The new homeroom teacher dispatched from Babel introduced herself as Elish Excel. I knew this woman. The first time we met was during the Aptitude Test for the Babel entrance exam, where she had served as the examiner for the summoning aptitude test. True to her name, she was the biological daughter of Ralph Excel, the legendary hero of the hunter world.
Recently, Ralph had summoned me, making sure to impress upon me that his daughter was at Babel and asking me to look out for her. Chloe had probably already worked things out with him behind the scenes. Installing his daughter as the homeroom teacher of my class at Ouboro Academy... Honestly, the whole thing reeked of a setup.
"I will be teaching Basic Magic Studies. My apologies to those who have already covered this material, but we will be starting from the absolute basics."
With that brief announcement, Elish began her lecture.
By the time the class came to an end, most of the students were trembling with genuine emotion.
And who could blame them? For the first time since enrolling at this academy, they had received something resembling an actual, competent lesson.
"That class was wonderful!"
It was rare to hear Rose offer such unreserved praise. As royalty and an alumna of an elite academy, she had always listened diligently in class, but she had never once commended anything taught here before.
"Yeah, it was."
As far as magic fundamentals went, while a few minor nuances were slightly off, the broad strokes were spot-on.
Well, as authoritative as I might sound, I couldn't use magic in the first place. No amount of theoretical knowledge really amounted to much for me.
Still, the fact that Elish's lessons were exceptionally clear and easy to follow was undeniable—a far cry from the rambling, utterly useless lectures we had suffered through previously.
The afternoon practical session was also run by Elish, and everyone from Rose to Lumine took part in high spirits.
Of course, unable to use magic, I had nothing to do but sit on the sidelines the entire time—during which Muto, also sitting out, glared at me with unwarranted hostility.
Once school let out, I headed down to a tavern situated in the southeastern district of Babel.
The tavern was an establishment operated by Akegarasu, the syndicate running Babel's underworld.
That brought up a rather thorny issue regarding the recent incident. The Black Stake thugs who had orchestrated Lumine's kidnapping were underworld figures. And on paper, Babel fell under Akegarasu's jurisdiction. There was no getting around the fact that, right here on their watch, those bottom-feeders had managed to abduct Lumine, an old friend of mine.
Oboro, the head of Akegarasu, took personal responsibility for failing to catch wind of Black Stake's reckless moves beforehand.
To be fair, an insignificant outfit like Black Stake was barely a blip on Akegarasu's radar, nor were they direct subordinates. There was no formal hierarchy between them, so at most, it was merely an embarrassing slight to his pride. Strictly speaking, it wasn't something Oboro needed to flagellate himself over.
Yet, racked with overwhelming guilt, Oboro looked ready to commit ritual suicide at any given moment. So, as a nominal way to let him make amends, I decided to entrust this entire "Plan to Reform Padde and His Crew" to his hands.
Masking my presence, I stepped into the tavern. Sure enough, there were Padde and his lackeys, throwing a boisterous drinking party despite being suspended from school.
Figures. They hadn't learned a single thing, nor did they show a shred of remorse for dragging innocent people into their mess. It was stark proof that my previous disciplinary measure had been far too lenient. These punks clearly had no grasp whatsoever of the weight of responsibility tied to their actions.
Well then, time to get down to business. I started toward the table where the bucktoothed boy, Padde, and his gang were carrying on.