“By the way, Ville, how’s Yuin doing?”
He means the black knight, right?
After his sudden inclusion in the hunting festival, he had stayed in Peylon, but I wasn’t sure what had happened after that. Last I recalled, he was still in the forest when I left for the royal capital. Since Aspozat and Peylon were good friends, the Aspozat’s royal capital residence and Castle Varchudar both had transmitters so they could easily get in contact. This meant that if Ville wanted to know how the black knight was doing, it wouldn’t be hard for him to find out. The question was why did the crown prince care?
“About that.” Looking very aggrieved, Ville turned to me for some reason. “Lera, sorry to ask this of you, but could you write that moron a letter sometime soon? It doesn’t have to be anything special.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s determined to reach Layer Six of the Mystic Forest, and nobody’s been able to sway him.”
Huh? Six? How long is he gonna stay in Peylon?
The Mystic Forest was a massive area that covered Peylon’s eastern flank. The layers referred to the forest’s depths, each one a set distance from the entrance. The area near the entrance was Layer One. The deeper you went, the higher the layer.
“Wait, Ville,” the crown prince said before I could get a word in. “You mean the Mystic Forest’s layers, correct? How deep is Layer Six then?”
“Hm... Here. A one-way trip to Layer Six is eight hours. Though I guess you can reduce that by more than half if you use magic.”
“Layers correlate to distance from the entrance, right? So even a hastened trip is around four hours?”
That’s Layer Six for you. Heck, Layer Five was a pretty long trek. And with all the monsters and foliage, you couldn’t go on horseback; your only choice was to hoof it.
After a brief moment of contemplation, the crown prince gave an order to Ville. “Get Yuin back here immediately! Don’t waste a moment!”
This sure caught Shenavaroa off guard. “Your Highness! You’re asking the impossible.”
“Am I? The Aspozats maintain a portal that—”
“Your Highness!”
This time, her voice echoed.
Gotta watch what you say, Crown Prince. That portal is officially one-way.
The portal connected to the Aspozat residence was unique in that it worked both ways. However, it required a mana charge to use it, and there was a trick to how you did that. Simply loading it up with mana wouldn’t work; it was set to zap anyone who didn’t do it with the right rhythm. This was, of course, a trap to prevent misuse, made at my suggestion. At the time, Bear and Nielle had both called me a villain. But it wasn’t long before someone up to no good had come along and triggered the trap. Those two then changed their opinion of me.
Portal talk aside, the crown prince was now a bit sullen after being so strongly chided by Shenavaroa. While she was in on the portal secret, it appeared Besheallina had not been in the loop. That was a surprise. Though they were both engaged to princes, being engaged to the crown prince must’ve made a large difference.
The crown prince cleared his throat and gave another order. “What we just said doesn’t leave this room, everyone. Forget about it once you all leave.”
“As you wish,” we all replied.
Still, the Aspozat siblings had always been aware of the portal, and I had been involved in its development, so how could I not know? The second prince was part of the royal family, so I assumed he knew. In other words, though he said “everyone” he really only meant Besheallina.
“Now, Ville, I need you to take care of that knight.”
“I’ll have Lera write him a letter urging him to return to the royal capital. Bear with me for a bit.”
So that letter to the black knight was supposed to be one convincing him to come back.
What the heck are you doing out there, black knight?
Loks chuckled when he saw the distant look in my eyes. “Yuin’s pretty desperate, you know.”
Ville furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about, Loks?”
“Come now, you were the one who said it, brother.”
“Said what?”
“That if he couldn’t at least reach the same layer as Lera, then she wouldn’t even talk to him, much less consider any advances.”
“Ah.”
That’s right. The black knight did mention Ville said something like that. I forgot. And apparently, so did Ville!
“Ville. Did you really?”
The crown prince and second prince were both looking at him reproachfully, which he just had to endure.
So that’s how I ended up writing the black knight a letter that said “get your ass back to the royal capital” but coated in one hundred layers of sugar. I entrusted said letter to Ville.
“But will this really be enough to bring him back here?” I asked.
“I’m sure he’ll be back immediately if you promise to spend some time with him upon his return,” Loks said with a laugh.
Whaaat? I don’t wanna. He’s laughing! So that was a joke? Well, I’m not gonna try it! You hear me?! I didn’t say anything like that in my letter!
The day after the private repast, Ville headed straight to Peylon via portal, letter in hand. I was told he planned to return via portal as well. I wanted to tell him those weren’t meant to be used for every little inconvenience. If he kept that up, it wouldn’t be long before people stopped believing that the portal really was one-way. If that got out and caused trouble for Peylon and the institute, it would be his fault.
With the three troublemakers transferred to another elective, my Peylon-style lessons came to a disappointingly early end. And to my bafflement, with them gone, I just ended up with two new students to teach.
“We’ve been over this,” Bear said. “It’s the better students’ job to teach those falling behind. Think of it as another part of your education.”
“C’mon, I want to work on my own spells.”
“You can do that another time. These two should be much easier to herd than the last bunch.”
Herd?
Still, the last three really had no grit. All I did was make them run around for a bit.
“Yeah, well, you did make them run laps when they were here to learn magic.”
“You say it yourself all the time: You need to be strong if you want to learn magic.”
Muscles solve everything. Besides, those three didn’t have any motivation from the start. Look how little respect they had for us. Bear saw it too—they didn’t have the slightest interest.
“Well, they were no good, so it’s no loss for us.”
Guess you’re right.
Those three weren’t interested in learning anything, and it’s pretty hard to pick up anything in that state of mind. I didn’t know which class they switched to, but there was a good chance they would fall behind there as well. In fact, I hoped they would. May a curse be upon them. Like, if they cared about an instructor’s rank, they wouldn’t get anywhere in any class. Plenty of teachers came from families of barons or knights, and there were some commoners like Bear. If they kept fussing over pointless details, the academy might have them removed.