Practical Training (2)
Practical Training (2)
One week before practical training.
The academy made an unexpected announcement.
"During this practical training, some students will explore ruins instead of clearing monsters. Members of the Royal Knights and several nobles will be accompanying you, so make sure you learn as much as you can from them."
The students were bewildered by the sudden announcement, but soon erupted into loud cheers.
From their perspective, exploring ruins had to be far better than fighting monsters.
It was much safer, less exhausting, and far more exciting.
Treasure chests, artifacts, and stories to tell. Ruin exploration was full of romance.
The fact that the Royal Knights were joining also meant the royal family was hosting the expedition. Play your cards right, and you might even catch the royal court's eye.
I was delighted to hear the announcement, too.
I didn't know whether I would be among the select few chosen to participate in the ruin exploration, though.
Still, while I was stuck staring helplessly at my map, I wanted to find comfort in taking a look at another ruin, if nothing else.
At the time, I had no idea this was a plot hatched by the princes, or that the ruin to be explored was the very one marked on the map I possessed.
The atmosphere in class, already chaotic with preparations for the practical training, descended into complete disarray, leaving the professors no choice but to give up on trying to manage the students.
The students from the Administration Department were deeply disappointed by the news about the ruins, but they weren't eligible to participate.
The students also wondered how the candidates for the ruin exploration would be selected.
Rumors ranged from drawing lots to favoring upperclassmen, and there was even talk that selections were being decided through family lobbying.
Given the nature of the Forest of the Seal, where monsters gathered in greater numbers when large crowds traveled together, they wouldn't choose a massive group. Still, it seemed certain that at least several dozen people would be selected.
A considerable number of people were needed to explore a ruin.
Even more personnel were required for the team to pass through the Forest of the Seal and reach the ruin site.
Although I was concerned about how many Royal Knights or nobles would participate, they did at least have the justification of practical training. They could hardly get away with sending just a few people to make a show of it.
Fortunately, I ended up participating in the ruin exploration.
As a royal, the Princess was naturally participating, and since she was going, the higher-ups pulled strings here and there to make sure I was included as well.
Time passed, and the morning of the practical training arrived.
We came to the Forest of the Seal once again.
This time, unlike during the 'field trip', we weren't divided into squads.
Dozens of people teleported all at once to a wide riverside.
I had visited the Forest of the Seal only once before, and this place, reached through spatial teleportation, was entirely new to me.
There were 48 students who underwent spatial teleportation: 24 from the Knight Faculty and 24 from the Inherited Ability Faculty.
That was about one-fifth of all the students in the Knight Faculty and Inherited Ability Faculty, and the 'practical training' for the remaining students was postponed by two weeks.
The students who missed out on the opportunity to explore the ruins were probably still at the academy, soothing their disappointment.
Besides the students, there were four professors, including Professor Katrin, and one headmaster, making a total of 53 people from the academy.
The rest were people sent by the royal family for the ruin exploration.
To begin with, about 20 members of the Royal Knights had arrived.
Clad in gleaming armor and shields, with expensive-looking swords at their waists, most of the knights appeared to be nobles.
Most other knights were not awakened nobles, but commoners capable of manipulating mana.
But most members of the Royal Knights were nobles who had graduated from the Royal Academy.
They were upperclassmen from our academy's Knight Faculty, and joining the Royal Knights was also the dream of Knight Faculty students who weren't heirs to their families.
About 10 officers belonging to the Kingdom Army were also visible.
In our kingdom, besides the soldiers conscripted from each domain when war broke out, there was a standing army permanently stationed in the capital.
More than half of them were officers with inherited abilities—landless nobles.
It was where landless nobles with combat-oriented inherited abilities ended up, serving alongside the Royal Knights as the Kingdom's core military force and the royal family's strength.
We might have expected the Royal Knights, but we had no idea that noble officers from the Kingdom Army would come as well, so we were quite startled by their appearance.
Although the students outnumbered them, it was immediately clear which group held the true center of authority.
Besides them, there was one more person.
A middle-aged noble was conversing with a senior knight of the Royal Knights and a noble who looked like a general.
The moment I heard that noble's name from another student, I was thoroughly stunned.
Count Chaipree.
The head of the Chaipree family and the father of the deceased Ride was participating in the ruin exploration.
'Good grief, by ruin exploration, did they mean THAT ruin?'
I placed my hand on my chest. I could feel the pouch tucked inside my inner pocket.
'Did he seriously give up right away?'
No matter how I thought about it, giving up was way too quick. Even though his son had died, he wasn't the primary heir, and yet he had handed it over to the royal family right away.
No matter how you looked at it, this wasn't something a noble who oozed greed would do.
On top of that, although the Count was participating in person, given that both the Royal Knights and Kingdom Army officers were here, it seemed unlikely that the Chaipree family would gain much profit.
If they were looking for the ruin on the map I held, I needed to figure something out, too.
If I just stood around doing nothing, someone else would snatch away all the treasures in the ruin—for which I even had the map.
But before I could even come up with a plan, the group began to move.
Everyone except the Headmaster made their way through the Forest of the Seal under Count Chaipree's guidance.
Strangely, there was barely any luggage among the party heading out to explore the ruin.
The students carried only light rations in their backpacks, while the knights and officers had neither backpacks nor accompanying squires.
Instead of dedicated porters, one of the knights carried an old bag on his back at the rear of the group.
"Is that bag on his back the artifact bag the royal family boasts about?"
"Yes. It's an Old Empire artifact bag from the treasure vault. It seems my eldest brother took it out of the vault."
The Princess had come up beside me without my noticing, and she answered my mutter.
It wasn't just the Princess. Bria and the first-year Knight Faculty students were all gathered nearby.
They had certainly mixed up the grades to form squads before departing, but after moving a short distance, people naturally clustered by year again.
With the Royal Knights taking the lead and the second- and third-year students clinging tightly to them to curry favor, the remaining first-years were inevitably pushed to the rear like this.
"Is that an artifact bag? I heard it holds a tremendous amount."
The other first-year students looked at the bag I had mentioned with wide, surprised eyes.
"It's probably about the size of a small warehouse."
"Everything from the equipment for this exploration to the rations must be packed inside that, then."
Only then did Bria and the other students seem to realize why there was no visible luggage.
I was a bit puzzled, though.
"Still, isn't it risky to put everything in a single bag?"
The Princess immediately answered my question.
"There must be a Subspace Ability User among the Kingdom Army officers. My second brother would never entrust all the supplies and gear solely to the Royal Knights."
"Ah, so they've prepared for everything."
The students nodded at the Princess's words, but I was able to glean a few crucial pieces of information from what she said.
The Royal Knights were aligned with the First Prince, while the Kingdom Army officers were aligned with the Second Prince. This ruin exploration was a joint enterprise undertaken by the First and Second Princes.
The situation was more complicated than I had expected.
A ruin exploration in which Count Chaipree was participating, and which served as a joint project between the First Prince and the Second Prince.
To make the journey all the way through the Forest of the Seal, they had included Royal Academy students, and on top of that, they had even brought the Princess along.
I cast a mana barrier around the Princess and myself to prevent anyone outside from overhearing, then whispered softly into her ear.
"Did you volunteer for this ruin exploration yourself, Princess?"
At my question, the Princess shook her head. She, too, covered her mouth with a hand and whispered softly.
"No. After getting scolded during the field trip, I stayed quiet this time. Katrin also said we should avoid anything that looks dangerous."
Yet, regardless of her own will, the Princess had ended up participating in the ruin exploration.
I didn't know about the upperclassmen, but the first-years walking alongside me were all top performers from the Knight Faculty.
The Princess's skill wasn't bad, either, but since she had awakened only recently and was keeping one of her two abilities hidden, she couldn't fully show off her skill during class.
Even so, the fact that she had been included meant there might be some other hidden reason behind it.
While nothing was certain yet, there had to be a specific reason why even the Princess had been dragged into this.
I fell deep into thought.
Just then, someone approached the first-years, who were walking leisurely through the forest since no monsters had gathered yet.
It was one of the upperclassmen who had been walking ahead.
"It's troubling if you guys cluster together separately like this. Everyone's pretending not to notice out of consideration for the Princess, but if you keep this up, the upperclassmen might not let it slide later."
He tried his best to intimidate the first-year students.
But since he spoke playfully with a smile on his face, no one was actually frightened.
The upperclassmen walking ahead let out a collective sigh.
It seemed they had tasked the senior currently speaking with scolding the first-years.
"So hurry up, go apologize, and mingle with the upperclassmen. It's not really your fault, but going off on your own like this will make it hard to score points with the Royal Knights. And by points, I mean OUR evaluation points! You guys still have a long way to go, but for us, this is right at our doorstep!"
But with the speaker himself talking like that, there was no way he could establish any real authority.
Still, since the students understood the message well enough, it wasn't a bad approach.
Seeing him play the senior role after entering just two years earlier felt a little laughable, but when I remembered the military from my past life, this level of behavior was downright cute.
Even so, although it must have been the freshmen's first time meeting the upperclassmen, many of the students recognized and greeted one another.
At a Royal Academy similar to a military academy, there were no clubs or student councils...
Were they students whose families were acquainted with each other?
"I heard that families and individuals host lots of parties and gatherings. Though for a child of a countryside noble like me, invitations hardly ever come."
Bria, who was hovering on the fringes like me, answered my unspoken question.
"Considering that, didn't quite a few invitations come your way after the last field trip?"
Since she sparred with me often, I had personally seen her receive invitations.
"That was only briefly. Even when I bothered going to the parties, I just ended up out of place."
As she said, although her family held a small domain out in the countryside, she was nonetheless a legitimate child of noble blood.
If even she felt out of place at the parties she was invited to, it made perfect sense why not a single invitation had ever come to an illegitimate son like me.
The Princess was now surrounded by upperclassmen, too.
At that rate, there was hardly any need for me to guard her separately.
"Why are you two moving separately like this? Aren't you both pretty famous?"
The upperclassman who had come over earlier and spoken playfully now addressed Bria and me.
When he spoke to us, Bria hastily placed a hand over her chest.
"Ah, no! I am Bria, Senior Havier!"
Bria's eyes sparkled as she replied.
Surprised by Bria's reaction, I inspected the upperclassman who had approached us.
Oho. Although he was hiding it to some extent, the mana emanating from him was tremendous.
He was the strongest among all the students I had seen—stronger than most ordinary knights.
As it turned out, he was extremely famous within the school.
He was the top third-year student in the Knight Faculty and an upperclassman widely considered likely to become the next commander of the Royal Knights.
Seeing how he struck up a conversation with an illegitimate son like me, he seemed to have a good personality, too.
Unfortunately, he would end up being the very first to die at the hands of the swarming monsters.