Princess Ophelia

After the first major class at Elf Academy ended, nearly all the students had to move on to another location...

Every corridor and pathway was packed with students. The young elves gathered together, with endless topics to talk about.

Roy and Klayr were also among the thousands moving between classes. Roy's second class today was Modern Elf History, while Klayr's was poetry. Their classrooms happened to be in the same Teaching Building, so they were headed the same way...

They chatted as they walked. Roy's movements were still somewhat awkward, as the scratches on his back sent waves of pain through him. He had practically spent the combat training class just watching from the sidelines, and even walking was greatly affected.

Klayr said that Life Potion had some pain-relieving effects and would make him feel better after drinking it, but Roy felt it was better to save the bottle.

He planned to take the Long Carriage to the temple after finishing Modern Elf History and have Jasper or Abbott treat him.

As for why he was not seeking out High Priest Reed, Priest Anderson, or Priest Theodore, it was because Priests had found it difficult to obtain Holy Light Power lately. Priests had more places where they needed to use Holy Light Power in their daily lives.

Even Klayr thought Roy was being far too careless. A naga had set its sights on him, yet instead of hiding at home or in the temple, he had actually come to the academy for class.

Seeing all the bandages wrapped around him, Klayr could not even put a hand on his shoulder. He frowned. Yet this guy refused to accept his kindness and would not take that bottle of Tree of Life Sap no matter what...

"Roy, aren't you worried that the naga assassin will come looking for you again?"

"As long as I don't go to the beach, I'm still confident."

Roy spoke with complete confidence.

He did not say what exactly he was confident about. Klayr assumed he meant he was confident he could escape.

Roy tucked the thick Modern Elf History textbook under one arm. The book was extremely heavy, and he paused to shove it farther beneath his armpit.

"I'm planning to set some traps," Roy said.

What he had in mind were ground spikes. The naga assassin's tail resembled a sea eel. Not only was it covered in tough scales the size of eggs, but its tip also had dark gray scissor-shaped tail fins. It slithered about like a snake, leaving a trail of moisture on the ground.

Roy had read in some miscellaneous books that hunters catching giant pythons would plant sharp blades at the entrances of snake dens and along their usual paths. When the huge snakes crawled over those blades, their soft bellies would be sliced open.

Roy also intended to set up such a trap at his doorstep.

If the naga assassin dared to come to his door, Roy would lead him right onto the ground-spike trap.

The fog by the sea was thick, but Elf Academy sat halfway up a mountain. Bright sunlight had long since spilled across the campus, and from here, the distant sea surface looked like a scene from a fairyland.

The warm sunlight shining on one's body always made one feel lazy.

Ignoring the scratches on his body, Roy stood on the steps and stretched his arms wide in a yawn. Then he said indifferently, "Actually, even if... it doesn't matter. I'll just treat it as waking up from a dream and going home."

"..."

Klayr was somewhat speechless.

Every Silver Moon Elf's life was incomparably precious. They loved and respected life deeply.

"What kind of thinking is that... I really can't understand it!"

Klayr spoke from behind Roy.

Roy smiled but did not explain further. He had never said such things to any other elf.

The two descended the steps and followed an arched corridor inward. Ahead was the west entrance of the Third Teaching Building.

"When you first wanted to be in the same group as me, it was to avoid being paired with Steve during combat practice and getting beaten up by him. But things have blown up instead, and now it's gone all the way to the arena. Klayr, are you really planning to fight Steve in the arena?"

Speaking of it, Roy smiled somewhat awkwardly.

Klayr and Steve ending up in the arena had something to do with him, after all.

When Roy had first met Klayr, he had felt that although Klayr was gentle and refined, his delicate face was a little too feminine and lacked a bit of courage and recklessness.

It was precisely because Klayr had inexplicably dragged him into the feud between Klayr and Steve that Roy wanted Klayr to become a little braver.

So he had dragged him out into the streets to fight like a couple of hooligans.

He had not expected Klayr to be so tenacious...

Klayr walked beside Roy and smiled carelessly before saying, "Back on the street, they had so many people fighting us, while we faced them with just the two of us. Now that the location has changed to the arena, of course it'll still be the two of us..."

Roy froze for a moment before agreeing. "...All right!"

Klayr looked at Roy walking ahead of him. Although Roy's personality and way of doing things were somewhat strange, and he seemed out of place among the Silver Moon Elves, the spirit of refusing to admit defeat in him was deeply infectious. It was always easy to be subtly changed when staying by his side...

He quickly took two or three steps forward to catch up. "Roy, I remember you're studying literature and history?"

Roy patted the thick book in his arms and answered without any concealment, "That's right, Silver Moon Elf Modern History!"

Klayr immediately asked curiously, "Then have you ever met Jonah Princess Ophelia?"

Roy glanced at Klayr and noticed that he had no intention of explaining who Jonah Princess Ophelia was, so he asked, "Is this princess also a student in this year's class at Elf Academy?"

Klayr stopped walking and looked at Roy with a strange expression.

"Her Highness is a teacher here... Don't tell me you've never even heard her name?"

Roy wore an expression that said, How would I know?

Only after receiving Klayr's affirmative response through his gaze did he say awkwardly, "I usually don't pay much attention to matters involving the upper ranks of elven society, so I didn't know. Are you saying... the instructor for Silver Moon Elf Modern History is Her Highness?"

Klayr immediately nodded.

"She is the most beautiful Silver Moon Elf in Castleton City. If the class hadn't already been full when we signed up, I would have taken Modern Elf History too. That's the bad thing about the academy—every course has a student limit." Klayr complained.

Roy recalled his experiences in the last two Modern Elf History classes.

To be honest, the learning experience had been terrible.

The two stood on the steps where the corridor connected to the west entrance of the Teaching Building.

There was a heavy flow of people here, so Roy and Klayr slowed down and moved inside along the edge of the steps with the crowd.

"That princess might truly be as outstanding-looking as you say, but her teaching skills are fairly average."

Roy lowered his voice and said, "Before, I didn't know she was a princess, so my evaluation of her was this: she was basically just reading straight from the textbook. From the beginning of class to the end, she was the only one standing at the podium, talking and talking... If that counts as a class, then they might as well hand each of us a book and let us sit quietly in the library to study by ourselves..."

Klayr listened with a look of surprise.

After they left the corridor and entered the Teaching Building, the footsteps going upstairs became rather noisy. The chaotic sounds of footsteps drowned out their voices...

Neither of them noticed that Jonah Princess Ophelia, the lecturer of Modern Elf History, was sitting on a bench behind the hedge wall where the west entrance connected to the arched corridor.

This garden-like separated area blocked out most of the noise and was also an excellent place to rest before class.

A sword-bearing guard stood beside Jonah Princess Ophelia.

When the young guard heard elves in the corridor outside discussing Princess Ophelia, he started after them.

"Stop!"

Jonah Princess Ophelia held a book, and her gaze seemed never to leave its pages, but her tone allowed no doubt.

"Your Highness..."

Jonah Princess Ophelia closed the history book in her hands and said calmly, "They were merely chatting casually. Besides, they weren't wrong about anything..."

The guard was somewhat indignant, his breastplate rising and falling sharply with his breathing.

"But they insulted you!" the guard said.

Jonah Princess Ophelia turned to glance at the young Silver Moon Elf guard. "Perhaps he is right. I should change this dull and tedious teaching habit of mine."

Roy never imagined that the casual conversation between him and Klayr while walking had happened to be overheard by Jonah Princess Ophelia.

When they arrived at the lecture hall, it was packed again. Some book-carrying elves were waiting outside the classroom door.

Two Teaching Assistants were checking the classroom for students who had not registered for the course. Some clever students began sneaking away, and only after enough seats had opened up did Roy find a place in the corner.

The bell for class rang. The two Teaching Assistants quickly slipped out through the back door of the lecture hall, and the noisy classroom finally fell silent.

Sunlight streamed through the glass into the lecture hall, making the elves seated in the sunlight especially conspicuous...

Jonah Princess Ophelia entered from outside. She wore a white silk strapless gown today, her ivory-white arms cradling a book.

She walked to the podium, looked at the two hundred students in the lecture hall, and pressed her rosy lips together.

This was the first time she had seriously looked at every elf student in their seats. Time seemed to freeze at that moment, and the classroom became utterly silent.

Perhaps because of the aura of being a princess, Roy found that her former arrogance, coldness, and unreasonable manner now seemed somewhat understandable.

Just as Klayr had said, when she stood on the podium, she was as dazzling as a flawless, magnificent gem.

Her lake-blue eyes swept over the crowd, but Princess Ophelia did not see the student with the somewhat distinctive appearance.

Instead of teaching directly from the book, she merely stood quietly at the podium and said:

"To me, Silver Moon Elf Modern History may be like the natural numbers from zero to one hundred, something I can recite naturally. Perhaps I overlooked a fundamental reason: although everyone lives in the Elven Kingdom, you do not know much about Modern Elf History. Therefore, my spoken lectures and writing on the board have been more like repeating this textbook. So now, let us all seriously consider this: what kind of teaching method would allow you to learn this knowledge faster and better?"

"..."

The elf students in the lecture hall were somewhat at a loss...

Hadn't it always been like this?

Why did it suddenly have to change?

"I hope you will bring your answers to that question to the next class. Now, class begins!"

Princess Ophelia opened the history book again and began recounting the important historical events on the Eastern Continent during the period when the Elven Dynasty had finally moved toward ruin.