“What?”

“My boss.”

At the out-of-nowhere answer, Rohide’s expression soured. That child is a boss, of all things. Had they been playing house out here?

Looking around, the fairly spacious clearing did look like just the right place for young children to fool around.

Not that he would know.

‘I am a prince of a kingdom, after all.’

But watching Adele, it did not seem as though she had come here to play childish games or any other kind of mischief.

Just what on earth was contained in that small body?

“Still, she would be no match for Sir Theodore.”

“……Adele might be.”

At the cool-headed reply, Rohide burst out laughing.

She was a child whose only distinction was giving off a strange air. And yet she could hold her own against Charles Theodore, professor of the swordsmanship department at Pilonia National Academy and widely rumored to be the strongest person in the empire? It was the kind of thing that would make even a passing dog snicker.

Rohide found everything dull again.

He was not sure why he had been so taken with such a strange child, but his churning stomach had settled, and it was time to return to the palace.

She had entertained him for a brief while, so he would let slide the offense of daring to deceive him, a prince. Such magnanimity was also a virtue of a prince.

Rohide shook his head and looked away.

At that moment.

Suddenly, a cloud of dust rose from beneath his feet.

“Ugh! My clothes are going to get dirty.”

Rohide panicked and brushed at his white clothes, but the movement of the dust grew increasingly fierce. The cloud of dust was slowly shifting toward a single point.

He slowly raised his gaze, following the movement of the wind. First he saw the young Viscount of the Rogato family, eyes gleaming, deeply absorbed in something. Then he saw the dust slowly swirling at the feet of Adele and Charles.

The movement of the earth gradually picked up speed and began to surge upward.

“Wh, wh, what is that now?”

Rohide, who had been worried about his white clothes getting dirty, was startled and fell backward ungracefully with a thud. His clothes had already turned yellow to the point where brushing would not clean them, but there was no time to worry about that.

The cloud of dust had now completely enveloped the two people facing each other, making them invisible. Nothing could be seen, yet Vincent’s gaze was still fixed somewhere within the towering whirlwind.

And inside it.

Charles was greatly astonished by the tiny child, small as a chick. This was his favorite place to meditate.

But having been unable to come for several months because of his classes, his body had been restless. He had finally found some free time and come to this clearing, intending to settle in properly and meditate, when suddenly the voices of small children reached his ears.

He had thought the clearing had become the children’s hideout while he was away, and had simply intended to chase them off……

‘Well now. I have run into quite a formidable one. How old is this child?’

He even found himself wondering whether there was something else inside the child’s body. And for good reason, because within this child was the very essence of what he only taught to students at the academy who showed the qualities of an advanced knight.

Not even the clumsy clumsiness of someone who had just learned it, either.

She was like someone who had continuously used and honed it, someone who had lived the life of a knight for at least ten years.

Yet the little one before his eyes looked young enough to make one wonder if she had even lived five years, let alone ten. Was this what it meant to be a heaven-sent genius?

Every muscle in his body twitched with the excitement of having encountered a genius.

“Where did you learn this? You give off a feeling similar to mine. Who is your teacher? Are you from the academy?”

‘Because I learned from you.’ Adele swallowed those words and focused even harder.

“Hahaha! You won’t tell me? Very well. A warrior speaks not with words but with the body.”

She had heard those words so many times her ears had grown calluses from them.

Adele’s earliest memory was the war Vincent had started.

So she did not know her past. Where she had come from, who her parents were, how she had grown strong.

She had been nothing more than a supporting character in this world.

Perhaps because of that, the Adele of that time had no great attachment to the people around her. Except for Vincent, who had kept coming to mind.

Yet after her regression, meeting again someone she had been close to in the past made her heart beat strangely fast.

Was this what it meant to be alive?

The emotions she had felt when this man, who had been her teacher, died were so faint she could not even recall them.

“Yes. This is what being alive feels like.”

“Exactly! This is what being alive feels like! Little one, you understand it well. What is your name?”

“Adele…… Grey.”

With those words, Adele’s fist swung to the side. It was an attack that came from no higher than Charles’s calf, but Charles blocked it immediately.

At the same time, the swirling cloud of dust enveloping them rippled.

Now Charles and Adele drove their fists forward without waiting for the other to go first.

But……

‘My arms are too short.’

Her arm length, the most critical factor, was far too short compared to Charles’s, leaving a significant gap in reach.

Adele realized this, but there was nothing she could suddenly do about her body. The mistake had been letting her joy at meeting her teacher make her forget for a moment how small her current body was.

Adele’s fist traveled only a very short distance and could not reach any part of her opponent’s body. And Charles’s fist passed just barely past her and drove into the ground.

The earth shook greatly as though an earthquake had struck, and the cloud of dust that had been enveloping them dissipated in an instant.

“Tsk.”

“Bwahahahaha! What a feisty little beast this is.”

Charles pulled his fist from the ground and straightened his posture.

Adele, covered in dust, was puffing out her cheeks fully, making no effort to hide her dissatisfaction. Charles patted the dust off Adele’s head and said.

“Do you know of the National Academy? Only adults may enroll, but I do hope you will come someday. You may use this place freely from now on. I shall take my leave.”

Charles laughed heartily once more and walked down the hill, disappearing from sight.

And here.

Rohide, who had witnessed the entire situation, was trembling with his face gone extremely pale.

He had never seen anything like this in his life. Were those things even human?

Rohide looked up at Vincent and asked.

“What on earth is that one? A monster?”

“I keep telling you, my boss.”

Leaving Rohide, who was still sitting on the ground, Vincent broke into a wide smile and ran toward Adele.

– – –

“To think I would meet that person here.”

No wonder the ground had been quite well-packed for a clearing that people supposedly did not visit. It had been Charles’s territory. He had always been someone who enjoyed meditating in places away from people, and in the past, this had apparently been that place.

‘But now it is my land.’

Her teacher was not someone who would go back on his word, so he would not take back what he had said about handing over the territory. Though in truth, having learned only a little from him on the battlefield, she was not sure she had the right to call him her teacher.

But to think that Charles Theodore, who had been her teacher, was a professor at the academy. That was something she had not known at all.

The Pilonia Kingdom National Academy was the place attended by Prince Rohide, who was still sprawled on the ground, and Vincent, who had come running straight to her side. As well as Layla, the female lead of this world.

Despite being in different departments, the prince and Vincent had clashed terribly. Badly enough that one of them had even been suspended.

To let students fight to that extent without intervening, was that not a dereliction of duty as a professor? Her teacher had apparently been quite a negligent professor in the past.

If it had been her, she would have stopped the fight with her fists if nothing else. And then declared that she would only listen to whoever could beat her. That would have shut everyone up.

‘Hmm, but if the academy exists now, would the others be there too?’

Her comrades, whose whereabouts she currently had no way of knowing. Since they had all belonged to the palace knight order, there was a high probability they were children of wealthy families.

And in the Kingdom of Pilonia, children of wealthy families tended to enroll in the academy for the sake of their families.

The atmosphere was such that those who did not graduate from the academy were even ostracized.

Of course, Adele had not been ostracized. She had been the only commoner in the knight order, but perhaps because of her strength, no one had treated her carelessly. Especially not after she killed Vincent.

In any case, if she went to the academy, she might be able to meet most of the people she had known.

Seeing Charles had stirred up her emotions, so she wondered how she would feel meeting others. Back then she had simply lived going with the flow, but now could be different.

The problem was that having simply returned to the past, Adele was unmistakably a commoner again in this life. She had no way to enroll in the academy. The other special method was the recommendation system. Or perhaps money?

But right now, Adele had neither power nor wealth. So there was nothing she could do immediately.

Above all, there were still fourteen years left until she became an adult.

Adele looked indifferently at Vincent, who had come right up to her side.

Vincent Rogato. He would have originally become a villain, but having met Adele now, he would become a swordsman with a harmless, sunshine-like smile.

The Rogato family had a great deal of money. On top of that, he was the next duke, so he had more than enough power. Enrolling in the academy would be a trivial matter.

Good. A perfect sacrifice. No, a perfect patron was right before her eyes.

Adele concealed her shameless inner thoughts and said to Vincent.

“Now that we have fairly obtained the territory from that big fellow, all that is left is training. Let us train hard and become fine adults.”

Until the day fourteen years from now when Vincent gained enough power to recommend her to the academy.

Vincent, unaware of Adele’s true intentions, nodded his head enthusiastically.

“Yes! I will definitely become just like you!”

“It is not ‘you,’ it is ‘boss.'”