A Profitable Transaction
The morning after I collided with Pletia-noona in that intense spar and somehow walked away with yet another unexpected gift, I finally got a window of free time since Ria had stepped out to visit her aunt.
To be honest, Milaze-sensei's offer weighed on me a little. But come on—what kind of professor would turn down a semester with no assignments at all, especially one that stretched into eternity? My own overwhelming talents or being the academy's rival didn't change the fact that extra tasks were just extra burdens. If chatting with the professor could magically clear them all, I might as well have kept my mouth permanently open twenty-four hours a day.
“Please come in, Lucian.”
As soon as I stepped into the professor’s office, Milaze-sensei greeted me with a bright smile.
The door swung open, and I couldn’t hold back a tiny “oh” of surprise. I had visited several other professors’ labs before, but this one felt different—overwhelming, almost dizzying.
“Sorry. I must have lost track of time,” she apologized lightly, though I suspected her focus was more on history than actual work.
The research room wasn’t just messy; it was a living archive. Books that looked relatively recent lay open, their pages yellowing at the edges, while ancient tomes with cracked spines and faded ink spilled across every surface. Only the narrow path near the entrance had been kept clear, a practical mercy given how often people came and went.
I muttered to myself that this chaos was pure madness, then realized the books all shared one common thread.
Records of the Lebechia-Pirot War, tales of the kingdom’s revival, documents on the royal family and the prime minister’s relationship, and files tied to the current emergency postal system.
Every single one of them pointed back to one elderly man.
I flipped through a few of the thick research binders Milaze-sensei had brought out and set down beside me.
“Here—have a cup. I just brewed it. The fragrance should be quite strong.”
“Thank you, Professor.”
The tea was from the elves’ own forest—steeped leaves with an aroma so deep and mysterious I had to close my eyes for a moment. I took a sip, and a soft “ahh” escaped me before I could stop it.
“This… is extraordinary.”
It wasn’t flattery. The flavor and scent were simply perfect, the kind that made my head nod without permission. I had never tasted anything better in all the tea I’d drunk here at the academy, even though hot chocolate remained my guilty weakness.
“It clears the mind and refreshes the spirit, doesn’t it? The forest is still in the air. This is tea leaves I gathered myself in my homeland. To us it’s ordinary, but human nobles go wild trying to get their hands on this powder.”
“I’m deeply grateful to be served something so rare. Words fail me.”
“Drink up. Tea loses its flavor when it cools.”
Milaze-sensei’s words made me drain the cup in one gulp, savoring the last of the warmth.
We exchanged a few pleasantries, then I turned my gaze to the shelves of books.
“I hear you’re a huge fan of Prime Minister Ju Cloud Low Dragonschultz.”
She nodded vigorously, eyes sparkling. “Among the elves, there’s no one more extraordinary. I truly want to understand him—everything.”
The person she wanted to meet most in the human world right now wasn’t even the current king or the late one. It was that man himself.
Milaze-sensei was the living embodiment of a Cloud Low Dragonschultz fanatic—except her adoration came from the scholar and the elf in her, not from romance.
“I understand. He’s still one of the handful of people who wield enormous influence even after retiring from politics. The one who was almost the only high official to survive when the late king purged nobles who threatened the crown. In Lebechia, he was indispensable. That’s why scholars like me want to study him—so much so that he’s almost a living legend, a fragment of history itself.”
The others praised only his power and achievements, but I wanted to honor his character, his resolve. No human could be free in the face of power, yet the late king had personally promised to keep the prime ministerial post open for him. That gave the man not only legitimacy but hidden support as well.
“Exactly.”
“But he refused the offer in a single stroke and stepped down from every position. At the time he was working himself to exhaustion, so the next generation had to step in and fill the gaps.”
Milaze-sensei was right. The old man had cast aside every privilege, every honor. He had already built a formidable legacy, his family was wealthy and respected, he had indulged in his work for decades, and his mind was no longer what it once was. He simply knew it was time.
It sounded perfectly plausible for a man approaching sixty.
Yet the moment I met him by chance, I realized he was still the kingdom’s greatest weapon. If he had stayed in the prime minister’s chair, Lebechia would undoubtedly be stronger today. Even I, with my absurd talent, had barely been able to reach him.
“…I agree with you, Professor. If he had remained in the post, Lebechia might have looked far stronger than it does now.”
“Many scholars and nobles in Lebechia say exactly that. He must have known the truth, yet he chose to retire. Why?”
“He said he was tired of working. Too tired to keep commuting to the palace every day. His real wish was to sleep in late on weekdays, lounge around all day, drift on the night breeze with a glass of wine, then sleep.”
I couldn’t exactly repeat that, so I fell silent.
Milaze-sensei would have said, “No way! He’s not the kind of person who would say that!”
I respected the man too much to throw facts at him like that.
“Couldn’t that have caused another problem down the line?”
“A problem?”
“Yes. Some people say, ‘If only he had stayed, things would have been even better.’ But ‘if only’ is a slippery road. Right now, during the Lebechia-Pirot War, Lebechia sent too few troops and got hammered when Pirot relaxed for a moment. Someone else claims that if we had sent more, we would have won bigger—but then Pirot might never have been careless.”
“Mm. I see what you mean.”
“Probably the late Prime Minister wanted to stop Lebechia from relying on him too heavily or from him becoming too involved in everything. He was a very humble man.”
“…That matches what other scholars have argued.”
Milaze-sensei nodded calmly.
I let the moment hang, then quietly slipped in the single piece of information I had never told anyone else.
“I do have one additional hypothesis, Professor.”
“One more?”
“Yes. According to what I found, there was a very small gathering not long after he stepped down.”
“A gathering?”
“Yes. You know he had a son, don’t you? Edwin von Dragonschultz. He’s the kingdom’s high-ranking knight and military commander now. One of Lebechia’s finest talents, trying hard not to tarnish his father’s name. He’s also the one who helped me develop new sword techniques by refining everything we learned together.”
“He married around that time. And a year later, his first child was born.”
“So… Prime Minister Dragonschultz attended his son’s wedding, wanted to know how his grandson would grow up, wanted to be a devoted grandfather to his grandchildren—therefore he resigned?”
“He could have said he wasn’t the kind of person to abandon the kingdom’s important affairs for something so trivial. But isn’t bringing peace to the family the same as bringing peace to the country? He had already fulfilled his duties, so when the chance to be a grandfather arrived, he seized it.”
Milaze-sensei looked thoughtful for a moment, then murmured, “That’s a rather interesting hypothesis.”
For the record, Edwin’s wedding had been intimate—only family. So quiet that most nobles never even heard the news.
“If other scholars heard your opinion…”
“They’d say Prime Minister Dragonschultz couldn’t possibly have left the kingdom just to be a grandfather.”
“Probably not.”
“But the man was still only human. How long can one keep sacrificing? How long can one keep working? It’s not disrespecting his greatness to admit he was also human.”
“…Humanity. Yes, exactly. He wasn’t always so cold and thorough.”
“Perhaps because of the pressure of being watched, or because he feared he might become a burden to his family, he stepped aside. It’s only my opinion, of course.”
Of course this was based on what I knew about Edwin. The late king had prepared the wedding in the quietest possible way so no harm would reach the old man. Then suddenly the man appeared out of nowhere and ruined the entire atmosphere. He had gone on about how excited he was to become a grandfather and claimed he would read hundreds of storybooks to his new grandchild the moment it was born. Even the old prime minister’s eyes would sparkle whenever family stories came up.
‘I understand. The old man had accomplished so much that the kingdom itself had grown accustomed to calling his name without reverence—more so than the late king, for whom the people still felt a little fear.’
While I was thinking that, Milaze-sensei nodded slowly. “If those are the reasons you’re considering, it makes sense. Interesting, Lucian.”
“I’m glad it helped.”
“It helped enormously. You can hold your head high. By the way, I wonder what the late Prime Minister would think if he ever read my papers. I’m a little worried he might say it’s not quite right.”
“He wasn’t the kind of person to dismiss ideas lightly, Professor.”
Milaze-sensei shrugged as if to say “who knows?” and waved off the offer of another cup.
“Next lecture is starting soon. I have to go.”
I was an ordinary freshman myself—busy keeping up with daily life despite not being as overwhelmed as Ria.
“It was short, but very useful. Thank you.”
“Thank you, Professor.”
I was about to turn to leave when another thought struck me.
Milaze-sensei was an elf who had lived in the kingdom from the beginning. Early on she had been called a traitor by her own kind, yet now she was respected as a pioneer who led the way in understanding relations with Lebechia.
If I could get close to this woman, maybe I could build a connection with the entire elf society.
“Professor Milaze.”
“Yes? Did you have something else to say?”
“Um… something just occurred to me. There might be one way.”
“What way?”
What way? Of course I meant to turn her into a fan of the late Prime Minister.
“The late Prime Minister Ju Cloud Low Dragonschultz. Is there any way to meet him?”