The Battlefield Tour (5)
The students were informed of a planned battlefield tour to Ivronik Castle.
The news that they would be going on a group outing had the entire student body buzzing with excitement. Ivronik Castle, in particular, was famous throughout the Empire for its breathtaking scenery.
"Knightly. Have you ever been to Ivronik Castle?"
In the noisy dormitory lounge, one of her hangers-on put the question to her. Knightly said nothing, her eyes fixed on the notice posted on the lounge bulletin board.
When she didn't answer, her followers grew a little awkward and soon fell to chatting among themselves — when their own families had visited Ivronik, how large the traveling party had been, how many nights they'd spent at the luxury hotel nearby. They were all daughters of reasonably distinguished houses, and competing over these petty, snobbish details had long since become a way of life.
Knightly, meanwhile, sat alone, lost in thought.
A battlefield tour. Something that had never happened in all her time here. Like so much else over the past few months, this too was one of the changes that had followed Professor Dian's appointment.
Had his influence reached even this?
Battlefield tours originally fell under the Theory Department's jurisdiction, but it was hard to believe he hadn't been involved at all. His influence at the Academy was so enormous now that at a glance he might as well have been the Principal. He had overturned everything, set it to rights, and won the support of students and faculty alike. And just last week, when that unsavory rumor about an improper relationship between the two of them had been circulating, he had even turned a crisis into an opportunity.
Thanks to that, Knightly had been left completely high and dry.
She had neither confirmed nor denied the scandal with Dian — had even quietly enjoyed it — only for Professor Dian to announce before the entire grand auditorium that the whole affair had been part of a psychological warfare exercise.
Her followers hadn't said it out loud, but they were surely laughing at her behind her back.
A special relationship with the Chief Combat Professor? Don't make me laugh. It was all hot air.
The private lessons themselves had been real enough, but that fact had, surprisingly, caused no great stir.
"She's the top student — of course she should be taking the advanced course."
"And if it's an advanced course, of course the Chief Professor would teach it himself."
"I want to work hard enough to get in there too."
"I'm so jealous of Knightly."
If anything, the mood had sent the number of students desperate to join that advanced course exploding upward, and Knightly had lately begun to feel a genuine, gnawing anxiety.
As the daughter of the Toulouse ducal house — one of the Empire's most powerful families — she had lived her entire life without knowing what it meant to want for anything. Whatever she needed, she already had. Whatever she desired, she obtained. Professor Dian had been no exception. She had wanted him, and in the end she had received private lessons and been able to monopolize him entirely.
Not anymore. Everyone liked Professor Dian now, and everyone was working to win his favor. Even the private lessons that had belonged to Knightly alone had been exposed to the student body at large.
And if she was unlucky, who was to say a new pupil wouldn't be brought in?
What if that girl was more skilled than she was? Prettier? Better-natured?
What if Professor Dian ended up liking her more?
To Knightly, who regarded Dian as an expensive ornament with which to adorn herself, such a thing would be no different from having that ornament stolen. It was something that could not be allowed to happen.
But if Dian made up his mind to take on a new student, what could Knightly possibly do about it?
Nothing. Somewhere in her bones, she already knew that if Professor Dian set himself to a task in earnest, she would never be able to stop him.
On the surface he was a smiling, bumbling goof — but judging by the content of the private lessons so far, Professor Dian was not a normal person. He had clearly lived a life that ordinary people could not even imagine. There was no way a girl raised in a greenhouse, wanting for nothing, could ever hope to handle someone like that.
So what was she supposed to do now…
As she worried, a face drifted into her mind. That pink-haired bitch who had recently been admitted as a Special Cadet.
In an atmosphere like this, that girl might well start wagging her tail at Professor Dian too, begging to be taken on. The problem was that she was genuinely, uncomfortably skilled… Should Knightly make a preemptive move…?
No. She couldn't. The Special Cadet already had a track record of beating the top-ranking students who had picked fights with her — Knightly's own followers among them — with perfect evenhandedness, and putting them all in the infirmary. On top of that, if Professor Dian decided, just as Knightly had been fearing, to take the Special Cadet into his private lessons, Knightly would be left empty-handed. The dog that chased the chicken and lost it.
This approach would get her nowhere.
In that case, rather than trying to stop other people from approaching Professor Dian, it would be far better to make Professor Dian look at no one but her…
Hmmmmm…
There was only one answer.
Work even harder than she already was. Hard enough that Professor Dian would have no reason to look anywhere else. Cheap little schemes would never work on him. There was no other way.
So how, exactly, was she supposed to work harder from here on out?
Knightly found her answer at the bottom of the battlefield tour notice — the section specifying the dress code for the day.
Attire for the day: combat training uniform and combat boots, in place of regular academy uniforms.
Ivronik Castle, perched on a cliff — paired with combat boots…
Having been put through the wringer by Dian more times than she could count, Knightly could roughly infer what was going to happen at the battlefield.
"Where are you going, Knightly!"
"The infiltration training ground."
Knightly strode out of the dormitory at a steady clip, and her followers scrambled after her. None of them could match her pace. The aftereffects of the beating they had taken from Special Cadet Sophie last time had yet to fully fade.
Outside, the sun had already set, and darkness had settled over the grounds.
The moment she reached the infiltration training ground, Knightly headed straight for the extreme terrain course. A rock cliff that looked as though it had been ripped wholesale from some mountain, and a precarious, narrow trail clinging to its face — that was the extreme terrain course.
From tonight until the day of the battlefield tour, she intended to practice here alone.
"What are you doing, Knightly? You're going to climb this in the middle of the night?"
"Get lost. I never asked any of you to join me."
When her followers asked in worried voices, Knightly answered with a chill and swapped into the combat boots she had brought with her.
The fact that they were being told to wear training uniforms and combat boots to a castle you could reach perfectly comfortably by elevator had led her to a single conclusion. Professor Dian was going to make the students climb the old wartime path instead of taking the lift. A steep, narrow stone trail that no one without considerable guts and stamina could possibly manage — and from everything she had learned in her private lessons, Knightly knew that was exactly what he would do.
Professor Dian would do it. She had already seen that far ahead, so she had to be ready.
She would practice here until it hurt, and on the day itself she would crush the others — Special Cadet Sophie most of all — and take an overwhelming first place. Then Professor Dian wouldn't even think of looking at anyone else. He would look only at her.
All right, Knightly. Let's go. Same as always — prove it with nothing but skill.
Knightly coated her hands thickly with the pine resin powder stocked at the training ground, and began to climb the cliff, one careful hold at a time.
A few days later, the day of the battlefield tour arrived.
The graduating class, dressed in training uniforms and combat boots, gathered in the plaza in front of the dormitory, laughing and chattering among themselves.
"Are you okay…?"
"Don't worry about it."
Her followers' concern, prompted by the white bandages wound round and round her hands, was met with a cold reply. Knightly knew perfectly well that they had stood behind her every night while she practiced, whispering and cursing her under their breath. Wasting even a scrap of feeling on the likes of them was more than they were worth.
Right now, Knightly's gaze was locked on Dian, who stood up ahead yawning.
Just you wait, Professor. I'll show you what I can do today.
Knightly clenched her fists and kept staring at him, but she couldn't quite catch his eye. So she looked for Special Cadet Sophie instead.
Sophie was easy to find. Pink hair was not exactly common. She was on the opposite side of the plaza, surrounded by lower-ranked students, arms folded, wearing a look of utter boredom.
That was because Sophie, by beating the top-ranking students — which was to say, Knightly's own followers — had accidentally become the savior of the lower ranks who had been getting pushed around. She was probably bewildered by it herself.
She'll be thrown too, when they suddenly tell her to climb a cliff. But I already know that's how Professor Dian is going to play this. There isn't a single student at this Academy who knows Professor Dian better than I do…
From that thought, Knightly felt a rush of superiority and a sharp, thrilling pleasure all at once.
"All right, everyone — onto the elevator, ten at a time!"
They had come through a dimensional gate onto the plains at the foot of Ivronik Castle. The professors herded the students into order and began loading them onto the elevator in turn.
Wait. What?
She had been certain they would climb the old, narrow wartime path, or scale the cliff along Sir Linus's original route.
Thrown completely by a situation that defied her prediction in every particular, Knightly ran straight to Dian.
"Professor?! Why are we taking the elevator?!"
At Knightly's protest, Dian blinked back at her as if he genuinely had no idea what she was talking about.
"What, you wanna crawl up?"
"This is a battlefield tour!"
"What are you on about? There's an easy way to get up there. Why would we go out of our way to make it hard on ourselves?"
"Th-this isn't… this wasn't how it was supposed to go…!"
Dian tilted his head, looking at the despairing Knightly.