My name is Gol.
I was an instructor at the Galgard Noble Academy.
...At least, I was supposed to be.
It was odd. Despite being a teacher, the only things I could vividly recall were exterminating monsters and playing baseball in Shashato City.
No, wait—think back.
I had returned to the Village of the Great Tree to participate in the Martial Arts Tournament, hadn't I?
Hahaha.
No, that wasn't it either.
I needed to focus on my memories as a teacher.
Let's see... what was I doing in the spring?
I spent my time welcoming students who were returning from their family homes after winter, as well as the new arrivals coming to enroll. Since everyone arrived at different times, we didn't hold many formal classes. Instead, the students focused on independent study and research.
...That’s right. The kidnapping incident.
One of the new students, a count's son, had been abducted. If memory served, Sil was the one who went out and resolved the whole thing. It was only natural for a teacher to help a student, after all.
As a gesture of gratitude for the rescue, we were given chickens. Live ones. About a hundred of them. Apparently, they were a specialty of that noble’s territory. We built a coop and began raising them, though the Academy Director spent a good while clutching his head in stress over the idea. We eventually secured his permission by promising to supply eggs and meat to the academy's dining hall.
The responsibility of tending to the chickens fell to the very same boy who had been kidnapped. He claimed he practically lived with chickens back at his family estate, and his knowledge far exceeded our own. He knew all about health management and disease prevention, so I actually ended up learning a lot from him.
...Wait.
It felt more like I was the student there.
Well, whatever.
In the summer... oh, yes, the Founding Festival. How could I have forgotten that?
We participated in the festivities at the Royal Capital. It was a grand event held over three days. Normally, the academy didn't get involved in city festivals, but the Royal Capital’s Adventurer Guild had specifically requested our participation. To put it bluntly, they wanted to eat the food from the academy—or more specifically, the food we made—so they wanted us to set up stalls.
Perhaps they worried we would refuse if they were too direct, because the official justification was that it was meant to foster "interaction between the students and the citizens." When it was framed like that, I had to consult the Academy Director.
In the end, he approved, and I somehow ended up as the person in charge. It couldn't be helped. Only those who volunteered participated, so I figured they wouldn't cause too much trouble. Though, the number of volunteers was a bit high—a hundred and twenty-one people, including some teachers and dining hall staff.
I wasn't entirely thrilled about being the one in charge despite being younger than some of the participants.
First, the students and I built a yagura. Since the goal was to interact with the city, we wanted a conspicuous symbol for our group. It was a mobile festival tower with wheels underneath. I remembered the design because I had watched the Village Head build them so many times. However, a truly tall tower would have been too difficult, so we kept it around two meters. It looked like a strange carriage with a high seating area. It moved well enough, so it served its purpose.
The real trouble was the bickering over who would pull the tower and who would ride on top. Since they were all nobles, status was a thorny issue. I ended up asking the students to take turns pulling it fairly to keep the peace. As for the top of the tower, I had the Academy Director sit there.
He looked terribly embarrassed, but the city folk loved it. By the end of the festival, even the townspeople were joining in, asking for a turn to pull us along. I’d say the "interaction" was a total success.
After the tower, we set up the food stalls. I felt we had to live up to the expectations of the guild. We left the actual cooking to the dining hall staff while we handled the logistics. The plan was for the students to focus on being waiters and waitresses.
However, some students were so enthusiastic about cooking that we ended up with five stalls in total. Three were run by the staff and two by the students. The biggest problem we faced was that every single stall sold out of ingredients on the very first day.
My predictions had been far too naive. I honestly thought we’d be ignored since we hadn't advertised, but a line had formed even before the festival officially started. When I wondered why we were so popular, it turned out the Adventurer Guild had been promoting us. I suppose they were worried we wouldn't prosper after they had asked us to come. Or maybe it was a thank-you for the samples we gave them the day before.
The students running the stalls were determined to bring even more ingredients next year. Even without seeing that enthusiasm, the Academy Director informed us that we would be participating annually from now on. Apparently, the feedback from both the students and the Royal Capital was overwhelmingly positive. It was going to be an official academy event moving forward, though still on a volunteer basis.
I just hoped I wouldn't be the one in charge next year.
We donated the profits from the stalls to the academy.
By the way, the main event of the capital’s festival was the Large Barrel Carry. It was a wild competition where the factions of the North, South, East, and West fought over a barrel so massive an adult couldn't even get their arms around it. Because of the risk of property damage, it was held on the evening of the final day.
Usually, you joined the team based on where you lived, but the students were all lumped into the Northeast team because that was where the academy was located. This led to a scramble between the North and East teams, but for some reason, we ended up on the West Team. I distinctly remembered Uncle Gratz, the West's representative, wearing a very wicked grin.
Assigning roles based on race and fighting for the barrel was actually quite fun. I wondered if we should try something like that in the Village of the Great Tree.
Autumn.
What happened in the autumn...?
A dungeon was discovered to the southwest and I went to scout it... but that wasn't really a teacher's job.
Oh, right. The succession crisis of House Quiche.
Two sons of Count Quiche were enrolled at the academy. They were close in age and saw each other as rivals for the inheritance, though they hadn't fought openly. However, news arrived that the Count had collapsed, and their respective followers began to clash.
I could look the other way if it was a competition over grades, but I couldn't ignore open violence. By the time I finished knocking sense into the aggressors, the followers of both sons had been completely neutralized. Both sons then came to me together, pleading for a peaceful arbitration.
I didn't know why they thought I was the one to do it.
First, we needed to confirm the Count's condition. Even if the worst happened, there might be a will. It was a massive hassle, but even if those two were older than me, they were still academy students. And I was an academy teacher. I couldn't bring myself to abandon them, even if they weren't in my classes.
So, I took the two of them back to their father’s territory. Along the way, we had to deal with various obstructers—apparently, there were other brothers who didn't attend the academy.
After a lot of back-and-forth, we finally reached the Count's mansion, only to find he was in isolation due to a contagion. Somehow, I was the one who had to track down a famous pharmacist and spend my time gathering rare ingredients for a cure. I couldn't just leave it alone, especially since the disease was starting to spread through the territory.
The pharmacist’s medicine eventually put an end to the outbreak. With the Count’s recovery, the succession crisis was postponed. I told them to sit down and discuss it as a family. I also suggested they might want to deal with the various unacknowledged sons running around. If I was being bold.
When I got back, the Academy Director was furious. He lectured me about how the academy was supposed to remain strictly neutral and stay out of noble succession disputes. I apologized profusely. To save face, the official story became that I had been dispatched specifically to resolve the plague.
The other major event in autumn was returning to the Village of the Great Tree for the Martial Arts Tournament. I realized once again that I still had a long way to go.
The three girls from the Post-Age of Gods Dragon Race—the ones we called the Three Dragon Sisters—came to the Royal Capital after the tournament ended. They were there to work for Uncle Demon King. For some reason, it was decided that their house would be built right next to ours at the academy. Uncle Demon King went through a lot of trouble to handle the Director’s permission, the building costs, and their living expenses, so I didn't complain.
Winter.
It was a cold winter this year. Perhaps because of that, monsters and magic beasts from the north began migrating south. A veteran adventurer said they were searching for food because the cold had made it scarce. While the Royal Capital was protected by the North Forest, the trade roads were in danger, so the adventurers were mobilized.
Sil, Bron, and I received requests for help as well. The monsters themselves weren't a big threat, but the travel distance was grueling. We had the Three Dragon Sisters fly us around to handle the hunts, and before we knew it, people were calling us "Dragon Knights."
It was a bit awkward. We weren't knights; we held a status equivalent to the head of a Baron's house. It might seem like a small detail, but those things are delicate.
Oh, they meant "knight" as in a rider? I see. But didn't that offend the Three Dragon Sisters?
Actually, they seemed rather proud of the title. Why?
Since most students went home for the winter, I didn't get to do much actual teaching. I spent so much time fighting monsters that those were the memories that stuck.
As for the baseball memories... well, Uncle Demon King had a knack for showing up to invite me whenever I had a spare moment. Even the Three Dragon Sisters, who were confused by the game at first, had started practicing on their own on the academy grounds. The sight of the three of them knocking out three home runs in a row certainly helped build excitement. When I told them they should practice their fielding as well as their hitting, they dragged me into helping them.
A few other students were starting to show interest in the sport as well. I sometimes gave them pointers... but I wasn't sure if that really counted as "teacher's work."
Maybe I was overthinking things. It was probably better to just relax. Students did come to me for advice, so I clearly wasn't invisible. Even if all their questions were about construction, cooking, or combat.
"Instructor Gol. Does the goat house look okay like this?"
"Hmm... well, first off, that door lock won't do anything. You need something much more complex."
"Is that for protection against thieves? Inside the academy grounds?"
"No, it's because the goats will open it themselves."
"Eh? But they're just goats."
"Because they're goats. They're clever enough to close the door behind them after they've escaped, just so you don't realize they're gone."
"I'm starting to think those are some other creature wearing goat skins."
This wasn't exactly advice; it was more of a final check. In the coming spring, Count Quiche was sending us goats as a thank-you for my help during the plague.
Getting the Academy Director to agree to that had been the hardest job of all.