Chapter 89

Chapter : 89

There were several reasons Navier and Kartea’s engagement ceremony was terrifyingly fast.

The Emperor’s health was poor, and Kartea’s consideration for the stress Navier would suffer until the engagement ceremony also had an effect.

Even if the Loveone Family’s power had grown somewhat over the past several decades, it could not compare to the small number of nobles and Imperial Family members who wielded power at the center. Since Loveone had become a family that would produce an Empress in a single leap, people would attach themselves from all directions, and attacks would come as well.

Kartea seemed to have paid attention to the fact that Navier would suffer quite a bit from such things, even if she did not reveal it. After the engagement ceremony, most nobles and Imperial Family members would quiet down, after all.

I returned to the dormitory with the confectionery set Navier had given me as a gift, looked at my book, and chewed on the confections. Navier had hit my tastes extremely well.

If not, perhaps they were so expensive that anyone would find them delicious.

Each of the various confections was incredible. I tried to enjoy the taste of the confections and prepare for the Final Exams, but the letters would not enter my eyes. I began to think back on all the things that had happened.

How does everything I do turn out this well?

When I thought back on the past few months, not a single thing had failed to go my way.

Bishot had suddenly changed her mind and attacked me, but even that had ultimately worked out in my favor.

If Bishot had continued staying quiet, things would have been peaceful, but my anxiety would probably have grown deep down. Since I would not have known when she might change, I would have spent my time nervously waiting for that moment.

Compared to that, this was better.

By directly resolving each debt and grudge between us, I had reduced the variables.

Crunch.

As I chewed one more confection, I wished things would remain like this for a few more months. No, I did not even need months.

I would be satisfied if I could resolve just a few more of the debts and grudges between Bishot and me.

---

Before entering the Final Exams room, I checked the contents one last time.

The goal I had set while preparing for the exams was to land somewhere around the middle, but no matter how I looked at it, that seemed difficult. To even reach the middle, I had to get at least half right on the exam.

If most of the students attending the class were nobles, it would have been fine even if my score was somewhat lower than half, but classes in the Swordsmanship Department were different. Since most of the students were commoners, everyone cared about exam grades. The grades they received here affected their futures.

Since my Midterm Exams score had been close to zero, I needed a score close to perfect on the Final Exams just to reach half, but I had no confidence at all.

With the feeling of, What does it matter if I ruin it? I entered the exam room and solved the problems. The result was exactly as expected. Seeing two or three unfamiliar questions in every subject, I seemed to have ruined it.

It is fine. What can I do about things I already got wrong?

I shook it off and returned to the dormitory, then slept deeply.

---

And the next morning.

Navier’s engagement ceremony arrived. Thanks to Navier’s wish and Kartea’s insistence, their engagement ceremony took place in the Academy’s plaza. Before the engagement ceremony was held, I went out to the plaza to watch.

The plaza was magnificent.

It had been decorated like the festival where Navier had gifted Kartea flowers, but even more than that. That day, because it had been under the name of a festival, the entire Academy had been decorated, while today, all that wealth had been poured into the plaza alone. Everywhere that entered my field of vision in the plaza was lined with flowers of every color.

Engagement was the act of promising marriage.

It was not even the actual wedding, yet seeing them spend money like this made my eyes spin over what they would do for the wedding. The wedding would be held at the Imperial Palace, so were they going to cover the Imperial Palace in flowers?

That was when I had been astonished for a while. Dozens of sturdy men holding staves walked in this direction. Judging by the one-time entry passes attached to their chests, which had been created after Agares was attacked, they were not Academy students.

They raised their staves and pointed at the sky. A staff assisted a mage in using magic above their own level, but since they were extremely expensive items, they were not easy to see. Each of them stretched his staff toward the sky and chanted a spell.

What is this?

What are they trying to do?

As I waited for a moment with anticipation, pure white bullets flew from the tips of their staves. The bullets each of them had fired merged into one, combined their size, and accelerated. The bullet struck the clouds as it was. Then the clouds disappeared entirely.

Wow.

So that is what they came to do.

The sky was indeed full of clouds. But judging by how white they were, I had thought it would at least not rain. Had that made them uneasy?

No, perhaps they had been dissatisfied that the sunlight was not blazing. The Empire worshiped the sun god, and sunlight was the sun god’s blessing, so perhaps they wanted to receive as much of that blessing as possible.

Since today was a special day, the sunlight probably had to blaze especially brightly.

The mages went straight toward the entrance and tore off the one-time entry passes attached to their chests. Since they had come this far, one might think they would stay and watch the engagement ceremony, but the fact that they left just like that was strange in its own way.

They really came all the way here just to do that.

Creating a staff-shaped tool rather than a wand required truly enormous effort and expensive resources, so even in the Magic Department, only people around the level of professors owned them.

Seeing that every mage who visited the Academy carried a staff-shaped magical tool, they must have been people recognized anywhere, yet they had all come here just to erase clouds.

Ugh.

Incredible.

The scale is amazing.

I admired the fact that someone at the level of the Crown Prince could do such things.

---

No matter what anyone said, the protagonist of the engagement ceremony was Navier.

Raphael stopped walking while looking for Navier. Seeing Navier from a distance, he felt as though her face had been replaced. During the previous festival, she had already pulled off terrifying makeup, but today surpassed even that. She must have paid double.

She was facing off with a woman. The woman’s age was somewhere between her early thirties and late fifties. Judging by her clothes and accessories, she was the wife of a named noble family.

‘Ah, I know who that is.’

She was Navier’s birth mother. Rather than appearing directly in the original, she had only been mentioned in descriptions. She was clearly taller than Navier, and her eyes were sharp. She had the sort of face that made you want to lower your gaze if you met her eyes while working a part-time job.

Navier and her birth mother spoke warmly. Their expressions were bright as well.

Yet watching from a distance made Raphael’s body tense for no reason.

In the middle of their conversation, Navier slapped away her birth mother’s hand when she tried to stroke Navier’s hair. The atmosphere froze for an instant, but as though they had agreed on it in advance, both of them laughed at the same time.

Navier’s voice as she made an excuse was loud enough to be heard from here.

“It is because I was worried my hair ornament might be ruined. Haha. Everyone worked so hard to style it, so it would be a shame, would it not?”

At Navier’s tone, which demanded agreement, her birth mother nodded as though she understood, said a few more things, then moved away.

Raphael sensed that if he somehow became entangled with Navier’s birth mother, it would be extremely tiring, so he waited for a long while before going to find Navier.

When Navier’s eyes met Raphael’s, she smiled a little more comfortably.

“How do you feel?”

“Good. Very good. So good that even if I told you how happy I am, you would not understand.”

Raphael knew Navier’s childhood. That made him feel pointlessly emotional alongside her.

“Was the person you just spoke with your mother?”

“Probably.”

“What do you mean, probably?”

“Hmm... She treated me so coldly when I was young, yet she forced herself to show her face on a day like this. It made me wonder whether I might be an adopted child. She may not be my mother, but I cannot lie, so it is hard to answer that she is.”

Navier spoke in a cheerful tone, putting force into each word. It seemed she had many things piled up inside her.

“What about your father?”

“I wonder. If he wants to benefit from me, he should show himself well on a day like this at least, but there is no word from him. Perhaps because it is not the actual wedding, moving his precious body must have been uncomfortable for him.”

“It is a good day, is it not?”

“Yes! It is a very good day. That is why I am in such a good mood too.”

It would not be good to touch this any further. To change the subject, Raphael brought up something else.

“Right, do you remember that? You said His Highness the Crown Prince helped you.”

“Ah, I forgot to tell you. How Lord Kartea helped me, I mean.”

“What happened?”

Navier’s expression twitched again. She recalled what had happened that day. The Emperor had summoned Kartea and Navier and spoken with them.

He explained why taking a young lady with somewhat weak authority as Empress was difficult, what had to be endured, and so on.

Each time a word fell from the Emperor’s mouth, Navier felt as though one organ after another was being torn apart. She also worried that the effort and suffering she had endured until now would all come to nothing.

She resented her parents.

She was angry that they had pushed her to dream an absurd dream and endure the pain needed to achieve that dream, yet now, after she had come this far, they were dragging her down.

She tried to control her emotions.

If she showed weakness here, she would surely leave a bad impression on the Emperor, so she forcibly held back her tears. What should she do? What did she have to do, what did she have to say, to plant goodwill in the Emperor?

It was then.

Kartea took Navier’s hand and spoke into her ear.

‘If moving forward without you is the easy path, then I will gladly choose the difficult one.’

He repeated those exact words to the Emperor and received the Emperor’s permission.

While telling Raphael about that day, Navier bit her lower lip hard.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

She had done it. She had achieved it. The days she had spent from childhood until now with only one goal in mind had held meaning.

“I am all right. I am just happy. I am crying because I am happy. You do not need to worry.”

“No, that is not what I meant. Your makeup.”

“Ahh... I handled it with magic in advance. If I cried, it was obvious it would be ruined anyway. And it was obvious I would cry too.”

Raphael admired that there truly was something for everything.