Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The Female Dormitory

The results of the class placement exam came out.

“What class are you in?”

“I don’t know... I died without doing anything...”

“Right. You said you met her, didn’t you? Eisel...”

“All four elemental families are in Class A. Lucky bastards.”

In front of the bulletin board, students had gathered in clusters and were murmuring.

I grabbed someone among them at random and spoke.

Even though I had already checked the results.

This was work that was absolutely necessary for me.

“Excuse me. Could you check where my name is?”

“Ah? Uh, yeah. What’s your name?”

“Zeto.”

“Zeto... Zeto... Oh! It’s here!”

“What class is it?”

“Class A!! Amazing... Wait... You! You’re the guy who fought Amon back then, aren’t you?!”

“Ah... yes.”

...It seemed I had chosen someone louder than expected.

The guy’s booming voice rang out, and the students’ attention began focusing on me.

“Amon? Ah, I remember. The guy with his eyes covered by bandages.”

“Didn’t the gauntlets break apart back then?”

“That was insane. How do you turn those solid-looking chunks of stone into powder with a sword?”

“Caligus wasn’t anything special either. He lost to a blind man.”

“I died after picking a fight with him. He was damn strong. He knocked away all my magic too.”

A very burdensome situation unfolded.

Fortunately, no one recognized it as dispel or asked me questions, so I was able to safely slip out from among them.

“Acting... really isn’t easy.”

I found myself admiring Eisel, who made it seem as natural as breathing.

In order to live a safer academy life, I had been making it clear that I was blind whenever I had the chance.

To survive, I had no choice.

Continuing to plant and plant the idea that I was blind.

My goal was to make it so that even if I made an obvious mistake someday, people would understand and let it pass to some extent.

For example, asking the name of a shop when I first entered it.

Or acting frustrated in the exam hall because I could not see the screen and did not know what was happening.

They were trivial things, if one wanted to call them trivial.

Moreover, in this place, there was also no technology to help the blind, such as Braille, so I had not even been able to set foot in the library.

There were various stories and quests in the library too, but for now, I had given up on it.

“Well, it might be different if someone reads books to me.”

It was not as if I could never go at all.

I had confirmed the exam results.

Quite a lot of time was free.

Until the first class tomorrow, I was free.

I looked at the bracelet hanging on my wrist.

The Bracelet Bearing Wishes.

An Epic-grade item with the effects of increasing mana and stamina recovery.

Mana was consumed from the moment it left the body.

For example, using mana to cast magic, or injecting one’s mana into a sword to draw out sword aura or sword force—things like that were all elements that consumed mana.

Since it was Reina’s bracelet, and she handled magic, it must have been an item perfectly suited to her.

It would definitely be a great help in my training as well.

If my stamina recovered faster, I could expend that much more stamina.

“Training would be good, but.”

Today, there was something else I had to do.

An essential condition for drawing out the original performance of Demon Swordsmanship.

I had to slowly start speeding up the creation of a “cursed blade.”

First, I had to obtain materials.

Materials that would allow the sword to withstand strong demonic energy.

Buying them at an auction house was one method, but I did not yet have money overflowing to that extent.

Among them were materials so absurdly expensive that it was hard to place a price on them.

So the best method was to obtain them myself as much as possible.

The first material I would try to obtain was a “petal.”

What kind of petal goes into making a sword?

It was not wrong to say that.

That was how far a cursed blade was from an ordinary sword. Even if it had the same appearance and use as a sword, in essence, it was a kind of vessel meant to hold a soul.

Naturally, an ordinary flower would not do.

It was a rare flower, if one wanted to call it rare.

But it was not far away.

The reason I chose to obtain it first was simply because it was the closest.

The problem was that the place where this flower was located was none other than the “female dormitory” inside the academy.

The female dormitory.

Naturally, men were forbidden from entering.

For this reason, one of the tips for Demon Swordsmanship characters was, “If you’re starting with Demon Swordsmanship, absolutely play a female character.”

If I had followed that tip exactly... and made a female character instead of the current Zeto, would I now be experiencing a dreadful ruin?

Changing one’s sex was not something that could be passed over easily.

“Whew...”

I let out a sigh of relief for no real reason.

Giving up on the petal and using another material was also one method.

But it was close, and if entry was possible, the difficulty of collecting it was very easy.

As a material for a cursed blade, it was not lacking either.

So I intended to try.

If anything, considering my “trait,” I thought it might be doable.

“If it really doesn’t work, I’ll sneak in at night.”

Since the material was a petal, if I tried to obtain it after the flower had withered, it would take quite some time.

In the early part of the game, the flower was always in bloom, so if not now, it would not do.

***

“Student! From there onward, men are forbidden from entering!”

A guard around the dormitory stopped me.

“Ah...”

I scratched my head and waited for the guard to approach me.

“Why would a man come here...”

The guard took in my face and was momentarily at a loss for words. I had to take advantage of this moment.

“...I’m sorry. There was something urgent I wanted to tell a friend. My friend... seemed very angry. I thought I might lose that friend if things stayed this way, and then... I lost my head.”

I said this and bowed my head deeply.

I put as much emotion into my voice as I could.

“Your eyes... are a little uncomfortable, student... A friend... Haa... Good grief.”

“It’s all right. I can make friends again, I suppose. Though they were such a good friend...”

The guard clicked his tongue while looking at me, then suddenly grabbed my shoulder.

“Human relationships... are always about timing, I think. I too, once... did many foolish things. But as always, after things become tangled as tangled can be, it becomes difficult to undo them.”

It seemed this guard also had some deep story of his own, because he empathized with me desperately.

“...If it’s you, you won’t do anything foolish, so it should be fine. Here, I’ll give you my badge as proof. Go and settle things somehow!”

The guard pinned his badge to my chest, then sniffed and wiped his nose.

“This actually worked.”

I had not expected it to be resolved so easily.

Perhaps I had simply met the right guard.

Like that, I was able to leap over the strict and high wall called the “female dormitory” for men.

When I entered the female dormitory, which could be called an “unknown world” to the male creature, a long corridor stretched out.

Its structure was not much different from the male dormitory.

My destination was the backyard.

I just had to keep going straight to the end of the corridor like this.

“...It’s a man?”

“How did he get in?”

“Who knows? Leave him. He looks blind anyway.”

“Isn’t he the guy who goes around with Yuri Clementine?”

“Are the two of them dating, maybe?”

“No way~. The high-and-mighty Miss ‘Yuri Clementine’?”

I encountered female students here and there, and they whispered about something, but they did not go out of their way to drive me out.

In the end, I safely reached the backyard.

Luckily, no one was in the backyard.

“It should have been somewhere around here...”

I began rummaging through the backyard flower bed.

After rummaging like that for several minutes.

“Found it.”

At last, I was able to face the flower in full bloom.

“Blanche’s Last Petal.”

That was not the name of the flower, but the name of the petal—in other words, the item name as a material.

This flower contained a mystical energy, so it possessed strong resistance to evil energy such as demonic energy.

I remembered that the flower had a special story behind it, but unfortunately, I did not remember the details.

I took out a small bottle from my clothes, plucked the petals one by one, and carefully placed them in the bottle.

With this, the collection was over.

Compared to entering, it was an extremely simple task.

Now I just needed to get out safely without anything happening.

I put the bottle containing the petals back into my clothes and went straight toward the corridor as if nothing had happened.

Things had gone better than expected.

The remaining materials were a rare metal.

And byproducts from certain monsters.

And an object containing memories of the soul to be sealed.

Whenever I had free time after classes ended, I planned to obtain them little by little.

“It’s still morning, so... should I devote the remaining time to training?”

Training, quests, leveling, and even creating the cursed blade.

I had to prepare everything without leaving a single thing out.

In other words, once classes began, I was going to become even busier.

“It would be nice if I had two bodies.”

By the time I reached the end of the long female dormitory corridor and the entrance was right before my nose.

“...Zeto?”

Someone descending the stairs called out to me.

The owner of the voice was Yuri Clementine.

Perhaps she had just come out after taking a shower, because unlike usual, when her hair was braided, her loosened red hair was slightly wet.

Her comfortable clothes instead of her uniform... a black sleeveless top with a considerable degree of exposure stood out.

“Why are... you here...?”

Yuri was flustered.

A “man” who should not exist in the female dormitory was walking around calmly, after all.

What excuse should I make this time?

Because I had not considered the possibility of meeting someone I knew, I had prepared nothing to say.

“To think I’d meet someone good to see this early in the morning.”

“No... why are you here? Could it be...”

I tried to play it smooth, but Yuri’s eyes quickly sharpened.

She was suspecting me.

If that suspicion became certain, it would change into a gaze filled with contempt, as if looking at a lecherous beast.

However, I was an exception.

At least, I could be free from that suspicion.

Yuri seemed slow to notice, so I only had to put a spoon on top of that.

“Could what be?”

“...No. It must not be. There’s no way. What absurd thing was I thinking?”

Yuri’s gaze finally reached my blindfold.

After realizing that she had momentarily misunderstood, only then did her eyes clear brightly.

Meanwhile, I... could not take my gaze away from the area around the chest of Yuri, who had become endlessly lenient toward me.

Her chest, revealed after loosening the chrysalis known as her uniform, was magnificent.

The state of my conscience was extremely precarious.

The more she understood me, the more that pricked one corner of my heart.

“This is instinct.”

Repeating that to myself, I spoke to Yuri with an awkward laugh.

“Haha. You must have been flustered, so that can happen. I was planning to leave after quickly finishing my business. Of course, I received permission from the guard too.”

I pointed to the badge I had received earlier from the guard with a lot of stories.

“So... what business do you have here?”

Even though I was blind, Yuri seemed to feel a mysterious embarrassment, and she approached me with one hand placed over her chest.

Thinking of ordinary situations, it was not a particularly special distance, but right now, it was quite dangerous.

A powerful “weapon” capable of subjugating most men was approaching.

Business... business, huh...

I had to answer Yuri’s pure question, but nothing came to mind.

The bewitching atmosphere she gave off without even realizing it made my mind go completely blank.

It was then.

Another familiar voice came from behind me.

“Zeto, what are you doing there?”

She spoke to me casually and familiarly, even though we had never agreed to drop formal speech.

With an indifferent expression, she continued with a shocking remark.

“If nothing’s going on, hurry up and let’s go. I’m hungry.”

“Eisel... Ludwig...?”

Yuri wore a dumbfounded expression.

But my mind was equally hazy.

“...What is this?”

In an instant, the situation had become one where I had come to the female dormitory early in the morning to find Eisel.