Interlude 2: Jessica Montford
Entering the Royal Academy was the biggest event of Jessica Montford’s life—being a young girl who came from a small provincial family and was the daughter of a baron. There was the overwhelmingly bustling Royal Capital, the unbelievably grand construction of the Academy, and on top of that, the second prince was one of her classmates. However, what surprised her the most wasn’t any of that—it was a girl the same age as her named Yumiella Dolkness.
Yumiella had stood out since the entrance ceremony. When her level assessment put her at level 99, she didn’t panic, despite being suspected of fraud. If anything, she was acting as if it was natural for her to be level 99.
It wasn’t until the first day of classes that Jessica was truly afraid of Yumiella. Yumiella had sent her opponent flying in their swordsmanship class and painted the entire sky black in their magic class. There probably wasn’t a single student who didn’t feel fear after witnessing that giant black orb floating in the sky.
The rumors started by Prince Edwin and Alicia that Yumiella was the Demon Lord were also suspected by Jessica’s peers to be true. Though she didn’t think much of it before, Yumiella’s black hair began to feel sinister, and her expressionless face—making it impossible to read what she was thinking—scared Jessica. After the entrance ceremony, she spent her days keeping her distance from Yumiella, who now felt like a strange creature.
But then, the students’ feelings toward Yumiella began to change after the first round of outdoor training. When she had shrunk from being scolded by Patrick, Jessica felt like she was just a regular girl. Though she was curt, Yumiella would properly respond when spoken to and didn’t use her strength blindly. Jessica started to wonder if maybe she wasn’t such a scary person after all, but the first term passed without the fear in her heart ever completely disappearing, and she returned home for the summer break.
After the first day of school following summer break, female students of provincial families gathered in a first-year classroom. The girls who were detached from issues like the centralist faction wars were simply happy to be reuniting with their friends. Jessica was there as well.
During long breaks, provincial aristocrats were allowed to return to their homes, but there were many who chose to stay due to the distance or cost of returning. Yumiella and Patrick were two of those who stayed behind. Having just returned to the Royal Capital, the girls began to catch each other up on their summers.
“It’s been a while! But I guess only, like, half of us went home?”
“Who stayed at the Academy? Did anything happen in the Royal Capital while we were gone?”
“I stayed back. The high-ranking centralists seemed to have a lot of parties and retreats going on, but nothing really happened with us.”
“Parties sound nice,” sighed one girl. “There were some gatherings hosted by provincial aristocrats, but they weren’t really parties...more like banquets?”
The glitz and glamor of the Royal Capital seemed to be out of reach for the provincial girls. Several of them sighed deeply.
“Wouldn’t it be kind of scary to be invited to the Royal Palace, though?” one girl chimed in, trying to hide her envy. “I couldn’t go. I’d be too nervous.”
“Oh, I heard that Alicia was invited by His Highness.”
“What?! No way! Isn’t she a commoner?”
Jessica and the other girls present weren’t at all discriminatory toward commoners, but they didn’t think very well of Alicia, who was only close with a member of the royal family and sons of powerful nobles and no one else. Their unladylike conversation continued.
“I thought His Highness had better judgment. Yumiella being the Demon Lord must be wrong after all.”
“I don’t believe it’s true either. Oh, by the way, how were Yumiella and Sir Patrick during the break?”
“They were the same as usual—kind of like an older brother and his younger sister or a beast tamer and his beast.”
“My impression of her changed quite a bit. I thought she was a scarier person.”
“I can’t blame you. There were even rumors of her being the Demon Lord.”
“Aren’t there some people who still believe that?”
There were surprisingly only a few students who still believed the rumor that Yumiella was the Demon Lord. However, many students still kept their distance from her because they were afraid of angering her, knowing that she certainly had above-average combat skills.
“She might actually be just...a normal person.”
“Isn’t it still scary to try and talk to her, though?”
Logically, Jessica knew that Yumiella wasn’t a terrifying person, but she couldn’t get rid of the instinctual fear she had toward her.
“On another note, a monster appeared near my house during the break, and I was able to take it down!”
“The same thing happened to me! I came home at a higher level than my brother.”
The provincial girls were quite fond of Yumiella’s level-grinding methods. Though there was some risk to it, they were able to participate in battle without any worries, thanks to Patrick’s command. Slightly scary and hard to approach but not a bad person—this was how the girls felt about Yumiella.
“Oh, speaking of monsters,” Jessica chimed in, “a dragon appeared near my family’s domain.”
The other girls fell silent at the mention of the strongest monster in their mindless chatting, and Jessica began detailing the events that took place at her home during the summer.
One of the girls eventually broke the silence, astonished. “What?! A dragon? Like the ones that fly? That kind of dragon?”
“Wouldn’t the army handle something like that?”
“My family’s small, so taking care of the dragon is a lower priority, especially since there haven’t been any victims or anything either.”
Even though the girls were at higher levels than many others their age, taking on a dragon would be impossible, even as a group. There was only one person they could think of that could take down a dragon.
“Maybe...maybe Yumiella could, but there’s no way I could ask her.”
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