Vol 4. Chapter 3: Milian Under the Tree

Isatia guided him through problems. When he had absolutely no idea where to start, she would provide him a line of thinking and lead him to finish the problem, while Mirexia sat across from the two of them doing her own work, occasionally lifting her eyes to glance at them before burying her head again.

During that time, Isatia also didn’t do anything like that again, and this round of tutoring ended under an atmosphere that felt a bit strange.

In the days that followed, Vinny would often go to Isatia for tutoring. Some forgotten knowledge was recalled as well, and with Isatia’s help, Vinny’s learning progress improved a lot.

Very soon, the long-awaited first day of school arrived. It seemed Carillian Academy had more or less finished taking stock of and dealing with the Kamov Mountain incident, since the academy couldn’t keep delaying the semester forever.

In the early morning, Vinny neatly put on his school uniform, tied his tie, and appraised himself in the mirror. He gave a symbolic compliment—‘This Young Master is still this handsome’—then left his room, went downstairs to eat the breakfast Shicodale had prepared for him, and then carried his bag out with Shicodale, heading to the Teaching Hall.

“Come to think of it, Dale, we’ve been suspended from classes for a while. You haven’t forgotten some of the knowledge from before, have you?” Vinny asked on the way to school.

“Huh? No. For me... I should still remember most of it,” Shicodale said after thinking.

Her studying had always been very good. It was just that she couldn’t explain problems, otherwise Vinny would’ve had her teach him instead—convenient and worry-free.

Also, compared to Isatia, it was missing a bit of stimulation.

Ah, no, no—stimulation isn’t a good thing, okay??

He didn’t know whether Isatia did it on purpose or not, but when she was tutoring him before, if Vinny’s brain got foggy and he couldn’t study anymore, Isatia would lean in and talk by his ear, even breathing warm air there, and Vinny would instantly wake right up.

One time, those black-stockinged, beautiful legs even pressed against the outside of his thigh and rubbed a couple times.

Ahem! Maybe a little stimulation isn’t such a bad thing.

Ah, no, no! What was wrong with him? How could he think that??

“Vinny? You... what’s wrong?” Seeing Vinny walking beside her for some reason with a faint blush on his cheeks, Shicodale held his bag with both hands and asked in confusion.

“Ah, nothing, nothing. I mean, if there’s anything you don’t understand, or if you forgot something, you can come to me. I’ll help you review,” Vinny shook his head and said.

“Huh? Okay, thanks, Vinny.” What Vinny said surprised Shicodale a little. In her impression, Vinny’s written-test scores had always been pretty bad. It always seemed like Vinny was the one asking others to help him study, so why was he suddenly volunteering to teach someone today?

As the two walked, they passed beneath a big tree in a campus park.

This tree stood on a fork in the road and was a required path for them to get to class. They saw it every day on the way to school, and they also often saw it when walking around campus.

When he first arrived at the academy, he’d marveled at how lush this towering giant tree was. Now that he’d seen it so many times, it didn’t feel that special anymore. But today, there was an extra person under the tree—someone they both knew.

“Hm?” After Vinny saw clearly who was standing under that tree, a trace of surprise appeared on his face.

Her? What was she doing here?

Beside him, Shicodale also recognized who the girl was—standing under the tree with her back to them, blankly watching the towering giant tree.

“Milian?” Shicodale called out to the golden figure with a strange expression.

“...” However, that figure didn’t turn around, as if she hadn’t heard Shicodale speaking to her at all. She still stared at the giant tree without saying a word, her eyes unfocused, letting the wind lift her brilliant high ponytail like golden sunlight.

Vinny also found the golden-elf goblin girl’s reaction strange. Normally, if Shicodale called to her, that golden-haired little goblin would’ve been ecstatic.

Seeing that Milian’s state was abnormal, Vinny walked up and looked at her from the side, discovering she was staring at the towering giant tree with vacant eyes, muttering to herself. It was just too quiet, so he couldn’t tell what she was saying.

Was she possessed or something??

Vinny didn’t know what was going on with Milian, but judging from the way she looked, it really did seem like she’d gone a bit possessed.

He frowned and raised his hand to wave it in front of Milian’s face.

The latter reacted quickly. Milian’s gaze gradually focused from that unfocused state, gathering on Vinny’s hand, then shifting from his hand to his face.

“It’s... it’s you? What are you doing??” When she saw it was Vinny, it was like she’d been given her soul back. Her eyes changed, and ever since the Shicodale incident, Milian’s attitude toward Vinny had clearly improved a lot.

“That’s so mean, Milian. What kind of tone is that? I was kindly thinking that if someone kept spacing out like this, they’d be late for school, and then who knows, maybe they’d get dragged off to stand as punishment. So I came over to remind you. And I get questioned for it? No good deed goes unpunished,” Vinny laughed.

“School? Right.” Prompted by Vinny, Milian seemed to only realize it now. She turned around, and immediately saw Shicodale.

“Shi... Dale, you’re here too?”

“Yeah. I always go to class with Vinny,” Shicodale nodded.

“...Right.” After confirming Shicodale was fine, same as usual, Milian glanced at Vinny. In her impression, the two really did enter the classroom together at the same time, since they lived under the same roof.

“What were you spacing out for? Staring at this tree nonstop—what for? Is there something special about this tree?” Vinny looked at the tree Milian had been staring at and teased.

To be honest, other than being able to tell the tree really was very old, he couldn’t see anything else.

“...This tree is already very old. Even from an elf’s perspective.” Facing Vinny’s teasing, Milian answered with rare seriousness.

“Milian, can you say something nobody knows?” Vinny pursed his lips.

“Its lifespan is reaching its end,” Milian continued.

“Huh??” Vinny froze for a moment, looking at the towering giant tree. It was clearly thick with branches and leaves. “You’re saying it’s about to die? No way. It looks fine to me.”

Milian didn’t speak. She just gave Vinny a ‘believe it or not’ look, then turned her back to him. “Dale, let’s go. We’re going to be late for class.”

“So you’re stealing the host’s role now, huh?” Vinny glanced sideways at Milian. “Let’s go, Dale. It really is getting late.”

“Oh, okay.” The three of them walked along the route to school like that. Along the way, that golden-elf goblin girl was unusually quiet. If it were before, she definitely would’ve been fighting with Vinny the whole way, or else constantly harassing Shicodale. But today, it was like she had something on her mind. Her attention wasn’t on those things at all.

Shicodale naturally noticed as well. Elves were extremely sensitive to changes in emotions. She glanced at Milian’s expression at the moment, then withdrew her gaze again.

The three of them quickly arrived at the classroom. The instant they stepped in, the class bell rang. Vinny swept his eyes over all the classmates present and roughly felt like not a single one was missing.

Isatia still liked sitting by the window, letting golden sunlight spill over those three thousand strands of dark hair, brushing down a layer of golden sand.

Aesphyra’s seat was still random. She didn’t care where she sat. When she noticed Vinny’s gaze land on her and linger, she returned him a look full of smiling amusement.

Vinny withdrew his gaze and chose an empty seat toward the back. Shicodale, as always, sat beside him as his desk mate. As for Milian, she also chose a seat toward the back.

After the three entered the classroom, the teacher came in right after them with lesson plans in hand. After sweeping his gaze across the students, he pushed up his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Students, I’m very happy, and very relieved, that none of you are late today. At least I won’t have to wonder whether some student has become unable to attend my class ever again. Although my class isn’t very interesting, I hope you will continue to appear in my classroom, until you graduate safely.”

“As you can see, things have seemed very unsettled lately. Not only at Carillian Academy—events of all kinds are appearing everywhere, and perhaps the majority of it is something we will never learn about.” After a brief greeting, the stern old man dressed with extreme rigor paused, then continued.

“I don’t want to say anything inauspicious, but since you are all my students, I must fulfill my duty as a teacher and remind you properly. Everyone—by using history as a mirror, you can know rise and fall, and you can glimpse the future.”

“I’ve studied history for many years. Although I don’t have any great achievements, judging from the series of events that have happened recently, Tyrelis Continent seems to be on the edge of some kind of collapse.” The history old man leaned on his cane. “I can tell you very responsibly: from the perspective of history, what has happened recently looks very much like the omens that appear before certain tremendous upheavals in history.”

“Of course, you can treat this as the alarmist talk of a stubborn old man. But I hope each of you maintains caution and prudence. Leaving yourself one extra bit of vigilance in everything is never wrong. Before the wheels of history, we are all nothing more than a speck of dust.”

“Alright, that’s all I’ll say. And I also hope that during these days of rest, you haven’t fallen behind in your learning progress.”

With that, the history teacher opened the textbook and began teaching. As for how many people took what he said to heart—that was unknown.

Anyway, Vinny took it to heart.

To be honest, he had a similar feeling too—that something big was coming.

No. Actually, he didn’t need that intuition at all.

Vinny glanced at Aesphyra.

The Destiny Heroine, and a whole batch of Destiny Heroines, were all here. How could “something big” not keep coming??

If nothing big was coming, why would they drop this many Destiny Heroines in the first place??

Small. Too small. Talking about Tyrelis Continent being unsettled—your frame is too small. When it comes, it’s probably going to be even bigger than that.

If nothing else, the Church of the Dawn was an extremely dangerous factor. A place that could be called the core crystal of the human side was full of fiends and monsters. Just from that alone, you could tell something was bound to happen sooner or later.

When the Dawn Saintess was still around, even though you couldn’t guarantee every single person in the church was actively doing good, at the very least, none of the clergy—from grassroots priests all the way up to the Pope—dared to do evil openly, and they definitely didn’t dare to do evil in front of the Saintess. Everything was done in secret, and even in secret they didn’t dare commit great evil. That would’ve been pure suicide. They could only do minor evil like bribery.

Because they knew the risk was enormous. Once the Saintess or her confidants discovered it and launched an investigation in secret, they were done for. And if it was great evil, someone would end up on the execution platform. During the War-God Saintess era, it didn’t even need to wait for an execution platform—once the crime was confirmed, you could experience the Saintess’s warhammer skull-splitting service on the spot.

Under that kind of powerful deterrence, there were far, far too few clergy with the guts to do evil. If they were found out, Radiant Cross Knights would come knocking in under half an hour.

Because the Saintess truly held military authority. The Radiant Cross Knights only listened to the Saintess, accepted only the Saintess’s command. As long as the Saintess gave the order, a whole regiment of Radiant Cross Knights would immediately come to clean them up.

Now? Now what was it like—who could say? Maybe they didn’t even need to pretend anymore.

Very soon, a full day of classes ended.

Good news: after tomorrow’s classes, it would be the weekend again. Bad news: next week, in order to test everyone’s level, every subject would be holding exams.

Yes. Adjusting was adjusting, but exams were still exams. In this regard, Carillian Academy students weren’t any different from the students of Vinny’s past life on Blue Star. After hearing there would be exams again, everyone wore bitter faces—one more miserable than the next.

From this, you could tell they hadn’t reviewed at all during these days. They’d all been relaxing. After all, they’d only just returned from that terrifying, high-pressure, dangerous environment to the safety of campus. Everyone’s brains were numb. Of course they could relax. So they collapsed.

“Ahhh! We have exams again! I’m going to get roasted into charcoal! We only rested a few days and we’re testing already?? I didn’t prepare at all??” Over the weekend, at the card table, Ferdi wailed nonstop, wearing a mask of suffering.

“Vinny, my little bro, what the hell are we gonna do??” Ferdi freaked out.

The moment he said that, everyone felt awful. In a card-player group, whoever mentioned exams would make everyone’s faces go dark, because you couldn’t scrape together a single person present whose grades were even decent.

What are you doing? Everyone’s trying to laugh through the pain, and you’re the one saying it out loud—are you trying to make everyone else unhappy too??

But only Vinny, calm-faced, played his card and said, “If there’s an exam, there’s an exam. What’s there to be afraid of? Ferdi, calm down. Don’t start shrieking every time there’s an exam. It’s too immature.”

“Hm??” Hearing that, Ferdi immediately lifted his head, scrutinizing Vinny with a suspicious look. “Something’s off. Very off! Vinny, little bro—why aren’t you panicking at all??”