Ch.570While I Rest

The fourth day’s lecture was about explaining the Ka’har and evaluating the effectiveness of the assignments submitted by students.

Since the Ka’har were no different from westerners except for their cavalry forces, there wasn’t much to explain, so most of the lecture time focused on the latter.

Fortunately, evaluating the students’ assignments wasn’t particularly difficult. All I had to do was recite the evaluations Perne had written.

I was somewhat surprised by how strong her desire for alcohol must have been—in less than two days after taking away her alcohol and assigning her work, she had graded all eighty assignments and added brief comments to each.

Judging by Hush’s handwriting mixed in here and there, Perne hadn’t finished everything alone.

In the future, if I need to get something done, I should start by confiscating alcohol.

“—With that, we conclude our four-day special lecture. Thank you all for your hard work.”

I put down the chalk on the podium and gave a light greeting to the students.

“If you don’t forget what you’ve learned over these past three days, you should be able to survive a life-threatening situation once or twice. So be sure to remember it.”

Though it was a brief lecture, I had taught them all the basic response techniques. The rest would be up to them.

Either survive and grow stronger, or fail and lose their lives. I personally hoped for the former.

“I expect you to continue studying and training diligently to become pillars supporting the Empire.”

With these sincere words of encouragement as my final message, I left the auditorium amid the students’ applause. I felt unexpectedly quite satisfied.

=============

Haschal’s lecture caused both a sensation and controversy.

The knights were shocked to learn for the first time that it was possible to subjugate enemies in such a way, while the nobles debated the veracity of the lecture content.

In fact, it was Haschal himself who should have proven the validity of his teachings, but in typical Haschal fashion, he showed no interest in providing proof.

Besides, it would have been impossible to prove without capturing monsters and heteromorphs and conducting dissection demonstrations.

Therefore, whether to incorporate Haschal’s lecture content into the knights’ guidelines was entirely up to Leopold’s judgment. Even if adopted, it wouldn’t be of much use right now except against major monsters.

“Hmm…”

It was a somewhat difficult decision for Leopold. If he rashly implemented it and suffered major losses, it would be problematic in many ways.

“For now, hire adventurers to test it on minor monsters. Then we’ll review whether to implement it.”

Leopold’s choice was to utilize lives that could be bought with money.

Most adventurers were inferior to even junior knights in skill, so perfect verification would be impossible, but they should at least be able to subjugate imps.

“And I will personally bestow rewards on any noble who proves the effectiveness with their own private soldiers. That should be sufficient.”

Leopold didn’t think many nobles would throw their private soldiers into uncertain danger for mere monetary rewards, but even if just one or two such nobles emerged, it would be enough for him.

One verification was sufficient.

=============

After finishing the lectures and collecting the generous fee paid by the academy, I spent my days training during daylight hours and writing about techniques for dealing with high-level monsters that I hadn’t explained in the lectures at night.

It wasn’t for the academy students, but rather a strategy guide for the Imperial Knights who would have to face such monsters directly. Whether they would accept it or not was their choice.

Anyway, I spent my days like that. It wasn’t as good as hunting monsters, but it was fulfilling in its own way.

Originally, I had wanted to subjugate monsters and travel around accumulating karma, but unfortunately, the monsters appearing near the Empire were not significant enough for me to bother hunting.

Unlike the power of murder karma, which only required killing civilians indiscriminately, enemies worthy of heroic deeds for someone who had reached the realm of heroes didn’t appear that frequently.

Rather than wandering everywhere subjugating creatures that wouldn’t help me grow stronger in the slightest, it was far more efficient to leave monster subjugation to my companions while I focused on my personal training.

So I concentrated on improving the precision of my swordsmanship and techniques and making them more familiar, until messengers from Leopold or Ludwig von Landenburg came seeking my help.

If Leopold called, it would mean they had found Nidhogg’s corpse, and if Ludwig called, it would mean the Ka’har had begun to move.

I couldn’t tell which would come first, but either way, both were matters too significant to ignore.

—-

Perhaps because my decision to leave monster subjugation entirely to my companions was effective, they all began to grow stronger at an impressive rate.

Sometimes they returned covered in wounds, but thanks to the holy artifacts they had received from the Holy State, they were able to defeat most monsters without much difficulty, so it was natural that they would grow stronger.

So far, none of them had broken through their limits, but they were all developing skills that would place them among the top masters. That was good.

Frider van Faelrun also spent the first few days visiting my training ground to spar with me… but after being completely subdued time and again, she eventually gave up and lately had been busy hunting monsters with Demian’s group.

She must have decided that the only way to narrow the fundamental gap in ability between us was to accumulate deeper karma.

Her recent goal, along with Millia and Demian, was to subdue me together. Well, they still had a long way to go.

Perneisia, when sober, was busy devising more certain methods to kill fairies, grimly smiling as she referenced the students’ ideas and my lecture content. When not sober, she was busy making drunken scenes with Hush.

From my perspective, I wondered if she might die before the fairies were ruined. She might go down in history as the first fairy guardian to die of liver cirrhosis or stomach cancer.

From the fairies’ standpoint, it would be utterly humiliating, so in a way, it could be considered a petty revenge successfully executed.

Ophelia van Sigmillus went to the magic tower to meet Floheta for information or advice about magic, but returned hours later with a disgusted expression and personally brewed me a cup of tea.

“Why the sudden tea?”

“Well… I just realized how blessed my working environment is.”

She turned her head awkwardly, fidgeting with the long mana herb in her mouth.

I wondered what she meant, but apparently Floheta’s condition at the magic tower was practically that of a shut-in. Not just Floheta, but all the mages affiliated with the tower.

Those selected for the Nidhogg investigation team had to spend all day wandering through damp underground waterways and digging below them, while the rest were working on airship and new weapon development as ordered by Leopold, staying up for days without proper sleep.

It vividly revealed the misery of state-employed researchers.

“There were mountains of crossed-out blueprints piled throughout the research lab, failed prototypes scattered all over the corridors. You could even hear screams like ‘How is a ship supposed to fly?!’ I barely escaped being forced to participate in the research by using you as an excuse.”

Ophelia shuddered as if getting goosebumps just thinking about it again.

So she was buttering me up with premium tea because of that?

They say to make someone appreciate something, first elevate them and then drop them hard, and to make them grateful, show them others’ misery. That saying was proving true.

Yet it was so like Ophelia to express her gratitude with just a cup of tea.

…Anyway, from the looks of it, the invention of the airship still needed more time. That was disappointing.

“If you’ve realized you’re in a blessed environment, why not work on improving your skills? You don’t plan to end your life as just a high-level mage, right?”

“I was planning to do just that. If I stayed in the capital any longer, I’d be dragged to the magic tower under the pretext of ‘cooperation.'”

Hmm… that wasn’t an unreasonable concern. If Leopold had asked me to lend him Ophelia for the airship project, I would have agreed after some deliberation.

Anyway, Ophelia also began participating in monster subjugation from the next day.

Unlike the others who immediately returned to subjugation as soon as they recovered from injuries, she would return to the mansion for about two days in between, claiming she needed to satisfy her “Claire needs.”

Lacy and Leonore were so busy with the archdiocese’s affairs that they rarely left the cathedral, and Agnes seemed to have been assigned to the special building’s quarters that I once used.

…As I had predicted, she had purchased a taxidermied werebeast from Frider to decorate her room.

Bethania stayed at Astraea’s church and visited me once every four days to discuss the contents of the scriptures before returning.

It was a relatively peaceful day-to-day life.