I lifted my hand and my voice reverberated throughout the quiet classroom,
“I object.”
Everyone in the classroom turned around to the source of the sound and simply looked at me with complicated expressions. The rumors about the green-eyed student seemed to linger in their minds as they looked back to the front of the classroom and gauged Dante's expression instead.
Contrary to everyone's expression, he didn't look bothered at all and stared directly at me with calculating eyes.
“You are Ian, right?”
I nodded without saying anything but he didn't take offense and continued,
“I’ve already heard from the rumors that you are pretty strong, maybe even stronger than I am, but you do realize this isn't a position of strength, right?”
A person exposed to the most danger on the battlefield cannot be the leader, it's really that simple. Whether or not he really believed I could win against him was very doubtful.
“Of course I do. You don't have to worry, I'm not as strong as the rumors say, so I think I'm more suited for this type of position.”
“Oh?”
He seemed amused at my answer as a surprised murmur escaped his lips.
If I had used my strength as an excuse to lead the class, he would have had an easier time pulling the class to his side. Though it didn't seem my unexpected reply did much damage as he continued,
“Well, that might be true for now, but you are Lily Dragnok’s brother, there's no doubt you have great potential, so this type of position might hold you back from fully reaching it.”
“Oh, so the rumors are true?”
”Now it makes sense why the Scarlet Arsenal lost.”
Most of the students seemed to be hearing this for the very first time so they couldn’t hide their surprise as they whispered among themselves. At Dante’s gaslighting, I decided to play it off with some self-deprecation,
“Well, there’s a reason she was adopted and I wasn’t. So really, I’m not as strong as you all think.”
Though the others had doubtful expressions, they didn’t say anything further and looked at Dante’s reaction, but his expression was still the same,
“Hahaha, I guess that might be the case. Then how about we settle this with a majority vote?”
“Majority vote? Are you serious? That failed system doesn’t belong in this day and age.” I retorted strongly as I mocked his suggestion, though what I said wasn’t far from the truth. Democracy was a failed system, after all.
“Well now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Although a majority rule system might not be used as opposed to blood succession, it’s still useful for less important decisions. We are simply electing a class leader, we have to make sure this is someone the majority trusts.”
Everyone seemed to agree with his words as they nodded to themselves, no, the ‘majority’ seemed to agree. I made a frown and pretended to think before speaking,
“Fine then, but I will only agree under 2 conditions.”
“Of course, as long as it’s reasonable I will accept.”
Dante gave a casual reply. He was clearly confident he could win either way as long as we decided this by majority rules.
“Firstly, every vote will be anonymous and anyone who breaks this rule will be disqualified, meaning their vote will not count. Then for the second condition, the vote will be repeated once every day until one of us wins with a 95% majority vote.”
Many students here knew about Dante’s influence and wouldn’t want to get on his bad side even for something so little. If we could give them anonymity, they could at least vote against him without repercussions. As for the second one, it was to make it harder for Dante to win too quickly and hopefully prolong the voting as long as possible.
“I see, those are indeed some interesting conditions, but isn’t the second one a bit unrealistic? We have until Friday to decide on a leader and also divide ourselves into groups. Let’s have an additional condition. If there’s no winner by Friday, Casper Lov will be the class leader.”
Dante replied while pointing at a particular student in the classroom. The student in question widened his eyes at Dante’s sudden action and stuttered in surprise,
“M-me!?”
I had no idea who he was, but from the last name, I knew he was from a well-established family at the very least.
“Yes, you. I believe you are the most suited for the job. If I win this, I already plan on having you as the vice leader, so it’s only natural you would be the most likely candidate for leader if I fail. So, do you accept these conditions, Ian?”
He turned toward me with a smile, his smile spoke many words yet his mouth never moved. It was possible that he lied about everything he just said and simply chose Casper in order to use him if ever he failed to win. By nominating him as leader, Casper would naturally feel indebted to Dante and is more likely to be manipulated as just a figurehead than an actual leader. It didn’t matter whether they knew each other or not, that’s how effective his strategy was, but…
“Sure, I accept then.”
After pretending to think for a while, I answered with a calm expression. Dante didn’t react to my calmness and simply continued,
“Then we might as well make this official, we will talk with the professor and have her set this up for us.”
After the tense debate, Dante went to his seat and the atmosphere turned back to normal as the students began to converse with each other more freely. The topic of discussion was, of course, their favorite candidate between us 2.
“Mmh. Are you sure you gonna win? That guy might be the son of a big shot or something.”
Roran on my side finally voiced his concerns with a concerned look on his face. The fact that he didn’t realize who Dante was even after hearing his name really spoke volumes of the kind of life he used to live.
“That’s the son of Commander Khal.”
“Eh!? Then doesn’t that mean you are screwed? Whose commander Khal by the way?”
“The commander of the Empire’s military.”
“What the!? Then you are already screwed!”
This time his eyes widened in surprise as he gave an exaggerated expression. I simply gave a small smile and responded nonchalantly.
“Probably.”
The rest of the day went by rather uneventfully, a few of the other professors came by for a similar introductory class but I wasn’t paying attention.
Later that day, Dante and I visited the academy staff office and submitted our proposal to Eliana, who although seemed reluctant at first, eventually accepted and the class vote would commence the following day. It went without saying that any misconduct would also result in disqualifying either of us from candidacy.
[Tuesday 09 April]
The following morning, I woke up feeling more or less the same as usual and went through my morning routines while contemplating the class vote.
I was at least certain that I would get enough votes for the voting session not to end today. With the protection of anonymity, a lot of the students would probably try their luck and see what happened if they voted for me.
These thoughts rang in my mind as I left my dorm room and walked to class. Upon arrival, the atmosphere was tense as most of the students were already seated and the professor was also present. Since we would be doing the votes, the professor advised us to come a bit earlier than usual in case we needed extra time to finalize things.
“Everyone is now present, so we will begin immediately. You will get a piece of paper and either write ‘D’ for Dante or ‘I’ for Ian, then I will go around with this box and collect the votes.”
Eliana spoke as she raised the small box in her hand, although it wasn’t an official ballot box, it was enough for a matter as trivial as this. Papers were passed around the classroom, but before we could start, Dante stood up from his chair and started to speak while heading to the front of the classroom.
“Since we are doing this, how about we each say a little something to give the voters a proper reason to vote for us.”
The words were pointed toward me and I stood up without question and went to the front of the classroom. Even without this, the individuals in favor of Dante would still be greater than mine, so this was probably a ploy to increase this gap even further.
“As the first candidate, I guess I will go first.” Dante’s expression became serious and everyone’s attention suddenly spiked.
“For starters, those of you who wish to vote for me because I am Khal Eliv’s son shouldn’t bother voting for me. I didn’t come here to ride on my father’s achievements or get to the top using his name. My name is Dante Eliv. I am not my father, nor will I ever be satisfied with reaching his level. I came here to become the greatest commander in history and surpass him in everything he has ever achieved. So if you vote for me, I promise you 100% of my effort. Thank you”
Cheers erupted throughout the classroom as the students clapped at his impressive improv speech.
Ah, the beauty of democracy
The garbage coming out of your mouth didn’t need to be true, it only needed to be prettier than your opponents. Dante looked towards me with his signature smirk as if saying, ‘Now it’s your turn’. I took him up at his unspoken words and started to speak.
“My name is Ian. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pretty words to say to you but I will at least promise one thing. If you vote for me, class C will never know defeat throughout their time at the academy. That’s all.”
Silence. The reaction was more or less as I expected. Since Dante would see the individuals who show their support for me, they didn’t want to take that risk and simply kept quiet. The two of us went back to our seats and the voting session finally began.
After collecting all the papers, Eliana placed the box on the ground and started taking out the papers one by one and counting in her head. She was probably using a special skill to keep track of the numbers because, after a few minutes, she finally faced the class and spoke up,
“Sigh. The results are as follows, 26 votes for Ian and 60 votes for Dante Eliv. So as per the rules, we will have another vote tomorrow morning.”
“Wow, that’s a lot more than I thought he’d get.”
“Yeah, did you vote for him?”
”What? Of course not.”
The reaction from the students was as expected, all of them, including those who voted for me, were questioning what happened with surprised looks on their faces. Since there were 86 students in our class, that meant that one of us had to get at least 82 votes to completely win. When you looked at the current result, it did indeed sound like a very unrealistic goal.
“Oh, you didn’t do as bad as I thought you would. I guess my vote also made a difference.” Roran by my side said with a playful expression.
“Don’t say stuff like that, did you already forget the first rule.”
If more people heard him and it was reported that he really said that, they could deduct a vote from me because of the anonymity rule.
“Oops, sorry.”
He put his hand over his mouth as he asked for an apology, I simply shrugged it off since it wasn’t that big of a deal. With this outcome, I was able to make it through the first day of voting without much incident. One would have thought this would be the best time to start interacting with my classmates and fishing for votes to stand a chance against Dante, but I simply relaxed and went on with my day as usual.
Later that night, I received an unexpected message from Roran.
[Dude you should watch your back, apparently Dante is offering money to anyone who can catch you doing anything shady to get votes.]
A small sigh escaped my mouth when I read through the message. It seemed he had no intention of giving me a chance of winning. If I started approaching my classmates, they would be more focused on catching me cheating rather than listening to what I actually had to say.
[Wednesday 10 April]
I went through my usual routine and exited my dorm room, but on this day, an unexpected visitor was standing on the other side. The boy seemed tense the moment he saw me and quickly approached me as if his life depended on it,
“Um. Hey.”
The boy greeted me with a forced smile and I responded with a slight nod. From his timid appearance, I could tell he was a first-year student, though he wasn’t in my class.
“W-well. There’s going to be another meeting on Sunday, and if you don’t show up, Tim will punish us instead. So, umm. if you can—”
“What time is it?”
I cut him off as he was about to beg and he didn’t seem bothered, in fact, his face seemed to brighten the moment I asked.
“It’s at 19:00.”
“Then I will see you there.”
I turned around and immediately left him. He was a student in the high classes but even that wasn’t enough to stand up against Tim, one of the kings of Rezen Academy. As long as you were within the academy grounds, then you had to follow the hierarchy created by the strong. Your social status didn’t matter if you didn’t have the strength to back it up, so the only way to beat Tim was through your individual strength.
The thoughts haunted me as I left the dorms and went to class. It was now the second day so lessons were going to commence as normal and the periods would be longer. Our class commenced with our voting session and after a few minutes, the results were announced.
“Tsk. The results are as follows, Ian - 15 votes, Dante - 71 votes, so as per rules and whatnot, we will have another voting session tomorrow.”
Eliana announced with a monotone. It was understandable since it wasn’t really her job to help us pick a leader, but at the same time, she couldn’t ignore her precious students when they needed help. With that, the second vote revealed how weak my influence was and because of this, many will likely give up on trying to vote for me since Friday was rapidly approaching.
After the first class, the rest of the day was uneventful — extremely boring even. The classes were now longer and we had to sit through hour-long lectures. The day finally ended when our last class ended at 15h00 in the afternoon. It was an especially torturous experience for me since whenever I heard something, [Recall] would activate on its own and the lecture suddenly sounded like a complete repeat of what I already knew.
“Haah… the classes are brutal, who would have thought we would cover that much work in a single day.”
Roran cried by my side as we left the building together. Throughout the whole day, he was probably the only student who wrote almost everything the professor said, he might have even written the jokes the professors cracked in class. Though it wasn’t really because he was dumb or anything, rather it was because he had the speed to actually do it.
“You should ask me for help whenever you want,” I responded to his cries with an all-knowing smirk, but he didn’t seem convinced.
“Heh, is that so? You didn’t even take any notes in class, are you some kind of genius or something.”
“I am.”
I lied through my teeth, but Roran seemed convinced as he looked at my confident smile.
“Then how about we—”
“Ian. You are Ian, right?”
A voice suddenly interrupted us and a student stood in front of us. He had spiky blue hair and piercings all over his face, like eyes, mouth, and all over his ears. I looked at him with a frown as I answered,
“What do you want?”
“Oh, haha, straight to the point huh.” He seemed amused by my response as he chuckled to himself.
“I am Leven Drollen from Class A, our leader is sending out an invitation.” He handed me a piece of paper with an address written on it — it was outside the academy.
Class A, huh? Lily should also be in class A.
The boy immediately turned around and left before we could ask any more questions. I was curious as to why this was happening, but at the same time, I had to be cautious. After some contemplating, I finally decided.
“You can go ahead, we will talk later.”
“Um. Ok, but will you be fine going alone?”
“Yeah, it’s a famous fast-food place, so I don’t think they will cause a scene.”
I handed him my wristwatch first since we weren’t allowed to leave the academy grounds with them. With that, I left the academy grounds for the first time since the selection exams.
