The Founding of the Knight Academy (12)

Castor had thus lost his chance to prove himself.

The nobles of the Imperial Knight Academy still came out on top against the Northlands and did not allow the final exchange to continue. The Imperial Knight Academy's performance also spread rapidly.

This had been an unequal exchange. The gap between the Imperial Knight Academy and the Northern Kingdom Knight Academy was simply too great—not between the knights themselves, but between the academies. For that little-known, newly established academy in the Northlands, anything less than a dazzling victory for the Imperial Knight Academy would have counted as failure.

The crucial point was that Flor's His Majesty the Emperor had agreed to that Northern Baron's request for academic exchanges between the two academies.

But who could say how things would turn out? The exchange between the two Knight Academies was merely surface-level; beneath it lay the political struggle of the entire Empire.

From a political perspective, the outcome of the Knight Academy competition did not seem all that important.

The Northlands nobles were making their demands. While the Imperial Knight Academy matter was drawing to a close, letter after letter from the Northlands arrived at the Imperial Capital, and the nobles' voices once again reached the Emperor's palace.

"The Northlands are dangerous, cold, and brutal. They reject every sheep raised in a greenhouse. We do not believe that every knight student of the Imperial Knight Academy is qualified to become an officer on the Northlands battlefield."

"The Empire's nobles are loyal to their Monarch, and Your Majesty, you must consider whether your soldiers can achieve victory in that frozen land."

"We rejoice at the emergence of the Imperial First Legion, for it represents the Empire's renewed strength. On the Norris Continent, there is no longer any enemy capable of opposing us. Yet