Chapter 14: Trekking [1]
"By the way, Senior... I think something changed today."
"Hm?"
The two were quietly eating dinner together when Ilya finally brought it up. Vera didn’t even bother looking up from her plate, calmly taking another bite.
"It happened during today’s examination," Ilya continued. "I was fighting the instructor. At first, everything was normal, but after a while... something strange started happening."
Vera finally raised her eyes toward him. "What kind of strange?"
"I could feel his attacks before they happened."
She stopped eating.
"Not by much," Ilya quickly clarified. "It wasn’t like I was reading his mind. Every time he moved, the snow around me moved first. I could feel the ice under my feet vibrate as well, almost like something had disturbed the entire landscape."
He paused, trying to put the sensation into words.
"At first, I thought I was imagining it. Then it happened again... and again. Eventually, I realized I wasn’t reacting to Sir Fritz’s sword anymore. I was reacting to whatever his sword was doing to my Domain."
Vera remained silent, listening without interrupting.
"The strangest part was that it didn’t feel like I was seeing anything," Ilya continued. "It felt... natural. Like the snow itself was telling me where he was about to strike. Every crack in the ice, and every tiny disturbance somehow reached me before his sword did, and my body started moving before I had time to think."
"Hm."
"I lost in the end, of course. The difference in skill was still too great. But... I don’t think that was just my imagination."
Vera calmly struck another piece of food with her fork and ate it in silence as she seemed to mull over his explanation.
———!
Then, without the slightest bit of warning, the fork she had just been holding shot across the table toward Ilya.
"...!"
Ilya tilted his head as he felt the snowflakes ripple.
Thunk——!
The fork whizzed past his cheek before embedding itself into the wall behind him.
"I see."
Vera casually reached out with telekinesis, pulling the fork free from the wall before setting it back beside her plate as though nothing unusual had happened.
"Humans have always been adaptable creatures," she said. "That was true thousands of years ago, and it’s still true today. When they’re repeatedly exposed to the same stimulus, they eventually begin responding to it without conscious thought."
She rested her chin against one hand.
"All those rocks I kept throwing at you forced your inner realm to react to incoming danger, over and over again, until your Domain itself began adapting."
Ilya quietly listened.
"Since domains aren’t static, but the reflections of their owners, as you change, they change with you. Your repeated exposure to attacks conditioned your Domain to perceive disturbances before your conscious mind ever could."
"So then...?"
Vera took another bite of her dinner before answering.
"It means I’ll have to adjust your training."
"...."
An inexplicable sense of foreboding washed over Ilya.
That night, Vera immediately put her new theory into practice.
Rather than pelting him with boulders as she usually did, she spent the entire session testing the limits of his newly awakened perception, repeatedly probing how far his senses could extend throughout his Domain, how accurately he could detect disturbances, and at what point those sensations gradually faded away.
By the time the training finally ended, Ilya had passed out in the ice bath.
* * *
By the third day, the practical examinations had moved on to the third pillar of the Knight Department’s curriculum.
Mind.
Unlike the previous two days, the instructors no longer cared about physical endurance or swordsmanship.
Strength and technique alone were meaningless if a knight lacked the judgment to make decisions on the battlefield, and today’s examinations existed to determine exactly how each student thought when placed under pressure.
The morning began with a series of tactical exercises.
Every student received a different battlefield scenario, whether it be a village under attack, a supply convoy caught in an ambush, or a fortress enduring a prolonged siege, and was expected to explain not only what they would do, but why they believed it was the correct course of action.
"You only have enough troops to save one. The villagers, the nobles, or the military supply depot. Which do you choose?"
Faced with this question, Ilya answered with confidence.
"The supply depot."
"And your reasoning?"
"If the supplies are lost, the surrounding villages will eventually starve anyway. Saving one village today only creates ten more tomorrow."
Naturally, there were no perfect answers, and the instructors seemed far more interested in a student’s reasoning than the actual outcome.
The instructor scribbled something onto his evaluation sheet.
The afternoon transitioned from map exercises to illusion magic.
Entire battlefields stretched before the students as they assumed command over magically created platoons, issuing orders while dealing with soldiers who occasionally misunderstood commands, hesitated under pressure, or reacted unpredictably.
Just when everyone thought they had control of the situation, the instructors would casually announce a new development, forcing them to abandon their original plans and adapt on the spot.
"Commander killed!"
"...Understood!"
"Reinforcements will not be arriving!"
"Then withdraw the left flank!"
"A blizzard has reduced visibility!"
"Signal the retreat and regroup at the forest!"
Compared to the previous day’s combat examinations, this portion suited Ilya surprisingly well.
He rarely panicked when the battlefield changed. Whenever a plan stopped working, he discarded it without even thinking twice and built another one from whatever resources remained, earning several approving nods from the instructors watching nearby.
Even so, his evaluations were never outstanding.
"Interesting. He consistently preserves the highest number of lives."
"At the expense of the objective..."
"Exactly. He treats success as secondary to avoiding failure. That’s admirable in an escort... but not in someone expected to command an army."
By the end of the third day, Ilya had once again passed without much difficulty.
Much like the previous examinations, he performed well enough to avoid criticism but never well enough to leave a lasting impression.
The day passed by uneventfully, and before Ilya knew it, it was already Thursday.
The fourth day marked the final pillar of the Knight Department’s practical examinations.
Will.
Unlike the previous examinations, Thursday contained almost no combat whatsoever. Instead of testing a student’s body, swordsmanship, or judgment, the academy sought to answer a far simpler question.
’When everything else fails, does this knight still possess the resolve to keep moving forward?’
The morning began with endurance.
Students gathered shoulder to shoulder as instructors applied carefully controlled magical pain throughout their bodies, forcing them to maintain Iron Reinforcement.
Those who lost concentration even for a moment were immediately dismissed.
"Maintain your reinforcement!"
"...Gh!"
"Do not fight the pain! Endure it!"
One by one, students fell to their knees as their mana circulation faltered.
Afterward came isolation.
One at a time, students were sealed inside featureless chambers through spatial magic, where there was neither sound nor light, no passage of time to measure, and no one with whom to speak.
The examination wasn’t physically demanding in the slightest, yet by the time the doors reopened, more than a few students walked out looking far more exhausted than they had after the previous three days combined.
The afternoon belonged to what the instructors simply referred to as the Burden Trial.
Every student was fitted with a magically reinforced pack that grew progressively heavier over time.
According to the instructors, the weight would increase gradually so that no one could pinpoint the exact moment they couldn’t handle it anymore.
Their only instruction was to continue marching along the designated route while maintaining proper posture and mana circulation, all without knowing how much farther remained.
"There is no time limit. There is no destination you need to worry about. Continue walking until instructed otherwise."
"...That’s it?"
"That is all."
At first, many students were left confused, thinking that the examination sounded easier than the previous ones.
Half an hour later, they immediately regretted even indulging those thoughts.
"Do you wish to withdraw?"
"No..."
"Please..."
"Yes!"
Those who chose to withdraw handed over their weighted packs before leaving the course without another word, while those who remained lowered their heads and continued walking.
The instructors merely observed, writing notes on their clipboards as the line of students gradually grew shorter.
Ilya continued forward at the same unhurried pace he had maintained from the beginning.
"Haah..."
His shoulders ached, his legs had long since become numb, and sweat soaked through his uniform despite the cold weather, yet his expression scarcely changed.
Compared to Vera’s training, where every evening ended with broken bones, freezing water, and another lecture about how pathetic he was, carrying a heavy pack while walking almost felt... reasonable.
Only then did Ilya notice something.
Sweat.
He looked down at himself, watching beads of perspiration run down his forehead before disappearing beneath his collar.
It had been so long since he had last broken into a proper sweat that he genuinely couldn’t remember the last time it had happened.
"...."
It was a decent change of pace.
* * *
The bulletin board was practically surrounded by a sea of students.
First-years from both the Knight and Wizard Departments squeezed through the crowd, craning their necks in search of their assigned groups.
"Yay! I’m grouped with Elodie!"
"Whoa, no way! Isn’t Lukas Weissadel the guy who topped the entrance examinations?!"
"Look at this group. They’ve got two upper-ranked first-years already!"
"Hey, look over there! They’ve got both Matthias and Camille in the same group!"
"I wouldn’t celebrate yet. The practical examination is a team exercise. One weak link can drag down all six people."
"...Please tell me that’s not my name."
"Oh, it is."
"...I’m finished."
Groans, cheers, and nervous laughter echoed throughout the hallway as students quietly prayed they hadn’t been assigned to carry someone through their first joint examination.
"Huh..."
Standing all the way at the back of the crowd, Ilya couldn’t see the bulletin board no matter how much he tried to peer over the students in front of him.
Fortunately, he wasn’t particularly anxious about the announcement.
This was the joint examination, meant for the fifth day.
The joint examination had already been announced a week in advance, and Vera had even reminded him about it again just a few nights earlier.
Beginning on Friday and lasting until Sunday evening, the three-day, two-night expedition would serve as the final assessment of the academy’s midterm practical examinations.
Unlike the previous four days, which had evaluated the Knight Department independently, this exercise would combine students from both the Knight and Magic Departments into six-person teams before sending them into the mountains.
"A three-day, two-night hiking course..." Ilya muttered with a weary sigh. "I really don’t want to go..."
Ilya didn’t have many fond memories of mountains. It wasn’t exactly trauma, per se. It was simply that Ilya found mountains inconvenient, especially knowing just how unforgiving they could be.
"Sigh."
Rather than forcing his way through the crowd, Ilya simply stood off to the side, waiting for the students gathered around the bulletin board to gradually thin out.
It was then that someone entirely unexpected approached him from behind.
"Seems like we’ll be working together, Ilya."
"Huh?"
Standing before him with an outstretched hand and a bright smile was none other than the Crown Prince himself, Siegfried.
"Your Highness..."
"Ah, come on." Siegfried laughed awkwardly as he scratched the back of his head. "Enough with the formalities already. Weren’t we friends? Just call me Siegfried... or Sieg!"
"Friends...?"
Ilya tilted his head, his expression remaining as indifferent as ever.
Sure, the two of them had exchanged words a handful of times during noble gatherings while growing up, but calling that friendship felt like a considerable exaggeration.
At best, they had simply been children whose families happened to occupy the same social circles.
"Yes!" Siegfried replied enthusiastically, leaving his hand extended. "Just call me by my name!"
Having read the novel, Ilya already understood where this insistence came from.
Growing up as the Crown Prince, Siegfried had been surrounded by people who bowed to his title long before they ever acknowledged him as a person.
Somewhere along the way, every greeting had become rehearsed, and every conversation had begun to feel superficial.
That was why, after enrolling in the academy, Siegfried had resolved to make friends who saw him as Siegfried the student rather than the Crown Prince of the Empire.
"Alright, Sieg."
For Ilya, however, there was another reason for indulging him. Ever since transmigrating into this world, he had been observing how much the story had already diverged.
His very existence had created countless butterfly effects, and more than once, he had witnessed events unfold in ways that his memories simply couldn’t account for.
"There you are, Sieg! I’ve been looking... Ilya...?"
Elise was here, too.
The moment she entered his field of vision, Ilya searched through his memories.
Of course, this was supposed to happen. During the first joint examination between the Knight and Magic departments, Siegfried, Elise, and Ilya were originally assigned to the same team.
’...So this part didn’t change after all.’
For all the butterfly effects his existence itself had already caused, there still seemed to be certain events that stubbornly refused to deviate from their original course.
Besides, unlike many of the changes he had inadvertently brought about, this team composition had never been within Ilya’s control in the first place.
The academy assigned the groups, and if the result remained the same despite everything that had happened, perhaps fate was far more persistent than he had initially believed.
’Which Chapter was this...?’
Two? Three? Four?
Ilya could no longer remember.
The furthest he had ever managed to read was Chapter Eight, and even those memories had gradually faded over time.
Still, the fact that this scene was still recognizable meant it had to be somewhere before that point.
"Ilya... um..."
Elise hesitated, clearly uncertain about how to address him.
The last time the two of them had spoken, she had raised her voice at him without holding anything back, and remembering that now only made the silence between them even more uncomfortable.
Standing beside them, Siegfried’s gaze alternated between the two, seemingly debating whether he should step in or simply pretend nothing was happening.
In the end, Ilya made the decision for them.
"Let’s do our best, Elise. Sieg."
For a moment, both of them stared at him in surprise.
"...R-Right," Elise answered.
"Y-Yeah! We’ve got three days together, so let’s make this the best team in the examination!"
"You’re making this sound like a vacation, Your Highness."
A new voice joined the conversation from behind them.
Turning around, Ilya found himself looking at a young woman with chestnut hair.
She was a little taller than Elise but still a head shorter than Siegfried, and without any pretenses, she casually draped an arm around Elise’s shoulders.
The ease of the gesture alone made it obvious the two were already close.
"L-Lucie!" Elise exclaimed, her eyes lighting up. "I’ve been looking everywhere for you!"
"And I’ve been looking everywhere for you," Lucie replied with a laugh. "Looks like I found the right group."
Ilya didn’t recognize her.
More likely than not, she might have just been another student assigned to complete the expedition’s six-person composition.
"You’re...?" Lucie’s gaze shifted toward Ilya before recognition slowly dawned on her face. "Oh... you’re... that guy."
"I am."
There wasn’t any hostility in her voice, surprisingly.
"Ah... let’s... do our best?"
"Likewise."
The exchange ended there.
Judging from the way Lucie kept stealing brief glances in his direction, she clearly wasn’t afraid of him.
Rather, she seemed to have already concluded that he would be the team’s weakest link, someone the rest of them would inevitably have to look after once the expedition began.
From the perspective of a Magic Department student, there was very little reason to fear an incompetent knight.
Ilya didn’t take it personally.
After all, that was exactly how his reputation appeared from the outside.
More importantly, something else caught his attention.
There were only four of them.
Since every expedition team consisted of three students from the Knight Department and three from the Magic Department, there were still two members who had yet to arrive.
"Oh."
It didn’t take Ilya long to figure out why the remaining two members hadn’t approached the group.
Standing several meters away were the last two students from the Knight Department, and both of them were all too familiar.
They were the very same pair who had cornered Adrian several days earlier.
Judging by the occasional glances they cast in his direction, they had clearly recognized him as well.
Neither side made any effort to close the distance.
The two knights remained where they were, speaking only to each other while waiting for the instructors to arrive, whereas Ilya saw little reason to force an introduction.
After all, being assigned to the same expedition team did not suddenly make them friends.
At the very least, they seemed to share that understanding.
"Now, now," Siegfried said with an easygoing smile as he stepped between the two groups. "Let bygones be bygones. Yesterday’s enemy is today’s friend!"
"With all due respect, Your Highness," Ilya replied, "that happened a week ago."
"...That makes it even more valid!"
Lucie pressed her lips together, clearly trying not to laugh, while Elise lowered her head and let out a quiet sigh, already accustomed to the Crown Prince’s peculiar logic.
Even the two knights exchanged uncertain glances, seemingly unsure whether they were supposed to agree or simply move on.
"Well," Siegfried continued, clapping his hands together once, "we’re going to spend the next three days relying on one another whether we like it or not."
"...."
"We don’t have to become best friends, but I’d rather none of us try pushing each other off a mountain."
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