When the school bell rang, a crowd of girls closed around Lux before he could get out of his seat. They all wanted something. His reputation as a handyman had arrived at the academy well ahead of him, and now that he was here in person they had chores, errands and small impossible tasks to hand him, all at once, all urgent.
Another girl arrived with a suggestion. Anyone who wanted Lux's help should write the request down and put it into a box. The students liked that idea enormously and began filling the box on the spot. From a little way off, Krulcifer watched the whole performance with interest.
Then Lisha came through the crowd and asked Lux, without any warning at all, whether he would become her caretaker and assistant.
The other girls were stunned by the request.
Lisha explained herself as though it were obvious. He already understood her well enough, she said, which made him suitable for the role.
Before Lux could answer, Philuffy stepped in front of him and told Lisha that she was bothering him too much. Lisha looked at her, recognized her as the daughter of an important financial family, and attempted to solve the problem by handing her a snack and telling her to step aside.
Philuffy calmly accepted the food. Then she warned Lisha that she was genuinely causing Lux trouble, and ate it.
Soon afterward Krulcifer arrived and told Lux that the headmaster wanted to meet him. He followed her outside, and once they were clear of the crowd he thanked her for the help earlier.
Krulcifer asked him whether he had ever heard of the Black Hero.
He had, of course. Everybody had. A mysterious Drag Knight who had supposedly brought down the entire old empire alone, and whose true identity nobody had ever discovered. That, Krulcifer said, was exactly the problem she wanted solved, and she wanted Lux's help uncovering the truth of it.
Lux became visibly nervous. The subject sat directly on top of his painful past, and she was watching his face while she asked.
Elsewhere in the academy, Philuffy was asleep. Nearby, voices were discussing dangerous human experiments, low and unhurried, while she slept through all of it. A girl came in later to wake her, and after that the conversation could no longer be followed.
Lisha, meanwhile, explained to Lux that once the third-year students returned, he would officially become part of the academy. Then, rather less confidently, she asked whether he would accept one of her personal requests.
That was how the two of them came to be walking through the marketplace together.
Getting to know each other better was important, Lisha declared, which was apparently the whole of her plan. She wandered through the city looking for a good restaurant and failing to settle on one. Lux ended up buying her snacks and food along the way, and by the time they had eaten, the two of them were talking far more comfortably than they had at any point since she had put a sword against his neck.
In the middle of the conversation, Lisha suddenly asked him whether he truly believed she could become a worthy queen someday.
Lux answered that she was already an excellent Drag Knight, and that she had the qualities of a capable ruler.
The words went into her deeper than he intended.
She went and stood by the boundary wall, quiet for a while, and then she told him part of her past. Five years earlier, the old empire had captured her. Because of her father's political importance she had been valuable as a hostage, and they had kept her as one. During that time a cruel mark had been carved into her body.
Her father, she said, had eventually chosen the country over his daughter. He had abandoned her for the sake of the kingdom.
She had become so hopeless in that place that she could not even bring herself to end her own life. So instead she had decided to make herself a useful member of the empire, because that was the only way she could see to survive. Later, after her father's death, she had been named the new princess, still carrying the scar the empire had left on her. That was why she believed she was unworthy of ever becoming a true queen.
Then she asked Lux whether it had been difficult, leaving behind his position as prince of the old empire.
That night Lux lay awake with her question and with his own failures.
He remembered the destruction. He remembered how many people had died, more than he had ever been able to count, and he remembered the conversations with his older brother, who had told him that he understood nothing whatsoever about the real world and was far too weak to ever become king. His brother had insisted that killing others was simply necessary, because anyone you spared would eventually come back and kill you first.
The memories kept their grip on him until the academy alarm went off across the whole school and tore him out of them.
The teachers gathered the students quickly and explained the situation. A massive Abyss creature had appeared nearby. Several Drag Knights had already been sent to stop it, and assistance from outside had arrived as well.
Lux ran for the scene, but Lisha ordered him and Airi to remain behind, on the grounds that they were still counted as newly transferred students. Then the rest of the Knight Squadron departed for the battle without them.
Airi noticed the worry on her brother's face and asked whether something was wrong.
Lux admitted that two Abyss appearances happening so close together felt extremely suspicious to him.
Out beyond the school, a gigantic creature like a mass of moving water was spreading fire through an entire forest.
Lisha attacked it bravely. But as she closed in, someone nearby began to play a flute.
The sound confused her. She looked around for the source of it, and while she searched, another man, a stranger, gave an order for several eggs to be broken open. The moment the shells shattered, monstrous creatures came pouring out of them in enormous numbers. Gracians.
A Drag Knight came down in front of Lisha and identified himself as Velvet, chief of the Arcadia Empire's Knight Squadron.
Shocked, she accused him of betraying the new kingdom.
Velvet denied it calmly. He was simply returning to the correct path, he said.
Then he played the flute again, and every Gracian on the field attacked at once.
Lisha fought desperately. She cut down a great many of them, more than anyone could have asked of her, but there was no end to their numbers. They came at her continuously and from every direction, wearing her down, and with every minute the situation grew more dangerous.