Chapter 8 - The True Warrior (7)
"I never thought it would get this out of hand."
Robert muttered under his breath, gripping his trembling hands tightly. He felt like he was about to lose his mind from nerves. When he'd met Brigadier General Kramer Schaefer's piercing gaze, he had almost wet himself.
"Damn it. I never should have entered the Imperial Military Academy. What was a merchant like me thinking, trying to become a noble or an officer…?"
Robert mumbled as he paced in circles. In his heart, he wanted to scream and run wildly, but being locked up in a cramped solitary cell, that wasn't an option.
Right after he was arrested, Robert was separated from Ernest and placed in solitary confinement. Ernest was probably in his own cell, too. Or maybe he was being interrogated ahead of Robert.
"Yeah, I was out of my mind. This is all my fault."
Robert knew perfectly well that he was the one who had agreed to Ernest's plan. He couldn't blame anyone else.
Clank!
"Gah!"
Robert, who had been muttering to himself, jumped in surprise at the sudden clanking of metal. The lock on the door was being opened.
"Robert Jimman. Step out."
"Y-yes!"
Though his body trembled, Robert answered with as much energy as he could muster and opened the door himself to step outside.
He was startled once again when he saw that the person who had come for him wasn't an upperclassman from the Cadet Corps or a Disciplinary Officer, but an Instructor from the Faculty Division.
Normally, problems that occur within the Military Academy are handled by the Cadet Corps.
If the incident was beyond the Cadet Corps' authority, the military police would have been called in.
'Damn it!'
Robert clenched his fists tightly as he followed the Faculty Instructor, screaming inwardly.
'Ernest! I trusted you!'
But instead of cursing Ernest in desperation, he realized that everything was going according to Ernest's plan and inwardly cheered with all his might—though only to himself.
If a Disciplinary Officer had come for Robert, it would have meant that the Cadet Corps would handle the entire matter. In that case, there was no way Ernest and Robert, as those responsible for the incident, would get off lightly.
And if the military police had been called in, it would have meant that the issue would not be settled within the Academy but would go to a formal trial instead. In that case, while a hereditary noble like Ernest might have been safe, a minor noble like Robert would have found himself in a very precarious position.
The fact that an Instructor from the Faculty Division had come meant that the issue that had arisen within the Imperial Military Academy was being taken extremely seriously.
Even so, it had been decided that it would be resolved within the Academy.
The Faculty Division was now handling something that should have been the Cadet Corps' responsibility. This was not something that Brigadier General Gauss Schulz, Cadet Commander, and Brigadier General Kramer Schaefer, Chief of Faculty Division, could have agreed upon on their own.
Major General Armin Mannheim, Headmaster of the Imperial Military Academy, was personally involved in this incident and had taken steps to ensure the Cadet Corps would not interfere with Ernest and Robert!
'This madman! He's really done it! A genius! An absolute genius!'
Everything was unfolding exactly as Ernest had planned. Robert was now absolutely convinced that his eccentric and occasionally unsettling friend was, without a doubt, an incredible genius. In fact, he had never, not even once, doubted Ernest.
So excited was Robert that his memories of ever doubting Ernest began to distort in his own mind.
Following the Faculty Instructor, Robert entered a small room and sat down across from him.
"Jimman, you'd do well to abandon any thought of lying here," the Instructor warned calmly—not raising his voice or glaring threateningly, but still making it clear.
Hearing those words, Robert was struck by the realization that this matter was far from over, and his nerves tensed all over again.
"From start to finish—everything that happened, everything you did, everything you thought—tell me everything, in complete detail, without leaving out a single thing."
Robert swallowed hard. Then, with lips dry from nerves, he quickly licked them.
Robert had already been warned by Ernest: never even think of trying to deceive the Instructor.
And there was no need for Robert to lie, anyway. All he had to do was tell exactly what had happened, just as it was. Ernest would take care of any gaps or inconsistencies. In fact, Ernest had made it crystal clear that he wouldn't lie either. He would simply conceal a few small truths.
So, from beginning to end, Robert began recounting everything that had happened since he entered the Imperial Military Academy and everything related to this incident.
***
"Ernest Krieger, step out."
"Yes, Instructor."
With a calm voice, Ernest responded and left his solitary room. Just as Robert had expected, Ernest had been called for questioning first. He had returned to the solitary room to wait, and it seemed they were calling him again, which meant Robert had also been questioned and the results were more or less in.
"..."
The Instructor glanced over his shoulder and looked at Ernest, who was following him. Distrust was clear in the Instructor's gaze.
'This scatterbrained kid—could he really be responsible?'
Not only the Disciplinary Officers, but even the Instructors knew well that Ernest was a rather scatterbrained guy.
He had been like that ever since the entrance ceremony.
That's why the doubt lingered. Could this kid really have planned and carried out the whole thing? Was it really not just a matter of things happening to fall into place by chance?
The Instructor's eyes, brimming with suspicion, only turned away after Ernest lifted his sparkling black eyes and met his gaze.
Knock, knock, knock.
"I've brought Krieger."
The Instructor kept Ernest standing behind him, knocked on the door, and spoke carefully.
"Send him in."
"Yes, sir."
With that kind, gentle voice granting permission, the Instructor turned and shot Ernest a warning look.
But there was really no need—Ernest already knew exactly where he was and who he was about to meet.
The Instructor opened the door.
Ernest, suppressing his nerves and masking them with a calm exterior, stepped inside.
Click!
As soon as Ernest entered the room, he snapped a salute to the person sitting in the place of honor at the head of the long table, all the way in the innermost part of the room.
"Mm. At ease."
"At ease."
Major General Armin Mannheim, Headmaster of the Imperial Military Academy, returned the salute with a faint, unreadable smile, raising his right hand lightly. Maintaining perfect military bearing, Ernest moved into the standing-at-ease position and waited without so much as a twitch.
Terrifyingly enough, it wasn't just Major General Armin in the conference room—Brigadier General Kramer, Chief of Faculty Division, and Brigadier General Gauss, Cadet Commander, were also there. The two of them sat rigidly upright on either side of Armin, exuding tension.
Despite the stiff atmosphere, Armin seemed entirely at ease, stroking his full white beard and giving a warm, benevolent smile as he spoke in a kindly tone.
"Krieger, I've already received reports about what happened with you."
Even though Ernest tried to hide it, he was quite nervous, and the instant Armin mentioned his name, he almost blurted out a reply before he could stop himself. Armin watched this with a low chuckle, then continued.
"But I'd like to hear it in more detail from you. Go on."
"Yes, Headmaster."
Ernest responded in as calm a voice as he could manage, though he still couldn't fully conceal his nerves and had to take a deep breath.
He began recounting everything that had happened, omitting not a single detail or fact.
It was a rare sight—a fourteen-year-old cadet offering a full account while a major general and two brigadier generals listened in silence.
"An enemy attack, you say."
When Ernest uttered those words, Armin's dark eyes glimmered with interest, as if he'd just heard something quite intriguing, and he murmured softly.
Ernest stopped speaking for a moment, then after a pause, spoke again.
"Yes, that's correct. I assessed it as an attack on the Imperial Military Academy, which trains officers for the Imperial Army."
"Hahahaha…"
Armin burst out laughing, clearly amused by Ernest's bold answer.
However, as he laughed, sweat beaded heavily on Ernest's brow, and even Brigadier General Gauss, the Cadet Commander with not a single hair on his clean-shaven head, was now drenched enough that drops of sweat trickled past his eyebrows and into his eyes.
Even so, Gauss didn't so much as bat an eye.
"Chief of Faculty Division."
"Yes, Headmaster."
When Armin called out to him in a voice still tinged with laughter, Kramer replied using only his lips.
"What do you think?"
"There's a major logical leap here. If this really were an enemy attack, they would have targeted important personnel and key positions, not meddled in the personal lives of individual cadets."
"Exactly. There's no reason to risk exposure pulling off some minor attack against a freshman. If I were the enemy, wouldn't it make far more sense to attempt to assassinate me, the Headmaster?"
"Yes, that's correct."
When Armin chuckled and casually brought up the idea of his own assassination, the air in the room grew noticeably heavier.
Yet Kramer confirmed it calmly, unfazed.
"Cadet Commander."
"Yes, Headmaster."
This time, Armin called on Gauss.
Though Gauss was already drenched with sweat, he answered in a steady voice, betraying not the slightest tremor.
"What do you think of Cadet Krieger's judgment and actions?"
"…"
Gauss tried to answer immediately.
But when Gauss met Armin's kind gaze, his lips just trembled; he couldn't bring himself to make a sound.
"…This wasn't something a cadet should have judged or acted on alone. However."
After a brief pause, Gauss finished speaking and immediately followed up so as not to leave any openings.
"Since the Disciplinary Officer, who is Krieger's superior, ordered Cadet Krieger to make his own decisions and act on them, if anyone is to be held accountable for this incident, it should be the Disciplinary Officer. And since this happened because I failed to properly manage my subordinates, I will take responsibility."
"Haha, no, not at all. I know very well that the Cadet Commander always does his utmost. I can't hold you responsible."
"Thank you. But…"
"I—"
When Armin spoke kindly, Gauss tried to press his point even more urgently. But Armin gently cut him off, his voice as soft as ever.
"I don't believe that a superior is responsible for every mistake their subordinates make. I led countless men into battle myself on the front lines. I've seen flawless plans—devised by dozens of outstanding officers I wouldn't trade for a thousand soldiers—ruined by the mistake of a single rookie countless times."
Armin's words were gentle, but they hung so heavily in the air that no one dared to breathe.
"I know the Cadet Commander is doing everything he can."
Armin repeated the words he'd just said. However, the weight of those words was now far heavier than when they were first spoken. Gauss's throat tightened, and his trembling lips moved.
"…Yes, Headmaster."
When Gauss answered, Armin's dark eyes shifted once more to look at Ernest.
"So?"
At Armin's question, Ernest finally realized he had made a grave mistake. For a plan made by a fourteen-year-old cadet, it was remarkably well thought out. The strongest part, above all, was how solid the justification behind it was.
However, since Ernest's fate depended on Major General Armin's decision, the whole plan was just a house of cards. The moment he handed all decision-making power to someone else, the entire scheme became fundamentally flawed.
Ernest, tense and nervous, swallowed once and spoke in as calm a voice as he could, though he couldn't keep the trembling out completely.
"The enemy repeatedly infiltrated the same location for sabotage, so I set a trap to try and capture them."
"Capture, you say… Cadet Commander, what was the condition of the cadet?"
"Their left ankle, caught by the snare, was slightly injured. The right wrist, used to break their fall, was broken, and there was a head wound with bleeding from hitting the floor."
"Hmm…"
At Gauss's reply, Armin looked back at Ernest.
"Krieger, I don't know much about traps. Explain to me how you set it up."
"Yes, Headmaster."
This time, Ernest replied in a truly calm voice.
Armin's black eyes narrowed slightly.
"Since we couldn't identify the enemy, we needed enough force to reliably subdue and capture them. Also, I judged that only capturing the enemy alive would give us meaningful information, so I set a trap with low lethality."
Ernest had made countless traps while roaming mountains and forests with his father.
For young Ernest, setting traps was much more efficient than shooting game with a bow or a gun.
Ernest could make all kinds of traps: from snares for capturing prey, and lethal traps that killed in a single blow before the animal could even scream, to cruel devices that slowly brought about a painful death.
"And so, I made a snare trap using the weight of two beds."
The fact that Ernest designed a snare trap to trip and drop the target by the ankle, even though he could have built something that would break the neck or hang the victim to death, meant that he truly had no will to kill.
Ernest explained in detail how he had constructed the trap. He was so thorough that Chief of Faculty Division Kramer glared at him and gave him three separate warning looks.
To make the trap using the two beds, Ernest started with a desk. The moment the prey triggered the snare, the branch supporting the raised leg of the desk would collapse, dropping the desk. At the same time, a chair supporting the bed would fall, bringing the bed down as well. In that instant, the combined weight of the two beds would yank the snare upward.
Even though it sounded simple, the mechanism was actually quite complex. In particular, getting the force of both beds to act on the snare at exactly the same moment was quite difficult. For a mere fourteen-year-old to set it up perfectly and actually hoist a person into the air with it—it was tricky enough that even skilled hunters would need considerable trial and error.
The only reason Ernest could whip up such a trap that morning was that, instead of relying on vague instincts, he had thoroughly followed precise calculations and formulas.
As a result, when the upperclassman triggered the trap, the weight of both beds was applied to the snare at once, lifting him off the ground, breaking the wrist that caught his fall, and even tearing open his head as it struck the wall. His scream was so loud that people could hear it from outside the dormitory
But that was all.
The upperclassman's life was never in any real danger, and it was obvious to anyone that the trap hadn't been intended to kill.
In other words, after hearing Ernest's explanation, anyone would have come to the same conclusion.
After all, it was immediately apparent that he could have built a deadly trap capable of killing someone in a single blow if he wished.
"Hm, so it was literally a snare trap meant for capturing, wasn't it?"
"Yes, that's correct."
When Armin turned to Gauss and asked, Gauss answered without hesitation.
"And he didn't use any prohibited items—nothing that was forbidden to bring in or possess—to make the trap, either."
The only tools Ernest used to build the trap were a branch and some vines. He picked up the branch from under a tree near the dormitory, and he cut the vine with a small knife—about the size of a nail clipper—that he used to trim his nails.
He hadn't used a knife or a gun meant to kill.
If he were to be deprived of even a nail clipper, who would cut the cadet's nails?
To put it another way, this young cadet could have built any number of deadly traps with nothing more than a small knife.
Leaning back in his chair, Armin gazed intently at Ernest as he stroked his beard.
Only then did Ernest realize that Armin's large hands were rugged and covered with scars.
These weren't the hands of someone who sat in a safe place and merely talked about war.
These were real warrior's hands—hands that had swung swords and spears, fired guns, climbed ladders, and even grasped at blades flying at him, trying to kill.
"It seems the Chief of Faculty Division's judgment was correct."
Ernest, so absorbed in looking at Armin's hands, snapped back to his senses at those words laced with a faint smile and instinctively turned to look at Brigadier General Kramer Schaefer, Chief of Faculty Division.
Without so much as a glance at Ernest, Kramer gave Armin a slight nod.
"Krieger."
"Yes, Headmaster."
Even in this situation, Ernest cursed his own miserable lack of focus for spacing out, but managed to respond energetically to Armin's call. Armin gave an extraordinarily gentle smile—so gentle, in fact, that it came across as unnervingly sharp.
"Excellent judgment, flawless planning, and perfect execution."
"Thank y—"
"But next time, I suggest you act a bit more cautiously. Wouldn't you agree?"
"…Yes, I'll be more careful from now on."
After responding to Armin, Ernest suddenly realized that something was odd.
Let's set aside for a moment the fact that Kramer had just spoken up in his defense. But wasn't there a problem with what Armin had said? Instead of saying, 'Don't ever pull something like this again,' or 'Make sure to report before you take action next time,' he'd simply said, 'Be more careful next time.' Wasn't that still leaving the door open for trouble?
"All right. Let's return to the lecture hall. Krieger."
"Yes, Headmaster."
"Hm."
Armin gave Ernset a mysterious smile as he received Ernset's salute.
With crisp, precise movements, Ernset took two steps back, opened the door, and stepped outside.
"The discipline of the Cadet Corps has really…"
Deliberately avoiding Armin's voice coming from inside and the pale face of Cadet Commander Gauss Schulz, Ernset quickly closed the door behind him.
"Haah! Whew…!"
The moment the door shut, Ernset wiped his sweat-soaked face, breathing raggedly.
Only after stepping outside did he feel his heart pounding wildly and a sharp headache begin to throb at his temples.
"Whew…"
Even the instructor waiting silently outside seemed tense—though not nearly as much as Ernset—releasing a long, relieved sigh.
"Krieger, go back right now—don't waste a single moment."
The instructor promptly hurried Ernset along, urging him out as if his life depended on escaping. It wasn't that he personally disliked Ernset; it was just that having Ernset remain here wouldn't do anyone any good. On top of that, the instructor himself wanted nothing more than to get out of this hellish place as soon as possible.
"Yes, Instructor."
Ignoring his pounding heart, aching head, and trembling legs, Ernset answered energetically and practically ran away, fleeing the scene.
The morning training had already ended and it was almost lunchtime, so Ernset returned to the dormitory, where he was able to reunite with Robert, who had been anxiously pacing in their room.
"How did it go?"
"It all worked out."
"Whoa! You're a genius, Ernest!"
When Ernset brought the good news, Robert jumped up and down with excitement. Seeing that, Ernset finally allowed himself to smile, too. That joy lasted until they heard the news that all the unfair demerits given to Ernset and Robert by the upperclassmen would be erased.
But when the next piece of news spread throughout the entire Military Academy, not even Ernset could find a reason to smile.
Because of this incident, two Disciplinary Officers—one lieutenant and one captain—were dismissed from their posts, and three third-years and one fourth-year were expelled.
On top of that, following a thunderous outcry from Cadet Commander Gauss Schulz, every soldier and cadet belonging to the Cadet Corps, fully geared up, could be seen by everyone at the Military Academy running around the Training Ground from morning until night—vomiting and wetting themselves as they went.
Only after witnessing that scene did Ernset truly understand why Brigadier General Gauss Schulz had tried to take all the responsibility himself.
Two freshmen had caused a lieutenant and a captain to be dishonorably discharged, four upperclassmen at the Imperial Military Academy to be expelled, and the Cadet Corps—which was one of the two main pillars of the Academy—to be completely smashed.
Brigadier General Gauss probably wanted to end things with himself, even if it meant running in full gear and wetting himself, so that at least this disgrace wouldn't go down in his own career or in the history of the Imperial Military Academy.
But it was already too late. What had happened could not be undone.
"Krieger and Jimman bear absolutely no blame for this incident. They made the best decisions and took the right actions in their own way, and thanks to them, we were able to uproot a disgusting and deep-seated tradition at the Imperial Military Academy."
Even when the utterly exhausted Disciplinary Officer said this and awarded both Ernset and Robert three merit points each, and even when everyone in that grim atmosphere gave them an awkward round of applause to celebrate their achievement, Ernset and Robert could not bring themselves to feel happy.
"…This was all part of your plan too, wasn't it?"
"…At the very least, we'll be able to offset three future demerit points, so I guess… it's not all bad, is it?"
"Maybe so."
"Ernset, I take back what I said earlier. You're not a genius. Well? Don't you think I'm right?"
"Unfortunately, I have to agree with you completely."
Now, there wasn't a single person at the Imperial Military Academy who didn't know about Ernset Krieger and Robert Jimman.
In particular, everyone was now well aware of just what kind of guy Ernset was—the one who had clearly masterminded this whole thing.
He made the upperclassmen look like fools for just a bit of messing around in the dorms, wrecked the Cadet Corps, and instead of being punished, he ended up being rewarded.
He was nothing short of terrifying.
"Bold, or… I don't really know what to call it."
As the eldest grandson of Brigadier General Heinz Hartmann, Ferdinand Hartmann was well aware of just how grave a thing it was for an officer to be stripped of his position.
With a sigh-like murmur, he still obediently applauded Ernset and Robert as they stepped down from the podium, just as he'd been ordered.
"…Are they insane…?"
Wilfried, the fourth son of Duke Ravid, could hardly believe he'd just blurted out something so vulgar; for a moment, he didn't even realize those words had come from his own mouth.
Fortunately, everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing.
They were all clapping awkwardly as Ernset and Robert descended from the podium, so Wilfried was the only one shocked by his own muttering.
It had taken Ernset just a single week to set off an incident that would go down in the annals of the Imperial Military Academy.
It was, quite literally, a historic moment.