"Sir, we've all decided to stay." Baldr's voice was barely able to contain his excitement.
Behind him, twenty-three boys stood straight. Most were thin and sallow, but their eyes burned with the same fervor.
Faced with the only chance to change their fate, who would willingly give up a knight's tutelage to return to the fields?
Caelan said, "Fall in."
Though they had almost no experience with military training, they spontaneously formed three neat rows in a short time.
Though their stances were clumsy, they were still relatively standard.
Caelan's gaze swept over the ranks. "Baldr and Nina should have explained the conditions to you, but I must reiterate them."
"You may stay here and receive an education, but the door to the Order is permanently closed to you."
"You failed the trial. You are failures. That is an unchangeable fact."
"If anyone wants to back out, they can leave now."
Caelan could give these children a chance, but he also had to draw a clear line.
They were, after all, failures of the trial.
To give failures the same privileges as those who succeeded would be unfair to the children who endured the cold night until dawn, and would undermine the fairness of the Order's selection process.
The winter wind, carrying fine snow, howled against their cheeks. Their eyes held disappointment, but no one chose to leave.
Many of them had been only a step away from success, but that step was a chasm, forever barring them from the Order.
But even if they couldn't join the Order, they believed that studying under a knight would still lead to a decent future.
Caelan said, "Since no one has chosen to leave, I'll lay down the rules."
"Don't call me 'Sir'. Call me 'Teacher'. Lion is your Headmaster."
"Fresh ingredients will be delivered to the kitchen every day. But no one will wait on you. You must cook, clean, and tidy your own rooms. Assign the specific tasks among yourselves. If you have any questions, you can ask Nina."
"You may leave the courtyard, but you must be back by five in the afternoon. Don't leave before six in the morning."
"Baldr, you are their class monitor. You are responsible for supervising the others."
"If anyone breaks the rules, I will personally put them on the cart back home."
"Cherish your only chance. Classes will officially begin in two days."
Nina quickened her pace to catch up with Caelan. They had to get back to Luther's for dinner.
This house with the small courtyard wasn't Caelan's residence, but Lion's property.
Originally, Caelan had planned to convert his own house into a schoolhouse, but Lion had firmly objected and applied to the Order for another vacant property to use as the Caliban High Development Academy's schoolhouse.
Though it was in a remote location, it was spacious enough to accommodate a hundred people.
Baldr and the others were the third batch of students.
The other two batches were on winter break and looking for work.
These jobs were basically arranged through Caelan's connections. They were too young, so they could only be apprentices to workers, earning meager wages.
But all of these wages had to be used to pay tuition, to support the school's operations.
This was also part of their education, letting them understand the meaning and honour of contributing to the collective.
Watching the closed gate, the children in the courtyard looked at each other, both nervous and excited.
The oldest among them was only nine, the youngest seven.
Though poor children learned responsibility early, having already helped their parents with farm work, education was still a new experience for them.
So, they all turned to look at Baldr.
Baldr cleared his throat, imitating Caelan's tone. "The teacher said we should assign the work ourselves. What can you do?"
No one spoke. They cherished this one chance and were therefore afraid of making mistakes.
Baldr frowned. "If no one speaks up, I'll start naming names."
"Massimo, Fischer, Brand, Fraser, you go help in the kitchen."
"The rest of you, start cleaning with me. We need to clear the snow from the yard."
...
"Big brother, welcome back!"
Leona ran over and hugged Caelan.
Caelan took off his coat and handed it to Nina, who hung it on the rack.
Caelan asked, "It smells so good. What's for dinner?"
Lion replied, "Creamy soup, escargot, and roast suckling pig."
"Did you wash your hands?"
"I'm not a child."
"To me, you'll always be a child."
Lion turned his head away, ignoring him.
Though he was happy inside, a Primarch also had his pride. He couldn't show it too obviously.
Luther watched the chattering father and son, his eyelids twitching involuntarily.
In his opinion, this father-son duo was ridiculously sentimental.
But when his gaze fell on Leona, he fell silent.
She was sitting quietly on Caelan's lap, happily eating the snacks he fed her.
He was her father, but his two daughters were closer to Caelan than to him. Was Caelan just that good with children?
Luther asked, "What are your plans for those children you're taking in?"
"Did the Order ask you to ask that?" Caelan glanced at Luther. He had never cared about such things before.
Luther was very honest. "Lord Cypher asked me to ask."
Though the children Caelan took in were failures, the Order had never accepted failures anyway, so there was no conflict over recruits.
Wherever these people went, it had little impact on the Order.
As long as Caelan didn't poach the candidates who passed the trial, there was no conflict.
But since Caelan was using the Order's resources to train people, even the Order had to ask.
They were afraid Caelan might start his own faction.
Though Caelan had no factories, no cities, no power armour or boltguns, making it difficult to found a new knight order from scratch...
He could seize the resources of an existing order, using their foundation to build his own.
For commoners, this seemed like a fantasy.
But with Lion around, it wouldn't be difficult for Caelan to replace another order.
Among all the orders, the easiest target was the Order itself, because Caelan was already inside the fortress.
Luther wasn't worried about this, and Lord Cypher probably wasn't either.
But there were hundreds of knights in the Order, and some would inevitably worry that Caelan had ulterior motives. Lord Cypher had to give them a reasonable explanation.
Rather than secretly investigating and causing misunderstandings, it was better to have Luther ask Caelan directly.
"You just need to understand that I'm training these children to provide logistical and administrative talent for the Order."
"Even if I really wanted to do something, I wouldn't go to all this trouble. Rather than relying on these children, it would be more practical to rely on Lion."
Luther was silent. That was true.
Lion's reputation was growing, even more popular among the commoners than Brother Amadis.
His reputation among the knights wasn't bad either. Many knights praised him.
Lion had also saved many lives while hunting Great Beats, including knights and their families.
Though knights' immediate family could live in the inner city, those knights who came from commoner backgrounds often had their families in small villages.
These villages were the knights' hometowns, and the villagers were naturally their family.
Though Brother Amadis was also famous, the only thing he still had over Lion was seniority.
Lion was a full knight of the Order. He was qualified to be compared with any senior knight, and even to become the new Grand Master in the future.
Once Lion became Grand Master, Caelan's status would also rise.
He was Lion's father, and Lion always followed his advice.
Even if he wanted to turn the Order into his own personal fiefdom, no one would dare to object.
If he really had designs on the Order, Lion alone would be enough.
Why rely on anyone else?
Luther suggested, "Actually, you could apply to the Order to be a training master, directly teaching the squires."
Though Caelan had few accolades, he was Lion's father.
If only for Lion's sake, the Order would accept him.
Besides, Caelan's position was also special. Even the Watchers obeyed him. He could do whatever he wanted.
Rather than teaching failures, why not go directly to teaching the candidates?
When the Order's new blood all saw Caelan as their teacher, his position would truly be unshakeable.
"No need. I just think it's a waste."
"Why?" Luther frowned. He didn't see the waste.
Failures should be sent back to their homes. Otherwise, what was the point of the trial?
"It's fine that you don't understand. I'm not talking about Caliban. I'm talking about the Imperium."
Whether in 30K or 40K, the most fatal flaw of the Imperium's governance system was its staggering waste of resources.
In 40K, the millennia-old bureaucracy had become a chronic disease. The Imperium was a rotten, bloated corpse.
The entire Imperium had been hollowed out by maggots, leaving only a splendid outer shell covering a festering interior.
The High Lords of Terra had also become a cancer on the Imperial bureaucracy. These powerful figures at the apex of Imperial power, outwardly devoted to the Imperium, were all worms who placed personal ambition above humanity's survival.
Their average lifespan was indeed far lower than other noble classes; cases of sudden death at their desks were common.
But the essence of this 'diligence' was that each High Lord was frantically seizing power, constantly appropriating functions that belonged to lower departments.
In the original High Lords council, the High Lords only dealt with the most important matters. Trivial proposals and specific affairs were all handled by lower departments.
But successive generations of High Lords, by creating redundant approvals and adding layers of supervision, ensured that every link in the Imperial administrative system had to pass through their review.
The benefit was that they could cultivate cronies, insert their own people, and ensure their families' political survival.
The downside was that the Imperium was constantly bled by these worms, leading to an increasingly passive, inefficient, rigid, and redundant bureaucracy.
The Imperium was in decline, but these worms had already made their fortunes.
In the ten thousand years from 30K to 40K, the High Lords' 'diligence' was always reflected in two areas: Fighting for power internally and purging dissent externally.
They had long since twisted the Imperial administrative system into a tool for satisfying their own desires. The mountain of paperwork that led to their deaths from overwork was mostly redundant procedures they had created themselves.
The crucial Imperial affairs that kept them busy day and night were often just schemes for factional infighting.
Red tape drowned all efficiency. Even basic resource allocation required going through hundreds of meaningless approvals.
The Imperium's appalling inefficiency and waste all stemmed from generations of High Lords' infighting.
Successors could certainly reform, abolishing redundant procedures and streamlining administration. But what about power?
No one wanted to give up power. If you gave it up, someone else would take it.
They had indeed sacrificed much, but those sacrifices also brought rich rewards for their families.
Under this system, the High Lords, xenos, and Chaos were the three winners. Only the Imperium lost.
They had indeed worked themselves to the bone, but not for the Imperium.
Almost all High Lords enriched themselves at the public's expense. If anyone refused to go along, the other High Lords would eliminate them.
The Emperor's once-great ideals had long become a cover for bureaucrats to line their pockets.
But in humanity's long history, such decay and corruption were the inevitable fate of all empires.
The generation of the 30K Golden Age had noble ideals, willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause of galactic unification.
But when years of peace dulled the sense of crisis, and comfortable lives eroded beliefs, idealism was replaced by utilitarianism.
All empires eventually decay.
This wasn't a flaw of the system, but of human greed and selfishness.
The first generation could go through fire and water for their ideals. The second might uphold their fathers' will. But by the third, only empty slogans remained.
As for the fourth and fifth, they might not care at all.
When the original idealists had turned into cold statues, their successors had long ago traded those ideals for tangible benefits.
Caelan said, "The Order doesn't lack experienced knight-masters. But only I will teach these failures."
"If I don't give them a chance, I will be the one to regret it."
If he didn't give these children a chance, they would spend their entire lives toiling in barren fields.
Caelan couldn't ignore reality for the sake of ideals.
Given Caliban's social structure and technological level, compulsory education was bound to be difficult here.
But he could at least try to cultivate a group of idealists, and they would in turn cultivate more idealists.
The torch must be passed, and someone must light it.
The Order was a torch, but it didn't burn brightly enough.
Caelan needed to add fuel to the fire.
Lion was the only one who could understand Caelan, but even he still asked quietly: "Is it worth it?"
He felt it wasn't worth it for his adoptive father. He shouldn't be trapped here.
"When I was in elementary school, there's a story from my textbook that I still remember vividly."
"Do you want to hear it?"
"I'm listening."
.....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
[email protected]/DaoistJinzu