In the darkened office, where the only light came from moonbeams streaming through the window.
"Hmm, is that what happened?"
Blue flames burning quietly within the eye sockets faced me.
I feel like I have seen this scene somewhere before.
Right.
The family head’s office, where I had been summoned before coming to this academy, had looked just like this.
Despite having lamps, they never lit them—like children of darkness, they only sat there doing their work.
Or were all swordsmen like that?
Professor Silves’s office had not been this dark, so perhaps it was just this man and the family head who were strange.
"Hmm. Well, you do not seem to be lying."
The blue flames wavering in his eye sockets gradually diminished, eventually gathering into a single point.
"Let us leave it at that, then. That dungeon belongs to Her Highness the First Princess anyway, so there should be no issue. I will report it to the headmaster accordingly."
Tap. Tap.
Professor Luke squared the documents on his desk with both hands, then opened his jawbone.
Ah, she had already bought the rights to the dungeon? Was that even possible?
More than that, it felt unsettling that he was letting this pass without asking me anything at all.
The skeleton before me was the sort who went on about the flow of things.
He was the man who had insisted on making me the vice president, even offering to teach me his skill under the pretext of that flow.
And becoming vice president had allowed me to manipulate the dungeon.
I had not considered it then, but looking at how unruffled he was now… I could not help wondering whether this skeleton had foreseen it all along.
"Is it really all right?"
"Of course it is. It is not as though there are no cases of spirits creating dungeons."
At some point, the blue flame in his eye sockets had curved into a gentle arc.
"This is more convenient in the first place. Otherwise, I would have had to get into another tiresome argument with the Empire’s old fogies. There is no need to go looking for trouble."
He answered in a listless voice, despite speaking as though it were a bother.
[Luke Eaenril]
◈ Level: 90
◈ The target is convinced.
Convinced.
That was the answer Insight Eye gave as it examined that seemingly lackadaisical skeleton.
That was the problem with Insight Eye.
It showed the truth, but never all the way to the end.
I had no idea what exactly that man was convinced of.
Professor Luke in the game had been, quite literally, a comic-relief character.
Unlike the head of the Logres family and the headmaster, who joined the fray in the latter half of the story, he was also a skeleton who stayed out of the plot entirely.
Even the setting guide had revealed very little about him, so I had no idea what he was thinking.
In the end, it was true that becoming vice president had earned me the dungeon card.
Still, I could not shake the feeling that this man was somehow leading me around by the nose.
As I watched Professor Luke organize his papers and crack his joints—
…Well, whatever.
I stopped thinking about it.
If a level 90 wanted to use me, how much could he possibly use me?
It would be easier for him to swing his sword once than to make use of my bullshit.
And even if he meant me harm right now, was there any way I could stop him?
In any case, I had gained a dungeon and would get to learn this man’s skill, so I decided to look on the bright side.
If things seemed dangerous, I could just stick close to Angelica.
Just as I was making that not-quite-rational rationalization—
"I summoned you here, yet I have been too absorbed in my own work, Student Ian."
Clatter.
With the sound of bones grinding together, Professor Luke rose from his seat.
He casually picked up the sword resting in the corner of the office and pointed at me with a bony finger.
"Follow me."
Then he simply walked out the door.
Assuming he was heading outside to demonstrate the technique he had promised to teach me, I silently followed the skeleton.
But after we had walked for a while, something felt wrong.
"Professor, this is not the way to the training hall."
The training hall was definitely in the opposite direction.
This skeleton professor was walking in a completely unrelated direction.
Upon hearing my observation, Professor Luke replied without looking back.
"We are not going to the training hall."
Not the training hall? Then where exactly was he planning to show me swordsmanship?
As though he had noticed my confusion, he added calmly,
"We are heading somewhere sturdier. Somewhere no one will mind, no matter how badly it is destroyed."
Somewhere sturdier?
#
On the other side of the door, we were greeted by a woman staring at us with an expression of absolute incredulity.
"Have you finally lost your mind, Professor Luke?"
The instant I heard her cold, subdued voice, I nearly nodded my head vigorously.
How could her thoughts align with mine so perfectly, not differing by a single word?
When I saw with my own eyes where this insane skeleton had stopped, I had stared at his skull, wondering whether it had cracked.
Fuck, there was not even a crack in it.
No, seriously, was this right?
The reason both I and the red-haired beauty before me—the headmaster—were dumbfounded was—
"What kind of insane professor uses the headmaster’s office like a training ground?"
I agree with you, Headmaster.
The sturdy place Professor Luke had brought us to was the academy headmaster’s office.
What kind of lunatic would demonstrate a technique in the headmaster’s office?
There he was—the lunatic in question.
"Yes. I suppose it has been in use for quite a long time. Perhaps it is time to replace that old skeleton as well."
The headmaster delivered that fairly chilling line without changing her expression.
"Well, there is no office sturdier than yours, Headmaster."
But even at that, Professor Luke merely shrugged his shoulder bones in an unconcerned manner.
Fuck.
Why had this insane skeleton come all the way here?
The one saving grace was that the headmaster had not released Dragon Fear like she had before…
"Do not worry, Headmaster. It will be over very shortly."
…Or not?
Whenever Professor Luke’s jawbone clattered, some kind of mana began to ripple around the headmaster’s body.
It was a sign that something horrible was about to erupt at any moment.
With her divine control, I probably would not be affected.
But would I get dragged into it and suffer because of this madman?
"Haa…"
At that moment, the headmaster, who had been pressing a hand to her forehead and sighing deeply, began reining in the violently surging aura around her.
"I am quite busy myself, so please finish quickly."
With that addition, the headmaster trudged back to her desk.
I had not noticed when we came in, but the desk was piled high with documents, as if she were shouting that she was busy.
It was equal to—or perhaps even greater than—the monstrous mountain of paperwork that had towered over the family head’s desk in his office.
"Do not worry. It will not take long."
Even as he looked at that tower of documents, Professor Luke responded in the same unruffled tone.
Then he slowly turned his head and looked at me.
Oh, fuck.
I had thought this would end with me simply watching him swing his sword once, so why did my shoulders feel so heavy?
Was this bastard really trying to screw me over?
#
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
In the office, filled with the scratching of a pen moving across paper and the sound of seals being stamped—
The blue flames inside his eye sockets suddenly blazed fiercely.
"Have you ever faced a dragon, Student Ian?"
Professor Luke asked out of nowhere as he drew his sword from its scabbard.
What was he talking about?
At Professor Luke’s abrupt question, I shook my head.
According to the setting of Dawnstar Academia, there was only one dragon publicly known to exist.
The headmaster, right over there in the office, rolling her pen with a deeply furrowed brow.
Even she was not pure-blooded, but a half-dragon with human blood.
But if one were to ask whether dragons had truly gone extinct from the world, the answer would be no.
There were dragons among the enemies we would have to face in the main episodes later on, and one of the game’s final bosses was even a dragon.
"Then what do you think is the first thing one must prepare for when facing a dragon, Student Ian?"
The important thing when facing a dragon?
Hmm. Was this the sort of structure where answering correctly would raise the rank of the technique I got to learn?
Still, if I got the answer completely right, it might make people suspicious…
I calmly reviewed the stats of the dragons I had faced while playing Dawnstar Academia.
True to their setting as the strongest race in the world until their extinction, the dragons I had fought through a monitor had patterns so utterly insane that they could not be compared to other boss monsters.
Enormous HP bars filling the entire screen, and maddening defenses that made you wonder whether they could even be pierced.
Physical stats beyond all other races, utterly outside the norm.
Dragon Fear, which shrugged off most crowd-control skills, and dragon speech that tore through even carefully built magic defenses as though they were sheets of paper.
On top of that, there was their area-of-effect breath attack that killed you instantly if it so much as grazed you.
They were a race so overpowered that calling them unfair did not begin to cover it.
What was even more absurd was that, despite appearing with those stats, every dragon that appeared as an enemy in the original story was supposedly nerfed in some way and not in peak condition.
Thinking about it now, I had no idea how they had gone extinct.
"Would it not be Dragon Fear?"
After sorting through my thoughts, I named the pattern I thought was the biggest pain in the ass when fighting dragons.
Dragon Fear was both an area effect and a crowd-control skill that dragons laid down as soon as a battle began.
It covered too wide an area to evade, and if you could not endure it, you would be unable to move at all—or, at a low probability, die instantly.
Even if you somehow endured it, your stats would be reduced.
"…It seems you have read quite a few books, Student Ian."
Professor Luke slowly nodded, the blue flames in his eye sockets blazing at my answer.
"Correct. To face a dragon, one must first equip oneself with the courage to meet the gaze they cast upon you. Only those who overcome that fear are finally permitted to stand upon the same horizon as them."
Professor Luke tapped his own jawbone with a bony finger, then shook his head and continued.
"That is why I had originally intended to teach you that first lesson, but…"
His blue flames stared straight through my eyes.
"It seems that will not be necessary. We will proceed directly to the second lesson."
The second?
A pang of disappointment struck me.
A skill that let me endure Dragon Fear head-on with an unshakable mind would have been an absolute gain.
Or would its effect overlap with my Dragon Strength trait?
Still…
But as though my thoughts did not matter in the slightest, Professor Luke slowly opened his jawbone.
"The second thing you must face when confronting a dragon."
Gripping the sword hilt tightly, he murmured in a low voice,
"I will teach you how to cut dragon speech—and a dragon’s breath."
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