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Chapter 1
“Candidate number 316, Chloe Evergreen!”
‘That’s my number.’
“……Ah, yes!”
I still wasn’t used to the name ‘Chloe Evergreen,’ so it took me a moment to realize I was being called.
As I awkwardly smiled to smooth over the examiner’s displeased stare and stepped forward, one of the squires assisting with the knight selection test handed me a cheap iron sword.
I accepted the sword without thinking and stared at it in bewilderment.
‘What is this?’
I knew it was a sword.
But it was far too different from the swords I was familiar with.
I might have learned swordsmanship as a hobby, but I had always used only the finest swords made specifically for me.
The dull weight and rough texture of this cheap iron sword felt strange.
It was obviously shaped like a sword, but if someone grouped this thing and the sword sitting quietly on the rack in the palace annex into the same category, I would have to object.
Whether I was confused or not, the examiner recited the explanation he had probably repeated dozens of times that day in a disinterested voice.
“Infuse it with as much aura as you can and bring it down on that rock.”
It was an iron sword that seemed to be full of impurities and not particularly durable.
‘If I bring this down on that rock, won’t it definitely break?’
Still, no matter how sheltered I had been or how lacking I was in common sense, I knew enough to understand that objecting at a time like this would mean immediate disqualification.
I gave the slightest tilt of my head and obediently raised the sword.
‘So I’m supposed to break it.’
Just before I infused the sword with aura and brought it down, the examiner, whose eyes had been fixed solely on his grading sheets, suddenly looked at me.
“Wait.”
My arm, which had been about to strike the rock, stopped awkwardly in midair.
“Yes? Why? I mean, wh—why?”
I asked in confusion, and the examiner clicked his tongue and gestured with his chin.
“That’s one thing, but can you even see with your hair like that?”
I pushed my glasses, which had somehow slipped down to the middle of my nose, back up with my index finger. Then I casually swept the bangs covering my eyes to the side and declared,
“I can see perfectly!”
The examiner flipped through my application papers with an unsatisfied look.
He was obviously checking the section about my eyesight.
His eyes moved back and forth over one particular part several times, but I remained confident.
‘It should all be normal.’
In fact, my eyesight was even better than average.
The glasses and unruly hair were merely makeshift measures to conceal my appearance.
It was a little embarrassing to say it myself, but portraits of my siblings and me, all blessed with exceptional beauty, were spread throughout the Empire.
Since the coming-of-age ceremony required me to live as a completely different person for a year, I couldn’t exactly show my real face.
But the crisis that threatened to ruin my coming-of-age ceremony arrived almost immediately.
“The hair is fine. But your eyesight is good too, so why don’t you take those off?”
The examiner gestured toward my precious glasses with his chin.
“Imperial knights are obligated to maintain a certain standard of decorum.”
He added the explanation as if to make it clear that he wasn’t simply picking on me.
I flinched at the perfectly reasonable justification.
As befitted an artifact taken from the Imperial Palace’s treasure vault, these glasses had a design that had been fashionable at least two hundred years ago.
In other words, they were so horribly outdated that they were quite capable of lowering one’s dignity.
But if I took them off, my identity would be revealed, and if my identity was revealed, I would fail my coming-of-age ceremony.
Just imagining what would happen if I became the first member of the Imperial family to fail the ceremony made a chill run down my spine.
“No!”
I clutched my glasses protectively and shouted.
The examiner’s expression, which had merely been displeased before, became noticeably more serious.
A candidate whose eyesight was perfectly fine yet stubbornly refused to remove such old-fashioned glasses was practically begging to be singled out.
I desperately racked my brain for an excuse.
‘Ah, this is a little unfair.’
But I couldn’t think of anything else.
I squeezed my eyes shut and shouted,
“They belonged to my late grandfather! They’re a keepsake!”
‘Well, they were taken from the Imperial family’s treasure vault, so technically they must have belonged to one of the previous Emperors.’
The examiner’s cold eyes, which had looked ready to declare me disqualified only moments ago, softened considerably.
“Ahem.”
The examiner avoided my pleading gaze and cleared his throat.
“A keepsake, you say…… Just keep wearing them.”
Perhaps he was unexpectedly sentimental. His eyes grew wistful, as though he were imagining the touching story behind my glasses.
“Yes! Thank you!”
I answered quickly before the examiner could say anything else and raised my sword again.
‘Let’s just get this over with.’
I gathered my scattered aura.
Huuup.
Slowly, a faint pink aura gathered along the blade.
It was so subtle that only I, the person holding the sword, could see it.
I brought the sword down on the rock.
Clang!
The rock must have contained some metallic components, because the sound resembled iron striking iron.
‘Ugh, my hand hurts.’
Still, a fairly clear crack appeared across the rock.
Crack, crack, crack.
The small sounds of splitting continued, so the blow had definitely landed properly.
Considering I had struck it with this cheap iron sword, wasn’t this a pretty decent result?
I hid my satisfaction and was giving my tingling hand a little shake when I heard murmuring from behind me.
That didn’t sound good.
“Do I…… have to break it completely?”
I wondered if I was about to fail the knight selection test because my skills were insufficient, and my pupils began trembling wildly.
‘Sir Calix said someone at my level would pass easily.’
I was just beginning to wonder whether Sir Calix had only said that because I was his disciple and his superior’s daughter when, fortunately, it was proven that he hadn’t been flattering me.
The examiner, who had been staring at the cracked rock for quite some time, quietly announced,
“Passed.”
“I did it!”
I clenched both fists and shouted.
“You broke one of the few spares we had, and you’re smiling!”
The examiner gave a disbelieving little laugh.
……Maybe swordsmanship is only fun when you do it as a hobby.
“Three hundred fifty-eight days left.”
Every day felt like a month……
The first three or four days had actually been rather fun.
For someone like me, who had lived with a restricted range of activities for safety reasons, the knight order’s building was a fascinating place I had never had any reason to visit.
Pretending to be ‘Chloe Evergreen’ also felt a little like playing make-believe.
But the training was brutal, and once rumors began spreading about how I had managed to take the entrance test in the first place, life in the knight order became considerably more difficult.
‘Three hundred fifty-eight days…….’
I sighed while counting the time I had left, when a furious voice came from behind me.
“Hey, rookie! Can’t you hear me?”
“No, sir! I can hear you!”
After just one week, I had become quite accustomed to this hierarchical society, so I answered with perfect military discipline.
“How many times do I have to call you? You’re already slacking off.”
It was Sir Hugo, the knight assigned as my mentor.
He had a bit of an old-fashioned, nagging streak, but among my seniors, he was one of the kinder ones. Still, after having to call me several times, he sounded rather irritated.
Fortunately, his scolding was brief.
“You know Sir Elias Blake is coming as the new captain of the knight order starting next week, right?”
‘Why is Elias coming here?’
But if I said I didn’t know, the conversation would only become longer.
“Yes! I know.”
I answered affirmatively, and Sir Hugo gestured with his chin toward the direction of the captain’s office.
“He must be pretty troubled about coming to the Tenth Knight Order, a dumping ground for useless recruits like us. Go clean his office. Make it shine.”
I had learned within a week that there was no benefit to asking, ‘Aren’t there maids in the knight order who do the cleaning?’
The same went for saying that working hours were already over and that this wasn’t an official break period.
“Yes, understood!”
I had never cleaned anything before, so I was worried about whether I could actually do a decent job. But I answered that I understood.
Every time I asked ‘Why?’ my seniors in the knight order tended to get angry.
Perhaps because this was the first time I had obediently followed an order without a single question in a week, Sir Hugo looked slightly surprised.
After patting me once on the shoulder as though praising me for finally showing some promise, he spoke in his gentlest voice yet.
“You, kid. Looks like you’re finally thinking about adapting.”
As squires serving senior knights, or as freshmen in the knight department of the academy, knights spend their early years running errands for their seniors and eventually grow into people who are quick to read the room and act accordingly.
‘Compared to them…….’
The youngest Imperial Princess of the Empire, the strongest nation on the continent.
On top of that, my family got along so well that there was no need to fight over the Imperial throne.
My maids, nanny, and friends were all kind, affectionate, positive, and considerate people.
With a background like that, I thought I was reasonably good at reading the room and being friendly, but the other knights treated me like the very embodiment of ‘kids these days.’
Apparently, doing what I was told without complaint even once was enough to earn praise.
Sir Hugo looked around before lowering his voice, as though he were about to give me some important advice.
“You know the new captain is His Highness the Crown Prince’s closest friend, right?”
‘I know that very well. That Crown Prince is my older brother.’
When we were young, Elias and I had even played together.
‘Though things got awkward between us as we grew older.’
“Yes!”
I answered briefly while lost in thought, and Sir Hugo continued in an even lower voice.
“No matter how skilled he is, there was opposition to giving someone so young an important position, so he came to the Tenth Knight Order. But if you ask me, he’ll be moving up there within a year. Make sure you get on his good side. I’m only telling you this because I’m looking out for you, so take it to heart.”
Sir Hugo gave me his advice with an air of great importance.
Elias and I were already acquainted, but considering the circumstances of ‘Chloe Evergreen,’ the commoner-born trainee knight who was already under suspicion of receiving preferential treatment, this was genuinely valuable advice.
“Yes! Sir!”
I answered with a bright smile, and Sir Hugo gave my shoulder another pat before disappearing after telling me to do my best.
I headed toward the captain’s office to attempt this so-called cleaning.
“It’ll work out somehow.”
Thinking as optimistically as possible, I confidently opened the door to the captain’s office.
“Huh?”
