Chapter 3
The Academy is an institution that trains soldiers for the Empire. But as befits an imperial institution, it openly acknowledges the original class distinctions.
And wealth is another form of class.
There’s a reason the Academy, which operates on semi-conscription, has a sponsorship system. Depending on how much additional money the students pay, the dormitory they are assigned to changes.
The dormitory Building A that Adrinne was assigned to is the one where students who bring along attendants reside.
Adrinne had enrolled while concealing her status as a member of the imperial family. And to her, interpersonal relationships were also politics.
Her personal creed regarding human relationships:
“People are drawn to those who are useful to them.”
The extravagance was calculated. The high-grade silk, jewels, and expensive armaments being carried into her room would undoubtedly serve as elements that would win her favor among the other students.
It took nearly an hour just to move Adrinne’s luggage.
After finishing arranging even the furniture in her room, her guardian knight Joan returned to his own quarters.
Contrary to the image the term “guardian knight” evokes, it is difficult for them to live cleanly. Protecting someone also means taking on—in their place—all the burdens and filth that person would otherwise have to bear.
The smell of sweat slowly rose from the body that had been encased in armor for a long time.
The distance from the capital to Frantimo here was 250 miles.
A carriage journey that had taken a full week. And that week had also been the period during which he had been forced to remain in full armor.
“Now… I suppose I can take it off.”
Joan methodically removed his armor.
The breastplate (cuirass) and plackart.
The back plate protecting the rear, and the lance rest protruding from the side of the chest.
The fauld guarding the pelvis, and the rivet-fixed tassets.
It was a modular lightweight armor that could be donned and doffed even alone. After stripping off the undergarments worn beneath the armor as well, he finally became naked after what felt like an eternity.
“I feel alive again.”
The flesh on his shoulders, compressed by the armor, was deeply indented. After briefly caressing his own body, he turned his gaze to the letter lying on the desk.
It couldn’t possibly be the school orientation notice.
Because he had not come here as a student of the Academy.
It was likely a message from an informant who had set out earlier from a different direction.
Joan picked up the letter and sank into the bathtub.
“Huu…”
The warm heat of the bathwater soaked directly into his body. Joan rubbed his flickering vision several times.
He had to concentrate. If the thick fatigue washed away completely, he might simply drift off to sleep right there.
“Right… let’s see…”
The letter was densely packed with strangely connected characters that made no immediate sense. It was encrypted.
With practiced ease, Joan removed the useless parts among the letters. When he was done, only one sentence remained.
“The seventh princess has also been assassinated.”
It no longer even surprised him.
Bloody news from an imperial family where no successor had yet been decided.
Starting around this time two years ago, instead of exchanging greetings, the siblings had begun gifting each other daggers and poison. Of course, such “gifts” were exchanged only in the shadows. Whether the second prince or the fourth princess had started it remained mere speculation.
“Impressive, truly.”
The more he received such grim tidings, the more the direction of his surprise reversed itself.
The twelfth princess.
Alias: Adrinne. Age: 18.
Born as the emperor’s youngest daughter, the woman forced to compete with her older siblings at the youngest age of all.
While her older sisters in the palace were being killed off one after another, she had intuitively sensed that her turn would eventually come. And so she chose to run faster than the death chasing after her.
It had been a wise decision.
Her siblings, who were up to ten years older, had already firmly established their bases of power long ago. If it had turned into a straightforward power struggle, she would have inevitably lost.
That was why she decided to place herself under the protection of the imperial army. The result of that deliberation was her enrollment in this place—the Academy.
“How ironic.”
There was no other way to put it. In a sense, she had gone straight to the battlefield in order to escape death. Some might whisper that it was far too undignified a choice for a member of the imperial family.
But Joan withheld such judgment.
Whatever the case, she was protecting her own life through her own decisions.
The saying that beauty is a woman’s weapon is, at first glance, correct. But it is always a double-edged sword.
The fate of her mother and sisters, who died in affairs of the heart, served as excellent proof of that.
Just as even a famous sword becomes a true weapon only when wielded by a warrior, beauty too becomes a weapon only when possessed by the wise.
She already had her weapon.
Therefore, all he had to do was become her shield.
Adrinne.
She behaves as though she is an innocent young lady ignorant of the ways of the world, but that is merely a mask.
She is a wise woman.
***
The tears stopped early.
But it took far longer than expected to pull my emotions back together.
When I lifted my salt-streaked face to look at the sky, three full moons of different sizes hung there in silence.
I had to accept it.
This was a world without Mi-ri.
There are moments when you realize how truly precious the things you once passed by carelessly really were. Usually, those moments only arrive after everything has become irreversible.
Just like now.
That cramped, poorly ventilated rooftop room—but back then it had been filled with happiness because of the dream.
The days of ambitious planning, pulling all-nighters in silence, and steadily building the game.
And at the end of those days, sharing one refreshing beer with her…
Even knowing those moments could never return—
I missed her so painfully.
The way she had been even happier than I was when we finally finished developing the true ending route…
…?
Then a powerful memory followed. The long development of the game, and that very last moment when we wrapped it up.
“…Huh?”
It was about the ending of this game.
The true ending of <The Savior from Another World>.
In the scenario route that Mi-ri and I had poured the most effort into—
The protagonist, Yohan Esperts, saves the empire and then returns to his original world.
And right now, I had become that protagonist, Yohan Esperts.
“Huh? Huh?”
I swallowed hard as the obvious three-step syllogism hit me.
Could it be… that I too…?
In that instant, as if by a lie, the cloying scent that had clung to me vanished. [The Smell of Death] had disappeared.
‘If I walk the true ending route, I can return to the original world?’
For a moment, excitement made my breath catch, but the decision that followed came swiftly.
I looked toward the distant clock tower. The hands pointed to 11:40.
Thoughts that had been frozen began to spin at full speed. To recall the early-game scenario of this timeline.
To make the absolute best choice available at this point.
Of course, I already knew what that was.
Without looking back, I ran toward the Academy’s grand parade ground.
The Academy’s grand training field, nearly 1 km square in both directions.
At the far central edge of the field stood a single platform overlooking the grounds, and atop it was a plaster statue striking the famous Yi Sun-sin pose.
A life-sized plaster figure.
The statue of General Mulkan, said to have single-handedly blocked the sea demons with one sword stroke.
I picked up a fist-sized rock from the flowerbed nearby and approached the statue. Then, with all my strength, I smashed it down onto the statue’s wrist.
Clang, clang, clang.
After three solid strikes, the wrist portion broke off and fell to the ground with a thud.
Immediately afterward, blinding light burst from the plaster sword. And when the light faded, it was no longer plaster.
Event name: [Mulkan’s Sword].
Mulkan was a hero of this world’s lore, a legendary general.
Normally, information about Mulkan, the original owner of this sword, could only be obtained in the late game.
Before his death, he left a will ordering the construction of the Academy and commanded that this plaster statue be made—with his own actual bones serving as its internal framework.
I picked up Mulkan’s sword, scabbard and all.
Then I drew the blade.
Shiiiing—
The straight, slender blade gleamed under the moonlight.
An item so overpowered that obtaining it in the early game would completely break the balance.
But Mi-ri and I had deliberately left it accessible early for mid-to-late scenario testing purposes.
In other words, it was a tool meant to easily skip the early-game grind.
“This is it… With this…”
It wasn’t impossible. Clearing the true ending route.
Because I knew every single condition and choice required to complete the true ending route.
Now all I had to do was return unnoticed, and the early game would be a breeze to clear…
“What the hell are you doing?”
…Or so it should have been.
The noise from smashing the statue must have masked their approach.
I turned toward the voice.
Two figures stood there.
One was a soldier in leather armor.
The other was a small woman wearing a semi-transparent one-piece dress.
On the right side of her chest was branded the number ‘6’ in the shape of a collar—the scarlet mark symbolizing an imperial slave.
The marks of a collar still remained around her neck, and from the gag in her mouth came faint, muffled sounds—eup… eup…—barely escaping as breaths.
Her dull, disheveled black hair was gripped tightly in the soldier’s hand.
The soldier yanked her hair and snarled,
“Wipe your drool. I don’t share a table with trash like you.”
“…What?”
“That free-spirited outfit—you’re a freshman, aren’t you, you little shit? Just arrived today, right?”
His tone triggered an immediate sense of déjà vu. One of the events I had created came to mind.
Nothing grand. Just a simple encounter event: running into a soldier trying to do something vile to an escaped slave—[Problem Child of the Academy].
“But what the hell is that sword…?”
His eyes flashed as he stared at the blade in my hand.
The sword I held—[Mulkan’s Sword]—was an ego sword. The rank insignia engraved on his armor marked him as a corporal.
That meant he had survived three years in this Academy, which in turn meant he had been deployed to the front lines at least ten times.
It was only natural that his eyes would recognize a good blade when he saw one.
“A brat who hasn’t even had his commissioning ceremony yet… Personal weapons are only allowed starting from the second half-year. I’ll confiscate that for now.”
An obvious lie.
One that the soldiers here loved to use.
The Academy never actually prohibited individuals from bringing in their own weapons.
“That’s going to be a problem.”
“Problem my ass. Why the hell did you smash Mulkan’s arm off? That was you, right? That’s a death-penalty offense, you lunatic. I’ll pretend I didn’t see anything—so hand over the sword and fuck off.”
“No thanks.”
“Playing hard to get, huh? Nobody gets to do only what they like in life. That thing looks insanely expensive, though.”
Just because it looked expensive?
This sword was something no one could buy even if they offered up an entire city.
“Still cheaper than your life, right?”
“Get lost.”
“Ha, look at this fresh little punk. Do I have to come at you with a blade before you wise up?”
No avoiding it, then.
I decided to help him along.
I turned my head and looked back at the broken wrist of Mulkan’s statue. At that moment—shing—the unmistakable sound of a longsword being drawn rang out from behind me, and at the same time, a familiar scent stabbed into my nose.
The Smell of Death.
[The Problem Child of the Academy] was an event intertwined with a murder case inside the barracks. And in that event, the problem child and the murderer were one and the same person.
In that instant, I understood this soldier’s thoughts more clearly than he did himself.
‘Dumb bastard, he turned his head? I’m getting a famous sword for free.’
The whole act of turning away had been to bait exactly this reaction. Sure enough, the sound of someone leaping came from behind me.
Thud—
Even without looking, I could vividly picture the expression on the greed-blinded soldier’s face. He must have been brimming with certainty—this was his golden chance to rob a famous sword from some wide-eyed Academy freshman.
But contrary to his delusion, the one who had let his guard down in this moment wasn’t me.
In the original scenario, the protagonist could never beat this soldier.
According to the event as written: the protagonist encounters this soldier who was about to rape an escaped slave. The protagonist charges in bare-handed, gets beaten senseless instead, and the woman escapes in the chaos.
In other words, this soldier was an enemy the original Yohan Esperts could not defeat.
But right now, I was holding a weapon that shattered the game’s balance.
It felt like a sharp warning buzz vibrating at the tip of my nose.
Even though my back was turned to him, it didn’t matter. Unlike sight, the sense of smell has no blind spots. And I—Yohan Esperts—could sense the flow of such scents with razor-sharp sensitivity.
There was no need to measure or hesitate.
Shwiiik—!
I twisted my body and thrust the sword along the exact trajectory of that scent.
Clang—
The sword he swung first met mine and snapped in half.
Shunk—slash—
The charging body, armor and all, was cleaved cleanly in two.
Blood sprayed in a wide arc under the moonlight, and the bisected corpse collapsed with a heavy thud.
The severed upper half rolled once before coming to a stop.
The lower half twitched a few times before going still.
The girl with the gag stared wide-eyed, frozen in place.
I slowly lowered the sword.
The blade, still gleaming cleanly despite the blood it had just drunk, reflected the three moons above.
I had just killed a man.
And yet—
[The Smell of Death] had not returned.
Not from him.
Not from me.
Because this was no longer just an early-game event.
This was the beginning of the path to the true ending.
And the true ending…
…meant going home.