Volume 01
Prologue: An unorthodox Swordsman
Prologue: An unorthodox Swordsman
“…d.a.m.n, I’m late.”
A boy with reddish-brown hair dashed down the maze-like hallways of the huge academy.
The boy— Satsukiba Sorata had entered high school in this spring and on a glance, his appearance was pretty much like any other normal high school boy’s.
His height was about one-hundred and seventy centimetre.
It wasn’t all that different from the average height of a j.a.panese male.
His face sill showed traces of youth, befitting for his age of fifteen years.
Still, someone with a keen eye might be able to discern his abnormal talent.
It was hard to tell while he was wearing his school uniform, but his body was trained, so that it no longer had any unnecessary muscles— like a blade polished to the utmost limit.
It stood in contrast to his overall slender body.
The palms of his hands were tough and there were impressive calluses from handling a swords at the joints of his small and ring fingers, which you wouldn’t expect from a teen.
Satsukiba Sorata was a swordsman.
Moreover— One with a natural ability that he was evaluated as the “strongest swordsman alive” by others.
While the extra-long sword dangled on the belt of his uniform, Sorata ran around in search for his destination: The cla.s.sroom of cla.s.s 1-A.
“Hey, could it be that boy is the rumoured…?”
“So it was really true that a boy enrolled in our academy…”
The nearby female students started to make a ruckus when they saw Sorata.
The reason for that was more than obvious.
This place, the Enbu Academy, was established with the goal to foster people, who fought in mechanical armours powered by magic, also known as artefacts: The [Sky Knights]. The academy was well known as a girls-only school, which never had accepted a boy until Sorata enrolled here.
Amongst the currently over three-thousand students admitted here, Sorata was the only male student.
It was human nature to gossip when the boy with such a background pa.s.sed by in front of their eyes.
“Hah… What a drag. I don’t care about him being a special swordsmanship student or whatever, but I heard that he has absolutely no apt.i.tude for magic. What’s a guy like that doing at our academy?”
“I know, right! To begin with, an outdated art like swordsmanship isn’t going to get you anyway these days!”
Some girls gave cutting comments in regards to Sorata’s enrolment.
However, that was only natural as well.
It would be no exaggeration to claim the present age as the golden age of [magic].
It had been seventy years, since the extremely convenient energy source known as [magical power] appeared in public and replaced the previous society based on science.
No matter how much talent you were born with for [swordsmanship] or [martial arts], it proved to be absolutely worthless in this age, where the talent for [magic] meant everything.
And Sorata understood that better than anyone.
“…Fuh. I somehow made it in time.”
He had managed to find his cla.s.sroom somehow or other while slipping through the gazes aimed at him from all directions, and made a sigh of relief.
The present time was 8:27.
Three minutes before cla.s.s started.
It came in handy to have left for cla.s.s early, expecting to get lost within the academy from the beginning.
He was already standing out enough due to his status and it would be unbearable if he were to get labelled as a troublemaker for coming in late for his first cla.s.s on top of that.
While thinking about such things, he stepped into the cla.s.sroom—
For some reason, there was skin as far as he could see.
Sorata’s vision fell onto the unbecoming appearance of over thirty or so girls.
Almost all of the girls had taken off their uniform and only wore their underwear, but a few of them were even topless.
In face of the all too sudden happening, Sorata just stood there with his mouth gaping half-open.
However.
The girls were reacting the same way.
In preparation for the cla.s.s, which trained their basic physical strength necessary for wearing an artefact, the girls had been in the middle of changing into their sportswear, but with Sorata’s sudden appearance, they partly froze in a daze.
As a side note: Sorata would come to know about this later, but the students of Enbu Academy never had to be careful about peepers when “undressing in the changing room”, because the girls had been among themselves for a long time.
Thus, the female students of the academy unhesitatingly changed clothes in the cla.s.sroom, too, when necessary.
And then.
The girl with black hair, standing the closest to Sorata, broke the silence from both sides.
“KYAAAAAAAA! A pervert! There’s a pervert!”
After that h.e.l.l broke loose.
Sorata truly experienced a ride from heaven to h.e.l.l right now.
“A boy!? Wh- What’s a boy doing here!?”
“Oh my G.o.d! Not even my dad has seen me like this!”
Some desperately tried to cover their body with their arms and legs in shame.
Some were raising h.e.l.l over the impossible appearance of a boy inside the academy.
And some ended up crying from the shock of being seen in their underwear by a boy.
(Argh, this is… pretty bad, isn’t it…?)
Sorata finally comprehended the situation he was in, but it was already too late.
The odds to escape from the cla.s.sroom without punishment was infinitely close to zero.
“Excuse me. I think you’re… called Satsukiba Sorata?”
Before he noticed it, a girl had come to in front of him.
Sorata would later learn that her name was Felicia von Flamberge.
With beautiful hair in a flaming red colour and a strong-willed look that oddly charmed the viewer, she was a pretty girl with a bewitching s.e.x-appeal that make you mistake her for a G.o.ddess from some legend.
The pink underwear she was wearing accelerated Sorata’s heartbeat.
“Th- That’s our Felicia-sama! She behaves so confident even in such an unforeseen situation… Wonderful! I’m deeply moved!”
“Good thing that we’ve one of the Seven Star Knights with the nickname [Purgatory], given to her by the Ministry of Magic, here!
“…..”
How could this girl act so unashamed in her underwear?
Sorata’s brain brought such a stupid doubt into question that right away, but he asked a different question first.
“I am Satsukiba Sorata, but… how do you know my name?”
The red-haired girl laughed while scrunching her nose for a bit.
“Of course I know it… There’s no one, who doesn’t know your name, here by now. After all… you’re the one and only male Knight in this city and famous for enrolling into our academy under the unusual condition of being an unparalleled ‘swordsman’. Any more question?”
“…..”
Oh boy!
He had been prepared to some extent when he moved here, but it even came as a surprise to him that his name had already spread so far.
“By the way, Sorata-kun, this comes out of nowhere, but how do you like your steak grilled? Grilling it well-done to the core is simple and appealing by itself, but you can’t ignore the medium rare variant either, as it torments the steak while it barely keeps its consciousness.”
Sorata was often teased for his slow-wittedness by others, but even he understood that she wasn’t talking about grilling a mere steak.
(A wrong answer and I’ll be burnt to the ground!?)
Felicia approached him step by step with her rapier regalia in hand, which was equipped with the core method of the fire domain.
What to do?
How could he soothe the angry girl?
Compared to other high school kids at his age, Sorata had painfully few experiences with girls, so he was blindly searching for a method to solve this pinch.
“C- Come on! Don’t get so angry! It ruins your cute face.”
“Wha… C- Cute!?”
Felicia blushed her cheeks from the unexpected utterance.
—Based on his past experience, the best way to lift a girl’s mood was by praising her.
Or at least, that method had a hundred percent chance of success for his little sister Airi.
And his action just now had definitely been effective against the girl, who had been raised in the Sky City [Octavia], where most of the residents were female, and was inexperienced about being praised by a boy.
“Yep. You’re cute. And quite beautiful.”
“C- Ca- Calling me beautiful… Th- That’s going too…”
Felicia’s cheeks reddened like a boiled octopus when the stranger boy, who had suddenly showed up in the cla.s.sroom, showered her with praise.
It was the completely opposite from her usual flawless and dignified att.i.tude.
The other girls couldn’t hide their surprise as they saw Felicia act like a girl their age.
“No way!? Our Felicia-sama is on the defence…”
“That transfer student… can’t be normal…”
Sorata sensed a favourable reaction from the girl in front of him and pressed Felicia with more powerful praises.
“I never thought I would come across a girl as beautiful as yourself on this Earth. On a personal note, your healthy and well-fleshed body impressed me the most! It’s practically picking a fight with the recent diet boom.”
“…”
At the moment, Sorata failed to notice it.
That Felicia’s temple twitched in regards to his “well-fleshed” remark.
“To begin with, the models on TV these days are way too skinny. Men are originally more attracted to women with an appropriate amount of meat on the bones than the skinny types!”
“…..”
“You’re perfect in that regard! My personal favourite is your a.s.s! These plump and child-bearing hips instinctively make me want to borrow my face into them… Truly the ideal shape for a man. I dare to say your body is rather wonderf…!?”
In the middle of his sentence, he suddenly realized.
The girl in front of him was giving him a ruthless look like a cattle being sent to the butcher.
“…….”
If there was a flaw with Sorata’s strategy, it would be that his little sister had a particular inclination unlike a normal girl.
His little sister Aira was the kind of girl, who would be brought to tears from joy when her brother told her: “Your plump and child-bearing hips instinctively make me want to borrow my face into them.”.
“…Have some shame, you d.a.m.n pervert.”
While mumbling that in a ba.s.s voice filled with bloodl.u.s.t, Felicia let her rapier regalia shine in her hands.
In the next moment.
The regalia in her hand produced a spherical light and Sorata’s vision instantly was engulfed by crimson flames.
The magic from the girl activated so insanely fast that it couldn’t be measured in seconds.
Due to that, everyone present thought the boy would suffer burns so grave that he would have to be brought to the hospital at once.
“… Whew, close call.”
But that didn’t happen.
When the white smoke cleared from their vision, the body of the boy showed not the slightest, visible harm.
Felicia realized the absurdity first and showed a doubtful expression.
(What’s going on…!? The speed and accuracy of my magic should’ve been perfect!)
So, how did this happen?
Why was the boy in front of her unharmed?
The only clue she got was the mysterious movement the boy had shown right before the magic hit him.
In face of the approaching flame, the boy in front of her had neither backed off, nor flinched— He merely had loosened the sword from its sheath hanging on his waist for a bit, with an abnormal serenity.
However, that was no real reason as to why he overcame this pinch unharmed just now.
After all, magic was essentially outside of the laws of this world.
Therefore swordsmanship, which was bound to the laws of this world, had no way to oppose magic, even if it was performed by a heretic [swordsman], who enrolled in the previously girls-only academy with flying colours.
For that reason, Felicia just couldn’t comprehend the current situation.
She wracked her brain over various possibilities regarding this event, but her thoughts were interrupted by the voice of one cla.s.smate.
“KYAAAA! Th- That man… has my… underwear…!?”
“Nuh! D- Don’t get the wrong idea!”
“Wrong idea about what? You d.a.m.n underwear thief!!”
“No! This underwear… coincidentally reached me from the blast, so I caught it in the spur of the moment… I wasn’t aiming for it or anything!”
Faced with such obvious circ.u.mstantial evidence, his claim was a futile struggle.
The underwear girls surrounded Sorata at once with their regalia equipped.
(…Guess I was over thinking it. This happy-go-lucky guy could never break my magic.)
Felicia heaved a short sigh in light of this ridiculous development.
She had a conjecture.
Namely, that her own inexperience must have brought about this incident.
When the spell caster messed up the script of the magic, a phenomena called Coding Error took place, which made the magic end up as a dud.
She didn’t think that there had been a mistake in her formulated script, but she couldn’t think of another reason to explain this outcome, so she settled for that conclusion for now
(For some reason… I am feeling rather disappointed now. I guess I was stupid to cherish any expectations of this guy for even a moment.)
As a matter of fact.
Felicia have had a little bit of expectations towards the boy in front of her, who had enrolled here under the unusual credit of being an unprecedented [swordsman].
Suppose for a moment that there was a secret [sword skill] that could defeat the almighty concept of [magic], which now controlled the world instead of [science]—
If someone appeared, who had mastered such a skill, she would have finally found the long-desired person worthy to be her partner.
Other people would surely sneer at her if they were to hear this— But she had expectation for such an impossible future.
“W- Wait. Hear me ouuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!?”
His desperate plead was in vain too, and Sorata screamed unheard inside the cla.s.sroom.
Afterwards.
The news that the first male students since the establishment of the academy turned out to be a pervert, who peeped on the girls changing and rifled through their underwear on his first day, spread throughout the whole academy in a relatively short time.
Good grief… How did things end up like this?
Sorata lamented his own misfortune.
Everything had started roughly one week ago.