Once thought to be a safe haven, the Sorcerers’ Academy had been attacked by demons and temporarily closed. With adult supervision reduced due to the ongoing efforts to locate the missing princess, a secret struggle had begun on campus grounds between Crown Prince Elvan, first-queen-to-be Clara, second-queen-to-be Karla, and a viscount’s daughter who wasn’t even a high-ranking noble.
The results were even better than what the demons—who had risked their lives to kidnap the princess and weaken the next generation’s national power—had planned. Slowly, a faint dark cloud had begun to form over the kingdom.
Two boys walked through the academy grounds.
Granted, calling them boys was a bit misleading. In Claydale, one became an adult at age fifteen, and while these boys would reach that age later this year and already looked seventeen due to aether-induced growth, they were still students and thus treated as boys.
In the otome game, the heroine was the only character whose appearance had matched her physical age, due to the fact she hadn’t had an aether-accelerated growth spurt. That conspicuously youthful look had, in the original plot, caught the eye of the crown prince. And in that game, these two boys would initially admonish Elvan for his closeness with the protagonist—but eventually, they would accept it and simply look on.
But that was only because they witnessed the growth and character of the protagonist, Alicia, thus coming to admire her. The current reality wasn’t developing that way. The two boys were strongly wary of Alicia Melsis, who called herself Licia. They found her manipulative and difficult to read and felt she was trying to worm her way into people’s hearts.
In this world, as in the original game, they had tried to admonish Elvan. But he was already deeply captivated by Licia; she had positioned herself as a woman who would wholeheartedly accept his inferiority complex. He had rejected the advice of his friends and future close aides, instead becoming even more enmeshed with Licia. The result was that the two boys had distanced themselves from the prince.
Once upon a time, perhaps these two wouldn’t have been able to abandon Elvan so readily. They, too, might even have been enraptured by Licia’s seemingly omniscient actions and words. But they had encountered a girl named Alia who had enabled them to think more critically than their in-game counterparts.
Alia was intense, for better or worse. Her existence was both balm and poison. If one of the boys hadn’t met her before enrolling in the Academy, if clear boundaries hadn’t been set...perhaps the boys might’ve been unable to bear it, categorized her as pure poison, and rejected her as Nathanital and Prince Amor had.
But the two had accepted her way of being. They weren’t bright-eyed, dreaming boys whose judgments were clouded by emotions. They had broader perspectives as people who would in the future be in positions uniquely suited to handling both domestic and international affairs.
And that was why the boys—Mikhail Melrose and Rockwell Dandorl—had reached the conclusion that, to resolve the current chaos, they needed both Princess Elena and her guard Alia, and they needed to set aside their personal feelings.
“You really think she’ll tell us?” Rockwell asked as he walked beside Mikhail.
“I hear Lady Karla is fond of Lady Alia,” Mikhail responded, furrowing his brow. “We’re her fellow students, not court nobles. Perhaps she will.”
The noble house that had facilitated the demons’ entry into Claydale had yet to be identified. Only the lower-ranked nobles and underground organizations who had dirtied their hands had been identified, and those had already been dealt with. But the identities of those who had given the orders remained a mystery.
A list of dozens of suspects had been compiled, and the fact that his sister Clara was on it made Rockwell’s heart ache. She had clocked Alicia Melsis as dangerous from the moment of the younger girl’s enrollment. Using demons to eliminate Licia—who was always hovering around royals—seemed like a bad gamble, but with Clara’s gift of foresight, perhaps she’d seen something others hadn’t. Rockwell wanted to believe in his little sister, but he understood that, given her gift, pressing her for information would be futile.
Also listed among the suspects was Karla Leicester. Like Clara, she was one of the chosen royal fiancées, and neither girl was considered a strong suspect due to their young ages, but Karla was known among nobles to be particularly dangerous despite being only thirteen.
In fact, she was currently under house arrest within the academy for destroying a chapel in the capital. Normally this would’ve warranted much harsher punishment, but the Holy Church had chosen not to press charges. Not only that, His Majesty the King had judged that trying to arrest Karla—who could incinerate Rank 6 monsters—could result in thousands of casualties among the knights. Removing her royal fiancée status was also not feasible; this would only have caused further domestic chaos. The current king, having caused the political precariousness in the first place, couldn’t afford to lose the support of Count Leicester’s faction, and as a result, house arrest had been the only option.
Behind the scenes, there was also a secret agreement between the king and Karla that certain actions of hers should be overlooked, but this was known only to a select few.
To her credit, Karla was bearing her punishment gracefully. Still, no nobles wanted to freely associate with her, knowing she was willful and might act unpredictably on a whim. But Mikhail and Rockwell thought that, precisely because she was powerful and dangerous, she might provide clues about Alia—powerful and dangerous herself—and her whereabouts.
And Karla did possess this information, but every court noble who’d tried to pry it from her had failed miserably. Nevertheless, since Mikhail and Rockwell were genuinely concerned about the missing girls, they figured there was a chance she might open up.
“Mikhail, can you bow your head to Lady Karla?” Rockwell asked.
“Yes. My grandfather, as prime minister, and your father, as grand general, may not be able to. But as of right now, I’m just a man. Bending the knee for Lady Alia is no trouble to me.”
The image of the peach-haired girl came to Mikhail’s mind. Though he knew she wouldn’t even give him a passing glance after the terrible impression he’d made during their first meeting, his desire to support her as a man had only grown stronger as she continued to fight in solitude.
“I, too, want to rescue Lady Alia, Mikhail, but... You do understand that rescuing the princess is our top priority?”
“I know that, but—”
“No, you don’t, actually. Lady Alia deserves respect as a warrior, but Elena is indispensable if we’re to restore order to this country. She is wise and sees much, and is noble and virtuous besides. Why, I would pledge my sword to her even if—”
Mikhail’s eyes widened. “Rockwell, did you just call the princess by name? Are you...?”
Rockwell was the picture of knightly virtue. The only reason he referred to the crown prince by name was their friendship. For him to refer to the princess by name like that could only mean she had secretly touched his heart.
“Is that wrong of me?” Rockwell asked.
“No,” Mikhail said with a grin.
The heart obeyed no logic, after all. In the game, Rockwell had no feelings for Elena beyond those expected of a cousin. But in the game, she had kept her own capabilities a secret and committed to supporting the crown prince. In reality, having distanced himself from Elvan and witnessed the princess handle the royal duties that should’ve been the crown prince’s, Rockwell wanted to pledge his loyalty to her.
Both boys’ affections seemed unrequited. As they walked side by side, the two lightly bumped fists.
“Shall we go?”
“Let’s.”
Setting aside their personal feelings for now, the pair carried on in silence, two nobles concerned for their country.
In the story, they’d been friends but kept each other at arm’s length. Now, having grown through their mutual understanding, brought on by their feelings for these two girls, Mikhail and Rockwell were best friends walking the same path. Their bond transcended noble connections, and the two were unified in their shared purpose.