It was true that Stellar Academy encouraged club activities to foster students' social development.
But that didn't mean the academy had abandoned its founding spirit of endless competition.
Social skills were social skills—and competition had to go on!
And so the professors of Stellar Academy put their heads together once more.
How could they cultivate at least a baseline of social ability while still driving students to compete?
They agonized over this thorny problem until exhaustion began to set in—at which point a young professor in the corner of the meeting room shot his hand into the air. (The very same professor who had proposed the club system in the first place.)
*"Why don't we just make the clubs fight each other?"*
*"!!"*
Professor of the Month, right there.
***
And so Stellar Academy began hosting the Grand Exposition—an annual battle royale in which clubs competed against one another for funding and clubroom rights.
The Grand Exposition worked exactly as the professors had hoped.
Students who had spent a year building bonds within their clubs banded together to defend what was theirs, and the result was precisely the double payoff they'd envisioned: social growth and fierce competition, all in one.
But exceptions have a way of turning up anywhere.
There was one person who had single-handedly dominated every Grand Exposition and successfully defended her club through sheer individual force alone…
"That would be the Hero Research Club's very own vice-captain, Senior Dorothia!!"
"Waaah! So cool!"
"Hehehehe!!"
A ruin on the western outskirts of Stellar Academy.
Cruje's enthusiastic applause and Dorothia's distinctly unsettling laughter echoed through the air.
Aiolette watched the little farce unfolding before her with an expression of pure disbelief.
The aftershock of the sudden Spatial Transfer still had her stomach turning, but the mental fatigue of witnessing this spectacle was far worse.
*These people never get tired, do they?*
They'd all gone through the same Spatial Transfer, yet Aiolette seemed to be the only one still dizzy—everyone else was too busy laughing and chattering to notice.
The moment they'd arrived, Gladia had set Aiolette down and launched into an enthusiastic campaign of flattery toward Dorothia, drawing on stories from who-knew-where.
Cruje was playing the perfect hype-woman at her side. (Not that Cruje had any awareness of this role. She was always completely sincere.)
Dorothia had been a little stiff at first, faced with unfamiliar underclassmen—but under the relentless warmth of Gladia and Cruje's praise, the corners of her mouth had climbed to heights that showed no sign of coming back down.
"Already at 5th Circle before graduating from the academy! A Grand Mage! And a master of spatial magic, no less!"
"Waaaaaah!!!"
"Hehehehe!!!"
"Haah… You two. How long are you planning to keep this up?"
When the trio's little performance stretched past the ten-minute mark, Aiolette finally snapped.
She'd left them to it, thinking they'd stop on their own—but apparently that was too much to ask.
"Oh, come on, my lady. We were having such fun~"
"Fun! You were obviously playing her like a fiddle!"
"Me?"
Gladia opened her mouth into a perfect circle of wounded innocence.
Aiolette wasn't fooled.
Flattering people into doing exactly what she wanted was Gladia's signature move.
*And here she was just telling me I was the most impressive one…!*
If she was being honest, there was a small, petty flicker of jealousy at watching Gladia heap praise on Dorothia.
Of course, Gladia didn't miss a single flicker of it.
She drifted quietly to Aiolette's side and murmured close to her ear.
"…Don't worry, my lady. No matter how impressive Senior Dorothia is, you're still the best in my eyes."
"W-who said anything about— that's obvious. Hmph."
Hit squarely where it hurt, Aiolette's pale cheeks flushed crimson in an instant.
Cruje and Dorothia watched the exchange from a short distance away.
"D-do those two always act like that…?"
"Yep. Every single day."
Dorothia stared at the pair with a peculiar expression, unsettled by Cruje's utterly calm and unbothered reply. No matter how she looked at it, that… sticky(?) atmosphere between them was not normal.
"Um, so… is it normal for close friends to whisper in each other's ears, and hug, and blush like that…? Is that just what friendship looks like?"
But Dorothia, who could claim the title of "least socially experienced person in the room" without much contest, genuinely couldn't tell whether what she was seeing was ordinary or not. (She did have Sara, but Sara spent more time fleeing from Dorothia's debts than actually spending time with her.)
Dorothia asked the question carefully, visibly confused by the scene before her. Cruje nodded without a moment's hesitation.
"Of course it is!"
Cruje, who had spent her entire life without a single friend, had formed her entire understanding of friendship from these two—and she believed wholeheartedly that what she was witnessing was perfectly normal.
"Oh…! I, I see. I just don't have many friends myself, so I thought maybe I was misreading things…"
Ah. This was what they called the statistical trap.
And so the seeds of Cruje's rather… open(?) view of romance were quietly planted in new soil.
A moment later.
Gladia and Aiolette walked over to Cruje and Dorothia, their strides falling into easy sync.
The irritation had already faded from Aiolette's expression.
It was, as she herself had said, Gladia's particular talent—flattering people into exactly the mood she wanted. She had proven it on herself.
"So where exactly are we?"
Aiolette glanced around.
The ground was thick with untended weeds in every direction. Calling it a ruin was generous—it looked more like an abandoned lot.
"Is this really a ruin connected to the Hero? Because it looks like a neglected patch of wasteland to me."
Aiolette swept the area with a skeptical eye and asked again.
She'd been to a Hero-related dungeon with Gladia before. That place had at least had a door. This was just open, empty land.
Cruje, who had been enthusiastically praising Dorothia moments ago, privately agreed.
The Spatial Transfer had pushed it from her mind briefly, but now that she thought about it—the place the Hero Research Club had arrived at was far too shabby to be a ruin bearing the First Hero's legacy.
But Dorothia, as though she had anticipated exactly this reaction from both of them, straightened up with a look of quiet triumph and began to explain.
She stepped up onto a nearby chunk of stone and planted her hands on her hips. Thanks to her compact frame, standing on the rock was the only way she could meet Aiolette's eye level.
"I-I'll explain…!"
"Yes, please! Vice-captain!"
*V-vice-captain… heheheh.*
Gladia's perfectly timed interjection melted away the last of Dorothia's guardedness in an instant.
Vice-captain. That sweet, intoxicating word rattled through Dorothia's mind like a bell.
The corners of her mouth twitched beyond her control. She forced the smile down with visible effort, struggling to maintain the dignity befitting her rank.
"Ahem! W-well, there are actually quite a lot of r-ruins inside the academy connected to the H-Hero…!"
"Hold on."
Aiolette narrowed her eyes and cut Dorothia off.
"Didn't you say the headmistress had already destroyed all traces of the First Hero left in the academy?"
If Gladia's earlier explanation was accurate, Stellar Academy's headmistress Rustil was known to despise the First Hero with a passion that bordered on frothing.
Apparently, anything connected to the First Hero that surfaced within the academy was met with Rustil personally charging over to destroy it.
But Dorothia only smiled at the question.
"That's r-right…! Most of the ruins inside the academy have been destroyed or sealed away under the h-headmistress's magic… but on the other hand, if you follow the trail of her mana…"
Dorothia extended both short arms in front of her.
Gladia felt the same sensation she'd experienced during the Spatial Transfer begin to stir again.
The dissonant feeling of space being twisted.
5th Circle Applied Magic — Spatial Shatter.
*Hmmm—*
The magic that shook space itself unfurled from Dorothia's hands.
The air over the empty lot rippled for a single instant, like a stone dropped into still water.
Dorothia's magic tore through Rustil's concealment and forced what lay beneath into the open.
"T-ta-daa…!"
The shabby lot blanketed in weeds and dust was gone.
In its place stood columns that had once thrust toward the sky, and the remnants of ruins that—though broken now—had clearly once commanded a breathtaking grandeur.
"…!"
"Waaaaaah…!"
The wonder in Aiolette's and Cruje's voices carried through the air to Gladia.
Gladia was just as struck—though not by the ruins themselves.
What had stopped her in her tracks was Dorothia's magic.
*The Spatial Transfer earlier was already impressive, but this is something else entirely.*
The magic that had just been shattered was an illusion spell personally laid by Rustil—a fully certified, pint-sized Grand Mage who had lived for over a thousand years.
Bring most Grand Mages here, and they'd struggle not just to break it, but to detect it in the first place.
Gladia's own Heart-Sight hadn't caught it.
She'd simply assumed there was something here because Dorothia had brought them.
And yet Dorothia had not only found the ruin without effort—she'd dismantled the magic over it like it was nothing.
"S-so, as long as you can find the headmistress's magic, you can find the H-Hero's ruins pretty easily…!"
Dorothia rolled her shoulders with a self-satisfied air and let out a small, triumphant breath.
Even she had to admit—that had looked pretty cool.
And in that moment, something clicked for Gladia.
*Now.*
She was already moving. She slipped her hands under Dorothia's arms and hoisted her clean off the ground.
It called to mind a certain lion king presenting his heir to the world.
"As expected! Our vice-captain! Genius of spatial magic! The foremost authority in the Hero field!"
"Yes! Yes! Senior Dorothia is amazing!!"
"Heh, hehehehe…! W-well, it's nothing really…!"
If getting close to a master of spatial magic meant pouring on the flattery, Gladia was prepared to pour until the jug ran dry.
Gladia's perfectly timed, extravagant praise and Cruje's wholehearted enthusiasm swept Dorothia off her feet all over again—figuratively and literally.
At this rate, she'd probably hand over a solid-gold Hero statue if they asked nicely enough.
Of course, Aiolette had no intention of standing by and watching this warmly.
"Hold on."
She stepped forward, reached over, and made Gladia set Dorothia back down.
Then she pulled Gladia's now-empty hand firmly into her own and looked down at Dorothia.
Dorothia stared up at Aiolette, who had inserted herself without warning, with an expression of complete bewilderment.
"You said you just broke the headmistress's magic, right?"
"Y-yes! That's right!"
"Then… the moment you broke it, the headmistress would have noticed, wouldn't she?"
"Y-yes! That's right!"
"???"
Dorothia's breezy confidence left both Aiolette and Cruje momentarily speechless.
*Isn't that a problem?*
They both remembered Rustil's thoroughly unpleasant personality from the entrance ceremony with perfect clarity.
If someone broke through a concealment she'd personally set and waltzed into a ruin she'd hidden, surely she'd come flying over in a fury?
Not that Dorothia was unaware of Rustil's temperament.
How many times had she crossed paths with Rustil in the course of running the Hero Research Club?
Every time she broke a concealment and found a ruin, Rustil would appear as if by supernatural instinct and hand down a punishment.
"S-so that means from here on out, it's a r-race against time…!"
A look of steely resolve settled over Dorothia's face.
This was the spirit of the Hero Research Club.
You couldn't find the Hero by fearing the headmistress.
"We grab what we can b-before the headmistress gets here, and then we r-run!"
With that, Dorothia turned and sprinted into the ruins with a rapid pitter-patter of small feet.
She'd lost a little time showing off for the underclassmen, which meant she needed to move through the ruin faster than usual.
But her heart was lighter than it normally was on these occasions.
*S-still… at least this time I won't be going to the d-disciplinary room alone…!*
That was enough for Dorothia.
Never mind that Aiolette and Cruje almost certainly did not share this sentiment.
This was Stellar Academy. The naive did not survive.