With about a week left until Olsylvia Academy resumed classes, Bella and company returned. Besides the mysterious victory in the south, the humans suffered heavily in the fights at the northern and eastern fronts, especially in the north.
The Octavia Empire, even with the help of the Male Savior, was unable to stabilize the battlefield and lost many port cities to the demon army. Thankfully the southern front was victorious, forcing the demons to retreat in fear of being flanked.
In the east, the Oceanic invaders also gave up on their harassment battle when their reinforcement fleet was destroyed by a mysterious force. Bella’s victory in the south had just barely mitigated the losses on the other two fronts.
“Duchess Bellina, this is an invitation to our Wealthy Club… please..”
“Duchess Bellina, this is the VIP card of the First Exchange, please…”
Bella, who had just returned to the academy, discovered that she suddenly received much more attention than before. This abrupt change left her a little lost. Her reputation had drastically risen as news about her exploits in the south spread.
This was a problem for Bella, as she preferred being low-key. The only silver lining was the look of frustration on her Rose Society’s arch nemesis, the Golden Legend Society president Carlos’s face. She figured this was probably due to the news of his little sister Caroline’s survival.
Bella had run into Carlos earlier and had seen the terrible expression on his face. Good thing he didn’t know that Bella was the one who had rescued Caroline, otherwise his face would have become even uglier.
Carlos would be busy with the “sudden resurrection” of his little sister and wouldn’t be able to harass the Rose Society during this time. Bella could relax for a bit.
“Big Sis Bella, what are you thinking about?”
“Nothing, Lisha, let’s go take a look at the knight branch!”
Currently, Lisha was the only girl accompanying Bella. Kriss and the others had to report back to their respective branches in the academy. Bella was still a knight student in name; it would only be polite to pay a visit to the leader of the knights branch, Ingrid.
The knight branch’s classroom was already half full of students. When Bella arrived, she recognized all of her friends and acquaintances. There was the beautiful teacher, Dragon Knight Ingrid, Princess Pamela, “Thunder Knight” Aurora, “Dusk Knight” Daphne, Disciplinary Committee Chief Natasha, Big Sister Irene, and Big Sister Luce; they were all there.
“Duchess Bella, you’re finally not late to class. I heard you performed admirably in the south! I thought you had already…”
“Teacher, what are you saying! Before seeing you again, I would never… Oh right, where are you guys planning on going!”
The girls of the Knight branch were all dressed to travel. Each student had a large traveler’s pack next to them and were ready to go. Thankfully, Ingrid had remembered Bella, that “special student”, and decided to wait a bit longer.
There was still a week until classes started again, and unlike the students of other branches, the knight students had returned rather early. After a discussion among the branch leaders, Olsylvia Academy had decided to send the knight students to participate in the Octavia Empire’s “Knight’s Assembly”, which would last about a week.
The “Knight’s Assembly” would be located at the Octavia Empire’s holy land of knights, the Aiden Plains. This time’s assembly would be a chance for the human knight students to exchange pointers, as well as to find a suitable mount.
Besides the knight students of Olsylvia Academy, there would be students from two other academies from the Octavia Empire participating in this time’s “Knight’s Assembly”. They were Ogleria Academy and Ophelias Academy.
These two academies were the same as Olsylvia Academy; they both belonged to the Human Empires’ Twelve Ivies and they were both specialized knight academies.
Ogleria Academy was also known as the Earth Knight Academy and specialized in training traditional, land knights. They were famous for their Earth Dragon Knights. Ophelias Academy was the Sky Knight Academy and specialized in training aerial knights such as Griffin Knights, Pegasus Knights, and most famously, Dragon Knights.
Compared to these two specialized knight academies, Olsylvia Academy’s knight branch seemed rather mixed. The “Knight’s Assembly” was a way for the young students of the “Twelve Ivies” to warm up for the Human Empires’ “Twelve Ivies Battle”.
At the end of the semester, Olsylvia Academy would have to compete with its neighbors, Continental Academy and Alessandra Academy.
After learning this, Bella was reluctant to participate. She was afraid that her substitute, Felia, would be recognized. The Bella of now was far different from the Bella that had first joined Olsylvia Academy; her fame had grown by leaps and bounds and there were far too many eyes on her.
Furthermore, Olsylvia had only won the past “Twelve Ivies Battle” based on their magic scores. Their knights branch couldn’t compete with those two academies, so if they went, the other two academies would likely look down at them.
“Teacher, I can consider going. However, I must be the team captain. If you agree, then I will go.”
“Student Bella, a knight must learn humility. You aren’t a Dragon Knight yet; the captain is comparable to the commander of a knight regiment, you… you girls wouldn’t mind?”
Ingrid was just about to reject Bella on the basis of her rank and power, but she realized that the rest of the powerful female knights were silently accepting of Bella’s request. The two Dragon Knight’s present, one was Natasha, Bella’s neighbor, and the other was Lisha, Bella’s self proclaimed “little sister”; neither of them had any objections.
Even the serious princess knights, Irene and Luce were quiet. This put Ingrid in an awkward spot; they didn’t give her any face, silently accepting Bella’s arrogance.
“Big Sister Ingrid, this is simply what everyone wants, you should stop looking for an excuse to refuse me!”
“Fine… you little she-devil, how did you do it, you and them…”
“This is a secret! If you want to know, we… Lisha, stop pulling me.”
Right as Bella was about to “follow the vine to get the melon” and take advantage of Dragon Knight Ingrid, Lisha pulled her away in the knick of time, stopping this she-devil’s evil plans.
Besides Ingrid, the other famous beauties here all had “special feelings” for Bella, making her the perfect captain.
Bella used a message spell to quickly explain things to Kriss and the rest of them before setting out on the journey to the “Knight’s Assembly”. Kriss and the others spammed Lisha with messages for “sneaking away” but other than that there wasn’t much else.
The Ayden Plains were located in the northern human empire, the Octavia Empire’s central hinterland. Legends say that this was the birthplace of Knight King Ayden, though the historical records of the Octavia Empire did not record Knight King Ayden’s existence.
Olsylvia Academy’s knights branch split into two groups, men and women, to travel. The men’s group was captained by Dragon Knight Shawn. His vice captain was the Male Savior, Scott. Originally, Scott was strong enough to be the captain, but suffered a sneak attack from a mysterious demon king and was heavily injured.
Since Scott was injured, he was unable to compete for the role of captain, and could only give the prestigious position to Shawn. When Bella heard about this, she almost died of laughter. She didn’t know which demon king was so awesome, able to slap the Male Savior into convalescence. Such an achievement was enough to brag around in demon king circles for over a year!
The women’s group was naturally captained by Holy Knight Bella. Her vice captain was Dragon Knight Natasha. The members of this group were basically all Bella’s lovers. Besides their teacher, Dragon Knight Ingrid, all of the girls belonged to Bella.
Bella’s group used teleportation magic to travel just next to the Ayden Plains, to Camp Polit. The camp was as big as a large border city, it was only called a camp due to knights being accustomed to this kind of naming convention.
After their arrival, they met with the Octavia Empire’s representative in charge of reception, Prince Hilton. This middle aged knight was both an imperial and a Dragon Knight. Personally welcoming Bella’s group could be seen as a nod to Olsylvia Academy’s importance.
“Your Highness, why did you come?”
“Ingrid, you’re still not calm enough. Why is the captain not a Dragon Knight? I recall that you had several.”
Ingrid didn’t know how to reply to Prince Hilton’s query. After all, it was tradition for the Captain to be a Dragon Knight. However, Dragon Knight Lisha and Natasha had both nominated Bella to be the captain, there was nothing she could do!
“Duchess Bellina is the captain? Oh, that’s not bad either, where is she? I want to see her!”
What left Ingrid not knowing whether to laugh or cry was that after finding out Duchess Bellina was the captain, Prince Hilton’s attitude did a 180. After all, Bella had Prince Frauer’s support; she was practically the same as a prince.
Bella nervously greeted Prince Hilton and the two exchanged pleasantries. Afterward, Bella handed him a letter from Prince Frauer. It seemed like the two princes were political allies.
Bella was afraid that Hilton would discover the truth of her body substitute; that she was the long lost 9th princess of the Octavia Empire, Holy Knight Felia.
However, Hilton had rarely seen Felia in the past and didn’t recognize Bella’s body substitute.
“Duchess Bellina, since you were invited by my old friend, Frauer, you’re basically family. I’ll draw out this part of the camp for you.”
Bella used her “connections” in order to secure a better camping location for the girls of Olsylvia Academy. Their distance to the center of Camp Polit was extremely good.
“Then, in the name of Prince Frauer, I thank you for your kindness. It’s getting late, so I will be leaving first.”
“En, right, Duchess Bellina, I hope you don’t mind, but this old man feels that you look rather familiar to one of my empire’s princesses, as if…”
“Your Highness, this kind of joke isn’t funny! You must be mistaken, I’m leaving now.”
Bella almost lost her cool, this alternate world’s old men were all monsters! Even though they had barely met, he was almost able to see through Bella. She didn’t want to have anything to do with her body’s old home. She was extremely dissatisfied with the mistreatment of Princess Felia and still held a very prejudiced view of the Octavia Empire.
Olsylvia Academy’s other group, led by Dragon Knight Shawn, was assigned to a spot at the very edge of Camp Polit, separate from Bella’s group.
The “Knight’s Assembly” would be split into three stages. The first day would be spent on shopping and preparation. The next five days would occur on the Ayden Plains and would consist of knightly competitions. The assembly would only occur on the last day. This order of events left Bella speechless.
The assembly was a lie, the competitions were the true objective of this gathering. The academies’ students formed up into “army groups”, wore matching armor, and rode onto the Ayden Plains to begin the competition.
Compared to the other academies, Olsylvia Academy had less students and could only form into a men’s group and women’s group. They were basically just an audience.
Ogleria Academy and Ophelias Academy were both able to field multiple knight groups and were divided by the type of mounts each group rode. Ogleria’s groups included: Dark Horse Knights, Unicorn Knights, and Earth Dragon Knights. Ophelias Academy’s groups included: Pegasus Knights, Griffin Knights, and Wyvern Knights.
Bella couldn’t tell if the two academy’s had come only to fight with each other. Regardless, Bella decided to treat this experience like a vacation. Her entire group was comprised of the girls of the knights branch; to her, this was a paradise.
On the first day of the Assembly, it was equipment shopping day. Bella decided to stay in camp and didn’t go shopping. The shops in Camp Polit had drastically raised their prices today; did they really think that everyone in Olsylvia Academy was wealthy!
“Bella, the competitions will be focused on hunting demonic beasts. Although us elites have good equipment, the regular students don’t have very good gear, are you sure you don’t want to outfit them properly?”
Seeing the large numbers of people from the men’s group of Olsylvia Academy who were shopping, Natasha worriedly approached Bella. According to the news, the monsters on the Ayden plains had a terrifying magic resistance, as well as strong physical resistance.
Olsylvia Academy had only provided them with ordinary gear that could be purchased in any shop. The majority of the gear was light armor, and since the girls generally preferred light armor, even their privately bought gear consisted of light armor.
Defense was always the downside of light armor, and Natasha’s concerns weren’t without reason. Their knight group only had two Dragon Knights, and their overall power was probably less than any random knight group of the other two academies.
“You don’t have to worry about this, just gather up the girls and go to the center of the camp. I’ve already made preparations.”
After sending Natasha to organize the group, Bella was just about to leave when she discovered a couple of Ophelias Academy’s Wyvern Knights standing around the entrance. They were all Dragon Knights, shown by their Dragon Seals. Ordinary people wouldn’t dare to counterfeit this Seal.
“What is this! I had thought that Olsylvia’s captain this year would be that Princess Natasha, or that new girl, Princess Lisha! I didn’t think it would be a Holy Knight. There won’t even be a competition this time.”
“Looks like our true opponent this time is still going to be Ogleria Academy’s Earth Dragon Knight Stasi, let’s go!”
The beautiful knight at their head had long, fiery red hair and a pair of gorgeous blue eyes. This beauty had a sexy figure and among Bella’s companions, none of them could compete with this girl in terms of figure.
Ophelias Academy’s chief “Crimson Knight” Elise was Bella’s close friend and originally a “Rose Knight”. Now, she was Blood Demon King Eleanor’s cousin. When Bella saw her, she looked similar to Eleanor, reminding Bella of their relation.
In the past, Eleanor had told Bella about her talented little cousin, who was stronger than even Eleanor herself, except that her looks were rather plain. Bella now realized that Eleanor had given her a fake story. No matter how she looked at her, Elise was anything but plain.
Furthermore, her chest area was clearly larger than Eleanor. Bella thought that she might have been ashamed to be outclassed by her little cousin in this area, and was too embarrassed to tell the truth.
“President Elise, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.. Let’s go!”
Elise looked over her shoulder at the fading view of Bella’s camp. She could almost feel the gaze of a “playboy” sweep over her body, as if she were prey.
The problem was, this campsite only housed the female knights of Olsylvia academy. Logically, a woman wouldn’t look at another woman with this type of gaze. Did she make a mistake? Dragon Knight Elise left in a cloud of doubt and confusion.
