Transmigrated As The Villainess' Boyfriend With A... SSS Harem System?

"Darlings," said Professor Duralianne Danyarta on Tuesday morning, hands behind her back and a smile that on any other woman would have been kind, "you’ve had two weeks of classes and you’re still treating your Empero like a dog."

We were in the circular arena where we took Empero classes, thirty-six of us.

"You give it an order. You wait. You get angry if it doesn’t obey." She paced. "Your Empero is a dog, and it’s a tool, and it’s a suit you put on over your clothes. Your Empero is you. When you order it around, you’re giving orders to yourselves. And you, generally speaking, obey yourselves terribly."

Someone laughed. She didn’t.

"Control. Manifestation. Density. The three aspects. Today we’ll only focus on the first, and I promise you’re going to hate it."

Raising her hand, she expelled Empero, pink and clean, and let it float above her palm the size of a walnut, until it took the shape of a tender bunny that began hopping around her hand.

"Manifestation is bringing an image into this world. It’s what those with elemental Empero do best, and in a way, it’s what makes people applaud at tournaments." She closed her hand and the pink vanished along with the bunny. "Density is tightening or releasing. When you expel Empero you gain perimeter and lose force; when you concentrate it, the reverse." She turned toward Ardwyn. "The young crown prince of Jahke has vast reserves for his rank... and what he does is distribute them across an entire courtyard, and that’s why I knocked him down with just two fingers, in front of all of you, and I don’t intend to bring it up again."

She brought it up three more times that morning.

"And control is your capacity to give orders to your Empero. That’s all. It seems humble. But it’s the only thing separating a Rank D knight from a Rank S one, and that’s why I leave it for last and that’s why today we’re going to do nothing else."

She made us form pairs and create a sphere of Empero in our palms. We had to keep it still. Nothing else. No shaping, no pushing, no expenditure: just hold it in the palm, the size of a coin, for as long as it took her to cross the courtyard and come back.

It seemed easy, but it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was very different from what Theren had taught me. Perhaps geniuses saw things differently? It was likely, since for them basic aspects like these came as naturally as breathing, and that was why they didn’t give them importance.

In my case, I lacked the years of training that most of my classmates had behind them, so successfully executing this type of basic aspect training was extremely difficult for me.

As you already know, my Empero is black, and since the day it awakened, it has done exactly what I tell it, with the bad manners of a well-paid mercenary. When I use my ability, I write a word, write an order on it, and it executes it.

I had never stopped to ask it anything beyond that. Based on what I knew about the original novel, I assumed the basics were, excuse the redundancy, basic. And let me admit that what holds up a building are its foundations; if those are wrong, the entire building will be.

That morning I tried to stop ordering it. I tried to stay still and let it be.

It dissolved four times.

My partner was Liryl Taint, who in two weeks had spoken to me three times: once when I asked him about Lianza on the day of the Welcome Ball, and the other two to ask me to move away from a window. He held his — brown, fine sand — from the first attempt without blinking, and spent the rest of the time reading a book with his other hand.

"How do you do it?" I asked him on the sixth try.

Liryl took so long to answer that I thought he wouldn’t.

"I don’t think about it," he said with a shrug.

"That’s not a technique."

"No." He turned a page and yawned. "It’s that I don’t think about it."

And he returned to his book, and I was left there feeling foolish in two worlds at once.

"Elcronne," Duralianne said, stopping in front of me after crossing the arena for the third time. "What are you doing?"

"I’m trying to let it be so I can listen to what it wants, Professor."

An eyebrow raised. And for a moment — it was a moment, and I probably made it up — something in her face stopped being disdain.

"Who told you that?"

"Nobody. It occurred to me."

"It occurred to you." She crossed her arms. "Do you know what happens to people who come up with these things without anyone teaching them, weed?"

"No, Professor," I replied, glancing at the others.

Most had already passed the exercise: Lianza had done it on the first try, with the ease of someone blinking, while Ardwyn was struggling to manifest a coin-sized sphere; what came out was one the size of a watermelon. Layda had done it with almost the same ease as Lianza, being the second to finish.

"They usually have a point, and usually do it wrong, and the sphere usually breaks." She kept walking. "Again. And this time don’t hold your breath: it’s not a diving test."

She took two steps and stopped, her back to me.

"Elcronne. Do you know why I teach this class and not the deputy headmaster?" she said without turning.

"No, Professor."

’The deputy headmaster’? Ah, she meant Theren Valdris. He had mentioned that the official Empero professor also held the rank of deputy headmaster.

"Simple: because the deputy headmaster doesn’t come down to the courtyards." She kept walking. "And because eleven years ago he put a light in front of me and told me to listen to it" — her voice took on a tone of annoyance. Or perhaps it was impotence? — "...and I spent three days without sleep trying, and on the fourth I screamed at him that lights don’t talk."

That caught my attention.

"And what did he say?" I asked, wanting to know what opinion someone who had been Professor Theren Valdris’s student might have.

"That I was right." She didn’t even turn, and though I couldn’t see her face, I could tell her brow was furrowed. "Again, weed."

It was to be expected that someone who had been Theren’s student would hold a certain grudge. With him, you had to think outside the box, break the mold... or die.

I tried eleven more times. On the eleventh, I held it until she reached the end of the courtyard.

Not until she came back. Until the end of the courtyard.

It was the closest I came to something that week, and I spent the rest of the day with my hand open under the table, trying to repeat it.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽ ☆ ☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

At the back of the courtyard, in the practice duels, Durania Sandahll won her bout.

I mention this because I was watching and because I didn’t see anything. Naral Docaror had two heads on her and was hardening his skin to steel, and he charged at her with a staff he had manifested — just as I had done before — and at some point during that charge the staff went a finger’s width off trajectory, just a finger, and Naral tripped over his own momentum, then over the staff, and ended up eating sand face-first.

Was this the same shy girl from before, the one I consoled at the rainbow river?

That was what I thought, but then Durania apologized. She apologized for real, ears red, and offered her hand to help him up. Naral didn’t take it, because Naral Docaror had just been knocked down by a girl who barely reached his shoulder and who could only alter the weight of small objects for one second, and there are humiliations one prefers to process alone.

Duralianne noted the result without looking up.

Nobody said anything. Nobody ever says anything about Durania Sandahll. She’s the kind of girl you greet in a hallway and ten steps later you don’t remember having greeted. Or seen.

After class, she approached me with her silver hair gathered any which way and asked if Garchi was eating well, because she’d heard that cats who lose their owners sometimes stop eating, and that she could bring sardines from the kitchen if needed.

I told her Garchi eats as if he were the king of Earolden. Although in a way he was one: he was the king of my room. In that place, I had to pet him a minimum of half an hour for him to feel satisfied, and I always had to bring him meat or fish. He also liked his litter box clean, so I had to change it daily. He was a demanding king, but... — I glanced at Lianza and smiled — I was already used to dealing with demanding nobles.

Durania laughed, then apologized for laughing, and left.

Something had changed in her. In a way, that girl was starting to make me uncomfortable, much like Layda Alaranne did with her enigmas.

And unfortunately, when I get these kinds of hunches, I’m usually right.