Chapter 76
After school, Vertus didn’t summon me to the usual tea-time terrace where we always had our conversations; instead, he brought me to his room.
Vertus’s room wasn’t much different from mine. I guess that just because it was a prince’s private quarters didn’t mean it had to be more splendid or anything like that. However, for someone with the talent to become a swordmaster, he had an unusually large collection of books. Of course, there was physical training equipment as well, but there seemed to be more bookshelves than anything else.
A hardworking villain—not too bad. But being right next to him and observing him so closely was kind of scary.
“Let’s have a cup of tea.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure.”
Vertus brewed some black tea for me. Vertus actually appeared to prefer doing things himself, as compared to life at the palace, where he would be served everything without having to move a finger.
Vertus also didn’t display any overwhelming sense of superiority that might have been hidden inside him, and even came off as just a nice guy.
“So, how was your holiday? Did you get some good rest?”
“No, it actually felt more exhausting than usual.”
Indeed, during the terrorist incident, my thoughts were so tangled up that it felt as if my head was going to split open, and after that, I endured relentless training sessions with Ellen, pushing my body to the limits.
It seemed that my days off had actually been more intense.
Vertus chuckled lightly.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. It seemed like it, judging from the state of your body.”
He must have been referring to the bruises all over my body, and was giving me high marks for the fact that I was gritting my teeth and really pushing myself in training.
If all he cared about was spirit and enthusiasm, then not me, but Ludwig, would have been the perfect subordinate. After all, he was someone who would eventually rise to become almost on par with Ellen, relying purely on fighting spirit and enthusiasm alone.
But why did he insist on calling me here? It didn’t seem like he just wanted to have tea for the sake of it.
“Comparing you now to when school first started, your improvement is indeed remarkable. Still, while it’s good to train, don’t overdo it so much that you harm your body. Remember that we’re still developing teenagers.”
“Of course.”
Vertus had warned me several times that too much training at a young age could be detrimental, and I was mindful of that as well.
I didn’t ask Vertus about anything, as I didn’t want to poke a hedgehog for no reason.
“There’s no other motive for me wanting to talk to you; I was just genuinely curious about something.”
“What is it?”
“How did you become close with Ellen?”
‘Shouldn’t he be super busy and preoccupied with his own matters? Why is he asking such an unexpected question?’
Vertus scratched his head and smiled.
“Well, it’s just that I tried talking to her a few times, but you know, she’s not much of a talker... But she trains with you and talks with you often, doesn’t she? I was wondering if there was a secret or something.”
Indeed, besides myself, Ellen didn’t really engage in conversations with anyone else in class. If everyone knew about Ellen’s background, there would have been a mountain of folks trying to get close to her, but only Vertus knew.
In our class, Ellen was seen as someone who was incredibly skilled but too blunt and hard to approach.
“It’s a little hard to explain.”
The more I thought about it, the more I realized it had just happened over time, without any deliberate effort. If someone asked me how to become friends with Ellen, I wouldn’t be able to give them a clue.
“Uh... to be honest, I think I just interacted with her without any intention of becoming friends.”
“... That just made it even more confusing.”
“Honestly, I don’t know either.”
Vertus sighed in response to my clueless answer. “I see.”
I hadn’t done anything particularly nice for her. To be precise, it had started with me teasing and provoking her, and it then somehow turned into what it was now. It just happened—eating meals together, sharing snacks, giving and receiving relentless advice and nagging, and before I knew it, we had become friends.
Of course, even though we had become friends, nothing much had really changed.
“Reinhart, you sure do have a strange knack for things. You get into all sorts of trouble wherever you go, but you end up becoming friends with Ellen, who’s maybe the hardest person to get close to.”
Even Vertus, who considered all of the talents of the current students to be nothing special, appeared to hold Ellen’s abilities in high regard. Obviously, though, part of it was because of her background.
“I’m just asking this out of curiosity, but... Do you like her?”
“... No, not at all.”
I liked her, but definitely not in that way. Why did Vertus suddenly ask such a question?
He continued to gaze at me as if trying to read my true intentions.
“Hmm... well, okay. You really seem to have no interest in girls at all. You even called Saint-Ouen a thick-skull.”
Vertus chuckled as he thought about my indifferent behavior toward girls.
“I’m just far past that age to be interested in them.”
“... Isn’t this the perfect age to be interested?”
“Not for me, I guess.”
I spoke as if I was the one who was not interested, but in reality, it was the others who weren’t interested. Besides, to me, they were all just cute little kids.
‘If only you could be a bit cuter and more childlike for your age.’
“But why do you ask such a question?”
“Hmm, I wonder why?”
Vertus continued to smile without giving me a straight answer. It seemed like he had some hidden motive, yet he wasn’t going to spill it. I guess there was no real reason why he should be revealing the truth to me in the first place.
“It was just a hypothetical question for the far, far future, if at all,” Vertus said as a way of deflecting my inquiry, indicating that he wasn’t going to elaborate further.
From what I knew about the setting of the novel, though, Vertus was interested in Ellen for her power, and not in a romantic way. And he likely wouldn’t be in the future either.
Hence, there was no reason for him to care whether I liked Ellen or not. So, then, why ask?
“Anyway, what do you think about this recent incident?”
Vertus introduced a very heavy topic in an attempt to steer the conversation in a different direction.
“... Sorry?”
I doubted what I’d heard with my own ears.
“I mean the recent terrorist incident,” he replied. “Surely you know of it, right?”
Would he really care for the opinion of someone who came from the streets? Surely, the fact that I was from the streets seemed to make him a bit less guarded around me, but was that enough that he would actually trust my words?
“Uh... Yeah, I’ve heard about it. But I can’t see it as anything but a big incident.”
I gave the simplest answer I could think of, something a commoner might say. Demons mounting a terror attack in the imperial city was obviously a big matter.
Vertus hummed and nodded slowly.
“Is that all?” he asked as he looked at me, as if expecting a different answer.
Of course, if I thought about it seriously, I could probably come up with a better answer. However, as one of the masterminds behind the incident, I couldn’t just offer up another answer on the spot. To express an opinion on the matter would be a risk in itself, as I might inadvertently reveal things that Vertus didn’t know about.
Vertus didn’t seem to suspect me or anything like that. He just seemed to want an answer that wasn’t ordinary. It looked like he was testing my insight.
Having considered this, I came up with a response.
“Well... I do wonder how an incident like this could happen now, since the Great War has ended. And why, of all things, was this a confrontation with the Order of the Holy Knights? Perhaps there are other reasons behind this that are not known to the public yet... That’s what I’m thinking. I’ve been at the Temple until now, so I don’t really know the details.”
I drew the idea for my response from Ellen’s previous musings. There must have been other reasons for the incident hidden beneath the surface. If not, from the demons’ perspective, there would be no point in picking an unnecessary fight with the Order of the Holy Knights.
Vertus nodded as if to acknowledge my train of thought.
“Well, it’s hard to give you more details about all the reasons behind it. But yeah, you have a valid point, though.”
From Charlotte’s words earlier on, I could infer that it was Vertus’s forces who were behind the black market organization. Whether Vertus had a personal hand in it or not, it was eventually his side that had tried to carry out the black-market auction, and information on it had leaked to the demons.
That’s why Charlotte had taunted him by suggesting that he had to manage his people better, since it was unprecedented for a horde of demon prisoners to escape, followed immediately by a terror attack in the imperial capital.
Judging by his demeanor, though, it didn’t seem like Vertus was particularly upset.
“As you know, there’s hardly anyone but you that I can have these kinds of conversations with within the Temple.”
“Ah... Right.”
Vertus needed someone who knew his true self, and could also be somewhat of a conversational partner. He may have had such a counterpart in the palace, but he lacked such a person in the Temple.
Everyone at the Temple was too young, and for now, Vertus had an outer persona that portrayed him as kind.
He crossed his arms and furrowed his brow.
“It’s being said that this incident has sowed chaos, but honestly, I don’t think it’s all that bad.”
That statement was rather shocking, coming from an imperial prince.
Vertus didn’t bother to warn me not to talk about this elsewhere, as he probably assumed I was smart enough not to go about spreading rumors so easily.
What did he mean when he said he didn’t think this incident wasn’t bad?
His planned black-market auction had fallen through, the imperial family’s reputation was tarnished, and the incident had given his political rival a reason to criticize him. How could this not be considered a bad thing?
“Why is that?”
“Do you think an empire that now dominates all the lands of humans could have been established if there were no Demon Realm in the first place?”
I was taken aback by Vertus’s question.
“Without an enemy, humans won’t unite.”
“...”
“Or, to put it a bit differently, humans create enemies in order to unite themselves. People like Scarlett are a perfect example of this.”
Humans need enemies to unite. They even go as far as to deliberately designate something that isn’t an enemy as one, for the sake of unity.
On a smaller scale, within a group of friends, this could take the form of finding a target to bully.
On a larger scale, if the group was expanded to encompass a nation, the country could create hypothetical enemy states to encourage its citizens to unite.
Humans need to create enemies in order to unite, and those who wanted to encourage unity would set up artificial enemies. That was what Vertus meant. It was a narrative that applied to the Allied Forces versus the Nazis, the communist and capitalist blocks, and to all manner of divisive issues without clear answers that led to split factions.
Essentially, Vertus was saying that the concept wasn’t much different from bullying a fellow classmate. To unite, you needed to create enemies.
“Now that the Great War has ended, the situation in the empire is going to become increasingly unstable. The very species that united against a common enemy will have lost that enemy. So, they will begin to become greedy, and look out for their own interests.”
The existence of the Demon Realm served as a grand justification for humans to unite. The empire could exist because of the existence of the Demon Realm. But now that the war against the Demon Realm had been won, humans no longer had a grand cause to unite them, no common enemy to face. Vertus predicted that this would eventually lead to the empire’s fragmentation.
In fact, I had planned to pursue such a storyline in this novel. When there was no more slice-of-life material left to write about, I intended to set off a major event related to this issue.
I had contemplated a scenario where nations within the empire would splinter, leading to the empire’s dissolution and the onset of war. However, I eventually abandoned this option and chose the storyline that began with the opening of the gates instead.
Obviously, Vertus would not be aware of the future opening of the gates, so he was just predicting the most likely event to happen from his current perspective.
The unity of humans, who had lost their common enemy, would ultimately fracture, and the empire, after enjoying a golden era, would end up disintegrating amidst a war between humans. Without the appearance of the gates, the history of this world would undoubtedly unfold in that direction.
“However, right on time, the demons caused havoc in the imperial capital.”
The forces of the Demon Realm, thought to have been annihilated, wreaked chaos in the capital during this period of uncertainty. As a result, people’s fear of the Demon Realm persisted, and as long as that fear remained, the empire could maintain the same cohesion it had enjoyed before the demise of the Demon Realm.
“Fear is a very effective tool for governance and unification.”
Therefore, despite suffering considerable losses, Vertus considered this event—which had caused people to fall into the grip of fear—more necessary for the empire than ever before.
He acknowledged that there might have been some damage to the empire, but he was looking further ahead. He thought that these terrorist acts caused by the demons could actually aid in the preservation of the empire.
Vertus likely knew that the Dark Land no longer posed a real threat to humans. Therefore, the uprisings of mere remnants of the demon forces were neither capable of destroying the empire nor delivering a meaningful blow. Ultimately, their existence was a benefit to the empire.
I had to agree, to some extent, with Vertus’ bold perspective.
When I thought about it, he might actually be pleased to know that the candidate for the next Demon King was still alive. If the existence of an enemy maintained the unity of humanity, then he might even wish for the reconstruction of the Demon Prince’s forces.
Of course, even though I agreed with him, I wasn’t going to suddenly reveal my true identity to him. Vertus seemed to be testing whether I could think that far—or perhaps, he was also trying to see if I showed any signs that I was agreeing with him on this point.
I had no idea how Charlotte would react to this, or what the reactions might be within the imperial family itself.
Experiencing how the perpetrators of an incident felt about it in real-time was a strange feeling.
I wondered if Airi and Eleris were doing well.
That aside, though, I had more pressing matters to attend to.
Harriet de Saint-Ouen, and Riana de Granz...
I had to find a way to prevent both of them from taking leaves of absence. My relationship with Harriet could hardly be described as close, and I had never even had a conversation with Riana de Granz.
What was I to do? With Harriet, perhaps I could find a way to talk to her, but someone like Riana, who hardly knew me, would likely ignore any plea from me, especially if it was asking her not to take a leave of absence.
***
It was after dinner...
I put aside my worries and immediately went looking for Harriet in the dormitory.
I quickly encountered a problem.
“... Where did she go?”
She wasn’t in the magic research lab, her room, the lobby, or the dining hall.
Come to think of it, I only knew the spots where Ellen usually hung out, and not the others. If Harriet wasn’t in the dormitory, then I would have to look for her outside...
Fortunately, there was still someone I could ask. Harriet might not have been in the magic research lab, but someone else was.
I headed back towards the magic research lab and flung the door open.
“Hey.”
“Y-yeah?”
The girl who replied sounded somewhat frightened.
In Class A, there were only two students who majored in magic—Harriet, and this girl. That was why they were close.
Adelia, A-7, who specialized in summoning magic and magical crafting.
She excelled in the area related to summoning through magic and crafting objects imbued with magic. Her talent in magical crafting was particularly important.
On a small scale, magical crafting might involve something like a magical lantern, but on a larger scale, it could include designing things as complex as a magic train.
I had never really had a deeper conversation with her as well, and it seemed like she was scared of me because of my reputation.
“Where’s the thick-skull?”
“Th-, thi-... thick-skull?”
It was evident by the way she stuttered when I called Harriet by that nickname that she was shocked.
“Yeah, that’s right, you heard me. Where did she go? I can’t seem to find her.”
I could feel her struggling with a dilemma. Answering my question about Harriet would be like acknowledging that her friend’s nickname was ‘Thick-Skull’.
She was just trembling her lips nervously without saying a word.
“Ah, come on. I’m not going to do something bad to you or anything. I’m just asking where she is.”
‘Why is she trying to make me out to be the bad guy? I honestly never hit someone just for the fun of it, so what’s up with the scared look?’
... Now that I thought about it, she might actually have a valid reason to be afraid.
I grew impatient, and the girl shook her head rapidly.
“Uh, um... Sh-she had to go use the transceiver...”
She eventually chose to acknowledge that Harriet’s nickname was indeed ‘Thick-Skull’, which left a visible trace of guilt on her face.
“Oh, is that where she is?”
“Y-yes...”
The Royal Class dormitory possessed a magical transceiving device, and a room in which transceiving magic could be used. Of course, the downside was that the other party also had to possess a magical transceiving device. I had no use for it, but if a student’s parents were influential or wealthy enough to own a magical transceiving device, they could be in regular contact with them.
It seemed that Harriet was currently there.
Adelia’s eyes kept darting to me, hinting that she wanted me to leave, now that she had provided the information.
Since Harriet hadn’t gone somewhere far away, she would probably return to the dormitory soon. Adelia seemed so distracted by my presence that she didn’t seem to be able to focus on anything else.
“Hey, let’s have a chat.”
“Wh-what? With... with me?”
“Who else could I be talking to?”
Adelia was trembling so hard that her hands were shaking visibly.
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