Evil Avalon - Volume 2 - Chapter 15

Chapter 15: The Student Council

Once I’d finished sparring with Nitta and the school day was over, I returned to our classroom.

Inside it, Oomiya was screaming furiously at a message on her terminal’s screen. “Why won’t they authorize my request?!”

Oomiya had applied to the student council for permission to form a new club for our classmates. This approach was her solution to the ban on entering the second-year Class E club imposed on us by Class D after Akagi’s unsuccessful duel.

But the message on Oomiya’s screen was a single word: denied.

The requirements for forming a new club were to have at least ten students wishing to join and one teacher to take responsibility for the club. Oomiya had cleared both of these conditions: over ten of our classmates had registered, and Murai had assured her that he was happy to be the club’s affiliated teacher.

All she needed now was for the student council to stamp their approval, then Oomiya could create the club and begin managing it. However, that final yet simple step was not to be because the student council had curtly refused to authorize the club. Oomiya was furious, all the more so since they hadn’t provided a reason for their action.

“I’m going to give them a piece of my mind!” Oomiya began to storm out of the room.

Nitta grabbed Oomiya by the arm and tried to calm her down. “Satsuki, hold on!”

Oomiya got worked up, and I agreed with Nitta that she should wait a while to let cooler heads prevail. It was a sensible idea to stop a Class E student from charging into the snake pit that was the student council without adequate preparation. We belonged to a school where power meant everything.

Some students were notable in their own right, but the factions called all the shots. If you wanted them to hear your opinion and improve your position in school, you had to join one of the powerful factions. The school had several of those such factions, mainly composed of students from the third-year Class A. Most factions based themselves around the various school clubs, headed by the club presidents of the swordcraft clubs and the magic clubs. But the largest and most influential faction was the student council.

Sitting on the council were the two top students for each year group, and many belonged to the nobility. They controlled the massive budgets that would make an ordinary school principal’s eyes water, and they could influence every event or club activity inside the school and even the factory and school alumni. The student council was the school’s central nervous system, a glorious institution with members picked from the top of the elite cohort of students distinguished in studies and dungeon raiding. Naturally, a constant stream of unscrupulous students tried to use their noble privileges or bribes to worm their way into the council.

Just because they were elite didn’t mean the members of the student council were...reasonable. Nearly all were bigheaded bundles of pride. I couldn’t see them taking a student from Class E seriously. In the game, they’d butted heads with the protagonists Akagi and Pinky, leading to several duel events.

“I won’t stop until they tell me why they’re refusing to authorize it!” fumed Oomiya.

“I don’t want you going to the student council room all by yourself, though,” said Nitta. “I’ll go with you, okay?”

Bolting in with an emotional outburst would only cause us more problems, so it was wise for the more collected Nitta to tag along.

While I was thinking about that, Nitta smiled and winked at me. “I’d feel a lot better if you came too, Narumi.”

I’d been planning to join in anyway, feeling I owed both for saving me from a loner’s life. This was my chance to show how big of a man I was!

“Oh, wow, you’re coming too...” remarked Oomiya. “If it gets dangerous, hide behind me, okay?”

“Huh? Uhh... Sure...” I responded.

Oomiya still thought of me as the weakest student in the school. I got that for letting everyone know that a slime had beaten me. My lips almost began to quiver... But I wouldn’t let that break me!

I shuffled along behind the two girls as we walked in silence down the sparkly clean corridors toward the student council room on the sixth floor. The wooden French doors leading into the room were large and heavy, decorated with engravings of birds and animals. The doors were likely worth several months of the average person’s salary.

Standing before the doors, Oomiya took one deep breath to calm her nerves and knocked on it.

A few seconds later, a voice answered from the other side. “You may enter.”

The doors slid apart far smoother than their bulk would suggest, opening into a room decorated classically. All the tables and shelves inside were exquisite pieces of valuable furniture. A dark red carpet lay atop the pristine floor of sparkling marble. A large landscape painting hung on a wall, illuminated splendidly by an antique chandelier.

There was also a leather armchair, as valuable as the rest of the furniture, upon which sat a male student with glasses. Being nothing more than a commoner, I felt an irrational anger seeing a high schooler like me on expensive furniture in such a classy room. A golden badge gleamed on the boy’s chest, showing how he was the son of a count of the imperial court. I would’ve guessed that the boy was noble, even without the badge, just from his demeanor. Perhaps dignity came naturally to those of high social rank.

The boy knitted his brows as he looked at us as though he were judging our pedigree. “What are you after?” he asked. A certain amount of suspicion was inevitable, given that we’d shown up without an appointment.

“My name is Oomiya,” she said. “I’ve come to discuss forming a new club.”

“You’re first-years...” expressed the boy. “From...Class E.”

Students’ uniforms featured different colors to visibly distinguish year groups: the color of the badges on boys’ chests and the color of scarves for girls. The red badge and scarves we wore demonstrated we were first-year students, while the green badge the student council member wore marked him as a third-year. Even the blue scarf Kirara had worn indicated that she was a second-year student.

He’d known our class because we weren’t wearing badges showing our adventurer class. Years of raiding the dungeon would give you plenty of opportunities to complete quests set by the Adventurers’ Guild and take rank-up exams. From class 7 up, one received badges of corresponding colors. Most of Class E was still class 9 because we’d only started raiding the dungeon. Since Class D students and above were almost all class 7 or higher, they could wear the adventurer class badges on their uniforms. While the school rules didn’t stipulate that students had to wear the badge, most chose to do it because it was an indicator of your status within the school’s social hierarchy. As such, the only students who didn’t wear badges were first-year Class E students who hadn’t had the time to get one, which made us easy to spot.

I had in fact taken a rank-up exam but hadn’t passed, so I was still in class 9. That rotten proctor had a lot to answer for...

“Go away,” the boy hissed, glaring at us like we were filth.

“No!” Oomiya shot back defiantly. “I want you to tell me why you won’t authorize our club!”

“Why is it that every year we get nobodies showing up thinking they’re better than they are?” he uttered.

I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, although that would be reckless. He was a noble, so who knew what could happen to us if we weren’t careful.

“Do you know where you are?”

Based on the huge sign that read “Student Council” by the entrance, I imagined the question was rhetorical. Still, his condescension made me bristle.

“I’m busy,” he said. “Go, and don’t come back.”

Oomiya seemed like she was about to argue, yet the boy turned away from us and refocused on the document he was reading for work. Even if we got his attention back, we wouldn’t have a proper conversation with him. So, we left the room and discussed what to do next.

“I can’t believe he won’t even hear us out!” fretted Oomiya. “That’s the whole point of the student council!”

“Maybe we should come back another day?” suggested Nitta.

“It wouldn’t matter,” I said. “He’s not going to listen to us...”

Someone with influence would need to introduce us to the student council if we wanted them to hear us out. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of any students with connections to the organization who were charitable enough to make introductions for some Class E losers. Our chances of success looked slim.

We barely spoke to each other as we dragged our feet back to our classroom. I could hear the shouts of students participating in club activities from outside the window. Only internal students from Class D and above engaged in training. A few Class E students might’ve been there to carry equipment and perform other menial tasks.

The students in the club the upper-year Class E students had formed were likely training somewhere, but they wouldn’t be at any of the prime locations inside the magic field. Those who had arrived at school with dreams of progressing to Adventurers’ University were getting a tough lesson in reality.

After we returned to the first-year Class E classroom, I began to pack away my things, feeling peckish, and the two girls started talking about raiding the dungeon.

“Nitta and I were planning on raiding the dungeon tomorrow,” said Oomiya. She was probably looking for a way to vent her frustration and smiled as if to prove she wouldn’t let a setback dampen her spirits. “Would you like to come with us?”

“Of course he is!” exclaimed Nitta, giggling. “You wouldn’t turn down an invitation from a girl, would you?” She smiled at me, urging me to go.

I’d intended to pick up some items at Granny’s Goods to sell for a profit tomorrow, though I was interested in getting closer to the two girls. But I could help Oomiya out with raiding, and I wanted to discuss some things with Nitta.

When I accepted their offer, they invited me to go with them to check out rental weapons at the school’s factories. That reminded me of the ore I’d dropped off there. Oomiya seemed interested when I brought this up and asked whether she could tag along. I would’ve preferred that they didn’t see the mithril ore I’d left... Although I could probably hatch a plausible excuse about where I found it, I didn’t see a reason to refuse.

I glanced at the smiles on the girls’ faces, Oomiya with her bouncing braids and the giggly Nitta. So, I gathered up my things and followed them out of the classroom.