Chapter 58
“So, you’ve been staying here ever since that day?”
“Yes!”
“It wasn’t uncomfortable?”
“Uh… well…”
“Not uncomfortable at all!”
“What? Hey, Rua! Just yesterday, you were—”
“…”
“There’s no need to glare like that…”
“Rua, it’s okay. You can be honest.”
“No, really! It’s not a problem at all.”
“Don’t lie. Be honest.”
“…To be honest, it is a little cramped…”
“Just cramped?”
“And kind of old, too…”
Truthfully, the dorms the cadets were staying in didn’t look all that great.
They were small for the number of occupants, and the whole place seemed pretty dated.
Well, that’s par for the course when it comes to the administrators.
“Was it really necessary for you guys to stay here? Both Vel and Rua, I mean.”
“Ah… well. It’s not like it was hard to find somewhere else, but we were told to stay here until the academy gets rebuilt…”
“I see.”
If I think about it from the administrators’ point of view, they probably didn’t really expect the cadets to stay here.
It was more like, ‘If you’ve got nowhere else to go, just use this place.’
A gesture of convenience. Maybe even kindness.
But to the cadets, it probably felt different.
They must’ve worried: If we leave here, will we get penalized later?
So they chose to stay in these cramped, uncomfortable quarters.
Not all of them, of course. A few of the cadets looked fairly well-off. And yet, even they were fussing over such trivial concerns… which probably meant they were merchants’ children.
Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen any nobles among them.
“Speaking of which—where are the others? Like Moldi?”
Rael must’ve been wondering the same thing and asked about the other cadets.
“Ah… Moldi went back to his family estate. Same with Bran and Kon.”
Naturally, I didn’t recognize any of those names.
Even if they’d mentioned family names instead, I probably still wouldn’t have known them.
Hardly any scions of prominent houses had enrolled in the academy, and the few who did… were all dead now.
But Rael seemed to recognize those names.
“Well, are you still in touch with them?”
“Oh, it’s not like that. I mean… they invite us to banquets and stuff, fairly often, actually.”
Huh?
Rael I could maybe understand, but… noble cadets?
Inviting commoners to banquets?
Seriously?
“Wait… You guys were that close?”
Even Rael looked taken aback.
“Ah.”
The cadet named Vel gasped and covered her mouth, as if realizing her slip.
The others looked just as awkward, and Rua was glaring at Vel like she was ready to strangle her.
“…What’s going on.”
“I-It’s just that we’ve grown really close lately. Y-Yeah. Really close.”
Rua was terrible at lying.
“Rua.”
“Your Highness… That is…”
As the cadets scrambled to change the subject, someone approached their group.
Judging by the uniform, they were a servant of a noble house.
“Cadets. Young Master Moldi has invited you.”
“Young Master Moldi, can we expect something exciting today?”
“Of course! Lord Garter. I’ve prepared a special fencing exhibition for the occasion.”
“A fencing exhibition?”
“Yes, Lord Garter! I’m sure you’ll be pleased.”
“Would it be alright if I joined as well? I’ve been curious to see the swordsmanship of cadets trained by imperial knights.”
“Of course, Lord Fran!”
Moldi Piet was never considered a particularly promising individual.
The Piet family had some standing, sure—
But as the eldest son, he lacked both talent and character. Even the position of heir was slipping through his fingers to his younger brother.
Going to the academy had been a last-ditch effort.
He needed something—anything—to pull ahead of his brother.
Even at the academy, Moldi wasn’t exactly exceptional.
Among the cadets, his family name gave him some status, but once the Princess arrived…
None of that mattered anymore.
Even if her maternal family had been slaughtered and she had lost political power, she was still a princess.
No one dared compare the bloodline of Arhan to a name like Piet.
But now? Everything had changed.
Heaven had smiled upon him.
Despite the massacre that took so many cadet lives, Moldi genuinely believed it was divine intervention.
After the tragedy, the surviving cadets remained in the capital.
And yet, no one was paying them any attention.
When the Emperor convened the Imperial Council and declared the unification of the continent, no one cared about the academy survivors anymore. Only a few had survived—and most of them were commoners.
If I don’t seize this opportunity, I’d be the biggest fool in the empire.
The princess, who used to advocate for the commoners, of course, no longer stayed with them.
The administrator who had arranged lodging for the surviving commoners clearly wasn’t invested either. And the handful of noble cadets who had lived through the incident?
They had no interest in the commoners whatsoever.
Idiots, the lot of them.
That’s what Moldi thought.
When he’d first revealed his grand plan to the other noble cadets, they got scared and backed out immediately.
And now? Look what happened.
Moldi had managed to connect himself to Fran of the Ziger family and Garter of the Trevor family.
Both were powerful houses in the capital, closely aligned with the Triell ducal family.
If those two houses supported him, there was no way his younger brother could ever challenge his position as heir.
“It should be about time now… Ah! There they are.”
In the distance, a Piet family butler appeared, leading the cadets toward him.
“Vel! You came! And your friends too. Welcome, welcome. Come, have a seat.”
With a wide, artificial smile, Moldi Piet greeted them.
“Thank you for the invitation, Young Master Moldi…”
An invitation.
Could it really be called that?
Before Rael had joined the academy, Moldi Piet had been the most blatant when it came to looking down on and tormenting commoner cadets.
Everyone knew about the cadet who once bested Moldi in a duel—only to be ambushed during an outing and nearly crippled.
“An invitation? Come now, what’s with the formality between us?”
Could an invitation from someone like him to the commoner cadets truly be called goodwill?
Of course not.
In fact, when Vel received the very first invitation, she politely declined.
The next day, her father’s merchant company was raided, and five of their trade partnerships were abruptly cut off.
Other cadets said they’d run into Piet family knights five separate times—in a single day.
When the second invitation arrived, they had no choice but to accept.
“Please, come in.”
The first time they attended, the cadets were completely unprepared for what happened.
They’d even made a backup plan to fight their way out, if things went south.
But instead, they were treated politely and sent home.
Aside from the way Moldi’s younger brother looked like he wanted to kill them, nothing really happened.
And after that…
Invitations started arriving almost daily.
At first, some cadets wondered if maybe Moldi had genuinely changed.
But after a while, the oddity of it all became impossible to ignore.
At first, the banquets had only included Moldi and the cadets.
Then, slowly, more people started showing up.
Merchant guild masters, heirs of other noble families… sometimes even the heads of houses themselves.
And before these increasingly high-profile guests, Moldi would converse freely with the cadets.
He often spoke of how much interest His Majesty the Emperor had shown in the academy—and how much support he had personally provided to the cadets.
Naturally, the Princess always came up.
He spoke as though he were her right hand, though in truth, they’d hardly exchanged more than a few words. But what could the commoner cadets say to refute it?
By the sixth banquet, Moldi began offering what he called “a small favor.”
He expressed deep regret that the cadets, who had entered the academy under the Emperor’s grace, could no longer receive proper education due to the attack.
So he would give them the opportunity to learn—through him.
Knights, mages, scholars—all personnel from the Piet family—would hold small lessons during the banquets.
The difference from the academy? Their audience now included nobles and merchant lords.
“Hooh…!”
“As expected of the Emperor’s academy cadets. Their talent is evident.”
“That Young Master Moldi would host such events out of pity for those denied their education… what a noble heart.”
Before long, among the nobles of the capital, Moldi had become known as the de facto leader of the academy survivors.
Some accused the Piet family of trying to turn the cadets into their private soldiers.
But Moldi would always say,
“I’m simply offering them a chance to learn!”
A chance to learn.
Such a magical phrase.
Because it was the very phrase the Emperor himself had used when he created the academy.
To criticize that phrase was to risk being seen as opposing the Emperor’s will.
And any noble bold and powerful enough to do that didn’t care what the Piet family was doing in the first place.
Of course, Moldi’s true aim was exactly that.
If he could turn them into private soldiers, great.
If not, then as long as people perceived that he and the cadets were part of the same community, that was enough.
While he continued weaving himself together with the cadets, his web of influence finally reached individuals worthy of being called heavyweights.
The Ziger family and the Trevor family.
Both long-time vassals of the Duke of Triell—and ranked among the ten most powerful noble families in the capital.
If he could stand alongside those two…
No—he wasn’t just standing beside them.
Even from his own point of view, many of the cadets were undeniably talented.
If they grew into prominent figures and caught the Emperor’s attention, the Piet family’s prestige would skyrocket.
It didn’t matter that neither he nor the cadets liked each other—and that they all knew it.
As long as others believed they were close, then it was true enough.
And when the time came… he might even be able to bypass the Ziger and Trevor families entirely, and form direct ties with the Duke of Triell himself.
As he watched the slowly approaching cadets and the two young lords observing them, Moldi Piet allowed himself a small, satisfied smile.
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