SBTMK Chapter 19

"No talent this year either, I guess. No fun. Tedious."

Hakra, commander of the Black Knights, muttered the words in a voice thick with boredom.

Below the platform, Kasin nodded along as he watched the mess of a sparring match unfolding, as if in agreement.

He showed nothing on his face, but this was truly, honestly, the outer edge of his patience.

He was starting to think that being locked in a room for a full day with a monster's corpse would be more productive than watching this pageant of a sparring exam continue.

"Embarrassing, picking passing scores out of this lot."

"Even accounting for them being new recruits. It's embarrassing, no question."

Straightening out the discipline of a knight corps rotted clean through was never going to be an easy job. One look at what the Academy called talent, what it sent out to the entrance exams, made that plain enough.

Should he count himself lucky it's improved even this much.

At the very least, since Kasin, Hakra, and Erne had taken up their commands, money, bloodline, and school ties alone could no longer buy a place in the corps.

But their exacting insistence on putting skill first, above everything, meant that every year they lost more people than they took in.

Some quit because the training was too hard. Some quit from fear before their first deployment. Some lost their lives on the battlefield.

Setting aside the brave ones who died in actual combat, the rest were, in the end, simply weeding out people who'd never have been of use anyway—so that much, at least, was fortunate.

The problem was that the ones who were of use were a limited pool, and even they had limits to their stamina.

"Flora."

Kasin was still turning over his grim thoughts on the corps's uncertain future when, without noticing, the turn had come around to the next name. He tilted his head, angling it down toward the floor of the training grounds.

A small-framed woman with dazzling silver hair pulled up high was pushing her way out through the crowd.

The moment he saw the silver hair, glittering like it had been embroidered with stars, and the quiet black eyes beneath it, Kasin found some old memory surfacing without his meaning it to.

'……What am I doing, dredging up some memory from god knows when. I've really lost it.'

But he caught himself being ridiculous almost at once, and let out a short, derisive breath. Pfft.

"Wow. I don't think I've ever seen silver hair that perfect. Pretty."

Hakra's eyes lit up—no wonder they called him the Crow—while Erne, as always, simply glared at the woman below like he meant to kill her.

Just then, someone tapped Kasin on the shoulder. The only people who'd call to him from behind like that were an honor guard or his own deputy commander.

Kasin turned his head slightly toward the backrest, and his subordinate's voice slid in, as if he'd been waiting for exactly this moment.

"That one's interesting, Commander."

Interesting? What was that supposed to mean.

At the vague, unreadable remark, Kasin's brow furrowed.

He was already on edge and now this one wanted to play games too—he was about to say something to that effect, but the match began before he could, and he had no choice but to straighten up in his seat.

And soon enough he was glad he hadn't taken it out on Sarthe. Watching the woman spar against her mid-rank opponent, he understood exactly what his subordinate had meant.

"Hey. That one's got magic."

Even Hakra, who'd just been running his mouth about her looks, sat up from what had nearly been a full recline and spoke in a serious voice.

"Her mana's unstable... is she using it unconsciously?"

"There's this much mana in her body and she still hasn't awakened it?"

The two of them traded the kind of questions a mage would ask, but neither had an answer for the other's.

One thing, at least, was certain.

It had been a long time since they'd had a genuine prodigy.

And, aside from Erne, the two commanders suddenly started watching each other like rivals, wary and on guard.

"Thank you for the match."

Flora had bowed politely to her opponent, who was still sitting on the ground looking at her like she was some kind of monster, and stepped away from the center of the training grounds, out of the general line of sight.

The next round of testing proceeded smoothly, without a hitch.

By the time the string of exams that followed had finally wrapped up, her stomach was so empty her strength had begun to sag with it.

She had no idea exactly what time it was, but her body was certain of one thing—lunch hour had come and gone a good while ago.

After a short conference, the results of the first-stage exam were announced. Out of what looked like well over a hundred applicants, only fifteen had passed.

Flora, fortunately, was among them. Lugaria's warning had kept her from letting her guard down, but it seemed the corps wasn't quite as rigid as she'd feared.

"Well done, all of you. Those of you who passed the first exam, please take the meal being handed out, and gather at the mage-gate behind the training grounds in one hour."

At the words of the officiating knight, the people who'd been standing there, stiff as boards, started moving, one by one.

Most accepted the results with grace. But a few couldn't bring themselves to believe they'd failed. And some of those turned that disbelief into complaints, or into anger directed at other people.

The trouble was, that anger landed on Flora—whose gut felt like it was about to cave in and stick to her spine.

"Hey. You."

"Can I help you?"

The man who called out to her practically announced I'm from a noble family just by standing there.

He was wearing his Academy uniform loaded down with jewels, so there was no missing it.

At this point it wasn't so much that the man was decorated with jewels as that the jewels had decorated themselves with a man.

"You're a commoner, right? Didn't even finish the Academy, walked in with nothing but a single letter of recommendation."

Wasn't the applicants' identities supposed to be kept confidential?

Then again, money could buy anything in this world, so he must have dug up the information from somewhere in the meantime.

"That's right."

Flora looked at him flatly, with an expression that said and so what?

The man, apparently determined not to lose ground in this contest of wills, held her gaze without flinching—and then, abruptly, his face went red.

"Ahem. G-give me your slot for the next exam! I'll pay whatever you want. I am the second son of House Labeliu, and my elder brother is with the Black Knights—"

"No."

"What?"

There wasn't enough substance here to warrant hearing more, so Flora cut him off and refused.

"I said no."

"Why, why not? Aren't commoners like you only taking this exam for gold or a title anyway? I'll promise you enough money to live off for the rest of your life!"

"I couldn't say about the others, but I'm not taking this exam for gold or a title."

At her answer, the man looked like he'd been struck.

Thinking the conversation might be over now, Flora turned to go.

She'd already gotten a little excited at the thought that she could finally, actually eat, right up until he grabbed her wrist. A brief little incident like this she could have generously let go.

"Then?"

'……Ha. This leech of a man.'

"Let go of my hand."

The man, without any apparent fear, had taken hold of her wrist. It seemed he'd made up his mind to keep interfering with her happy mealtime no matter what.

"Just tell me already. If it's not gold or a title, what do you want?"

"Do I have to tell you that? Let go. I'm hungry."

At her couldn't-be-bothered answer, a vein bulged in the man's neck.

"What? You're hungry, at a time like this?!"

"What kind of time is it, exactly?"

"A time when a fortune could be dropping right in front of you! Your whole life could change."

'Looks to me more like thirty seconds before your head goes flying.'

"I'm not interested in that. Not selling."

Flora let killing intent flare, unannounced.

She'd figured that even someone this stupid, if he'd been through the Academy, would be able to feel at least that much off a person. But apparently his stupidity ran deeper than ordinary stupid, because he kept right on gripping her wrist regardless.

"So then what could you possibly want—!"

"I intend to protect the weak, and to live for justice. That's why I'm trying to become a knight—to hold on to the values I believe in. So it doesn't matter how much money you offer me, my lord. I won't be handing you my slot."

Flora gave him a light nod and pried his hand off her wrist by force.

Hand over her slot. The gall of it—saying something that insane, and so shamelessly, too.

It hadn't sunk in until now just how absurd the whole demand had been, and now the ridiculousness of it caught up with her, late.

Come to think of it, she'd been unnecessarily kind about the whole thing. She'd wanted to be someone warm—not some soft-headed pushover who folds at every damn inconvenience.

She was weighing whether to go back and land at least one punch when it happened.

"……You only passed out of dumb luck! You worthless—!"

She felt killing intent behind her.

If he wanted to attack first, well, that was almost a kindness.

She'd read the line of the attack and was turning her body when—

"Stop."

At the cold voice, a sword that hadn't yet reached her clattered to the ground with a loud noise.

Flora stood there blinking at how fast it had all happened.

A man in a neat white dress uniform was standing between her and the man behind her, blocking him. His broad shoulders and tall frame cut off her line of sight completely.

The uniform he wore was different from what Sarthe had been wearing—the top was cut like a long coat, and the pattern on the epaulettes at his shoulders was finer, more elaborate.

"Are you all right?"

The man blocking her turned his head halfway back to ask.

"……Yes."

Whatever her answer had reassured him of, he shifted his stance slightly, positioning himself between the young lord and Flora, and slid his sword back into its sheath.

Only then did she see his face properly. Ash-gray hair, blue eyes—a striking man.

Flora searched her memory for this man. It wasn't so long ago.

He'd been sitting on the platform above the training grounds, looking down at her with an expression of profound boredom.

"What's all this commotion? The exam's over—explain why you've got a sword out."

The commander of the White Knights…?

She didn't want to believe it, but there it was.

Flora was overwhelmed by the pressure radiating off the man. From a distance she hadn't noticed it at all, but standing this close, her body stiffened on its own.

It felt like a massive serpent had coiled itself around her. It was a threat of a different nature entirely from what she'd felt off Erne.

"A-ah, C-Commander Kasin… good afternoon. I am of House La—"

The nobleman's son, apparently recognizing the mediator as a commander, stammered through his own introduction too.

'Wait. Did he say Kasin?'

Flora's eyes turned toward the White Knights' commander for a moment, touched with something close to awe.

'Could this really be that Kasin?'

Kasin Revelotia.

She'd heard plenty about him back when she was in Cenkan.

By the time he entered the central Academy he'd already been enough of a prodigy to handle a fifth-rank monster on his own, and by graduation he'd apparently awakened his mana and become a Master.

She couldn't recall exactly what he'd accomplished, but there was one thing she knew for certain had lodged him in her memory.

A war broke out over a monster den that had appeared out of nowhere. Kasin had reportedly taken down three fourth-rank monsters alone, and then, together with the knights under his command, driven off the second-rank monster that had been the den's ringleader.

There was no way she could have forgotten hearing that.

A second-rank monster wielded power close to that of a dragon. Hearing that the man had fought his way through fourth-rank monsters and then—granted, with a corps behind him—still taken down a second-rank one afterward, Flora had thought Kasin sounded like a monster himself.

And now that monster was somehow a commander, and standing right in front of her.