I couldn't start talking about the First and Second Princes when I knew nothing about them. And apart from the ducal house, the only affair connected to me was the one that had devastated House Hierro over the illegitimate-son issue. Even if they concluded it was unrelated, they could use interrogation or magic to uncover the terrorist plot. I could simply say I'd been mistaken then.

"The House Hierro affair? Do you think the Empire is involved?"

So he knew. Of course he did. He'd asked me to help the princess; there was no way he hadn't looked into my affairs. Not that the two were likely connected.

"Having her at the entrance ceremony with the princess seemed dangerous. Was I wrong?"

I gave myself a little room to back out, just in case.

"No, you did well. Wait here. I'll check on her myself."

He immediately signaled the other knights and headed for the infirmary in person. Now, what would happen?

Rather than take a seat, I stood at the back and watched the entrance ceremony. The program went on, and the freshmen took their oath. Piar recited his part admirably. Time passed.

At one point, a commotion broke out near the infirmary. Before the ceremony was even over, a message appeared before my eyes.

[The crisis has ended. A new save point has been set.]

* * *

The female lecturer lying in the infirmary killed herself as soon as she woke up. It happened at the very moment the message saying the crisis had ended appeared before my eyes.

I was glad the cycle of deaths had stopped, but the culprit's suicide was deeply disappointing. In my experience, when things ended on such an unsatisfying note, more brushes with death often followed.

But that was a problem for later. Right now, I ought to be grateful that the pain of dying had stopped.

The lecturer's suicide was covered up far more quietly than I'd expected. The entrance ceremony ended as normal, and it seemed her departure had been recorded as leaving early and then resigning. Most people never even learned anything had happened. Only a few members of the royal household's staff and academy officials learned the truth—and only the truth I'd told them.

After the ceremony ended and the immediate cleanup was done, Katrin summoned me to her faculty office. The Senior Knight who had witnessed the lecturer's suicide was there with her.

Katrin's office was so tidy it bordered on bare. A few swords hung on the wall, and there was only a desk and several chairs.

At her gesture, I took the remaining chair and joined their conversation. I supposed I could call it a meeting about Princess Aisha's protection and what to do next.

"I was going to question her as soon as she woke, but she realized what was happening and bit down on a poison capsule."

Katrin sighed at the Senior Knight's report. "So you couldn't find out who ordered her to do it?"

"I'm sorry."

"It couldn't be helped. Still, it's a shame. That was the first lead we'd found in a long time."

Still looking disappointed, Katrin turned to me. "Was there anyone else you found suspicious?"

I thought it over, but I didn't change my mind.

"No. I only happened to remember that woman. To be honest, I wasn't even sure about her."

I was concealing the two students who had become bombs. Of course, it wasn't because I wanted to protect the children, who were nothing more than victims. Nor was I particularly intent on keeping them as bait to pick up the trail we'd lost.

The main reason I kept quiet was that I had no way to identify the two as culprits. I couldn't claim to have seen them in the marquis's domain, and I'd never seen the students meet the lecturer, so I had no way to connect them to her. To reveal that the two students were bombs, I'd have to expose my ability. I had absolutely no intention of doing that.

From what I'd experienced, once a crisis ended, it didn't recur under the same conditions. At least the two students wouldn't explode and send me through another cycle of deaths right away. I had plenty of time to investigate. It was a bit of a risky way to think, but protecting my secret mattered most.

With her hair pinned up and her academy instructor's uniform on, Katrin looked like a mature, striking woman—nothing like the mercenary I'd known. In my previous life, I would definitely have asked for her phone number the moment I saw her. And she'd have turned me down on the spot. But perhaps because I was younger now, I felt nothing like a crush on her. Had my tastes changed after I was reborn...?

In any case, Katrin and the Senior Knight both looked disappointed by my answer.

"We'll have to investigate the dead woman further, but it looks as though we'll have to end the rest of the investigation here. The academy seems uneasy about it too."

As Katrin said, the entrance ceremony affair would probably end there. If the terrorist attack I'd seen before dying had actually happened, it would have thrown the entire kingdom into an uproar, not just the academy. As things stood, it was merely the suicide of one lecturer—and even that had been officially buried.

If only I could have gone back a little farther, I might have dragged more of the people hiding behind this into the open. This was an especially frustrating ending. Or perhaps it wasn't over yet.

"Well done. You're a new student yourself, yet you've been put through all this on official business."

The Senior Knight nodded at Katrin's words. Katrin looked at me with unmistakable pride. That was plainly the look of someone pleased she'd chosen well when picking the princess's escort.

Getting caught up in something bigger than I'd expected had its drawbacks, but earning Katrin's and the Senior Knight's trust in return wasn't a bad outcome. It also meant I could probably ask for a small favor.

"There's something I'd like to ask of you."

* * *

The day after the entrance ceremony, I moved into the academy dormitory. The other students had moved in on the day of the ceremony, but I'd been called all over the place to deal with the aftermath of the lecturer's suicide, so my move was inevitably delayed.

People came to the Royal Academy from all over the country, so it had enough dormitory space for every student. Some students had homes in the capital and commuted, but without fast transportation like the systems from my previous life, most lived in the dorms.

The long, three-story buildings were divided into men's and women's dormitories. They were far larger and more old-fashioned than the university dorms I'd seen in my previous life. The cleanup had also made me miss the next day's orientation, and it was after dinner when I finally entered the dormitory.

I passed a vine-covered wall that showed its age, went through an old-fashioned door, and climbed a staircase that had been renovated more neatly than I'd expected. "Building One, third floor, second-to-last room."

Perhaps because of the hour, hardly any students were passing by. We didn't know one another's faces yet, so those who did pass exchanged only brief nods. In a few days, those glances would be full of prejudice.

I reached the third floor, walked down a long corridor, and stopped outside the room I'd been given. My luggage had already been sent ahead, so I knocked empty-handed and went in.

Two students to a room. The student who had moved in yesterday looked at me, his eyes widening.

"Gresia?"

"Hi, Piar."

The freshman blinking at me was the commoner representative who had taken the freshmen's oath at the entrance ceremony—and the suicide bomber whose explosions had killed me several times.

"What brings you here?"

"What do you think? My bag's right there. I've been assigned to this room too."

"That can't be... I'm a commoner, and..." Piar's expression changed awkwardly mid-sentence.

So he'd learned who I was after only two days. Then again, before I died, the noble freshman representative sitting next to him had worked it out immediately. It wasn't that rumors hadn't spread—he simply hadn't recognized my face. I would be seeing those prejudiced looks sooner than I'd thought.

"I'm a noble, but I'm an illegitimate son. They still treated me well in the domain, but I guess that doesn't count for much here in the capital."

"Uh... I suppose..." Piar couldn't even manage a proper answer. He just stumbled over his words.

As if that were true. I was a son of a ducal house. Illegitimate or not, there was no way they'd normally put me in a room with a commoner. Especially now that I had Princess Aisha's backing.

Naturally, I had no reason to share this room. I was here because I'd asked Katrin to arrange it. I'd convinced her by spinning a story about being an illegitimate son who wanted to experience different ways of life.

I couldn't just leave a bomb lying around because its detonator was gone. The lecturer was dead, but Piar and his older cousin were still problems I had to deal with. Leaving things half-finished could only lead to another death. I had to find the cause—or, if I couldn't, get rid of the bombs—to keep the next death from coming.

Leaving the startled Piar alone, I sorted through the luggage on my bed. There was quite a lot of it, but fortunately the room was spacious.

There wasn't even a bunk bed. A window stood in the middle, with a bed and a desk against each side wall. We each had our own wardrobe. We had to share a washroom and toilet, but the place looked comfortable enough. It wasn't like the princess's current accommodations, a hotel suite with several rooms, a living room, and a reception room, but it was better than a small studio apartment. And Piar, being a commoner, surely wouldn't find it uncomfortable.

I put my things away, washed up, and sat on the edge of my bed. Piar was still sitting in a chair, looking tense. He was pale enough that he seemed to be bitterly cursing whoever had assigned the rooms. Katrin was going to live a very long time at this rate.

In any case, it gave me the perfect opening for a conversation. Time to get him talking.

"Regular classes start tomorrow, right?"

"Oh, you weren't at orientation today... were you?"

"I had something to do."

"Uh... right... sir." He was clearly struggling to decide whether to speak to me as an equal or a superior.

I felt a little sorry for him, but I let him struggle. He hadn't killed me deliberately, but after everything I'd been through, I had no desire to make things easy for him. Come to think of it, that was another reason I'd wanted to share his room.

I shrugged and continued. "You're in the administration faculty, right?"

"Are you in the inherited abilities faculty, young master...?"

"No, the knights faculty."

"The knights faculty?" Piar's eyes went wide. He was so surprised he forgot to speak politely.

The academy was divided into three main faculties: the knights faculty I'd just mentioned, the administration faculty, and the inherited abilities faculty, where students trained their inherited abilities.

Of course, most students at the Royal Academy had awakened inherited abilities, but not every inherited ability was useful. There were abilities suited to administration, such as the perfect memory the former administrator of the royal domain was said to possess, and abilities suited to knighthood, like mine.

Even so, most nobles—especially the high nobility—attended the inherited abilities faculty. No wonder Piar was surprised.