Chapter 31
‘Do you feel better now?’
The evil spirit in the water spoke to Haru. Haru stretched her arm, stiff with fear, behind her and planted her hand on the ground. Then, trembling, she backed away from the water.
“…Sir Haru?”
A familiar voice came from behind her.
“Ah, Captain Logis….”
Haru answered in a voice gone cold and turned her head.
“…!”
The sight of her face left Logis aghast.
Seeing Logis back away, Haru’s face twisted into a complicated expression as well. She had realized that the reflection in the lake was not a hallucination.
Only then, after seeing her expression, did Logis hurriedly say,
“I, uh… I didn’t realize you were washing up. Sorry. I’ll leave right away.”
“…Captain Logis.”
As he turned to leave, Haru asked him,
“Do I look like a monster to you too, Captain?”
“….”
Logis, who had been trying to leave as quickly as possible, stopped in his tracks as soon as he heard her.
After hesitating for quite some time, he finally spoke in a low voice.
“If I said you didn’t….”
“….”
“That would be a lie.”
Haru nodded with surprising calm. It was the answer she had expected. In fact, if Logis had vehemently denied it, she would have been deeply disappointed in him.
“Sir Haru… no, Miss Haru.”
“…?”
That was why, when Logis went on, she couldn’t help feeling somewhat flustered.
What could anyone hope for from a monster like me?
“There’s something I’d like to tell you.”
“…Something you’d like to tell me?”
“You may think it’s a boring sermon. You can dismiss it as nothing more than an old fogey’s rambling. Would that be all right?”
At Logis’s words, Haru slowly nodded.
“Thank you.”
Logis cleared his throat and sat down with a thump, his back against the tree.
He sat facing completely away from Haru, who was staring blankly at the water beside the tree.
“First, I’ll speak as the commander leading this eastern battle.”
“…?”
“The existence of a particular soldier or officer who becomes etched in the enemy’s mind as a symbol of terror is a tremendous advantage from a commander’s perspective.”
Logis continued.
“We can use such a figure as a propaganda tool for our army. Even with only a small force, we can frighten the enemy and turn the tide of battle in our favor. A knight known to the enemy by terrifying epithets such as ‘monster’ or ‘despair’ is extremely useful from a strategic and tactical standpoint.”
“A monster…?”
“Yes.”
At Haru’s words, Logis nodded, though she could not see him.
“In that respect, your recent
actions, Sir
Haru, have been extremely satisfactory from a commander’s standpoint. Because they fear you more than anything, I can drive them wherever I want. I can’t even count the number of soldiers who have survived thanks to you.”
“….”
“But you see, Haru,
ma’am
.”
Logis said quietly.
“As an individual, rather than as a commander, I think… quite differently.”
“….”
“Stop. If you continue like this, you really will become a monster.”
Logis turned toward Haru and spoke. Haru, who had done nothing but listen calmly, murmured,
“…I’ve already become one, haven’t I?”
“No.”
Logis shook his head.
“Didn’t you realize, before becoming a monster, that your methods were wrong?”
“…I’m not sure.”
Haru shook her head.
“Even if you tell me to stop, how am I supposed to? We’re at war, and I’m a soldier under your command.”
“That’s right.”
“In the end, one way or another, I’ll kill countless demi-humans and pile up mountains of corpses. Isn’t that monstrous? What’s the difference?”
Haru asked in a dry voice. Logis stared at her silently for a moment before giving a brief answer.
“There is a difference.”
Logis shook his head.
“As you say, we’re at war. Nothing will actually change. We may capture and torture enemy soldiers for information, and we’ll continue encountering one another on the battlefield and killing each other. On the surface, nothing will change.”
“Then…!”
“What changes is your heart.”
Logis said,
“Act according to reason, not emotion. Don’t let revenge consume you; keep your eyes on the goal you seek through it and control yourself. That, I believe, is the difference between a monster and a human.”
“….”
“Become human, not a monster. Don’t let your own emotions consume you in turn.”
=
“…That’s the gist of it.”
I said, holding Kate in my arms.
“You were wrong, Miss Kate. You tried to hurt someone you shouldn’t have harmed because of your desire for revenge, and you tried to join hands with people you should never have joined hands with.”
I glanced at the demi-human corpse with its skull pierced through and continued.
“You don’t have to give up on revenge itself, Kate. But at the very least, you must never let the emotion of revenge devour your reason.”
“….”
“If you do, Miss Kate, you’ll become a monster too, just as I once did.”
I finished speaking and set Kate, whom I had been holding, slightly away from me.
“Don’t give up on taking revenge. But don’t let your desire for revenge ruin you, either.”
Then I smiled and said,
“This is the first admonition I’m giving you as your professor.”
Kate looked up at me and asked,
“…What about you, Professor?”
“Yes?”
“Did you succeed in taking revenge, Professor?”
Kate asked me. I thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Of course.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I succeeded spectacularly.”
I clenched my teeth and added quietly,
“A magnificent revenge—one I could face my master proudly after carrying out.”
=
After that… well, various things happened.
As promised, Kate went to Ayla and confessed everything.
That she had never been Ayla’s fan, and had actually held a grudge against House Lucilante, not Ayla.
And that she was the illegitimate daughter of Ayla’s uncle, Kalud Lucilante, and had harbored a grudge against him.
Before long, a temporary disciplinary committee was formed to punish Kate.
At first, it was expected that not only Kate and Ayla, but even I, would be expelled at the very least.
Kate had not merely tried to hurt Ayla; she had even collaborated with a demi-human group that had operated in secret in the royal capital for no less than three years since the end of the war.
But contrary to initial expectations, the committee dragged its feet for quite some time without reaching a conclusion.
The biggest reason was that Kate had lost one arm.
Some committee members argued that Kate was only sixteen, still a child, and had lacked judgment and acted impulsively. They said she had already paid the price for her carelessness by losing her left arm, and that adding expulsion on top of that would be too harsh.
Of course, not everyone thought so. The other committee members insisted on expulsion, saying that although losing her arm was unfortunate, it was an entirely separate matter from punishing her wrongdoing. In fact, they argued, she would have no grounds to complain even if she were immediately indicted for conspiring to commit insurrection.
External pressure brought the seemingly endless debate to an end.
House Lucilante itself had intervened.
But House Lucilante had not wanted Kate expelled.
One week later, the disciplinary committee sentenced Kate to the following punishment.
One hundred and twenty hours of community service, along with an order barring her from advancing to any class above the Advanced Class upon entering her second year.
That was all.
“House Lucilante didn’t want things to escalate.”
The person who told me the story said so.
After Kate turned herself in, rumors began spreading quietly throughout the academy.
Rumors that Kate was an illegitimate daughter of House Lucilante and had done all this to take revenge on the father who had abandoned her and her mother.
Her father was none other than Kalud Lucilante, who had once made a name for himself as the worst wastrel in the kingdom.
Even now, after reforming and making a name for himself as the Iceblade Knight, there were many who dredged up his past to disparage him, despite his complete turnaround.
Now an illegitimate child had entered the picture—one who had been sharpening the blade of revenge against him, no less.
Some clicked their tongues yet pitied Kate, while even those who did not pity her had little good to say about House Lucilante.
The family’s honor was being whittled away in real time—in the kingdom’s finest educational institution, filled with promising future elites.
A child born from the family’s past wrongdoing, and an expulsion over what that child had done while taking revenge.
Whether or not it was true, some might think the following.
‘Could it be that House Lucilante, resentful over Ayla being harmed, applied pressure?’
To be serious, not many people would sincerely believe such an absurd rumor. Given the gravity of Kate’s crime, expulsion would not have been strange at all.
Yet the very fact that such a rumor was circulating proved that House Lucilante’s prestige had already been diminished beyond recovery.
House Lucilante had to make a decision.
It was common for noble families to use pressure, persuasion, or similar means to make disciplinary committees issue verdicts in the direction they wanted.
Either way, they could not avoid the family’s prestige being tarnished. All that remained was a choice: would they really apply pressure, or would they not?
And House Lucilante chose the former.
But they applied that pressure in the exact opposite direction. The disciplinary committee handed Kate a slap-on-the-wrist punishment, which was exactly what House Lucilante wanted.
A family that embraced even an illegitimate child driven to cross the line by revenge, and humbly accepted its past wrongdoing. House Lucilante’s choice was the best move it could make to quiet any further gossip.
“…But this is what I think.”
I murmured this to him after he finished his story.
“Perhaps, from Kate’s perspective, this outcome… might be a punishment worse than expulsion.”
“That’s a rather interesting perspective.”
“Think about it. What Kate wanted to accomplish through revenge was to get revenge on her father and tarnish House Lucilante’s honor.”
“That’s right.”
“But House Lucilante instead turned this incident into a blessing in disguise. They successfully reinvented their image yet again.”
“As far as her goal of tarnishing their honor goes, she’s actually farther from it than before.”
I nodded, then asked the man before me, who was sipping his tea,
“But why did you suddenly come to me to tell me all this?”
“….”
“Rex.”
Rex silently tilted his teacup. Then he set it down lightly and answered.
“Did I ever tell you who gave me my letter of recommendation?”
“…No.”
“Kalud Lucilante.”
I was already tense, and those words nearly made my thoughts freeze.
“He fought on the Western Front alongside me.”
I barely composed myself and asked,
“But why bring that up all of a sudden…?”
“And the reason I brought this up is to correct one ‘misunderstanding’ Miss Kate has.”
Rex laced his fingers and leaned his upper body slightly toward the table.
“You know the basics about Sir Kalud, right? He was once an incomparable wastrel, but then reformed as if he had become an entirely different person overnight.”
“Y-yes.”
Overcome by an inexplicable unease, I nodded, my voice quavering.
“That’s right. But the truth is, Sir Kalud didn’t reform.”
“What do you mean…?”
“Literally, the ‘person’ changed.”
Those words sent a chill down the back of my neck. Lowering his voice, Rex whispered to me,
“The soul of an entirely different person now resides inside Sir Kalud.”