WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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◈ Academy's Pure Love Dark Knight ◈

Chapter 124

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Episode 124. How the Queen Captures the Knight.

* * *

First, Sophitia sent Licht away and invited Phine into her own bedroom.

"..Sophie, did we really have to do this?"

"Brings back old memories, doesn't it? It's nice."

She'd even added a postscript demanding Phine come in her pajamas.

"Phine, it's been a while. I'm glad you look brighter than before."

It was a pajama party between two women of high standing, both dressed in a striking mix of black and white, trimmed with frills.

If anyone from the Empire or the north had seen this scene, they'd surely have been struck speechless.

"..Yeah. Thanks to Licht."

"You really are something else. How on earth did you two even meet?"

Sophitia broached the subject, remembering the Black Knight who hadn't so much as flinched even when she'd threatened him at spearpoint.

A man who, even frozen solid from the neck down, had only seemed to think all the more clearly for it as he coldly declared his feelings for Phine Gransia.

"At first, I approached him because I wanted to learn his swordsmanship."

"The Drake Style, I take it? Most of it can only be learned through the body, can't it?"

"That's right."

So that was why his body looked so honed, unlike other imperial citizens who relied on mana circulation, Sophitia thought, her expression shifting slightly.

He'd shown tremendous skill even suppressing an Apostle of Wrath. Not quite Grand-rank, but at least Sword Master-rank.

"So you two grew close while he taught you swordsmanship? Close enough that the princess calls him someone precious?"

"More than that, he was considerate even after he found out who I really was."

So it hadn't been the sword lessons that had drawn them together after all. Sophitia felt a small twinge of disappointment at how her calculated guess had missed the mark.

"He treated me like a friend even knowing I was the princess. I liked that."

"..Really? No hidden motives, no ulterior interest at all? You're quite the beauty, you know."

Phine Gransia was, even by objective standards, beautiful, even from the Northern Grand Duchess's point of view. Everything in the right place, nothing wasted where it shouldn't be….

A body without a single flaw. Now that she'd come of age, she'd only grown more captivating, the kind of beauty that could easily bewitch any man.

"He's a bit of a pervert, honestly, but all he ever does is make cute little reactions."

"I know, right? Whenever you get close to him he just stares straight up at the sky, desperately holding it together."

An enchanting wolf, one who, if she ever walked down a street without her helmet, would steal the gaze of every man who passed by.

Sophitia had it so bad that standing next to Phine gave her a complex about her own body.

That man Licht did seem more than a little oblivious, though.

"He's such a cute puppy. Licht is."

"Talking about a person like that will get you hurt one day. Phine."

"But Licht really is like a dog that's scared of people…."

Sophitia's lips curved into a small smile at the thought that his affection for her was probably so overwhelming that he wanted to cherish her all the more.

"What does his face even look like? He always hides it behind that helmet, so I've never really seen."

"He's ugly. Really ugly."

Ever the strategist, she kept probing at Phine. One thing was clear, at least, and it fascinated her: what she was seeing went well beyond simple fondness.

"Even if he's incredibly ugly, you still want to cherish him? Enough to hand over even your tail?"

"..Yeah."

As Phine spoke about Licht, something in her tone made her ice-cold expression soften just a little.

"Licht.. I don't want to lose him to anyone else."

Someone who despised lying more than anything, forcing out even a lie just so she wouldn't lose a man.

"I want to get closer to him, be someone special to him.. but I don't know how."

It was a moment where the pure heart of a girl with snow-white wolf ears and a tail came through clearly, and seeing it, the Northern Grand Duchess became certain.

My friend is falling in love for the first time.

Phine, embarrassed, hid her face behind both curtains of hair. Like a glass long left empty, now slowly filling with the wine called love.

"So, Sophie."

"Hm?"

But it was still a raw feeling, one that hadn't had time to mature.

Left as it was, it would surely spiral out of control the moment it lost its innocence. Even with Sophitia, her own friend, Phine had once bared her teeth in threat.

That was exactly why Sophitia decided she shouldn't shatter that innocence. By nature, love was an emotion far removed from someone as calculating as her, so,

"What's today's recommendation…. what is it?"

"I already told you about it before. Phine."

She spoke around it instead of straight at it. It wasn't right to hand out easy advice about something she herself had never experienced.

"It's a novel titled 《How the Queen Captures the Knight》."

"..What a strange title."

She pulled the book she'd prepared in advance from the shelf. A short story collection, its contents and even its cover rewritten and altered, cobbled together in half a day with the help of the northerners.

"This romance novel is a little unusual."

"The Queen falls in love with a Knight, you said."

Shhk, shhk. The sound of pages turning. In truth, all she'd done was twist the story of Phine and Licht slightly and write it out as a plot.

"You know it's easy for a Knight to capture a Queen, right, Phine?"

"Is that common, in chess?"

"Of course it is."

It wasn't a difficult trick at all. The Black Knight and the princess. On a chessboard, that made him the black knight and her the white queen.

"In this novel, the chess pieces appear as people."

"..That sounds cute."

This time, though, it was the Queen who loved the Knight. She'd thought long and hard about what to do if the Knight kept trying to run when the Queen tried to capture him.

"The story goes, the white Queen falls in love with the black Knight."

The novel in front of her was the fruit of all that thinking.

"Where did the white King go..?"

If Phine actually married Licht, he'd automatically hold power comparable to hers, since he'd be the husband of the future empress.

"The King abandoned the Queen to save himself."

She'd taken a little creative liberty here. Fiction and reality were different things, after all.

"That's awful.."

"It is, isn't it? And he's a king, too."

Sophitia found it absurd, hearing Licht's excuse that their difference in status made things impossible. Even Emperor Rook had climbed from a woodcutter in the mountains to the throne through sheer strength alone.

There were, honestly, a lot of similarities. The Emperor had appeared as a war hero wielding an axe and had even gone on to unify four fractured nations into a single empire.

By the same logic, for Licht, a hero who'd killed even the Demon King of Omniscience, to say he could never marry the princess was hopelessly naive about the way the world actually worked.

"So the white Queen watches another color's Knight guarding the black Queen, and starts to feel envious, tries desperately to capture him, but…."

"Since they can each only move in certain ways, they'd just run in parallel forever, wouldn't they?"

If there was too much backlash, she could always just hand him a count's title, make him a noble, and have them married off regardless.

The only woman in the Gransia Empire holding a claim to the throne.

She could have Licht quietly imprisoned somewhere underground and let him live out his life in secret, unknown to anyone. What would it matter even if the Emperor or the common people objected?

A princess with absolute, unchallengeable power, that was exactly what Phine Gransia was.

"Even a Queen.. there's something she can't do?"

"If the Knight sets his mind to running, then yes, he can't be caught."

In the end, if she simply willed it, the Knight could become the white King, but that felt far too blunt an approach.

"Right. They keep almost drawing close, and then drifting apart…. never able to meet."

"That's just like me and Licht.."

Unlike Licht, Phine tended to be honest about her feelings. So Sophitia waited for the words to come out of her own mouth, and

"Hearing that makes me curious about something."

Once Phine's expression showed a glimmer of understanding, Sophitia asked a few questions to confirm her feelings.

"Phine, does your heart pound when you're next to Licht?"

"..I'm not sure."

Sophitia felt her spirits sink, looking at a princess who turned out to be even further gone than she'd expected.

She'd clearly seen him touch her tail, and just earlier, even scratch her chin, every sign of an affectionate display.

To answer that she didn't even know if her heart raced, well, even if Sophitia had never experienced love herself, she knew the basics.

"Really? Not even once? Think carefully, Phine."

"..Ah, there was one."

Phine gave a small clap, as if something had just come to her, and Sophitia's face lit up, only to have that hope crushed once more a moment later.

"When I get close to Licht, his heart starts pounding."

"That's it..?"

"Hehe, when that happens…. it's like my own heart, numb for so long, starts beating along with his, and it makes me feel at ease."

The Northern Grand Duchess felt a strange sense of déjà vu at that. A memory flickered somewhere in the back of her mind, the feeling of having heard this before.

"Don't tell me, Phine…. did you actually go through with the Dragon Heart transplant..?"

"..Huh? Of course I did."

So the mana circuits of an imperial princess and a man were connected. No wonder the mana she'd sensed had felt subtly different from before.

"Phine, you know what would happen if the Emperor found out about this!!"

"It was necessary. Sophie."

He'd try to tear the man named Licht apart. He might even burn the entire academy off the map with bloody tears in his eyes.

What the Empress Bellin Gransia had suffered at Magic Hat's hands, and what Rook had done in response, had been genuinely shocking. He'd wiped out every last remnant of the Heroic Cult single-handed.

There was even a prevailing theory that the reason they'd stayed quiet for so long was that they'd been living like the dead, careful not to provoke Emperor Rook's temper.

He was a werewolf, after all, one who carried the trait of that kind, valuing family above all else.

"Licht saved my life more times than I can count, and I couldn't do the same for him."

"That doesn't mean you had to risk your own life for it! You could have died along with him!"

"Even that isn't enough to repay the comfort and warmth Licht gave me. Sophie."

Without even realizing it herself, Phine spoke with her feelings for Licht bleeding through. Love was a feeling too great for words, and too great for actions as well.

"He even saved my mother."

"What..? Then you're saying, really…."

If it was true that he'd saved the Empress everyone had believed dead, then Licht's excuse about their difference in status truly meant nothing at all.

Maybe he simply didn't understand, coming from another world as the hero. Dennis and even the Heavenly Demon had shown common sense that ran on an entirely different track at times too.

"To me.. he feels like more of a hero than the hero himself, someone precious to me. Please don't speak carelessly about him. Sophitia Coldheart."

Her golden eyes shining, Phine let her true feelings show. A firm anger, demanding that no one speak ill of the person she loved, ever again.

"If that's how you feel.. all right, I understand."

"I'm sorry for saying something so harsh. Sophie."

Seeing that same proud look she remembered from childhood, Sophitia had no choice but to back down a step.

"No, it's fine. I'm the one who asked something I shouldn't have. So, do you know how the Queen captures the Knight?"

"What is it..?"

She'd meant to naturally steer the conversation from the novel into the subject of love and give some real advice, but,

"By using every trick available."

At this point the feelings involved were far too intense, and if she got tangled up in them herself, she might end up on the chopping block too, so she avoided speaking about love too directly.

If Phine, thanks to her, became aware of her own love and started dating Licht, that blade would surely turn toward the north eventually. So instead, she gave her advice through the contents of the novel.

"Well, you could cook him something delicious and win over his stomach…."

She'd never been in love herself, but she knew exactly what worked to bring men to their knees. A woman of calculation and logic, through and through, cold-blooded to the core.

"Or you could just charge in bodily and leave him dazed. There are plenty of ways, aren't there?"

It was advice that suited Sophitia, ruler of the north, to a tee. Someone who won people over if they weren't already on her side, and eliminated them if that didn't work.

"The Knight in this book was the same. All men are pretty much alike."

"..A bodily charge didn't work on Licht. Sophie."

"Looked like it worked to me, though? He didn't seem like he was, you know, impotent."

Sophitia remembered how Licht used to cross his legs or walk with an odd gait whenever Phine got close to him, and kept talking.

"I got attacked by an Apostle and asked him to kiss me. He refused…."

"..."

Hearing that an imperial princess had tried to plant a kiss on him and gotten turned down, Sophitia was at a loss for words. Phine was beautiful enough that any man who landed her must have saved a nation in a past life.

"He really is impotent, then."

"Ngh, Sophie.. stop. My cheeks are stretching.."

The moment Phine mentioned getting rejected by Licht, her ears and tail had drooped, so Sophitia grabbed both her cheeks and pulled to lighten the mood.

"If he ignored a kiss from someone this cute, he deserves to be called impotent!"

She'd started teasing the Black Knight a little, just to cheer up her friend who'd finally started brightening up.

"Hehe, maybe you're right."

Watching Phine let out a small laugh, Sophitia stopped teasing her and walked over to the bookshelf again.

"Oh, Phine. There's a hot spring near here that's famous throughout our north, you know?"

The strategist's mind spun quickly, and she pulled out a thick book listing famous sites of the north, the very same one she'd read in front of Licht just before.

"They say it's wonderful for the skin. Why not visit once before you head back to the Empire?"

"Good for the skin, you said..?"

Sophitia finished her calculations, thinking back over everything she'd seen of Phine in the north so far, including how she'd tried to kiss him.

If she mentioned this much, someone as possessive as Phine would surely take care of the rest herself.

"Good for.. burn scars too?"

"Mm-hm, and there's every kind of bath there, all sorts of variety."

She kept the mixed bathing quiet, for now. Mention that, and Licht, who seemed impotent, might just run for it, while Phine, curious as she was, would definitely walk right in.

"Thanks for the recommendation. Sophie."

All that was left was to guide Licht in without letting him realize it was a mixed bath. Disguise it as the men's bath, lay the trap, and let the wolf spring the ambush from inside.

How the Queen Captures the Knight. In truth, a Queen alone has a hard time capturing a Knight.

"I'm too busy to come along, so enjoy yourself. Phine!"

If that's the case, then all she had to do was use the other pieces to isolate the Knight. A Rook, say, or a Bishop, would do the trick just fine.

Sophitia's eyes curved into crescents as she wore a curious little smile.

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