The Slap of Truth

“Today, all five squads assemble in the first-year common room.”

Another beating, then.

In this place, the words “first-years assemble” were synonymous with “the seniors are going to hit you.” In short: a shakedown.

“Before we begin our formal studies at this Academy, there is a war we must understand. You must remember it.”

They’re changing the curriculum on the fly, it seems.

Sky Castle Academy employs many commoner professors, who—predictably—lack the political clout to stand up to noble students. The Imperial class student council had unceremoniously scrapped a basic magic reagents lecture led by a professor, replacing it with a self-styled “lesson” from a senior.

Out of nowhere, we were getting a history lecture.

“It was roughly seven years ago. A band of brigands, claiming to be kings from the south, launched an unprovoked invasion.”

And not just any history—it was the story of the Three-Year War, something anyone with half a brain already knew. Most of the girls here had brothers or sisters who fought in it; some of the third and fourth-years were veterans themselves.

But as someone listening from the “Kingdom” side, I was floored. This wasn’t history; it was fan fiction. Since when did we become the North Koreans of this world? The war began with a massive, surprise preemptive strike by the Empire.

“These brigands burned our border estates and massacred our people. That is how the flames of war spread.”

Ah, I see. It’s propaganda hour. To be fair, those events happened. But they conveniently left out the part where the Empire’s massacres against Kingdom citizens came first. The “massacres” they’re talking about occurred when the Kingdom successfully counter-attacked, reclaimed its territory, and executed collaborators and war criminals. When a mess like that happens, both sides scream “genocide,” but the Empire was the one who pulled the trigger first.

“Our Imperial Army marched in to punish these bandits, but unfortunately, we met heavy resistance at the Merlano estate. However, the momentum of our glorious army did not waver, and soon…”

You hit your limit, you mean.

The Empire claims to be a centralized powerhouse, but sustaining a 100,000-man mobilization for over a year was a desperate gamble. They moved with the intent of ending the war quickly and erasing the Kingdom from the map. But Duke Merlano of our Kingdom held out for an entire year under siege against those 100,000 troops. That was where the Emperor’s ambition died, but the humiliation was only beginning.

The Empire then shifted strategy to expand its borders. They began a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the northwestern Kingdom territories they had occupied, replacing the pro-Kingdom subjects with Imperial settlers. But then they lost all those territories and tucked tail…

“Those of you from the Eastern nobility will know. Especially Lady Colmar.”

“Yes.”

“And Lady Aosta?”

“Ah, yes.”

“A demon invaded. The Blood-Soaked Count of the enemy crossed the mountains and attacked.”

That was when my father handed me a helmet and armor and sent me to the front lines, just as I was supposed to be enrolling in an academy. I was originally meant to be part of the reinforcements to break the siege at Merlano, but I took my family’s troops and pivoted.

If you cross the mountainous Aosta region—the natural border between our family estate and the Empire—you enter the canal zones of the central Empire. But the Aosta terrain is so rugged that an uphill invasion is considered impossible. No one expects a move from there. So, I bypassed the main defenses by heading through the eastern valleys.

“The Blood-Soaked Count, that demon, joined hands with the mountain tribes and poured into the Eastern Empire. The East was empty because the troops had been sent to the front.”

The region between Aosta, the northeastern Kingdom, and the southeastern Empire is a chain of peaks thousands of meters high. It’s inhabited by mountain tribes who reject the Holy See in favor of indigenous spirits. Crossing it is madness. How do you transport grain and supplies through a wilderness like that?

Logically, the attacker wouldn’t try, and the defender wouldn’t watch. But I have an Inventory.

“The mountain tribes believe in spirits, not the Holy See. How did the Blood-Soaked Count gain their full support? It must have been through heresy, or perhaps dark magic.”

Why are they adding ‘theories’ to history? Because they need me to be a demon, they label my alliance with the mountain tribes as “heretical.” In reality, I just approached them with an Inventory full of offerings and food. The mountain tribes often starve because they have little to eat but dairy, goat meat, and hardy mountain crops; even if they buy grain, the transport is too difficult to stockpile. When I provided food, they followed.

Simply put: I fed them. They were a people who viewed mercenary work as a family trade anyway; once I paid them in advance, there was no reason not to follow.

“In the end, the Blood-Soaked Count bypassed our Aosta mountain barrier and ravaged the Eastern Empire, and in that devastation…”

She started injecting “literary flair” to assume the worst horrors. There are no photographs, but her words painted a grisly picture: crushing children’s heads, making cups out of skulls to drink wine mixed with blood, etc.

I was there, lady. Who exactly did that? I’d like to know too.

“Sob… hmph…”

One of the girls actually started crying.

During the middle of the war, the Blood-Soaked Count’s unit made a lightning-fast advance into the Eastern Empire. Admittedly, my control over the mountain tribes was imperfect. They had a history of being oppressed and massacred by the Eastern Empire, and they wanted to pay it back in kind. My family troops numbered 1,000, while the mountain tribes numbered 10,000; I couldn’t seize total command of them.

However, the chroniclers of the neutral Papal State—and even the historians dispatched by the international neutral body, Sky Castle Academy—officially recognized that there were no civilian massacres carried out by the Blood-Soaked Count himself.

“There are historians at Sky Castle too. But if you take those classes, you must think carefully. They move because they’ve been bribed by those bandits. They’ll insist it’s not true, but…”

The brainwashing is strong with this one. The Empire is hell-bent on insisting it was all my fault. I looked around. I couldn’t tell who was who—everyone has grown up so much. I don’t remember the faces well, but there were Eastern Imperial noblewomen I personally protected. The nobility and commoners of the East knew that only the areas where the Blood-Soaked Count was stationed were safe from the mountain tribes’ looting. Some even assisted us.

If you ran into the mountain tribe soldiers alone, you were finished. If you survived, you were considered lucky. The mountain mercenary captains once rebelled because I kept protecting the “loot,” leading to a standoff. I had to beat sense into the captains every time until they stayed quiet. But there was a madness to war that even the captains couldn’t control. Below that level, I simply claimed the moral high ground of not ordering it and gave up. Do people go to war to save lives? No, they go to kill.

“After that, the Blood-Soaked Count and the barbarian mountain tribes reached the outskirts of the Imperial Capital. The capital was on the verge of falling.”

With the Eastern Empire being scorched by a mysterious army that never ran out of supplies, the main Imperial army finally retreated. The Kingdom’s army, led by the King and the Prince, intercepted them from the rear, causing massive damage and pushing across the river into the southeastern Empire.

“Here, the Blood-Soaked Count behaved strangely. He stayed in a canal city that could reach the capital in a day and made no move. There are several theories. Does anyone know?”

“Correct! He drank the canal water and got the runs!”

The girl who made that joke… I’ll make sure she only gets muddy water from now on.

“He missed his mommy!”

Well, I’ll make sure you miss your mommy too.

“I heard a letter with a fake engagement proposal delayed him.”

That’s closer to the truth. When I reached the capital, the Emperor sent me a letter to win me over. We’ve carved that letter onto a victory monument back home to mock him.

“Well, there are stories like that too.”

Even the senior teaching couldn’t deny that one. The Emperor had offered to marry his daughter to me to join the two families.

“The propaganda that the Blood-Soaked Count was noble is a lie; he was a greedy man who could be swayed by a beauty like the Princess.”

“Right. He was so blinded by the thought of a beauty that he just sat there.”

Actually, I just saw that it would be hard to take the fortified Imperial City with less than 10,000 men. I waited because my King had insisted the Prince lead the reinforcements so he could take the glory and solidify his succession.

“The filthy Blood-Soaked Demon stayed there, lusting after the Princess, but…”

From here on, it was pure flattery. Dividing classes by nationality leads to this kind of propaganda-heavy “education,” it seems.

The reinforcement army led by our Prince was annihilated by a suicide squad led by Princess Celisty. When the Prince was surrounded and his life was in danger, he sent out a call for help. I eventually stopped the advance on the capital and sent reinforcements, crushing all the ambushes I anticipated. But when the mountain tribe soldiers fled because of the Princess’s overwhelming mana, the formation collapsed. I thought I could settle it with a duel with the Princess, so I broke through the enemy center alone, but once the heavily wounded Prince was evacuated, I had to save him first.

I clashed weapons with the Princess once and felt her powerful mana, but the mission was the safe retreat and evacuation of the Prince. The Princess didn’t seem interested in pursuing further, so we retreated.

“And so, our Empire was saved by the Princess, and the Blood-Soaked Demon ran away with his tail between his legs and went into hiding.”

That became my only defeat in the war. I don’t regret it; as we retreated, I held the rear to protect my family’s knights and gained thousands of naturalized mountain tribe soldiers. But I still remember the look in the Princess’s eyes under her helmet. She was crying as she fought.

“And after the war, the Blood-Soaked Count’s two younger sisters… after learning of their brother’s hideous acts, they took their own lives to pay for his sins.”

…You’ve crossed the line.

I’m going to hang them all in the next war, no questions asked.

War will inevitably break out again. Even though the invading country lost, the next power has already cleaned up the defeat. There’s a political responsibility for the Emperor and his family, but there’s no alternative group to hold them accountable. Since there are no constraints on their next actions, the Emperor will likely plan to make up for the defeat with a new victory. If his daughter wasn’t the alternative, he would have been ousted by a coup. Lucky him.

“Excuse me, but…!”

I was making a hit list for the next war and deciding who to kill when a sudden question came up.

“Hmm? Didn’t I tell you to say your full name when asking a question?”

Usually, teachers like questions, but apparently not this senior. She’s probably teaching a distorted version of history with plenty of holes. But unless an Imperial-class lady had lost all sense of social cues, she wouldn’t talk back to a senior in a coercive school like this. What is she going to say?

“Ancy Mont-Blanc. Uh, I heard not all of the Kingdom’s army was like that.”

“Excuse me?”

Who is she? Everyone looked at her like she was crazy, which clearly flustered her.

“No, I mean… those people in the Blood-Soaked Count’s unit… for us…”

“You’ve been taught wrong. That’s why this is necessary. We have no idea how our country and the subjects we must protect were ravaged, and people like Lady Mont-Blanc are being fooled by those bandits.”

“But they helped us.”

“What did you say? Say that again. Who helped you?”

Her family’s estate, the Mont-Blanc estate, was just one we passed through; I don’t remember helping them. Maybe she was staying as a godchild in another estate? I’m here as a spy, but I’m proud of her for standing up against the distortion of history.

“Why don’t you come up here and say more?”

What is she going to do to her?

SLAP!

A sharp, resounding sound echoed through the courtyard. It was also the sound of Ancy’s academy life falling apart.