8th volume prologue
The New Year had passed, and the holidays were approaching. Many students were getting ready to go home to their parents. Some guilds planned to have a collective vacation, but we continued working at the Asura's cafe. As long as no one had dispersed yet, there were plenty of fans from our guilds here, and after defeating the imperial forces, their numbers had grown even larger. Even the presence of one of the guardians in our group didn't deter customers; on the contrary, it attracted a certain group of intellectual students who, with each visit, tried to extract secrets of imperial technologies from the girl. Now, Katrina was also participating in the work; her unusual gloves made some customers uneasy, but her charming face and refined manners compensated for all the shortcomings. Only occasionally would the princess step away to release a couple of discharges around the corner to extinguish her field again, and on her way, she bumped into the only gloomy worker sitting on empty crates in a corner.
"Krito? What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Pointless..." My heavy sigh could have crushed an entire building. "No one cares about me. Even when I approach a table just to hand out menus, they greet me with 'mmm, it's him.' So, I'm left hiding in this dark corner."
"Well, you said yourself that you don't mind if no one talks about your victory over the emperor. So, nothing has really changed."
I glanced around the café. "Yeah, it hasn't changed... It seems Seleria and Miriam have gained more fans, and in general, there are many more people now."
"Probably because it was easy to guess who took part in their battles," she replied.
"But it still hurts."
At that moment, a cheerful girl with curly golden hair appeared in the alley.
"Krito! There you are!" she exclaimed.
"Vina? You can drop the act when you're with us," I said.
"Haha, a true merchant should never drop the act until the client is out of sight. But I'm not here just for fun, I'm a customer too!"
"Oh, come on!"
"Go and see for yourself," she pointed to a distant table and stepped aside. I went to the customer with hope, but the girl at the table turned out to be someone I already knew.
"Oh... Mmm... Hello, Mister Krito."
"Hi, Ferris. Well, I already figured that no one else would approach me."
Sitting at the table was our familiar class president, who also happened to be the rector's granddaughter and the only one at the Academy who knew about my achievements.
"I came here for lunch, and I also wanted to discuss something on behalf of the rector," she said.