episode_0072

Among the general education courses that students could take at the Imperial Academy, aside from their major courses, the most popular ones were usually courses on imperial history, theology, or social studies.

These were things that the upper class of the empire should naturally be familiar with, so it was better to learn them thoroughly at the academy.

In addition, depending on one’s taste, knowledge related to martial arts, magic, or engineering was also popular.

Surprisingly, liberal arts courses were also quite popular.

Although it is regrettable to learn it as a major, there is nothing wrong with knowing about fields like music or literature, and learning them is also fun, so surprisingly many people choose these courses.

But even in those art fields, the liberal arts courses in the art department were among the least popular.

In particular, this semester’s liberal arts course, titled Understanding Art, seemed to have no practical use and did not seem interesting, so if it had been a normal course, there was a high possibility that it would have been canceled.

“It’s already full of people.”

“Shall I stand behind and listen?”

“I didn’t really want to hear it that way… .”

The liberal arts lecture room is already full of both current and new students.

Students who arrived late clicked their tongues and complained when they saw that there were no seats, but contrary to their attitude, they quietly took their seats in the back of the classroom.

“His Highness the Third Prince and Lady Bluewell will come to listen to this lecture.”

“That’s not all? Prince Kyle of the Prius family also came to listen to this lecture.”

“Really, I see you sitting in the front seat. But who’s next to you?”

Next to Kyle, the eldest son of the Prius Margrave, known as the Northern Wall, sat a man with sky-blue hair.

There was no way an ordinary nobleman would sit next to the successor of the Duke of Chang’e without being aware of it, so he must have been someone of some reputation, but he was a man I had never seen before.

There was no way the students here would not recognize the famous nobles of the empire, so at that moment, they became extremely curious about his identity.

“The second prince of the Kingdom of Sylvania, ‘Adrian Belmont’!”

The classroom began to stir at the shouts of someone who recognized him.

The students’ excitement grew as they had not expected that even a prince from a kingdom, not an empire, would come to take this class.

With the four most noteworthy freshmen gathered here, the liberal arts course on understanding art has become a must-take class even if you have no interest in it.

If you happen to have even a small connection with one of them, then that alone would have made this lecture worthwhile.

Squeak.

The front door of the art education classroom, which was unusually full, opened and a young man came in.

An intelligent looking man with blond curly hair and glasses.

As Rupert Somerset, a new professor in the Department of Fine Arts, entered the classroom, the slightly noisy atmosphere suddenly calmed down and attention became focused.

“There are more people than I expected. I introduced myself yesterday, so I don’t think I need to introduce myself again, right?”

Rupert gave a brief greeting to the students.

But there was no answer. It was a kind of rebellion, a conscious attempt by the students to express that they could not yet accept Rupert as their professor.

however,

“Yes.”

A few voices answering from the front seats.

The students’ attention was focused on who would answer without thinking at that sound, but surprisingly, it was the four freshmen of the academy who answered.

Third Prince Edric Bell answered with a serious expression, while Amelia Bluewell answered with a bright smile.

And Kyle Prius and the second prince, Adrian Belmont.

Although only four people answered, that alone carried enough weight.

“Then let’s start class right away.”

After looking around at the four students who had answered, Rupert finally began his lecture.

***

“Have you ever thought about why pictures are necessary?”

There was no answer to Rupert’s question. This time it was not out of defiance, but because he really had no answer.

This was because there were no students who thought about why a picture was needed when a picture was just a picture.

“To be precise, we have cameras, so why do we draw?”

Rupert asked questions about that part persistently, and then someone answered without knowing it.

“There are things that can’t be captured with a camera, right?”

Exactly!

Rupert responded to the student’s answer by snapping his fingers.

“That’s right. For example, can we go take pictures of dragons that we can’t see?”

-There’s a greater chance of your head being caught in the claws of an angry dragon.

A little laughter rippled through the classroom at Rupert’s answer.

“That’s not all. Let’s take a look at this picture.”

Rupert took out a picture he had prepared in advance and showed it to the students sitting in the classroom, starting from the right.

“What did your student see in this picture?”

“An old woman.”

Those sitting on the right nodded in agreement with the student’s answer.

The students sitting in the middle and on the left reacted with vehement opposition.

‘What, an old woman? Does that girl have bad eyesight?’

As the negative words came out as if they had seen something different, Rupert continued questioning the Third Prince who was sitting in the middle without hesitation.

“What kind of picture did the prince see?”

“Please speak at your convenience, Professor Rupert. You looked like a young woman to me.”

After hearing the Third Prince’s answer, Rupert immediately asks a question to the student sitting on his left.

The classroom was thrown into confusion when the student answered that this time she appeared to be a young girl.

A situation where they cannot understand why the pictures they see are all different.

I wondered if Rupert had done some magic, but there were also many magic students there.

If he had used magic, there was no way it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.

“The pictures you saw are all the same. But your answers were all different.”

The painting Rupert took out again.

This time, all the students were looking straight ahead, so she appeared to be nothing more than a young woman.

But when Rupert showed the painting by twisting it left and right, everyone was amazed to see the woman’s appearance change in real time from old age to that of a baby.

“Photography is certainly an amazing technique for capturing moments. But apart from that, paintings have many amazing things that only paintings can show.”

This time, Rupert goes to the blackboard and draws a simple picture.

It was none other than a picture of a rabbit.

The students burst into laughter at the painting, which seemed rather unsophisticated for an art professor.

That was because they thought that they could draw something like that.

But the laughter stopped as Rupert asked the following question.

“What do you see in this picture?”

The moment someone was about to answer rabbit, someone else answered duck.

The students had no choice but to rub their eyes and stare intently at the pictures drawn on the blackboard.

***

“Cut, cut this one too.”

Even though today’s lectures were over, Rupert didn’t leave work but sat at his desk in his office looking through piles of paperwork.

As soon as I finished the first lecture today, a mountain of applications came in for the liberal arts course on understanding art taught by Rupert.

Rupert was emotionlessly selecting the applications, as he had to select 40 people for the garden.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t need the Military Science Department.”

If the department listed on your application is Military Science or Humanities, unfortunately it will be immediately excluded.

If it were any other place, they would have been the first to be selected, but unfortunately, they were not the type of people Rupert was looking for.

On the other hand, when Rupert saw the applications from students in the Faculty of Arts, he collected them carefully and kept them separately.

In particular, the music and art departments were given free passes without exception, and they were all valuable talents that would fit into Rupert’s treasure chest.

Also, there are plenty of opportunities for the engineering department’s talented people to be put to use, so passing is a priority.

The Magic Department already receives help from the Magic Tower, so I didn’t think it would be that necessary, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have it anyway, so I ranked it as 3rd priority.

“I didn’t know there would be this much support.”

At best, there were 400 students who applied for a class of 40, meaning that almost a third of the Academy’s students applied for this class.

But I knew that not all of them had come to listen to Rupert’s lectures with pure hearts.

Rupert knew that there was another reason why the percentage of freshmen applicants was particularly high among the applicants, and that was because of the original four main characters.

Because the main characters, the Third Prince and Amelia, as well as the supporting male characters, Kyle and Adrian, all chose their own culture.

It was only natural that students flocked to them wanting to become friends with them.

Rupert would have liked to have eliminated them all, but he had no choice but to accept it, as the aftermath would have been too much for even Eustace, the headmaster and not just an art professor, to handle.

‘Two people from the Military Science Department, one from the Magic Department, and one from the Humanities Department. Why are they all crammed into such useless departments?’

Despite the fact that those departments were the most popular in the academy, they were geniuses in fields that were useless to Rupert.

Even though he has a connection with Amelia, Rupert still can’t understand why the others signed up for his class.

I only saw the Third Prince once in passing at the Princess’ palace, and the rest are people I have no connection with at all.

Rupert was one of those people who just ignored things that he couldn’t understand no matter how much he thought about them.

‘The lecture was easier than I thought.’

Because I used to work part-time as an instructor at an art prep school.

Rupert found it easy to deal with the students he was teaching at the time, as they were similar in age to the students at the Academy.

Moreover, he was convinced that no one in the empire knew more about contemporary art than he did.

This was a world where magic cameras were invented early and art was backward.

Although there are cameras on the modern Earth, they were popularized in the 19th century, so art had time to take root. However, here, art has not been able to take root and has degenerated.

What kind of reaction would it evoke if we spread artistic trends that went beyond simply depicting reality in such a different world?

From Fauvism, Impressionism, and Cubism to Cubism and Surrealism.

Even if it was impossible to cover modern art containing modern philosophy, there was a vast amount of teaching material in the history of art created by numerous masters in opposition to the camera.

For Rupert, who had been learning from such excellent teaching materials, it was not difficult to unravel that knowledge.

If art is revived like that, it may naturally bring about big changes in Rupert’s comic book business.

The moment when a modern manga is not reborn in another world, but a manga from another world is born.

Suddenly, Rupert wanted to see that moment.