[Attack]
As the children gathered, the murmur in the grand auditorium grew louder.
In one corner, I quietly looked over the children.
“You need to decide soon.”
Hans urged me from beside me.
“Decide what?”
“The punishment.”
Hans’s eyes were on Griam’s group.
“I am grateful that you prevented a major disturbance, but a wrong is still a wrong.”
“We agreed that the academy would impose a light disciplinary punishment after it opens.”
“That was something the academy naturally had to do. At the level of the nobility, it is different.”
Hans’s voice was firm.
“We found out why their families gave those instructions.”
Over the past few days, while I worked to preserve peace at the academy, Hans had been very busy too.
From tracking those who had planted the life force sphere beneath the academy to watching the families of Griam’s group.
I heard that Special Division 4 had not been enough, so they had received support from other divisions as well.
“Why did they do it? Those people call themselves nobles, so they could not have done it simply because they were afraid, could they?”
The fall of Skadivia and its absorption into the Afernia Empire.
It was natural that nobles from Skadivia would have less room to stand.
But if fear alone had motivated them to plan this, they had nothing to gain from it.
“There may be some truth to that reason as well.”
“Really?”
“Yes. As a result of watching the houses, we confirmed that they were connected to people called the Skadivian Resistance.”
They were people seeking the restoration of the Skadivian royal house.
Put that way, they sounded like patriots trying to raise a fallen nation again.
But they were nothing of the sort.
The Skadivian royal house had joined hands with demonfolk, provided the souls of knights and soldiers, and obtained biological weapons called enhanced soldiers.
I was in favor of wiping out those bastards.
In favor, but....
“Do the children know? That their families are connected to the Skadivian Resistance?”
“Yes. It was written in the letters.”
“Do they know what the Skadivian royal house did after joining hands with demonfolk?”
“...Circumstantially, they seemed not to know.”
Of course, their families had hidden it.
They could not tell their children, ‘We joined hands with demonfolk who ravage human souls.’
It had been the same when we attacked Skadivia years ago.
The royal bastards had denied knowing anything even as enhanced soldiers openly walked around the palace.
Only after the Teruna Theocracy intervened did they try to cut people loose by calling it the deviation of a few.
And Her Majesty the Empress had given those bastards a proper lesson.
“Were you not expecting an internal whistleblower?”
Hans was right.
I was waiting for an internal whistleblower.
A student who would look back on their actions and admit they were wrong.
If even one such student appeared, I felt that I could know my efforts had not been in vain.
“Why are you working so hard?”
“Good grief. You complain even when I work hard.”
“You are not in a position to say that, considering how you constantly say everything is troublesome.”
He had hit the mark, so I had nothing to say.
“And education was not why you came to the academy.”
That was true too.
I had come to the academy because of the Main Quest.
More precisely, I had come to earn MP through the Main Quest and return to Earth.
Putting aside the fact that Teruna had threatened me, of course.
But Hans did not know why I had come to the academy.
The only thing he knew was that I had been looking for a student named Peris.
From Hans’s perspective, watching at my side, he must have wondered what kind of person I was.
I had come looking for one student, yet I was devoting myself to educating children.
“As you know, some have already crossed the line. If not for your response, a problem would have already occurred.”
“......”
“Special Division 4 has already finished preparing.”
“All right. Then it cannot be helped.”
I knew I was being unreasonable.
The moment they tried direct harassment, they had crossed the line.
It was not a matter of degree.
In the end, the fact that they had carried it out was the problem.
So I lowered my head and could not stop Hans as he left.
And shortly after—
“Teaching Assistant!”
Jerome, the large student who acted as Griam’s group’s enforcer, hurried over to me.
***
“......”
“......”
The children gathered in Griam’s room every day.
At first, they had been so busy talking about this and that that the room had been quite noisy.
But now all the children gathered in Griam’s room had their mouths shut.
They had gathered on their families’ orders, but distrust had sprouted inside the group.
The children caught by the teaching assistant accused Griam, and Griam repeatedly cut them loose by claiming he had nothing to do with it.
As that happened over and over, the children’s eyes held not only distrust, but hatred when they looked at one another.
As the silence continued, one child stepped forward.
“I think this is as far as I go.”
He was a boy from a baronial family in a frontier region of the Skadivia Kingdom.
Though he belonged to a baronial family, his house came from great wealth.
Now, the power of money was stronger than the authority of Skadivian nobles.
“From now on, I’ll somehow manage on my own. If I stay here, I feel like I’ll get stabbed in the back.”
Once that boy left, the other children departed in a rush.
Naturally, Griam’s face twisted horribly. He had naturally taken on the role of leader.
That left only Griam and Jerome in the room.
“You’re not leaving?”
“I want to hear what you are going to do.”
Jerome looked straight at Griam.
“What do you mean, what am I going to do?”
“The instruction from our families.”
Jerome’s expression had hardened as much as it could.
“The instruction to lure an elf or spirit into the western forest and make them disappear. Are you really going to do it?”
At Jerome’s question, Griam shouted.
“Then what do you want me to do?! They told me to do it!”
“Even if your family ordered it, it has crossed the line by far. It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous? I’m the one in danger right now! At this rate, my younger sibling will take away my place as heir!”
“It’ll be the same even if something goes wrong. Your family will say you acted alone and cut you loose.”
Griam shut his mouth at Jerome’s words.
“Just as you did.”
“......”
“So let us stop now.”
But Jerome’s words had the opposite effect.
“You’re the third son! You’re a promising student in the Knight Department! You can say that because you can become a knight and live independently!”
Griam’s eyes flashed with dangerous light.
It was closer to madness than pressure, enough to make Jerome flinch and take a step back.
“If you are not going to help, mind your own business.”
“Stopping here would be for your—”
“If you are just going to say that, get out! We would not have reached this point if you had done things properly in the first place!”
Griam looked around the room as though seeking something to swing.
Then he reached for a protective dagger.
“It could have ended with only spreading a few rumors! It’s because all of you were not active enough! If only you had all done things properly, we wouldn’t be in this situation!”
At the sight of Griam seeming half out of his mind, Jerome hurried out of the room.
He knew that staying there would help neither himself nor Griam.
‘I should visit him again after he calms down. We have to attend the final Exchange Meeting lecture anyway.’
Jerome thought that.
But even that did not go as Jerome wished.
“......?”
When Jerome headed toward the grand auditorium, where the final Exchange Meeting lecture was underway, after getting ready late—
“Griam?”
Beyond the garden, outside the corridor window, he saw Griam.
Griam was climbing into a carriage with an elf named Forein.
No matter how he thought about it, it was strange.
Griam hated elves and spirits.
There was no way he would act with one.
The carriage was not even heading toward the grand auditorium.
It was heading for the west gate, out of the academy, instead.
And hanging at Griam’s waist as he boarded the carriage was the dagger he had picked up in the room.
“You idiot....!”
Jerome started to run outside, then hesitated.
Even if he ran now, it would be hard to catch the carriage.
Besides, the carriage bore the crest of the Ganiv Family, Griam’s house.
If Forein disappeared like that, the family would be suspected.
‘Are they planning to abandon Griam entirely?’
The way to escape suspicion would be for the family’s eldest son to disappear or die along with Forein.
Jerome sensed danger and hurried toward the grand auditorium.
‘Someone who can help...!’
Jerome looked around, then stopped.
Would anyone believe him if he grabbed any professor and told them?
Griam had kidnapped Forein. He did not know what would happen, so they needed to chase the carriage that had left through the west gate immediately.
How many people would believe him if he said that?
Three out of ten would not believe him, and six would first verify whether it was true.
Jerome needed one person who knew his circumstances and would believe him.
“Lewis. Teaching Assistant Lewis.”
Jerome thought of Lewis, who had kept interfering with them over the past few days.
“Hey. Do you know where Teaching Assistant Lewis is? He belongs to Professor Kanibara’s office. He has a young, sly face and black hair....”
Jerome asked every student he saw if they knew where Lewis was.
But the children gathered in the grand auditorium that day were there for the final Exchange Meeting lecture.
There were as many as ten thousand students, and there were no small number of faculty members and assistants either.
Finding Lewis immediately among them was very difficult.
“I saw him earlier. He went behind the podium with that slit-eyed knight.”
The student with a nameplate that read [Peris] said that.
He was a student Jerome had never seen at the academy over the past two months.
If Jerome had seen that unusual white-haired, beautiful young boy even once, he would have remembered him.
But that was not important right now.
“Thank you!”
Jerome hurried through the crowd toward the place Peris had indicated.
Hoping that Lewis would believe him.
***
Forein sat in a carriage with Griam, heading for the western forest of Gloria City.
“Is it true that you found this plant there?”
“Yes. I heard it was obtained completely by chance. I brought it to apologize, but I was rough, wasn’t I? I’m sorry.”
With a false smile, Griam apologized to Forein.
“No. You said humans do not know how to handle plants unless they are farmers or herbalists.”
Forein smiled gently and shook their head.
Watching that, Griam felt inwardly relieved.
When he had first spoken to Forein, Forein had been very wary of him.
But that wariness melted away like snow as soon as he showed the Silver Evening Primrose sent by his family.
“This Silver Evening Primrose is an endangered species even in Yggdrasil. It needs to receive plenty of moonlight for at least three hundred days of the year to grow well, but Yggdrasil’s forest is so dense....”
Forein’s entire mind was fixed on the Silver Evening Primrose in their hands.
“The weather is cold, so drink this at least. It is flower tea.”
“The fragrance is unique, but it tastes good! Thank you! I thought you hated elves.”
“I misunderstood elves too. I am sorry about that.”
There was no sincerity in Griam’s expression as he apologized.
But Forein was so excited to find a colony of Silver Evening Primroses that they did not look at his expression.
The carriage ran out of the city and arrived at the entrance to the western forest.
“Young Master. The carriage cannot travel any farther from here.”
“I know. I’ll walk. I know the location.”
“I will help you so that you do not get lost in the forest!”
When Forein said that brightly, the Ganiv Family’s servant smiled and bowed.
“Yes. Then this humble servant will guard the carriage here.”
“Let us go quickly!”
Forein was the one urging Griam on instead.
But Griam felt a faint unease and looked back at the servant.
“Is there something you wish me to do?”
When the servant asked in confusion, Griam shook his head.
“No. I’ll be back.”
“Yes.”
In the end, Griam could not ask about the suspicion he held in his heart, and he entered the forest with Forein.
There was a faint path through the forest as well.
But it only reached the entrance.
After they walked for around thirty minutes, their surroundings gradually began to darken.
Dense trees blocked the sunlight.
“From here, we need to go where there is no path.”
“I heard that humans get lost easily in forests. How did they go so deep?”
“I heard they deliberately went where no one had stepped to gather herbs.”
“Ah.”
Forein nodded.
“That is why there are faint traces. They continue ahead. We just need to follow them, right?”
Griam nodded without thinking.
‘The Silver Evening Primrose was simply sent by my family.... Who went ahead of us?’
He was uneasy.
But Griam did not think about it for long.
They had to make an elf disappear in the forest, so an ordinary place would not do.
It must belong to someone who had gone ahead to scout the area.
Thinking that, Griam continued farther into the forest with Forein.
Then they reached the destination marked on the map his family had sent.
“Huh?”
There was nothing there.
He had expected there to be no colony of Silver Evening Primroses.
But there was nothing at all that could make an elf disappear either.
Only then could Griam look at the situation coolly.
‘A forest deep enough for an elf to get lost? Then how am I supposed to find my way?’
The instruction had made no sense from the start.
If he had not held a blind faith that his family would have taken some measure, he would never have believed it.
But he had realized that far too late.
“Griam?”
Forein called to Griam, who had suddenly stopped.
“What is wrong? Are you confused about the way?”
“...No.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m sorry.”
As he said that, Griam turned around.
After he realized his own stupidity, fear came.
What had his family been thinking when they sent him this far?
Even a young boy’s imagination could infer the reason without difficulty.
‘They are going to get rid of both of us...!’
He did not want to die.
How he would die, whether he would die without achieving anything, whether he would die young.
None of that came to mind.
He simply did not want to die.
But even after turning around, Griam could not move farther.
Sway—
His legs lost their strength, and his vision wavered.
‘The flower tea the servant gave us....’
Beyond his wavering vision, Forein, who had hurried toward him, swayed too.
Griam had only taken a sip, but Forein had emptied an entire water flask.
A black shadow fell over the two of them.
His vision was too blurred for him to see clearly.
But he had the illusion that small horns stood at the sides of the shadow’s head.
‘If that bastard Jerome had stopped me more forcefully....’
Even to the end, Griam blamed someone else.
The shadow standing before him drew its sword.
SWISH—!
Thud!
“Griam...! Run!”
Forein shoved Griam with their shoulder and threw themselves beneath the descending sword.