Gladia made her way to the first-year classroom alongside Aiolette and Cruje—her first visit there in quite some time.
*Feels like just yesterday I was here… and yet so much time has passed.*
The tiered rows of desks, the massive blackboard at the front, the lectern.
The familiar layout of the classroom washed over her through Heart-Sight, and Gladia lingered for a moment in quiet reflection.
The room itself hadn't changed at all. The only thing different, within the landscape her Heart-Sight painted, was the number of students filling it.
*The numbers have thinned out considerably.*
Roughly two-thirds of the original enrollment remained. Not even half the first-year curriculum had passed, and already one in three had dropped out—well, what else could you expect from the empire's premier institution of learning.
Still, the quality of those who remained had risen sharply compared to the early days.
The raw recruits who'd stumbled through the doors on the first day, unable to contain their own mana and leaking it everywhere—they were nowhere to be found now.
The mana flowing through the survivors was noticeably denser, and their eyes carried the particular edge that belonged to those who had clawed their way through Stellar Academy's brutal gauntlet.
And yet…
*The atmosphere in here is downright murderous.*
The mood inside the classroom, as Gladia read it through Heart-Sight, was wound so tight that a brawl breaking out wouldn't have surprised anyone. The usual camaraderie—the easy bonds that tended to form between classmates who'd entered together and suffered through the same trials—was nowhere to be found.
Not that it was hard to understand.
For the past several months, these students had seen each other not as peers but as rivals to be stepped on and left behind.
Through that wall of hostile stares, Gladia, Aiolette, and Cruje moved deeper into the room.
The moment they did, every sharp gaze in the classroom swung toward them as if on cue.
"Eep…"
Cruje, rattled by the collective pressure, quietly slipped behind Aiolette and Gladia.
Aiolette, on the other hand, clearly had no patience for being stared at. She moved to establish dominance immediately.
"What are you looking at?"
Two words.
In the same breath, her mana surged outward—just as it had on their very first day—and pressed down on the room with suffocating weight.
The other students had grown, certainly. But—
*Still no match for my young mistress.*
Gladia felt Aiolette's mana flatten the room and allowed herself a small smile.
The other first-years had improved in various ways, but the pace of Aiolette's growth left them all in the dust.
One by one, the students' gazes dropped, the hierarchy silently established by Aiolette's mana alone.
"Hmph."
Satisfied at last, Aiolette gave a dismissive sniff and strode toward the back row of the classroom.
Gladia fell into step beside her, matching her pace.
Cruje, who had been briefly cowed by the room's collective pressure, watched the two of them with eyes that practically sparkled.
Then, with a newly confident stride, she followed them inside.
*My friends (?) are the strongest here!*
For once, Cruje felt that all her efforts—such as they were—had been entirely worth it.
***
The reason Elahim had summoned the first-years was to deliver instructions regarding club activities.
Stellar Academy, vast as it was, housed an equally vast number of clubs, and per the educational guidelines, every student enrolled there was required—without exception—to join at least one.
One might wonder about the apparent contradiction: an academy that had spent months actively pitting its students against each other was now mandating that those same students participate in communal club activities. But from the academy's perspective, it had been a necessary compromise born of desperation.
Stellar Academy's history stretched back nearly a thousand years.
It had been founded around the same time as the empire itself—though the process had involved a certain dragon being rather unceremoniously evicted from her home.
Through all those centuries, the academy had operated under the banner of "infinite competition," producing elites who excelled across every field. The result was that a Stellar Academy graduate was treated as a guaranteed asset virtually anywhere in the empire.
Everything seemed to be going splendidly—until, over time, a particular problem began to surface.
Stellar Academy graduates had the cooperative instincts of a brick wall.
Perhaps it was the price of throwing students into cutthroat competition at such a young age.
Graduates of Stellar Academy were, without exception, staggeringly, profoundly, almost impressively individualistic.
*Stellar Academy: it's every person for themselves!*
The phrase had the ring of a special forces motto, and not in a flattering way.
Things came to a head when an alumnus deliberately sabotaged a colleague to advance their own position. After that, Rustil's desk was buried under a mountain of letters carrying the unmistakable implication that the academy had been asked to cultivate talent and had instead mass-produced high-functioning sociopaths.
With the situation spiraling out of control, the academy had no choice but to conduct a full review of its curriculum.
But abandoning the ethos of infinite competition was equally out of the question.
It was the very core of what had made Stellar Academy's students the best—the soul of the institution itself.
As Rustil's hysteria over finding a solution reached its peak and the faculty grew increasingly exhausted from endless meetings, a young professor raised his hand with a suggestion.
*Why not just force the students to spend time together?*
It was a naively optimistic idea—the theory being that even forced proximity would eventually breed some kind of grudging attachment—but with the academy's feet already in the fire, no one had a better option.
And so the ⟨Mandatory Club Participation⟩ rule was born at Stellar Academy.
As it turned out, the approach worked, at least to a degree.
It gave students who had known nothing but self-interest at least a minimal foundation of social functioning. (The young professor who proposed it, incidentally, was named Outstanding Educator of the Month and rewarded handsomely.)
Compared to students from other academies, the social skills on display were still nothing to write home about—but at least graduates now looked out for their own people. Progress.
In any case, for these reasons, Stellar Academy actively supported its students' club activities.
"…You've got the general idea. Come up and collect your application forms."
Elahim tapped the stack of papers in front of her with a tired air.
A student raised a hand.
"I have a question!"
"Go ahead."
"Does 'at least one' mean we're allowed to join multiple clubs?"
"It's possible, but I wouldn't recommend it."
Elahim shrugged with the energy of someone who had answered this question too many times.
"Every club has mandatory regular activities you're required to attend each month."
As she explained, joining a club meant committing to a set number of meetings per month without fail.
"Your upperclassmen were quite creative about finding loopholes."
The academy hadn't always managed clubs this strictly.
But this was Stellar Academy—where the careless did not survive.
Students had never been the type to let a gap go unexploited.
Signing up and then doing absolutely nothing, coasting as a ghost member. Forming clubs that existed in name only to siphon funding. And so on.
The ongoing battle of wits between students determined to find the easiest path and an academy equally determined to keep them in line had produced the current system.
"So don't waste your energy on clever workarounds. Think carefully before you decide."
With that, Elahim distributed the application forms and dismissed the assembly.
Once the gathering broke up, Gladia, Aiolette, and Cruje made their way to Café Rubato—which had, somewhere along the way, become their unofficial headquarters.
It was, incidentally, the same café they had visited on the day Cruje first brought the Shard of the Holy Sword—the day Gladia had nearly been forcibly reregistered as a hero.
They finished a late breakfast there and moved straight to the topic of clubs.
It was Aiolette who spoke first, as the group's unspoken leader.
"Why does the academy have to make us do something this tedious?"
The complaint came out flat and unapologetic.
Aiolette had already been quietly accumulating grievances about having less time with Gladia since arriving at the academy.
And now club activities on top of that?
She had, with some effort, made her peace with Cruje. But Aiolette had always been intensely private by nature.
The idea of being thrown together with even more people did not sit well with her.
Naturally, the task of smoothing things over fell to Gladia.
"I imagine it's meant to encourage students to get along with each other. There'll be upperclassmen in the clubs too, so it should help with building those connections."
"Why would I need to get along with anyone? Most of them are going to wash out anyway."
A living demonstration of exactly why Stellar Academy had made club participation mandatory in the first place.
If graduates with this particular worldview were released into society in large numbers, it would be nothing short of a civilizational hazard. Safety regulations were written in blood for a reason.
In sharp contrast to Aiolette, Cruje looked positively delighted as she chimed in.
"But doesn't it sound fun? Look at this—there are so many clubs!"
She produced a thick booklet from somewhere and spread it open on the table with a flourish.
"Look at these! There are normal ones like the Swordsmanship Club and the Magic Research Society, but there's also a Dessert Exploration Club, a Napping Club, and even a Treasure Hunting Club!"
Cruje had always harbored a deep romantic vision of school life with friends.
A peaceful, lighthearted event had finally arrived, and she couldn't contain her excitement—her considerable presence shaking with enthusiasm.
*Wow, her chest…*
Cruje's chest was brimming with dreams and hope.
Gladia had thought she'd grown accustomed to it, but when the vigorous motion of Cruje's considerable mass registered through Heart-Sight, she swallowed involuntarily before she could stop herself.
*That really does move that much.*
Gladia herself was hardly lacking in that department, but standing next to Cruje had a way of inspiring humility.
She kept her expression perfectly neutral, of course—but Aiolette was not the type to miss things.
How dare she try to seduce Gladia, who belongs to me and me alone.
*Smack.*
"Kyah!"
Unprovoked violence descended upon Cruje.
Struck without warning or explanation, Cruje clutched her chest with a wince and looked at Aiolette with bewildered eyes.
It hadn't been a hard hit, but being struck there so openly was a first, and Cruje's face flushed crimson almost immediately.
"Wh—why did you hit me…?"
"No reason."