Cassell College, Dorm Room 303, Zone 1.
The room's furnishings were split between two extremes. One half looked like a standard freshman dorm at a Western university; the other was piled high with leftover pizza boxes and empty beer bottles.
"Bro, you have no idea what an earth-shattering thing you did today!"
Holding half a cold pizza he had swiped, Fingel chewed and sprayed spit as he talked. "You single-handedly ground the Lionheart Society and the Student Union's faces into the dirt!"
Lu Mingfei pulled out a chair and sat down, not bothering to respond to this noisy German loser.
"The best part is the spoils!" Fingel jumped off his bed in excitement. "The winner of the Day of Freedom gets free use of Norton Hall for a whole year! It's a standalone mansion with a private swimming pool and wine cellar! And that's not all. Any girl who took part in the Day of Freedom can't refuse your advances, and she has to stay in a relationship with you for at least three months!"
Fingel clicked on the glowing computer screen beside him and pointed to a post pinned prominently at the top of the Nightwatch Forum.
The title was an assault on the eyes: "Twilight of the Gods! The S-Rank Demon King descends! The Day of Freedom game is officially dead!"
The poster was Fingel himself. Never one to let a spectacle go without stirring up more trouble, he had vividly embellished Lu Mingfei's "coldhearted ruthlessness" in ignoring the Black King's portrait at the train station, then hyped his clearing of the plaza into a higher-dimensional being crushing inferior life-forms.
At the end of the post was a blurry candid shot of Lu Mingfei standing in the plaza with his hands in his pockets, the two club presidents lying helpless before him. Beneath it was a heavily bolded revelation: "According to reliable sources, the S-Rank personally described the two presidents' ultimate showdown as 'children playing house.' Brothers, a grown-up has come to crash the party!"
"You really have nothing better to do." Lu Mingfei shook his head at the replies lighting up the entire screen in red.
In that world where air-raid sirens could sound at any moment, a single tactical missile cost three million dollars. To save a little money for repairs to Unit-01's armor plating, logistics even rationed the air-conditioning in the pilots' hospital rooms. Every shot fired there was meant to let the human species cling to life for one more day.
Yet these people were throwing expensive resources down the drain for a dorm, a little pocket money, and the primitive animal right to court a mate.
Peace was wonderful. Even going off the rails was a luxury.
"Still, they really do have money. Even playing house has a high barrier to entry when you're rich." Lu Mingfei reached his conclusion matter-of-factly.
He cared nothing about Norton Hall, or about girls. He only thought this world was prosperous-so prosperous that it made him feel safe. That sense of security even made him think that, if there really were dragons here, these young masters with more money than they knew what to do with would probably bury them in cash.
Bang!
The dorm room door was suddenly shoved open with tremendous force, and Professor Guderian walked in, beaming.
"Mingfei! My wonderful student!" Guderian grabbed Lu Mingfei's shoulders, spraying spit in his excitement. "Your performance in the plaza was nothing short of a miracle! Even the principal was stunned! But-"
"You have to clear tomorrow's hurdle! Only by passing tomorrow's '3E Exam' can your S-Rank bloodline be fully confirmed. Your privileges at the college depend on it, and so does my tenure review!"
"3E Exam?" Lu Mingfei frowned.
"Extraction Evaluation Exam. The Bloodline Evaluation Exam," Fingel helpfully explained from beside him. "It mainly tests how strongly new students resonate with dragon script. If you can't understand dragon script, or don't experience spirit visions, the Board of Trustees will demote you or even slice you up for research, even if you beat the Almighty himself into the ground today."
"If I can beat the Almighty himself into the ground, I still have to let the Board of Trustees study me?" Lu Mingfei could not follow the logic.
"No, little bro..." Fingel began.
"Shut up, Fingel." Professor Guderian rested both hands on Lu Mingfei's shoulders and stared straight into his eyes. "Mingfei, concentrate. Listen to every sound I make!"
A string of strange sounds forced its way stiffly out of the professor's throat, like a drake quacking or a leaky bellows wheezing. Sweat covered the old man's head, and his body contorted as he desperately tried to imitate a dragon's majesty that cowed all living things.
He nearly made Lu Mingfei laugh.
After reciting the final set of syllables, Professor Guderian let out a long breath and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He looked at Lu Mingfei expectantly, waiting to see whether this S-Rank freshman would burst into tears or witness a terrifying spirit vision of the apocalypse.
"Mingfei... you..." Guderian's voice trembled. "You don't feel anything? No urge to cry? No desire to kneel?"
"Why would I cry? Why would I kneel?" Lu Mingfei was baffled.
He knew this was Word Spirit: Emperor. When he had been on the verge of defeat against the EVA Mass Production Units, Lu Mingze had controlled Unit-03 and roared out this Word Spirit. Unfortunately, that power did not exist in that world, so Lu Mingze could only rage impotently within their mental link.
Besides, with its pitch so badly distorted, this incantation really sounded like a recorded loudspeaker advertising scrap collection.
"But... this is Word Spirit: Emperor!" Guderian tugged at his hair in desperation, plunged into a profound academic crisis. "This is impossible! Even an S-Rank couldn't remain completely unmoved by the Emperor's summons! Unless... unless you don't understand it! You can't hear the majesty within it!"
"I understood it," Lu Mingfei said naturally.
"What?!" Guderian and Fingel's eyes widened at the same time.
"Praise the awakening of our king; destruction is rebirth. Basically, it means absolute obedience, or death. Right?"
Guderian stood rooted to the spot. The pizza in Fingel's hand slipped silently into his lap.
A freshman who had never even attended Dragon Language Class had treated the most ancient Word Spirit like a memorable phrase in a foreign language, translating it as casually as "How are you," complete with his own summary.
"You... how could you know what it means? Who taught you?" Professor Guderian's voice had become a shrill duck's quack.
"Professor, it's nothing but empty words," Lu Mingfei said.
Guderian staggered two steps back toward the door, feeling as though someone had thrown the academic career he had spent most of his life building straight into the trash.
Night had completely swallowed the mountains. There was no champagne party on the lawn outside Norton Hall as there had been in previous years.
Student Union officers formed an assembly line. Priceless oil paintings, whole crates of large Cuban cigars, and heavy Persian rugs were neatly stacked onto handcarts and wheeled away.
Lose the fight, surrender the grounds. That was the dignity of the defeated.
Caesar Gattuso stood before the enormous floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor, looking down at his subordinates as they withdrew.
His defeat today had been utterly humiliating. His opponent had not even drawn a blade; some damned invisible repulsive force had crushed the swordsmanship he took such pride in. Since he had lost, the rules dictated that this palace now belonged to Lu. Even if the other man knew nothing about it, Caesar would not spend one extra second in this magnificent palace.
"All personal belongings have been accounted for. Every member of the Student Union will leave Norton Hall before ten tonight."
Nono walked up behind Caesar and placed an inventory on the mahogany table beside him.
"You were there at the time, and you were also the student adviser sent to pick him up."
Caesar took a sip of whiskey and looked up at Nono, who was sitting on the windowsill, toying with a shell casing.
"Nono, what do you make of this Lu Mingfei?"
Nono spun the casing between her pale fingertips, then snapped it into her palm.
"I can't judge him, because he and the rest of you don't live in the same world."
Caesar's expression darkened slightly. "What do you mean?"
"When he watched you swinging blades and hacking at each other," Nono said, "he wasn't mocking your strength."
The night breeze lifted Nono's long, dark-red hair. She gazed out at the peaceful campus, but reflected in her eyes was the back of that figure walking across the waters of Lake Ashi, on the verge of collapse.
"He just thought it was tragic."