Chapter 1: The Truth After 30 Years of Reincarnation
Sirius Walker, an S-rank adventurer and teacher in the Alchemy Department at Luminous Academy, was currently standing in front of the school gates, assigned the menial task of handing out flowers for new students to pin to their breast pockets.
“ No way… Could this possibly be… an otome game world? And not just any otome game, but that horribly rated one because the story was such a disaster — ‘Sparkling Academy Paradise ~ True Love Will Save the World ~’!?”
Hearing the muttering of a pale-faced duke’s daughter among the gathering freshmen at the academy entrance, Sirius unintentionally overheard her words and was shocked.
So this is an otome-game reincarnation world!?
That was the realization of a single man who had already spent thirty years reincarnated in this world.
To briefly summarize Sirius’s background:
Originally, he was the illegitimate child of a marquis family in the Way Empire, and his mother had been an elf captured as a slave.
In other words, Sirius Walker was a half-elf.
Naturally, no one in a relationship built on nothing but resentment would ever cherish the resulting child. However, baby Sirius had memories of his previous life from birth, so he pushed forward positively, thinking:
“This is hardcore mode!”
By the age of six, Sirius had somehow survived while secretly training his magic power with the mindset of:
“This is gonna be a rise-to-power reincarnation story!”
Then one day, for reasons unknown to him, he was suddenly kicked out of the house.
At the time, Sirius simply accepted it without much thought.
“Yep, yep, the standard exile template.”
After secretly stuffing his already-mastered storage magic with valuables and food—his “compensation,” so to speak—he repeatedly snuck aboard merchant wagons without paying, crossed the sea, and eventually arrived in the Kingdom of Luminous.
Naturally, following the standard template, he registered with the Adventurers’ Guild, saved money by doing delivery quests, and lived modestly in the slums.
As his body matured, Sirius gradually started taking monster-subjugation requests in his own self-taught style… and before he realized it, he had accidentally climbed all the way to S-rank.
Using the rewards he’d saved up, he even bought himself a house, which left him fairly satisfied.
“I became the lord of my own castle while still a teenager!”
Incidentally, he had become the youngest S-rank adventurer ever at age twelve, which led the guild masters to tell him things like:
“If you’ve got money, go enroll in the academy and study.”
So he did.
When it came time to think about employment, Sirius believed that the more qualifications he had, the better. Ignoring social interactions entirely, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to earning certifications.
To Sirius, those were fond memories.
Although he was a half-elf, his physical traits—such as his ears—leaned more human, while his abilities leaned heavily toward elves. He possessed Spirit Eyes, a skill said to surpass Appraisal itself.
Senior Alchemist, Senior Mage, Senior Knight, Senior Architect—
He leveraged his half-elf abilities to the absolute limit, obtaining all sorts of qualifications to an excessive degree.
The only certification Sirius actually used in daily life was his Senior Gardener license for maintaining his garden. But since elves possessed a natural affinity with plants, he could practically cheat at gardening, effortlessly cultivating rare medicinal herbs and exotic fruit trees alike.
Then, somehow, he even obtained a teaching license… and accidentally became a teacher afterward.
Of course, Sirius found taking requests as an S-rank adventurer far more enjoyable, so he chose one of the academy’s unpopular elective subjects—Alchemy—and spent most of his time out on “fieldwork” excursions.
The academy had originally also functioned as a research institution, and whenever Sirius donated rare materials, the headmaster would simply smile warmly and say:
“You’re fine just the way you are.”
So Sirius assumed everything was acceptable.
That said, Sirius did properly fulfill his duties as a teacher.
Even though he lacked episodic memories from his previous life, the knowledge itself remained, allowing him to use “past-life cheats” for paperwork. Furthermore, he found that study methods from his previous world were optimized to an entirely different level of efficiency, so he was actually considered a fairly competent teacher.
He was the type who at least handled the minimum required work properly.
However, since he refused to engage in social interactions beyond the bare minimum, people other than the teachers who had once looked after him during his student days called him things like:
“Cold-blooded.”
“Heartless demon.”
Sirius was undeniably handsome, possessing the classic elven beauty: long jade-colored hair tied in a loose braid and deep green eyes, while appearing to be in his twenties.
Unfortunately, thanks to everything he’d experienced in life, his facial muscles had long since stopped functioning properly.
Anyway, back to the beginning.
To Sirius, it was utterly shocking to discover that this world might actually be based on some bizarrely titled otome game.
All that time he had spent believing he was the protagonist of a rise-to-power reincarnation story, searching everywhere for something resembling a Demon Lord…
Give me back that time!
Unable to voice the complaint to anyone, Sirius silently swallowed his frustration.