The First Lesson
The scale of Bethesda Academy was staggering. Hangars built to house a thousand Titans, warehouses stocked with spare parts, vast outdoor training grounds, and countless other facilities. Thanks to all that, self-levitating buses ran throughout the campus. They were fast, perfectly stable, and caused zero motion sickness. Their high passenger capacity was another plus. The only downside was the complete lack of partitions, which meant every eye could land on you.
“Is that him?”
“He doesn’t even look like he has any muscle. How can a body like that handle those kinds of G-forces?”
“They said the footage wasn’t edited, right?”
Even though I was tucked away in a corner of the bus, the stares never stopped. I felt like throwing up. It definitely wasn’t motion sickness. It was the stares that were making me sick. My head had been pounding since morning. I couldn’t even tell if the headache came from smashing my forehead earlier or if the headache was what made my forehead hurt. None of it made sense.
I still couldn’t understand it. All I did was get absolutely wrecked by the Imperial Princess. What part of that spar was so interesting that everyone kept staring at me?
“A Titan otaku with zero piloting experience pulled off maneuvers that completely ignored G-forces? Or that if he’d had a close-range weapon capable of piercing her shield, he could have won?”
Ailee’s voice rang out from my smartwatch. I tried to think of a rebuttal to her words, but nothing came to mind.
“I lost, didn’t I?”
“That’s true, but…”
But in the end, I had lost. The moment Ailee slammed into the ground after taking a hit to the blade, even the superior mobility I’d held until then was overtaken. I tried to pull back and fire a few shots, but I surrendered right before the second decisive blow. The entire fight hadn’t even lasted five minutes.
There was nothing I could do. My real combat experience was lacking, and so was my fuel. I should have predicted the fuel shortage. The problem was that I’d only upgraded the thrusters. I never once held the advantage during the engagement. I didn’t land a single effective hit. All I did was pull off some acrobatic flying. Making excuses about insufficient weapons was pointless.
After that footage of me doing absolutely nothing useful got pinned on the academy’s official community, I became a celebrity. To put it bluntly, it was humiliating.
“Next stop, Lecture Hall One.”
Just as the stares were becoming unbearable, we reached my destination and the bus doors opened. I followed behind the other cadets as they stood up, doing my best to avoid eye contact as I got off.
Lecture Hall One was where the Pilot Department’s major courses were held. I didn’t even need to look for directions; I could just follow the crowd. The moment I stepped into the huge lecture hall, I lengthened my stride and headed straight for a seat in the corner. Thankfully, while the other cadets glanced at me, none of them tried to sit nearby. Except for one person who looked around and then locked eyes with me.
“Deep, over there, isn’t that…”
“I know.”
I was confused too. I had no idea why that person was coming this way.
“Did you seduce the Imperial Princess?”
“As if that’s even possible.”
Unlike the standard cadet uniforms that were mostly black, she wore a lavish outfit dominated by red with gold embroidery. That extravagant attire was a privilege granted only to the Imperial Family. Saya Aslan, the Imperial Princess, walked straight toward me, her gaze fixed on me the entire time, then grabbed the chair right beside mine.
“Commoner.”
Saya sat down without hesitation. All I could do was bow my head in greeting. The princess looked at me with a strange expression and spoke.
“Which country are you from?”
What a ridiculous question. The special admission program for lower-class citizens only accepted Imperial subjects, and commoners couldn’t enroll without going through that program.
“I-I-I-I’m from the E-E-E-Empire.”
The princess’s eyes widened.
“Do you have a speech impediment? You didn’t seem to have any problems during the sortie?”
That was a bit rude.
“N-No. I-I just get n-nervous easily.”
“I see. So you’re from the Empire after all.”
I nodded, but it was hard to say it with any confidence. Even I found it difficult to state where I was from. The one thing I knew for sure was that I was a commoner of the Empire.
The princess leaned in close and whispered.
“I think you’re a spy.”
Huh? That’s so fucking wrong.
I barely managed to swallow the words that almost slipped out. The stares I could feel from all around us were burning into me. The princess kept her face close.
“That piloting skill. There’s no way a commoner with no Titan piloting experience could move like that. Unless you’re hiding your identity and enrolled through the lower-class program to gather information.”
“Th-Then wouldn’t it have b-been better for m-me to just l-lose without r-resisting?”
I couldn’t hold that one back. The princess pulled away, staring at me with slightly surprised eyes. After a brief moment of thought, she made an expression that was half convinced and half not.
“…Hmph. Tell me your name.”
Maybe she really was just an idiot who happened to be an amazing pilot. No way the Imperial Princess of the Empire could be like that. She was probably just overly devoted to her country. Yeah, that had to be it. Definitely.
“D-Deep. It’s Deep.”
“I’ll remember it.”
Her tone didn’t sound like you’re marked. It genuinely sounded like she would remember. Just as the princess’s face cleared up and she seemed about to say something else, a loud sound rang out.
THUD!
The front door of the lecture hall burst open. The princess immediately straightened her posture and looked forward. The sharp click of dress shoes echoed as a face that was somewhat familiar to me stepped up onto the podium. Saya flinched the moment she saw the professor’s face. A moment later, the lecture hall erupted into murmurs.
“That’s Captain Zeke from the Eastern Front.”
“The Zeke with three hundred kill marks, right? Why is he teaching here?”
Wait, how many kill marks?
Zeke, standing on the podium, quietly scanned the room. His calm gaze gradually silenced the students one by one. Only after complete silence had fallen did Professor Zeke speak.
“I assume many of you have questions about why I’m here. Set those questions aside. As long as I stand in this place, I am nothing more than an instructor at this academy.”
The cadets were about to grow noisy again when Professor Zeke raised his hand. Starting with the quick-witted ones, silence quickly returned.
“This lecture is meant to build the foundations of a pilot. Many of you may have already built those foundations or gained real combat experience, but none of you meet my standards.”
Professor Zeke’s eyes clearly turned in my direction.
“Moreover, there is a cadet here who hasn’t even built the most basic foundation.”
That was a direct shot. No matter how I thought about it, he was talking about me.
“If any cadet knows what the most important foundation for a pilot is, raise your hand and answer.”
Several hands shot up immediately. Without hesitation, Professor Zeke pointed at them one by one.
“Responsibility.”
“Wrong.”
“Patriotism!”
“Wrong.”
This was going to be controversial.
“Piloting skill.”
“Wrong.”
“Theory—”
“Wrong.”
Professor Zeke was about to point with his index finger but paused, then opened his hand instead. At the end of that gesture was Saya Aslan, who had her hand raised. The princess answered with a confident expression.
“Stamina.”
“Correct.”
A short round of applause burst out. Professor Zeke waited quietly until it died down, then took off his suit jacket and draped it over his chair. The atmosphere instantly grew tense. It wasn’t killing intent or anything like that. Several cadets instinctively made disgusted faces. I did the same.
“Which is why today we will be conducting a physical fitness test.”
Why that of all things.
Bethesda Academy placed heavy emphasis on efficiency. So much so that there was no entrance ceremony, no orientation, and not even a course registration period. Classes started a week earlier than other academies, and the curriculum ran a week longer. Everything was designed with maximum efficiency in training cadets.
Even so, I hadn’t expected them to start us off with running from the very first week.
“Huff, huff, huuuff…”
The academy’s training field was insanely large. I couldn’t remember exactly how big my previous school’s field had been, but this one seemed nearly five times larger. Everyone has run at some point in their life. I was no exception. But I hadn’t run once in the past few years. Because one of my legs refused to listen properly.
Professor Zeke had said there was no problem with that. He had brought an exoskeleton device designed to assist with walking. It wasn’t academy-issued; he said he’d bought it with his own money. Thinking back now, maybe he had noticed my limp from the very first time we met.
I would have been grateful if it had ended there, but the real problem came after that.
“Run more. Keep running until you physically can’t anymore.”
He said it didn’t matter if I fell far behind, and that I could basically just walk, as long as I kept moving. I had already been running for twenty minutes. It might have been short compared to a marathon, but for someone who hadn’t run in years, it felt like I was going to die. I had reached my limit after the first lap. My stamina was already completely drained. While the other cadets were running just fine, I was moving at a speed that was closer to walking. But he wouldn’t let me stop.
My entire body was screaming for me to quit, yet Professor Zeke kept running beside me, telling me to keep going. It wasn’t favoritism. He was simply running alongside the person who was falling behind at the very back. I was just thinking that maybe if I collapsed right now he would finally let me stop, when he spoke in a voice only I could hear.
“I heard you passed out from the first acceleration during the exam. That wasn’t the first time your body performed maneuvers beyond what it could handle. What you need, in the end, is a strong, resilient body.”
That part was fine, but what he said next sent chills down my spine.
“Don’t worry. You’re clearly the type of person who still has one more drop left even after you’ve been squeezed dry.”
Fuck.
In the end, I had no choice but to run one more lap. When I finally collapsed on the ground and looked up, Professor Zeke’s face somehow looked strangely refreshed.