There was a slight delay—the young mistress had emerged from her bath only to piece together what had happened and sulk about it—but they managed to avoid being late.
The classroom they arrived at was already thick with tension. Students who had come in early were locked in a silent battle of wills, sizing each other up from across the room.
Gladia quietly mapped the scene through Heart-Sight, building a picture in her mind.
Tiered rows of elegant desks. A massive blackboard at the front, and a lectern before it.
The eyes of the new students—each seated, each covertly studying the others—were uniformly sharp.
After yesterday's blood-soaked welcome ceremony, one might have expected some deflation. But these were the continent's finest, and apparently that was enough to bounce back overnight.
Every last one of them had grown up being called a genius in their corner of the world.
As if to prove it, the air inside the classroom was heavy with the mana they unconsciously radiated.
With Heart-Sight, Gladia felt those invisible waves of power far more vividly than anyone else in the room could. Mana surged from every direction as students tried to establish dominance, the competing currents colliding chaotically in the air between them.
*If I drew my sword, I'd probably see the whole mess tangled up like a knot.*
But as she quietly took in that dazzling flow of mana, Gladia gave a slow, internal shake of her head.
*Hm. Well… not much to write home about.*
Even if they were students of Stellar Academy—supposedly the finest young minds on the continent—they were still first-year freshmen who'd just walked through the door, and to Gladia's senses they were riddled with holes. The mana they threw around so proudly was murky and wasteful, and their control over it was sloppy; instead of concentrating, it bled out in all directions, leaking away uselessly.
And they had the nerve to strut around like that while hemorrhaging mana all over the floor. Truly pitiful.
*Now, our young mistress, on the other hand—look how composed she—*
"Hmph."
Aiolette sniffed and stepped past Gladia into the classroom.
Whether the clumsy mana pressure from all sides had irritated her, Aiolette's eyes sharpened dangerously. She lifted one foot and stamped the floor—hard.
In the same instant, mana rippled outward from the point of her heel like a shockwave.
The tangled, competing currents filling the room were crushed flat by Aiolette's overwhelming output and swept away without a trace.
The students who had been so absorbed in their silent contest stared at her in open shock.
"What are you looking at?"
"…!"
As one, the students who had been glaring at each other a moment ago turned away or dropped their gazes to the floor.
Aiolette paid them no mind. She strolled to the back row—the universally acknowledged territory of whoever ran the class—and dropped into a seat.
Gladia followed, tapping her cane lightly, a shadow at her heels.
"My lady, if you make enemies of everyone on the first day of school, you won't be making any friends."
"Hmph. Who said I came to the Academy to make friends? Besides, they were the ones staring first."
*Ah, that's our young mistress. Not a single thought spared for what anyone else thinks.*
In the original story, she hadn't been quite this socially catastrophic—so how had it come to this?
*Was it because I was too soft on her these past three years?*
Gladia had thought she'd been strict enough. She'd dropped the girl off cliffs, for starters. But apparently raw human nature was beyond correction.
Then again, it might have been the trace amounts of poison she'd occasionally mixed into Aiolette's food to build up her tolerance. That could have had some unintended side effects.
She was still turning over the question of Aiolette's social development when the sound of deliberate footsteps approached, and a young man made his way toward them.
"Quite the entrance for first thing in the morning, Aiolette Drnaris."
A low, smooth voice—soft on the surface, but carrying beneath it an authority that didn't invite refusal.
Gladia recognized it immediately.
More precisely: it was one of the voices she'd heard countless times across every playthrough before she'd fallen into this world.
The main male lead of *Saintess & Hero*. Crown Prince of the Libertian Empire. Edward Libertis.
She didn't need to draw her sword to picture his face clearly enough.
Not that the face of a male character held much value to her, so she'd spare the detailed description.
Blond hair. Classically handsome. That covered it.
He was the male protagonist, so he'd had a devoted female fanbase, and the story had made a point of establishing him as the empire's official beauty standard—surrounded by adoring women at every turn.
It showed in his voice. The confidence was unmistakable.
*The kind of confidence that comes from assuming no one in the empire could possibly not recognize you.*
Fair enough, for a man called the most handsome in the empire.
Unfortunately for him, his audience was Aiolette Drnaris—born of the Drnaris Ducal House, raised by Gladia, and a complete disaster of a human being when it came to social awareness.
"And who are you? Do I know you?"
"……?"
The shock of a cold reception—something he had clearly never experienced from a woman before—radiated off Edward in waves.
And rightly so. Their young mistress, a duke's daughter no less, did not recognize the face of her own country's crown prince.
Before meeting Gladia, Aiolette had barely attended any social gatherings or noble functions, too busy navigating her family's expectations. After meeting Gladia, the two had been so inseparable that the number of other people Aiolette had interacted with could be counted on one hand.
The result: the Drnaris Ducal House's very own shut-in. A catastrophic social disaster. Aiolette Drnaris.
*That's our young mistress. Completely unmoved by a pretty face.*
In the brief silence that followed—Edward too stunned to speak—it was one of the followers hovering behind him who cracked first.
"H-how dare you! Do you have any idea who you're speaking to?! This is the empire's own sun, Crown Prince Edward!"
The shout rang through the classroom. Aiolette's expression turned even more dangerous.
The young man who had stepped forward faltered, his breathing going unsteady, as though a predator had just fixed its gaze on him.
*She's going to cause a scene again. Should I step in?*
Just as Gladia was weighing her options—
*Clack.*
The front door of the classroom swung open.
Every head in the room turned on instinct.
"Plenty of energy for a first day."
A voice like a blade cutting through air—heavy, unhesitating—filled the room.
In an instant, every sharp edge in the atmosphere, every thread of tension and noise, was crushed flat by those few words.
The sheer weight of authority in a single voice sent a chill crawling down spines, and heads swiveled toward the door as if pulled by a magnet.
Gladia, eyes closed, felt the shape of the mana that had just entered the room through Heart-Sight—and quietly clicked her tongue.
*It's like watching a person-shaped fire walk through the door.*
Mana that blazed as though it might set everything around it alight.
The density was in an entirely different league from the sloppy overflow the students had been leaking earlier.
Under that pressure, every student in the room tensed—even Aiolette.
Gladia didn't need Heart-Sight to picture the owner of that voice. She already knew exactly what she looked like.
Like Edward, this was someone she had encountered across multiple playthroughs.
In *Saintess & Hero*, the homeroom teacher assigned to first-years was randomized each run. Whoever you got determined the difficulty of that playthrough—and the owner of this mana was, without question, one of the people who pushed the difficulty into the extreme tier.
*She doesn't usually show up as a first-year homeroom teacher…*
Tall enough to look down on most grown men without effort. Flame-red hair pulled up roughly into a high ponytail. A high-exposure leather outfit that barely contained a chest of frankly unreasonable proportions—and beneath it, white battle scars covering her body like strange, intricate markings. A thick scar cutting across one cheek, worn like a medal.
Her appearance alone was enough to make people instinctively shrink back.
She had walked in and seized the entire room in a single breath. Now she took a leisurely look around, and the sensation of that gaze—like a predator selecting its next meal—prickled against every student's skin.
"……Tch."
*Step. Step.*
She crossed the room without hesitation and stopped in front of the lectern. Then she stood there, slightly crooked, looking down at the students, and said:
"All of you, stop wasting your energy and sit down. Class is starting."
She moved behind the lectern.
"No need to snarl at each other yet. You'll have more than enough chances to knock each other around from here on out."
Once she confirmed the room had fully settled, she let a slow smile cut across the thick scar on her cheek. The fighting spirit rolling off her leather-clad frame pressed down on the students' shoulders like a physical weight.
But Gladia's attention wasn't on the fighting spirit.
*Wow… those are enormous.*
Well—a chest that size would draw the eye whether you could see or not.