Chapter 63
Chapter 63
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 63
Chapter Title: The Silver Eagle's Standard-Bearer (1)
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“Ah...”
“This was my last chance.”
“Ugh. Maybe I should look for a spot in one of the provincial knight orders.”
Those who couldn't find their numbers on the list sighed in frustration.
“Yahoo! I barely passed!”
“Father! Mother! I'm a student of the Cradle!”
“The hardship is over, and happiness begins!”
Those who found their numbers at the top of the list screamed with joy.
Joy and sorrow crossed the faces of the kids, split between passing and failing.
“Hmm.”
And then there were about ten others, the kids from prestigious families, who belonged to neither group.
For them, who never doubted their acceptance for a second, the question of passing was never a concern to begin with.
“Excuse me.”
I squeezed my way through the crowd of kids.
And immediately checked the list of ninety-nine names on the scroll.
I found my name without much difficulty.
Thirty successful candidates out of ninety-nine applicants.
My name was right around the middle.
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□ List of Successful Candidates
1st. No. 32 Bern Vigete (90 points)
No. 88 Amelia Justice (90 points)
3rd. No. 40 Yom Brenner (85 points)
4th. No. 13 Lian Kart (84 points)
⋮
13th. No. 61 Roen Giftrang (77 points)
14th. No. 23 Grass Harper (76 points)
15th. No. 99 Yan (75 points)
⋮
29th. Angelo Schmitz (61 points)
30th. Pon (60 points)
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A sigh of relief escaped me.
Even though my acceptance had been confirmed long ago, it seemed a corner of my heart had still been anxious.
The tension I hadn't even realized was there finally loosened after I saw the list.
Slowly, but surely.
A ticklish feeling spread through my chest.
The fact that I, who was scorned in my past life, had become a student of the Cradle—the dream of all squires—didn't quite feel real.
For no reason, I found myself looking at the list again and again.
I'm not sure how long I stood there, taking in my name on the list.
Suddenly, I felt a stare boring into the back of my head.
When I turned, the kids from prestigious families were looking at me.
With blatant smirks on their faces.
“Look how happy he is.”
“All hype, no substance.”
“I guess you can't change your origins.”
It was open mockery.
Of course, I didn't care one bit.
Passing was all that mattered; I couldn't care less about my rank.
To be honest, I was even satisfied with my score.
I had lost quite a few points in the physical and weapons assessments, and I hadn't even participated in the sparring evaluation.
A score of 75 was actually quite generous.
Asking for more would be greedy.
Besides, the attention and scrutiny from the other kids had been a burden.
If this was a chance to escape that unwanted attention, then I was more than happy with the outcome.
“Hmph.”
While I was at it, I took a step back to observe the other kids' reactions.
After glancing at me, the prestigious kids looked at each other.
A strange current flowed between them, who until recently had acted as chummy as siblings.
In a way, it was natural.
Though they were all lumped together under the banner of 'prestigious families,' a closer look revealed disparities among them.
And now, that disparity had been laid bare.
In undeniable numbers.
In short, a pecking order had been established within the group.
Of course, whether the individuals involved would accept this new hierarchy was another matter entirely.
“So only Vigete and the Judgment Knights scored over 90.”
“Truly living up to their reputations.”
For now, everyone seemed to agree that Bern of Vigete and Amelia of the Judgment Knights, who tied for first place with 90 points, were at the top of the hierarchy.
But the same couldn't be said for the rest.
“Hildegard is tenth?”
“Far below expectations.”
It seemed inevitable that the kid from the Hildegard family, a proud member of the Eight Great Families, would see his standing within the group fall.
Of course, the prestige of one of the Empire's eight representative families wouldn't vanish over a single test, but the Hildegard family was a different story.
Unlike the other seven families, who actively flaunted their influence, the Hildegards rarely ventured outside their domain.
In my past life, the Hildegards hadn't lifted a finger even as the Empire fell.
If they were the type to get involved in such matters, they never would have earned the name 'Sleeping Hildegard' in the first place.
Besides, the boy himself didn't seem to care about the whispers around him.
Hummel Hildegard glanced at the scroll with a languid expression, then shuffled to a corner and promptly began to doze off.
“Hey, friend.”
Someone spoke to me then.
I knew who it was without even turning around.
“Angelo.”
Only the chatty Angelo would be this friendly and clingy.
When I turned my head, sure enough, the curly-haired kid was looking at me.
“Did you see?”
His words lacked context, but they weren't hard to understand.
“Yeah, I saw. Congratulations.”
“Ahem.”
The way he puffed out his chest and swaggered was so ridiculous it was almost unbelievable.
He had barely scraped by, ranking 29th out of 30, yet from his behavior, you'd think he was the valedictorian.
“I-I passed too!”
As I was giving Angelo a half-hearted congratulations, another kid approached.
“Thanks to you, I didn't give up.”
“...?”
“What you said about an unbreakable spirit—that really meant a lot to me.”
It was one of the kids from back then, the one who had acted as if my random comment—made to escape a tight spot during the first evaluation—was some kind of priceless wisdom.
“Ah, you don't know my name, do you? I'm Pon.”
I was just staring blankly, not knowing what to say, when the kid suddenly introduced himself.
As I casually accepted his greeting, my eyes widened in realization.
There was nothing following his name.
No family name, for instance, or the name of a knight order.
That meant the ordinary-looking kid before me was a prodigy who had applied to the Cradle without any backing and passed with flying colors.
“Wow.”
When I expressed my genuine admiration, the kid, Pon, gave me a bewildered look.
“Aren't you a commoner too?”
“You and I are different.”
“How are we different?”
“...Well. You and I...”
“So, how?”
Pon's innocent question left me speechless.
It wouldn't be appropriate to explain the difference between myself, who had toiled as a squire for fifteen years in a past life, and him.
As I stood there, fumbling for words,
“Birds of a feather flock together,”
a haughty voice cut in.
“Number 29 and number 30. Are you trying to play king with a bunch of nobodies?”
“What's there to say? It's better for us that they've gathered all the troublemakers in one place. They'd just muddy the waters if they were scattered around.”
It was the kids from the prestigious families.
Pon flinched, his shoulders hunching.
Just as a furious Angelo was about to step forward,
“Now I remember!”
I stepped in front of him.
“You were the commander of the archer unit in the mock battle, weren't you?”
When I called him out, the kid who had been talking about playing king flinched and looked at me.
“You left quite an impression, staying behind to provide covering fire as the infantry retreated.”
“Protecting our allies' backs is an honorable duty...”
“Except your archers blocked the path, preventing the infantry from retreating properly and causing even more casualties, right? It was a mess of allies pushing and trampling each other. I watched and thought, 'That's not right.'”
The face of the kid who had been talking so smugly turned pale.
“And you, over there. During the final offensive, wasn't it your infantry unit that got blinded by the prospect of glory and chased the retreating cavalry right into the castle?”
The kid I pointed to shuddered.
“It was an obvious trap. What were you thinking? Did you really believe a few infantrymen could capture a fortress? Or did you think your allies would come to your aid if you just seized the gate and held out?”
My sharp words drained the color from his face as well.
“In a large-scale battle, meeting your quota is important, but you also have to coordinate with your allies. What's the point of charging in at the perfect time by yourself? If your allies fall back, you'll just end up isolated, fighting alone and padding the enemy's kill count. It might be different for a common soldier, but a commander needs to have the vision to grasp the flow of battle.”
After that, I went on to call out and tear into every one of the kids who had been running their mouths earlier.
“Getting so full of yourself over a mere mock battle...!”
“You think a real battle would have been any different? It would have been worse. Do you think battle-hardened mercenaries and soldiers would ever respect a greenhorn commander? If you think they'd obey you as docilely as the soldiers in the mock battle, you're being naive.”
“I-Insubordination is punishable by immediate execution...!”
“Execution? Did you know that a lot of squires and newly appointed commanders who die in their first battle are found with holes in the back of their heads or in their backs? Why is that, huh? I wonder why? I really don't know. Do you?”
One of the kids, unable to bear the shame, tried to retort, but he couldn't even make his point and shrank back.
Looking at them, silent as if they'd eaten honey, I continued my tirade.
“And another thing. If you keep looking down on others just because your family is well-off, you're going to get a rude awakening later. You need to treat people well. That's how you build a support system you can rely on when times get tough.”
Right now, the Empire is fine and their families are secure, so they can act up without consequence, but that karma doesn't just disappear.
Eventually, the karma that piles up is bound to come back to you.
And that time was much closer than anyone thought.
The Great War.
That terrible war that would sweep across the entire world was just around the corner.
Recalling that fact, I suddenly felt a sense of urgency.
When I saw the list of successful applicants on the scroll, I was dumbfounded.
Heirs of the Eight Families, members of prestigious houses, talents carefully selected from all over the Empire.
Despite all the grandiose titles, I didn't recognize a single name on that scroll.
Which meant that none of the kids here had survived for long.
Bern of the Vigete family, standing in the back like some big shot, shaking his head at the antics of his followers.
Amelia of the Judgment Knights, mulling over my words in deep thought.
Hummel of the Hildegard family, snoring away, oblivious to the commotion.
The other kids from prestigious families, glaring at me with resentful faces.
The children from minor families, watching the situation unfold from a step back.
Pon and Angelo, anxiously tugging at my sleeve.
They were all just victims, swept away by a terrible war before they even had a chance to bloom.
“I'm telling you this for your own good. You all need to work really hard. The effort you put in back home won't be enough. You have to fight like your life depends on it to gain something here. If that's too hard, then at least make some connections. The people you look down on are, when you get down to it, talents scouted from all over the Empire. There's no harm in being friendly with them.”
I continued to offer my heartfelt advice for some time.
“If you want to survive, you have to be smart. Think and think again. Think about how you can get stronger. Think about how you'll survive when the background that protects you is gone.”
It was all invaluable advice.
But it seems I got a little too heated.
“Back in my day...”
The words almost slipped out before I knew it.
I had been uncharacteristically talkative.
Realizing this belatedly, I shut my mouth.
“...”
No one was quick to speak.
I was busy replaying my passionate speech, wondering if I had let slip something I shouldn't have.
The prestigious kids, having been thoroughly dressed down by me, didn't dare to speak up again.
The others were silent as well, as if weighed down by something.
“O-Okay. That's all fine and good.”
The first to break the silence was the talkative Angelo.
“Why are you being so serious? Anyone would think the world was ending.”
Even as he tried to speak in a playful tone, Angelo's face was strangely pale.
It seems I scared them too much.
That's enough for today.
Realizing my mistake, I put on a bright smile and shouted.
“Let's all get along as classmates!”
And the next day.
“Welcome to the Star's Cradle!”
Just as I had hoped and dreamed, I became a new student of the Cradle.