On the first day of the second semester, an opening party was held in the Central Hall in the late afternoon.
However, for the first semester, an orientation that also served as a welcome for the new students was held in the Grand Hall early in the morning.
Since it was the start of a new year, there were many things to communicate, including the academic schedule.
Because of this, Yor and I headed toward the Grand Hall immediately after returning from having breakfast outside the Academy with Reysir Daudabina.
I wondered how they had managed it in such a short two-month vacation.
The Grand Hall building, which had been damaged by the effects of the Magicalization, had been perfectly restored.
They even seemed to have transplanted the trees that had grown between the cracks in the building to landscape the area around the restored structure.
“What is that?”
While I was admiring the restored exterior and its surroundings, Reysir noticed something installed at the entrance of the Grand Hall and raised a question.
Only then did I see the device myself.
‘Is that what I think it is? A walk-through metal detector like the ones at airports.’
Although I had never been to an airport myself and hadn’t seen one in person, I knew what they looked like through various media.
It was a door-frame-shaped device with an LCD panel at the top and a passage in the middle for people to walk through.
No matter how I looked at it, it was clearly a walk-through metal detector.
Therefore, unlike Reysir, I couldn’t help but wonder about the reason for its installation rather than its identity.
‘The students here experienced the Magicalization firsthand on the day of the graduation ceremony. Many of them must be carrying weapons for self-defense at all times now, so is it really okay to install something like that?’
If the professors had stepped forward to protect the students on the day of the graduation ceremony, it might be different, but there was currently a strong perception that Valhalla Academy was a place that did not protect its students.
No matter how much the combat faculty had been replaced, how could the students trust people they had never even seen before?
In such a situation, banning weapons would surely cause a huge backlash.
As I was pondering this, I saw a student with a sword at their waist pass through the device that was clearly a metal detector.
However…
‘The warning sound didn’t go off?’
Even the staff member standing next to the detector let the student through without stopping them.
This meant that the device only looked like a metal detector but was not installed to prevent weapons from being brought in.
The moment I realized that, the words ‘no way’ flashed through my mind.
“What is this device?”
“I don’t know much about it either. I was just instructed to have the students pass through one by one and, if the alarm goes off, guide them to the seats prepared on the right side of the auditorium.”
At Reysir’s question, the staff member answered at a rapid-fire pace, almost like he was rapping, with a slightly bored expression.
It was a reaction that suggested he had already answered the same question many times.
Considering that we had arrived quite early, that employee would likely have to repeat the same answer dozens, perhaps hundreds of times more.
The original protagonist seemed to have noticed this as well.
Instead of persistently pestering the poor employee with additional questions, he replied that he understood and passed through the thing that looked like a metal detector.
Immediately after.
— Beep!
An alert sounded, and at the same time, the words [DETECTED] appeared on the LCD panel at the top of the device.
The device functioned the same way when I passed through it.
With this, it was certain.
‘This isn’t a metal detector; it’s an Awakened Discriminator…?!’
Even though I had mentioned in Chapter 153 that ‘an artifact capable of confirming whether someone has awakened will be created,’ there was a reason I only realized it now.
The Awakened Discriminator in the original work was a portable item in the form of a handheld scanner.
The time of its appearance was not now, but about a year after Reysir left the Academy.
‘Above all, this is a world where it wouldn’t be strange for modern equipment like metal detectors to actually appear, right? To show us modern items that functioned exactly as they looked until now and then suddenly throw such a curveball!’
I had wondered if I should remove the metal accessories on my school uniform to maintain my character settings.
I was incredibly relieved that I realized it wasn’t a metal detector before I actually did it.
“That seems to be a device that confirms whether someone has awakened, doesn’t it?”
“I think so too.”
“Why did they install something like that at the entrance of the auditorium and gather the Awakened separately? Are they planning to run a special class composed only of Awakened?”
“……”
As we headed toward the ‘seats prepared on the right’ that the employee had mentioned, Reysir said something ominous.
I really wanted to dismiss it and tell him not even to bring up such nonsense.
However, because his words sounded very plausible even to me, I just kept my mouth shut and frowned.
If I were tied together with the original protagonist in something called a ‘special class,’ it would be a predetermined future that I would be caught up in all sorts of incidents and accidents.
This was also a big problem, but…
‘There was no mention of an Awakened special class in the original work at all, was there?’
This was the real problem.
If the fact that Reysir remained at the Academy caused an Awakened special class to be created that didn’t exist in the original work, how should I interpret this?
‘Still, it’s too early to be suspicious, so let’s not worry ourselves.’
Just because it wasn’t mentioned didn’t mean I could say for certain that an Awakened special class wasn’t created at Valhalla Academy in the original work.
It could simply be that it wasn’t described because the original protagonist had dropped out of the Academy.
Since the setting of the original work was that a portable Awakened Discriminator was developed about a year later, it wasn’t particularly strange that a large, installation-type discriminator appeared now.
I sat down, suppressing the anxiety that had sprouted in a corner of my heart.
Unlike the seats of the other students, which were just folding chairs set out on the bare floor, a black carpet was spread under the seats prepared exclusively for the Awakened.
The chairs were also more comfortable and stable.
It was truly a place prepared intentionally to grant a sense of being ‘special.’
At the setting that seemed to openly shout ‘Look over here!’, I could see the students whispering among themselves while glancing this way with curious eyes.
‘For me, I feel like a monkey in a zoo, so I don’t feel good at all…’
A thought suddenly occurred to me that Nidhr, the villain in the original work who was excessively obsessed with being ‘special,’ might have welcomed this kind of attention.
Perhaps the reason he couldn’t stand his inferiority complex toward the Awakened and ended up hating them enough to kill them was because Valhalla Academy in the original work also gathered the Awakened separately and gave them special treatment like this?
“Seeing you lost in thought, I guess you don’t know either?”
“No matter how much of a Duke my father is, he isn’t an Academy official. How would I know such things, LF?”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“What about you? Did you not hear anything from Professor Dyuf?”
“Yeah, I didn’t hear a thing.”
Around the time I was having this conversation with the original protagonist, the person I had just mentioned entered the hall with his daughter.
Dyuf slipped behind the screen at the back of the podium, and Hailga approached us.
“Hailga, did you not hear anything from Master Dyuf either?”
“Hear what?”
“About the reason they’re gathering the Awakened separately or the device installed at the entrance to check for awakening.”
“I actually asked him as I was coming in, but he kept quiet, saying I would find out soon. I suspect they might have been instructed to keep it a secret from the students.”
Hailga replied to her childhood friend’s question in her demure tone and sat down.
If what she said was true, it was certain that Dyuf knew something.
‘Somehow… I’m starting to think that his appointment as an Academy professor and the current situation aren’t unrelated.’
As my uneasy feeling grew, a person wearing an orange tie, which indicated a new student, entered the black-carpeted area instead of sitting in the First Year ranks.
A ginger ponytail, brown eyes, and a face full of freckles reminded me of a certain character from the original work.
‘No way… There’s no way that person would enroll in the Academy, right? That hair and eye color are quite common in this world, and the freckles are the same… So it’s probably not him, right?’
For reference, ‘that person’ was briefly mentioned in Chapter 56.
The successor of the Information Guild, ‘Fret Grimur.’
The description of his true appearance, revealed when he deactivated his disguise skill, exactly matched the person I was looking at now.
“Wow! Hello, seniors. My name is ‘Fret Hullid’! I’m just a nobody commoner, so there’s no need to remember my last name. Just call me ‘Fret’!”
Not only his smiling impression and sociable attitude, but even his name was the same as ‘that person’ in the original work.
But since the last name was different, he might be a different person…
‘…As if!!’
I ultimately failed to escape reality and had no choice but to accept the facts presented before me.
While it couldn’t be concluded for certain that the freshman in front of me was the same mercenary who appeared in Chapter 56—actually, the exclamation ‘Wow!’ had significantly increased that possibility—anyway, leaving that aside for now, what was certain was that he was one of the main characters from the original work.
And there was no setting that this character had attended Valhalla Academy.
“You seniors are also Awakened, right? I think we’ll be seeing each other often from now on, so why don’t we introduce ourselves and get along?”
“You think we’ll be seeing each other often? Why are you so sure about that?”
Suddenly, Reysir lightly tapped my knee twice as if to reassure me.
He then questioned Fret with a wary voice.
I had unintentionally stiffened my face at the appearance of a supporting character from the original work who shouldn’t be here, and he seemed to have misunderstood that I was nervous because a stranger had approached us so familiarly.
“Well, isn’t that obvious just by looking at how they’ve set aside separate seats for the Awakened like this? It surely means that we Awakened should all get along with each other. And this is just my guess… but I think we might receive combat training together, even if our years are different.”
Fret answered with a sly attitude, but the moment he mentioned his ‘guess,’ he lowered his voice and whispered.
These were words spoken by none other than the successor of the Information Guild.
Therefore, those words were surely a ‘verified fact’ rather than a ‘guess.’
It was the moment the existence of the ‘Awakened special class’ was confirmed.
‘…Should I quit the Academy even now?’
I wondered if Hard would accept it, but I began to contemplate whether I should at least try to talk to him.