"Asagi, wake up. School's over."
"Mm… ah—Cid, school's already out? Then I need to go. I'm going to be late for my part-time job."
The girl in front of him had just woken up from sleeping on her desk. With black hair, red eyes, old-fashioned glasses, and a plain, unfashionable outfit, she looked completely unremarkable. Her name was Asagi Aiba, a native resident of Itogami Island in World No. 2, and one of the few background-character friends he had managed to find at this school.
Before the world fusion, she had supposedly been nothing more than an ordinary student with excellent grades. But after the fusion, tests revealed that she possessed fairly good magical power aptitude, which led to her transferring from her original school.
Because the powers of different worlds varied greatly, a new evaluation system had been developed to roughly measure strength. From lowest to highest, the ranks were: D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS, and Dragon God.
Unfortunately, even with decent talent, she had only been training for a little over a year, so her strength was merely C+. In this school, which placed extreme importance on practical combat ability, even with her written test scores added in, she still ranked in the lower-middle tier.
"Been busy lately? You slept through the whole day and still look exhausted. Good thing Natsuki doesn't have any classes today, and the other teachers can't be bothered with you. Otherwise, you'd definitely be writing a reflection."
"Yeah, I've been pretty busy. There's been a small problem at the place where I work part-time. It's not something that can be solved quickly, so I've been staying up late every night."
"A small problem? I've never seen you spend this long on something. A 'small problem' that can't even be fixed after you spend all your class time catching up on sleep?"
"Relax. I'll definitely finish it over the weekend. (Besides, telling you wouldn't help anyway.) I don't have time to chat. I've got to get to work. Once everything's settled, we'll hang out."
Watching the girl quickly pack up her belongings and rush out, Cid let out a sigh.
The last sentence had been whispered very softly. She probably thought he couldn't hear it.
But he had heard it clearly.
Even if she was just a background-character friend he had picked up along the way, it was still rare for him to show concern for someone. Being brushed off like that still stung a little.
Though admittedly, part of that concern came from the fact that Asagi Aiba had been sleeping through classes for days, leaving his source of campus information completely outdated.
After packing his bag, he grabbed a wooden sword and headed toward the school's training grounds.
Ignoring the magic practice area, which had already turned into a massive crater, he walked straight into the empty sword training room beside it.
Instead of immediately practicing with the wooden sword, he first moved to a blind spot in the surveillance cameras. From thin air, he took out a white crystal block. Only then did he walk over to the wooden dummy and begin swinging his sword.
"Whoosh… whoosh…"
Cid Kagenou.
According to the character setting he had prepared for himself, he was a minor noble with a bit of talent, but whose written scores and combat ability both ranked in the lower-middle tier—a background character with no chance of inheriting the family estate.
But after arriving at this new school, both the combat standards and the passing scores for written exams had risen significantly.
With his previous results, he would rank near the very bottom here.
And that completely violated his background-character principles.
So how could he bring his strength back from dead last to the lower-middle tier while still maintaining his role as a background character?
The answer: extra training.
After all, a hardworking background character is still just a background character.
But that created a new problem.
He simply could not accept spending several hours every day doing exercises that were completely useless to him and only wasted time, just to maintain his persona.
Fortunately, the solution was simple.
He just needed to increase his training load in a way that no one else could notice.
Just like right now.
On the surface, he appeared to be holding an ordinary wooden sword. But in reality, the sword was secretly filled with an enormous amount of magical power. Its weight fluctuated constantly somewhere between that of a sheet of paper and an entire mountain range, pushing his body, reflexes, and control to their limits.
Of course, it wasn't without flaws.
For example, he had to divert additional magical power just to reinforce the surrounding space. If he accidentally lost control of the power, the consequences could range from destroying the school… to sinking the entire island.
But compared to the ability to train as an Eminence in Shadow while simultaneously acting as a perfect background character—
Those minor drawbacks were completely negligible.
"Whoosh… whoosh…"
Within the span of a single second, the sword's weight shifted multiple times between that of a mountain and a sheet of paper. Yet each time, he reproduced the exact same swing trajectory using nothing but the strength of his body.
The moment the weight changed, he sensed it instantly and adjusted the force of his swing so the speed remained perfectly consistent from beginning to end.
Not exactly.
When the blade was 0.003 centimeters away from the wooden dummy, he slowed slightly. Then, at 0.001 centimeters, he began to pull the sword back.
That was why, even though it was just the most basic sword swing and he wasn't using any magical power, every strike looked as if he were swinging with his full strength. After only half an hour, he was already drenched in sweat.
To anyone unaware of what was really happening, it would simply look like a talentless but hardworking background character training by himself. Some cynical people might even sneer that no matter how hard he worked, it would never amount to anything. Then perhaps some girl would step forward and say hard work wasn't shameful, and after a series of events secretly fall for him.
But that was impossible.
The reason he deliberately came to the training grounds after school was precisely to avoid that sort of development. His effort existed only to justify the improvement in his abilities, not to ruin his background character performance.
If anyone ever grew suspicious, the surveillance footage would clear things up. After all, Cid the background character was no genius. Even a genius, unless something was wrong with their head, wouldn't waste hours every day on such pointless training.
As these thoughts passed through his mind while he continued swinging his sword, Cid's pupils suddenly shrank. A faint cold smile appeared at the corner of his lips.
His sword swings didn't stop. However, the magical power reinforcing the sword's weight and the magic stabilizing the surrounding space were both quietly withdrawn.
Maintaining that same posture, he truly spent another hour and a half practicing completely meaningless basic sword drills.
He prepared himself mentally.
His face showed visible exhaustion. His legs trembled weakly after standing for two hours. He was ready to collapse at any moment.
Alright.
Turn around.
And then...
"Wah… N-Na, Natsuki-sensei, what are you doing here?"
He staggered backward as if startled, falling down in shock. After two hours of training, the exhausted body of a background character lost its balance and collapsed.
At the same time, he let out a startled cry. Upon recognizing the teacher, he instinctively called out her name, but the fatigue and the pressure of facing a teacher caused his voice to stutter at the beginning. The question that followed came out in a trembling tone, his tongue stumbling slightly to convey nervousness.
A flawless background character performance.
If there had been a protagonist standing nearby training with him for contrast, it would have been even more perfect.
"I just got here. Besides, that's a question a teacher should be asking you. Why are you still here so late? Don't you know that non-staff members aren't allowed to remain on campus after school?"
As unbelievable as it sounded, the girl standing before him was indeed a teacher at this school.
She had waist-length black hair, blue eyes, and stood around 1.4 meters tall. Dressed in a black lolita outfit, she looked like a young girl rather than an adult.
She was also one of the top attack mages of World No. 2, essentially the island's highest combat power under normal circumstances. Her title was the "Witch of the Void."
"Um… I'm really sorry, Natsuki-sensei. You know my talent is pretty poor. If I want to pass, the only thing I can do is train more on my own. But the training facilities outside the school are too expensive, so I had to use the school grounds. So… Natsuki-sensei, please don't report me."
"Since this is your first offense, I won't report it to the school. But only this once. Don't let it happen again. From now on I'll be the one patrolling the campus after school, so you'd better find somewhere else to train."
"Eh!!! Th-then… alright."
Putting on a dejected expression, he walked to the corner, picked up his backpack, and headed for the exit.
"And one more thing. Things haven't been very peaceful lately. It's best not to go out at night."
Just before he stepped out the door, Natsuki Minamiya gave that warning.