107. Trainee No. 2
107. Trainee No. 2
Thanks to the Hunting Festival, Shahra had recently found herself having more frequent private audiences with Atlas.
That was because, as of late, Atlas had come to need her information more often.
Time she didn't have to share with anyone else. Time she could keep all to herself.
As the intervals between these private meetings grew shorter, Shahra was pleased, because she could feel more keenly that Atlas needed her.
At the academy, students were not permitted to bring in servants from their families to order around like their own hands and feet.
There were several reasons for this, but the biggest was that some people had brought hordes of servants and run wild, treating the academy like their private villa.
Because of that, within the academy, no matter what family someone came from, they were an individual and had to rely solely on their family's background and their own personal strength.
The academy professors were naturally from families of considerable standing, and since most of the academy's menial chores were handled automatically by golems, what any individual student could do was bound to be limited. However, a few students whose 'background' was overwhelming were different.
The Phrygia family's background wielded absolute power, enough to order around most of the academy's professors like servants.
And the value of the information that flowed from the professors, the very heart of the academy, was beyond imagination.
If it had been Atlas alone, he wouldn't have known this early that Professor Buckingham harbored ill intentions during this Hunting Festival.
The moment he saw Shahra, Atlas told her what he had done.
"I've already moved against Buckingham. I gave him a thorough scare, so it's unlikely, but... if you catch the slightest hint that Buckingham is harboring other intentions, let me know."
"You've already resolved it. I will keep it in mind."
She had advised him that noticing a hint meant it was better to seize the initiative, but even she had thought it would take some time to prepare. Yet his speed was astonishing.
She hadn't caught so much as a whiff of any commotion in the meantime, and yet he had dealt with a professor in an instant. That's just like Atlas, Shahra thought.
The academy's security was renowned as the most impenetrable in the Empire after the Imperial Palace, yet Atlas always acted as if it was nothing.
"I heard you won't be going out for the Hunting Festival."
"That's how it worked out."
Atlas spoke indifferently.
"You're not going to ask the reason?"
"If it is Atlas-nim's decision, there is surely a deeply considered reason."
Truth be told, she did wonder why he wasn't going.
If he went, his victory was practically a foregone conclusion.
If it was a Hunting Festival held in the Black Forest, Shahra could say with certainty that no one else would even come close to Atlas's heels.
And that was plausible, because the place where Atlas had 'trained' Shahra was precisely deep within the Black Forest.
Just how dangerous a place the depths of the Black Forest were, Shahra also understood well in theoretical terms.
It was a hellish place teeming with venomous insects, poisonous plants... and dangerous magical beasts.
But Atlas had not only taken himself but also Shahra, who was nothing more than dead weight, inside—and on top of that, he hadn't stopped there. He had trained Shahra.
It had been an incredibly dangerous undertaking.
During the training, Shahra had shed an immense amount of bodily fluids—sweat, blood, and the like—and she had screamed at the top of her lungs.
She knew very well that both magical beasts and predators were sensitive to such smells and would swarm toward them.
Nor was it as if there had been no magical beasts nearby.
She had confirmed with her own eyes that the assassin she hired had been devoured by the Black Forest's magical beasts, with only pieces of his body remaining.
In such a dangerous place, Atlas had carried a lump of dead weight and conducted training for hours on end, without ever letting her be poisoned by toxic plants or venomous insects.
In Shahra's memory, she had clearly never been bitten by a venomous insect, never been grazed by a toxic plant, and had no recollection of dangerous magical beasts even lurking nearby.
It had been so quiet that, had she not been told, she would have mistaken it not for the Black Forest but simply a garden near the academy.
Though the few magical beast corpses and the devoured corpse of the assassin strongly asserted that the place had indeed been the Black Forest.
She wondered just how many people at the academy could endure such conditions without a single injury.
But she could state with certainty that no student could.
She was curious why Atlas hadn't participated in a Hunting Festival he already had in the bag, but she had no intention of asking him directly.
She merely accepted that there was probably something her current self was incapable of understanding.
"I heard that instead of going, you're doing a tea house with your class."
"Woodville was bursting with enthusiasm. The way she was gushing passion about beating Class 4..."
Atlas laughed indifferently and told her about the incident where Woodville had turned the dough into charcoal.
He seemed quite amused.
At the name Woodville, Shahra's eyebrows twitched.
It was absolutely not because the Woodville family was a nuisance.
She had no intention of getting serious over a commoner-born merchant whose entire business was penny-profit bulk sales, but the fact that she was in the same class as Atlas annoyed her.
It grated on her that a woman from such a trivial family, without even a proper education, could be by Atlas's side and get brought up in his conversation simply because she had been placed in the same class.
But she didn't let it show outwardly.
She could say with certainty that Atlas wouldn't like that.
At most, she could overlook a bit of familiarity that built up during the Hunting Festival period.
After all, she was enduring even the women who latched onto his side all day long.
"Shahra, what's Class 4 going to do?"
"We have no plans to do anything grand. After all, we cannot bring shame upon Atlas-nim's class."
When Shahra had heard that Atlas wasn't going out to the Hunting Festival himself but was opening a tea house with his class, she had set her own class's plans within limits that wouldn't strike a blow against Class 5.
Since Class 5 was doing a 'tea house', she figured Class 4 could hastily construct a decent attraction and call it a day.
But upon hearing that, Atlas smiled.
"Then it won't be any fun."
"It won't be... fun?"
She was surprised, because she had thought he would tell her to help her own class take first place in sales, but he said something completely different.
Atlas spoke with a very bright smile.
"Do your best. As long as it's not a mud fight with black propaganda, anything goes. Aim for first place in sales in the entire academy."
Upon hearing that, she realized.
Ah, so that's why this person hadn't participated in the Hunting Festival either.
He found something where first place was already guaranteed to be boring.
In that case, she thought, she should proceed as she had been taught by her family.
"...If that is what you wish, I will revise the plans."
After that, Atlas suddenly dropped a bomb.
"I was curious about who would win if Phrygia and Woodville clashed."
"?!"
A chill ran down her spine at the words 'curious about who would win.'
Was he thinking of weighing the scales between Phrygia and Woodville?
What would happen if Woodville won at this Hunting Festival?
If he came to think Woodville was superior... would she, perhaps, become unnecessary to him...?
Inside Shahra's head, an ominous delusion unfolded like a vivid hallucination.
A different woman, not herself, was at Atlas's side.
Clothes excessively focused on flashiness, a disgustingly strong perfume, pigtails that swayed like tails every time she turned her head.
The image of Dorothy Woodville having a private meeting with Atlas in her place was drawn with painful clarity.
Atlas was laughing indifferently, just as he had when he told her about what happened with Woodville a moment ago.
The moment her anxiety reached its peak, Shahra rose from her chair and fell to her knees on the bare floor.
"I will definitely win..! I will prove my usefulness. So please... please don't abandon me!!"
Atlas was momentarily flustered at seeing Shahra suddenly drop to her knees, but he skillfully calmed her down.
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Shahra Phrygia was a trainee.
Not Trainee No. 1, but somewhere around No. 2.
What she was being trained in was how to become a 'person'.
Suffering from antisocial personality disorder, she was unable to empathize with others, ignored their rights and morals, and had a tendency to calculate only her own gain.
Whether it was innate or acquired, it was because she had been thoroughly conditioned to be that way.
She had been made to act coldly, calculatingly, doing only what benefited her, and she had been unable to feel any emotion even when her actions provoked the wrath of others.
I had tried to change Shahra's constitution.
For someone who had been thoroughly educated not to empathize with the emotions of others, I delivered an intensive, expedited lesson over the course of a single day.
It was a high-intensity shock therapy, but it was quite effective.
The wrongdoings commonly committed by psychopaths are often rooted in the ignorance of not understanding why those actions are wrong.
Because they cannot empathize with the other party, whatever they thought was right was always right.
As a result of forcibly injecting into her body over a single night what was right and what was wrong, her condition had visibly improved.
The attachment she displayed toward me also proved her condition was getting better.
"I will definitely win..! I will prove my usefulness. So please, please don't abandon me!!"
Dropping to her knees and begging me not to abandon her—these were not words befitting the young lady of Phrygia.
It seemed she had taken my curiosity about who would win if they clashed with Woodville to mean I was weighing the two of them on a scale.
Even so, to drop to her knees out of doubt... apparently, her degree of dependence was also increasing alongside the formation of the attachment relationship.
But that was a good sign, too.
Watching for others' reactions, appealing to the emotions of others—the very fact that she was doing these things meant she was beginning to empathize with human feelings.
"Abandon you? There's no way I would ever do that. Once I've taken someone on, I will never cast them aside."
As I let her feel the sound of my heartbeat, I could sense Shahra, who had been on the verge of tears, gradually regaining her stability.
"Is... is that true..? Even if I become useless... even if a superior subordinate appears, you won't abandon me...?"
"I don't meet you because you're useful."
It was true that Shahra was outstanding, and it was true that I had received her help many times, but that wasn't the only reason I kept her at my side.
To be precise, it was because I was certain that leaving her alone would cause even greater incidents.
She had tried to kill me, tried to harm the people around me, and was destined in the future to become a traitor who sold out her country by surrendering to demons, but I knew where her actions stemmed from.
I knew it was because she had been taught to live that way.
Trained to live that way by her parents, by her environment, and having lived her whole life acting exactly as she was taught—I was curious to see how Shahra would change if she received a proper education.
Therefore, instead of killing her, I had taught her.
I had done it with the thought of trying to make a person, and the results had been quite good.
Because of her position, she didn't seem to have changed much in front of other students, but seeing her increasingly improved self before me was rewarding.
"You are...."
But in the middle of that, I felt a specific signal from inside my clothes.
"...Just a moment."
I took out the parchment I kept on my person.
Words began to inscribe themselves across the parchment.
The one connected to this was Professor Buckingham.
[A meeting has been scheduled for tomorrow.]
The time had come to hunt the little rats.