Chapter 44
Chapter 44
"Respect?"
I grimaced and waved a hand.
"If just feeling it makes me guilty, then I'm guilty—no, worthy of execution. I really, truly didn't want to do it."
It was the truth.
When floods washed out the field embankments, when heavy snow collapsed the greenhouses.
'What, you little punk? That's all you can do? Eat and use some strength!'
No matter how hard I worked until my back felt like it would snap, all I got back was criticism.
I still remembered that contempt and belittlement, the way they treated soldiers like state-certified servants or movable property.
Now I'm a noble!
If you're a noble, what? You're exempt. Exempt!
But Lily took my candid confession and answered with a saintly interpretation.
"What matters is that you came out here all the same."
She clasped her hands together, her eyes shining.
"Everyone has both an angel and a devil in their heart. The desire not to do it, the temptation to run away. Overcoming that and carrying out our duties is our fate."
"......"
"I don't think a good deed done unwillingly is worth less than one done because you want to. That's the spiritual discipline of self-restraint."
Wow.
She really does hear exactly what she wants to hear.
And in spite of that, the sermon is so holy it's almost absurd.
'This girl... she's not just some manufactured fashion saintess. She's the real deal.'
If there's a god, take her. She's passed.
Though I guess He already chose her.
"I'm flattered you think that highly of me. But I should warn you, don't be too surprised."
"Huh?"
Lily tilted her head.
"I can say with certainty it's on a completely different level from the volunteer work you used to do."
"It's all right. I'm used to it too. When I was at the temple, I often went out for poor-relief work."
"No. I can guarantee you only went to the poor parts that were for show."
I pointed with my chin toward the direction beyond the forest, where the stench was drifting from.
"This is the real thing."
That old fox of a cardinal had obviously only sent Lily to places that were poor enough to look the part but pretty enough for the camera, in order to build her up as the order's idol.
The kind of place where you get a bit of dirt on your clothes, pat a few kids on the head, a reporter snaps a photo, and that's it.
But Professor Wilhelm is a battle-hardened veteran who'd come through the northern front.
Now that I was experiencing it in real time, memories of that part of the original story were slowly coming back to me too.
This part too had been completely reworked by Grandpa Wilhelm, who'd grumbled that "the capital nobles are all style and no substance," grabbed the principal by the collar, and torn apart what had originally been a joke of a leisure trip called the Legion Tour.
That's why the freshmen were chattering away in the carriage like a bunch of airheads.
Lily's expression stiffened.
She must have sensed something was off from my serious attitude.
"...I'll keep that in mind."
"Yes. You really need to brace yourself. If you feel like throwing up, tell me beforehand. I'll pat your back."
What I was actually worried about was Lily's stomach.
In the original, Lily saw the horrors here, had her mind shattered, threw up, and fainted.
Motion sickness + an empty stomach + visual shock: the triple combo.
I gave her motion-sickness medicine and jerky to try to prevent it, but I couldn't prevent the shock itself.
I was worried too, honestly.
Because reading it in text and experiencing it in 4D are worlds apart.
Could I really stay sane after seeing the horrors in there?
Then Professor Wilhelm's booming voice rang out.
"All right! Team assignments are meaningless! I'm assigning the work!"
He swung his baton.
"The women will handle cooking and dry-ration distribution in the village square! The men will be assigned to village repair work! Bring your shovels and hammers and move out! Execute!"
"Yes, sir!"
The students, cowed by Wilhelm's razor-sharp presence, moved without a word.
* * *
We stepped into the village.
My arrogance in thinking I'd gotten used to it just by standing outside the village and saying, 'Hmm, it smells a little. Barn smell,' shattered in a single step.
Fwoosh!
A stench that felt as if it were striking my brain directly, not my nose.
A disgusting smell that went beyond numbing my sense of smell and seemed to twist my stomach like a rag surged over us.
And then came the visual shock.
Soggy black mud.
The dirt itself had gone rotten.
Children running barefoot across it.
Old people sitting there blankly with unfocused eyes.
Or maybe they weren't old people.
They might have been men and women in their twenties or thirties, worn down by every hardship and soaked in hunger and disease.
"U...ugh!"
One of the noble students walking right behind me clamped a hand over his mouth.
But apparently he couldn't hold it back.
Uwaaaeeek!
"Hurk, ugh, ugh!"
Vomit splashed onto the ground.
Ridiculously enough, the whole village was already so full of stench that I couldn't smell the vomit at all.
*
A little while later.
"U...ugh!"
A noble girl walking beside us clamped a hand over her mouth.
One more.
"Ugh! Bwaaagh!"
Great, now we're adding something nice to already rotten ground.
As if that blunt sound triggered a chain reaction, cries of retching burst out here and there.
"Ugh... I want to go home..."
"People live in a place like this?"
The noble young lords and ladies pinched their noses in agony.
They looked as if they'd fallen straight into hell.
The looks from the poor people watching them were even more of a spectacle.
Eyes mixed with fear, hostility, and misery.
How awful must it be to watch nobles vomiting at the very sight of the ground where you live?
I looked at Lily beside me, and although she looked deeply shocked, she didn't seem to be dismissing my warning lightly and was keeping herself together.
Then one of the male students, looking at the girl who had thrown up, stepped forward with his face reddening.
That face looked familiar.
In a trembling voice, he shouted at Professor Wilhelm.
"Professor! This is too much!"
"What's too much?"
"Please withdraw these unnecessary measures and treat us properly as nobles! Forcing us into this pit of filth and compelling us to suffer under the name of education isn't noblesse oblige, it's nothing but ordinary sadism!"
"...Sadism?"
Professor Wilhelm's eyebrow twitched.
"What exactly is?"
"This stench and this unhygienic environment... it's an environment no human being can endure!"
At the student's protest, Wilhelm's eyes turned sharp.
He strode over and stopped right in front of the student.
An overwhelming presence.
The student could only tremble, lips quivering, unable even to step back.
"Nobles are the intellect that leads the empire. And intellect is completed through the combination of knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge can be found in books."
Wilhelm's voice dropped low.
"But wisdom comes from experience, not from a desk. If you'd known what it's like to have your toes nearly frozen off by the biting winter winds of the north, or the desperation of digging in the dirt and starving to death because you didn't have even a handful of grain."
He gave the student's shoulder a light tap.
"You wouldn't have been able to spout nonsense like 'conscription is only for learning duty and sharing a sense of belonging.'"
"......!"
Ah.
So it was him—one of the idiots from the first Intro to Military Studies class who'd set me up.
The one who'd been going on about community spirit and all that.
"For the record, the people here are neither runaway slaves nor barbarians without imperial status. They are imperial subjects, just like you, and they should receive the emperor's protection just like you."
The student's expression plainly said, 'Then how exactly are we supposed to do that?'
Wilhelm pointed at the village with his baton.
"Finding out why they have to live like this is the reason you need to endure your nausea today. Understood!"
"......Yes."
The students were so overwhelmed they couldn't say a word.
The atmosphere turned solemn.
As expected, a general is a general. He's a pro at keeping people in line.
But my mind remained cold.
'Pretty words, but what's the plan?'
If all you do is talk and make people dig, then you're just an old-man blowhard, aren't you?
After Grandpa Wilhelm's razor-sharp beatdown of an education ended.
He immediately gave out work orders.
"The women will prepare meals in the village square, and the men will handle transporting foodstuffs and checking the village facilities for repairs. That's all!"
I let out a dry laugh to myself.
'This is seriously a comedy.'
Did they just soak plausibility in gukbap and eat it?
If he really wanted to give them a meaningful experience and a real shock, he should have let them do truly hard labor.
It would be much better to pay some trench-building veterans or construction laborers by the day, bring them in, and shove these noble young masters under them as lackeys or make them haul bricks, wouldn't it?
That way they'd be helping the poor too and educating the kids' minds—an instant two birds with one stone.
And the women too.
If we brought Aunt Marie in and had her do it, it'd be great.
'A renovation project with a bunch of kids who don't know anything?'
Are they trying to bring the house down or what?
Of course, the reason Grandpa Wilhelm was doing this was obvious.
It was probably because Lily needed to shine, plot-wise.
In the original, the men would stand around blankly, get tired hauling supplies, and the women would freak out at the smell and run away.
In that chaos, Lily alone would roll up her sleeves, struggle through it, and shine with the light of a saintess.
That was the direction of the original story.
I wasn't oblivious to that context either, so until we entered the village, I had planned to hide in a corner and join the bystander mode.
Lily standing out wasn't a bad thing, after all.
Even if it wasn't a principle I was properly keeping.
I still hadn't given up on trying to make things unfold according to the original story.
But.
Looking around, I could feel countless gazes soaked in despair.
Deep hostility and rage showing through the fear from time to time.
Suffering. Pain. Emptiness.
There wasn't a single gaze that held anything remotely positive.
'...Hah.'
Even if my conscience wasn't exactly healthy or admirable.
I wasn't cold-hearted enough to mechanically say, 'Yeah, if we want the original plot, this can't be helped.'
Then.
Thud, thud.
Sensing someone approach, I turned my head and saw Lucius, who had handed me motion-sickness medicine earlier, standing there.
"You look like you have some kind of plan. May I join you?"
"Your eyes are different, aren't they? Unlike theirs."
Hmm.
"Suit yourself. But don't back out because you don't feel like it."
"Don't worry. I'm not all talk."
I figured as much.
Lucius rolled up his sleeves and flashed a grin.
'This guy's completely insane too.'
He looks so refined, but his taste is really unusual.
I shouldn't get close to him.
He's the type who's going to be exhausting to get tangled up with.
But for today, I'll make use of him first.
The more hands, the better.
"Good. Then let's tour the village first. We need to get an estimate."
"An estimate, huh. Understood."
"Follow me."
I led Lucius along and started walking.
Just when everyone else was hesitating and milling around.
As I moved forward without hesitation, everyone's attention focused on me.
'Why is that guy stepping up again?'
Every face was a mix of contempt, curiosity, and suspicion.
I ignored them again.