Outside the Academy Is Dangerous - 1
It may be stating the obvious, but every duke who has appeared across the Empire’s three hundred years of history has been an extraordinary figure. Either their personal ability was insane, the forces under their command were insane, or both. And the current five dukes all fall into that final category. Truly, the Empire’s future looks bright.
And since I am the chief of the Audit Department—which is practically a direct organ of the Emperor—I encounter these complete monsters of dukes far more often than any other civil servant. Is it because we share the common fate of being worked half to death by His Majesty? My official fortune is truly cursed.
At any rate, this was an unprecedented situation: not merely being summoned by a duke already in the Imperial Capital, but having to travel all the way to his home base, the duchy itself. For Margeta and the student council as well, it was an abrupt and unwelcome variable.
“It’s a document sent from the Boyar Duchy.”
“May I take a look?”
“Of course.”
So I accepted it with genuine gratitude. A document from the Boyar Duchy—more precisely, one thoroughly steeped in the Golden Duke’s will.
This level of consistency is almost impressive.
Looking at the document actually put my mind at ease. As the title “Golden Duke” implies, the man rules money and is utterly mad for it. There is even a saying: if the Golden Duke is smiling, he has already made a large profit; if he is moving, it is to make one.
In that light, the reason this year’s school trip destination had been set as the Boyar Duchy was simple. There were no elaborate schemes layered underneath. They had simply built a new resort in the Boyar Duchy. The whole affair had been pushed as publicity for the new resort and as a way to stimulate the local economy with an influx of noble students.
“It’s the Golden Duke I know.”
“Isn’t it? He’s so unchanging it’s almost reassuring.”
The Golden Duke had simply done what the Golden Duke always does. If he had used a duke’s authority to force the school trip into some remote backwater, that would have been another matter. But the Boyar Duchy was already famous as a resort region and one of the Empire’s economic hubs. The students would like the place more than they disliked it.
“We were hoping for somewhere nearby. It’s a shame.”
A faint weariness colored Margeta’s voice even as she forced brightness into it.
There were two victims of this school trip. One was me, who preferred to meet dukes as little as possible. The other was the student council, which now had to plan the logistics of moving several hundred people—students and faculty alike—all the way to the southern tip of the Empire. For a council that had been aiming for a reasonably close territory, this was a bolt from the blue.
Moreover, given the Golden Duke’s nature, he would not have made the request carelessly. He must have quietly slipped the Academy some favor already, so the student council now had to earn its keep. No matter how stoutly a duke’s daughter stood as vice president, when the duke himself took the field, they could not win.
“If there’s anything I can help with, I’ll do so.”
“Hehe. Thank you. I’ll call on you anytime, so be ready.”
For the briefest moment, a familiar light flickered through Margeta’s smiling eyes—the look of a pitiful civil servant who had been proceeding according to plan only to be yanked off course by the whim of someone far higher up.
Civil-servant young lady.
I felt novelty and pity at once. A duke’s daughter who ought to have lived serenely above the fray was suffering hardships she should never have known. If one of my section chiefs had been in the same position, I would at least have given them a clap on the shoulder.
Margeta tilted her head under my steady gaze, and today she looked especially pitiable.
Apparently the school-trip destination had been announced publicly today.
“I’ve never been to the sea before!”
“Is that so?”
I nodded vaguely at Luise’s excited face. Seeing her so delighted merely at the prospect of seeing the ocean made her seem pure; yet when one considered the Empire’s sheer size, it was understandable. The land was absurdly vast, and the main form of transport was still the carriage.
Teleportation existed as a variable, of course, but not just anyone could use it. In the end, unless one deliberately set out to do so, people from the inland regions could easily go their entire lives without ever seeing the sea.
“If there’s no particular reason to go, reaching the ocean is hard. I’ve never been either.”
Erich, too, was a fellow who had mostly stayed on the family lands. There had been occasional pleasure trips, but even those destinations had been inland. Silent Ainter, trapped between the fierce rivalry of his two elder brothers, had never left the Imperial Palace, so there was nothing to discuss in his case.
“Then none of us have been?”
“I have. Though it was a consolation visit to a tsunami-damaged region.”
“Does going for work count? I went during the alliance conference.”
“I’ve had any number of reasons to go as well.”
The two princes and the next Saint had apparently been dragged about on official business. I sometimes forgot, but they were high-ranking figures in their own right; external activity was inevitable. Ainter, unable to leave the palace at all, was the true exception.
After listening to Ryutis, Later, and Tanian, Luise nodded repeatedly and then turned her eyes toward me.
“Same for me—only for work.”
I could see the question coming, so I struck first. The sea? I had been. Several times on official business, but the most memorable occasion was when bastards smuggling prohibited export goods tried to flee overseas and we chased them all the way to the coast. It had been a lively game of tag across the entire Empire, and I still remembered it vividly.
In the end we could not stop them from boarding a ship, so we sank them along with the vessel. How I regretted the cargo going under. The smugglers themselves could die without issue; even if captured alive, the sentence would have been death.
“Then going together just to play is a first for all of us?”
Luise rummaged through her bag and produced something. A thin booklet with a blue cover appeared before us.
“Tada! It’s a Boyar Duchy pamphlet!”
Why is that here?
Why on earth was that here?
While I was still processing the awkward encounter with the unexpected booklet, Erich answered my unspoken question.
“A pamphlet? Where did you get it?”
“I saw it with Irina at the library last week. There were lots of them.”
No matter how one looked at it, they had deliberately stuffed the things into the Academy library to coincide with school-trip season. The message was clear: learn what is where before you arrive in Boyar, and decide in advance where you will spend your money. Golden Duke, you ruthless man…
Hundreds of noble guests would be pouring in; of course he did not want them wandering about wasting opportunities. He was serious. That man was completely serious.
“Oh, so something like that existed.”
“Knowing about a trip beforehand isn’t a bad thing either.”
The moment the five young men found an excuse to draw closer to Luise, they closed in with ghostly speed. It was almost pitiful. Still, six people crowding around one small booklet felt excessive.
“The Boyar Duchy is a maritime trade center located on the southern coast of the Empire, a place that has prospered since the age of Apels.”
I was about to tell them to stop clustering so tightly and back off when Luise’s voice rang out. If she insisted on reading it herself, there was nothing to be done.
Watching her little recital for a while, I realized those bastards had zero interest in the content. Even Villar would have said the same. No matter how diligently she read, they were staring far too openly at Luise’s face alone.
“Beginning with the duke two generations prior, the Boyar line has developed resort facilities…”
I felt a little guilty toward hardworking Luise, yet the scene looked exactly like Teacher Luise of the baking kindergarten reading a fairy tale to five immature children. At least ordinary children fall asleep when you read to them. These ones…
While I watched in silence, Erich’s bright expression caught my eye. Enjoying yourself, you useless fool? You ought to be offering to read in her place or going back to the library for more copies.
Is there a sixth one somewhere?
Lately I could not help nursing a fundamental doubt. There were already five of them, and not a single one was making proper progress. Was this truly the correct state of affairs? Would a sixth I did not yet know about have to appear and inject a sense of crisis before any of them advanced? Yet adding one more to this mess would be a considerable headache.
While I was sunk in these solitary, serious worries, the miraculous reading session—speaker present, listeners effectively absent—paused for a moment.
“The continent’s greatest casino?”
The sudden appearance of a casino seemed thoroughly unfamiliar to our young lady, who had been raised in pure surroundings. She blinked several times, then turned her gaze toward me standing some distance away, clearly a little flustered.
“As a resort, every sort of noble gathers there. Set up even one proper casino and the income is quite respectable.”
“Is that so?”
She gave an awkward little laugh, apparently feeling some aversion to the very word.
She really was raised purely.
Perhaps because the original author was a modern person, even though the setting approximated medieval Europe, attitudes toward gambling in this world were not especially favorable. That was how a noble girl this innocent could still exist.
And in truth the casino in the Boyar Duchy was not operated with complete openness. That place was essentially the Imperial ATM.
I’ve used it a few times myself.
Occasionally a civil servant passing through the Boyar region on business would draw emergency funds by “winning” at the casino, but fundamentally the house was structured so that the casino, not the guests, always won.
Thus nobles loyal to the Emperor would go there, lose a moderate amount of money, and that money would flow to the Emperor. Part of the money that reached the Emperor would then be channeled into the Ministry of Special Affairs or the Audit Department under the name of special budget; part of that became my salary; and I would take that salary back to the casino and lose it again…
What the hell was this? The circular economy was deeply wrong. Was I losing my own money at the casino, or was I merely holding money that had never been mine and returning it? The distinction was strangely blurry.
“Still, there are plenty of other places to enjoy, so don’t worry about it.”
I added the remark hastily, lest these children also get tangled in the bizarre cycle I had fallen into. At least I received a salary or budget; if they lost money at the casino, that would simply be the end of it.
“Yes. I plan to stay at the beach.”
“If it’s the sea, of course you go to the beach.”
“Right? I’m looking forward to it.”
Judging by their reactions, there was no need for concern. More importantly, that Erich bastard had never even seen the ocean—what was with the “of course”?
“Wow, there are lots of unique fruits too?”
As Luise’s reading session resumed, I quietly brushed the communication orb in my pocket. The students seemed purely excited, but the adults burdened with various circumstances had a great deal of advance preparation to handle.
Just off the top of my head: the three kingdoms would have to send key personnel not merely near the Academy but all the way to the southern tip of the Empire. At that distance, permission would be required for those forces even to enter Boyar.
Outside the Academy is a rough world.
In the first place, the very idea of going outside was mistaken. Should we not avoid sending students out into a dangerous world?