It was twelve fifty, five minutes after the start of the nobles’ training classes. For everyone else, though, it was free time, probably one of the few perks of not coming from a noble blood.

Antonio sat at a table, a sandwich in one hand and a pen in the other. He scribbled through the book, writing something again. I went to one of the stalls and bought instant noodles, before going beside him. I thought since he always approached me randomly, he couldn’t be mad when I was the one who did it. Despite reassuring myself, it still took quite the amount of willpower for me to actually sit down next to him. It just felt like he had a no-approach aura surrounding him, and whoever got close to him would die inside just because they chose to converse with him. The wooden bench rattled slightly when I sat, causing him to glance at me, before returning his attention to the book.

“Why instant noodles?”

“It’s cheap, and I just feel like it.”

While it was one of the cheapest menus on the board, it lacked the nutritional values a normal meal had, so I rarely ate it despite its alluring prices. I thought he would continue on why it wasn’t healthy, but he remained shut.

Did he really lose interest in me?

Sometimes, I wondered to myself about that question. Did I want him to comment on every little thing I did, or did I not want him to comment? That part of me infuriates me, making me angry at my inconsistencies, while Antonio casually munches his sandwich beside me without the slightest care in the world. He finished, wrapped up the paper wrapper, and threw it into the bin. He then sat back down beside me. He took his notebook and stuffed it into his pocket, before bringing his intention to a single ant who walked past us. He didn’t say anything, he simply observed that ant as it walked through.

It made weird zig-zag lines, as if it was traversing the uneven terrain of the cafeteria table. It eventually got to the edge, walking down one of the footings and disappeared from sight. By the time the ant disappeared, I had finished my meal. I got up and threw the plastic into the bin. Antonio stood up and wordlessly exited the cafeteria, prompting me to follow him.

“... You’ve been silent.”

I said as I walked beside him.

“You know the saying, that everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses?”

I nodded, prompting him to continue.

“I believe that is true. I saw countless others who think they do not have strength, when in truth, they simply had not found one yet.”

He then looked at me, tapping his pen lightly on his chin.

“Yet you… I feel like I know what your strength is, but at the same time despite me thinking about it, I could not point it out, not yet at least.”

He said as he jabbed his pen at my chest.

“I thought you’d been insulting me this entire time?”

“When insulted, people would normally want to prove the insulter that they are wrong. I could see the same within you. You have this weird feeling of accepting and agreeing to my words, but at the same time you seem to fail to find anything that you can use against me, despite your best efforts at finding it. To add to that, I never insulted you. All I spoke was facts. If I indeed insult you, why would you not fight it? Are you not supposed to prove me wrong? Or worse, why did you not report me to the teachers as a retaliation?”

I… I did not have an answer for that.

“Putting my words at you aside, regardless of whether you can live with them or not, I want to find the strength that lives within you.”

He said as he walked off, heading for building D.

“Join me in the library, if you want.”

I headed back to the dorms and changed into my school uniforms. Luckily, I had a spare pair that I hadn’t used yet. I tidied the dirty ones up, as I originally planned to spend the afternoon washing my clothes with the laundry machines at the dorms, since they were free, but that needed to wait. With my fresh, and last, pair of school uniforms, I went back outside, heading for the library.

This would be the second time I entered the library, but last time I didn’t go deep because I was on a tour with the rest of the class. From the receptionist, the library looked like a normal library with white floors and tidily placed wooden bookcases forming a maze filled with books. Now that I entered, it felt like I entered an ancient dungeon tucked in a mountain somewhere that led to the remains of a lost civilization.

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I took a look at my messaging app. I hadn’t added Antonio as a friend, so I went to our class group and searched for his contacts there. I added him and typed in a quick message asking where he sat.

As I waited for a response, I explored this book-filled dungeon, looking at the signs. One of them pointed toward the magic alley. I headed there and checked out all the books, looking at various titles covering magic and the like.

A Beginner’s Guide To Using Magic.

Was one of their titles. For the general public, magic, particularly shield magic, was widely used as a passive defense against attacks. As the shield on the dummies proved, they could prevent the magic attack from harming the victim. And the shields didn’t affect someone visually if not hit, so you wouldn’t need to worry about looking weird.

Yet somehow I could see the purple glow that my shield emits after my countless failed attempts at attacking it. While it probably came from the fact that an item was the one wearing the shield, I couldn’t help but feel that even the dummy mocked me for my failures.

I opened up the book, only to find that most of the stuff the book taught had been taught in class. My teacher even personally instructed me on using magic, yet I couldn’t find myself wielding anything. To make matters worse, I neither shine in my combat training nor in my weapon training. I could understand the basic theories in the fundamentals of magic class, yet I couldn’t use them when it came to the Keeper’s training.

I felt a vibration in my pocket. I returned the frankly useless book to the shelves and opened up my phone, finding Antonio’s reply. Instead of telling me where he was, he took a photo of his surroundings and sent it to me, as if it would help.

I didn’t expect him to give any clues, though, so I checked for the attached image and analyzed its surroundings. Based on the picture, he sat near a corner, proven by the two bookshelves that joined in from two angles. The image also contained the picture of a wooden railing, but without the stairs, which meant he should be on the library’s second, or the building’s third, floor.

There were two different floors in the library. One sat on the northwest side of the room, the other on the southeast side of the room, so they were practically across from each other. The library itself was quite long, spanning around eighty meters from the north end to the south end, occupying most of the second and third floors. The first three floors of building D literally consisted of only the auditorium on the first floor and the library occupying the rest. Other than that there were simply corridors.

I decided to try my luck by going up the southeast stairs, the one closest to me. Several round tables were lined up on the second floor, but I could not see Antonio among them. I checked the books that appeared in the image, they didn’t look similar, so I walked to the northwest side. From a distance, I could already spot Antonio’s white lab coat standing out like a lightbulb in a dark room. His lab coat didn’t shine, though.

“Couldn’t you just say where you were?”

I asked as I sat down on the seat across from him.

“Would searching for me not be more interesting?”

“For you, yes. For me, no. So, what do you find?”

He closed the book he was reading, a book about insects.

“Why are you even reading that? Do you have an interest in them?”

“As a researcher, my goal is to learn as much as possible about this world. But setting that aside, let me ask you this, Ranold. Have you ever felt weird?”

“Weird?”

I just arrived and you’re going to ask me that random question?

“What do you mean weird?”

“I do not know. I am not the one feeling it.”

“Then how am I supposed to answer that question?”

“... Ranold, how about we make a deal? I will be your friend and help you find your strength, and in exchange, you will help me with your strengths.”

“How did it get to this? Besides, what would happen if I didn’t find my strength?”

“I will abandon you.”

He let out a smug-looking smile, as if laughing at my incompetence.

“Seriously, what’s the point of all this?”

He shrugged and opened his notebook, writing stuff again.

“So, do we have a deal?”

He said as he wrote something down.

“It’s not like I have any other options.”

He returned his pen to the table. Holding the book in his left hand, he snapped his right finger, seemingly without reason, his eyes still locked on the text or whatever was in his book. He then snapped his fingers again, and again, but without saying anything.

“Huh? I’m saying yes, we have a deal.”

Antonio didn’t reply, instead, he kept snapping his fingers again and again. I was confused. I always knew he was a bit weird, but snapping his fingers multiple times in the library? I looked around me, feeling grateful that no one sat close enough to be disturbed by us. I then returned my attention to his fingers. Considering how insistent he was, I assumed he was sending some kind of code, but without an explanation, it would be impossible for me to guess his intentions. He glanced at me again, reading my expression for a few seconds. Then he did it again.

He snapped, snapped, and snapped. Eventually, he stopped snapping, but he held his fingers up in the same position, not moving the slightest. A fade, reddish glow appeared at the end of his fingers. I could feel his gaze on me and snapped his fingers again, the glow instantly disappearing. When he snapped his fingers again, it appeared, glowing faintly on the tip of his fingers. Eventually, I realized what he was doing and panicked slightly.

“Are you… using fire magic in the library?”

I whispered, then he stopped. He put his notebook on the table, his brown eyes looking at me. He curled his lips into a smile and snapped his fingers, one more time.

“You’re not trying to burn the place, are you?”

I whispered in a voice inaudible to the people around us, all he did was smile. He parted his lips and spoke,

“Oh Great Knight of the Highlands, please lend us your strength.”