Vote for Your Knight! - Chapter 13

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Vote for your knight!
Chapter 13
* * *
-Edith’s Notebook-
※Participant List by Grade※
Grade 3
Deni Binoshu
– Fisherman from the Southern Coastal Region
– Uses harpoon and net as weapons
– A fisherman, but handsome as a sea god—that’s just unfair
– Taciturn. Maybe he’ll answer someday?
Pavel Shurb
– Pink-haired boy with unruly curls
– Wields a greatsword nearly as tall as himself
– Calls Deni Binoshu “Shusu”
– Adorable
Killian Gruci
– Former mercenary, fights with an axe
– Who carved scars into that sculpted face!
– His upper body is exceptionally strong
His lower body, on the other hand, leaves something to be desired…
– But he’s the most normal one here
Grade 4: None
Grade 5
Morris Arno
– Heir to the Arno Trading Company, a house in disarray
– Claims he entered to become a Di Eques as a commoner representative, but seems to have other motives
– Is it prejudice to think that with that handsome face and spirited personality, he couldn’t possibly devote himself to knighthood alone?
* * *
Underground of Princess Palace.
Edith was burning the midnight oil, editing the first episode of Kartamen.
This place had been an alchemical laboratory until recently.
But it had been converted into an editing room for Kartamen.
Of course, the editing method was quite different from her past life.
‘It’s being done with the newly created magical tool, after all.’
Edith stood before an enormous well.
So vast it was less a well than a pond, its walls were entirely constructed of mana stone.
Inside, it brimmed with transparent water saturated with magical power.
This was the Video Editing Magical Tool.
Edith dropped several image orbs into the transparent water.
Splash! Splash! Splash!
The magical tools submerged in water bubbled and foamed.
Soon the bubbles swelled and floated upward into the air.
Inside each spherical bubble, the footage captured by the image orbs played back.
Edith had to carefully carve and edit these bubbles to craft a single episode’s worth of broadcast.
“Ah, almost done now. Just this last part.”
Dark circles shadowing her eyes, Edith gritted her teeth and began editing in earnest.
Most of the participants weren’t yet aware of the video magical tools recording them.
As a result, raw arguments and colorful language erupted constantly.
“Even without any editing, just airing it raw would be spicy enough, wouldn’t it?”
Edith forgot her fatigue entirely and threw herself into the editing with frenzied intensity.
* * *
The training session didn’t end until after midnight.
“Are we insane?”
“Ugh, I’m exhausted. There’s no way I’m going home tonight.”
The Training Ground was located on the outskirts of the Capital. For those whose homes were in the heart of the city, the journey back would take considerable time.
Most chose to sleep in the Dormitory near the Training Ground instead.
‘My peaceful dormitory…’
Kusto, who had imagined monopolizing the empty room for himself, fell into despair.
The reality was four rowdy men crammed into a cramped space.
Dormitory assignments were random.
Everyone here felt equally out of place.
Still, with only four of them in one room, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
They didn’t ignore him or jeer the way larger groups sometimes did.
“My name is Kusto. What’s yours?”
…….
Were they treating him as if he didn’t exist?
Kusto, awkward and fumbling for conversation, regretted extending the greeting to the man in the next bed.
But the way he kept his eyes fixed suggested it wasn’t quite dismissal.
Kusto steeled himself and tried once more.
“Is that net your weapon?”
“……Deni Binoshu.”
“?”
“My name.”
And then nothing more.
‘Damn it…….’
Kusto glanced around the room.
The other participants, having witnessed the end of their stilted exchange, had already turned away and settled into their beds.
It was a silent signal: keep your awkward conversation to yourselves.
Unable to bear the suffocating tension any longer, Kusto slipped outside.
‘Might as well train.’
The Training Ground near the Dormitory stayed open at all hours.
It was the Princess’s way of encouraging them to practice whenever they wished.
But it was past midnight now.
Everyone would be exhausted, so the Training Ground should be empty.
“There’s no one……here, is there?”
He was mistaken.
The lit Training Ground already held several people hard at work.
‘Monsters, the lot of them.’
Dmitri was among them.
He turned to look at Kusto with a mix of gladness and surprise, then his expression softened into something like pity.
“Don’t tell me you…….”
“?”
His eyes drew downward with sorrow.
His whole bearing radiated sympathetic understanding.
Sensing something ominous, Kusto watched as Dmitri forced a smile.
“Were you kicked out of your room too?”
So this one had been thrown out.
Kusto’s mouth twisted awkwardly as he answered.
“No. I’m fine.”
“……I see.”
With even that one point of connection broken, Dmitri turned away with a dejected sigh.
‘Damn it, why do I even care.’
Kusto drifted toward Dmitri, who was training halfheartedly.
“This move confuses me a bit.”
As he muttered it under his breath, Dmitri’s eyes lit up.
“Then let me show you!”
‘What is this man, really…….’
The infamous traitor to the empire carried himself this way?
Kusto found himself questioning the reputation.
And the earnest care with which Dmitri tried to teach him was almost touching.
‘Could there be some misunderstanding?’
Something didn’t add up.
As Kusto practiced the movements he was shown——
“But you really don’t improve much, do you.”
!
“It doesn’t seem like lack of practice. Is it just a natural lack of talent?”
Kusto stared at Dmitri, whose face held not a trace of malice.
‘Maybe he’s not shunned for being a traitor—maybe he’s shunned because his mouth is like this.’
With that thought occupying him, Kusto heard something strange from beside him.
“Hah! Ugh!”
Kusto and Dmitri turned their heads in unison.
A fair-haired man with delicate features was awkwardly swinging a practice sword.
Rafael Lorang.
A participant with the unusual distinction of having served as an orphanage director.
He was one who had received a higher grade than his actual skill warranted, simply because potential was visible in him.
Someone beside him spoke with a laugh.
“Wow, you’re just as hopeless as I am.”
“Is that so?”
“And you just got the motion wrong. This is how you do it.”
The man delivering cutting remarks with a smiling face was Morris Arno.
Heir to the Arno Trading Company and its master, he held Grade Five.
Morris demonstrated the form.
It was just as clumsy as Rafael’s.
Where Rafael had failed to memorize the motion but showed some knack, Morris had memorized the form yet still looked inadequate in raw execution.
…….
…….
Two hopeless students fumbling through the movements together in mutual encouragement.
“Ha ha! So that’s how it’s done?”
“Yes, indeed. Try again. Ah, excellent! That’s nearly perfect now.”
“Come now, it’s not quite that good. Morris is doing better than I am.”
Among themselves they were cheerful and warm, but watching them was nearly unbearable for anyone with a shred of discernment.
Dmitri and Kusto, who had been observing in silence, drew near them without any ceremony.
“Well… I doubt you’d welcome my help, but that form would be better done like this.”
“I only just learned myself, but in that last motion you need to relax your strength a bit.”
Rafael and the other man’s eyes widened in surprise at the sudden arrival of these two.
Yet they soon broke into broad grins.
“Wow, you’re really skilled.”
Rather than dancing around it, wouldn’t you consider teaching us more thoroughly? As you can see, we’re rather below the standard.”
Morris especially was enthusiastic.
‘He was the one who kept the mood bright during the Grade Five training as well.’
It was admirable that after living such a sheltered life, he received Grade Five here and didn’t fall into despair.
‘And seeing how he’s come out here to practice separately, he doesn’t seem ignorant of his own level either.’
Was it a gift of temperament?
As Kusto fell into thought, Dmitri gave another start of surprise.
“You wish me to teach you in earnest? Do you not know who I am?”
“You’re the famous Knight Dmitri, after all.”
“And yet you wish to learn from me?”
“Why not? I’m a merchant, so if it helps, I don’t mind either way. What about you, Rafael?”
“Truth be told, I’m hardly in a position to be choosy either.”
In the face of these two’s transparent sincerity, Dmitri lowered his eyes with pity.
“You’ll come to regret it…….”
“But you were teaching us incredibly well just now.”
“It’s not as though we don’t want to teach you. Ha ha!”
Both possessed guileless, straightforward dispositions.
Struck by their warmth, Dmitri’s face flushed as he nodded in agreement.
* * *
Even after the first day, Kusto trained the latest into the evening.
Dmitri, Rafael, and Morris trained adequately and departed, but Kusto could not.
Having no foundation compared to the others, his path was singular.
Clench his teeth and persist through.
Only then could he preserve even Grade Two.
And Kusto, unlike the others, had his own reason for being able to endure training that bordered on ascetic practice.
Yet there were those who envied his dedication.
Kilmen’s faction in particular.
They too began staying late in the Training Ground, practicing on their own.
But it did not last long.
After four days, none of them remained in the Training Ground.
They had simply exhausted themselves.
“Pretending to work hard all by himself.”
“You don’t need to push that hard. There’s plenty of work for everyone who wants it.”
They left with a few parting jibes, unbothered.
* * *
Before sleep, David sat by the window nursing a cup of tea when he happened to glance outside.
Kusto was alone in the Training Ground, still training.
He’d been with Dmitri just moments ago, and now he was by himself again.
‘He’s doing fine without me.’
That, at least, was a comfort.
At first, David had worried—Kusto was slave-born, after all, and might be shunned, denied fair evaluation.
Kartamen was supposed to be a sacred, impartial competition.
For that reason, David had kept watch over Kusto.
But that concern, it seemed, had been nothing but his own arrogance.
Kusto was managing well enough, his origins notwithstanding.
It looked as though he’d already made a few allies among the other competitors.
‘I feel almost envious.’
David smiled at the absurdity of it and took another sip of his tea.
He couldn’t bring servants to the Dormitory, so he’d brewed it himself.
“That Kusto fellow—he’s working awfully hard to impress the Princess and the Valkyrias, isn’t he?”
One of the other competitors who shared their room spoke up then.
Until yesterday, this man had been training late into the night, trying to keep pace with Kusto.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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