The door creaked open, and Ram entered carrying two heavy tomes. Unlike her sister, Rem, Ram didn't radiate a visible, jagged hostility. She was calm, though her eyes held a spark of practiced condescension.
"Lord Kiyotaka, I am here on Master Roswaal's orders to begin your literacy training," Ram said. Her voice was a mirror of Rem's, but the cadence was more mature, flavored with a dry, aristocratic arrogance.
"I appreciate it," Ayanokoji replied with a slight nod.
A moment later, light footsteps echoed in the hall. Emilia stepped in, her silver hair shimmering in the lamplight. "Am I too early?" she asked with a bright smile. "I wanted to see if I could help."
"We are just beginning, Lady Emilia," Ram said, placing the books on the desk. She slid a thin volume toward Ayanokoji. "We will start with the basic I-script. This is a children's picture book. It may be a daunting task for a grown man, but Ram will do her best to guide your... limited understanding."
"I'll do my best," Ayanokoji said. He had already clocked Ram as a "poison-tongued" personality.
The lesson began. Ram was not a natural teacher, but it didn't matter. Ayanokoji's mind was built for this. Having already mastered over ten languages in the White Room, he didn't learn by rote—he learned by structure. He quickly identified the phonetic patterns and grammatical markers, cross-referencing them with Latin and Germanic structures from his original world.
The syntax and sentence logic are largely standard; the deviation lies in the glyph-to-morpheme mapping, he noted. Within hours, he was seared the vocabulary into his memory.
In his previous school, he would have played the "average student," intentionally flunking or slowing his progress to blend in. Here, there was no benefit to mediocrity. The faster he became literate, the sooner he could infiltrate the Forbidden Library. Furthermore, demonstrating high-level intelligence was a way to cement his value in the Emilia camp.
"I didn't expect a royal from a backwater nation to possess such a functional brain," Ram said, closing the book. Her tone remained respectful, but the "barb" was there. "That's enough for today. I'll leave the books. Try not to hurt your head reading them alone."
Ram left, secretly stunned. Most foreigners took weeks to reach basic literacy. This boy had begun reading sentences in a single afternoon.
"You're amazing, Kiyotaka! You're learning so fast!" Emilia beamed.
Ayanokoji shifted the conversation. He didn't want praise; he wanted data. Through subtle, inductive questioning—guiding the topic toward the state of the Kingdom—he extracted the names of the major players.
There were three other main candidates: Priscilla Barielle, a noble of immense status; Anastasia Hoshin, a merchant queen with a financial empire; and Crusch Karsten, the head of a prestigious ducal house with the strongest military backing.
Crusch is the logical choice, Ayanokoji analyzed. She is the most competent, the best positioned, and the most stable. If I were choosing based on pure probability of success, I would defect to her camp immediately.
In the Karsten Estate...
Crusch Karsten, dressed in her signature green military uniform, nodded at the sky-projection. Her amber eyes remained serious. "A wise assessment," she murmured.
Beside her, the cat-eared Felix (Ferris) giggled. "Nyan, this boy is quite the strategist! If we could pull him to our side, the throne would be as good as yours, Crusch-sama!"
"Perhaps," Crusch replied. "But a man who views everyone as a 'tool' is a man who cannot be easily led. Would I be his leader, or would I eventually become his puppet?"
Ayanokoji reached a different conclusion.
Even a perfect tool is garbage if it is unwieldy. Emilia is weak, but she is controllable. Her personality is malleable. He decided that while he would stay with Emilia for now, he would begin collecting dirt on the other candidates. If he needed to remove them from the board, he needed to know where they bled.
He also pondered the "Felt Variable." He was certain she was a secret candidate. Having two candidates under his influence—one a friend, one a debt-holder—gave him a massive strategic advantage. He kept this to himself. Asking Emilia about it now would raise suspicion.
"Oh! Look at the time! I've kept you up too late," Emilia said, looking at the clock. "You've had a long journey. Please, get some rest!"
After she left, Ayanokoji didn't sleep. He spent two more hours self-teaching from Ram's books, using logic to fill in the gaps. Finally, around 2:00 AM, he stepped out to use the washroom.
He walked down the hall, turned the corner where the bathroom should be—and found himself standing in front of his own bedroom door. He recognized the specific oil painting hanging next to it.
Is it a duplicate? No. He checked his internal pedometer. He had walked thirty steps further than he had during the day. The hallway had elongated.
He tried again. After three turns, he ended up back at the same painting. The space was a closed loop.
Spatial distortion magic, he concluded. He wasn't panicked. Based on his interaction with Beatrice earlier, he knew she was both arrogant and slightly petty. He had found her "secret" room twice; this was her "payback."
"A childish way to greet a guest," Ayanokoji whispered. He didn't see a threat—only an invitation to solve a puzzle.