SBTMK Chapter 33

Night had already begun settling in by the time they'd made a full round of the training grounds.

"Had it rough today, the both of you, running around like that. Get back to quarters and rest up. Truth is I'd like to keep messing around with you two, but I've got to mind the bags under my subordinate's eyes."

Melia snickered at that, a stifled little "kkuk-kkuk."

Flora and Melia bowed to Kasin with proper formality and headed for their quarters.

Melia still carried something girlish about her, the way fresh Academy graduates often do. Even Kasin's throwaway comments had her eyes sparkling like a student hanging on a professor's every word—Flora thought it was pretty cute, honestly.

"Let's get along well from now on, Dame Flora! Rest well, then."

The female knights' quarters were apparently gathered on the third floor.

Once they'd reached the same floor, Melia greeted Flora first.

"Likewise. I look forward to it, Dame Melia."

Flora returned the greeting and went into her room.

The recruits' first day passed, just like that.

Ask about a new recruit's daily routine, and the answer comes back the same everywhere: training, training, errands, and then more training.

Guess a trainee's schedule is the same everywhere, no matter the country—back in Cenkan too, being a fresh knight meant nothing but grinding through training that felt like hell.

Honestly, this schedule was far more comfortable than that had been.

Unlike Cenkan, where training ran from before dawn until deep into the night, Haenkan's training schedule had, comparatively, a somewhat humane shape to it.

Morning training, then a meal, then two hours of rest, then training again until the midday meal. After that, they were free for the day.

"Rest," they called it—but it was an hour of pure pain, stuck doing the senior knights' grunt work.

The days made up entirely of training and errands left her tired and bored at times, but even so, over the course of more than a week, she'd adjusted well to the White Knights and picked up a fair amount of information.

For one thing: the imperial knights' ranking system had six tiers total—Commander, Vice-Commander, Elite Knight, Senior Knight, Mid-rank Knight, and Recruit Knight.

Recruit Knights, the rank Flora currently occupied, were as she'd said—stuck with training and errands. Assignments involving actual imperial crime or security duty only began at the Mid-rank Knight level.

The promotion exam for Mid-rank Knight was held once every three months; qualification was granted based on how precisely a candidate could reproduce a swordsmanship manual announced in advance.

Above Mid-rank, promotion wasn't decided by exam at all, but by a range of basic qualities—how well a knight knew the corps' internal rules and etiquette, how well they understood imperial law, and whether they had an eye for politics and combat alike.

A knight who fought well would no doubt bring the corps plenty of honor, but someone who couldn't be bothered with manners or protocol had no business leading people as a commander.

There was a separate rank reserved purely for combat ability, and that was the "Elite Knight." Not that Elite Knights were nothing but brute strength and bad manners.

Masters, when they joined as recruits, were usually promoted straight to Elite Knight after a probationary period.

Even without being a Master, anyone judged to have outstanding combat ability was promoted to Elite Knight.

And when a Vice-Commander position went vacant, it was filled from among the Senior Knights or Elite Knights, chosen for possessing well-rounded basic qualities.

The reason nobody objected when someone was fast-tracked from recruit straight to Elite Knight was that Elite Knights spent more than half of every year in Demon Hollows or along the border regions.

They faced danger and combat far more often than an ordinary Senior Knight.

Anyone who valued their own hide kept their trap shut around people who threw their lives away for the empire day in, day out—crack wise about rank to one of them, and you'd get yourself booted straight to a demon-beast subjugation squad, no question.

And one fact she'd learned just two days ago:

The man Sarthe and she had mistaken for an assassin had been, of all things, an Elite Knight.

He'd just returned to headquarters from border defense duty after a short leave, and had happened to be observing the recruit entrance exam when it was held.

In a few days, he and the others would be departing for the Demon Hollow that had recently appeared on the count's territory.

"Dame Flora. Mind if I sit?"

A knight sidled up awkwardly to where Flora sat eating lunch in the dining hall.

"Please."

A man with close-cropped hair. He didn't have to scowl or try to look scary—his face was just naturally rough and mean-looking, and that's exactly why Flora remembered him.

Probably a Senior Knight. The elaborate insignia and epaulets on his uniform confirmed his rank as much as anything.

His name was...

Kellen? Kullin? Flora dug through her fuzzy memory for his name, and laughed, awkward.

Memorizing the names of dozens of superiors was still too much for her.

"Dame Flora. Have you decided on your direct superior?"

At his question, Flora blinked, as though only now recalling something she'd briefly forgotten.

"No. I haven't decided yet."

Recruit Knights were required to choose a direct superior who would help with training and teach them the job.

Forget learning the job, swordsmanship, manners—she'd obviously just end up wiping up after whatever superior she picked. But hell staring her plainly in the face was no excuse to spit on the group's customs.

'Still haven't even got all the names memorized.'

Flora let her eyes go unfocused, digging back through memory.

For the first two days of training, every Senior Knight had come out together to help the recruits.

There had, without question, been knights she'd taken note of at the time. The problem was she couldn't remember their names.

Plenty of Senior Knights harassed her for one petty reason or another, but there were also superiors, on the other hand, who thought she was impressive and genuinely liked her.

Like the man in front of her now.

"Ahem. Then how about coming under m—"

"Dame Flora. Commander Kasin's asking for you."

Before the Senior Knight could finish, another knight cut him off abruptly and called her over.

'What had he been about to say?'

Flora blinked, then bowed apologetically to the Senior Knight in front of her.

But since it was the Commander himself calling, not just anybody, he couldn't very well throw a fit about it—so Kellen, or Kullin, or neither—Senior Knight Kyrel, as it turned out—was left with nothing to do but click his tongue, sour with disappointment.

Flora put away her tableware and left the dining hall. She had no idea why the Commander wanted to see her.

In the more than a week since she'd joined, she'd endured her superiors' provocations without complaint whenever they'd come, and had made an effort to get along even with the recruits who acted smug about having joined slightly earlier than her.

So no matter how she thought about it, it didn't seem like she was being called in over some incident she'd caused. And yet she couldn't understand why her chest had suddenly gone cold.

Before joining, she'd thought of Kasin only as the White Knights' notoriously fearsome commander; now he'd become someone whose presence alone could make her heart go cold over the slightest thing.

'Is this what it feels like, getting stained by an organization...?'

Thinking that Cenkan had probably been like this too, Flora came to a stop in front of the Commander's office. The knight guarding the door soon announced her arrival.

The door opened, and Flora took a short breath before stepping inside.

The Commander's office looked exactly as it had the first time she'd entered.

Kasin sat processing a stack of papers, while the knight guarding the door stood perfectly still, without the slightest movement. The adjutant, too, seemed to have his hands full writing something diligently.

Flora bowed politely, but Kasin gave no reply, leaving her slightly awkward for a moment.

"Dame Flora. Would you mind sitting and waiting a moment? I'll finish this and be right with you."

"Yes. Please, take your time."

"Much obliged."

Only at Kasin's belated reply did Flora finally take a seat on the sofa.

Soon, the adjutant and Kasin exchanged a brief, low conversation about the disappearances happening across Haenkan and about the Demon Hollow.

Both were interesting matters, but there was no room in that exchange for Flora to interject.

Exactly two days before now—

The first news about a Demon Hollow had come in since Flora had joined the corps.

Three residents of a count's territory who'd gone into the rugged mountains to gather herbs had gone missing, and the report had prompted the count's own knight corps to launch an investigation. They'd found the mutilated bodies deep in a mountain ravine.

While on patrol, they'd encountered and defeated five level-5 demon-beasts, but two of the ten knights involved had died, and three more had been wounded. That was why the request for support had gone up to the imperial knight corps.

That demon-beasts had already escaped the Demon Hollow and were roaming the mountains was a dangerous thing in itself—there was no telling when they might push into a village.

For that reason, the subjugation force was scheduled to depart for the count's territory in three days.

Of that force, the White Knights' contribution had been selected as one Vice-Commander, five Elite Knights, three Senior Knights, and one Mid-rank Knight—ten temporary personnel in total.

She hadn't heard the details of the disappearances happening across Haenkan and didn't know much, but judging by how gravely the adjutant and Kasin were discussing it, it didn't seem like a minor matter.

Flora, lost in thought for a moment, snapped her eyes up. Her eyes, still as a quiet lake until now—something rippled across them.