Crushed by an Uninvited Disaster - 4
Foreigners enrolling at the Imperial Academy was nothing unusual. They were simply a tiny minority beside the Empire’s own students, and until the year before last, no high-ranking figures had ever set foot on campus as enrollees. Still, the Imperial Academy was an open institution—a place where blue blood and red, Empire-born and foreign-born, coexisted under one roof.
So whether the number of foreign students rose or fell was not something anyone needed to fret over. If anything, it was a welcome chance to flaunt the Empire’s outstanding educational system and the Academy’s freedom from prejudice.
And yet that ordinary, welcome development had drawn a direct response from the Minister of Foreign Affairs—urgent enough that he contacted me, the Academy’s inspector in name only.
An all-time high?
Worse still, an ominous phrase had slipped into the conversation. Technically, even one student more than the previous record would reset the “all-time high,” but if that were all, would a minister have moved?
“I suspect it has to do with those… persons of interest who enrolled last year,” the Minister continued when I fell silent. The consideration—shock was understandable, but I still needed to know—nearly brought tears to my eyes.
And at the words “persons of interest,” my teeth found my lip by instinct. Damn it. So it was because of you lot. Things had finally quieted down lately, and now you pull this?
“Even royalty far removed from the succession is still royalty. If one can form a senior–junior bond with a royal, what does it matter that the school is foreign?”
In other words, the catastrophe had been locked in the moment those two enrolled last year. A grim sentence—and one I could not refute.
For a royal, studying at a foreign academy came plastered with penalties. For ordinary nobles, it was a price they could stomach. A noble who went to a school outside their own country? That stigma was nothing a little speech couldn’t fix: I am the loyal retainer who attended His Highness through the hardships of life abroad.
No—honestly, it wasn’t merely tolerable. It was an opportunity too good to miss. Domestic connections in every kingdom were already set in stone; but if you shared a foreign land with a royal, you could forge relationships that transcended the old networks entirely.
Fair enough.
Judged with cold objectivity, the motive was more than enough. A catastrophe that had truly been waiting in the wings.
“Of course, a fair number of the new students are from the Holy Kingdom as well. When the next Saint wanders foreign soil in person, there will always be plenty who wish to follow that example.”
I could only nod weakly. Chaos from three nations, not two—but as the Minister said, it was only natural, and so not especially shocking. If the Holy Kingdom had stayed quiet, that would have been frightening in its own way. Why are you the ones behaving?
Still, something felt off. If this was a scheduled disaster, hadn’t they already known and prepared? Imperial civil servants might hate work, but they were not the sort of incompetents who simply washed their hands of a problem.
Does he really need to tell me this himself?
It didn’t add up. An enrollment upheaval the Foreign Ministry—and perhaps the Education Ministry as well—had spent a full year bracing for. As Academy inspector I certainly needed to know, but this was hardly a matter for a minister-level figure to deliver in person. The messenger sometimes mattered more than the message, yet this messenger felt excessive.
“I am reassured that Your Excellency has taken the trouble to inform me personally. Had I gone in knowing nothing, I would have been quite at a loss.”
I floated the line carefully. Is that really everything? Isn’t there something you still haven’t said?
At a question dressed up as gratitude, the Minister of Foreign Affairs gave a dry little laugh.
“Word travels fast among mages.”
Ah.
“The Magic Lord is a figure every mage on the continent reveres, is she not?”
Ah…
No further explanation was required. The Magic Lord stood at the summit of mages not merely in the Empire but across the continent—and closest to her stood the Magic Tower.
Naturally, the Tower’s network of connections was not confined to the Empire, and any news that left the Tower traveled that web until it blanketed the entire continent. And from the Tower, one after another, had come pieces of news that would turn any mage who heard them into a berserker.
That the Magic Lord’s only disciple was currently enrolled at the Academy—and that the Magic Lord herself would come to the Academy to teach magic.
“Heh heh. Never imagined it. Who could have guessed such a thing would happen? If you’d told last year’s me, I’d have scolded you for talking nonsense.”
Watching him laugh and laugh with hazy eyes, I could not bring myself to lift my head.
Of course I had known the Magic Lord’s visit would affect the mages. But her approach had been thoroughly covert, and by the time I heard of it through the First Division Chief, the term was nearly upon us. Even I, close as I was to the Magic Lord, had learned late—so how much more so for mages scattered across the continent? I had assumed any rush of applicants who wanted to see her would wait until next year—
I was wrong.
I had underestimated the Tower’s network and the mages’ fanaticism. If I had been a mage myself, would I have seen this coming?
“Still, we were fortunate. Most of those who submitted applications ran afoul of the age limit, so turning them down was simple enough. Thank the heavens the Academy has no mature students.”
The relief packed into those words made my hands tremble on instinct. I had known mages lived in an extraordinary mental world, but applications had poured in so thickly they ignored age? That meant it wasn’t merely mages in their twenties and thirties—elders with beards gone pure white might well have shown up.
Sensing my agitation, the Minister added quietly,
“The headmaster of Ernesto Academy submitted an application as well. For the sake of that person’s honor I sealed it as a confidential document at once, so keep that between us.”
Ernesto—the archmage who had contributed so greatly to the founding of the Uven Alliance. The finest educational institution in Uven, named after that very archmage, was Ernesto Academy.
Insane.
So this was what happened when mages lost their minds…
Students from three kingdoms flocking in for ties to royalty and the next Saint; mage applicants from every corner of the continent, bewitched by the legend of the Magic Lord; and those blessed souls who happened to be both from the three kingdoms and mages, one step short of perfect happiness.
“Wow. The foreign ratio is over thirty percent?”
Put it all together and more than three-tenths of this year’s intake were foreigners. A figure that did the words “largest scale in history” no shame.
“Amazing. Normally even three percent feels like a lot.”
I wanted to pinch the First Division Chief’s chattering lips as he flipped through the documents the Foreign Ministry had sent, but I could not muster the strength. I simply stared blankly at the pattern on the ceiling and tried to gather myself.
I resented the heavens. Managing the Baking Club alone had been agony enough—and now foreign students were flooding in, with every likelihood of factional splits along national lines. If it stayed mere factions, that would be none of my business; but those factions would inevitably form around club members like Ryutis and Later. Which meant they fell under my jurisdiction too.
And the mages who had come for the Magic Lord went without saying. The Minister had not mentioned it, but honestly—hadn’t the Magic Lord come to the Academy to see me? If something blew up from the overconcentration of mages, I was morally obligated to clean it up.
Should I have stopped her?
The thought came late. Foreign students could not be blocked short of expelling the club members—but the Magic Lord’s posting to the Academy… shouldn’t I have somehow talked her out of it?
“I was so envious, you know. Those children get to live with my little one, and even when my little one was in the Imperial Capital I so rarely got to see them.”
But the memory of the Magic Lord speaking as if she were truly, pure-heartedly happy snuffed the thought at once.
Right. Better that I take on a little hardship. If that joyfully smiling Magic Lord ever wore a sulky, tearful face, the guilt would drive me mad.
Mages should be easy enough to manage.
Think positive. However extraordinary mages might be, they would never cause a scene in front of the Magic Lord they so revered—and they would never ignore me, her prospective husband. If they did, I would drop all dignity and tattle to her on the spot.
“Hey, Chief.”
“What?”
While I was steeling myself for that petty resolve, I felt the First Division Chief tap my shoulder.
“If the number of students to manage goes up, the number of inspectors should also—”
I caught his lips before the sentence finished. I did not need to hear the rest to know what he meant to say.
“There has always been exactly one inspector, whether the student body is large or small.”
With the Academy’s situation changing so sharply, he had been about to wheedle his way there under the same title of inspector.
Absolutely not. Even my own appointment as inspector had been something of a stretch. For inspectors to suddenly multiply? There was no justification and no precedent. That the Audit Department Chief—a specialist in inspection—should serve as inspector was at least comprehensible; but anyone could see that expanding a post that had always been one person was a targeted move.
Truth be told, I would have liked extra hands myself. But breaking precedent meant even more work cleaning up the fallout. Adding people and somehow ending up with a net minus—that particular miracle was all too real.
We’ll just have to work hard with the people we have.
I set the wriggling First Division Chief on my knee and sighed. If reinforcements were impossible, the existing staff would have to work until they coughed blood. Me, the headmaster, the deputy headmaster—
And Sir Villar.
Thinking of Sir Villar filled me with pity. Of the four of us, who could say who would have it easier or harder—but Sir Villar’s position was truly wretched.
He must have gone home in high spirits; instead he would return to the Academy dragging not only Ryutis but a whole string of other nobles behind him. He was probably ready to bite his own tongue. Worse, Sir Villar was not merely responsible for Armein—he was the representative for all three kingdoms. In short: three times the difficulty, three times the suffering.
…I should prepare a gift.
Something focused on health foods, to keep him as healthy and long-lived as possible. There were only four of us to manage this disaster; if even one collapsed, it was catastrophe. And if anyone went down, I was fully prepared to desert without a backward glance.
Damn it.
Wasn’t there a single useful body of manpower I could freely put to work somewhere? I was confident I would treat them very well.