Chapter 1
Have you ever experienced your whole world being turned upside down?
A few years ago, Olivia would have answered that question with, “No, nothing like that has ever happened to me.”
But now things were different.
“Olive, stop joking around. You know I don’t like this kind of thing.”
The ordinary noble lady Olivia had gone through three turbulent years after her fiancé left her. Now, she was growing into a proper knight—almost suspiciously capable.
Because of that, Olivia actually felt quite grateful to the man standing before her.
He was the one who had turned her carefully ordered world upside down.
…Even if he was currently ruining her date for about the fourth time.
“I’m not joking. I’m completely serious.”
She truly was.
Olivia was enjoying this date with all her heart.
At least she had been until this man showed up and interrupted.
Her sharp gaze landed on the man who had completely destroyed the pleasant atmosphere without seeming to realize he had done anything wrong.
“Sir Eugene is my date today. Not my brother. So why do you keep trying to ruin my dates?”
“…What?”
The man staring at her in shock as though he had heard something impossible was Aiden Oblivion.
He was the vice commander of the knight order Olivia belonged to and the best friend of her older brother, Cesare.
He had once been Olivia’s fiancé as well.
But that was all in the past now.
“Vice Commander, don’t you think you’re interfering a little too much?”
“Commander, have you truly gone senile? How could you bring along such a young child—”
“Brother—no, Senior.”
Holding back a sigh, Olivia called out to Aiden.
“Are you jealous, by any chance?”
“What?”
“The way you’re acting looks exactly like jealousy.”
“What nonsense are you talking about!”
Unlike Aiden, whose face immediately turned pale, Olivia’s expression brightened.
Her green eyes curved into a smile, and a dimple appeared in one cheek.
Seeing that smile up close, Aiden’s ears turned red as if stained with flower petals.
“I’m just worried about you, Olive. You’re still young, and I’m your brother’s friend. I have a duty to protect—”
“No, you don’t. You’re not my fiancé anymore, and I became an adult a few months ago. I’m old enough to choose my own dating partner.”
So go away.
Putting all those feelings into her stare, Olivia glared at him.
“If you’re not jealous, then trust my judgment and leave. And if you are jealous—”
“…If I am?”
“Keep it buried. It’s already too late.”
Olivia had once loved Aiden.
In truth, she still loved him.
But she had no intention of accepting the feelings of an idiot who couldn’t even recognize his own heart and only threw childish tantrums.
She had waited so long for the chance to say those words back to him.
Hooking her arm through that of the Lux Knights’ commander, Eugene, Olivia smiled brightly.
“Didn’t you say your friend’s younger sibling wasn’t a woman?”
Veritas Academy, the prestigious academy founded alongside the Laurentia Empire itself.
The academy had produced countless outstanding knights, and normally the training grounds would be filled with the spirited shouts of students sparring.
Yet today—
“Again?”
“She’s insane. It’s already been three hours.”
“If you ask me, she’s the craziest person here.”
“You’re only realizing that now?”
Instead of battle cries, the training ground was filled with students chatting.
There was someone stealing the attention of every student who should have been focusing on training.
Clang! Clang!
Brown hair tied high above her head whipped through the air.
A woman holding several daggers charged toward a greatsword as large as a human body.
To any observer, the outcome should have been obvious.
Yet nobody dared predict the winner.
Never underestimate Olivia Kysier.
That was the lesson they had all learned through painful experience during the last three years.
The woman, slender enough to look as if a strong wind might knock her over, was Olivia Kysier.
Three years ago, she transferred into the Department of Knight Studies.
From that moment on, she crushed student after student—many of whom had trained far longer than she had—and eventually rose to the top of her class.
Considering that Olivia had once been an ordinary noble lady with practically no fighting ability whatsoever, the achievement was unbelievable.
Whoosh!
With the sound of air being sliced apart, the weapons in their hands shot toward each other.
Boom!
A tremendous explosion echoed through the training ground.
At the same time, the battle that had seemed destined to continue finally reached its conclusion.
As the heavy greatsword came crashing down toward her, Olivia dodged gracefully, moving with the agility of a cat.
The moment her opponent realized he had missed, panic flashed across his face.
Olivia seized the opportunity.
She kicked off the flat side of the greatsword, which had become embedded in the ground, and leaped upward.
Everyone watching had the same thought.
It was as if gravity worked differently around Olivia.
Lightly vaulting over her opponent, she landed behind him and kicked the back of his knee.
The man collapsed.
Olivia’s dagger flashed dangerously in the sunlight as she gained the advantage.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
“Enough. The winner is Miss Olivia Kysier. Well done, both of you.”
“Thank you, Professor. Bennett, that was a good match.”
“…You’re welcome. I learned a lot too.”
Smiling softly, Olivia pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed away the sweat on her face.
The sight was completely different from the fierce warrior who had looked ready to tear everything apart only moments earlier.
The handkerchief was small and elegant, the sort a noble young lady might carry rather than a knight.
After neatly folding it and putting it away, Olivia turned gracefully and disappeared into the building.
“…”
The evening sun was beginning to set.
The sparring match that had started when the sun was still high in the sky had finally ended.
Bennett remained stiff and motionless until Olivia completely disappeared inside.
The moment she was gone, he collapsed onto the ground.
“Bennett! Are you okay? How did you end up being her sparring partner today?”
“Who was the idiot that said Olivia wasn’t coming to the training grounds this afternoon? Confess right now.”
“Is that really important? You should’ve been more careful this time of year. Field training starts soon.”
“It was you, wasn’t it? I knew it! You sacrificed me to Olivia so you could escape! Today’s the day one of us dies! Get over here!”
“Aaaah! You did the same thing to me! Think about what you did to me last week!”
The training ground suddenly descended into chaos.
Bennett’s frustration from serving as Olivia’s sparring partner for three straight hours wasn’t fading anytime soon.
Soon the area was filled with the screams of tangled students.
Olivia Kysier.
A student in Veritas Academy’s Department of Knight Studies.
A mutant-like noble lady feared by everyone.
She had suddenly appeared one day and climbed above them all.
That had already been three years ago.
“By the way, have you heard that rumor?”
“What rumor?”
“The reason Olivia transferred departments.”
Why had that crazy noble lady abandoned the wonderful field of Monster Taxonomy and thrown herself into a profession where she beat people up for a living?
Anyone who had ever sparred with Olivia had probably wondered that at least once.
After glancing around, Bennett lowered his voice and whispered.
“They say she came here to catch her runaway fiancé.”
“What?”
“Apparently he left behind only a letter breaking off the engagement and ran away to a knight order stationed elsewhere. They say she’s planning to kill him when she finds him, so she’s using us for practice.”
Good heavens.
Sympathy immediately appeared on everyone’s faces.
Olivia was the kind of person who followed through once she made up her mind.
That meant the fiancé would almost certainly be found dead someday.
The cause of death would probably be…
“I wonder what it feels like to be killed by your fiancée.”
“No idea. I’ve never seen a man killed by his fiancée before.”
“Well, we’re probably about to.”
The students looked full of sympathy for the unnamed fiancé of Miss Kysier.
