The Demon Prince goes to the Academy

Chapter 29

He was a teacher. Most students had specific aptitudes and talents, so one didn’t have to tell them what they had to study. It was his job to just look over the list of courses the students chose and give a few words.

However, from his point of view, it would be the first time having a student like me. A weird student who could do everything but wasn’t specifically good at anything.

“You can do anything within the curriculum supported by Temple. However if you try to do everything, you would gain nothing.”

So, Epinhauser brought me to the teacher’s office in case I would get overly greedy and tried to do something absurd. To prevent a situation like me trying to learn everything but ending up with nothing.

What a good teacher.

“Aptitude and talent did not always determine if it was suitable for one or not. I’ve seen people who had a talent in magic but absolutely hated magic, and there were people who had great talent in swordsmanship, but would immediately faint as soon as a sword got pointed at them.”

A talent for swordsmanship didn’t automatically give one fighting spirit, and a talent for magic didn’t automatically give one the desire to research and explore magic.

That’s what one might call the blind spot of talent.

Mr. Epinhauser was already telling me a problem that would only occur after the beginning part.

In the end, what was important was one’s own mentality, one’s interest in it and if one could apply it in practice. If one were forced to train in a certain field because one found a talent in you early on, one might come to loath that talent itself and one might just end up collapsing in a situation where one’s life is at stake.

What good would being talented in swordsmanship do, if you were afraid of violence itself?

That’s what he meant.

“So, you are better off than those guys at least. You don’t have to force yourself to do anything because you don’t have a talent that’s restricting you. You can do whatever you want.”

Eventually, he asked me what I wanted to do. I decided on that yesterday.

“I want to learn about supernatural powers.”

“…….”

For the first time today, his face showed some emotions.

He was clearly pitying me.

He looked at my profile and remained silent for a while.

“I heard that you have so many aptitudes that it just got shortened to a single line.”

They weren’t able to write all my aptitudes down on paper. That was why they just summed it up in a single line: ‘Has aptitudes in all fields’. If they actually tried to document all of them, they’d waste a huge amount of paper.

“Do you also have aptitude for supernatural abilities?”

“Maybe?”

Maybe I had it or maybe I didn’t, I couldn’t really explain it to him.

“So, let’s just say you do, how do you plan on awakening such supernatural powers?”

“…By trying my best?”

I couldn’t exactly tell him that I could use achievement points to awaken them, so I said that, but that kind of made him look at me as if I was trying to break a rock with an egg.

“Isn’t there anything else you want to focus on other than supernatural powers? Put simply, people who do not have supernatural abilities cannot attend those special lectures.”

“I can’t?”

“……It’s a bit different for students of Royal Class, but the teacher in charge will find that very strange. There might also be the possibility that they will kick you out.”

I nodded and told him that I would bear the full responsibility if I would get kicked out.

He agonized for a long time and eventually began to write something down on a paper.

“Apply for this class, I will inform the teacher separately.”

He seemed to think that I should realize on my own what nonsense I was trying to do.

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“Instead, we shall keep it at a single lecture.”

He wrote down this and that, saying that he would not introduce any other supernatural power-related lectures to me.

After writing some things down in a flash he handed me the paper.

“This is your schedule for the semester. If you put anything else in it, I will not accept it.”

Apparently he made a schedule for me instead.

“What lectures are these?”

“Rather than just focusing on that single subject, I’d like you to do it like this. You’ll be able to find something fitting.”

He told me I could do anything I wanted at first.

When he realized that I wanted to focus on something as bizarre as supernatural powers, he asked me to choose something I’d like to do other than that. So rather than spending this semester on just supernatural powers, he told me I should try other lectures as well to find something I liked. It was common sense that it was impossible to awaken supernatural powers just through effort.

In other words, that was the right judgement here, so I couldn’t say anything against it.

*             *             *

It went without saying that just joining all the supernatural power classes wasn’t a good idea. In fact, it might not be possible for me to fill the entire semester with just lectures related to supernatural powers, and I also wanted to see how the lectures of each major that I only roughly described in my novel went about things.

So I just went back to Class A’s classroom where no teacher was present. There I found nearly all the children, except a few, gathering around a bulletin board.

As soon as I went through the door all of their eyes turned to me.

“……”

“……”

Why were they staring at me like that?

The gazes from the guys gathered around the bulletin board were lukewarm. Rather than filled with mixed hostility, their gazes held curiosity and incomprehension.

“Hey, you don’t have any talent, do you?”

It was No. 10 Cayer Vioden who said these words. It was then that I realized why the kids were crowding around the bulletin board like that.

Mr. Epinhauser posted each students profile on the bulletin board. They were posted with the intentions of getting to know each other’s talents so that everyone knew what to be careful of.

Of course, Ellen’s tremendous talents weren’t all written down, so she didn’t get much attention.

There probably were some kids who were curious what talents the others held, so they found out that the bottom ranked No. 11 only had aptitudes and no talents.

So they found it weird.

“Yeah, so what?”

It was true, so I didn’t have anything else to say to him. I just went back to my seat and sat down. My seat was on the far left in the second row near the window, as the tables were arranged by numerical order. The classroom was spacious so there was no need for us to share desks. I had this huge desk all to myself.

I tried to get rid of them, but these strange gazes seemed to follow me. Bertus was also looking at me with a strange smile on his face.

“No, hey. How does that make any sense?”

Cayer came to my seat as if he didn’t understand this at all.

“This is the Royal Class, a place not everyone can enter, even if they have a talent. How did you get into this place, which required one to have exceptional talent? What’s more into Class A? Shouldn’t you be at least in Class B?”

I did set him up to be someone with a strong personality, but I didn’t expect he’d come at me like that on the first day of class.

Cayer really didn’t understand and to him my existence on its own seemed ridiculous. He seemed very angry. How should I even respond to this? He was ready to grab my collar and no one seemed to want to stop him.

Bertus seemed to be just watching the situation.

“I seriously don’t understand. Hey. What are you? How could someone like you be here?”

“Hey you.”

“…..…What?”

I wanted to act more mature. To be honest, how old was I to be overreacting over something like a kid badgering me?

I didn’t want to stand out.

I didn’t mean to.

But, so what.

“Don’t fuck with me, go ask the admissions office for all I care.”

Seeing this situation happen right in front of my eyes, I snapped back a bit.

Seeing me reacting not as he expected, Cayer’s complexion drastically changed.

“Y, you punk, you, just now…. What…. H, how dare you not have any talent and….”

“Why are you asking me about the decision the admissions office made? Do you think I came through some back door? Huh? I just came here because they sent me here, like you. Who do you think you are? And what do you mean with ‘How dare I’? Are you the admissions examiner or the head of the admissions office?”

“No. This….”

“Hah, are you the head of the admissions office?”

“That isn’t….”

“Hah, are or aren’t you the head of the admissions office? You bastard! Yes or no?”

-Clatter!

He was startled as I jumped up from my seat and approached him. He began to retreat step by step.

“Are or aren’t you? What’s taking you so long? Huh?”

“N, no…. I… am not.”

“So why are you meddling in this?”

He was definitely so scared that his face turned blue.

“Hey, Number 10. Number 10 who has this huge magical talent but can’t feel mana for shit.”

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“A,ah….”

One didn’t have to be talented to be a jerk. Did you avoid poop because you were afraid of it? No, you avoid it because it’s dirty. I couldn’t become some scary guy right now, so I had to become a dirty bastard so that one wouldn’t want to touch me.

That guy in front of me wasn’t even talented in combat anyway.

“Why don’t we just treat each other well, huh?”

-Thump

“Aren’t you going to answer?”

When I opened my eyes and stared at him, his complexion turned as white as a sheet of paper, then he slightly nodded.

“A, ah….”

I patted that naughty bastard on the cheek and sat back down. The atmosphere around my classmates watching the scene was chilly.

I was tired.

Like that I would be branded as some dirty bastard, who didn’t even have an ability.

But I wasn’t wrong you know? I was sent here by the admissions office, you know?

Afterwards.

I really didn’t want to stand out, but here I was standing out faster than lightning.

I could foresee a dark future for my school days.

*             *             *

Thanks to No. 10 getting things turned on him while he was trying to pick a fight with me, no one else tired. They must have been shocked seeing a crazy person acting like a jerk, not in the least intimidated by his lack of talent.

They just heard from the teacher that they might get killed if they use their ability first so only a completely crazy guy would have the guts to do anything. If he wasn’t that than he was just totally ignorant. Well, something like that certainly would happen again in the future.

Class B was a very friendly class. Sometimes one could hear laughter drifting over from there, but Class A was deathly silent. Except for the sound of pens moving, the teachers’ lecture and the questions asked from time to time, it was completely devoid of laughter.

Originally, this place was supposed to be a gathering of only that kind of people, but I couldn’t help but sigh at the thought that the atmosphere of horror I created for no good reason must have played a part in this.

Damn it, I seriously got angry at a kid. I’m the worst kind of human being.

I sat in class feeling shame.

Common classes were like general classes that everyone had to take.

For example, classes such as history, geography, mathematics, literature and ethics. Each teacher was in charge of a different subject, perhaps it was set that the homeroom teacher wasn’t in charge of any classes.

During the brief break between classes and the end of them, the children seemed to be chatting with each other, slowly getting to know each other.

– You have aptitude for magic? What classes are you going to take?

-Well…. I’m not sure yet.

-Then would you like to ask our teacher what to take?

-Huh? Ah, that…. Well…. Hm.

-Royal Class seems to have exclusive lectures different from other general class kids.  Maybe we could just get a lecture for just the two of us.

-Oh…. Really?

Kids with similar talents seemed to want to apply for the same classes. On the day you self-applied for a lecture, you would have to listen to the lecture with general class students, so they wanted to have one more person they knew as psychological crutch.

So on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, people talented in combat would join combat classes, people talented in magic would attend magic classes and people with supernatural abilities would join classes for supernatural ability users. In the case of people talented in divine power, they tended to attend combat lectures as they often had another combat talent.

And so, everyone was talking about what to apply for, others thought about it on their own. That was how the class time passed.

Lunch time.

Since there were only about 100 people in the Royal Class, all years ate lunch in a large restaurant. There was no need to stand in line with a plate in hand, and one could just take along whatever one wanted to eat.

It was natural that senior students were also mixed in the crowd, but the zones were implicitly divided. Some seats were reserved for first years, others for second years and so on. Of course both classes A and B were mixed together, hence they had to eat in the same place.

Class A gathered around Bertus and had a meal. He seemed like a good-natured person, so maybe he already gained some followers.

Class B was no different.

-Hey, Charlotte, try this. It’s so delicious.

-Ah…. Ah, No, thank you. I don’t like oily things.

Class B was centered around Charlotte, but the reason seemed to be a different one.

-You have to eat a lot to be healthy!

-Do you dislike vegetables?

She was kidnapped to the Demon King’s Castle and entered Temple shortly after returning. So it seemed like everyone was worried about Charlotte’s health. Not only that, but even her seniors were looking at the princess with pity.

They were clamoring to take care of Charlotte with Ludwig at the forefront, while Charlotte seemed to struggle dealing with this situation.

I set up Class B to have a friendly atmosphere, but even with Charlotte added, the atmosphere remained friendly and the reason for that was Ludwig. He was a typical manga protagonist type character with an optimistic, friendly and energetic personality.

I didn’t have much contact with people like that, but I feel like I didn’t really like people like that.

Even though there were so many open seats, Class A gathered around Bertus and Class B gathered around Charlotte.

And then there were five people eating on their own, as if trying to keep their distance from each other, including myself, who had a bit of an incident this morning.

A-2 Ellen Artorius.

A-5 Cliffman.

A-11 Yours truly.

B-2 Louis Ankton.

B-3 Scarlett.

Were all outsiders, introverts trying to keep their distance?

All the outsiders, including me, were eating silently.

-I’m going to have an upset stomach….

Charlotte’s melancholic voice sounded strangely sentimental.