Tbate - Making A Much Lighter Path

Chapter 17 - Instilling Guilt

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Time skip during the school ceremony.

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"My name is Tessia Eralith, and I am honored to stand here as this academy's student council president."

Murmurs started after the crowd once again cheered for our beautiful president.

Next to me, a scrawny human boy spoke excitedly to his friend beside him.

"That's the Princess Eralith I was talking about. My older brother told me she's been on campus since last year as a direct disciple under the Director and will start formally attending this year with us!" He leaned into his friend so only he could hear but the volume at which he spoke betrayed him.

"Th-That means she was the first non-human to set foot on this campus. Wait... she's only a first year and she's already the Student Council President? Is that even possible?" His friend, whom I couldn't really see, spoke louder and louder with each word, causing the neighboring students to hear as well.

"Yeah, I heard of her as well! She's supposedly a super-genius of some sort, right?"

"Why the hell is she so damn pretty when she's talented as well? This isn't even fair..."

"I wonder what I would have to do to get her to even look at me?"

The audience was filled with different talks about Tess but while, for the males, it revolved around how much of an unobtainable star she was, for the females, it was a mixture of admiration and envy.

Sylvie was going crazy on top of my head as she recognized Tess down onstage.

"Kyuu~" 'Papa! That's Mama! She's down there! Let's go say hi!' Sylv was jumping up and down so I picked her up and wrapped my arms around her.

'nope! Calm down!'

"Woah..." Elijah, who I had stopped paying attention to, firmly gripped my arm with both of his hands as if he needed me to support him from fainting.

"Woah," he repeated. For how smart he looked, he sure acted like an idiot at times like these.

"You okay there, Elijah?" I lightly nudged his head but it just bounced like a bobblehead toy.

"...Art...I think I'm in love."

Elijah suddenly released the hands that had firmly gripped my arm to link arms with me, as if to imagine I was Tess.

Okay, this is getting out of hand. I released my bond to attack and she promptly locked her jaw on the top of Elijah's head, causing him to start screaming more from surprise than pain.

"Oh, sorry..." With Sylvie still dangling on the crown of his head, Elijah let go of my arm and started focusing on the stage below again.

As the crowd settled down enough for Tess to start speaking again, Director Goodsky silently disappeared.

Tess spoke eloquently enough to surprise even me. She was only thirteen, yet she had the ability to draw the crowd's full attention with her unadorned words filled with maturity. She spoke about the principles of this academy, how this was a holy ground where students should feel safe to walk freely around. Tess emphasized the discipline one would face if anyone hurt another student outside of a consented duel.

"While I may be a first year as all of you are, having given the privilege to be inside the academy a year longer made it all too apparent to me that there is deeply embedded discrimination against the scholar mage students by the battle mage students. I, for one, will not tolerate any sort of aggression or bullying based on the trivial fact that one is a scholar mage student."