“Second place, Lizzy Lynn August.”

 

The familiar name suddenly heard in my ears jolted my relaxed mind awake.

Lizzy Lynn August. 

Although I couldn’t remember her since our first meeting, she was now a woman that I had a memorable relationship with and was someone that I could clearly recall.

She was the eldest daughter of the August family and the older sister of Caraham, the miniboss of Part 3.

 

‘…No, wait, how did she get in?!’

 

As far as I knew, Lizzy was definitely a woman with an ambiguous talent for magic.

It explains why she applied for the Magic Department last year, but I believe she failed without achieving proper grades.

That’s why I thought there was virtually no chance of meeting her again at the academy, and even if I did meet her, I never thought it would be at the academy.

I couldn’t help but feel momentarily flustered seeing her properly enrolled in the academy, whatever her intentions might be, even more so seeing her enrolled in the Pharmacy Department rather than the Magic Department.

 

‘Should I consider this good news…?’

 

This meant she was a woman of at least some ability to rank second in the Pharmacy Department, so I guess it’s fair to say the academy’s overall strength had increased.

Of course, since the Pharmacy Department was a non-combat department, I didn’t think it would make much of a difference unless she had skills like Lara, who was the top student.

It was such an unbelievable reality that I couldn’t help but think it might be an incredibly unlikely case of someone with the same name, but soon, a voice I heard completely denied that last possibility.

 

“Sister! As expected of you, sister! You’ve raised the honor of the August family in my stead…!”

“Stop making such an embarrassing fuss and wait quietly…!”

 

Hearing the clear voices of the August siblings even from a distance, I had to finally acknowledge it for certain.

In the end, my actions during the attack on the Imperial Palace caused a change in the Luminor Academy student pool.

For now, in Ethan’s case, things had definitely changed for the better, so it might be better to think of Lizzy’s case similarly.

Thinking that, I was blankly staring at the stage when a young lady with sky-blue hair started to ascend.

As I was absently following Lizzy’s path with my eyes, for a moment, I had a strange feeling that our eyes met.

 

Wink.

“……?”

 

…Did she just wink at me?

No way. She must have just been greeting someone else she knew nearby.

In the first place, I was dressed differently from that day, and on the day I met Lizzy, I was even wearing a mask covering my eyes.

No matter how much we were acquainted and even talked, it would be nearly impossible for Lizzy to recognize me at a glance.

Anyway, I was just looking elsewhere when, suddenly, familiar names were called for the first and second place in the remaining Theology Department.

Only after seeing ‘False Saint Serista,’ the top student in the Theology Department, go up did I become certain that the story was flowing properly, at least, in the remaining parts.

 

‘Fortunately, it seems they’re properly trying to make Serista the Saint.’

 

One of the most important elements in determining the difficulty of the game from the prologue alone was whether to make this Serista the Saint or not.

If you trusted her as the real Saint, the difficulty became easier, but if you exposed her as a false Saint and excommunicated her, the difficulty became harder. {GalaxyTL/Axiomatic}

The principle of making the difficulty easier was simple. Serista, feeling favorable towards the protagonist who saved her from the crisis of excommunication, becomes the protagonist’s Pocket Sage- no, the protagonist’s healer *1, and follows them along on all journeys. 

Moreover, after this event, Serista becomes almost like a bonus character for the protagonist, not even counting towards the maximum party member limit.

When a healer capable of AoE healing and buffs is added to the existing difficulty, the game’s difficulty naturally drops significantly.

 

‘Seeing that they saved Serista, it really seems like they’re trying to conquer the game seriously.’

 

I might need to revise my evaluation of Gyeongmwa-whatever a bit.

Even if bringing Selena could be a coincidence, not trusting Serista and excommunicating her was one of the common mistakes first-time players make.

Unlike the expectations of players who think an event to find the real Saint will appear if they excommunicate the false Saint, excommunicating Serista forces you to play a lonely game without even a healer, let alone the real Saint.

By the time the talk of whether to excommunicate Serista or not comes up, the real Saint, Lilith, would have already lost her qualifications as a Saint after being thoroughly “trained” by Ethan.

Since Lilith couldn’t be taken as the Saint anyway, it was unconditionally beneficial to take Serista instead.

There were hardly any healer characters with better stats than her until later in the game, and even the awakened Serista was, objectively, quite a good character in terms of performance.

 

‘If the protagonist really is a possessed person trying to complete this game seriously, I might need to have a proper conversation with him at least once.’

 

Thinking that, I was blankly looking up at the stage when Princess Seraphine, the overall top freshman, began her speech.

I quietly waited for the rest of the entrance ceremony to pass while listening to her speech from my seat.

I wondered how I could talk with that guy named Gyeongmwajogyegigwat Volt alone.

Gyeongmwajogyegigwat Volt, the possessed Hero of Luminor Academy.

He looked around at the faces of the first-place and second-place students participating in the entrance ceremony, roughly confirming the lineup of enrolled students.

 

‘Although I’ve been getting to know the enrolled students while living near the academy for a few days, there are certainly differences from the story in the original game.’

 

It was about three years ago that he possessed the protagonist of Luminor Academy.

His backstory was that he possessed someone when trying to delete a character created by his younger cousin who had come to visit his house during a holiday to play Luminor Academy.

Thus, he entered the world of Luminor Academy with a strange, unwanted name that his cousin had created.

However, since he was possessed anyway, Gyeongmwajogyegigwat was diligently approaching the game in his own way.

As someone who had played Luminor Academy several times in his previous life to the point of being a maniac, he had already grasped the general storyline.

He was also sufficiently familiar with the overall strategy for the game, having thoroughly read ‘Lilgirl’s Guide’ on LuAGal.

Trusting Serista instead of excommunicating her, meeting Selena in the World Tree Forest and making her enroll in the academy, dealing with enemies that are easy to defeat in the prologue, and not interfering with rival characters’ enrollment just to enter the route of some of the heroines – he had done it all.

Although he bore the strange name Gyeongmwajogyegigwat, his goal was only one: ‘Safe Clear.’

To return to his original world, he had to clear the game and see the true ending – that was the condition set by whoever made him possess the protagonist in this world.

…The problem was that this world he was possessed in was flowing a bit differently from the original story of Luminor Academy.

 

‘No matter how I compare, many things are definitely different.’

 

The fact that the spearwoman at Silverwood, which he briefly visited for monster subjugation, had changed from a pink-haired woman to a woman with dull, brown hair resembling Ariana…

The fact that the name of a woman presumed to be Saint Lilith was somehow on the list of successful applicants for the Magic Department while finding Agnes’s name…

And even the fact that Lizzy, who should have died in the monster invasion of the Imperial Palace, had unexpectedly enrolled as second place in the Pharmacy Department…

Each of them was enough to make the hero, Gyeongmwajo…, flustered, but among them, what surprised him the most was the unbelievable transformation of Ethan, the Lout Prince. {GalaxyTL/Axiomatic}

 

‘Who would call him a lout prince after seeing that appearance…’

 

At first, he thought someone else had come up on stage instead of Ethan.

The appearance and atmosphere emanating from him were at a level that made no sense to recognize him as Ethan, and he could barely find any commonalities with the Ethan he knew from the previous world.

Even now, looking at Ethan standing next to himself as second place in the sword department, Gyeongmwajogyegigwat couldn’t help but stare intently at him as if he still couldn’t believe it.

 

‘No matter how I look at it, it seems to be Ethan himself; he really isn’t someone else.’

 

With the twin swords at both sides of his waist and the black double-headed eagle crest of the Blackwood family engraved on various parts of his sword and cape, even someone who had never met Ethan before would inevitably think of the Blackwood family upon seeing him.

Moreover, the black hair and eyes unique to the Blackwood family were decisive evidence that he was Ethan Richard Blackwood.

Faced with this unbelievable reality, the Hero couldn’t help but experience confused emotions for a moment.

After thinking to himself for a while, he came to the most plausible conclusion in his mind.

 

‘For now, this Ethan guy definitely seems to be someone special.’

 

Whether he came from the same world as himself or not, at least the Ethan before his eyes was a different person from the ‘Lout Prince Ethan’ he knew…

…and the fact that all the changes so far were related to Ethan increased its credibility.

Sending Ariana, who stole his mother’s heirloom, to exile in Silverwood, recognizing Lilith’s talent for magic, and using means to make her enroll in the academy – these were all probably his doing.

Moreover, there were even rumors about his considerable achievements during the monster invasion of the Imperial Palace, so he likely intervened to prevent Lizzy’s death as well.

 

‘I’m not exactly sure what this guy wants… but our general goals seem to be the same.’

 

Seeing him act as if he knows the future, he might be possessed like himself from another world, or he might be living a new life after returning from a different future of this world.

Of course, since he was basically a villain, he couldn’t rashly reveal the fact that he possessed the Hero, but at least he needed to confirm Ethan’s identity once.

Even as he listened to Seraphine’s speech, Gyeongmwajogyegigwat was just waiting for the entrance ceremony to end as soon as possible.

He waited for a chance to talk with Ethan Richard Blackwood, who stood beside him, alone.