How to Survive as the Academy Student Council President

“Lady Elena, the results are out.”
Saintea.
Elena’s office, where brilliant light scattered through the stained glass.
At the aide’s report, she slowly opened her eyes, having been kneeling in the prayer room with her hands clasped in prayer.
Elena straightened her knees, which had been folded beneath her, stood up, and received her report card from the aide, Adler.
The results recorded on the report card were a clean perfect score.
It was only natural, so Elena did not pay it much attention. Handing the report card back, she asked,
“Thank you. How are Adler’s grades?”
Adler scratched the back of the head and answered in a small voice.
“……Not much different from previous years. Barely above last place.”
Adler possessed top-tier Holy aptitude and swordsmanship ability, yet written exam scores were so low that it was faster to look from the bottom.
It was the same situation as Kiriel’s.
“Oh my, training the body and sword is good, but please pay at least some attention to Holy Studies. Knowledge of the sacred will always help when fighting demonkind.”
“I’ll bear that in mind. And the thing you requested.”
Adler took out another document and handed it to Elena.
Elena quietly examined it, then gently smiled.
“You doze off often in class, yet your grades came out decent. I wonder if all that special training with me had meaning? Fufu.”
She skimmed the report cards of the Purification Studies Club members, smiling especially when she reached Loen’s.
Watching Elena’s reaction for a moment, Adler cautiously asked,
“But Lady Elena, why are you so concerned about Loen?”
“Are you curious?”
“Yes, well…… normally, you don’t show much personal interest in other # Nоvеlight # students, do you?”
Adler shrugged.
Elena was kind to everyone, but it was rare for her to show private interest in someone.
She simply hid various emotions beneath her radiant smile.
Having served by Elena’s side since childhood, Adler knew that well.
Then Elena answered.
“No reason. It’s just fun.”
Elena closed Loen’s report card and set it down on the table.
Then, with her eyelids lowered, she recalled the contents of the letter that had arrived from her home country a few days ago.
A claim asserted by some of the hardline cardinals of the Holy Kingdom Celestia.
‘Only those related to the demonic can know the Blood Demon’s weakness.’
Normally, Elena would not have bothered listening to such a typical hardliner’s argument, but she had gained a small hint from it.
She remembered the conversation she’d had with Loen over a meal regarding the practical exam incident.
He had judged that the incident was related to a leyline anomaly. However—
‘No matter how you look at it, this incident is the work of Gilean, one of the Twelve Venerables.’
Loen had acted as if he knew that truth, deliberately avoiding the subject and trying to steer the conversation elsewhere.
He even went out of his way to ramble at length about leyline anomalies.
Outwardly, Elena had agreed with him, but it was behavior suspicious enough to make her doubt.
‘And then.’
Elena’s gaze fell to her own pale fingers.
The unknown black ring Loen always wore.
At first she hadn’t noticed, but as she spent more time near him, she began to feel a strange sensation from that ring—something she could not identify.
It wasn’t Holy Power detection, nor was it mana sensing.
Just instinct.
The intuition of a Saintess candidate said to be closest to the Divine’s divinity.
Or perhaps one could call it a woman’s intuition.
She found herself thinking that perhaps there really was an artifact capable of withstanding her Holy Power, even if only for a moment.
‘Of course…… that doesn’t necessarily mean Loen is related to demonkind.’
Elena organized her thoughts and slowly opened her eyes.
To doubt Loen’s lineage was to doubt the entire de Valis family, who stood at the forefront of exterminating monsters.

Hasty judgments were forbidden.
This was merely suspicion, no more than conjecture. There was no evidence, no grounds—only personal doubt.
She had already once acted on suspicion and paid a heavy price. She could not move rashly again.
For now, the best course was to remain close to Loen and watch him continuously.
While Elena quietly looked at her hand and thought, Adler’s voice came again.
“Fun, you say. Is the slip of paper you drew last time also something like that? The most entertaining person?”
Adler was referring to the Sports Festival, when Elena had chosen Loen as her partner for the two-person three-legged race.
The fact that Elena had chosen Loen as her partner had become such a hot topic that it was even written up separately in the Union Daily, so most students were curious about the contents of that slip.
It was said that Lambda, the master of ceremonies for the Sports Festival and one of the only two people who knew the contents, refused every interview from the Newspaper & Broadcasting Club in disgust.
Whether it was because of strict secrecy rules or someone silencing that person was unknown.
Elena smiled faintly.
“……Well, let’s just say it’s similar.”
The content of the slip Elena had drawn at the time was [The person currently on your mind the most.]
Whatever that meant exactly, the only person Elena could have chosen was Loen.
***
Tok-.
Tok-.
Vaporized materials rose through the glass tubes of the distiller.
They soon met the condenser and fell drop by drop to the bottom of the flask.
Wearing protective goggles, I blankly observed this.
Though extracted from the blue liquid, the distilled materials each displayed a different color.
Colors resembling a rainbow.
I wasn’t sure such colors would appear in reality, but considering the materials, it wasn’t impossible.
After all, I had tossed in bizarre ingredients like troll oil and thunder-firefly.
It would be stranger if they came out looking ordinary.
At first I had worried that the combined ingredients, once mixed, would separate into something bizarre again during distillation, but fortunately that didn’t seem to be the case.
After watching the distilled materials for a bit, I checked the timer ringing and removed the flask containing the first-distilled red ingredient.
Gulp gulp gulp-.
I transferred the contents of the flask into a small glass test tube, then placed it into a magic device and spun it.
It was a magic tool similar to a centrifuge, separating mixtures according to density.
Wiiing-.
While the device on one side whirred, I took out the orange-colored flask and placed it in the rapid freezer. It was an ingredient that needed to be cooled and solidified quickly.
Next was the yellow ingredient.
The color was… suspicious. Like the next morning after taking too many supplements…
Like that, I processed each of the various distilled materials according to the recipe.
In carrying out this task, the advice I had received from the pharmacist Pastel proved quite useful.
He had taught me several practical tips.
“Hoo.”
Finishing the work, I stretched my back with a sigh.
The reprocessing of the distilled materials had to be done continuously for exactly twenty-four hours.
Since I had boiled them in the cauldron for forty-eight hours as well, this overlapped precisely with the seventy-two hours required for artifact creation.
As I had intended from the start, it seemed both the artifact and potion production would finish at the same time.
“Let’s see.”
I tidied up the workbench first, then began the preparatory work for the remaining materials needed for artifact creation.
Various assembly components used to make [Tubal-cain’s Star].
Because it was a simple artifact, the required materials were not complicated, so even store-bought products circulating in the market posed no issue.
Even so, they were extremely expensive high-end goods, making their quality guaranteed.
To raise the item grade, I had brought components crafted not from ordinary alloy but from adamantium.
Its mana conductivity was excellent, and I liked adamantium’s unique blue color.
Like preparing to assemble a model kit, I sorted each material into its proper section.
Then I trimmed the rough parts and applied anti-corrosion coating so that once the mana circuit’s blood-absorption process finished, I could assemble immediately. I set them to dry in the wind.
This should keep them safe even if submerged in water.
After completing the groundwork, I arranged the components in the correct positions and order.
Up to this point, nothing was difficult.
Now what remained was connecting the power source that would supply mana to the mana circuit board.
And processing the “magic stones,” each containing various concepts, to be installed on the circuit board.
Fortunately, the magic stone processing had already been taken care of—I had asked Alfredo to acquire them—so that was fine, but the work of connecting the mana circuits and power source had to be done by hand.
With a monocle over one eye, I began twisting the delicate mithril wires together with tweezers.
If compared to electronic devices, it was like connecting copper wires. But connecting mana circuits was slightly more complex.
Even with the know-how I had learned from the dwarf triplets, the level of difficulty still felt high.
I had never done anything like this in my life, so there was a certain awkwardness.
With trembling hands, I patiently twisted each strand of wire.
A precise task like threading a needle.
Part of me wondered what the hell I was even doing, but at the same time—
‘This is… fun.’
A faint smile touched my lips.
There were many obstacles in creating something yourself. But as you focused and worked through each step, it became enjoyable, and you learned many things.
It was rewarding, like filling empty pages in a game encyclopedia.
‘And tomorrow is the weekend.’
Even if I had to sacrifice the entire weekend, I would succeed no matter what.
This was a wall I had to surmount relying neither on the system nor on anyone else.
My opponent was never other players or competitors—but always myself.
‘……I can’t lose.’
***
Ciel Yuraphia.
She placed the homemade lunchbox on the table and looked toward the laboratory.
‘It’s already been sixty hours since Lord Loen shut himself in the lab.’
She couldn’t even tell if he was sleeping in there.
The only proof that he was still performing basic biological functions was the empty lunch containers placed outside the laboratory door at each mealtime.
At least he was eating the lunches she faithfully prepared—she supposed she should be relieved.
In any case.
Given the previous incident in which he collapsed coughing blood, she couldn’t let herself wander far.
Letting out a deep sigh, Ciel sat on the sofa and opened the book she had brought.
If something happened, she needed to be here until evening just in case.
After reading for a while, Ciel soon closed the book and stepped outside to check the mailbox stuffed with letters.
Managing the letters delivered to the Student Council Office was part of her duties.
As she rummaged through the mailbox, she spotted one high-quality piece of stationery among the blue envelopes that symbolized challenge letters.
A letter stamped with the crest of the de Valis family, bearing a golden lion.
It was a letter written personally by Aslan, the head of House de Valis.
“……”
Ciel looked around to make sure no one was watching from the hallway, collected the letter, and returned to the room.
Sitting back on the sofa, she swallowed once and pressed her blood to the seal.
Ssssss-.
The seal absorbed the blood and disappeared like melting snow. Confirming this, Ciel immediately opened the envelope and took out the letter.
When she spread it open, she saw handwriting that looked as if Aslan had scrawled it himself.
[Hey, you little bastard. How are you doing? If you’re alive, at least contact your sister. Do I really have to hear your updates only through Ciel? Don’t tell me you’re sulking because I cut off your allowance for a bit……]
The letter began with a rather rough greeting, but nothing particularly special followed.
She had been slightly nervous, wondering if there might be orders inside, but fortunately, it did nothing more than ask Loen how he was and share Aslan’s own recent news.
Someone under his command had gotten married, someone had given birth, someone had died in the last battle.
There was mention that the prisons holding prisoners collected from across the continent were full, and that the elders kept pressuring him to get married.
What she especially needed to remember was that he insisted Loen visit the family during summer break.
If he didn’t, he wrote that he would come all the way to Union himself.
[Ah, and thank you as always, Ciel. There’s no one but you who can take care of that brat. Sorry, and I’m counting on you. I added extra to your salary this month. Also, I know your birthday is coming up—if there’s anything you want as a gift, send me a list in a letter. That’s all for now.]
In the postscript, he wrote that he was grateful for her hard work, and asked her to continue taking care of Loen.
Though Duke Aslan had a somewhat rough side from living and fighting on the front lines against monsters, the warmth in his letter came through clearly.
Ciel folded the letter with a faint smile when—
Rumble rumble-.
Along with a vibration, brilliant light spilled out through the crack beneath the laboratory door.
At the same time, a laugh filled with elation rang out from inside the lab.