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Chapter 105.

The New Year’s Festival was a festival that combined the year-end party and the New Year’s party from my previous life. As such, the New Year’s Festival was held for a total of five days, from December 30 to January 3. Since it was rare for the Empire to dedicate five days to national events, the New Year’s Festival was a big enough event to be called a festival.

In addition, the ceremony department’s probationary training spanned across the four weeks of December. Ending exactly on December 30, I’ll have finished my probationary training career and will be graduating from the training center with my final grade.

Although the preparation for the New Year’s Festival events was a huge pain, the actual operation of the events did not require that much manpower. That was a relief. If I had been held for work even after the probationary training was over, I would have personally visited the Minister of the Ceremony Department and smashed his head.

Looking at the calendar, I saw that tomorrow was the last day of my trainee life. The experience felt similar to school, but, at the same time, they felt different, so I didn’t feel like I would miss it at all. Even after the training was completed, I’d only be assigned to a public institution somewhere anyways.

Still, the reason why I was looking forward to tomorrow was that they would give us two weeks of vacation after our training’s completion for having worked hard.

In fact, these two weeks were a period of organizing grades and deciding where to appoint everyone based on the grades. So it felt like they were giving us a break because they had no choice, but it was still better than nothing. This break would provide more productivity than immediately sending everyone off to work.

It was early enough to be called dawn, but Alice came downstairs and asked, "Den, are you going to work?"

"Yes, it’s the busiest time when preparing for the New Year’s Festival."

"Haam~ Really? You’re working hard." There were deep dark circles around Alice’s eyes as she yawned loudly.

"Did you stay up all night again?"

"Yeah. It’s hard because the final projects overlap with the final exam."

Yuria seemed relaxed and lively, but Alice must be having a hard time keeping up with her studies.

Well, it is a little cruel to compare someone to a member of the Butterfly Tribe. However, Alice’s grades were still called top class within the same grade, and her skills were rapidly improving because she was with Yuria one-on-one.

When we had first met, Alice was a beginner who only knew the basics of using magic. Now, her skills had grown to the point where even I thought she was capable of being called a magician. If she had grown to this level in half a year, Alice’s talent couldn’t be ignored either.

"Damn it! Professor! Your class isn’t the only one that we have to take!"

When I saw Alice yelling and pulling at her hair, I thought of my past life. You stupid middle schooler who doesn’t know the truth that giving up is easier.

"Cheer up, Magician-nim!"

"Ok, Civil Servant. Fighting!" Alice snickered, but I was rather strict about things regarding magic.

I couldn’t call someone with poor skills a magician. Alphonso could use magic as a member of the Butterfly Tribe, but I didn’t think of him as a magician. Yet, to say he was a knight, one would tilt their head in confusion, but at least he was showing growth.

Come to think of it, the knight school and magic school trainees would soon be on break as well.

"So, when is your vacation?”

Alice looked at the calendar and answered, "Tomorrow."

"Then it seems you won’t be able to watch Lisbon and Alphonso participating in today’s martial arts competition preliminaries."

By the way, I wonder if those two signed up after the knight school went on break.

"Right..."

"You should try to take a brief nap. I heard you have a test today."

"Yea... I should. Just one or two hours." Alice stumbled like a zombie, trying to climb back up to her room.

I called and stopped Alice for a moment, then threw her a bottle of liquid medicine. "It’s medicine for fatigue recovery. You’ll feel a little better if you take it and sleep for a while."

Alice caught the medicine, opened the bottle, and drank it on the spot.

"Keu, gross. Thank you,” Alice thanked me and stumbled back to her room.

What Alice just drank was my special fatigue recovery medicine, so she should feel refreshed after a nap.

"Ah, I don’t want to go to work."

I tied my shoelaces and left the boarding house. It was winter, so it was still too early for sunrise.

* * *

Among the crowd gathered at the middle-rank knight school’s training hall five, Lisbon was warming up with a slightly tense face. The middle-rank knight school that Lisbon attended was not yet on vacation, so he had to go through quite a complicated process to participate in the martial arts competition.

Whether it was fortunate or not, the final exam, which was his biggest obstacle, was able to be taken early in return for a higher level of difficulty. The early test Lisbon was taking had been created in the past because of students who wanted to participate in the martial arts competition.

In fact, it was no exaggeration to say that the method was designed to discourage students from participating in the martial arts competition. Saying that the already difficult final exam would be even more challenging was no different from saying that they would flunk you.

Barely managing to pass the early final exam, Lisbon had two reasons why he chose to participate in the martial arts competition despite the risk of failing the early final exam. The first was the spirit of wanting to test his skills, and the other was because of the prize money.

Prize money was given to those who made it to the New Year Festival Martial Arts Competition finals, and the higher one’s ranking, the higher the prize money would be. Since Lisbon’s family controlled a large territory as a viscount, there was no shortage of allowance money transferred to his bank account.

However, Alice managed most of the money, so Lisbon couldn’t just randomly give it all away. Therefore, Lisbon only used a little of the allowance to maintain his weapons and for donating to orphanages. The funds under Alice’s management were to be used later to buy horses and other equipment for when Lisbon became a knight. So, for now, he was poor.

Lisbon vowed to advance to the finals and receive the prize money to increase his donation funds and to buy a birthday present for his sister’s upcoming birthday.

"Wock!"

"Uu-ah! You surprised me!" Lisbon was startled and looked behind him after someone suddenly shouted and pushed his back, rousing his will to fight at the same time.

Behind him was Den, who stood smiling mischievously with his civil servant ID around his neck.

"What were you thinking about so hard that you didn’t even notice me coming?”

"Oh, you know. Self-determination to make it to the finals." Lisbon gave a refreshing smile. He was surprised by Den’s prank but felt relaxed for some reason.

Den looked around and pointed to one person. "As long as you’re careful of that red-haired woman, making it to the main draw won’t remain just a dream.”

In the direction of Den’s finger, there was a beautiful woman with as large of a frame as Lisbon, resting a huge ax on her shoulder and counting the clouds in the sky with a bored face.

"Wow, she’s using such a big ax as a weapon. Who is that person?” Lisbon asked admiringly, but Den shrugged his shoulders.

"I don’t know."

"You tell me to be careful, but you don’t even know that person?" Lisbon tilted his head, but Den smiled and slapped him on the back.

"Ack!"

I didn’t think I hit him that hard, but he jolted in pain.

As Lisbon over-exaggerated when it came to pain, Den just looked at him pathetically. “What, such a drama queen. Just be careful if I tell you to be careful. Here’s your number ticket."

Den handed Lisbon a number ticket that was being distributed to those participating in the preliminary round.

"Is Alphonso participating in the preliminary round somewhere else? I don’t see him."

Lisbon nodded at Den, "Yeah, I heard he’s participating at training hall number seven in the low-rank knight school."

"That’s a relief. Since Flam is there, I won’t have to go there in secret. That guy is very nosy. I’m sure he’ll cheer for us.”

Den told him to work hard and left to hand out the number tickets to other participants.

Lisbon smiled dejectedly and stroked the sword handle, calmly raising his fighting spirit.

* * *

After handing out the number ticket to Pushover, I glanced at the red-haired woman with braided pigtails. Like a completely crazy person, she was constantly shooting off a weak martial aura, making her unmatched in unpleasantness.

She was releasing a martial aura into the crowd of martial arts competition participants but seeing how the aura was so weak that no one would notice, she seemed to be searching for someone who could be her proper opponent.

I suppose if you reacted to this martial aura and approached her, then you were skilled enough. Unfortunately, however, it seemed I was the only one who felt her martial aura here.

Lisbon didn’t notice it, but he subconsciously felt the martial aura and was tense. So I slightly blocked her martial aura towards him. Nevertheless, there were few people here who could even subconsciously feel the martial aura of that woman.

At this rate, those who had a similar skill level to Lisbon would get eliminated early, unable to show off their skills properly due to being tense. Well, that has nothing to do with me.

But anyway, not mentioning her personality, it was clear that she was considerably skilled. Even back in my hometown, there were few people who could control their martial aura to this extent.

Well, actually, it was mostly because there was no need for them to have such control over their martial aura. Still, even when considering this, what the red-haired woman was doing was an ability that only skilled warriors who hunted in the Olympus Forest could do.

However, if you asked if she was as strong as the warriors in my hometown, then the answer was no. Yet, if there was going to be a winner of this martial arts competition, I thought it would be that Red Hair.

In fact, being able to use martial aura in a fight freely provided a significant advantage. It could be used to intimidate those who were weaker than themselves and to disperse the fighting spirit of those stronger than themselves.

Martial aura was essentially no different than the intangible sword aura. Perhaps, if you were around the level of my second brother, the leader of the warrior group, or Mac, the right-hand man of my older brother, you could kill a person with just martial aura alone.

"Here’s your number ticket."

When I gave the red-haired woman a number ticket, she received the number ticket with a bored look.

I wondered why she would come to participate in such a competition if she was going to be so bored, but when I thought about the prize money, then it was worth enduring the boredom. In the end, money was good.

Having handed out all the number tickets to the preliminary round participants, I was about to go back to the barracks and organize the documents in the corner, but the red-haired woman called and stopped me. "Wait a minute."

"Is something wrong?” I was momentarily surprised, thinking that I had accidentally reacted to the Red Hair’s martial aura. I was certain I didn’t show any reaction.

No matter what, I was an ordinary and fragile civil servant. I was not a person who would gain the interest of someone who was pumping out a faint martial aura like that.

"By chance, did you happen to see a person?"

"A person?"

Oh, thank goodness. She was just talking to me because I was a staff member. Are you perhaps looking for your lover who came to cheer you on?

"Yes, he’s about 193 centimeters tall, is balding a little in the front, and he’s a muscular middle-aged man who often wears lacey v-neck."

What? The description was weird. A lacey v-neck? You’re saying a middle-aged, muscular man is wearing that? What capitalistic society are you in? Furthermore, this was a strangely familiar description.

"I’m not sure? I think I’d remember if there was someone like that, so I don’t think I’ve seen him."

Red Hair frowned at my response. "Is that so? I see. Sorry for stopping you when you are busy."

The red-haired woman lowered the huge ax from her shoulder and went off to somewhere.

Seeing an ax reminds me of my older brother.