The Grand General's Headache
“Professor Leon supposedly cut down twenty demon knights with a single stroke!”
“Twenty? Try twenty-five, I heard!”
“Twenty-five in one stroke... So it's true that Professor Leon is an unofficial Imperial Sword.”
Listening to the chatter drifting in from outside, Leon squeezed his eyes shut.
The story of how Leon had captured demon knights had sent his already overblown reputation spiraling completely out of control.
As a result, course registration requests had piled up on Leon's desk like a mountain.
Nearly every student in the Academy had applied to attend his orientation.
Leon, following the orders of the man he'd met on the train to the Academy, hadn't even hired a teaching assistant yet.
If he started his lectures like this, he'd be branded a fraud and thrown out for certain.
*I have to run.*
Leon grabbed the resignation letter he'd written in advance. He planned to return to the front lines.
The only thing nagging at him was having blundered in front of someone terrifyingly high up—but surely he wouldn't run into her again.
BANG BANG!
Just then, someone hammered violently on the door.
"Open up before I break it down."
Leon hurried toward the window.
Warm sunlight streamed in from outside, as if beckoning him to come this way at once.
When he pushed the window open, the crisp air of early spring brushed across Leon's nose.
Leon stuck his head out and winced. The height was dizzying.
No matter how tough a knight's body was, this was pushing it a little—
CRASH!
The door burst apart with a splintering roar.
*They've caught on already?!*
Startled out of his wits, Leon sprinted for it. The fragrant spring breeze tickled his hair. It smelled like freedom.
Then someone seized him by the nape of his neck. It was a hand so thick with calluses it felt like iron gauntlet.
"Where do you think you're going?"
At the gravelly voice, Leon looked up—and saw a familiar face.
The man who still haunted Leon's nightmares: the general of the legendary Unit 444.
"For the Empire—!!"
Leon snapped off a frantic salute. The man didn't even acknowledge it.
"Running away?"
"I wasn't running— I mean, some son of a bitch spread the most vicious rumors about me!"
"Vicious rumors?"
At the man's calm question, everything Leon had been swallowing back burst out at once.
"Yes, sir! All those absurd rumors—that I'm one of the Empire's Five Swords, that I'm the Magic Tower Coalition's secret weapon! I can't live like this! The professors come sniffing around my office every day, and the students look at me with those hopeful eyes! Now they're saying I captured the demon knights too! Some son of a bitch has been spreading this poison—!"
"I did."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The son of a bitch who spread those vicious rumors is me."
The man answered with perfect indifference. Leon laughed awkwardly.
"Ha, ha... good one, sir."
"I'm serious. The rumors were mine."
"You're serious?"
"I am."
"Why! Why would you do that! Do you have any idea how much I've suffered because of them!"
"Suffered? How?"
The man asked as if he genuinely had no idea. Leon was flabbergasted.
"How? Do you have any idea how much pressure that puts on me! Everyone treats me like I'm some legendary figure—"
"Leon."
The man called his name in a grave voice.
"C-Captain Leon!"
Leon straightened his posture as he answered. Not easy, given his situation in midair.
Only then did Leon realize he was still dangling in the open air.
Then the man asked, his tone dead serious.
"Are you a chickenshit?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
"I asked if you're a chickenshit."
"N-No, sir!"
"Then why—"
The man shook the hand gripping Leon's nape.
Leon whipped wildly through the air. The cold wind rushed through his hair.
Colder still, the man's sunken eyes bored into Leon.
"Acting like one?"
...I was acting like a chickenshit?
Any normal person would react exactly like this if people started calling them an Imperial Sword or the Coalition's secret weapon, wouldn't they?
All sorts of retorts climbed to the tip of his tongue—but the answer had already been decided.
"I'm sorry, sir!!"
"Good. Let's do well together."
The man nodded placidly. Leon stretched his neck out straight to make himself easier to haul up.
The man, however, did not pull him up.
"Leon."
"Captain Leon!"
"As I told you before, I am carrying out a classified mission under the Commander's orders."
*The Commander!* To a soldier like Leon, that name carried more weight than the Emperor's.
Leon snapped to attention in a hurry. His feet dangled and swayed, what with him being in midair.
"Will you cooperate?"
"Yes, sir! Absolutely!"
"Good."
The man smiled, the corner of his mouth tilting upward. It was a smile as dry as a winter wind.
Only then did the man haul Leon up. Barely clambering back inside, Leon rubbed his aching neck and looked up at the man—and finally saw what he was wearing.
*A guard uniform?*
The flimsy-looking short blue shirt was unmistakably a security force uniform.
Why would a man who'd been a general of Unit 444 be in the security—
Then the man spoke.
"There are two objectives. The first is protecting the gifted. Because of the Oracle, the Empire's brightest have flocked to Elysium Academy. Naturally, the vermin will come crawling after them too. Shielding the gifted from those vermin is objective number one."
"Ah, so that's why you joined the security force?"
"Right. The guards are first to respond to any outside intrusion. It also makes avoiding suspicion easy."
The man answered with a light nod.
He was a soldier positioned impossibly high in the military hierarchy. And that man had entered the security force for the sake of his mission.
Sensing the gravity of that mission, Leon swallowed dryly.
"The second objective is cultivating the gifted. Finding the ones with potential early and forging them into something."
Well, with the Oracle drawing every talented soul on the continent into one place, there had never been a better opportunity for talent scouting.
However—
"But this is Elysium Academy, is it not?"
Elysium Academy was the finest institution on the continent. The quality of its education went without saying.
He couldn't understand how one would go about *improving* students already attending such a place.
"That's right. Elysium, the continent's finest academy. You're an Elysium graduate, aren't you, Leon?"
"Yes, sir."
"Was anything you learned there useful on the front lines?"
At the man's question, Leon couldn't bring himself to nod.
To be sure, Elysium's education was the best on the continent.
But no one had ever taught him that you had to *twist* the blade to punch through a demon's throat.
"...It was completely useless, sir."
"I thought so. Real combat can't be taught in a classroom."
As he nodded along, a sudden question occurred to Leon.
If combat couldn't be taught in a classroom—
"Then how do you plan to teach it?"
At Leon's question, the man curled one corner of his mouth upward. For some reason, it looked like a dangerous smile.
"By working you half to death."
At that murderous answer, Leon suddenly recalled a rumor he'd heard back on the front lines.
Something about an instructor there whose training was so brutal that even the soldiers who'd crawled through the worst of the front lines couldn't endure it, fleeing in tears—
*Nah. No way.*
Leon shook his head firmly.
* * *
"Grand General. The commander of Unit 444, the 'Ascetic,' has requested an audience."
At her adjutant's report, Grand General Cassandra winced.
Unit 444 had begun as a penal battalion.
They'd gathered the convicts who were good for nothing but dying, picked out the ones with a spark of promise among them, and hurled them across the front lines. The ones who lasted longest were all that survived. That was today's Unit 444.
They were men who ate and slept in hell itself. There was no such thing as sane among them. No—in a way, the sane ones were the most dangerous of all.
And despite that, they delivered results, which made Unit 444 a nightmare to manage even for Cassandra herself, the Grand General.
And now its commander had come in person.
"Send him in."
Cassandra waved a hand and sighed.
"You may enter."
Clank, clank. The sound of the knight's footsteps echoed from outside.
Cassandra scrunched up her face. Because she knew exactly what she was about to see.
THUNK! The door was flung open with brute force, and the first thing to appear was a pair of gleaming iron boots. The thick, heavy iron footwear you'd expect from a heavy-plate knight—the problem was, the boots and a helmet were the *only* things he was wearing.
Everything else was bare skin. Not so much as a scrap of cloth. Completely, utterly naked.
His stripped body was packed with scars, some of them still crusted with fresh blood, as if freshly carved.
If you're going to be naked, be *all* the way naked. That halfway getup—just iron boots and an iron helmet—somehow made him seem even more perverted.
It was an outfit befitting the 'Ascetic,' commander of Unit 444.
*Clank.*
"Grand General. Where is Jeron?"
At a tone of voice incongruously polite and deferential, Cassandra's frown deepened.
Cassandra rarely felt headaches. She usually smashed people's skulls in before they could become a problem.
This time, however, she couldn't do that.
No—she didn't *want* to.
Because if she crushed that pervert's skull, helmet and all, he'd just pant happily and thank her for it.
"He's on leave."
"Prisoners get leave? This is the first I've heard of such a thing."
*Clank.*
"Unlike you lot, Jeron is not a prisoner. He was simply unlucky enough to end up in Unit 444."
"Heh heh, no wonder his eyes looked so clear. He was never a prisoner at all. Now I finally understand that beautiful heart of his."
*Clank.*
"...Would you *please* do something about that sound."
"Oh, my apologies. It's rather unsightly, I know—shall I take it off?"
The impulse to crack his skull open flared up again, but she couldn't act on it.
Unit 444's efficiency had already dropped since Jeron's departure.
However much Jeron denied it, he had been the linchpin of Unit 444. Since his discharge, the unit had wobbled badly.
If the commander fell too, it would be fatal.
Cassandra strangled down her killing intent.
"Without Jeron, who is to assist me in my sacred penance? I fear my body will begin to gnaw at itself from unsatisfied suffering, Grand General. Our unit members have been voicing similar grievances. I have merely come as their representative to beg that you let us seek him out at once."
The Ascetic spoke with earnest passion, sincerity dripping from every word.
Jeron had handled all of Unit 444's training. The unit's results were so outstanding that Cassandra had once loaned Jeron out to train another unit.
*They all raised hell saying they'd rather discharge than endure it.*
Jeron's training was so savage that even the front-line soldiers couldn't withstand it.
No—could you even call that training? It was simply assault. Divine-artistry assault, at that.
And yet these lunatics had come begging because they *missed* getting beaten.
Insane perverts, every last one of them.
"He used up every scrap of accumulated leave. I had no choice—they threatened that if I blocked it, he'd discharge."
Cassandra said, biting back a filthy curse.
"Discharge... what a dreadful thing to say. Oh—no, wait. If Sir Jeron discharges, I can simply follow him, so it's no trouble at all. Quite the opposite, really. It's even better."
*Clank.*
There wasn't a trace of humor in the Ascetic's voice.
He truly looked ready to follow Jeron all the way to the capital.
The Ascetic, loose in the capital—
The mere thought was horrifying.
The *real* problem was that the Ascetic was one of the *tamer* ones in Unit 444. There were plenty far worse than him.
If men like *those* went hunting for Jeron in the capital...
*A civil war.*
Cassandra resolved it once more.
She would tell no one of Jeron's discharge. Not a soul.