I Became the Academy’s Female Delinquent Chapter 49. Battle Competition (1)

At the time Dane went berserk after hearing Elsie’s story, a giant eagle appeared in the skies above Glitnir.

As its overwhelming presence dominated the city, drawing everyone’s gaze upward, one person in the crowd was visibly horrified.

‘That’s Dane’s monstrous bird!’

Svik, a man cloaked in a grayish-white robe, grimaced.

Dane’s arrival in Glitnir in search of Elsie meant that all their plans had gone awry.

‘No, it was over the moment that idiot Hrókr failed.’

“Damn it…”

Elsie’s awakened combat aptitude, enough to subdue Hrókr, coupled with Dane’s appearance…

Made it nearly impossible to deal with Elsie.

‘Herja’s plan has failed. Then at the very least…’

He had to clean up the clumsy mistake the mistress had left behind.

The letter sent to Elsie.

To think she’d enclosed a vial of Nidhogg’s venom with the letter.

Could she not have considered that it would become incriminating evidence against her?

Svik massaged his forehead at her clumsy and reckless judgment.

“I have no idea what she’s thinking anymore…”

Svik began to move, hoping that next time, she would at least consult with him.

*

Elsie was being held captive by a fearsome-looking Thrud.

“Elsie…”

Gulp.

Elsie swallowed hard and nodded fervently at Thrud.

The atmosphere was such that she felt she had to beg for her life, promising to do whatever she was told.

Otherwise, she might end up like Han Doyun, sprawled on the floor of the classroom behind her.

“Starting today, I’m giving you 1:1 lessons…! The extent to which your common sense has crumbled due to memory loss is worse than I thought!”

Nod, nod-

Elsie nodded obediently, though puzzled by Thrud’s serious words.

“But… what are you going to teach me…?”

Thrud’s golden eyes blazed at Elsie’s question.

“I’m going to make you realize that you have no self-awareness!”

“Huh…?”

Thrud stood up abruptly, grabbing Elsie by the shoulders and pulling her up.

“Why, why? I have to go to the next class soon… why?”

Despite Elsie’s questions, Thrud wordlessly slipped her hands under Elsie’s armpits.

“Hey!”

Elsie squirmed at the sensation of her sensitive spots being touched, but Thrud stubbornly lifted her into the air.

“…Elsie, you lack awareness as a woman.”

“What…”

Pause.

Elsie, who had been blushing and struggling, froze momentarily.

“…Awareness as a woman…?”

“Sigh-”

Thrud sighed as she looked at Elsie, who seemed to be in shock for some reason.

Then, as if having made up her mind, she raised her head and strode toward the back of the classroom.

“Wh-where are you going…”

Elsie, held like a doll, replied weakly, sounding a little cute, but Thrud steeled her heart.

No matter how unavoidable it was, this incident was far too reckless.

No matter how loyal and kind Doyun was, he was still a man.

‘And a lewd one! A pervert…!’

To think she’d innocently stayed overnight at Doyun’s house without knowing that!

Her heart had dropped more than when she’d misunderstood Elsie’s compliment about Doyun’s mercenary outfit.

Therefore, she had to make Elsie aware.

Doyun, who had been scolded by Thrud every hour for letting Elsie stay at his house, was sprawled on the floor.

‘Peaceful.’

Even though he was lying on the classroom floor, he felt strangely at ease.

Just counting aimlessly and looking at the sky through the window was calming…

Swish-

Just as he was starting to feel attached to the floor, a shadow fell over him.

Doyun, who had been looking out the window, turned his head, wondering what it was.

“What… Cough! Keheuk! Kek!”

He started coughing, taken aback by the absurd sight.

He had thought Jaime and Pajolt were playing another prank, but when he turned around without a second thought, he saw a pair of long, white legs.

“There! Elsie! How is it! What do you feel!”

“Huh? Huh?”

When Elsie looked down, she saw Han Doyun, his eyes wide, coughing beneath her.

“Wh-what are you doing? How embarrassing. Why are you showing it off on purp… what’s wrong with you?”

Elsie was reminded of the time she had been caught by Han Doyun when she was playing around in the infirmary.

How embarrassed she had been when she had accidentally flashed her panties to the guy who had just walked in.

Elsie frowned and tried to cover her skirt with her hands, but it wasn’t an angle that could be covered that way.

“Thrud, what are you doing? Are you trying to make me an exhibitionist?!”

“The problem is that guy over there, who’s not even thinking of getting up from the floor and is just watching to his heart’s content?! More than that… is that really all you feel?”

“What… what? Embarrassment is embarrassing. What else is there to-”

“That apathetic reaction even when you’re being exposed so blatantly is the problem! I’m telling you, you have no self-awareness!”

“Heeheuk-”

Thrud’s impromptu moral education began, shaking Elsie this way and that.

Correct mindset and posture, the gazes of others, thoughts, ways of thinking, and so on.

Elsie nodded repeatedly with a frightened expression at the onslaught.

Thrud was about to cram common sense directly into her brain.

“Ugh…”

Elsie’s mind grew hazy from the indiscriminately injected common sense.

Clap!

Elsie, jolted back to her senses by Reginleif’s clapping, found herself in the training grounds lined with training pillars.

“Hwaeng? How… did I get here?”

Reginleif, with her arms crossed, glared alternately at Elsie and Thrud.

‘I can’t tell if she’s glaring with those slit eyes.’

“Elsie?”

“Yes?”

“It’s good that you and Thrud are getting along… but you can’t torment Doyun too much when he’s at that age.”

“???”

Elsie tilted her head with an innocent expression.

Reginleif, after glancing at Doyun, whose face was appropriately flushed, sighed and opened her mouth.

“Making him suffer too much emotionally is also tormenting him… Well, Elsie… I don’t think it’ll be resolved even if Elsie is aware and acts accordingly…”

“…?”

Reginleif shook her head with incomprehensible words and disappeared.

Elsie looked at Han Doyun with a bewildered expression.

“Did I torment you?”

Han Doyun, his face flushed, began to seriously contemplate Elsie’s question, and soon wore a determined expression as if he had come to a conclusion.

“…No.”

Doyun thought.

What he had suffered from Elsie… or was it right to say suffered?

Aside from a few mistakes he had made while his mind was hazy, it would be more accurate to say that he had seen various things rather than being tormented.

In Doyun’s opinion, those things were not torment-

“Rather-”

“Rather?”

“Ah, anyway, it’s not torment, so don’t worry about it.”

Doyun coughed and glossed over it.

Elsie scratched her head with an uneasy expression at his reaction.

“Okay… if it’s not, then…”

“Today, as planned, we’ll have a joint class with another class. You can think of it as a class-versus-class sparring match.”

Reginleif finished her explanation and began to talk with the other class’s teacher, Hildebrand, who had arrived just in time.

Elsie roughly scanned the unfamiliar group across the training ground.

“I heard that’s the class that went monster hunting in the forest with our class the other day?”

Elsie nodded at Thrud’s explanation, then tilted her head.

“But… didn’t we catch all the monsters?”

Fenrir, who had been hiding in the center of the forest.

Elsie’s group, which had headed straight for it, would inevitably have dealt with the most monsters.

“They must have energy to spare.”

“Maybe. Our class chose to enter all the way inside, so they probably had more frequent encounters with monsters.”

Sparring with a handicap. That wasn’t bad either.

Hildebrand, the teacher from the neighboring class, who had been briefly talking to Reginleif about the schedule, didn’t miss that conversation.

“That’s a presumptuous student!”

“Yes?”

“That silver-haired student, she’s very confident.”

Hildebrand glanced at Elsie, who was whispering, and spoke.

He, who was also in charge of swordsmanship, was a swordsman to the bone.

Therefore, he disliked judging opponents arbitrarily before even crossing swords.

“Ah- Elsie is a student who’s really serious about combat.”

“Teacher Regin must have a lot of trouble one way or another. Having a student like that in the class…”

“How could that be? She’s such a lovely child.”

“No, well, being pretty is secondary… Isn’t she the student who was absent without permission for a week and damaged the academy’s property from the first day of school? She’s quite famous among the other teachers, too.”

In a bad way.

Hildebrand, who had to leave the academy several times recently due to external dispatches, had only heard about Elsie verbally.

Because of that, Elsie had become an image of an arrogant and delinquent young lady from a prestigious family in his mind.

Reginleif wore a troubled expression.

She stroked her hair and looked up at Hildebrand.

“Teacher Hildebrand, you weren’t here at the time, so you don’t know, but it wasn’t just property damage…”

Reginleif trailed off, unable to bring herself to explain that she had almost half-destroyed the academy.

“Well, anyway, she’s a pitiful student… and at the same time, she’s a child who has awakened a tremendous talent.”

“I’ve heard that she’s not only talented in combat but has also awakened her divinity…”

Hildebrand, feeling Reginleif’s gaze fixed on him, glanced away into the distance.

It would be disrespectful to her to continue saying bad things about the student she was in charge of.

Hildebrand coughed with a slightly reddened face.

“W-well, anyway, possessing both combat aptitude and divinity is definitely an innate talent…”

“Right? It’s really rare at that age, you know? Hehe.”

Reginleif’s purple eyes were briefly revealed as she smiled.

He flinched, coughed, and took a step back.

“E-even so, that doesn’t guarantee absolute strength. If that student is overconfident in her skills because of that… she’ll be defeated by our student.”

Hildebrand grinned.

Reginleif simply widened her eyes and smiled back.

“Ugh…”

Hildebrand staggered, startled by the sudden opening of her eyes.

“Elsie never lets her guard down… Teacher? Are you not feeling well? You’re staggering?”

Hildebrand, regaining his posture, glanced at Reginleif’s eyes.

“No, I was just a little surprised… Anyway, even if it’s a light sparring match disguised as a class, it won’t be that easy!”

“Hehe, our students are looking forward to it too.”

Hildebrand ran back to his position as if fleeing.

The class-versus-class match had begun.

*

[…Dane. Has he finally gone crazy…?]

“Come now- isn’t it natural to check on my beloved sister, who has come down to Midgard and is living the academy life, to see if she’s doing well?”

[Is there any need to lengthen the words that you want to see your sister so grandly?]

“….”

Dane, who had stubbornly followed Elsie and sneaked into the academy, was hiding in the bushes, watching Elsie take an outdoor class.

[Breaking the promise to wait at home… Your sister will be disappointed.]

Vedr, sitting on Dane’s shoulder, closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Think about what happened to Elsie, Vedr. They’ve only just met, and you want her to wait again? I can’t do that because I’m anxious.”

Dane focused his energy on his eyes, enhancing his observational skills as he watched Elsie.

[At this rate, there’s no difference from a stalker… Huh?]

Flap-

A pair of large ravens landed on Dane’s crown and empty shoulder.

“Wh-what are these things?!”

Rustle-

While he was flustered by the appearance of the ravens, he heard the sound of rustling bushes.

[Dane… something’s coming. Before you can worry about the ravens-]

While Dane was distracted by the two large ravens, the shadow of a beast fell over where he was hiding.

“…If it were an ordinary beast, it would have run away at the presence of the nameless eagle?”

Dane tilted his head and turned around, only to see two wolves with white fur staring at him.

The two wolves, who had been quietly watching Dane, slowly opened their mouths.

[What did I tell you, Freki? I said I felt the presence of an Einherjar here, didn’t I?\]

[I know, Geri. Seeing Huginn and Muninn, they must already know.]

“…Geri? Freki?”

[Yes, we’re Geri and Freki. Einherjar, what are you doing here?]

Even in this absurd encounter, Dane remained calm and answered indifferently.

He was already used to talking to monsters.

“Sister’s class observation… I guess.”