Several months had already passed since they enrolled at Stellar Academy.
To get straight to the point: the search for the Hero had yielded nothing worth celebrating.
Cruje had wandered every corner of the academy with the Shard of the Holy Sword pressed to her chest, hoping against hope—but the shard hadn't moved so much as a single millimeter.
At first, Cruje had been brimming with confidence that she'd find the Hero in no time. But as the weeks dragged on without a single lead, she'd wilted like a piece of dried fish left out in the sun.
Not that it mattered much to Aiolette and Gladia. Their daily routine remained unchanged.
Attend classes, train, go out together.
Cruje occasionally wedged herself into their days, but nothing much shifted because of it.
The only real difference was that things they'd once enjoyed as two were now enjoyed as three.
Aiolette had made her displeasure plain at first whenever Cruje kept inserting herself—but after it happened enough times, something like a grudging fondness seemed to take root, and she stopped pushing Cruje away.
Not that she went out of her way to include her, either.
Regardless, their primary occupation was being students of the academy.
Even with the Demon King's resurrection looming on the horizon, they still had coursework to complete.
Stellar Academy lived up to its reputation as the empire's premier institution of learning by driving its students relentlessly, without mercy.
Those who couldn't endure were forced to leave. But those who made it through the crucible emerged with breathtaking growth to show for it.
Aiolette was no exception.
Clang! Whoosh!
Early morning. An open clearing at the academy's outskirts.
Sharp bursts of displaced air rang out as Aiolette's shadows surged from every direction in a ferocious assault.
Slither— Slash!
With a single gesture, the shadows transformed into massive spears and hurtled toward Gladia at blinding speed.
Shadow Control had always been Aiolette's specialty, but the power and precision she wielded now bore no resemblance to what she'd been capable of before. Even measured against the other magic-track students, it was overwhelming.
And yet Gladia was evading every one of Aiolette's vicious attacks without so much as drawing her sword, moving with a fluid, unhurried ease that made it look effortless.
When Gladia sidestepped even the shadow needles lunging from her blind spots with a light nudge of her toe, something ignited behind Aiolette's eyes.
"Ngh…!"
*Large attacks won't land on Dia. Then—!*
Aiolette bit down hard on her lip and wrenched her hand upward.
An enormous mass of shadow erupted into the air and instantly fractured into dozens, then hundreds of razor-sharp needles—before cascading down like a storm of black rain, targeting every inch of Gladia's body.
A black downpour that swallowed the sky whole.
Facing that downpour, Gladia quietly rested her hand on her cane.
Click.
[Trait ⟨Sword Saint⟩ activates.]
[⟨World's Trial⟩ is nullified.]
The moment she drew her sword, her vision blazed open.
In a world that seemed to hold its breath, Gladia watched Aiolette's attack falling toward her with perfect clarity.
And into that vision filled wall-to-wall with black rain, she swung her blade.
Clang—!
Gladia's sword deflected the assault and carved a gap in the storm in an instant. She drove through it, closing the distance to Aiolette in a single breath.
"Ugh—!"
Aiolette's eyes went wide as Gladia's speed—faster than before, unmistakably faster—gave her no time to react.
*She's gotten even quicker!*
Flustered, Aiolette scrambled to drag up the shadow pooled at her feet, but Gladia wasn't about to fall for something that predictable. With the scabbard in her off hand, she drove it hard into the ground at Aiolette's feet.
Thud—!
The impact shuddered through the earth, and the shadow that had been coiling upward to strike collapsed and scattered uselessly.
"Ah—!"
The shockwave knocked Aiolette off-balance, sending her pitching forward into empty air. She was a heartbeat from hitting the ground when Gladia, already right there, shot out an arm and wrapped it firmly around her waist.
Fwump.
As if it had been choreographed, Aiolette's unbalanced body fell neatly into Gladia's arms.
Holding her there, Gladia looked down at Aiolette's startled face with a playful glint in her eye and spoke with perfect composure.
"The more urgent the moment, the calmer you need to be, my lady. When you panic, it's painfully obvious you're going to reach for the shadow at your feet first~"
"L-let go of me—!"
Aiolette's face flushed red as she squirmed back to her senses, but there was no resisting Gladia's strength, which had long since left the bounds of what a human body should be capable of.
If anything, Gladia only held her more securely—and let her gaze drift down toward Aiolette's chest.
Not to assess how much her lady's presence (chest) had grown, as her one and only maid. That was not the reason.
Since drinking the Hero's Blood, Gladia's body had been changing in ways she hadn't fully anticipated.
Her Heart-Sight, which compensated for her blindness, had improved by an order of magnitude. The Sword Saint's capabilities had made a similar leap.
The most dramatic change, though, was in what she could see when her eyes were open.
As though in compensation for all those years locked inside pitch-black darkness, while the Sword Saint was active she could perceive far more than she ever had before.
And what Gladia's eyes found now was the Circle spinning furiously inside Aiolette's chest.
A ring of deep violet mana, rotating around her heart.
The Circle Aiolette had built by concentrating her darkness-attribute mana into a single, dense orbit.
But around that great violet ring, something new shimmered—a flow of mana she hadn't seen there before. A quality entirely unlike the darkness attribute, tracing a thin but firm orbit along the outer edge of the existing Circle.
Still faint. But unmistakably the precursor to a second Circle.
*Given the mana she packed into her first Circle, the backlash must have been brutal… and she's already finished laying the foundation?*
For a mage, forming a second Circle was a monumental ordeal.
The repulsive force generated when two different mana attributes collided defied imagination—and Aiolette's first Circle, dense with mana in quantities that dwarfed her peers, meant the backlash she'd have faced was proportionally more violent and dangerous.
That was precisely why Gladia hadn't pushed Aiolette to expand her Circle count before entering the academy. More Circles didn't automatically mean more power, and fewer Circles didn't automatically mean weakness. She had poured everything she knew into building the best possible foundation for Aiolette to be absolutely dominant with a single Circle.
But Aiolette's talent had made a mockery of Gladia's calculations.
As if she had no need for outside help, Aiolette had crushed that murderous backlash through sheer monstrous talent and sheer stubborn will—and had completed the skeleton of her second Circle entirely on her own.
Gladia gazed at Aiolette's chest for a long moment, then looked up at her lady's inexplicably reddened face and smiled quietly.
"My lady… you've really grown."
"…Where exactly are you looking when you say that?! Put me down!"
***
*Wow…*
Cruje watched Aiolette and Gladia bicker from the corner of the training ground, quietly marveling.
What she'd just witnessed was simply off the charts. Stellar Academy gathered the empire's finest young talent—and yet the magic and swordsmanship those two had just displayed operated on an entirely different plane from any other student here.
*The goddess wasn't wrong to send me to them.*
There had been a time when Cruje resented the goddess's choice. But after spending these past months at their side and seeing their strength firsthand, she'd come around to accepting that the goddess had known exactly what she was doing.
And with that thought came the memory of the Shard of the Holy Sword going absolutely haywire in the café that one time.
She'd been telling herself it was a malfunction, clinging to denial—but the more she witnessed their talent, the harder it became to shake the thought that one of them might actually be the Hero.
With ability this absurdly beyond the norm, who could say they weren't the legendary Hero destined to save the world?
But then their sparkling personalities (?) flashed through Cruje's mind.
*—Hey, quack. This month's tribute (?) is a little light, don't you think?*
*—Now, now, my lady. Calm down. Surely the Saintess's friendship is worth more than this? Isn't that right, Saintess?*
Brrrr!
Cruje shuddered involuntarily and shook her head with great conviction.
*No. No, no, no. Not those two. Anyone but those two.*
The monthly "tributes" (?) she'd been forking over to them had grown into a noticeable expense, and the church had recently started asking where the money was going.
The church's stipend was generous enough, and the amounts weren't exactly straining her budget—but still.
The Hero who would save the world being one of those two scoundrels? That she absolutely refused to accept.
She was in the middle of that fierce internal denial when—
"Are you going to let go or not?! Training's over, so put me down already!"
"Oh, come now, my lady. Your legs gave out from the exertion. You can barely stand."
The bickering voices drew closer, and Aiolette and Gladia made their way toward Cruje.
More precisely: Gladia had effortlessly overpowered Aiolette's resistance and was walking over with Aiolette cradled in her arms.
Sword already sheathed, Gladia had produced a handkerchief from somewhere and was carefully dabbing the sweat from Aiolette's face as she squirmed in her hold.
Aiolette resisted at first—then gave up and went still, accepting the attention.
When they reached Cruje, they turned to her as she stared blankly at them.
"Hey, quack. What are you standing around for? Heal me."
"Oh—yes, right!"
Cruje snapped back to herself and hurried over to Aiolette, drawing up her holy power and beginning the treatment.
Warm, sacred light flowed from Cruje's hands and wrapped gently around Aiolette's body.
Under the Saintess's holy power, the damage Aiolette's body had taken from the sparring session mended at a rapid pace.
"Mmm…"
The healing was far more immediate and comfortable than Principal Rustil's restoration magic, and Aiolette let out a languid breath.
She called Cruje a quack as a matter of habit, but privately, she acknowledged that Cruje was still a Saintess. The quality of her holy power and the speed of her healing made it impossible not to, however reluctant the admission.
And lately, Cruje had been growing faster. Keeping pace with Aiolette and Gladia's training sessions had been pushing her further than she realized. She hadn't noticed her own progress—overshadowed as it was by the other two—but she had long since outgrown what a first-year was supposed to be capable of. A talent worthy of the title Saintess, without question.
*…Not that she's gotten any less dense.*
Still, having her around meant Gladia could get patched up on the spot whenever she needed it.
That was the logic Aiolette had quietly used to make peace with Cruje's presence.
Her fatigue thoroughly washed away, Aiolette remained leaning against Gladia and turned her head just slightly to ask.
"Dia, what's next on our schedule?"
"Professor Elahim called a full assembly for all first-years, apparently."
"Professor Elahim?"
Elahim was the head professor overseeing the first-year cohort, but she didn't teach first-year classes directly—so after that one encounter at the start of the year, she'd more or less faded from Aiolette's memory.
Aiolette furrowed her brow slightly, fishing for the fragment of recollection buried somewhere in the back of her mind.
"What does she want?"
"Sounds like she has an announcement. It probably won't take long, so shall we get that out of the way and then go eat?"
"Sure. I'm all sweaty—I need to wash up first."
Aiolette finally stepped lightly down from Gladia's arms, stretched with a lazy arch of her back, and started toward the dormitory.
Gladia fell into step behind her without missing a beat.
"Shall I scrub your back for you, my lady? It's been a while."
"Don't push your luck. Just have a change of clothes ready."
"W-wait, I'm coming too!"
A witch, a maid, and a Saintess.
Three people who had no business being together—their bickering footsteps faded into the morning air, filling it with something that felt almost like warmth.
And so another peaceful day at Stellar Academy began, much the same as any other.