"Do you know her?" Noah asked Ikki.
Because the energetic girl standing before them was acting far too familiar, he instinctively felt she must have some prior connection with Ikki.
"..."
But Ikki looked even more puzzled than him.
Noah glanced at the digital camera in the girl's hand and vaguely guessed something.
Seeing their confused reactions, the girl quickly explained, "Wait, I'm not a suspicious person! My name is Utakata Misogi, and I want to start a dedicated journalism club at this school! Thats why I really want to interview both of you!"
As she spoke, she aggressively stepped closer, pressing in so near that a faint fragrance could be smell from her.
"Journalism?"
"An interview?"
Ikki waved his hands awkwardly. "No, no, Im not anyone famous. You want to interview Noah, right? There is no need to include me."
"Huh? But you are one of the main characters of the video, senpai! How can you be absent?"
"What do you mean?" Ikki was completely confused.
"Ah, don't tell me you two don't know yet?"
Utakata took out her student handbook terminal, opened a video-sharing webpage and showed it to them.
It was a shaky amateur recording playing their mock battle from yesterday afternoon.
The view count had already exceeded one million, with over four thousand active comments.
"It has been in the top 20 trending national topics since this morning! Its so amazing!" Utakata said excitedly.
At that moment, other gossiping girls from the class also gathered around their desks, about ten in total.
"We saw that crazy video too! It was really amazing. How can someone with such incredible physical strength only be an F-Rank? Senpai feels so mysterious!"
"Even though you lost to Noah, that perseverance was really impressive!"
"Noah-kun, do you have time later? Want to tour the school together?!"
The girls chattered on and on, crowding the two boys.
Faced with an eager invitation from one of them, Noah gently shook his head.
He also said to Utakata, "Forget the interview. You can use the video footage however you like, as long as you don't write anything weird about us."
With that, he politely excused himself and pushed his way through the crowd of girls.
"Hmph, why didn't you just accept that girl's interview?"
Seeing Noah return to his seat, Stella snorted coldly, seeming somewhat displeased.
Noah was taken aback.
He then thought seriously for a moment.
After that, he asked, "So you think accepting the interview would be politically better, right? Indeed, leveraging this trending topic could slightly boost the Vermillion Empire's international reputation—"
"Huh?" The princess was stunned.
'It could be used like that?'
Actually, she was just feeling a bit jealous!
Seeing Noah suddenly surrounded by other pretty girls made her heart highly uncomfortable.
She hadn't considered the political angles of a newspaper interview at all.
In contrast, the boy was thinking entirely about her royal wishes.
Thinking about this, Stella suddenly felt deeply ashamed of her petty jealousy.
Due to Noah's cold aloofness, Ikki became the main target of the girls' attention.
After all, none of the ordinary girls had the confidence to compete with the royal princess for Noah's affection.
Whether in strength, beauty, political background, or pure figure, they couldn't compare to the Crimson Princess in the slightest.
It was better not to humiliate themselves from the start.
BANG!
Suddenly, a loud noise echoed through the classroom.
It was a wooden chair being violently kicked over by an older male student.
The leading boy, mocked them, "Hey, hey, flirting with girls in the freshman classroom so openly... isn't that a bit too arrogant for a repeating loser, senpai?"
A group of five upperclassmen suddenly provoked them.
Before Ikki could react, Shizuya Kirihara, the arrogant second-year who had kicked the chair, deliberately provoked him further.
"What, are you just jealous of our senpai?" Kagami Kusakabe, a spunky freshman girl who had been talking to Ikki, snapped back defensively.
"Shut up! Woman, get out of the way!" Kirihara reacted as if his fur had bristled.
"Huh? What's wrong with being a woman?!" Kagami refused to back down.
Kirihara simply ignored her and turned his venomous words back to Ikki.
"He's just an F-Rank, basically an ordinary useless person. Why does he suddenly get so much attention? And that new student... going to such lengths just for some cheap fame. Even if Kurogane is a repeat student, he is technically still a senpai. To ruthlessly use him as a bloody stepping stone for freshman fame... what a terrible guy."
Hearing that Noah was also being maliciously implicated, Ikki's expression turned serious as he earnestly defended him.
"That's a total misunderstanding. That person isn't—"
The ambient temperature in the classroom suddenly skyrocketed, making everyone feel a wave of suffocating sweltering heat.
Ikki's words were cut off.
Everyone simultaneously turned their terrified gazes toward the source of the heat.
"Red... Crimson Princess... what, what are you doing?"
Stella's ruby gaze sharpened murderously as she grabbed a heavy wooden desk chair with one hand.
Whoosh!
The terrifying sound of something heavy cutting through the air came rushing toward the upperclassmen.
By the time Kirihara realized what was happening, he saw a wooden chair rapidly enlarging before his eyes.
It looked like the boy's head was about to be directly caved in by the furniture!
Judging by the A-Rank physical force behind the throw, he definitely wouldn't be able to stand up for a while after this.
Seeing this, Noah sighed.
He gently hooked his index finger, and the flying chair abruptly stopped in mid-air, levitating less than a single millimeter away from Kirihara's sweating face.
Two silent seconds passed.
"Ahhhhhhh!!!"
The boy screamed in terror, hurriedly step back, only to trip over his own feet and fall flat on his back.
"You... you! Were you trying to kill me just now?!"
"Harming others on campus violates the strict school rules," Noah stated calmly.
Faced with the boy's terrified shouts, Noah stood up from his desk at that moment.
He used Weaver to control the floating chair, slowly righting it and gently flying it back to its original position where it landed softly on the floor.
Then he said to the furious girl, "Stella, calm down. If we cripple him in front of witnesses, we will be punished too. As students, we should follow the school rules."
"Noah! But he said those awful things about you just now! I'm really angry!"
Noah smiled gently and said, "Thank you, Stella. But don't do this next time. You know, with my specific abilities, there are countless ways to make someone die a completely unnatural death without leaving a single trace of forensic evidence behind."
Noah spoke these terrifying words in a light casual tone!
Looking at his upturned lips and cold eyes, everyone in the classroom felt a severe chill run down their spines!
Death.
'This guy is completely serious! It doesn't feel like a high school joke at all!'
'If I provoke him again next time, I really... will... die.'
Kirihara felt a warm wetness spreading between his legs.
To avoid total social embarrassment, he quickly scrambled up and ran straight toward the hallway bathroom without looking back.
But there was one person standing out in the hallway who had already been watching for a while and she didn't give a shit about any school rules.
Since those thugs had insulted her dear brother, she couldn't possibly let them get away unscathed!
"Scatter... Shigure."
Swish!
An astonishing burst of freezing air suddenly erupted in the hallway.
In an instant, the disheveled group of five upperclassmen, still locked in their panicked fleeing poses and expressions, were flash-frozen into solid ice sculptures.
With their pathetic abilities, they were utterly incapable of detecting this high-level control of water magic.
Until the very moment they were struck, they had no idea what had befallen them.
The biting cold that ravaged the hallway kept the other students from showing their faces, yet there was one figure who emerged completely unaffected from the chilling wind.
She stepped gracefully into the classroom, her gaze fixed directly on her "beloved."
"It has been a long time... Brother."
She was a petite girl with beautiful silver-white hair and emerald-green eyes, appearing quite aloof and elegant.
Yet at this moment, she wore the sweetest most affectionate smile on her face.
The person she called out to was none other than Ikki Kurogane.
After a few seconds of stunned silence, Ikki excitedly ran forward.
"Is it really you, Shizuku?! You have grown up so much, you're practically a different person now and you're so beautiful!"
At that moment, Stella noticed that not only was Ikki excited, but the surrounding students were also buzzing with fear and excitement, all discussing the icy girl.
'Could it be that she's very strong?'
"Hey, Noah, who is that girl?" Stella whispered.
Noah glanced briefly at the ice in the hall, then found her public information in the student handbook.
"Shizuku Kurogane. She took second place in the practical entrance exam, just behind you. Her Blazer Rank is B and her official title is the Lorelei."
"I see, no wonder... Wait, she also has the surname Kurogane?"
"Ah, without a doubt, she is Ikki's biological sister."
If this had been before she met Noah, even if the other party was the second-place finisher in the entrance exam, Stella wouldn't have had any particular thoughts.
She was first because there was no higher rank than her, whether second or two-hundredth, in her eyes, they were all just opponents of the exact same level.
"Speaking of second place, aren't you technically second too?" Stella remembered that Noah's official entrance exam result seemed to be second as well.
Moreover, she knew full well that the boy wouldn't have exerted his full strength in such a basic test.
"Indeed, it's technically a tie for second. Our combat scores appear to be exactly the same, but her official Blazer Rank is B, while mine is only C, so I formally seem to have ended up in third place on the roster. Not that it matters, though."
It was just the entrance exam results after all.
"Brother..."
Suddenly, Shizuku Kurogane's next move left everyone present utterly stunned.
She affectionately cupped Ikki's face with both hands, stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips directly to his in a deep kiss.
Stella was entirely dumbfounded!
Noah's jaw dropped slightly, his brain briefly unresponsive to the sheer cultural shock.
"N-Noah... wh-what is this?! D-Do siblings in this country casually greet each other like this?!!!"
The unfolding taboo scene before her had shocked the royal princess to her core.
Trembling, she tugged desperately at Noah's sleeve, bombarding him with panicked questions.
The problem was, even Noah wasn't sure now.
According to the Truth Seeker appraisal results he had just run, the two were undoubtedly biological siblings with a direct blood relationship.
"I get it, Noah! Remember what we watched together on the internet last year?! That late-night anime show... Yosuga no... Mmmph!"
The boy hurriedly clamped his hand over the princess's mouth, desperately stopping her from uttering the rest of that highly controversial title in public.
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