Vote for Your Knight! - Chapter 64

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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 64
A cold smile flickered across the black eyes of the knight holding the ball.
“It is… Joanne Ginola!”
Edith announced it while maintaining a bright expression, pretending not to notice.
Joanne looked down at the Golden Ball with a bewildered face.
“I… I find this burdensome. How can I possibly assign points on behalf of someone else…? I cannot do this.”
“In Kartamen, ‘I cannot’ is not permitted.”
Ines spoke coldly from behind.
Joanne gripped the ball tightly, as though she had no choice.
“I understand. But how am I supposed to…?”
“You save a fellow from your group who might otherwise be eliminated. If there is no fellow to be eliminated, or if you don’t wish to save anyone, then well, there’s nothing to be done….”
Edith glanced toward the Waiting Area.
“The benefit goes to the second-ranked group.”
It meant the benefit would not be nullified even if Joanne refused.
Joanne spoke, as though she had no choice.
“Then I will do it. For a precious comrade.”
Joanne closed her eyes as though deliberating.
“Then everyone except Joanne, please return to the Waiting Area.”
Only Joanne remained on the stage.
Joanne was handed a golden slip of paper and a pen.
“Write the name of one teammate to whom you will give 100,000 points.”
Joanne pretended to deliberate for a long time, then wrote down a name without hesitation.
She folded it carefully, handed it to Edith, and returned to the Waiting Area.
“I myself do not know who is written on this slip. The contents will be revealed in the middle of the Ranking Ceremony.”
The Waiting Area was still buzzing with excitement over the 100,000 points.
Some crowded around Joanne, asking whom she had written.
Joanne only shook her head with a regretful expression, offering no answer.
Amont, watching them, rose from his seat.
“Silence! The Ranking Ceremony begins now.”
At the ringing voice that filled the Circular Arena, the murmuring knights fell quiet.
Edith smiled at Amont and spoke.
“In this Ranking Ceremony, only twenty-four knights can survive. All fifty-four knights shone like stars in the last evaluation, but the Kartamen Rules are strict.”
“Yes!”
“Then the announcement begins.”
The lights of the Circular Arena dimmed, illuminating only Edith and the Survivor Seat.
Tense music played softly.
“Kartamen, we announce from twenty-third place.”
It seemed she intended to announce twenty-fourth place last again.
Pierre, who had ranked nineteenth in the last Mid-term Evaluation, clasped his hands tightly.
‘I must show Master. I must prove that I succeeded through Master’s teachings. And….’
Pierre clenched his teeth.
‘I must make it all the way to the end. There is something I absolutely, absolutely must do.’
Dmitri, who had ranked twenty-seventh, bit his lip as well.
At the last Ranking Ceremony, his heart had been one of despair.
But now it was different.
At the last Ranking Ceremony, he had ranked fifty-fourth.
Yet by the Mid-term Evaluation, he had climbed to twenty-seventh.
It fell short of the surviving twenty-fourth place this time, but he did not wish to give up.
For those who believed in him.
For those who were sacrificed for him.
And for himself.
‘I must succeed.’
“Twenty-third place is a knight who has always impressed with sincere and earnest conduct and a gentle smile. Paul Videtta!”
But twenty-third place defied the expectations of Pierre and Dmitri.
The two swallowed heavy sighs.
Twenty-second place….…
Twenty-first place….…
Twentieth place….…
As the rankings progressed, the remaining survivors grew increasingly anxious.
“Ugh, really, truly thank you. For voting for someone like me…….”
Survivors spoke their thanks through tears,
and this time, there were more knights moved to emotion than before.
The longing had only deepened.
The knights in the Waiting Area watched them with envious eyes.
And envy flickered across Dmitri’s gaze as well.
‘Envy, of all things…….’
A hollow laugh escaped him.
It had been a long time since he’d felt anything like it.
Ever since deciding to become a traitor to the Empire, he’d thought he’d worn away his own capacity for feeling.
‘And here I am, experiencing nearly every emotion there is.’
That was when it happened.
“Seventeenth place. A knight who moves forward quietly, yet inspires confidence. Thanks to that steadiness, his ranking has been climbing beautifully! Dmitri Kassel!”
Dmitri’s name was called.
Dmitri went rigid as stone.
“Oh, Dmitri! Your ranking went up.”
“Again. At this rate, you’ll be taking first place.”
His neighbors patted his shoulder, and he came to himself at last.
Plenty of knights still regarded him with displeasure, of course.
But Dmitri ascended the stage as if moving through a dream.
“Sir Dmitri? Would you share your thoughts?”
Edith spoke to him with an amused lilt, noting his dazed expression.
Dmitri shook his head, trying to gather himself.
He looked exactly like a puppy shaking water from its fur, and Edith had to fight back laughter.
Unable to fathom why she was smiling, Dmitri stared ahead with wide eyes before finally offering his remarks.
“For the first time, I’ve felt hunger. The hunger to survive Kartamen. It felt like something I shouldn’t possess, but I didn’t want to let it go. And now I truly won’t. Thank you to everyone who voted for me.”
His words came steady and measured.
Yet his voice trembled.
Within those few sentences lay all of Dmitri’s inner struggle and every moment of sweat he had shed.
Edith held back her own tears and resumed the rankings.
“And in thirteenth place, a participant from whom answers flow like an encyclopedia no matter what you ask—a participant whom we hope to see graduate as top of Kartamen! Olivier Morti!”
At last, Olivier’s name was called.
“Yay! Congratulations!”
“He survived!”
Nearby participants rushed to embrace and congratulate him.
Those who had trained with him in Red Heart’s first unit came running from afar to hold him.
“Congratulations, Olivier!”
“Thanks, Kusto. And Dmitri, Killian too…….”
“Don’t cry, boy.”
“Cry? Who’s…….”
Olivier broke off, startled.
Tears were genuinely streaming down his cheeks.
‘Was I really this desperate?’
Olivier wiped his tears with the back of his hand and climbed onto the stage.
‘That can’t be right. I didn’t cry when I graduated top of the Imperial Academy, or even when I won the student council presidency despite the prejudice against me, winning through policy alone……?’
“Olivier, would you share your thoughts?”
But the moment he opened his mouth, believing himself composed,
“Really, truly, ugh, thank you…….”
Olivier broke down in tears.
Mere honor as the Imperial Academy’s top graduate was not enough.
Becoming a professor at the academy couldn’t fill Olivier’s ambitions.
So he had challenged Di Eques.
That was how it started.
That was supposed to be all.
“I really, truly wanted to survive. This—Kartamen, I want to keep going. I want to stay with my comrades, and even though I still have much to learn, I want to work hard as a knight…….”
“And you’ve been given the chance to pursue that dream,” Edith said gently.
At her encouragement, Olivier’s tears burst forth anew.
“Yes, ugh…… really thank you so much. At the next evaluation, I’ll, ugh, do my absolute, absolute best.”
Olivier, his eyes red and swollen from weeping, took his seat in the thirteenth position.
He had wept so hard that the other survivors around him had to comfort him.
“This is the first time I’ve seen Olivier like this.”
“I know what you mean.”
The murmur spread through the Waiting Area.
The ranking ceremony continued.
“Eleventh place—you’re all tired of hearing the word ‘madness’ by now, aren’t you? Pierre Simon!”
Pierre climbed the stage with a trembling expression.
Yet he shed no tears, striving to maintain his usual composure.
At his waist hung the Whip he carried with him always.
“Thank you. I came to Kartamen because there was something I absolutely had to accomplish. That is…….”
He drew out his Whip.
“I had to show my master, who left me this heirloom, that I am carrying on his teachings with honor.”
At the mention of a master’s legacy, the arena fell silent.
This was the first time anyone had heard that Pierre’s master was dead.
His face showed no emotion—or rather, it grew even colder as he spoke.
“My master laid down his life in combat against a tyrant’s blood feud. But he taught me to become a true knight. I am infinitely grateful that I could show him I survived Kartamen. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.”
He carefully returned the Whip and sat back down.
His face looked as though tears might spill at any moment, but he clenched his lips so hard they bled, barely holding them back.
Edith gazed at Pierre with sympathy before resuming the next ranking announcement.
“……Tenth place, Grimal Baldo!”
“I owe everything to the commanders of the Imperial Knight Order! Thank you so much! Please continue to support me!”
Indeed, the top rankers had come predominantly from teams that had performed well in the Mounted Combat evaluation.
“Next is ninth place.”
Edith announced.
“A participant who always brightens us with a cheerful face. Morris Arno!”
Morris’s eyes went wide.
He truly hadn’t expected to place ninth.
Only when those around him lifted him up could he walk forward.
Along the way, he received so many congratulations and embraces from the knights that it took considerable time to reach the stage.
Once he stood upon it, Morris’s expression became oddly serene.
“Sir Morris, would you share your thoughts?”
“Yes. I’m grateful to everyone who selected me. And…….”
Morris looked directly at the Image Orb filming him.
“Father, Mother, and my siblings. I thank you all. Because of my family, I was able to grit my teeth and come this far.”
Everyone applauded, moved by his words.
Morris’s eyes gleamed with moisture.
But not from emotion.
His father, who had been indifferent to his son.
His stepmother, who had worked against him.
And his siblings, who had ridiculed him.
When he imagined what expressions they must be wearing now, he wanted to laugh.
So instead, a smile spread across his face.
‘I am already the only knight in my house.’
He had placed within the top twenty-four of Kartamen.
At this point, no sibling could compare to him as the family heir.
Yet his hunger for more burned fiercer still.
Now that it had come to this, he would climb higher.
He would go all the way to the end and show everyone who he truly was.

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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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