What They Deserve (1)
Field Training. For students who had enrolled at Sigmund Academy, the mere mention of those words should have evoked fond memories wrapped in a quiet, nostalgic warmth. But for the 65th class at least, the keywords were nightmare and terror—so catastrophic that the entire exercise had collapsed into utter, horrifying failure.
In a place where they should have been forging bonds with their peers, they had instead been hunted by hellish Steel Hawks. The injured and the dead had piled up, and in the worst cases, total annihilation had been a very real possibility. The noble heirs destined to lead the Empire, along with so many other promising talents, had nearly been extinguished. Even before that, this had been a disaster no human being should ever have endured, regardless of status.
So from the perspective of the Sigmund Academy Newspaper Club, censorship and official directives meant nothing. They had a duty to expose every detail to the entire Empire. A major scandal would normally be a windfall for any newspaper, but this went beyond that. It was a matter of journalistic responsibility.
Thus Figaro, the club president and self-proclaimed director of reporting, lit his favorite pipe and began roaming the campus in search of stories. Smoking on school grounds was forbidden, but he had decided to ignore the rule. A cigarette was necessary to maintain focus while compiling every testimony into a near-perfect edition. After all, he had lived through the incident himself.
The first thing he needed to confirm was the central figure of the entire affair: Vankite.
After the students returned from the training exercise, the most explosive topic circulating among them was the crown prince’s shocking corruption. The claim that he had colluded with Yagnus, one of the Demon King’s Six Swords, was so unbelievable that the first reaction was natural skepticism—surely it was just a rumor.
“Ugh, what the hell is this?”
Someone had left a recorded Memory Video Cartridge in front of his dormitory room. The footage of Vankite was utterly repulsive—and irrefutable evidence.
The A-rank monster known as the Iron Giant, a being whose name they had never even known, was being commanded like a servant. There was no explanation for that except collusion.
‘—Kill the Iron Giant! Damn it, this was all a trap. I knew something felt wrong…!!’
And the conversation that followed with Yagnus was even more damning. When the Sixth Sword spoke of slaughtering every student in the distance and merely obscuring their vision instead, the crown prince had replied:
‘Well done. Touching that place would have made the future uncertain. The same goes for you staying by my side…!’
With words like those, there was no room left for rumor. This was a scandal that could shake the imperial family itself if exposed.
Therefore…
“Seize the video!”
“Aaaagh, why are you confiscating it?! It’s just a package that arrived for me—who gave you the authority?!”
“By order of the chairman. Unauthorized items on campus grounds are to be confiscated and destroyed!”
Whether it was to protect the imperial family’s name or to safeguard his own position after forcing the field training to proceed, the chairman—who had been busy covering up every incident since Yohan’s death—had raided the newspaper club and seized everything.
Yet even under such pressure, the man was still Figaro.
“…Fine, take it. I already made backups of everything. I am the director of the Newspaper Club. A true journalist who will never yield to outside pressure.”
He had already saved everything. Furious at being blindsided by the school administration, he marched straight to the head of the Discipline Committee.
“Discipline Committee Head Altria. Care to take them down?”
“Understood. With clear evidence secured, I’ll issue a dormitory search warrant immediately from within the committee.”
Of course they would bite when bait was offered.
“Hahahaha!!”
“No matter how much of a crown prince he is, he is still the crown prince who injured and killed countless classmates. If he committed crimes on campus grounds, there will be no leniency.”
She held absolute authority over all disciplinary matters within the academy. When she turned the prince’s quarters inside out, she discovered numerous pieces of evidence in a suspiciously hidden annex: traces of demonic activity left by Yagnus, a horrific torture chamber whose death toll was unknown, and numerous women trembling inside.
“Th-the crown prince… he really was a terrible person. He brought us here from the orphanage under false pretenses and never treated us like people…”
“Every single day he forced himself on us more violently than anyone else…!”
“If we displeased him even slightly, or if his mood soured just a little, he slaughtered us like animals—!”
That single special edition was enough to fill the entire monthly extra issue. Unlike the cover-up surrounding Yohan’s death, exposing this would clearly cost them their positions—or worse. Yet even after every trace of their involvement was erased from the records, they mobilized every contact they had built over the years and distributed the edition far and wide.
The special report spread throughout Sigmund Academy, the city of Sigmund, the capital Karlangk, and even the Bruised City beneath it—all within a single day.
“The crown prince did something like that?!”
“Don’t look at that. Bring every single one of those seditious publications here!”
“A-ah, goodness. I didn’t see anything, I swear.”
Because this was a clear affront to the imperial family, every copy that could be found was confiscated. But just as one cannot cover the sky with a palm, the evidence was so damning that rumors spread from mouth to mouth. A powerful wave of public condemnation against Vankite solidified.
Perhaps someone had even encouraged it. Reports of masked figures ambushing the carriages collecting the papers and redistributing them continued to pour in from every direction.
“…Cryan, and that nameless inspector. You really did it. The only thing I can do for you now… is this.”
No one knew that the king of the underworld had moved to take responsibility for everything he had set in motion.
Until now, Vankite had been known as a terrifying figure who slaughtered his own peers and brought bloodshed to the imperial family. Yet because he had carefully cultivated his image among the common people and nobility, this revelation struck everyone like a thunderbolt—including Sabrina, the Queen Mother and Vankite’s own mother.
“Aaaah, aaaah—!”
“Sabrina, calm down…”
“Get away from me, you worthless husband! This is all your fault. You should have stopped him when he said he was going to the academy. You couldn’t even protect our only crown prince—so what am I supposed to do now? What will become of our imperial family?”
“Ugh…”
“And what about those baseless rumors swirling around him? This won’t do. Someone! Lock the palace gates and the gates of Karlangk. Not even a single rat is to enter until further notice!”
“M-my lady. Doing that will cause enormous losses in many areas…”
“We have no choice until the situation is resolved. Can you not even maintain your own position? No—of course you can’t. You’ve always been this incompetent.”
“U-ugh…! I’m sorry. It was my fault again.”
“Remember this. It was I who made that outstanding child the crown prince for the sake of a useless man like you who nearly got deposed. You have no right to speak.”
The devastating news of losing her child was already tragic enough. With wave after wave of bad tidings piling up around the imperial family, the situation had become truly dire. Having already seized control of the palace, Sabrina forced the emperor to seal every gate in the capital. With the crown prince’s position vacant and the damaging rumors now public knowledge, there would surely be opportunists circling like vultures. She was preparing for the possibility of a coup.
But this was only about Vankite. The events at Sigmund Academy were not limited to him alone, so Figaro’s pipe smoke showed no sign of stopping. There was one more major scoop.
It concerned the man who had done what the dead should never do—the problematic man who had become the students’ idol and hero in this moment: Yohan Kim.
“So what happened to the Baisa girl and Lady Lumein?”
“Excuse me, Figaro. Lumein is an elf, so she’s not a ‘girl.’ She’s a young lady.”
“Be quiet, Baisa!”
“…What’s this? Are the two of you on bad terms?”
“It’s not like that. Baisa is just a pure child who doesn’t know much about the world outside the territory, so she speaks without thinking… Really. There was no malice.”
“U-uh, sorry. I just said what came to mind…”
“Anyway.”
Figaro had been interviewing everyone who had received direct help from Yohan, yet every account converged on the same point: a black-clad man had suddenly appeared and struck down the Steel Hawks. Without a trace of fear, he had charged into a moment of absolute despair, shattered those horrific creatures into pieces, reduced them to ash, and saved everyone without a single word.
But it seemed he had known everything all along. Not after his death—rather, at the time when everyone believed he was dead. The fact that he had appeared during the field training where the students were gathered and saved them all pointed to exactly that reason.
—That was the prevailing narrative. Figaro himself had been helped, so it made sense to him as well.
“…So to summarize, this is the extent of it.”
Figaro wrote everything down in his notebook.
“12 dead, 137 injured—wow, that guy’s insane. Honestly, it wouldn’t have been strange if all the injured had died too. He somehow saved everyone except those twelve?”
The more he looked at it, the more he marveled at the man. Recalling the Steel Hawks’ ferocious assault and the chaos of that day still made his body tremble, yet Yohan had saved everyone as if it were nothing. On top of that, he had completely destroyed one of the Six Swords. It was said he had nearly absorbed it and become a Sixth Sword himself, yet had endured through sheer will. Regardless of how it had happened, this was an unprecedented event in human history. A sense of awe washed over Figaro’s entire body.
Therefore, before the Lord of Steel himself became even more famous, he had wanted to meet him in person…
Thud—
“Kyaa!”
“Oh dear, I’m sorry, Priestess.”
“No, I should have been watching where I was going.”
“…Oh? And coming out from in front of that special ward means you went to see the Lord of Steel, correct?”
Figaro had been lingering in front of the ward when he bumped into the pink-haired priestess. She nodded, confirming she had indeed visited Yohan.
“In that case, you must have received some kind of help from him as well. Hohoho, if it’s not too much trouble, could you tell me your name and what happened?”
“My name is Mika. No surname—just Mika.”
She spoke while shrinking into herself.
“As for what happened… I don’t want to think about it, so I won’t say. The only thing I can tell you is that if it weren’t for Yohan, I would definitely have died.”
“…I see. That must have been a difficult time. Still, for someone saying that, you were discharged remarkably quickly. All the other students are still in intensive care.”
Whatever that meant, Mika stared blankly for a moment before gently stroking her own stomach.
With his scoop-hungry mind, Figaro briefly wondered if she had been having an affair with the grand duke’s daughter while Yohan was unconscious, but she suddenly spoke.
“Um, Figaro.”
“You know my name?”
“…Yohan is in a lot of pain right now. He still hasn’t woken up, and no one is allowed in except those who have permission.”
“Hmm, I figured as much… So does that mean our priestess here has permission?”
She slowly shook her head and left him with only a meaningful remark.
“So if you want to know something, just like I did—leave flowers in front of his hospital room first. He is a noble man who deserves everyone’s respect.”
“…How curious.”
Watching her retreating figure, Figaro turned his gaze toward the intensive care ward where Yohan lay. Just as she had said, it was filled with flowers that people had left in piles. The guestbooks left alongside the flowers by everyone he had helped—including Mika—were particularly striking.
[Yohan, wake up!]
[To Sir Yohan, who must be going through a hard time. I survived because of you. Thank you.]
[With all the wishes of the northern people, we earnestly pray for your recovery.]
[Y-Yohan… When you wake up, let’s have tea together…]
[Honestly, I had my prejudices, but you seem like a good guy. I’m jealous of the grand duke’s daughter for being able to stay close to you.]
[I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.]
[Thank you for saving me.]
[Vankite, you son of a bitch.]
[To all those who misunderstood, to all those who drove him away—only those who have never received his help may cast stones.]
[Now I understand. Give us just one more chance.]
[Live.]
The atmosphere was so sacred that he couldn’t even bring himself to knock.
“……Ah, so everyone’s regretting it. Regretting that they went along with the ostracism. Still, they deserve this kind of treatment.”
Even Figaro, whose cynical side was quite strong despite his easygoing demeanor, had to acknowledge Yohan’s achievements.
“If I were in Yohan’s position, I wouldn’t have done anything for anyone else. Of course I wouldn’t have saved them either.”
With that, Figaro abandoned any thought of knocking on the door or sneaking inside. Unconsciously reaching for flowers he didn’t have, he simply left the pack of tobacco he happened to be carrying—his pipe tobacco—among the flowers before departing.
He already knew the reports that the Lord of Steel occasionally enjoyed a smoke outside the academy grounds.
“…Wake up. It’s not easy for me to say something like this.”
Well, tobacco leaves were plants too, so it should be fine.
Thus passed the days at Sigmund Academy as everything gradually settled.