The training grounds for the Olsyvia Academy’s knight division’s students was a large field just outside of the northern Filomina branch’s school grounds. In this world, knights required the most input of wealth out of all the non-magic classes as the heavy plate armour and mount for a well trained knight was several times more expensive than the equipment that an archer or assassin of the same level needed.
Due to this reason, the students who had picked the knight class as their specialty were mostly students from the nobility’s Filomina branch and the royalty’s Euphemia branch. There were a few students from the Church’s St.Louis branch and the geniuses’ Olivia branch but there wasn’t a single student from the commoner’s Francis branch.
Currently on the training grounds, a large number of student knights had gathered and were awaiting the arrival of their instructor. There were a few among these students who drew more attention than the others , they were new to the academy this year, yet possessed the cultivation of dragon knight. One should know that even in the empire of knights, the Octavian Empire, dragon knights were quite few in number and it was hard to see them around in times of peace.
“Bellina…nee, aren’t you supposed to be in class right now? So why have you come over to our knight division’s training grounds?”
“Of course, your big sister is a good student and I’ve already gotten someone to take my place in class, you don’t have to worry.”
“So why didn’t you go find Kriss? Her relationship with you has been getting better and better every day?”
“I’ve came to look for my cute little sister Lisha first! Let’s quiet down a little, the instructor should be here soon.”
Bella and Lisha had already changed into a set of light plate training armour and were currently waiting for the knight division’s instructor to arrive. Beside Bella was one of her loli ‘maidservants’, Noesha, as well as Shelly who had decided to become Bella’s squire. A proper knight, under normal circumstances, would hire a squire.
Of the other students in the knight division, there were quite a few of them with their own attendants and squires so Bella’s arrival didn’t draw too much attention. The strange ring that Charlotte had given Bella didn’t only have the ability to pause time, it also created something similar to a body double that remained behind and continued to do whatever Bella had been doing previously, in this case, attending class.
Using this strange ring, Bella had successfully ditched her class and even though she didn’t understand how exactly this ring worked but she decided to thank Charlotte the next time she saw that fake loli. The reason as to why Charlotte was so hard to find was probably due to something similar to this ring, Bella wanted to ask some questions the next time that she saw him.
Bella’s older sister Irene was having a hushed conversation with a flaxen-haired beauty not far from where Bella and Lisha was standing. That beauty was the Octavian Empire’s 3rd princess, Octavio Luce, who had returned to good health after receiving the heart of a [Ground Dragon] to dispel the curse that had been placed over her.
It was quite evident that Irene had already talked with Luce about Bella as the latter’s eyes had looked towards Bella and Lisha quite a few times. Luce had most likely already recognized the identity of Bella’s substitute, Felia. Luce had a much better relationship with these two younger sisters of than Irene did and if it wasn’t for the fact that there were too many wandering eyes around, Luce would definitely have greeted the two of them.
Bella didn’t know how much Irene had talked with Luce about, in Bella’s plans, she had already ‘marked’ Luce as someone on her side. When she had the chance, Bella was going to invite Luce out to reignite their sisterly relationship.
The knight division’s instructor was the dragon knight Congreve, a middle-aged man who exuded killing intent and a member of the Octavian Empire’s Royal Dragon Knight Corp. Of his previous students, the most renowned was the young dragon knight, Randall Shawn. As an experienced dragon knight who had many times seen the fields of battle, he placed high expectations on his students.
“Lisha, where is your Golden Dragon?”
“Teacher, my mount is temporarily…”
“What, a dragon knight who lost her own mount, if this were on the battlefield… go and find a suitable mount before you come back to class.”
On the training grounds, Congreve immediately spotted the mountless Lisha. This girl who was called one of the Octavian Empire’s biggest potentials,【Magic Dragon Knight】 Lisha, was just a third-rate knight who had even lost her mount and lost face for all the other dragon knights in the empire. If it wasn’t for her status as one of the Octavian Empire’s princesses and the fact that he served in the Octavian Empire and its royal family, he would definitely have lost his temper here and now and straight up kicked Lisha out of his class.
Lisha’s face was a little red as she looked down at her feet, just like a child who had been scolded, not daring to look at Congreve. Her mount, one of the Golden Dragons’ princesses, hadn’t signed a permanent contract with her. Lisha had desperately need power back then and had to settle for a ‘Risk Contract’ with the Golden Dragon, if she were to ever lose in battle, her contract with the Golden Dragon would be automatically voided.
Back in the fighting around the Gabriel Empire’s Laerte defensive line, Lisha had suffered a defeat at the hands of the demon king Bella’s six void monarchs. Her contract with the Golden Dragon had been broken there and then. Bella held quite a bit of the responsibility as to why Lisha didn’t have a mount currently, as it was her subordinate void monarchs who had defeated Lisha so handily.
“Wait, Mr. Instructor, by what right are you telling my little sis… dorm mate to leave the class? It’s not like you run this academy.”
As Congreve was about to begin class, a female knight with golden hair stepped in front of Lisha and spoke. This girl shared quite a few similarities in appearance with Lisha and Congreve almost thought that it was one of Lisha’s elder sisters, Irene or Luce, who had stepped up and spoke to him.
“This is my classroom, is there anything wrong…”
“Uncle, I feel like your qualifications to be a knight are a little lacking, where’s your chivalry? I think that the person that should get out of here, is you!”
“Little girl, you dare to question my…”
Congreve was a dragon knight who had seen his share of the battlefield and still kept quite a few of the habits that had been left from those times. Seeing that a girl had dared to speak against him in front of the entire class, he swung his lance at Bella without a second’s thought.
Of the onlooking knight division students, quite a few of the female students had closed their eyes out of fear. Congreve had quite the reputation among the academy’s students for being hard on his students and even though they secretly agreed with what Bella had said, they didn’t dare to take any actual action. The only one who was planning to actually do something was the male Saviour who Bella was paying attention to earlier, Scout.
Scout was about take this cliche hero saves the beauty chance. Even though he didn’t plan on flirting with Bella but if he took action know, he would definitely be able to leave a lasting impression in the knight division’s students and it would make it much easier for him to flirt with them!
However, Scout never got the chance to do anything. The students who had their eyes open were able to see that Congreve’s lance had been intercepted by the seemingly soft and weak golden-haired beauty, with only one hand at that. The scene was frozen in front of them and Congreve looked at the student in front of him with a look of shock.
This seemingly weak girl, without the aid of proper armour, had used her body to receive his attack. Even the dragon knight Shawn wouldn’t dare to take an attack from Congreve in this matter.
In Congreve’s moment of shock, Bella quickly applied force to her hand and pulled the lance right out of his hands. Quickly recovering from his shock, Congreve was about to launch an attack on Bella when he felt killing intent from behind him.
Behind Congreve, Irene and Luce walked over with their blades pointed at his back. As members of the royal family, they were allowed to carry sharpened swords during their time at the Olsyvia Academy and it was quite evident what they meant when they pointed their swords at Congreve’s back.
“Irene, Luce, what are you two trying to do?”
“Lisha is our little sister, we can’t just sit and watch as she gets kicked out of class!”
“Sir Congreve, even though we’re in the academy right now and we can’t deal with this like we would back in the empire, Lisha is my little sister and if you kick her out like this, it’ll be rather problematic for me!”
Congreve hadn’t expected to anger the princesses Irene and Luce, back in the Octavian Empire, it wasn’t exactly a secret that these two didn’t have the best relationship with Lisha. So why was it that after a few months, their relationship had improved so much?
“There’s no need to be so impulsive, everyone. Princess Irene, Princess Luce, can you two put down your blades please? To draw swords on the instructor is…”
“Don’t step into this, Natasha. Congreve, I am challenging you to a knight’s duel. If you lose, from now on the knight division will be split by females and male and I don’t care if you go teach the males or anywhere else as long as it’s not the females. Of course, if I lose, I’ll drop out of the academy myself and I’ll pay you 100,000 gold coins as an apology for damaging your honour.”
The Disciplinary Committee’s head chair and avid stalker of Bella, Natasha, was also a student of the knight division and seeing the scene before her, knew that she had to intervene before the consequences became irreversible. Thing was, on one side was one of the academy’s teachers and on the other was 3 of hre country’s princesses and a problematic Duchess, so all Natasha could do right now was make sure that the situation didn’t escalate and wait for another teacher to arrive.
“Are you sure, you haven’t even completed your knight’s qualifications. You dare to challenge a dragon knight? Young people these days sure are…”
“It’s not like I haven’t fought a dragon knight before, Congreve, you can summon your dragon mount for the fight. I don’t want you to make any excuses later as to how you lost to me.”
Bella hadn’t done this simply due to Congreve kicking Lisha out of class but it was also the main reason as to why she actually took action. She had previously heard from some of the more senior female students in the knight division that Congreve had always been biased against females, believing that males were those who were most suited for the knight profession. During training, he much much harder on the female students, enough to be considered excessive.
In Bella’s opinion, this sexually biased Congreve who was unable to treat all of his students equally, didn’t have the right to continue being the knight division’s instructor. She had also glanced at Scout earlier and knew that he was about to make is move and that if she didn’t take action, Scout would have stolen the spotlight, something that Bella didn’t want to see.
“Alright, I accept your challenge. Because you’re a girl, I won’t even have to summon my mount to beat you.”
“If you really think so but I hope that you won’t regret that decision!”
Bella looked at the confident Congreve with a slight smirk on her face. Congreve didn’t know it yet but even if he had tried to summon his mount just now, it wouldn’t have arrived. Noesha had already used her spatial magic to locate where Congreve’s dragon mount was resting and Bella’s familiar, the demon world’s princess Hadia, was on her way over there with the void monarchs Brisbane and Yulysses.
“Bella…nee, you don’t have to help me…”
“Dumb little girl, I’m your nee-san too, why shouldn’t I help my cute little sister after she got bullied?”
“But… Congreve is a dragon knight, you…”
“Just sit and watch, my little sister, I won’t let anyone bully you and get away with it!”
Bella reached over and comforted Lisha by patting her head, after which Lisha obediently backed up some distance before turning to look back at Bella. After repairing her relationship with Bella, Lisha wasn’t as stubborn and overwhelming as she had used to be, probably because she no longer needed to put on a facade now that she had someone to rely on.
Due to the fact that Lisha’s head was lowered, Bella and the others didn’t notice that through Lisha’s beautiful blue eyes had briefly flashed a golden ray of killing intent. That was the eye colour of the 【Dragon Demon Empress】 Alisha, Bella didn’t notice it yet but the old Alisha, the one who destroyed entire dimensions, was still alive in the current Lisha as another personality, just that she hadn’t shown herself yet.
At the center of the knight division’s training grounds was the Knights’ Arena. This was an open air building similar to an ancient Roman amphitheatre. The knight division’s students had split into two groups, all of the female students had naturally chosen to sit behind Bella as they had long felt the difference in the way that Congreve treated them compared to how he treated the male students. Regardless if Bella won here or not, the fact that she chose to speak out was worthy of the female students’ acknowledgement.
All of the males sat behind Congreve with rather awkward expressions on their faces. Even though they too were not happy with how harsh Congreve was on his students, if he lost here there would be no more girls for them to look out during class. The armour of the female student knights wasn’t the full plate that was worn by a typical knight, mostly being half plate or light plate that still offered some fanservice.
The adjudicator for this duel was the Disciplinary Committee’s head chair Natasha. It was a knightly tradition that when dragon knights were involved in a duel, the adjudicator would have to be a dragon knight from an uninvolved third-party. Currently, there were 4 dragon knights in the arena.
Lisha didn’t have a mount and was also one of the parties involved in this whole affair, so she couldn’t be the adjudicator. The dragon knight Shawn, who was also watching was a prided disciple of Congreve and therefore not able to become the adjudicator.
At the center of the arena, Congreve looked at Bella with a serious look on his face. Bella hadn’t changed into a proper suit of armour, still wearing the light plate that was to be used for training. Behind Bella, her squire Shelly was currently drawing the magic formation for mount summoning on the ground.
“Bella, where did you get this strange dragon bone from, I’ve never seen one like it?”
“All you have to do is the summoning, Shelly I’m…”
“There’s no need to apologise, I chose to become your squire, so I’ll go everywhere that you go. Eh… this power is…”
Right as Bella was about to thank Shelly for her understanding, a great power rippled out from the magic formation that Shelly had drawn, quickly followed by a fierce roar that travelled across the entire arena. All of the mounts that had been brought over by the knight division’s students, including a few prideful unicorns all collapsed on the ground out of fear.
The Ice Dragon mount of Natasha hadn’t collapsed in fear but had suddenly tensed up and looked at the magic formation cautiously. A few seconds after the bloodcurdling roar, a giant dinosaur shaped mount appeared. Its blood red eyes were exceptionally frightening, apart from its gentle and placid look as it looked at Bella and Shelly, it gave off a fierce and terrifying look when it looked at anyone else.
This monster, [Fierce Dragon], looked the same as a Tyrannosaurus Rex and had been equipped with a full suit of black gold armour. This beast was something that Bella had created herself using the [Fierce Dragon] that she had defeated back at the Unnamed Forest several months ago as a template, improving many of the original’s flaws. If it wasn’t for the fact that it didn’t have any wings, there would be no dragon that could match it’s combat prowess.
“SS+ class monster, [Fierce Dragon], how does one summon such a monster, isn’t it only a legend!”“
“No, it’s not just SS+, that black suit of armor is definitely enough to push it into SSS class. If Congreve doesn’t summon his mount, he’s done for. Though [Fierce Dragon] can’t use magic, it’s pretty much peerless when it comes to ground battles.”
Congreve didn’t have the best look on his face, he hadn’t expected Bella having the ability to summon such a terrifying dragon-type monster. Even though he had heard that Shelly had quite the talent as a summoner but she had never summoned any monster about A class. This turn of events had caught him unaware and he had temporarily fallen into a stupor.
Congreve knew that he could no longer treat Bella as anything but a strong opponent on his level and decided to summon his mount. However, after he finished the incantation for summoning his mount, the Red Dragon didn’t appear. Currently, his mount had already been beaten within an inch of its life by Hadias and the two void monarchs, it would have been strange if it could answer the summons.
