Tour of the Former Battlefield (3)
After the meeting.
As I stepped out of the main conference hall, I caught sight of our professors huddled together off to one side — every last one of them except me.
"Hey, what are you guys doing over there?"
"Hmm? Nothing at all. We're just talking about tonight's faculty dinner. I'll let you know once we've decided."
Waiver answered with a smile, and I turned away, figuring that was that.
Faculty dinner, my ass. We're not the Theory Department. Since when do we sit around drawing up plans for drinks?
Tonight's dinner only got scheduled because Kazadar mentioned a place giving out free drinks and we jumped on it immediately.
Those idiots. This was probably because of what I'd said in the meeting.
When I first took this post, the professors had worked overtime behind the scenes trying to figure out who I really was. But the Emperor had been so thorough about expunging every record of me that they all hit a wall.
Most of them — the live-and-let-live types — seemed to have settled on assuming I'd belonged to some special task force or other and let it go. Pelemiya, though, never gave up.
That was why, last time, when she suggested turning those unsavory rumors about me into a psychological warfare exercise, she'd actually been running a psy-op on me. Trying to look inside my head and dig up my past.
And sure enough, there she was now, standing in the middle of the huddle, glancing my way while saying something to the others.
Whatever. Knock yourselves out.
There was a reason the Imperial Palace never properly briefed the Academy on who I was, and I had no interest in running my mouth about it myself. Partly because I didn't know what the Palace was after, and partly because being a member of the Hero's party didn't actually get me anything.
I'd run away because I couldn't stand the crushing attention that came with the Hero's party. There was absolutely no reason to go waving that flag around now.
And the truth only becomes the truth when people can actually handle it.
If I started rattling off everything Linus and I had done together, most of them would tell me to stop talking nonsense and refuse to believe a word of it. Knightly had already proven that.
Ah, maybe I should have flicked a tree with my finger back then, just to show her.
"He's gone."
Once Dian had walked far enough away, Pelemiya — who'd been watching him from the corner of her eye — spoke up.
"Orendi. Put up a sound-blocking spell around us."
"Hold on, hold on!"
Kazadar waved his hands.
"Brog and I are sittin' this one out. You lot talk amongst yourselves. I don't give a damn what Dian used to do. Long as he's useful to the department now, that's enough for me."
"Um... me too..."
Anna raised a gloomy hand.
"I have to go feed the horses their breakfast..."
"I'm heading out too. As long as he's not the resurrected Demon King, I don't care who the Chief Professor used to be."
Once Waiver, Brog, Kazadar, and Anna had gone, Orendi activated a sound-blocking spell around the remaining professors. It was magic that dampened the vibrations in the air so that no sound would carry outside.
"You all felt it just now, right? How strange that was."
"I... didn't really notice anything..."
Pelemiya spoke in a low voice, and Orendi scratched his head.
"Everyone knows the Demon King's army used poison gas and land mines during the recapture of Ivronik Castle. It comes up in history class. Even the students know that. It's common knowledge."
"Of course it is. But the way the Chief Professor talked about it — it felt like he'd experienced it firsthand."
"Did it...? Now that you mention it, maybe..."
"How about this?"
Professor Lina, who'd been listening, spoke up.
"What if he actually fought in the recapture of Ivronik Castle?"
"Hmm. So you're saying he's a veteran of that battle?"
"He said he lived in Brunswell for ten years, right? That's right after the war ended. If he fought at Ivronik during the war and then went straight to Brunswell after mustering out, it would make perfect sense."
"That's true. Brunswell's a long way from the Empire. If he never paid attention, he might have no idea what happened to Ivronik Castle afterward."
"Anyone here actually on the ground at Ivronik?"
"Not me."
"Me neither."
In truth, every professor in the Combat Department had some form of combat experience, direct or indirect — but Ivronik Castle was the exception. It had been a horrific battle in which both sides suffered near-annihilation. Surviving it at all had been a miracle.
Pelemiya, however, shook her head.
"I don't think it was just that he fought there..."
"Then maybe he's just from a special task force. He didn't become Chief Professor with a blank resume, after all. There were plenty of special task forces operating during the war."
Orendi brought up a theory that had already made the rounds among the faculty more than once.
"Special task force" didn't automatically mean that legendary Demon King Assassination Special Task Force. The Empire had been forming and deploying various special task forces long before that, and most of what they did — who they were, where they operated — remained shrouded in secrecy.
Even Professor Lina, who was speaking right now, was only known to have been a special task force operative. Nobody knew exactly what she'd done. So if you just said "he's from a special task force," everything clicked into place.
"Even if he was special task force, I have a feeling he wasn't just an ordinary operative."
Pelemiya stroked her chin, and Professor Morton, who'd been silent until now, finally spoke.
"You think the Chief Professor was in the Demon King Assassination Special Task Force?"
The Demon King Assassination Special Task Force was uniquely famous — their exploits had been publicized far more than any other unit, because the Imperial Palace had promoted them so aggressively. The Hero Linus, the hunter Celine, the magical prodigy Kayden, the Oracle Priest Rormane.
Taking the Demon King's head was one of the Empire's greatest achievements. There was no reason whatsoever to conceal a member of that team.
"Not that, exactly. But he could have been on that level."
"So how do you plan to find out? Dig into a special task force's past?"
"Well..."
When Pelemiya couldn't continue, Morton pressed on.
"I don't know about the rest, but one thing's certain: the Chief Professor has military experience. He took one look at me and knew I was Long-Range Patrol. That alone tells you. I used my old contacts from my active-duty days to look into him, and I came up with nothing."
"Same here."
"Me too."
The other professors agreed.
"Among the people I still have connections with, some are high-ranking officers in the current army. If even they don't know, the odds are high he was special task force. But that's as far as it goes. If he really was special task force, we should leave it alone."
Morton's hawk-yellow eyes turned toward Professor Lina.
"Lina was special task force too, but she never speaks of her past because of her Confidentiality Oath with the Imperial Palace, and we never ask. A Confidentiality Oath isn't something you break lightly. It's a solemn, binding vow."
"Well... that's true."
"Right now, getting the graduating class to the standard the Imperial Palace demands is what matters. Digging into the Chief Professor's past has nothing to do with that."
"I suppose so..."
"If you're that curious, Pelemiya, you're free to keep at it. But I have no intention of wasting any more effort or time on something that does nothing for the Academy's development."
With that, Professor Morton stepped out of the sound-blocking spell's range and headed for the lecture building.
Watching his retreating back, Pelemiya looked at Genev, who hadn't said a word the entire time. Her eyes said, If you have an opinion, let's hear it.
"Secret Imperial Prince."
Genev spoke quietly.
"What?"
"Secret Imperial Prince. A wastrel prince the Imperial Palace has been hiding."
"Haha! Professor Genev. What are you talking about? That's not like you at all."
Lina burst out laughing.
"If he were imperial blood, he'd have silver hair. Professor Dian doesn't."
"Among the rumors about the Secret Imperial Prince, there's one that says he's the child of a concubine whose origins are too scandalous to even mention."
"If we're going that route, there's no end to it. Why not just say he's the Demon King while you're at it?"
All kinds of insane rumors circulated about the Demon King. That when they dissected the body it turned out to be a woman. That the one who died was a body double, and the real Demon King was still alive, horns cut off, living among humans. That he was an alien from another world.
"Nothing else comes to mind. The most plausible theory is that he's former special task force. And if he's special task force, digging into his past is pointless."
In other words, Genev's Secret Imperial Prince claim wasn't something he actually believed — it was a way of saying that any assumption Dian was something other than special task force was that far-fetched. Those kinds of theories made the rounds among immature students, not among professors.
"Honestly, I don't really care what the Chief Professor used to do."
Orendi spoke up with a smile.
"We've been digging for months since he arrived and haven't turned up a single thing. The fact is, things have gotten better since he came. He's capable, and he looks after us. That's good enough for me."
At Orendi's declaration, Lina nodded as well.
"That's right. When I asked him about it myself last time, he just smiled — it felt like he might be in a similar situation to mine. The Confidentiality Oath is genuinely a pain, you know."
"Shall we go get ready for class, then?"
Orendi pointed at the clock tower. First period was about to start.
As always when they talked about Dian's past, the professors dispersed toward the lecture building without reaching any conclusion.
Anna, Waiver, Brog, and Kazadar, who'd left from the start saying they weren't interested. Morton and Genev, who said digging was pointless. Orendi and Lina, who figured as long as he treated them well, that was enough.
In the end, the only one still curious about Dian's past was Pelemiya.
Watching the other professors walk away, Pelemiya thought, At first they all tried so hard to find out. Now that they've got nothing to show for it, they're giving up.
Well, everyone's satisfied with Chief Professor Dian's leadership, and his past doesn't really matter. Especially if he was special task force — digging into that past is completely useless.
But I want to dig a little deeper.
Pelemiya wasn't being petty for no reason. She had one thing that kept nagging at her.
While interrogating captured high-ranking demons as a psychological warfare specialist for the Imperial Army, Pelemiya had obtained a series of statements that shared a striking common thread.
A raid team sent on a flanking infiltration had vanished. They'd assumed desertion — until they ran into two humans.
The lamp in the tent had suddenly gone out and come back on, and the legion commander's head, sitting right beside them, was gone.
The command staff meeting had gone on too long. When they went to check, everyone was dead.
Every one of those statements included a witness account of two humans: one blond, and one with unkempt brown hair.
Pelemiya had requested related information from the Imperial Palace and been stonewalled. She'd assumed they were just another special task force.
It was only after the war ended that she learned the blond was the Hero Linus. The identity of the messy brown-haired one remained a complete mystery.
Among the four members of the Demon King Assassination Special Task Force announced by the Imperial Palace, not a single one had brown hair.
He'd fought across the battlefield alongside the Hero Linus, and yet he'd been left out of the Demon King Assassination Special Task Force? That made no sense.
If not that, then perhaps the Imperial Palace was concealing his very existence for some reason.
So even though the odds were vanishingly small, Pelemiya suspected that Professor Dian might have been that brown-haired, unkempt soldier.
She had no hard evidence. Just an instinct honed by years of psychological warfare.
Should I try the technique one more time? But last time he countered it and caught on, so a second attempt would be difficult...
I have a feeling... tonight's faculty dinner might be my last chance...