Published: March 15th 2025, 9:55:10 pm
The cadets left the room with more questions than answers. Although the concept of a training camp piqued their curiosity, it was too soon to tell them the details. I needed more information about the Imperial Academy's evaluation practices to design an effective curriculum. My mentor at university used to say that evaluation was easy: just test what you taught and how you taught it. The problem was that I wasn’t in charge of evaluation, and the syllabus was as obscure as Shu’s most straightforward bedtime story. Love triangles were an anachronism, as Shu wasn’t interested in anything less than a romantic dodecahedron.
“Zaon? Can you tell the others I will meet them for dinner? I have something to discuss with Preceptor Mistwood first,” I said.
“I will. Mister Clarke, Preceptor Ca—” The boy bit his tongue before finishing the sentence. “Preceptor Mistwood.”
Zaon gave us a slight bow and rushed out of the room. I watched his long, golden, fluttering hair disappear through the doorway, wondering if he was about to call her ‘Preceptor Cabbage’, like Holst, during our short meeting.
I glanced at Talindra. She didn’t look like a cabbage at all.
“Zaon was your student, too?” Talindra quickly asked, almost like she wanted to change the subject.
I decided to humor her.
“Do you know him?” I asked, curious about Zaon’s reputation.
Students always had a reputation.
Talindra nodded.
“Last year, Zaon made some noise in Classroom Basilisk,” she said, lowering her voice like someone was eavesdropping behind the door. “At the end of the second year, when cadets formed their own squads, he didn’t go into Black Basilisk.”
I didn’t know how to interpret that information.
Talindra seemed to realize I was missing the point because she continued.
“Oh, right. You are new here,” she said. “After two years, the number of cadets per classroom goes down to four or five. You need at least ten to form a cadet squad, so it’s not rare for two or more classrooms to merge.”
The cadets who survived the first two years had a good chance to become Imperial Knights.
“Lord Astur, Sir Rovhan, and Preceptor Holst are different. By the two-year mark, they have enough cadets to form full squads. Holst’s Classroom Basilisk became Black Basilisk Squad as a tribute to him… Zaon was the only Holst student to step aside, which is almost unheard of. It was the matter of discussion in the instructor’s lounge this winter.”
I nodded. It didn’t hit me as a surprise. On the one hand, Zaon wasn’t fond of Holst; on the other, the boy wanted to do something for himself and not rely on Firana, Wolf, and Ilya. Still, I understood why his decision could’ve been interpreted as a snub towards Holst.
“Not only that! He formed his own squad!” Talindra said it like it was unthinkable.
A lot of times, teachers missed the point when it came to understanding students' actions.
“Well… Zaon has been a follower for a long time. I guess he needs to prove to himself he can do things on his own,” I replied.
“Really?” Talindra asked. “He seems to be a very kind and competent person.”
I shrugged.
“Anyway, are you okay with the training camp experiment?” I said, changing the subject.
Talindra retreated to her shell.
“Sir Rhovan didn’t ask for me to be his magic instructor again this year. I’m not the best person to ask… I guess,” Talindra awkwardly laughed. Even without [Foresight], I knew deep inside it hurt her. “If you taught Zaon and the gnome girl… Nugget, I’d say you are way qualified to call the shots.”
I shifted uncomfortably. Zaon and Ilya weren’t my only achievements as a teacher, and although Mister Lowell’s core values had made teaching them much easier, I wasn’t sure Talindra would believe me.
“Zaon and Ilya were my students, but not the only ones. Wolf and Firana, from Wolfpack also studied under my guidance,” I said.
Talindra recoiled like she had put her fingers in the electric outlet.
For an instant, she looked at me like I was some sort of golden god.
“Firana The Lightningbolt was your student?!”
I rubbed my temples. Of course, Firana had a flashy nickname. I could almost imagine her barging into Zaon’s bedroom at three o'clock in the morning to have an unscheduled brainstorming session.
“Firana was my student, yes.”
“It must’ve been delightful to have such talented students together.”
“It was,” I smiled.
Although not for the reasons you think.
Firana lacked discipline, Ilya had no prospects going for her Class, Zaon was chronically afraid of the world, and Wolf felt like he didn’t belong anywhere, and yet, in all my years as a teacher, they had been my greatest triumph.
“Firana has a flashy name, but what about Wolf?”
“You don’t know?” Talindra asked.
“They have been lying in their letters for two years straight.”
“I lied a lot to my parents when I was a Novice,” Talindra said. “Wolf is famous, and infamous, for gathering a squad of commoners. Commoners usually find… resistance from the most traditional Instructors, but none could break Wolf and his crew. They are extremely loyal to each other, so Rhovan and the other traditionalists don’t like it.”
I nodded. The Wolfpack was a tight-knit squad. Without going any further, Aardvark had assembled a team to intimidate me in record time. There was a somewhat inherently individualist slant about the System, but having friends and helping hands were often better than a few extra levels. Wolf had made the right decision by surrounding himself with loyal people.
I couldn’t help but worry about these so-called ‘traditionalists’.
So far, the only cadets who showed a hint of amity—other than Cedrinor and Genivra, and Malkah and his henchmen—were Aeliana and Leonie. Both were from warrior families, and both seemed to like Fenwick’s pets. Bringing nobles to the commoners close might be a challenge, but it might be necessary if I wanted to create an environment where the cadets could focus solely on learning.
The Imperial Academy didn’t strike me as a place with a strong rulebook. In my last job as a teacher, the Code of Conduct had more than twenty bullet points merely in the subsection about simple interactions with students. There were more than a thousand bullet points in the complete document, and although it might seem overkill, common sense among teachers wasn’t as abundant as I wanted to believe.
“If the training camp is going to work, we must remove every superfluous distraction,” I said, recalling my mentor's horror stories from his days in boarding school. “We might need to remove the cadets from the barracks.”
Talindra mindlessly played with her curly hair as she went deep in thought.
“A place for commoners to escape from hostility and nobles to avoid peer pressure then…” she muttered. Suddenly, her face lit up. “I might have the right place for us!”
For the first time since we met, Talindra was excited. We were working as a team. Rhovan didn’t seem to be the kind of person who made others feel useful, and I wondered how those two managed to work together for a whole year.
I followed Talindra out of the classroom.
Behind the baroque colossus that was the main building lay the inner gardens and the Egg. Cadets hung around the marble fountains, inside the white gazebos, and on the benches between the flower beds. We crossed the gardens and walked down the paved road between the main building and the Egg. A group of gnomes dressed in simple clothes pruned the poplar trees that adorned the esplanade. I made a slight bow, and they returned the greeting, balancing on top of poorly anchored ladders.
“Safety harnesses aren’t mandatory?” I asked, my stomach prey to height vertigo.
The poplars were almost as tall as the main building, and some gnomes were very high.
Talindra gave me a quizzical look, but I dropped the matter.
Safety measures were an alien concept even in the capital.
Along the inner wall, away from the center of the Academy, were the stables, workshops, a granary, and servants' houses. Behind the Egg, on the opposite side of the main gate, an outer wall extended hundreds of meters into the valley, encroaching a meadow, a lake, and a small forest. The landscape wasn’t much different from the farmland outside Cadria, although confined to small patches of vegetable gardens and orchards. The Academy seemed to have a private production of rare ingredients. Down the hill, a group of cadets rode horses across the meadow; some swam at the lake, practiced archery, and others played a game with a ball.
The scene disappeared behind the wall as we walked down the slope.
We walked down the row of servant houses, dodging the small farm plots planted with greens, beans, and bushes similar to tomatoes. No cadets were around, but servants worked on their plots or hung the laundry. There were a lot of gnome families with little ones running around. As soon as we appeared, their mothers called them into their homes, seemingly alerted by Talindra’s robe. My attire, on the other hand, placed me in the range of mid-wealth merchants and craftsmen.
After fifteen minutes of walking along the servant quarter, we reached an abandoned two-story house in the shadow of the wall. The windows were boarded, and the shingles cracked, but no weed dared to taint the garden. Rows of the greenest cabbages I've seen covered the plot.
Talindra walked to the communal well and dropped the bucket.
“This is yours?” I asked.
“I used to be an Herbalist for a long time. I get antsy if I don’t have my plants and these… I kinda like how they look,” she shrugged, using a dipper to water the plot.
The cabbages were lustrous, straight out of a Studio Ghibli movie.
[Foresight] connected the dots and started to form a known figure.
Not one I particularly liked.
“Is this the reason why we are Squad Cabbage? The reason why they call you Cabbage?” I asked.
Talindra laughed nervously.
It wasn’t hard to see she wasn’t fond of the nickname.
“They are harassing you!” I said, sounding more accusatory than I pretended. “Who is in charge of assigning the squad names?”
“The squad names are chosen randomly,” Talindra stuttered, turning around away from me.
My blood boiled, but I wasn’t sure if I was more annoyed by whoever decided to pick up on Talindra or because she let them get away with it. I pinched the bridge of my nose, reminding myself that getting mad at the victim wasn’t productive.
Not everyone is as confrontational as you are, Rob.
My father was the kind of man who advised me to hit back and hit hard.
My university mentor was the kind of man who told me not to judge those who didn’t hit back but to try to understand them. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Mister Reyes. I wondered if he was already retired. I hoped not. It would be a loss for the world of education.
I looked at Talindra as she watered the cabbages.
Students who didn’t stand up for themselves usually feared worse consequences, whether from bullies or the school itself. Others, those who had been victimized for a long time without any help, convinced themselves there was nothing they could do to change the situation. In my experience, those were the two most common situations. I wondered in which category Talindra fell into.
I crouched by the cabbage plot.
The water drops trapped in the outer leaves were so perfect they seemed placed by hand.
“My kids back at the orphanage are potato enthusiasts, but I’m sure they’d love seeing these,” I said.
Talindra made a gesture of gratitude.
“Do you really teach at an orphanage, or was it part of the narrative? I mean… you are a Sage and a Thane.”
I grinned.
“It’s true. You won’t even imagine how crazy things are back home. I’ll tell you sometime.”
We had work to do.
Talindra left the bucket and the dipper next to the well and guided me through the cabbage patch into the old house. As part of her teacher contract, she had asked for a small plot for personal use. Instructors asked for all kinds of strange stuff, and Lord Astur couldn’t help but accept. Lv.40 combatants were a scarce resource, after all. A small patch of land to grow cabbages was practically nothing compared to the petitions of others. By technicality, Talindra also had access to the old house, although she used it only to store gardening tools.
I would’ve asked for a pet dragon if I knew I could demand excessive stuff.
Talindra used an enchanted key, and the door opened.
The house reminded me of a Viking longhouse. The main room had no partitions, a central hearth, and a metal chimney above. Small beams along the walls hinted at the remnants of long disassembled private rooms. The ceiling had a square hole in the middle, and the second floor wasn’t much more than a high platform with a wooden railing.
I tried to get an overview of the place, but nothing came to me.
“Pinneaple Juice!” I shouted, and the Bind hex disappeared.
[Foresight] came back online, full force, scanning the surroundings to the last crack in the wall. My brain was flooded with information. High-level woodworkers must’ve built the house because every beam, plank, and wood peg remained strong and sturdy. A slight trace of mana ran through the building, just like in Farcrest’s Great Hall. The house was built to last.
“This is no place for the children of a Knight or the son of a duke,” Talindra pointed out.
“I bet I can bullshit my way into convincing them,” I said. “Don’t quote me on this, but twenty percent of a teacher’s job is to bullshit your students into actually doing the work.”
Talindra covered her laughter with a hand.
“Do we have enough time to get this place ready?” she asked.
“Watch me do it,” I replied, channeling my mana to stop at the last second. Then, I realized that, once again, I was putting the carriage ahead of the horse. My spell fizzled. “Do we have permission to lodge the cadets here?”
Talindra looked at me like she didn’t understand the question.
“You are the Martial Instructor, sir—Rob. You order, and the cadets obey.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose once again.
“This place needs stronger guidelines.”
“You don’t seem to be the kind of person who likes following rules… if I may say so,” Talindra stuttered.
“You may,” I replied, re-channeling my mana. “Now, sit back and watch how a Sage cleans the house… and by sit back, I mean you probably should exit the house.”
Dozens of mana hands dismantled the boards blocking the windows and kept the shutters open. Then, I violently pushed the air out of the house, and a massive dust cloud arose. I coughed, barely able to see. I always wanted to do something like that at Whiteleaf Manor, but Elincia never allowed me to do it. Now I knew why it was a bad idea. Sucking air through the chimney, I created a current to clear the dust out of the room. Then, I coughed a bit more.
For the next half an hour, I pushed my magic skills to the limit. Several instances of [Hydrokinesis] scrubbed floors and walls while even more mana hands scrapped the patches of accumulated gunk. Luckily, there was no mouse filth, although an owl nest was inside a crevice between the roof and the main beam. I made a mental note to have Fenwick relocate them later.
Most of the roof shingles were cracked, but replacing them would be a waste of money. It was spring, so it was unlikely to rain, and this would be our operations base for only a month. After the first selection exam, the cadets should be able to return to the barracks and live a normal academy life.
My cleaning spree attracted a small crowd of gnomes who stood by the well and watched the mana hands clean the house inside and out.
“Hey! Do my house next, kid,” an old, rugged gnome with white hair and coarse hands hustled.
“I’m too expensive for you, old man,” I replied, prompting laughter from the gnome crowd.
Ilya would be a giant among their ranks.
The gnome kids pointed and snickered as water blobs crawled across the walls like slugs. I couldn’t help but imagine how adorable Ilya was when she was a little girl. Some of the gnome kids didn’t even reach the height of my knee.
I might be a showman, after all.
Channeling my mana, I used [Mirage] to create small fireworks.
The kids were blown away and cheered for more.
One of the water blobs fell apart. I reached the limit of simultaneous spells I could control, even with [Foresight]’s assistance. I launched a few more fireworks, turning the sparks into butterflies and fireflies. Soon, I was in the middle of a gnome festival with lutes, fiddles, and drums. Everyone abandoned their farm plots and the basins of dirty clothes as soon as they heard the first chords of music. The gnome’s demeanor was the opposite of the orc's calm and collected disposition to work from dawn to dusk. It seemed like they were looking for a sign to drop their jobs and start partying. The fireworks were that sign.
Twenty gnomes dragged a long table into the middle of the road. Drinks, bread, and cheese started to appear seemingly from thin air. My feeble twenty-first-century mind couldn’t comprehend the spontaneity of the situation. Back at home, it took me weeks to gather four friends, and now more than thirty gnomes had assembled in a heartbeat.
I wondered if they had a hive mind or something.
Talindra gave me a helpless look as two little gnome kids shoved a tiny stool behind her knees and pulled her robe for her to sit.
I had no time to help her because a middle-aged woman who seemed to be the leader of the gnome moot put a small wooden cup in my hand. She had dark violet skin, the gnome equivalent of a tan, long brown hair arranged in a braid, and sleek ears almost perpendicular to her skull. Adult, but not too old.
“What is your name, Talltop?” she bluntly asked.
“Robert Clarke, nice to meet you,” I replied, my brain still trying to catch up with the events.
The woman suddenly raised a hand, and the music stopped.
“Attention, mosslickers!” she said. “This lumberlegs is Nugget’s daddy!”