The Youngest of the John Nassen Family
“Hahahaha! The ogre went ‘Oh!’ and toppled right over, I tell you?! Ahahaha!”
“Hahaha! Is that so! Hahaha!!”
The fact that I was laughing right along with him was the real legend here. It was the kind of dad joke that made my blood boil every single time I heard it.
The ogre had gone “Oh!” and face-planted, and every time it happened, Kyle etched the character for “patience” into his soul. They said enduring three times could spare you from murder—so did that mean past three, the kill window slammed wide open?
“As expected of the John Nassen family—even the youngest is cut from the same cloth. To pull off something this magnificent!”
“Thank you, Your Excellency the Margrave.”
“You worked hard as well. Ian, was it?”
At the margrave’s words, the gray-haired swordsman nodded.
Right when the ogre Kyle had body-slammed was trying to push itself back up, he had been the one to finish it off—the so-called last hit. A man who had violated the iron rule of the martial world: never steal the last hit.
Nothing made the blood boil quite like someone sticking their spoon into a meal you’d already cooked and then fishing for carry credit. Yet Kyle let that part slide in silence.
The wandering swordsman Ian—the original first protagonist of this novel. Only when he reached the Academy would the story truly begin. So a stolen last hit? Kyle could look the other way for that. Besides, it wasn’t as if Ian had gone around bragging that he had taken down the ogre. Of course, twice was off the table. Once. Exactly once.
“These are the kinds of friends who truly ought to enter the Academy!”
“Indeed, Your Excellency!”
“Not those brats who can’t even swing a sword!”
Just as planned, talk of the Academy was flowing smoothly from the margrave’s mouth. If things kept going this way, securing the recommendation letters would be a breeze.
“Hmm, come to think of it, I’ve already used one. That leaves me with two, doesn’t it…?”
…Excuse me? Your Excellency the Margrave? Why two instead of three?
Kyle wanted nothing more than to grab the man by the collar and demand answers, but he barely held himself in check. He absolutely had to find out who had received that first letter. If it had gone to some random person, he was fully prepared to consider assassination.
For the original plot to stay on track, the wandering swordsman Ian and the witch Tisha both had to enter the Academy. And as a bonus, hitching a ride himself had been his primary goal. But if one letter was already gone and one of the three couldn’t go…?
Getting both Ian and Tisha in was important, of course. But Kyle himself entering the Academy was every bit as critical.
“Hahaha! Your Excellency the Margrave. I had heard that you possessed a total of three recommendation letters. Who on earth claimed the honor of that first one?”
Who was it. Who ran off with my recommendation letter.
“A woman currently staying at my castle—a rather unusual woman. Not magic, but something I’d never seen before. She healed my nephew with it, and she calls herself a shaman. Tisha. Yes, Tisha.”
The moment Kyle heard that, he slammed the mental gearshift into neutral. He had thought some random weirdo had snagged a letter, but it was none other than the second protagonist.
Having only read up to the free chapters, he had no idea whether the two ended up as lovers or split along the way. What was certain was that they appeared around the same time and entered the Academy together. Honestly, that alone was enough to treat it as a foregone conclusion in a romance fantasy.
“More importantly, Kyle. You seem quite interested in the Academy.”
No matter how much he loved dad jokes, a noble was still a noble. Faced with that razor-sharp question, Kyle decided to answer honestly.
“To be frank, yes.”
“I thought as much. I could tell from the moment we started discussing Academy recommendations. But from what I know, your older sister caused an… incident at the Academy, did she not? A rather large one, as I recall.”
Put that way, Kyle had nothing to say. It was true she had caused an incident, and it was also true the incident had been far too large.
“I hear the Ministry of Education just shakes its head at the mere mention.”
“Is that so.”
“But you see, Kyle. That is precisely why I want to recommend you all the more. Stagnation breeds rot. No matter how many new faces come and go through the Academy, if the waters stay too calm, they grow stagnant in the end. Sometimes a storm must roll through.”
“By that, you mean….”
“I shall write you a recommendation letter. Even the Minister of Education would not dare ignore a privilege His Majesty the Emperor himself bestowed upon me. Return to the barony, make your preparations, and come to my castle within a week. The entrance season is approaching—you must arrive by then.”
And just like that, Kyle became the storm-bringer freshman destined to rock the Academy.
“And you as well. I would like to write you an Academy recommendation letter. What do you say?”
At the margrave’s words, the wandering swordsman gave a slight nod. It seemed this semester would see not one but two transfer students of pure chaos.
“So. You’re going to the Academy.”
“Yes, Brother.”
Kyle watched his older brother, who was mid hanging leg raise with weight plates strapped to his feet. Every time he looked, he couldn’t tell whether the man was human or an ogre. No—if anything, he was worse than an ogre. The one they had fought yesterday hadn’t been anywhere near this terrifyingly muscular. Kyle would bet anything that if his brother fought an ogre, his brother would win for certain. People said the underdog was destiny, but even destiny itself would get pulverized.
“Will you be all right?”
“His Excellency the Margrave said he would write the recommendation letter. He told me that even though our sister caused an incident, as long as the Imperial family does not oppose it, admission should go through.”
“That is not what I am asking.”
Thud.
Every time his brother dropped from the bar and approached, Kyle instinctively shrank. This was a brother who had never once bullied him or laid a hand on him. And yet just being looked at like this was overwhelming. Maybe the reason he had never hit him was that a mere graze would have sent Kyle straight to the afterlife. Maybe that was why they had never even had the usual sibling scuffles.
“The weaklings at the Academy will know. If even you cause an incident, our family will never set foot in the Academy again. So they will know that you intend to keep your head down.”
“You mean there may be people who try to provoke me?”
“There are always such types. Those who try to trample others just to flaunt their own strength. A true strong one faces other strong ones—not the weak. But a false strong one only wants to face the weak so he can talk of superiority.”
“….”
Placing a hand on Kyle’s shoulder, the man who would one day become the master of the John Nassen barony—Lear John Nassen—continued.
“There will be those who use your patience to seize whatever they desire. When that happens, what will you do? Endure? Or do as our sister did?”
“I will endure.”
“Even if they insult you, can you still endure?”
Everything else he could endure. But if they called him weak… well.
“For the margrave’s sake, live as quietly as you can, Kyle. However—when you suffer an insult that no member of John Nassen can tolerate, you may do whatever you wish.”
“That could lead to serious trouble, Brother.”
“Could anything be more serious than the John Nassen name being insulted?”
The John Nassen barony had never originally been an Imperial noble house. They were a northern minority people with whom the Empire, exhausted from its wars of conquest, had made peace. The passage of years had never meant full assimilation into the Empire.
“If friction arises, smooth it over. If it cannot be smoothed over, then we fight.”
“Brother. You shouldn’t say things like that so carelessly.”
The Empire’s standing army alone numbered well over two hundred thousand. Add the reserves and you had a host exceeding six hundred thousand. And it wasn’t just numbers—the supplies backing them were enormous. Even the John Nassen barony would struggle against that….
“If every person of the barony kills a hundred each, that will be enough.”
“….”
“Even the children could handle two or three with ease.”
He had forgotten. What kind of place this was. What kind of people they were. And it wasn’t only his brother Lear who reminded him of that fact.
“Come to think of it, Kyle. Back then, this big sister of yours was far too soft.”
She had half-destroyed the Academy and still had the nerve to call it soft. Kyle couldn’t tell whether she had no conscience or simply didn’t know what the word meant.
“I should have just sent a few of those brats who weren’t even worth the name straight to the grave.”
“If you had, the Imperial family truly would not have stood by.”
“Stand by or not. Anyway, the ones who got a taste of me back then are still around. And they will definitely try to mess with you. They know that if anything happens while you’re dealing with them, it will become a real problem! Those disgusting weaklings.”
“That does seem likely.”
“Let things slide when you can, but never just endure no matter what. Got it? Do you avoid them because you’re scared? No—you avoid them because they’re filthy.”
Such was the advice of the sole person in Imperial history to have half-destroyed the Academy.
“There is no need to force yourself to get along.”
“Children grow by fighting, after all.”
Brother, sister, and then both parents he met afterward. Every last one of them told him he didn’t need to endure. That if anyone at the Academy crossed the line, he was not to sit still. That he was not to let weaklings dare sully the pride of John Nassen.
These damn battle-race maniacs… they’re actually ridiculously reliable.
The thought even crossed his mind that maybe they wanted a proper scrap with the Empire but lacked a pretext—so they were packing him off to the Academy for just that reason.
Nah. No way. That can’t be it.
Please let that be the case. No—it absolutely had to be the case. He had no desire to watch a romance fantasy suddenly turn into a full-blown war epic.