A long, long time ago—so far back that calling it a “past life” wouldn’t be an exaggeration—I was once a learned individual who received higher education in South Korea.
That is to say, I graduated middle and high school.
My memories of those years are faint now, but there were certain feelings and sensations that still linger vividly in my mind.
One such sensation was the peculiar awkwardness of stepping into a new classroom at the start of the school year, where everything feels a little too quiet and unfamiliar. The sound of pages turning seems unusually loud, and there’s an unspoken tension in the air—a sort of subtle power struggle between new classmates you don’t even know yet.
“Hmm… this wasn’t exactly how things went for me back then, but close enough.”
I’d come prepared for something similar at the Academy, having experienced it all before. But when I felt an openly hostile glare stabbing into me from across the room, I reflexively turned to see who was looking my way.
A blond boy met my gaze with a scowl so obvious it could’ve been drawn on by crayon. What’s more, he made no attempt to hide his animosity.
“Great,” I sighed internally. “Just what I needed.”
That hostile glare? It had been trailing me since I met him earlier in the hall on the first floor. This blond kid—who I later overheard was named Cain Hover—had been glaring daggers at me while I was talking to Elaine. Once Elaine stepped out of the classroom briefly, the blond kid wasted no time in giving me some side-eye action.
I wondered wistfully if any of this would lead to friendly bonding, after-school fried rice cakes, and those simpler days of camaraderie with classmates.
“Hey!”
I turned to see the voice belonged to none other than Blondie from earlier.
“I need you to come with me for a second,” he said imperiously.
“What for?”
“Just come!”
“Why?”
“I want to see what this ‘Great Commoner Top Recruit’ has got.”
Sub-Quest Activated!
Sub-Quest (1-3): “Follow Me to the Rooftop”
Objective: Defeat Cain Hover in a duel.
Content: Show your worth to those doubting your Academy top-recruit title.
Reward: 2 Stat Points
Penalty: Decreased efficiency of <Academy Top Recruit> title (Growth Boost +30% → +15%).
“Follow me to the rooftop?” I internally snorted.
“Come on, hurry up!”
With a resigned sigh, I thought, alright, alright. Secretly, I had to admit this could be funny—if not exactly relaxing.
Let’s see how these young guns stack up.
—
Scene Break
Thud… Thud…
The sound of two pairs of footsteps resounded through the otherwise silent corridor. A few curious eyes peeked around but nobody stirred to stop us, probably because only three other people were left in the classroom.
Elsewhere, Cynthia sighed deeply, torn.
Cynthia Surplus—first daughter of the Surplus family, not as prestigious as the St. Claire but still a fairly renowned name in Crescent Empire—was a well-known figure among her peers. This was largely due to her striking purple hair, aggressive figure, and radiant beauty, but even more because of her fiery sense of justice. She once challenged another noble to a duel for mistreating their servant, a story that had cemented her reputation among the students.
“Someone should stop them,” she muttered to herself. Even if justice wasn’t her direct motivation, her conscience wouldn’t let her stay put. She tied her long violet hair into a quick braid and hurried after the two boys.
Of course, being a noble from the Surplus family, Cynthia wasn’t entirely thrilled that a commoner had claimed the top spot in the entrance exam. However, with no formal protests raised against Ryu from the Academy’s side, there didn’t seem to have been any foul play or cheating involved. So begrudgingly, she acknowledged his ranking.
Still annoyed over her own sixth place rank, she figured there’d be plenty of opportunities to reclaim honor. For now, she was focused on catching up to those two troublemakers.
Cain and Ryu were nowhere in sight by the time she left the classroom. After checking the ground floor and second floor hallways, she realized they must have ducked into one of the rooms.
“Ah, the training room,” she mused. Spotting a sign marked “Training Room,” she entered cautiously, prepared for the worst.
—
Creak…
The sliding door opened silently, revealing the scene she’d come for. But instead of a tense standoff, she found Cain kneeling, clutching his stomach, gasping for air while Ryu stood coolly nearby, arms crossed.
Before she could register the situation fully, Cain stumbled backward, and a burst of hot flames erupted between them.
“You lunatic!” Cain roared, flames licking around his hands like an avenging phoenix.
Ah yes, the Hover family. Cynthia instantly recognized their unique style of pyromancy, which supposedly could take the form of birds once the user reached a certain skill level. She flinched back, the heat from the flames almost singeing her eyebrows.
This was getting out of hand.
—
The Crescent Empire boasted countless noble families, from the mighty Big Six that upheld the realm to countless smaller ones referred to as “Prestigious Families.”
Of them all, the Hover family was renowned as masters of Fire Magic. Their flames were said to possess a unique quality unavailable to other mages, and their most skilled members could shape the fire into avian forms, earning them the moniker “Hover Firebirds.”
Cain Hover, though not yet advanced enough to command perfect bird forms, proudly sent a fiery blaze toward Ryu. Burning with indignation, Cain glared at the calm, dark-haired boy before him.
“What about this? Take this, you arrogant b*stard!”
Ryu merely shrugged. “Whoa, isn’t this overkill? You might hurt someone.”
Seeing no fear in Ryu’s eyes only fueled Cain’s rage further. Since the entrance exam, he’d been itching to knock this commoner down a peg. Ryu had acted smug from the start—snatching the top spot ahead of St. Claire Elaine, breezing through orientation like it bored him, and walking straight into S Class without batting an eyelid.
To cap it all off, the guy had the gall to casually dodge every single attack Cain threw at him and landed a solid punch as well—a punch that still throbbed painfully.
Cain, who’d never been hit in his life and certainly not by a lowly civilian, was seeing red. What started as a warning had turned into a vendetta.
“Here goes!” he roared, summoning the flames one last time.
As the fiery bird soared toward its target, someone shrieked from the doorway.
“Are you insane?!”
Cain ignored the girl’s shout, focusing entirely on the spectacle of flames hurtling toward Ryu. Yet just as the bird was about to strike, it vanished—in an instant, as if it had never existed. Staring dumbfounded at the empty air where his firebird once soared, Cain choked out a sound of confusion.
“W-what?”
And just like that, the duel ended abruptly, leaving the room tense and silent once more.
