After a bit of light stretching and a quick jog around the auditorium, Reysir Daudabina’s expression returned to normal.
However, that didn’t mean he was unaffected by the Imperial Princess’s remarks.
‘He told me it was better to eat what he brought than to not eat at all…!’
As 5:00 PM approached, the students of the Special Class began to appear one by one, with the exception of Hailga and Risi.
But Reysir did not offer an energy bar to any of them.
He merely gave a simple morning greeting to Vigdis and Liolikin, with whom he was acquainted, asking if they had slept well.
It might have been because Princess Fjodra was watching, and he felt awkward handing out something she had labeled as junk food to everyone…
‘Is he really hurt? Maybe his pride too…’
I felt upset on his behalf.
I knew Fjodra hadn’t said those things to intentionally embarrass Reysir.
Even so, it was excessively rude of her to describe the food as if it were inedible right in front of the person who had just eaten it.
‘I should have spoken up earlier…’
Regrettably, it was too late now.
Not only the students but also the professor had just arrived.
“Nice to meet you, Awakened Special Class. My name is Banahilda Baezr. First, I’d like to call roll to match your faces with your names before I move on to my self-introduction… Is that all right?”
As mentioned back in chapter 172, the Awakened professors were all supporting characters from the original work.
Some were companions who spent every day with the protagonist, while others maintained friendly relations and collaborated from time to time.
Among them, Banahilda was someone who fell into the companion category.
She was the one who had accepted Reysir into her Einherjar Team when he was wandering alone, belonging nowhere.
‘Even though rumors that Reysir intentionally sacrificed his teammates had spread everywhere, long after Fjodra’s death…!’
At that point in the original story, even Reysir was aware of the fact that everyone who became his companion ended up dying, and he was actively pushing people away.
However, since there were limits to tackling Boss Monsters alone, he was often dispatched to Einherjar Teams that needed support as a mercenary or formed one-time teams with untrustworthy strangers.
‘Reysir met Banahilda in the former case.’
Not as a leader of an Einherjar Team, but as a professor, the current Banahilda finished checking attendance by calling out each student’s name as promised.
Then, she began her self-introduction.
“Since I already mentioned my name, let’s skip that. I’m forty-three years old. My profession before becoming a professor… well… can this even be called a profession?”
She couldn’t continue for more than a few words before suddenly falling into thought, muttering to herself.
There was a reason for Banahilda’s behavior.
“I lived off the rewards I received for catching criminals with bounties and handing them over to the guards. Some people called those living such a life ‘bounty hunters.’ It’s a rather grand name for a lowlife who wanders alone without a job or a home.”
As evident from her bitter smile and self-deprecating words, she didn’t particularly like being a bounty hunter.
The only reason she had entered that industry was to find the murderer who had killed her husband and son and take revenge with her own hands.
Her past was also why she had accepted Reysir, who was followed by foul rumors, into her team and why she had embraced and comforted him when he tried to avoid all connections.
If her dead son had lived, he would have been exactly Reysir’s age, and they even had similar hair colors.
‘In short, she saw her dead son in Reysir.’
Furthermore, while she had eventually succeeded in her revenge, she felt deeply sorry for him.
Reysir might have eliminated the ‘person’ who killed those dear to him, but the ‘phenomenon’ known as the ‘Demonic Realm’ that had taken so many more was impossible to erase with human power.
She pitied him for craving a revenge that could never be fully realized.
“Ah! Also, my Ether Characteristic Skill is [Super Regeneration], so most wounds heal quickly. So, if we end up entering a Demonic Realm together, don’t worry too much if I get hurt. You don’t need to try to protect me.”
In the original work before the remake, Banahilda had said something similar to Reysir.
She told him that because her Aether ability was like this, she wouldn’t die as easily as others.
She explained that she was the only one who survived the day her family was murdered because of this ability.
She even told him that his worrying was unnecessary because her regenerative powers had improved significantly since then.
Banahilda knocked on the locked door of Reysir’s heart like that.
She struggled to heal his interior, which was full of wounds.
She cherished Reysir with all her heart, as if she were cradling her child who had died long ago, or comforting her past self who had been frantic to track down a murderer whose identity she didn’t even know.
Finally, after she managed to open his heart…
‘…She died!’
***
After Banahilda’s death in the original work, her Einherjar teammates blamed Reysir for her death, saying it was ‘his fault for accepting an ominous fellow,’ and kicked him out of the team.
It wasn’t as if she had died while protecting Reysir; the Boss Monster had simply been too strong.
Nevertheless, the original protagonist tamely accepted their words and fell into a pit of self-reproach.
“Anyway, I never thought I’d be teaching not just the children of noble families but also the Imperial Princess…”
As I forced myself out of my thoughts, I heard her muttering.
Come to think of it, in the original work before the remake, Banahilda had finished her revenge long ago, quit being a bounty hunter, and converted to an Einheri to work in a team where she met Reysir.
‘I wonder how things are now?’
Everything depended on how the author, Senna, set it up.
Maybe she had already finished her revenge.
Or perhaps, far from revenge, she hadn’t even discovered the identity of the murderer who killed her family yet and had been forced by the Imperial Family to become an Academy professor.
If it were the latter, an incident related to it would surely occur.
In that sense, I hoped Banahilda had already finished her revenge and was in a state of relief.
“Does anyone have questions for me?”
Since I couldn’t ask about her revenge, I decided to keep my mouth shut.
Banahilda stood still and waited for a moment to let the students ask questions.
However, not a single student spoke up.
‘To think that even the Information Guild’s successor would pass up a Q&A session…’
It seemed Pret had already finished investigating not only the students but also the Awakened professors, including Banahilda.
Or maybe there was something he wanted to ask, but because the content was something he couldn’t bring himself to ask, he was suppressing his curiosity just like me.
“It seems you don’t have any questions for me. Then I’ll ask you instead. Has anyone here never learned Martial Arts at all?”
At Banahilda’s question, only Svein raised his hand.
Perhaps he had thought his fellow commoner, Pret, would be the same as him, but a look of betrayal crossed the face of the original traitor as he looked at him.
Feeling that gaze, Pret spoke up.
“Aha! The brothers and sisters in the circus troupe taught me various things, saying I should know how to protect myself!”
He spoke playfully, giving me the feeling that Pret would continue to use the ‘circus troupe’ as an all-purpose excuse in the future.
“Student Pret, how long did you study Martial Arts?”
“If you count the duration, it’s about ten years? But I didn’t train consistently; the brothers and sisters just checked my posture once in a while, so my [Martial Arts] rank isn’t that high.”
“Ah, now that I think of it, since you’re all Awakened, you can check your own skill ranks, right? But is it okay for me to ask about that…?”
Banahilda seemed to ponder for a moment before coming to a conclusion.
“It’s probably better if I don’t ask. I can’t teach someone with a solid foundation and someone who fills their lack of basics with tricks the same way just because they’re at the same rank. It’ll be better for me to see for myself and decide how to teach you.”
It was a very professional statement.
Just as I was thinking she seemed quite reliable, a very unreliable statement popped out of her mouth.
“Though, I don’t have much experience teaching anyone, so I don’t know if I’ll do well… Since I need to see your skills first, try hitting the sandbags freely.”
…Even if Banahilda said that, her capability as an educator shouldn’t be lacking.
The Imperial Family might have prioritized Awakening status and combat power and failed to check teaching ability, but surely Senna wouldn’t have given an ally-positioned professor character a setting like ‘having no talent for teaching others.’
‘Surely even if she’s bad at teaching, she won’t be as disastrous as Vigdis!’
I was able to set aside my worries with that thought, but standing in front of the rotating sandbag I was seeing for the first time today, I felt quite lost.
While I was worrying about what to do, I heard the dull thuds of impacts.
The ones making the noise were Fjodra and her Familiar, Lausa.
They seemed to have experience using these rotating sandbags.
Fjodra displayed a variety of movements, dodging the spinning spin-bars with light movements while striking the two punching balls with her fists and kicking the cylindrical body.
And Lausa flew around Fjodra and the sandbag, taking care not to collide with its master while dodging the spin-bars and striking the punching balls and the sandbag with its wings or scratching them with its claws.
Judging by how the sandbag didn’t tear even against the eagle Familiar’s sharp claws, I figured it was an Aether Engineering setting where the sandbag had been specially treated.
‘Wait, is Yor supposed to do this training too?’
I looked at Yor with concern.
Yor quickly pulled out a whiteboard and wrote the following:
It meant it was impossible for him to move like Lausa.
My thoughts were the same as my baby dragon’s.
If Yor were to fly around, a monster would surely snatch up that long, thin body in an instant.
I decided not to imagine the details after that for the sake of my own mental health.
“Then just stay a reasonable distance away and play by yourself.”
“LF LF!”
Now that I roughly understood how to use the rotating sandbags, I moved Yor away and tried moving my body as well.
A heavy sensation of impact was transmitted, requiring far more strength than throwing punches and kicks into the air.
I found myself paying attention to evasion and defense maneuvers that were easy to overlook when focusing only on offensive actions.
‘But it feels like this is only good for practicing alone…’
I felt that once one reached a certain level, this wouldn’t be as good as image training.
I think I understood why this equipment hadn’t been used in the previous Martial Arts lectures.
Once students had the basics down, sparring would be much more effective for improving their skills.