Chapter 231 : Chapter 231
Chapter 231
The students had a thought.
'This isn't the final exam?'
This project assignment was harder than any they'd ever undertaken.
And for good reason—the variables were endless.
"Oh, um. Right. There are monsters in our territory. But there might be something else too."
"What's the difference between monsters and those things?"
"Well, how do I put it? You know those things that've been showing up lately—the demon tribe or whatever."
"Do you mean demons?"
"Yeah yeah, whatever, that. Something like that. Anyway, they're around, so deal with it."
A noble tossing them at demons with zero information was actually the better outcome.
One team believed such rumors and went to investigate, only to find not demons but commoners who'd been bled dry by taxes and were preparing a coup.
They couldn't fight civilians, so they returned having failed the commission—and were accused of treason.
So they dealt with the noble who was shrieking about treason, under royal authority.
Akarind Academy had Princess Charlotte, and for exactly such occasions, they'd been granted the title of Royal Direct Inspectorate.
"S-so we're just being abandoned......?"
And so the commoners came weeping to them next.
They were, quite literally, nothing more than ordinary citizens.
You couldn't expect them to spontaneously launch a revolution and transition to a people's government just because their ruler had vanished.
Revolutions required a leader capable of leading them.
"Please become our leader......"
The students who heard that said:
"What? I—I'm just a Basic Class student, and you're telling me I'm secretly the hidden heir who vanquished the wicked noble of the Belmein Kingdom and inherited the territory? You want me to play pretend?"
"P-pretend?"
"I mean, like, a role-play...... aah! Senior! What do we do about this?"
So their senior, Bridget, handled it cleanly.
"Relocate to Akarind Academy."
"Wh-what? You're telling us to abandon our homeland? How could you......"
"Hm? It's an order."
"What?"
Bridget looked at them as if they were speaking nonsense.
"You just told me to inherit the territory. This is my first order as your lord."
"Oh......"
The Empire, which had expanded its colonies for generations.
House Chestra, which had risen to prominence by standing at the vanguard of its wars.
Bridget had been the one receiving heir training from that house.
He may have been the troublemaker youngest, but troublemakers always had a knack for this sort of aristocratic thing.
"Why would I tolerate subjects who disobey orders?"
The commoners could do nothing but weep at their new lord's tyranny and accept the relocation.
Their laments and tears continued all the way to Akarind Academy City.
"Of all places, a third-rate academy stuck at the edge of this kingdom......"
"Akarind—I do recall hearing the name! Wasn't it famous a very long time ago? But do students even go to such a place these days?"
"No, no......"
It was harsh enough to embarrass the Akarind Academy students listening.
Did these people not recognize the Akarind Academy uniforms they were wearing?
Back in the distant Empire, even street children were crying "I'm gonna go to Akarind!" and here these people were oblivious?
"Mama...... where are they taking us?"
"Don't worry, dear. These people, they're all good people......"
Even the sight of a mother cradling a three- or four-year-old, stroking the child's back with that desperate expression, was enough to make—
"......Are we actually doing the wrong thing?"
—even Bridget question himself.
Seeing that, Eleveth smacked the back of Bridget's head as if he'd lost his mind.
"Get a grip. You can't let these people guilt-trip you. You're supposed to be the mentor, aren't you?"
"......"
"This is exactly the problem with nobles. You need to think from the commoners' perspective. These are people who've lost their hometown, their livelihood, and their memories. You think sugarcoating is going to work on them?"
"Then......"
"Show them. People like me—ignorant types—don't believe anything until they see it."
From that point on, the people of the Belmein Kingdom's territories began receiving three proper meals a day along with full supplies.
"Th-this is meat broth?"
"Wait, is it really okay for us to have this? This is the finest fur—the kind only mercenary lords use......"
Akarind Academy was wealthy.
It received enormous donations from nobles and Auditors, and had the Goldline Merchant Guild's full backing.
Above all, Cassian's money was extraordinary.
His textbooks were sold to swordsmen across the entire world.
Avril had, despite everything, handled the accounting cleanly, and Cassian had funneled all the profits back into Akarind Academy's development.
On top of that, the fortune Sihan had accumulated over a lifetime was also invested.
He was a 6th-circle Alchemist, no less.
The wealth he'd amassed from covertly trading minerals and Artifacts across the globe was staggering.
And money wasn't everything.
"Wh-what is this?"
"Insert the pipe into the lake water and turn this mechanism here. It automatically purifies the lake water so you can drink warm water without stomach trouble."
"But this is......"
"You said your child was ill? This is a powdered medicine made from refined fever-reducing herbs. Mix one spoonful into water and give it twice a day, morning and evening. That should do it."
Thanks to Eleveth's hands-on leadership, the entire populace's quality of life skyrocketed.
They ate better, slept better, and received better medical care than they ever had back home.
Not just a feeling—it was fact.
"This place called Akarind Academy...... perhaps it can be trusted after all......"
Scenes like this were unfolding across the Belmein Kingdom.
Of course, not everything went smoothly.
***
Hati blew a sharp breath through his nose.
Around him lay the scattered corpses of an Ogre pack.
"It's done."
A Graduation Class student approached, exhaustion written across his face.
"This is insane. An Ogre pack, in a backwater like this......"
"Monsters displaced by the demons."
Hati turned his gaze toward the border between the Empire and Aislard.
Neither nation had the capacity to deal with the demons spawning within their borders.
The Empire was fractured, and its major military organizations had dissolved.
The Magic Tower barely remained, but there was no telling what Ban had turned it into.
The Underground Magic Tower had been the root cause of all this from the start, and a demon masquerading as a human was hiding within the Lionheart Knights.
The Wolf King had been sweeping through the Empire, hunting demons, but even his reach was limited to certain regions.
In the end, demon and monster extermination within the Empire fell to each region's private military forces.
In the meantime, wandering monsters had consolidated like this.
"Even so, large-type monsters forming packs...... I've never heard of that."
"It's not normal."
A single one of these large-type monsters could reduce a rural territory to rubble.
And twenty of them had been massed together.
Even Aura-wielding students and experienced knights and mercenaries had struggled mightily.
Without Hati, an Expert-level mercenary, the group could easily have been wiped out.
"......This isn't the end, is it."
The students' gazes were heavy.
They didn't look like people who'd just accomplished a historic feat.
"Let's go see the lord."
Hati led the students back to the territorial lord.
"Oh, oh. You dealt with them?"
The lord looked no different from his own subjects.
Both cheeks were gaunt, his skin rough from hardship.
A sunken scar marked one cheek, and his left arm barely moved due to lingering damage.
His armor and cloak were worn ragged from countless battles.
"But I'm sorry. Another pack of yetis has come down from the east. From the Aislard side......"
"My lord."
Hati opened his mouth, his expression bitter.
"Defending this territory any longer ain't possible. This land's run its course. You know that."
"B-but......"
"We can clear out a good number of monsters for you. But once we leave? You plan to let every soul here starve to death?"
"Y-you're mercenaries. I'll hire you! I'll sell my castle if I have to—"
"That won't be enough."
Hati cut the lord's words short with cold precision.
He had no choice.
The lord's unpretentious devotion to his people.
That devotion was the very reason this was already their twelfth monster extermination.
"Even we—who came here with no supply worries—are barely keeping up with the monsters. And with the land this ravaged, do you think next year's harvest is even possible?"
The more they fought, the more the territory would deteriorate.
And the worse it got, the more this place would become somewhere people survived but didn't live.
Now was the time to make a bold decision and leave.
"N-no!"
"My lord."
"W-we'd survive, sure! But if we abandon this place, who stops the monsters pouring down from the Empire and Aislard?! I am a Margrave! Even if I die here, I must hold this line!"
Even his reason for refusing to leave wasn't personal ambition.
As he said—if the people here, who served as the buffer, all disappeared.
The swarms of large-type monsters would overrun the Belmein Kingdom in no time.
"......The capital will send people on a regular basis."
"Gkh......"
That was all Hati could offer.
If the Firestorm Mercenary Guild had been with him, he could have led forces deep into the Empire or even into Aislard proper for a suppression campaign.
But right now, he had twenty students to protect.
"Chief of Security......"
Even the students watched Hati with pained expressions.
Moved by the lord's sense of duty, they wanted to help however they could.
"Let's go."
Hati forced himself to look away from their feelings and turned around.
The students kept glancing back, again and again, memorizing the lord and his territory.
The lord couldn't bring himself to ask for more. He stood there with a hollow expression, gazing up at the sky.
"......This is bullshit."
An Imperial-born noble student spat on the ground.
"Let's go."
Beside him, a student from the Kingdom of Namress placed a hand on his shoulder.
"We can come back."
"Come back?"
"When finals are over, it's break."
He faced forward and walked.
"I've got nowhere to go during break anyway. I'll just stay here. Two months or so."
"The hell. You can't even swing a sword as well as me......"
But his eyes weren't looking ahead toward Akarind Academy—they were fixed on the territory behind them.
Behind him, the Imperial student sighed.
"Then I'm coming too. If you die out here, who's gonna rein in my temper?"
"Won't your family have something to say?"
"I'll tell them to deal with it. They won't even come to Akarind no matter what I say. But if their son tells them he's going to die out here, maybe that'll scare them enough to come running."
"Then they'll see the monsters and demons and lose their minds."
"And if that gets them to come to Akarind, I'd be grateful."
Before the assignment had begun.
The deep rift of emotion that had existed between them was completely gone.