This Novel is not my Novel

This was not the time to engage in a bickering argument with Reisir. Especially when the subject was irrelevant to the original topic.

So, I refrained from responding to Reisir's words.

Instead, I spoke the words I wanted to say to Skati while pretending to address him.

"Anyway, Professor Skati has already stepped onto the judgment stand, received a community service sentence, and is carrying it out, isn't she? She does so very diligently, even though someone of her ability could hide her appearance and presence without anyone knowing."

Skati could have gone into hiding after killing the guild leader.

But she cut off his head and placed it on the judgment stand.

And by providing the Imperial Family with information about the Assassination Guild she belonged to, she dismantled that organization.

It was an act akin to avenging the countless people killed by the assassins there, and saving the lives of countless others who might have been killed in the future.

She could have demanded leniency by citing such merits.

Skati willingly placed herself on the judgment stand as well.

The expression 'sublime' probably wouldn't suit her, an assassin.

But even so, I think Skati deserves to be respected.

"Professor Skati is already being punished, and the professors have no right to punish her. No, given her past act of murder, they likely aren't even imposing private sanctions."

"...If not that, then what?"

The emotions visible on Reisir's face were quite complex.

While his brows were furrowed as if he found everything utterly displeasing, the eyes beneath them were directed at me favorably.

He looked somewhat resigned, yet I also sensed an inexplicable expectation.

'Seeing how he's throwing in appropriate interjections so the conversation can flow naturally, it seems he's grasped my intention and playing along, but...'

At this rate, won't Karvaldr's image become excessively glorified in Reisir's mind?

Anxiety struck me, but I couldn't stop what I was doing now.

It was already too late for that.

"Since scholar-type professors have no reason to involve themselves with Professor Skati, the ones bullying her are probably combat-line professors. But isn't the skill they've polished their whole lives also a means of killing people?"

There may be people who developed their martial prowess to protect themselves and their loved ones.

But that was just an idealistic notion.

If we got down to fundamentals, the goal of combat techniques lay in efficiently harming the opponent.

"To become a professor at Valhalla Academy, one must possess the appropriate skills, for which actual combat experience is essential. One also needs to build honor, for which accomplishments are necessary. Whether they killed enemy soldiers in war, hunted down and killed criminals, or engaged in life-and-death duels by mutual agreement for some reason... not all, but the majority would have experience killing people."

Some might argue that assassination cannot be equated with that.

But no matter what justifiable excuse is offered, isn't the weight of a human life the same?

Yet if they criticize Skati for killing people, shouldn't we view it as them forgetting the weight of the lives they themselves took?

If so, they have even less right to despise Skati.

"They went through such an arduous process, beating out countless competitors just to barely become professors. But then a criminal who suddenly appeared obtained professor qualifications effortlessly, so they must have been angry. But they couldn't rebel against the Imperial Family that sent that criminal to the academy, so they took it out on Professor Skati, didn't they?"

"Yeah, that could be it."

"Even if, by chance, the perpetrators referred to Professor Skati's past, it would only be to justify their own actions. I dare predict that behavior which began as venting anger has long since degenerated into amusement." ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com

Perpetrators were always like that.

They began enjoying seeing others suffer and submit more and more, continuously escalating the intensity of the bullying for greater amusement.

As if addicted to it.

"That sort of thing can't even be called private sanction. It's mere harassment. Whatever crime Professor Skati committed in the past, there is no reason she should endure that bullying. Moreover, since her past self was likely nothing more than a tool, this is even more true."

This should be enough discussion about how the perpetrators were not legitimate judges.

Now, I would begin speaking to alleviate Skati's guilt.

"You've seen Professor Skati's face too, so you know she is quite young. Considering that age, tell me. What level is her skill as an assassin?"

"Considering her age... it's truly unbelievable. Even if her talent is exceptional, it makes you wonder whether it's possible to accumulate that much skill."

"Despite her young age, can I interpret that to mean she underwent training for a very long time and was deployed to actual missions countless times?"

"Yeah... that's probably it."

Thanks to Reisir vouching for Skati's skills, bringing up the topic became much easier.

Otherwise, I would have had to use Duke Hard's name and claim I heard from my father that she was the successor to the Assassination Guild leader.

It was a relief I didn't have to fabricate such a lie.

"That must mean she underwent training to become an assassin at such a young age that she lacked proper judgment, and began assassination work under the coercion of adults. Was she kidnapped by an assassin who recognized her talent when she was young? Or perhaps they took in orphans and raised them as assassins, and Professor Skati was among them? Or maybe an assassin killed her parents on request, saw the child left behind, and took her in to raise..."

Even in the original work, the path through which Skati entered the Assassination Guild was never revealed.

Because Skati herself, who would have had to explain it to the protagonist, didn't know either.

Her earliest memory was being locked in a secret room with countless other children, undergoing repeated training to kill people.

"She wouldn't have become an assassin because she wanted to. It was simply taken for granted that she would become one, and she grew up in an environment where she had no choice but to believe that was her only purpose. I suspect she naturally became an assassin."

"......"

At some point, the look of displeasure had completely vanished from Reisir's face.

Was it because he learned that Skati had an unfortunate past?

That was a good thing. Just as important as instilling in Skati the will to escape the bullying was preventing her relationship with Reisir from diverging from the original work.

"Even so, she realized on her own that taking others' lives is wrong, and decided to leave that profession."

I continued speaking while meeting Reisir's eyes directly.

"So..."

Even if others criticize Skati without knowing any of the circumstances, you, the protagonist of this world, at least—

"—Shouldn't you rightly find her pitiful and admirable?"

I saw his golden monocular eye tremble greatly, revealing his agitation.

The wedge seemed to have been driven in properly.

With that reaction, it was safe to assume that when he met Skati in a dungeon later, there wouldn't be any antagonism between them.

Relieved, I took my eyes off Reisir and looked around the lecture room once again.

Skati's figure was still nowhere to be seen.

'Surely she hasn't already left the lecture room, and Reisir and I were just acting pointlessly because of a misunderstanding...?'

Should I ask her to send some kind of signal if she's listening to our conversation?

While I seriously contemplated that, Reisir suddenly asked a question.

"By the way, how have the professors been bullying her? Surely, as professors, they wouldn't have gathered in a group to physically assault her, right?"

"I don't think they would have done that either. After all, ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) isn't her specialty concealment? Naturally, the perpetrators would have aimed for mental harm rather than physical pain."

"...Huh?"

"The type of bullying that's hardest to endure differs from person to person. In Professor Skati's case, after enduring all sorts of brutal training as an assassin, physical pain might have been easier for her to withstand."

Seeing Reisir react with bewilderment, I added an explanation, wondering if he was perhaps underestimating mental suffering.

Even so, Reisir's expression didn't change.

Because the explanation I had just given was nothing more than an unnecessary comment, irrelevant because I was barking up the wrong tree.

"No, no. Not because of that... Why are you speaking as if you're guessing? Didn't you say it's a confirmed fact that she's being bullied by the other professors? Didn't you imply you fully understood how she was being bullied?"

"I deliberately avoided digging into the details. Although it seems she no longer considers me her disciple... still, if I knew those details, wouldn't that damage her pride as a professor?"

Actually, there was one more reason.

If I knew the exact kind of bullying Skati had suffered,

I felt I would unconsciously compare it to my own experiences and measure her suffering by subjective standards.

I could never claim to have completed the investigation simply because I didn't want to continue it.

"What I do know is that, in the past, someone harbored malice and exposed Professor Skati's status as a criminal, and that only professors could have done such a thing."

"I understand that there is someone among the professors who dislikes her. But isn't an educator's criminal record something that should obviously be revealed? Isn't hiding it actually the bad thing?"

"Yes, it isn't something that should be hidden. So what is malicious is not the act of exposing it itself, but the timing."

I suspected that Skati at the time hadn't intentionally hidden it, but had merely obeyed orders from the higher-ups not to say anything.

This was slightly off-topic and merely speculation without evidence.

So I decided to skip over it without mentioning it.

"If that fact had become known at the beginning of the semester, things wouldn't have escalated this far. If students disliked having a criminal as a professor, they could simply apply to change lectures. Professor Skati would have regarded it as her karma and calmly accepted it. But what if it happened after the lecture was already well underway and she had grown attached to her students?"

"...She would have been hurt by the students' sudden change in attitude?"

"I suppose so."

"Even so?"

"......?"

Someone else here had suddenly changed as well.

For some reason, Reisir's expression abruptly turned icy and rigid.

Just as I wondered what was wrong with him, his lips slowly parted.

"Even so, she hurt you in exactly the same way?"

It wasn't difficult to understand what his words implied.

And Skati seemed to understand as well.

I was beginning to suspect she truly had been hiding somewhere in here, considering there had been no sign of her the entire time.

"Ah......"

Along with a sigh, a human figure appeared from a shadow where there had clearly been nothing moments before.