The Broken Crest
Because of the Monster Chieftain’s curse, she had never been able to show herself to the world. She had never mixed with other nobles. Aside from her family, her exclusive maid, and Gelwood, Lumiang had never once interacted with another human being. There was no way she could have known the vicious underside of noble society.
Of course she had received instruction from Sir Gelwood and her father, but the gulf between someone who had lived those lessons from childhood and someone who had only ever heard them spoken aloud was bound to be vast.
Wow… s-so this is the Royal Academy…!
All that had mattered to Lumiang was the chance to receive a proper education at the kingdom’s finest academy.
“Hoho, are you that happy?”
Together with her exclusive maid Ronica—who would later die in an accident—Lumiang had arrived at the Royal Academy after the first grueling journey of her life. Yet the fatigue had been washed away in an instant by pure joy. The unfamiliar grounds, the academy campus itself, had been a place overflowing with every kind of excitement.
“Yeah! It’s the absolute best!”
The entrance ceremony followed at once. Young lords and ladies from countless noble houses gathered in the auditorium.
There are so many…
Easily a hundred students, by the look of it. Standing among them, shrinking a little, Lumiang recited the oath after the headmaster. Loudly.
“I swear! Article One! In the pursuit of learning there is no high or low of birth, and beneath the sacred light of scholarship all are equal!”
That verse had settled deep into Lumiang’s heart. Forced by the curse to conceal her true station, unable to risk posing as anything higher than a baron’s daughter lest she be exposed, she had been made to become the young lady of some remote frontier barony whose name no one had ever heard. To her, that oath had been perfect.
And so—
“Professor! I have a question!”
—she followed Article One without a thought for status and threw herself into pure learning. She was so happy. Unlike the lonely days of self-study and solitary fretting, there was now someone who could answer her doubts at once. No one put more passion into class time; after lectures she would seek out professors without hesitation whenever a new question arose. An entirely new world seemed to open before her. All those stagnant years felt repaid at last; her scholarship soared as if it had spread wings and caught a following wind. She sat in the very front row. She always raised her hand first when a professor asked a question.
That was the spark that started the fire.
Ignorant of the dark underbelly of noble society, never realizing that the oath of equality was nothing but empty words, Lumiang drew the hostile stares of Deron’s clique.
That was when it began. Simply because she was an eyesore, simply because a baron’s daughter from some unheard-of backwater dared to stand out in class, the merciless abuse started.
“You cheeky little bitch. If your blood’s that low, know your place and stay down.”
“W-why… why are you doing this? We all took the oath…”
“Puhaha! The oath? What’s that supposed to be?”
“I-I just… I just like learning…”
“Is that so? Then from today you’ll learn from us.”
“Learn what…?”
“Life lessons, you fucking whore!”
Thud!
Thwack!
“Kyaaah!”
Day after day she was dragged to the empty lot behind the campus and put through hell. Bruises bloomed on her face, cuts opened on her neck, yet no one ever offered her salve. For three full years she endured food torture, deadly games of tag, and every other form of group bullying they could invent.
“Heh heh. Get caught and you’re dead. Better run.”
“Please… stop…”
Grab!
“Kyah!”
“Whether it stops or starts is our decision, bitch. Got it? All right, you’ve got ten seconds. You’d better run fast.”
For no greater reason than that they simply couldn’t stand the sight of her, she suffered all of that.
Even so, Lumiang never gave up. With a bruised face she still sat in the front row and gave everything she had; she forced her aching body through research and experiments. Even if that only stoked their rage further, even if her passion and stubbornness only returned to her as greater calamity, she refused to quit. In the end she earned the glory of being named a top scholarship student.
And then—
“Fuck. So just share a little of that glory with us, yeah?”
—Deron’s group became top scholarship students as well, and thus the valedictorians. For Lumiang, who had simply loved learning more than any title of “top graduate,” it did not feel unfair. The only regret was having to leave the campus after three years.
“Heh heh. So this filthy connection of ours is finally over, huh? Feel relieved? Erincia?”
“You’re free of us now. Smile a little. Heh heh.”
“Live well. Don’t forget the life lessons we taught you these three years.”
That had been the end. Three years of hell had finished so anticlimactically. She felt no bitterness. Just as they said, she was relieved. She would never see them again. She would never cross paths with them again.
Returning to the northern territory, Lumiang threw herself even harder into research and experiments, trying to bury the memories. Little by little they seemed to fade. The pain, the wounds, the tears seemed to be vanishing down the road of forgetfulness.
No.
If only their names had not appeared on the candidate list, those memories would surely have disappeared. If only the old scars had not begun to throb the moment she saw those names, if only the memories she had so carefully buried had not risen again…
In that instant Lumiang understood. Three years of hell would never be so easily forgotten.
“Ah, here come the candidates.”
Seated with her eyes closed, Lumiang opened them at Gelwood’s words. And she saw. Kyle sprinting toward them from afar. Behind him Blund, face white as snow, running hard. And Deron, whose face had gone the exact same ashen shade hers always wore after their deadly games of tag. A smile rose, but she forced it down. Because they had taken the opposite direction from Elden, they could not possibly be bringing the crest. They must simply have been chased by the giant monsters stationed in each cave until they gave up of their own accord.
Lumiang rose from her chair and went herself to meet Kyle.
“Hoho. You’re back early. How was it?”
She wanted to hear that it had been terrifying. That it had been horrifying. That he was forfeiting. But—
“Look at this, Grand Duchess!”
What Kyle pulled out while gasping for breath was none other than the Grand Ducal crest that should have been in the northeastern eight-hundred-meter cave—the one Elden Raphelion should have brought.
Lumiang took it.
“….”
“I nearly died, but after a desperate fight I managed to seize it!”
“….”
Moments later Blund and Deron arrived. Their faces were full of things they wanted to say, yet they only glared daggers at the back of Kyle’s head. Whatever had happened among them was utterly useless to Lumiang.
Trembling. Fighting to still her shaking hands, she asked Kyle,
“Elden… did you not see Young Lord Elden?”
“Pardon?”
“I’m asking whether Young Lord Elden was there.”
“That is… why…?”
“Answer the question I asked.”
Kyle, who had expected the Grand Duchess to be delighted, who had snatched the crest the instant the Wild Big Boar fell and raced back in the belief that he would receive the highest score, instead found himself facing her furious face.
“N-no, he wasn’t there…?”
Lumiang exhaled a long breath. Her grip on the crest tightened. She had gone so far as to confess to that villain whose very thought made her teeth grind—confessed as a woman. She had used the final method she had never wanted to bring out, the one that filled her with such rising nausea she had sworn never to employ it. And yet Elden Raphelion, who had headed northeast… where was he and what was he doing?
She was angry. She was humiliated. She had even forced out a confession she did not mean, just to encourage him. She had personally sought out Young Lady Ariel. And once again she had failed. Whether Elden had tried and failed or had not even tried, she could not know—but her instincts leaned toward the latter. The fact that he had not even shown his face there was the same as rejecting her confession.
Her teeth ground together. Shame burned hot across her face. She had been certain of success. She had promised him victory; she had believed he would give his all this time. He had to. Her ultimate incentive had to succeed so that she could teach Elden just how terrifying their deadly games of tag had been. What was it? Why did she fail every single time? Her insides churned; a white-hot rage boiled up. She had endured the urge to vomit while writing that confession note, only to end up looking like a fool who failed again and again. Had the entire premise been wrong? Had he truly forfeited of his own will in order to walk a path of repentance? Impossible. That could not be.
“G-Grand Duchess…? Then the second evaluation is my vic—”
“Shut your mouth.”
At Kyle’s cautious words, a harsh reply slipped out before she could stop it. Her mind was too tangled for rational thought. For the sake of complete liberation from hell she had turned the family’s sacred tradition—the Marriage Tournament—into a vehicle for personal revenge. That was why it absolutely had to succeed, yet that snake named Elden kept wriggling free of her grasp in the most infuriating way.
And then—
“…!”
—she saw Elden walking back along the forest path toward the starting point. An innocent face, casually crunching on a piece of fruit. The sight was so grating she could barely stand it. The sight was so utterly loathsome. Trembling. She wanted to slap his cheek then and there, yet the thought that this very spite was the same look Deron’s group had worn while watching her for three years made her clench her molars and endure.
In the end—
Crack!
—she hurled the crest Kyle had brought onto the ground and turned on her heel, beginning the descent down the mountain. The crest struck a stone and shattered into pieces. Just like the cracks spreading through Lumiang’s convictions.
A short while later Elden, finally returning to the starting point, took a big bite of his fruit and asked from behind the frozen figures of Deron and Blund,
“Did something happen? The atmosphere doesn’t seem good.”
Crunch, crunch.