a sly smirk tugging at my lips, I turned away. “I just have something I need to do. Well then, I’ll be off now.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get lost already.”

With Professor Kane’s ever-so-warm send-off echoing behind me, I stepped out of his office.

***

Within the Hero Academy, the status of a fourth-year cadet carried special weight. That was because once the year ended, these cadets were expected to graduate and serve as active-duty heroes. Naturally, their curriculum was significantly more intense than that of their juniors. Dangerous field missions, live combat simulations, and other real-world training programs replaced the standard classroom fare.

As such, the building where the fourth-year cadets took their lessons was located slightly away from the main cluster of first- to third-year lecture halls at the heart of the academy.

I gazed up at the old-fashioned building that looked like it had leaped right out of a storybook. “It’s been a while!”

As I took my first steps inside, walking down the wide corridor, I spotted a few familiar faces. Among the students wandering the halls were several who would go on to make quite a name for themselves in the future, such as Bertrand the Iron Wall and Keia the Blue Lynx.

There was a reason why this particular class was hailed as the greatest in the Hero Academy’s five-hundred-year history. It was because this year’s fourth-years were undoubtedly and absolutely stacked.

I furrowed my brow as I wandered deeper into the expansive building. “Now then…”

I had come here hoping to at least catch a glimpse of her, but I had no idea where she could be. Where the heck was I supposed to find her?

Fourth-years usually have assigned seats in their lecture halls, right?

I wondered to myself.

Unlike the lower years, where seating was free-for-all, fourth-years attended all their lectures within the same lecture hall for their respective homerooms. That meant every cadet had a designated seat. The problem was that I had no idea which homeroom Senior Sophia was in.

Each year typically had six homerooms, labeled from Class A to Class F, and I didn’t have a clue which one she belonged to. Senior Sophia never really talked about her academy days much.

I was just about to resign myself to checking each of the six lecture halls one by one when I spotted a familiar figure in the distance. “Huh?”

It was a woman with crimson bobbed hair that brushed the nape of her neck and a petite frame that barely reached chest height. Despite her small, almost animal-like cuteness, her fierce gaze clashed strikingly with her appearance.

Senior Sophia, found you.

Even though I had already reconnected with Iris; Yuren, who was now Yurina; and Berald, seeing another comrade from my past life still made my chest tighten with emotion.

I straightened my uniform, brushing off invisible dust and trying to figure out what to say as I approached her and greeted, “Ahem! Hello, senior.”

Her sharp eyes turned toward me. “You. You’re Dale Han, a third-year cadet, right?”

She knew my name even though I hadn’t introduced myself. I blinked in surprise. “Huh! I didn’t know you were aware of me.”

Her cold eyes locked onto me, sharp and unwavering. “Your name’s been making the rounds even among us fourth-years. So, what do you want?”

“Well, if you’re okay with it, I was hoping we could chat for a bit—”

Before I could even finish, she brushed past me and walked away. “I have nothing to say to someone working under that lunatic professor.”

Lunatic professor… She can’t mean Professor Bastion, can she?

It was already fairly well-known among the cadets that I frequently visited Professor Bastion’s lab. Did Senior Sophia hate Professor Bastion? In my past life, by the time she had joined our party, Professor Bastion had already passed away, so the topic never came up.

I followed her and said, “Please wait, senior. This is all just a misunderstanding…”

She glared at me and said in a razor-sharp voice, “I told you I have nothing to say. And a third-year cadet shouldn’t be loitering around the fourth-year wing. Get lost.”

She then spun around and vanished down the hall. With a long sigh, I watched her retreating figure. I had never expected that meeting Professor Bastion would turn out to be a curse. The future had already begun to change, I knew that, but I had never imagined that it would affect my relationship with Senior Sophia like this.

I would have to check with Professor Bastion later and ask what the hell had happened between them. Mulling over that, I turned to leave the fourth-year building. However, at that moment, I spotted another familiar and massive silhouette in the distance.

“Hmm? Berald?”

What the hell is he doing here?

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