Chapter 24

Chapter : 24

The moment Navier saw me, she began making a tremendous fuss.

“His Highness the Crown Prince really, truly came. I heard he hadn’t attended a ball in years, so how did this happen? And how did you know about it in advance?”

“Yes, yes, I get that you’re excited, so slow down a little.”

Before I saw Navier, there had been quite a few things I needed to confirm. First of all, I had been doubtful whether she would actually be able to go through with that stunt at the ball.

Unless someone had skin thicker than iron, they would have given up halfway through from worrying about the eyes around them.

Could she really keep it up for hours? And not merely do it, but do it so earnestly that it did not look like an act?

Before I met her at the Academy, I had intended to ask outright whether she had done it properly, but it no longer seemed necessary.

Her face was blooming with delight.

It was the smile of a child proudly showing off praise she had received at school.

She must have realized that she had really pulled it off.

I could tell it all just from looking at her face. Even so, Navier said,

“I think I did it properly, just the way we agreed. I didn’t make any mistakes. I dressed simply, went in, and read my book very diligently.”

“You dressed simply? Didn’t you buy a whole new dress?”

“Well, it’s not as though I’d ever bought clothes meant for dressing simply before. Ah, but anyway, how did you know? I didn’t know His Highness the Crown Prince would appear at the ball that day either.”

I don’t know. I don’t really remember.

There had been a reason the Crown Prince showed up at the ball that day.

I had simply forgotten because it was some trivial justification my sister had forced in to keep the plot moving.

“I just happened to overhear it in passing.”

“Ah, I see.”

Navier made no attempt to hide that she did not believe me, but she let it go anyway. Then she started talking about what had happened yesterday.

“Can you imagine how mortified I was? As I opened that book, I thought over and over that I would rather die. Even if nobody came over and asked why I was behaving like that there, everyone must have been criticizing me in their heads, weren’t they?”

Smack.

Navier clapped her hands as though she had realized something, then widened her eyes.

“Ah. Everyone must be talking badly about me behind my back today, right? I mean, I knew that might happen, but it still stings. I’ve spent so long carefully managing my reputation.”

“Would that many of them really go that far?”

“Of course they would.”

Navier knit her brows and sighed.

“People always like a story more the more provocative it is. I’ve always lived so cleanly, so carefully managing myself, and then suddenly I’m the one making a scene. The aftermath is bound to be bigger than if an ordinary young lady had done it.”

“Ah.”

When I had lured Navier into this plan, that part hadn’t even crossed my mind.

I had looked only at my own personal benefit. I had vaguely assumed that, since it was something that would benefit Navier as well, she wouldn’t reject it.

But it hadn’t been only that.

Navier had gone into this carrying a burden of her own.

Then all the more reason to make it succeed.

“So then, what I did was…”

Each sentence Navier spoke opened up some fresh detail I could have picked apart, but it looked as though if I started interrogating her one by one, I would be there all night, so I forced myself to hold back.

I listened in silence as she told the story, and the summary of it was basically this:

It worked.

Things had gone well.

“You know this isn’t the end of it, right?”

“Of course. I even studied until my nose bled last night.”

“You?”

I wasn’t trying to look down on Navier.

It was just that the image didn’t fit at all. Navier studying was hard enough to imagine, and Navier studying so hard she got a nosebleed was harder still.

At my doubt, Navier frowned and said,

“I suppose there’s no point in saying I worked hard here. I’ll show you with my grades.”

“All right. I’ll trust you.”

“Have a good day today as well. I should go now. I have studying to do.”

---

Time flew by like an arrow, and before I knew it, the exams were already at my doorstep.

As for me, I didn’t feel the need to put real effort into doing well on something like this, so I took it half-heartedly.

A few days before the exam, some instinct deeply carved into my soul kicked in and made me pour in a fair amount of energy, but not everything I had.

The exams were meaningless, yes, but coming in last was another matter. More than anything, it would bother me.

Today was the exam for Introduction to Giant Beast Hunting.

All I had done was skim through a single book, but it was the subject I felt most confident in.

Didn’t people always say that you performed better at things you found interesting and enjoyable?

I was confident that nobody could beat me when it came to this, having once thrown hours of my life into the trash swearing I would kill those monsters in a game no matter what.

Even now, I could vividly remember those days. I had definitely dodged, and yet somehow I still got hit. I had definitely pressed the button, and yet nothing happened. I had definitely landed the attack, and yet somehow it missed. My sister and I had cursed that garbage game together countless times.

On the day of the exam, as I looked over the students still cramming from summary sheets even inside the exam room, I was waiting for the test to begin when Leo came through the door and sat beside me. As he opened his bag, he said,

“Ugh, I thought I was going to die yesterday. I stayed up all night looking over this.”

“It’s only an elective. It’s not such an important subject, is it? Don’t wear yourself out. Take it easy.”

“I’d like to do that too. I’d love to take it easy, but I’ve no idea what’s going to happen after graduation, so I need to do well in whatever I can. Especially for people like us. Most of the others hate reading books, so having strong elective grades actually helps.”

“What do you want to do after graduation?”

Leo hesitated for a moment. He scratched the back of his head with his right hand, then said,

“Well, first I suppose I need to become a knight.”

“In which knight order?”

Everyone had heard, often enough to be sick of it, that dreams should be clear and concrete. Since I had time to kill, I questioned Leo more deeply.

“This may sound arrogant, but I don’t want to belong to any one place. I want to wander under my own name and meet strong people.”

“A wandering knight?”

“Haha, well, something like that.”

After chatting briefly with Leo, the instructor entered the exam hall.

He checked the clock, then began handing out the exam papers from the front row onward.

The moment I saw the first question, I snickered inwardly.

Chaurus.

It was a parody of the monster from the game that had tormented me so much. Based on the dozens of times I had hunted that bastard, I started filling in the answer sheet. First, you had to strip away the outer hide that ignored all attacks below a certain grade.

To do that, you needed either a heavy sword type with a “Severing” property, or a gun with a “Piercing” effect fired repeatedly into the same point.

But this was reality.

So instead, I translated those into sword aura and magic and packed the answer sheet tightly.

A few other beasts appeared as questions after that, but every last one of them was familiar.

“Huaaaahm.”

Certain I had scored full marks, I finished the exam and walked out.

Aside from Introduction to Giant Beast Hunting, the other subjects had probably landed somewhere around average.

At least I had done better than half.

That concluded the written exams, and the only thing left was the practical.

As befitted an exam for the Swordsmanship Department, the students were naturally made to spar one another and ranked by the results.

I approached Katarina, who was standing in front of the exam grounds with her arms crossed and one leg bouncing.

“What is it?”

“I have something to tell you. If you lose even once, you’re dead.”

“Isn’t it possible to lose once in a while?”

“No. Not if you fight properly. Not if you don’t get careless.”

“Ah. Yes.”

Under Katarina’s encouragement, I fought ten matches in a row throughout the entire day.

Because it was a simplified sparring format that ended the moment either side landed one valid strike, each bout was over within five minutes.

Fortunately, I won all ten and escaped being killed by Katarina.

She had been right.

There really was a clear difference in level. Against the same opponents, I felt certain now that I could fight them a hundred times and win a hundred times.

“You’re impressive.”

By coincidence, my last opponent in the practical exam turned out to be Leo.

I beat him without crossing blades even once.

Without trying to deal with my sword strike at all, Leo aimed for a simultaneous hit and slashed for my throat. We both swung in opposite directions toward each other’s necks, but my blade arrived first.

Leo had fought ten matches as well, and he won eight of them.

He lost once to me, and once to some random nobody.

That loss had been unexpected.

“You would’ve won if you’d fought normally the way you used to, so why did you do that?”

“It wasn’t a spar where losing meant death, was it? There was something I wanted to try. In the end, I did lose, but I feel as though I understood something.”

“Good.”

As for my own exam results, I did not really care one way or another.

The one I was anxious about was Navier.

The moment the swordsmanship practical ended, I went to find her.

“Ah. You came?”

Her face looked vaguely dazed. Dark circles lay thick beneath her eyes, and her hair was more disheveled than usual.

“Did it go well?”

“At times like this, shouldn’t you ask whether I’m all right first?”

“Did you miss a lot?”

“No.”

Navier smiled brightly and said,

“I didn’t miss anything. I got everything right.”

I swallowed hard at her claim that she had not gotten a single question wrong.

At first I thought she must have completely ruined the exam and started babbling nonsense. Or else perhaps she felt guilty for ruining the plan and was lying to me out of shame.

I only believed her after the grade report came out.

Navier had truly received perfect scores.

In every subject.

“That’s impressive.”

“I told you I would show you with my grades. Did you not believe me?”

“I thought you might do well, but I didn’t expect this much.”

“Ahem.”

“You did great. You’re amazing.”

Navier grinned.

“So what’s the next plan? What are we doing this time?”

“Wait a little. I’ll look into it properly.”

“Yes, understood. I’ll also see whether there’s anything I can do.”

“Right.”

---

I had thought that would be the end of it after my short conversation with Navier about the exams.

At the Academy, exams were about that significant for nobles who already had territories to inherit.

“Unexpected.”

It was Agares speaking to me. The sharp glare he had been wearing the whole time was gone, and his eyes had curved slightly. It couldn’t be, of course, but he almost looked pleased.

“What was?”

“I checked the exam results. Full marks. I even went to ask the professor whether some mistake had been made. He praised you. Said you used methods for dealing with them that even they hadn’t thought of.”

“Ah.”

It was not because I wanted to boast that I was an outstanding student.

And it was not because I wanted to attract unnecessary attention.

It was simply because I hadn’t studied. To write the ideal answers the professors wanted, I would have had to read and memorize too much.

At that point, even if it made me stand out a bit, I had decided it was better to use knowledge I already had.

“I looked up where your territory lies. Quite close to the capital, isn’t it? That’s an environment where you would never encounter monsters, let alone large ones. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes. Well, it is fairly peaceful around there.”

Agares spoke in a tone full of certainty.

“If you had scored full marks in every subject, then I might have thought you were merely an unlikely diligent student, but since that isn’t the case, then the conclusion is obvious.”

“What conclusion?”

“The subjugation of the demons.”

Agares’s eyes gleamed.

“Those filthy, loathsome creatures covet the Empire’s lands. Someday they must be exterminated without fail. You think so too, don’t you? Isn’t that why you took the giant beast course? As preparation?”

“What?”

“I have no intention of being satisfied as the lord of a territory. I’m going to the battlefield. In my generation, I’ll make sure those vile demons are wiped out.”

“Ah, I see. That’s quite an impressive resolve.”

I humored him with something agreeable, since I already knew all this.

Then Agares, carried away by his own excitement, went on and on like an engineering student who had finally found a topic he knew something about.

“You think so too, don’t you? That if the time comes, you mean to destroy them as well?”

“What?”

That wasn’t it at all.

I took Introduction to Giant Beast Hunting for one reason only: because it was easy.

Because while everyone else sweated blood studying, I could rest comfortably and still get a good grade. I couldn’t care less about demons. I’d rather worry about my own survival than concern myself with that sort of thing.

“No. I respect Lord Agares’s determination to exterminate the demons, but I have no intention of joining in.”

“You mean that sincerely?”

I corrected the misunderstanding. These things had a way of snowballing over time, and once something distorted got rolling, it became terribly difficult to straighten it out later.

“I have no interest in demons. It’s hard enough just making sure I can feed myself. And fighting things like that? Even less so. I hate fighting. All the more so if it means I might get hurt.”

“Hmph.”

At my protest, Agares snorted, then burst out laughing, clutching his stomach. Every time he laughed, his pure white fur cloak shook.

“Ha ha ha. Do you think I’m fool enough to believe that? Yes, yes, I know. This isn’t the kind of thing one says openly in a place like this. Fine. So that’s how it is, then.”

Pat. Pat.

Agares slapped my shoulder. That all-knowing expression on his face, and the gesture that seemed to imply he understood everything, irritated me.

So, just to needle him a little, I pointed with my index finger at the pure white fur draped around him.

“That’s wolf hide, isn’t it?”

At my sudden remark, Agares tilted his head. I continued.

“I heard white wolves symbolize the North. That fur cloak is probably made of wolf hide too, isn’t it? Doesn’t that seem strange? I’ve heard people in the North raise wolves almost like dogs. Wolves are like friends to them.”

“So what of it?”

“Well, then isn’t it rather cruel of you, Lord Agares, to kill those wolves and make a fur cloak out of them?”

“I suppose, put that way, one might think so.”

The fact that he indulged even this nonsense of mine so calmly made it seem as though he really was in a remarkably good mood.

Why?