Chapter 18
The first-year cadets of Arien Academy’s Swordsmanship Department had a shocking start to the semester. To begin with, even the rumors that spread before the entrance ceremony were extraordinary.
-I heard a member of the Gallian royal family might enroll this year…?
-And apparently it’s Her Highness Lydia, the ‘Golden Princess,’ who hasn’t even made her debut in high society.
-An abandoned royal at the academy? Why? Is she planning to enroll in the Department of Magic and befriend the Republic and those reformist upstarts?
-I heard she enrolled in the Swordsmanship Department….
-But why…? Her twin brother, His Highness Leonard, belongs to the reformist faction even within the Foreign Ministry. Wouldn’t it make more sense for her to go to the Department of Magic?
-How should I know?
Gallia’s ‘Abandoned Gold.’
Lydia de Gallia was enrolling at the academy.
When the Gallian noble freshmen heard the news, they exchanged letters and could hardly contain their excitement even before the semester began. They would be attending school alongside a beautiful royal who had never appeared in public except at state events.
Before they were members of the noble faction, they were passionate teenagers.
“I wonder what she’s like.”
“Just how beautiful is she, to have earned the title ‘Gold’?”
“Will she really be as noble as a royal should be?”
Their curiosity about Lydia grew and grew.
Moreover, she hadn’t gone to the Department of Magic, where the Republic’s nouveau riche and their insignificant reformist hangers-on enrolled. Like a true member of Gallia’s royal family, from a kingdom of knights, she had proudly joined the Swordsmanship Department.
The noble cadets were both excited and worried.
“As expected of the Gallian royal family…! A true Gallian noble should take up the sword!”
“But….”
“Will a noble royal lady be able to hold her own in the Swordsmanship Department?”
“What if she just watches from the sidelines while we struggle?”
“That would be proper for a royal, but… that seems a bit much. If that’s all she’ll do, there’s no point in coming to the academy.”
“I hear beautiful women can be difficult. If she’s called ‘Gold,’ I can’t even imagine how particular she must be.”
They spent months worrying like that.
And at last, when they saw Lydia at the entrance ceremony….
She was a princess beyond their wildest dreams—in the best possible way.
Beautiful,
diligent,
and benevolent.
“Good heavens….”
“A royal like this….”
“They really… exist?”
She was breathtakingly beautiful.
It was as if an angel of dawn from mythology had descended upon them.
She never skipped training.
She always ran quietly behind them and rolled around in the dirt with them.
She was incredibly generous.
Even in somewhat harsh conditions, she thought of others.
She was undoubtedly royalty,
yet she trained on the very same battlefield as they did.
-I am a cadet of this academy, too. I don’t expect special treatment. I’ll eat alongside you.
-Are you all right? There’s no need to make things difficult. I need only work harder.
-You needn’t feel guilty toward me. When your stamina reaches its limit, your judgment naturally falters. The instructors were trying to make you slip up.
When Lydia said that and dusted the cadets’ shoulders clean, the cadets of the Kingdom of Gallia stared at her in a daze.
“….”
“….”
“….”
At the noble sight of her walking gracefully, her long golden hair swaying.
At the sight of her walking proudly, like a goddess of war….
Even the shabby cadet training uniforms couldn’t conceal her radiance.
The men and women, the nobles and commoners alike,
clutched their pounding hearts and sighed.
“Phew….”
That person is royalty of our kingdom.
‘I’m proud.’
For someone like her,
I want to become a knight who would gladly give my life.
They each thought of it differently, but their feelings were much the same.
“….”
“….”
“….”
Was this
love?
Or was it
admiration?
‘I can’t believe there’s such a perfect royal….’
It felt like a dream.
They wanted to talk with her more.
But they couldn’t.
-Her Highness Lydia is likely to belong to the reformist faction, just like His Highness Leonard. Don’t approach her carelessly. Observe for now.
-Even though the academy is a neutral zone among the three nations, a careless connection could get in the way of your future. Now isn’t the time to approach her.
-Don’t go making friends with an abandoned royal.
-A royal that capable must have her reasons.
“….”
“….”
“….”
All the noble freshmen in the Swordsmanship Department were among the youngest members of the noble faction. They had no choice but to quietly obey the orders of their elders and upperclassmen.
‘But if I had permission, I’d like to become friends with her….’
The commoner freshmen didn’t dare approach royalty, either.
‘A commoner like me would only bother someone as perfect as her if I tried to speak to her….’
The freshmen from the Holy Theocracy and the Republic watched quietly from a distance.
‘As expected, she has the bearing of royalty. But there’s no need to cause needless friction with another nation’s royal family.’
For those reasons, aside from Arti and Mave, who had approached her themselves, Lydia received little attention from her fellow cadets.
She didn’t question the situation very much.
The ‘incompetent princess’ in the original story had also been shown drifting around without belonging to any department. So Lydia simply thought, ‘Even royalty can be ostracized, I suppose,’ and let it go.
But there was something Lydia hadn’t considered.
Drifting on the fringes because you were ‘incompetent and timid,’
and drifting on the fringes because you were ‘noble and dignified’…
was,
to a far greater extent than she’d imagined,
a major difference.
That difference became clear when Lydia’s own abilities stripped away the stigma of being the Abandoned Gold.
It was
just like
now.
*
“….”
Lydia was bewildered.
Before Instructor Zach’s class began.
As usual, she’d expected to wait at the Swordsmanship Department’s training grounds with only Arti and Mave beside her. Instead, a few female cadets had quietly gathered around her and sat down.
‘What am I, a lion surrounded by a pride?’
Mave proudly flaunted her friendship with Lydia from her side.
“Hehe. Lady Lydia, is anything troubling you? Is there anything I can do to help you ‘as a friend’?”
“No. Thank you for your consideration ‘as a friend,’ Mave.”
“Hehehe….”
See?
I’m this close to royalty.
…That was more or less what she was showing off.
The cadets around them gazed at Mave with shining eyes, clearly envious. Mave’s reputation, which had taken a hit after her major blunder in the Skeletal Rider incident, was recovering.
“I’m jealous….”
“So even a commoner can stay by a royal’s side.”
“Could I do it, too, if I tried harder?”
Simply being able to befriend royalty was considered valuable. The fact that Lydia was an abandoned royal didn’t matter.
It wasn’t the strength of her personal charisma,
but the advantage of authority recognized by society.
‘So this is another way to boost the self-esteem of people around me. I’ve never seriously used my royal authority before, so it never occurred to me to use it like this.’
Lydia subtly raised her head.
“….”
Nearby, the men were whispering among themselves.
The male cadets, both commoners and nobles, had surrounded Arti. But instead of beating him up, they were whispering questions to him.
Dominic and the noble faction cadets spoke in demanding voices.
“W-what did you say…?! You cheeky commoner! While we couldn’t even approach Her Highness Lydia, you trained alone with her every day—?!”
“You lucky bastard!”
“You got to monopolize that noble bu—… figure?!”
“How dare you become her subordinate before any of us!”
Dominic pointed at Arti.
“Her Highness’s bu—… noble body! Carrying her on your back up a mountain path is a reward! I could do a hundred laps if you made me!”
“I wouldn’t call it a reward….”
Arti scratched his head awkwardly as he answered.
“It was just the two of us for the first few weeks. After that, more and more people joined us.”
The cadets from the Holy Theocracy, who had been eagerly listening to Arti’s story(?), marveled as if they’d finally understood. Until just moments ago, they’d been hostile toward the ‘country bumpkin who dared approach the Saintess.’
“Hehe, I see. So it wasn’t just Brother Arti and the Saintess together; you were all building a friendship with Her Highness the Princess….”
“We must have let our imaginations run wild. When the two of you walked together at the Sabbath festival, the group had merely split up for a little while.”
“We apologize for our wicked misunderstanding—that Brother Arti dared to entertain such an audacious fantasy of doing something with the Saintess… Sorry, in any case, for our mistaken assumption.”
Arti flinched at their words, but gave an awkward smile.
“Haha….”
At that moment,
Dominic, trembling with excitement, shouted.
“You commoner, you! You lucky bastard! I, Dominic de Montrant, younger brother of Lucian, the ‘Golden Sword,’ hereby challenge you to an honorable duel! I’ll make sure you’re worthy of serving Her Highness—!”
“Me too!”
“I may be a commoner, but I can’t forgive you, Arti!”
“Me too!”
“Get in line, one at a time! Everyone who wants to duel this guy one-on-one, gather around!”
“Hehe, let us see how capable our brother is.”
“Those old-fashioned Gallian nobles are more amusing than I expected.”
Rumble—
They picked up wooden swords and began to give Arti an ‘honorable’ beating. Caught off guard by the sudden duels, Arti still calmly began taking them down one at a time.
“Wait, what’s going on all of a sudden…?!”
The wooden swords clacked together brightly.
Clack!
Clack!
“Grrk?! This commoner’s stronger than I expected!”
“Gah! Hurry up, next one! He just got hit in the ankle!”
“I’m next in line to be Her Highness’s chair—!”
Arti found them easier to knock down than he’d expected, but the endless stream of duels terrified him. He swung his wooden sword instinctively, darting this way and that.
Even so, he thought,
‘Lydia’s subordinate…. Honestly, she feels more like a mentor to me, so I can’t quite picture it. But if it were Lydia, I wouldn’t mind at all. It’d be an honor.’
But
not as her subordinate….
Someday,
he wanted to fight alongside Lydia as a swordsman.
‘As a hero, as a swordsman… I want to get stronger.’
And become someone Aria could be proud of, too—
Clack!
“?!”
Arti stopped thinking as he saw more cadets charging at him.
“Wait a second?! This is way too unfair—?!”
“Take my sword—!”
“Why doesn’t this commoner ever get tired?!”
The female cadets around Lydia sighed.
“How simple-minded.”
“Which one’s the noble and which one’s the commoner…?”
“As a fellow former knight-order trainee, I’m embarrassed.”
Lydia watched them and thought,
“….”
‘Normally, because Arti was the only commoner standing out, the “commoner-bashing” event would happen. But now, with his position as my subordinate, it’s turned into a string of nasty duel challenges….’
Bearer of the Sacred Sword.
The weight of the title Hero.
His interactions with Saintess Aria.
All of it had brought him under the shelter of ‘the princess’s subordinate,’ rather than leaving him in the position of a mere commoner. Someday he’d have to step out from under that shelter, too, but at least he wouldn’t be subjected to indiscriminate bullying.
And so she thought,
“….”
That day, on the street,
it had been a good thing she’d faced Lucian head-on, even if it drew a little attention.
‘I thought it would be enough if the bullying simply eased up. The result’s better than I expected.’
Lydia watched with satisfaction as Arti fought ‘honorably,’ one against seventeen.
-Aaagh! You cowards?!
-You’re the coward, commoner!
-You’ve been monopolizing Her Highness all this time—!
The fighting continued until Instructor Zach entered the training grounds with a bewildered expression. From a distance, Instructor Zach glanced at Lydia, silently asking, ‘What’s with that kid?’
Lydia smiled faintly at the look.
“…This is going very well.”
*
Lucian and the upperclassmen of the Swordsmanship Department’s noble faction watched through the window. Under Instructor Zach’s directions, the freshmen busily began their physical training.
Instructor Zach’s voice rang out.
-You slugs!! At this rate, when are you ever going to reach the realm of Flow?! Run faster, faster—!!
The freshmen understood the point of this brutal physical training and gritted their teeth. And behind them ran a princess, her bright blond hair swaying.
Seeing her, the freshmen now shouted proudly.
-Her Highness the Princess is with us!
-People of Gallia, run with honor!
The noble faction upperclassmen watched them and groaned.
“….”
“….”
“….”
One of them muttered.
“Is this really all right?”
“Even so, letting a princess’s faction form within the Swordsmanship Department….”
“Even the commoner cadets who don’t belong to any faction are following her.”
Lucian said indifferently.
“It’s fine. I’ve already given my permission. And Her Highness Lydia hasn’t been seen meeting with reformist figures in particular. Since there’s been no contact so far, we can simply consider this an academy social circle.”
“But….”
“Besides, we should focus on our own work.”
“…Understood.”
They turned away from the window and went back to the classroom.
Lucian kept gazing out the window until the very end.
‘With this, I’ve repaid my debt. Your Highness, whatever you’re doing at the academy… I hope it won’t bring you into conflict with us.’
If that happens,
we won’t be able to stand by, either.
“….”
Lucian looked at his younger brother running on the training grounds.
Even as he ran, he grinned and secretly talked with the princess. It was an innocent smile, unbefitting a boy who would one day be drawn into Gallia’s corrupt noble society.
“…Enjoy yourself while you can, Dominic.” I’ll take care of all the difficult things, as your older brother.