Belated Regret
The lecture hall felt frozen solid.
Had time itself stopped?
For a moment I wondered if Linea had cast some kind of spell, but that was impossible. The Academy's magical security system was far too robust for anything like that.
Which meant the students of the Fief Management Department were simply that stunned by my arrival…
Yeah, right.
I shook my head. Honestly, I couldn't believe it. At the Academy—especially inside this classroom—I had always been treated like an untouchable.
The Empire was a ruthlessly stratified aristocracy. House, bloodline, and rank were the absolute measures of a person's worth.
Imperial royalty. The Chosen Twelve Houses. High nobility. The bourgeoisie. Named aristocrats.
In that rigid hierarchy, I didn't even have a place to belong.
A bastard?
How dare a child of a different mother even show his face? Go play with the servants!
That was the vague, universal symbol of this age—accepted everywhere. And the Academy was packed with the arrogant noble heirs who fancied themselves the future of the Empire.
What had I been to them? Nothing more than an eyesore of a bug, or something so filthy they wouldn't even soil their mouths by speaking of it.
Well. Fine.
By now, I was calm about it. No matter how much they looked down on me, I could live with it. With a modern man's memories, the ones who looked primitive weren't me—it was them, the people who measured human worth by blood and station alone.
But the old me hadn't known that. So I had groveled harder, drowning in inferiority, acting more and more pathetic. Their deep-rooted contempt had probably come not only from my bastard status, but from that wretched attitude as well.
— Thud. Thud.
Which made this all the stranger. The only sound echoing through the lecture hall was the fall of my own footsteps. No one whispered. No one openly scorned me.
What the hell is wrong with everyone?
They were acting so unlike themselves that it felt awkward. These people sitting here were supposed to be elites, the children of high nobility?
An inexplicable unease prickled at me as I walked toward my usual seat—the far back corner.
Huh.
To my surprise, the seat was empty. On any ordinary day, someone would have deliberately taken it just to sneer at me.
The moment I sat down, the frozen air began, little by little, to thaw. Students started watching my face carefully and whispering again—but the lively, arrogant atmosphere from before was gone without a trace. Pale-faced, they shared the damage reports from their own territories, trembling with anxiety.
"More than half our farmland burned. The grain stores, too…"
"We lost three knights alone. The power of those monsters was… beyond anything I could have imagined."
"That whispering I heard all night still seems to be ringing in my ears."
And mixed in among it all, talk of me surfaced now and then.
"That bastard was right. I never thought a real catastrophe would actually come…"
"Doesn't it give you chills? How did he know?"
"Just luck. That guy's nothing but a lunatic."
"You idiots! Even a broken clock is right twice a day! Don't get worked up over that fraud's nonsense!"
Listening to them, I couldn't even laugh. Why not just say it to my face?
Just as the voices of the ones desperate to tear me down started to grow louder—
— Clack.
The lecture hall door was flung open hard.
Cassian Leonhardt stood there.
The same woman who had refused my desperate plea to lend me troops now had a bandage wrapped around one shoulder.
…And beneath it, there was no arm.
Even at a glance, she did not look normal. She looked worse off than anyone else sitting in this room.
Through the rising murmur, she walked toward me.
"Ian."
Her voice was no different from before—the same endlessly calculating, ice-cold tone she had used when she rejected my proposal.
"You were right."
With that same voice, Cassian bowed her head to me.
No.
She didn't just bow. She collapsed in front of me.
"Everything you said was true. The sun went down, and the monsters attacked. Those damned…! Those damned things!"
Pat. Pat.
Tears fell from her eyes and wet the desk.
"My arm. My fief. My people…"
Her shoulders trembled faintly.
I was rather at a loss. Should I pat her shoulder? Offer some kind of comfort?
"If I had… believed you back then… if I hadn't dismissed it as a madman's rambling and prepared even a little… my territory wouldn't have… ended up like this…"
The voice that spilled out low was unmistakable regret.
Cassian Leonhardt. Her fief, like Seorigol, lay in the western reaches of the Empire—one of the regions hit hardest by the Eclipse. That was exactly why I had gone out of my way to warn her in person.
Cassian had ignored my warning.
Honestly, just keeping her life was lucky.
Given her personality, she had probably kept some degree of emergency preparedness even on ordinary days. That was what had saved her life.
So you're lucky.
I couldn't say something like that to a woman who had lost an arm and was sobbing in front of me.
Every student in the lecture hall watched her grief and regret in silence. The ones who had been sneering at me turned their heads one by one, or looked away as if uncomfortable.
To the others, Cassian's confession seemed to act as a catalyst.
"D-Darkest…"
One student mustered the courage to approach me. He was one of those who had once shown open hostility toward me.
"I… I sincerely apologize for my rudeness during the last presentation. I, too, suffered enormous damage to my fief."
He stammered for a moment, then continued.
"If… if it isn't too much trouble, might I ask for some advice on how you managed to protect Seorigol through that catastrophe…?"
A sudden change in attitude. Watching the same people who had treated me like a lunatic come crawling like this was… well, pathetic enough, but—
Actually, it's impressive.
I was a little surprised. For nobles, apologizing—especially to someone of lower rank—was a disgrace. And they were willing to swallow that just to get information that could protect their territories.
I guess Academy students really are Academy students.
An attitude that seemed thoroughly closed off, yet could open at any moment if their own interests were at stake.
Other students began approaching me one after another, asking for help.
"Our territory has no defensive facilities at all…"
"What kinds of monsters appeared most often?"
"How many troops would we need?"
The situation had completely reversed. The ignored bastard, the outsider treated as a madman, had become the sole hope that desperate noble heirs clung to.
— Clunk!
Just as they were about to crowd in even more urgently, the lecture hall door opened and Professor Valerius entered. His expression was far more solemn and exhausted than usual.
"Everyone, take your seats. We will begin an emergency meeting. As fief managers, all of you are direct victims of this incident—especially those of you who hold territories in the west."
A heavy silence settled over the room again. The professor stood at the podium and looked around at the students.
"The catastrophe has occurred. The problem is the prediction that events like this will keep happening without end. Countless rumors will sweep through our surroundings. You must not fall for them. What matters is protecting your fiefs. That alone."
Think only of your own territory. A statement worthy of the guiding professor of the Fief Management Department.
I agreed with him completely.
"Then how are we to protect our fiefs?"
He swept his hand through the air.
The current status of each student's territory rose into the empty space like holograms. Territories unaffected by the Eclipse vanished from the list.
…And a few disappeared from the list entirely.
There were deaths, then. Even in this classroom.
Anyway.
1.Ian Darkest / Seorigol / Casualty Rate: 6%
2.Roella Amelia / Loreal City / Casualty Rate: 28.7%
The list of fiefs had been sorted by casualty rate.
The professor's gaze, sweeping the room, stopped on me.
"Ian Darkest."
Every student's eyes focused on me once more.
"I have heard that you foresaw this Eclipse and prepared your territory in advance. Though Seorigol is a small fief, your experience could serve as a valuable reference for everyone present—no, for the entire Empire."
The professor addressed me directly.
"Tell us. How did you prepare, what happened in Seorigol, and how did you defend it?"
There was nothing particularly special about the story.
I mechanically recited the predictions I had made and the preparations that followed—leaving out, of course, any knowledge of Theore.
"Your experience and cool-headed judgment will serve as a great example to us all."
Professor Valerius's praise continued.
"…I've never heard the professor compliment me before."
"Wouldn't you do the same in his place?"
I scratched my cheek. Students shielding me, of all things.
The discomfort lasted only a moment. The meeting's focus shifted straight to aftermath measures.
"Military expansion is urgent! We should hire mercenaries immediately!"
"We need to increase investment in magical barrier research! Let's request support from the Academy!"
This and that. They immediately launched into debate about their fiefs. That was the reason I had stayed in the Fief Management Department despite every humiliation.
Because for me, too, protecting and growing my territory comes before everything else.
In the broad strokes, I was no different from them. In the broad strokes.
"But what about capital? Whether it's magic or military, prices are going to skyrocket."
The students dug straight into the core of handling this crisis: reconstruction and recovery of their fiefs—and the cost of it all.
From total annihilation to half-destroyed. The territories damaged by this Eclipse would have to shoulder enormous expenditures for recovery.
But how were they supposed to raise that money?
Surprisingly, it was Cassian who offered the answer.
"We could consider utilizing the Chaos Crystals left behind by the monsters."
"That does seem right, doesn't it? I thought there was something to those black stones."
"There was something like that?"
Chaos Crystals.
A mysterious substance dropped by the monsters that appeared after the Eclipse. In this world that had flipped into dark fantasy, it would become one of the most important resources going forward.
How you collected them, and how you used them—that was one of the key factors determining how far a fief could grow.
"Since they seem to contain something like mana, the Magic Towers will likely purchase them for research. It should help with reconstructing the territories hit by the disaster."
I was quietly impressed by the accuracy of her analysis. When it came to pure reason, was Cassian the sharpest mind in the Fief Management Department after all?
Her analysis made sense, and her conclusion was perfect—as far as ordinary human thinking went.
I toyed with a few Chaos Crystals I had brought tucked inside my coat.
Chaos Crystals. A substance obtainable only through catastrophe, and ironically, the very power that would let humanity cling to survival against those catastrophes by a hair's breadth.
It's true that they trade for high prices among humans.
In the early stages they would be used for research, and later for all kinds of applications. Just as Cassian predicted, Chaos Crystals had endless value.
Sell the Chaos Crystals and raise military funds. In this situation, that was certainly the most orthodox response one could pursue.
But.
I knew another method. A dangerous place where these crystals could be sold for even more.
And today happened to be the day that place opened.
I glanced out the window. Outside, the sunset was already settling in.
The meeting grew more heated. By the time it ended, dusk had already fallen.
"…Hoo."
I drew a deep breath and steeled myself.
From here, I was going to the black market.
The black market of the Aberrations.