What is the advantage of modern society?
It's that a lot of non-confidential information can be obtained quite easily.
And the information he stumbled upon in a bookstore was about the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival.
This was an annual competition jointly hosted by Japan's seven knight academies, a martial arts festival to determine the strongest student knight.
The victor would be crowned the Seven Stars Sword King.
From this alone, it was clear just how important the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival was to these schools.
At the same time, he noticed another very interesting detail.
The Hagun Academy's director had stepped down, and this year a new director had taken office.
According to his deeper research, this was likely because Hagun Academy had been performing poorly at the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival in recent years.
The biggest reason was that Hagun Academy had not been able to recruit any seed students.
And that brought him to another very interesting fact.
In this world, from the moment a person is born, everything about them is already settled.
The amount of magic power you have at birth will remain the same until you die.
It cannot be increased through training, nor changed by sheer effort.
In this world, a genius is a genius, and a mediocre one will always be mediocre.
The only thing you can improve is technique.
Thus, the moment he gathered this information, he immediately locked onto a key point.
Since the new director had just taken office, the very first thing she would need to do was to erase the humiliation of Hagun's repeated failures at the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival.
But Hagun, having failed to achieve any good results for several consecutive years, had already become infamous as the weakest among the seven schools.
Recruiting promising seed students would now be extremely difficult.
And that was the very weakness he intended to exploit.
He would see if he could use this as leverage to make the school's director resolve his identity issue.
What's more, in a sense, this would also be mutually beneficial. After all, he himself had ambitions regarding the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival.
Of course, even if it failed, it didn't matter.
At the very least, he could still retreat safely. With the contingency plan Shiroyasha had left him, he was confident in that.
But judging by the current situation, the option of retreat could be set aside for now.
Because the woman in the suit standing before him had already fallen into deep thought.
"It seems you really did investigate a lot before coming here."
Her hostility seemed to ease slightly.
Harumura Makoto could feel it, which made him more confident in persuading Shinguuji Kurono.
"Well, it wasn't exactly difficult to investigate. These conclusions can be drawn with a bit of deduction—though I admit, it carries significant risk."
After that, Makoto didn't say another word.
He simply stood where he was, making no dangerous moves, just patiently waiting for Kurono to make her decision.
Sometimes, saying too much was worse than saying too little. Leaving gaps for her to fill with her own thoughts would make her more convinced.
"…You're not with the 'Union' or the 'Liberation Army,' are you?"
Nearly ten full minutes passed.
The length of that silence alone revealed the depth of Kurono's inner struggle.
And the question she finally asked proved that her mind was already leaning toward Harumura Makoto.
"I already told you, I'm just a wild man from the mountains. I have nothing to do with any other factions."
Currently, the world was balanced precariously among three major forces, maintaining a fragile peace.
First was The Union, formed by superpowers like the United States of America, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, who pushed for dividing and governing the world.
Second was the League of Mage-Knight Nations, formed by smaller nations like Japan cooperating to preserve the current world order.
Lastly was the Rebellion, a massive international criminal organization that had united the dark side of the world as a third power.
"You're sure about that?"
As she questioned him, Kurono seemed to be making a decision of her own, her gaze sharp as it fell on Makoto.
"Of course."
"…I see."
Kurono gave him a long, searching look, then let out a long sigh before finally stepping closer to him.
"Come with me. Since you want me to help you with so much, letting me test your strength first isn't unreasonable, right?"
"Inspecting the goods before purchase, huh?"
Makoto rubbed his chin, his expression deepening slightly.
"Fair enough. Very reasonable. But there should be some kind of passing standard for this inspection, right? To what extent must I perform?"
Kurono didn't stop walking, and naturally, Makoto followed behind her.
"Hmm… Previously, a man proved himself to me by defeating me while I wasn't using my powers. But his innate ability was weak, and his magic level was low. So for someone of your caliber, the condition can't be set that low."
They strolled openly into the elevator together.
Despite it being vacation, there were still plenty of staff around the school, which reassured Makoto that his method of coming up here had been flawless.
If he had snuck in via the stairways, things might have turned messy and far less smooth.
"Alright then—seventy percent of my power. If you can beat me while I'm using seventy percent of my strength, I'll fulfill all your requests."
"Seventy percent of the former world's third strongest, huh?"
Makoto's gaze deepened as he followed Kurono's back.
"Director Shinguuji, you really think highly of me."
"You're the one who bragged that you could win the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival."
Kurono only responded with a cold smile as she finally stopped before a dome-shaped building.
"Don't underestimate the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival. To win stably, this level of strength is the bare minimum. Besides, if you really do enroll, your cohort will likely have an unusually high number of strong contenders. Winning won't be easy."
As she spoke, she pressed her fingerprint and opened the large door in front of them.
"Is that so? Then I truly look forward to it. I hope there really is someone who can surpass me."
Walking into the training arena, he took his position opposite Kurono. The place was vast and empty, with viewing stands surrounding it.
"But before that… I'll have to defeat you first, won't I?"