Everything he needed to pack from the director's office would not even fill a single bag. Command had weapons, so it came down to daily necessities, and even those were available from military supplies.

And so, for the first time in a while, Ivan took his notebook out from beneath the director's desk.

"..."

It was crammed with notes he had scribbled when he first decided this world was the prologue to an academy story. The academy's rules of "common sense," jotted down with some urgency.

Ivan flipped through the notebook, feeling almost nostalgic despite the scant few months that had passed. Surprisingly, much of the "common sense" he had written down had already been dealt with.

Wait.

Dealt with?

He sat down, struggling to dredge up a vague memory drifting through his mind. He stared at the notebook. He had heard something somewhere. What was it? Something that had really left an impression... Well.

Ah.

[Title: What actually disgusts me about academy stories Seriously, the guy steals every growth event meant for the protagonist, takes all the Quest rewards and hidden bonuses, hogs every heroine's salvation arc, and then whenever anything goes wrong, pulls that "Must I step in after all?" bullshit.] └Not wrong lmao

"Oh..."

With the thought finally pieced together, Ivan quietly looked down at the notebook.

The academy's first tutorial. The train attack. I dealt with that.

The attack on the field exercise. I... dealt with that.

The academy's Chamber of Secrets. I dealt with that, too.

The tournament, supposedly the crowning glory of academy stories. I... No, that had nothing to do with the academy in the first place.

Eliminating the nobles plotting against the Princess (headmaster). From a broader perspective, that was close to an academy cliché (those death-eating bastards), so, yes. I dealt with that.

At this point, Ivan put the notebook down for a moment and thought.

Hadn't this left the protagonist's party far too weak?

He did give them a little training, but training in an academy story was merely a detail of daily life mentioned in passing. It was common sense that protagonists did not get stronger through training.

Studying at school belonged in a documentary, not an academy story. An academy was not a place for teaching things. It had to pursue the mother-lion approach to education: throw students into horrific adversity and let them grow.

For a protagonist, the normal process was to awaken through real combat, hardship, adversity, friendship, and love. There was no such thing as a protagonist who grew stronger through physical conditioning and technical drills.

The world was not so earnest and soft. That was the academy genre for you. Even NaruX hadn't grown stronger through training. It might be easier to understand if one recalled the fate of the young martial artist who had dared try to improve through hard work. (That village was so serious about real combat that it used elementary schoolers as child soldiers.)

Then wasn't this a fairly serious problem?

At this rate, he risked having to take down the final boss—probably the Demon King or something comparable—all by himself. Whether that was possible was one thing; whether doing so would even count as reaching the ending was another.

Enrique had told him to turn his own pages, but given the series of events unfolding now, wasn't it abundantly clear that this was an academy story?

"They need experience in real combat, not training."

Ivan finally reached a conclusion. He even felt a sense of crisis: he could not leave the children of the Hero's Party to peacefully devote themselves to their studies like this.

Even in literary fiction, people did not study at school. If anything, literary fiction featured murders or romantic dramas between men. School was never a place for studying. (It was.)

Real combat. Real combat, then.

With dry eyes, Ivan looked at one wall of the director's office. At the many weapons mounted there, pristine from meticulous daily maintenance. At the days when he had been forced to wield them with all his strength and run wild.

At the snowy northern front.

Ah, of course.

"Summer break is almost here."

It was common sense for students to attend some sort of training camp during an academy break. Ivan nodded quietly in the darkness.

Late at night, without a speck of light, Ivan sat at the office table with his fingers interlaced. Only his eyes shone blue.

The protagonists needed real combat.

And to him, real combat meant killing.

* * *

St. Jansk University was always lively. Naturally. Given its astronomical tuition, students who could afford to attend generally had no reason to worry about things like grades or life after graduation.

This was easy to understand if one thought of art colleges on Earth. Parents who could send their children to study art for four years were generally wealthy. In that climate, art colleges could almost always stay lively.

At worst, a noble's child would graduate and inherit the family estate, which meant a future as the owner of a vast farm was already guaranteed. It helped to remember that studying was not an essential virtue for a factory owner's child.

Thus, with final exams just over, Jansk University was enjoying a festive atmosphere day after day.

"Bella! What are you doing after school? Want to go to a café?"

"No, I'm busy."

Isabelle trudged along with a gloomy expression, scanning her surroundings. She was not looking for students, of course. She was searching for a certain man who had been missing for days.

Had he gotten hurt again? She had certainly seen him collapse, but immediately after hearing that the Princess was nursing him herself, the hospital had been locked down, preventing her from visiting.

It had been much the same since. The orphanage was still under repair, and for some reason, Counterintelligence Command was a hive of activity cut off from the outside world. (Intelligence agencies were supposed to be cut off from the outside world.)

So, things like:

'I heard your wedding fell through, mister! Oh, how tragic. Doesn't this mean someone really needs to take you off the market? Do you know even a single woman?'

'Hmm. Well, there's no helping it. Just wait two years. If you're still single when I graduate, I suppose I'll take you out of the goodness of my heart.'

'Don't be so moved. Heehee, I'm in my prime too, you know. Who knows? I might meet someone else in the meantime.'

'No, no, no, don't look so hurt! There isn't anyone! There isn't! I'm not even thinking about it!'

Well. You know.

Those sorts of situations. Hoping for one, she had visited the training grounds every day, sat in the yard at night waiting listlessly, and wandered the campus at lunchtime for no reason, looking for a suspicious gardener.

But he was never there. She could not find Ivan anywhere. And now, all of a sudden, unease was welling up.

Mister was an intelligence agent, an exceptionally capable one at that, and senior enough for the Princess to give him operational orders herself.

On top of that, he was so serious about getting married that he had personally entered the Princess's marriage tournament and gone all out against the old woman (she wasn't) called the strongest elf.

Could the Princess perhaps be interested in him, too?

"No way!!"

Impossible. Sure, his eyes were rather pretty, but look at that beard. Always long and shaggy, with annoyingly lovely texture. And his hair was invariably a bird's nest. Who would want a man who wore shabby work clothes every single day?

Yes, exactly. He was a pitiful old man (he wasn't) with no one but her to take him.

Then was he really badly hurt? Unable even to move?

Isabelle walked on, grumbling at length. Today she would try making that fermented vegetable stew again. This time, she planned to let it marinate with the salted meat he liked.

Had Ivan seen it, the dish would have moved him to tears. "To think the day would come when I could eat Xpam wrapped in kimchi."

* * *

"Miss Einarsdottir, if you have no plans after school today, perhaps we could..."

"Oh, I'm sorry. My fiancé wouldn't like that."

"Fian...?! You're engaged...?"

"Yes, hehe. Father was quite insistent. We're planning to marry right after graduation."

Esidisi was enjoying life in the conducting department.

These future unemployed nobles, who did not play instruments themselves, were generally among the most sociable students in the College of Arts. Their discipline greatly dulled the prickliness characteristic of artists.

Questions of how cheap or expensive someone else's instrument was, or whether and how they had wrecked it, were a world away from the conducting department.

There were plenty of expensive batons, too, but even one carved from gold was only an expensive stick to a noble. The price ceiling was entirely different from that of a costly instrument.

Besides, Esidisi's baton was an iron rod. Bang-Bang, the goddess who sang of wrath (the Second: two months old), actually looked more like a mace than a conductor's baton.

A foreign princess, good-looking, gentle-natured, and even frugal. Amid the seething youthful passions of the first-year students, Esidisi could never be lonely.

"Miss Einarsdottir is engaged...?"

"It... It can't be...!"

"This isn't real. What did I even come to this university for...?"

Thus, the conducting department's male students wailed at this bolt from the blue and scattered like a routed rabble. (They did accept it. Betrothal was a perfectly normal way to arrange a marriage.)

"Eshi! Who's your fiancé? Is he handsome?"

"Hmm. I only found out recently, but he's some provincial noble... He's handsome. And a friend of Father's..."

"Eek."

Engaged to her dad's friend...? Then how old was he?

The faces of the students around Esidisi, who had been thrilled by this romance of the century, visibly cracked.

Eshi's father was, well, the Slaughterer of Droan, Great King Einar...

Uh, if that "Slaughterer" approved of him... And if they were friends of a similar age... Their tastes were probably similar, too...

An image flashed through the students' minds: a muscular, middle-aged man roaring with laughter, his beard covered in beer foam.

"Miss Einarsdottir! Y-you must give marriage more careful consideration...! However important political concerns may be, they are not more important than your life! Do you understand? I... I swear I'll save you, Miss Einarsdottir!!"

Some fellow claiming to be the son of a count from Thilles ran off howling. Esidisi watched his retreating back coldly, then shook her head.

"Where is he now? If he's in Prizhenkaya, I'd love to meet him!"

At this question from a classmate she had grown quite close to, Esidisi's expression stiffened.

Indeed. Where was he?

Already engaged, yet he had entered a tournament to marry another woman, fought until he fainted, and been carried off. Not a word since.

That sort of behavior was fundamentally unacceptable in Droan. Droan was a civilized society with an established tradition of monogamy. Such barbaric concubinage called for a round of "traditional games." Usually, that meant castration.

They were still only engaged, with both sets of parents' permission, so things would not go that far... Still, considering their future married life, she needed to establish some discipline.

Esidisi quietly stroked Bang-Bang (conductor's baton: steel) and sank into troubled thought.

* * *

At that moment, Ivan was seated in Command's operations room, studying an unfolded military map of Krasilof.

"Supply lines?"

"We can secure them through nearby estates. Yelyabinsk happens to be in the vicinity. The newly installed Duke Sheretif will certainly be sympathetic to our operations."

"Excellent. How many personnel can we deploy?"

"Excluding the agents operating inside Prizhenkaya, then those dispatched to the north and west... We have approximately sixty-three personnel in southern Krasilof."

"And armed personnel, excluding essential domestic intelligence staff?"

"That leaves forty-seven."

"Enough."

He could not touch agents currently deployed on operations, so those were out. Drawing personnel on standby for training would give him just under fifty.

That would be enough to form a strike team capable of disrupting the enemy's rear in a small-scale campaign.

In other words, more than enough to keep five or six people under control.

Ivan nodded in satisfaction. The operations officer ventured a question.

"I'd like to issue the training notice. Will you be submitting an operational plan?"

"I'll handle it myself. The operation's name..."

Summer Getaway.

After all, it was one of the indispensable elements of an academy summer break.

He would designate an operational area spanning sea and mountains, then conduct "real combat" training within it, incorporating every bit of his own combat experience.

So, Operation Summer Getaway. That would do.

Ivan nodded and rose from his seat.