Chapter 4: Chapter 3 – Encounters with Fate

Chapter 3

Encounters with Fate

-000-

Without even noticing, the first term had passed by. Even I myself was surprised by how quickly time had flown. I had thought that classes would be an absolute slog to get through since I had already studied everything in my previous life, but I had found that the research projects I was working on kept me engaged in the relevant classes.

I had started a bit of a cordial relationship with Master Kord, often consulting with him on aspects of engineering and crystal batteries that I had trouble wrapping my head around. Jonah and Judau were also instrumental to keeping my research progressing at a steady rate. They had more theoretical knowledge about magic and engineering than I did. To top it all off, they were more than happy to pitch in some help. It was also great that the two of them had struck up a friendship as well. It would seem that I could invite Judau into my squadron on the next term without any problems.

Thanks to both Judau and Jonah's help, I made enough progress to present my work to Master Kord this evening. It was the last day before the term break, and I was looking forward to winding down in the two weeks where we had no classes. I had originally intended on continuing my grind for the duration of the term break… but I felt that I was ahead of schedule and deserved a little break. Instead, I was thinking of inviting all my friends for a get together somewhere in town. It’d be nice to simply hang out with them for the sake of hanging out.

I walked down the hallway of Building B with a little spring on my step, and I had two folders with me. In each was a copy of my work so far. Thank God that the librarians had a spell that could photocopy texts from one document to another. It saved me the hassle of having to rewrite everything multiple times.

I reached Master Kord's personal office and braced myself to present my work. I knocked on the door and quickly turned the door knob open.

I believed that no other student would be consulting with him right now. It was the end of the term and people were either retreating to the dorms, or they were returning to their homes. After all, nobody would willingly throw themselves into more work for the duration of the two week break… right?

Yes, that was a good enough excuse for my mild rudeness.

I spoke my greetings as I pushed open the door itself.

"Good evening Master Kord, I'd like to show you my prog…"

When I had pushed the door far enough that I could see inside the room, I realized that I had made a grave miscalculation.

Someone was consulting with Master Kord… and it was someone I desperately wanted to avoid in this life.

There was a girl in the room with Master Kord, someone around my age.

Her platinum blonde hair which was tied together into a braided bun perfectly accentuated the deep blue orbs that were her eyes. The navy blue uniform with its gold trim also complemented her beautiful figure well. If I were any other man, I would have been entranced by her looks.

Instead I was only filled with dread.

This was Rikke dal Ramiel. Beloved daughter to Duke Gregor dal Ramiel… and betrothed to Crown Prince Maximillian dal Grunnder.

I felt myself fall into panic inside my own head. Of all the people I wanted to avoid in this life, she was prime among them.

I looked at her face, and she was surprised at my presence here. Her eyes had widened and her mouth was slightly agape in shock. The rest of her face contorted in an expression of equal parts confusion and frustration… Well, it was fair for her to feel that way, I suppose. I would be quite indignant too if some random nobody who was far beneath me in social standing suddenly barged into my private meeting.

Hopefully she won't send her toadies to harass me for interrupting her session like this. I really didn't need the trouble.

After a couple of awkward seconds, I managed to calm myself enough to the point I could start thinking clearly again. I quickly formulated an escape plan and attempted to execute it.

"Ah, my apologies!" I quickly said as I bowed my head. "I didn't realize you already had a guest. I'll come back at a later time then."

Short, sweet, and simple. It was the perfect getaway.

Once I said all of that, I made a move to close the door.

"No, Sir Morgan, wait. You've actually come at quite the opportuned time." Master Kord said, stopping me from leaving.

My body froze… partially of fear, but mostly because of what Master Kord had said. I was mildly curious as to why he would think me barging in right now would be a good thing.

"Rikke, allow me to introduce to you Morgan Redborn, the man I was speaking about earlier." The elderly teacher spoke. "He approached me for guidance at the start of the term, and I’ve been advising him on his research projects since. If all things go right, he will turn out to be quite the promising Manor-Lord."

With half of me still peeking through the half closed door, I looked at Master Kord somewhat quizzically.

Me? Promising Manor-Lord? Well, I suppose this is because I've been performing well on most of the subjects in the Academy. I’m not surprised that I seemed like an exemplary student compared to my peers. Among the lower nobles, I was among the top ten highest scoring students for the enrollment exams, and I was in the top five for the midterms. The only subject keeping me down was practical magic, and that was because my low magic potential made me quite unmotivated to study it. Once practical combat and leadership classes started next term, I was sure I'd give the highest scoring upper nobles a good run for their money.

I can't exactly say that it was all hard work though. My memories from my previous life did carry me through most of it.

“He might not hold much of the same theoretical knowledge about crystal powered machines as I do," Master Kord continued. “But his familiarity with the practical uses of such machinery has provided him a perspective that is unfortunately lacking in academia. His penchant for lateral thinking and out of the box problem solving has helped him push ahead of his peers.”

That was high praise indeed, especially coming from someone like Master Kord. I felt flattered that he thought of me that way, though I can’t help but feel like he may have exaggerated somewhat. The way I approached my research and work did seem a bit odd to the uninitiated. This was because I mostly knew that my goals were entirely achievable. My only problem was that I lacked the tools or resources to get them.

Rikke’s gaze seemed to have… softened? I wasn’t sure if I could confidently say it had softened. She certainly didn’t seem as irritated as before, but she still seemed rather stiff.

She began to respond to the teacher’s words. Her gaze was cold and seemingly bore straight into my soul. The way she spoke was even toned in an absolutely prim and proper manner as expected of a Duke’s daughter. The voice itself was soft and pleasant to hear, and yet carried a heavy weight of authority behind it. It befuddled me somewhat how her voice could be like that, but I decided to simply brush it off as her upper noble etiquette education.

“If Master Kord vouches for you, then I suppose I will have to defer to his judgment.” She simply said.

“Yes, yes, Morgan, please come in. Take a seat and join us.” Master Kord said.

The words may sound like a request, but it felt more like an order to me.

I hesitated for a moment as I seriously contemplated bolting from the room right then and there. However, I decided against doing so. Instead, I composed myself, adjusted my posture to a more proper form, then complied with what Master Kord asked of me.

“Well, since you asked so nicely, I don’t believe I can refuse.” I said, faking a smile to hide my discomfort.

I entered Master Kord’s office proper, but then remembered that Rikke was already there. This would make seating a bit awkward.

Since Master Kord was already sitting in his lavish armchair, this meant that the only seats left were on the visitor’s couch that was opposite him. Rikke was already on that couch, on the right end. I walked myself towards the left end of that same couch and sat down. I made sure to distance myself as much as physically possible from her as I could. There were so many reasons that I had behind the scenes that would justify avoiding her. Part of it was due to her importance and status. Most of it had to do with what happened to her in my previous life… much of which I regretfully was involved in.

It was a dark memory from my past that I sorely wished to never remember. Being around her was not going to be conducive to that end.

Taking a glimpse of the girl in question, she too seemed to want to keep a healthy distance from me. Her posture was still stiff, her hands kept to herself, and her gaze was fixed solely forward. This was the one time I felt thankful that an upper noble wanted to distance herself from me. With any luck, it’ll be the only time I’d have to be thankful for it.

As I put down the documents in my hands, a sudden thought hit me.

What the hell was Rikke doing here in the first place?

“Ah, my apologies Sir Morgan, where are my manners?” Master Kord suddenly said after I sat down. “This here is Lady Rikke dal Ramiel. She’s…”

As Master Kord started introducing Rikke to me, I started zoning out. I knew who she was… hell, I’m pretty sure every single student currently attending knew who she was. Rikke was slated to be the next queen of the Kingdom. Someone that important is unlikely to go by unnoticed by any noble… which only confuses me even more as to what the hell someone of her caliber was doing here. Based on my memories, I don’t recall her ever being interested in machinery or Magi-Armors. I also don’t recall ever hearing her consult with the engineering teacher.

Granted, it’s been proven that my memories are fairly biased and can be unreliable when it comes to certain details… but this is one of the few things I remember that I’m more than certain about.

I tried as best as I could to think of how she could have suddenly become interested in machinery like this. With the admittedly limited information I had, I couldn’t really come up with a clear answer. I wasn’t so arrogant as to say that my intervention at Yashin Bridge could have created such a major ripple effect in the timeline. She was going to be the queen, which meant that her studies and upbringing should be focused on the politics, diplomacy, and management of the country. Development and research of crystal battery technology and machinery is something that would be better left to her subordinates. Her brother winning one battle couldn't suddenly change her whole attitude... right?

Something definitely wasn’t lining up. I considered a whole slew of possibilities that could have created this change. Off the top of my head, I could think of two answers.

The first was that I didn’t get sent exactly back in time, but was instead sent to a parallel world that only had the most minor differences. It would explain a lot of the discrepancies that happened between what happened in my previous life, and this life. I prayed that this was the true cause of the divergence, because the second option drove genuine terror into my soul.

My second theory is that I wasn’t the only person to get sent back through time. In this case, there would be other people out there that had memories of the future and altering events as they happened. This worried me greatly because it meant dealing with total wildcards. If other reborn people actually existed, then there would be a whole slew of variables that I not only didn’t know about, but also couldn’t account for.

However, after thinking it through I didn’t think this was what was happening. If I was able to alter the result of an event as important as Yashin Bridge, then others could too. If they could too, then the multiple ripples caused by their interventions would have undoubtedly altered the very course of history. There simply was no way things would have progressed with minimal differences like it had until now.

Having come to that conclusion, I leaned more on the possibility that this was an alternate world with a handful of discrepancies. If that were the case, I have to figure out what the discrepancies were. If they were major enough, I would have to take them into consideration. If they didn’t affect anything much, I could very well ignore them.

Once Master Kord had finished his introductions, I made a move to investigate why Rikke would be interested in the subject of engineering. I glanced at Master Kord for a moment, and saw that he was looking over the documents I had brought for him. He seemed quite engrossed by it, and it was doubtful that he would speak up anytime soon. With that in mind, I tried to make my face look as earnest as possible as I started my investigation.

“Lady Rikke, may I be so bold as to ask why you’re interested in studying machinery?” I spoke to her in as nice a tone as I could speak in, head bowing slightly.

I never was the best when it came to etiquette. I hoped that the facade I pulled up at the very least looked convincing. It would be extremely disastrous if a Duke’s daughter decided that I had insulted her.

“I suppose my interest in machinery and industry would seem quite curious to outsiders.” She answered matter of factly.

Her voice still didn’t waver from her regal and composed tone at all. Her posture too was cold and stiff. It seemed clear to me that she was finding my presence a bit intrusive. I winced internally, fearing that my question may have slighted her somehow.

“Tell me, Sir Morgan. Wouldn’t you say that protecting the Kingdom is a task that the queen should participate in?” She answered with her own question. It was a rhetorical question, of course. There really was only one answer to what she asked.

“Of course.” I answered. “I would expect nothing less from those of noble blood but to responsibly lead the people they are given authority over.”

When I said as such, she seemed satisfied with my answer. Rikke nodded, her expression still frozen and unchanging as she continued speaking.

“If even half of the royal court thought like you did, the Kingdom wouldn’t ever face any hardship.” She replied.

I swear I saw the corner of her lips curl upwards for a split second before returning to her more reserved, neutral expression. Was she amused by what I said? I certainly hoped it was amusement and nothing more sinister.

“I agree with your sentiments, Sir Morgan.” Rikke continued. “Those of us with authority should endeavor to do our best to lead responsibly. My efforts to advance crystal battery technology is simply another way for me to fulfill my responsibilities.”

She glanced at me from the side with her cold blue eyes as she spoke. Her body and face had hardly even turned, still oriented at the teacher who was preoccupied reading my paper. It seemed to me that she was treating our conversation as merely a bit of sideshow.

That was fine. The less she wanted to do with me, the better.

Well, back on track… I suppose she did answer my question. It was a very vague answer, but it was an answer nonetheless. I contemplated whether or not to push the question further, but Rikke decided to further elaborate without my prompt.

“We upper nobles… we haven’t been fair with your lot.” She explained. “We get to issue commands and mandates to you, you do most of the hard work, and yet we get to reap all the glory. That doesn’t seem fair, now doesn’t it?”

I hesitated to answer. Regardless of what she was saying, she was still the daughter of a Duke. One wrong move and I could cause immense damage to not only my own household, but also the entire damned Kingdom. Agreeing with what she said would functionally be the same as me saying that I distrusted and disliked the upper nobles. Disagreeing would make me seem like a weak sycophant who was desperate to gain favor with her.

It took me a bit, but I managed to formulate an answer that adequately expressed my true opinion, while still being diplomatic about it.

“While I… lament that the upper nobles tend to reap all the benefits, I must also remind myself that not all upper nobles are of such… uncouth behavior.” I answered her Rikke’s question. “I must also remind myself that upper nobles tend to… make decisions that have more risks involved.”

I winced everytime I paused, but it was for the better. I had enough self-recognition to know that my vocabulary tended to lean on the more vulgar end. Because of this, I had to slow down to pick my words carefully.

“That is true.” She nodded. “However, that doesn’t mean we have to make things harder for you, does it? So to answer your question, Sir Morgan, my interest in studying machinery and industry is to help lower nobles such as yourself… to help ease the unfairness, so to speak.”

What the hell! For an upper noble, she’s actually not an asshole… Not only that, she’s actually a pretty decent person! This isn’t helping soothe the guilt from my previous life at all!

No, actually… thinking about it clearly, this was probably a scheme to secure the loyalty of the lower nobility. Yes, that must be it. She’s trying to capture our loyalty by siding with us on occasion. That’s already a better deal than most upper nobles tend to give.

However, I don’t recall things being like this in my previous life. Is this another one of those discrepancies in the timeline? If so, this is a major one. The Ramiels are competing with the Ostgards for the loyalty of the lower nobility. If House Ramiel stands beside the royal family, I think it’s doubtful that the Ostgards could gather enough sympathy to launch a revolt.

I stayed silent as I pondered my circumstances. Perhaps because of my silence, both Master Kord and Rikke took this as a sign of skepticism. The elderly teacher made a move to assuage my concerns.

“I can see that you’re skeptical.” Master Kord said. “It’s understandable, given what happened in the war. However, I can personally vouch for Rikke’s motivations. I and a handful of other educators have been tutoring her for almost ten years now, and she was always passionate about helping lower nobles.”

The teacher walked over to his work desk, opened the drawers on it, and began searching for something. He then pulled out a folder before closing all the drawers again. Master Kord brought the folder to the tea table that sat in between his armchair and the couch I sat on.

“Please, observe for yourself.” The old teacher said, handing over the folder to me. “These are a handful of ideas that Rikke proposed a few years ago that we had to shelve for a variety of reasons. However, if we applied your own research to this…”

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I flipped open the folder and skimmed through the pages of the document. She had a lot of ambitious and interesting ideas when it came to machinery, some of which were only held back by the limitation of our current understanding of crystal battery machines. I was starting to see why Master Kord wanted me to join this meeting. I occasionally glanced back at Rikke whenever I saw something on the page that I found impressive, and she had quite the smug look on her face. Honestly, she earned it. I don’t know how long she’s been studying crystal battery machines in particular, but she shows a level of understanding that was abnormally high for someone of her position.

I decided to flip over the page to a proposal which I was particularly interested in. This particular chapter had crude schematics and designs to heavily modify an old Jager model armor. The intention was seemingly to make it fly.

Rikke proposing the concept of flight capable armors brought forth a slew of complicated emotions within me.

For one, it was impressive that she managed to figure out a system to make the armor fly. The schematics proposed for a flightpack that would be attached onto the Jager’s backpack section. This would be a miniaturized version of the flight system that let airships take to the skies. The entire lower leg assembly would have to be replaced entirely in order to fit maneuvering thrusters for enhanced mobility. Additionally, the armor plating would have to be reduced to allow the machine to lift off. It was as complex as it was impressive, and it very well could have worked… if it weren’t for the power source limitations.

According to the conclusion section of the proposal, only pilots with very high magical affinity could even power up the flight system. The crystal reactor that was of the armor wasn’t anywhere near powerful enough to generate the magical energy needed to operate both the armor and the flight system… thus requiring the pilot to channel their own magical energy into the attachments. This drastically reduced potential operational time, as well as the pool of potential pilot candidates.

This was all very impressive. I had to hand it to her, she’d done a pretty good job with her design… Though the impressiveness of the design wasn't actually what captured my attention. It was the fact that the proposed flying Jager was uncomfortably similar to a machine I used in my previous life…

That specific machine… the AeroLandser as it was called… was what I piloted when I brought absolute ruin to her. My squadron engaged the battleship she had boarded, which we made short work of.

Yes. In my previous life, I was responsible for her ultimate demise. Taking on the flagship of the Ramiel fleet, winning, and then returning to camp with Rikke as a prisoner of war was what solidified my reputation as The Fiend Knight. It was not lost on me that the Rikke of this timeline seemed to have designed a precursor to the machine that led to her end in my previous life. I found the irony of the situation not amusing in the slightest.

However, that aside… Master Kord was correct that my research and her own could complement one another. Her desire to find a way to power attachments like the flight pack and my wish to give enhanced magical weapons to the average grunt faced the same hurdles. If we combined our efforts, we could make some serious progress on both our fronts.

"This has a lot of potential." I specifically pointed out her Flying Jager concept. "I can see why Master Kord wants me to work with you."

I took my copy of the documents I wrote and handed it over to Rikke. She took it off my hands and began skimming through it at a leisurely pace. However, the further she read into the document, the more she was invested in what I wrote. Occasionally, she began glancing at me between pages, seeming somewhat skeptical that I had come up with such advanced concepts. It was now my turn to pull up a bit of a smug face, and I must admit that it was quite the satisfying ordeal… though I did eventually restrain myself when I realized I might insult her by being overly indulgent.

After a while, Rikke finally put my document back on the table. It seems she's read enough.

“Your work has… potential. Master Kord’s praises for you aren’t empty. I should refrain from being skeptical of his words in the future.” She said to me before continuing. “If I may suggest, we should exchange notes. It would be most beneficial to both our works… that is, of course if you don’t mind doing so.”

“Oh, no! Not at all!” I answered, bowing my head lightly with a smile on my face. “The original copy of my work is still in my room, so feel free to hold on to that one.”

Well… it’s not like I could refuse, really. Rikke was way up the social hierarchy. Even if she didn’t hold any official rank right now, her words still held an absurd amount of influence over a lot of things. Any requests or suggestions she makes to us lower nobles should be treated with the gravitas of an order.

That being said, I actually was kind of… sort of looking forward to getting a copy of her work. There are some genuinely interesting ideas in there I could adapt for myself.

“Excellent.” Rikke replied, smiling ever so slightly.

Whatever bit of anticipation evaporated the moment I saw that faint bit of expression on her face. A pit started to grow in my gut. Why was she smiling? What was she planning? Just what the hell was she going to make me do?

 “If this is what you can achieve now… then I’d imagine you’d excel even further if you could get your hands on more resources no?”

I initially hesitated to answer, but eventually I agreed. That pit in my gut was starting to grow larger, especially now that I saw where she was leading this conversation.

“You overestimate my abilities, Lady Rikke.” I tried to downplay myself in front of her. “Anyone with access to good resources can do impressive feats.”

I added that bit as an afterthought, to try and throw her off my tail.

Alas, it was for nothing.

“Humble as well…” She let out a full smirk.

Shit, that backfired spectacularly.

“Well then, I very much look forward to working with you… Sir Morgan.” Rikke concluded.

In a split second, I felt myself become light as the pit in my gut almost overwhelmed my being. The wind was knocked right out my soul.

I very much didn’t look forward to working with her.

-000-

Later that night, I met up with Theo as well as some other friends and colleagues at a cozy little restaurant in Ehren. Due to my untimely encounter with Rikke, I ended up joining the little party somewhat late. It was sometime after seven now, and they’d been here for an hour or so. Including myself, there were around over a dozen or so people in our little group. Some of them were close with me, like Judau and Jonah. Others were much closer to Theo, having been invited by him instead. It was a bit of a hodgepodge group, and because of the size of our party we ended up taking up a whole corner of the restaurant to ourselves.

Predictably, Theo was first to greet me.

“And here I was thinking you wouldn’t show up!” He said out loud, catching everyone else’s attention.

The others started teasing me too after that, and I saw no end of it for a while. I had a reputation for being punctual, after all. Being late was somewhat out of the ordinary for me, so the ones that knew me took the opportunity to rib me for the occasion. Once everyone had returned to their own conversations, it was my best friend that first questioned my tardiness.

“You’re not usually the one to be late.” the big guy asked, taking a sip from his cup. “What held you up?”

“How are you so sure I didn’t just forget that we had a thing?” I joked a bit, but mostly I was trying to avoid talking about my previous encounter. “I can make mistakes too, you know? I mean, I would’ve forgotten to go to your party a couple of months ago if you didn’t send a letter.”

I waved down one of the waitresses and ordered a small meal. The whole ordeal with Rikke had left me in a bit of a tizzy, and I wasn’t sure if I could eat a lot with my head still spinning.

“Yeah, true… but you’re not the kind to forget about plans you just made the morning before.” Theo pointed out. “That is, unless something really important came up.”

I mulled with my thoughts for a bit, still trying to avoid the whole subject. Thankfully, the previous waitress returned with a cup of water, so I could stall my answer just that little bit longer by drinking slowly from it.

“Look, I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I saw my buddy being troubled and did nothing about it.” He said, trying to reassure me. “Even if I can’t help you solve it, at least you can get it off your chest.”

I smiled and sighed as I put my drink down. Of the both of us, Theo always was the more considerate one. I rubbed my temples for a bit before explaining the whole situation with Rikke to him… well, the whole situation except for the part where I ruined her life before waking up in this timeline.

As I recounted the events of the past few hours, I saw his face turn from surprise, to disbelief, then to concern. That’s good. Even if I can’t tell him the real reason why I wanted to avoid Rikke, he still understands why I wanted to stay away from her.

“Man, that’s rough.” Was all Theo could say.

“Yeah.” I nodded along. “And it’s not like I can just say no to her. Duke’s daughter and all that.”

“See, this is why I try not to be an overachiever. You never know if you’re going to attract the wrong kind of attention.”

I winced at my friend’s words. Much as I didn’t like it, he was right. Honestly, I should have seen this one coming. Being ahead of much of my peers was inevitably going to get me noticed by people. Whether or not they’re people I like is completely out of my control… especially as a lower noble. I seriously worried about getting all tangled up in upper noble politics, since if I do there’s not really much choice except to hope I had somehow garnered the favor of someone not entirely malicious.

It’s also extra frustrating because if things ever get to the point where I have to correct the Crown Prince’s behavior, my proximity to Rikke is going to be a major wildcard. Considering that Maximillian was very much willing to break his engagement publicly… which was tantamount to a major insult, mind you… I was pretty sure he wasn’t a big fan of hers. Because of that, I concluded that being a known associate of Rikke’s would put me at a disadvantage. The Prince would assume I’m correcting him to curry favor with Rikke, when really I couldn’t care less about how they felt about each other.

Our conversation thankfully diverted to less distressing topics afterwards. My dinner arriving soon after also served as a fine diversion from the whole mess I had gotten myself into. We started going over what we managed to accomplish over the course of our first term, then to our plans for the next. Since Theo would lead his own squadron, we got to talking about who we were planning to induct.

The way the Academy dealt with command training was fairly simple. The higher the rank, the higher the priority when it came to choosing members. If rank was equal, then grades would be the tiebreaker. Thankfully for us lower nobles, the member pools were segregated by rank, and it was exceedingly rare for anyone from the upper noble classes to pick up a lower noble member. To them, picking squadron members was also a political game… a declaration of who had each other’s favors, and who they were loyal to. So while the upper nobles squabble over such political frivolities, us lower nobles got to squabble over more pragmatic reasons. Manor-Lords ranked students got their pick of the best knight rank students, and then the knight ranked students that had earned the right to command their own squadrons got whatever was left.

In this timeline, since I was not only the son of a Manor-Lord but also one of the highest scoring students, I was going to be allowed to pick first. Theo, having scored just slightly above average grades, was going to pick somewhere down the line after me.

“Hey buddy, I know they’re gonna let you pick first… being a damned overachiever and all… but there’s a couple of guys I’d like in my squadron.” Theo told me as we continued to talk. “Could you, uh… not pick them? Like, consider it a favor please? I’ll owe you one.”

He seemed to be worried that I might pick up some of his friends for my squadron. I had already finalized on who I was going to pick up as squad members… well, mostly. Theo having his own squadron this time around means that his spot was vacant. Since I’m also dead set on not picking up Hector and Nils for abandoning me in my previous life, that brings up the vacancy slots to three. I’ve already earmarked Judau and Petrov as replacements, so that left one more. It would be quite the trouble if Theo and I got into a fight over who that replacement would be, so it was fortunate that he was bringing this up now.

“Hmm, it’ll depend on which one.” I responded somewhat bluntly.

We went back and forth with a couple of names, some of which I was interested in, though I was mostly fine with letting Theo have. They would have made good additions to my team, but I decided not to get greedy. Eventually, Theo and I got through his list of candidates. I decided not to contest any of his picks, and he seemed to be somewhat grateful for it.

I sympathized with his situation, especially considering I was in his very boots in my previous run. Since high scoring students like myself got to pick first, there was always a chance someone could snipe a candidate he wanted ahead of him. Contesting picks like that is a process that can get very messy if neither party was willing to back down.

-000-

Our party ended an hour or so later. Some of the others wanted to head home for the term break, and they had bought tickets for early the next morning. I myself was tempted to head back to the estate, but I ultimately decided against it. Surprisingly enough, Theo also was planning to stick around for the term break. It was something about his parents wanting him to network with more people. Business stuff I wasn’t keen on understanding.

We all headed over to the wagon station, where we would together rent a ride to take us all back to campus. However, as we walked through the dimly lit streets of Ehren, I spotted a familiar looking silhouette of a woman walking through one of the side streets. From a distance, I could see that she was wearing a sort of cloak over her Academy’s uniform, and I could see glimpses of red hair and vaguely familiar face from under her hood.

"Is that…" I thought to myself out loud.

Allanah? She said she was busy this evening and couldn't join us. What was she doing here? I split from my group and went to investigate. I had gone some distance away from them before somebody noticed I was going somewhere else.

“Hey, Morgan, where are you going?” Theo called out to me.

I quickly thought up an excuse before answering. 

"I… Just remembered that I had some errands I needed to run before heading back." I told him. "I think Fleming's is still open, so I'm going to check on an order I made last week. You guys go on back to campus without me."

Like many of the excuses I gave, it was a partial truth. I did put in an order for a custom made shotgun from a gunsmith that was popular among lower noble students. Said gunsmith also did open until rather late at night. However, my order wouldn't be done until at least a week into the next term and I knew it. It was simply another convenient excuse for me to split off and shadow this person that I thought was Allanah.

It might come off as creepy, but I had my reasons for shadowing her. Allanah wasn’t one to flake out on her friends. I’ve never known her to purposely miss out on a chance to hang out, so something's definitely going on. If I turn out to be wrong, then I can go beat myself up over doubting my friend later. For now, I have to know.

I managed to keep my distance… though to be honest I never was good at being stealthy. I followed the woman I thought was Allanah for a bit until she reached a small public garden. It was a quaint little place, with a little gazebo in the middle and a handful of benches scattered about. Half a dozen or so magic lamp posts were also around, providing a moderate amount of illumination to the place.

The woman I was following sat down on one of the benches, and seemed to wait for someone. I kept myself hidden while I moved to find a clearer view of her, when the person she was waiting for arrived. It was a man, and he seemed to be wearing clothes that… didn’t look the best. He had a bit of grime and dirt on his face too… but it didn’t look quite right. The splotches of dirt that were all over his face didn’t seem natural. They weren’t the result of a hard day’s work like it was supposed to, but instead like the makeup job of a low budget stage work. After realizing that, I paid close attention to his clothing and noticed that the wear and tear on it was also far too deliberate to be real. This man had purposely made his clothing look bad. His light brown hair was also messily tied up, but it looked disheveled because he seemed to have tied it improperly.

But why? Who was he? Why was he trying to hide his identity?

I moved around the magic lamp posts and stuck to the shadows. I carefully watched from a distance as the meeting commenced proper. The woman took off her hood, revealing that it was indeed Allanah.

Righto! I won't have to beat myself up later for doubting my friend. It felt like a bit of weight had lifted itself off my mind. I had to stop myself mid celebration though, because if this was Allanah… and if there were only minor changes between the previous timeline and this current one, then the person she was meeting with was…

"Allanah, you look wonderful as ever." The man Allanah was meeting said.

There was no mistaking that voice. Even with his attempts at a disguise, there was no way to mask that voice.

It was the Crown Prince.

That weight which was previously lifted suddenly came crashing back down on me. It took all my willpower to stop me from recoiling where I stood and blowing my cover. Allanah and the Crown Prince were in an affair. Today was just becoming worse and worse.

"Max, we really need to stop meeting like this." Allanah replied. "You.. you could get into trouble, you know?"

Was that hesitation in her voice? It was hard to tell. I couldn't get a good read on her body language in this light so it's tough to tell for certain.

"But, Allanah, my heart yearns for you…"

I zoned out of their conversation after that. If it was just this little development that I had to deal with, I might have been able to digest it. But the preceding blow of getting tangled up with Rikke was enough to send my head into a spin. Now that I had to tangle with this little affair as well…

Suffice to say I wasn't looking forward to having to deal with it.

I slowly crept away from the garden, careful not to alert the two. Now was not the time for me to intervene. I needed to formulate an approach that would limit my exposure to the Crown Prince. Interrupting them right now wouldn't be conducive to that end. As I left the garden and headed back to the wagon station, I thought of as many possible approaches as I could. Try as I might, but all the plans I deemed feasible always ended up boiling down to splitting Allanah and the Crown Prince from each other. Breaking their illicit relationship was halfway to the goal of maintaining House Ramiel's support for the Royal Family, which in turn should discourage the Ostgards from rebelling.

It's unfortunate, but it's the only road I can think of moving forward.

"Sorry Allanah… but I'm going to have to throw a wrench in your little relationship."

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