The Founding Day Festival was now only two weeks away. Lessons and tests were now speeding up in their rollout to the academy’s classes as a result.

  Hogged up by schoolwork, mostly coming from Alexa’s mathematics, science, and magecraft subjects, meant that her ability to move or even train was badly limited.

  At this point, she had given up on the possibility of being able to conduct a formation ritual for her 3rd magic circle until after the event.

  The good news was, she managed to inform Wilhelm about the budding plot against her. In fact, when she discussed it with her knight, he told her that he himself was already close to discovering the plot before Alexa revealed it to him.

  While she trusted his abilities and competence, in Alexa’s copy of the Iron Saintess novel, Wilhelm actually failed to discover the use of poison to assassinate Alexa.

  Well, he did discover the plot, and he did send his men to test out the wine that was given to Alexa, and even the person who gave the wine to her was a vetted staff member of the academy.

  Unfortunately, the poison laced on it evaded detection. Alexa found that quite strange as it was clearly a fast-acting poison, until she realized that there was a possibility that Elisabeth, a herbalist mage, could have direct control over the poison’s activation.

  Unfortunately, of course, Wilhelm in the novel was considering multiple angles of attack even after he discovered the plot.

  A lot of his men and resources therefore were assigned to look out for other threats. By the time that she fell dead therefore, Elisabeth and Henry would escape without a scratch.

  And there wasn’t anything that tied the two to her. Again, the poison used by the two wasn’t even detectable, so Wilhelm had a hard time combating that.

  This time though, we have an advantage.

  Alexa furrowed her brows as she closed her notebook, filled with lecture notes. She left the room of the professor teaching magecraft fundamentals with other students, rushing out into the hallways to go to the next lecture.

  That was when she found herself bumping straight into Elisabeth’s side.

  “Ah! Who just—”

  It seemed that Elisabeth was easily irritable today, and she nearly slapped the woman to her right, when she noticed that it was Alexa that mindlessly hit her.

  The girl immediately shifted her tone, bowing and apologizing politely.

  “Ah, Your Highness! I apologize, I didn’t see you. Please pardon me for colliding with you! I’m so clumsy!”

  “I…I’m the one who bumped into you—”

  “No! It was me, I did it! I’m so sorry, really sorry. I’ll try my best to ensure this never happens again!”

  As Elisabeth bowed and begged for forgiveness, Alexa noticed the students around them chattering lightly about what had happened.

  It seemed that many were looking at Elisabeth with sympathy. She was being honest, polite, and extremely apologetic. Even if Alexa was royalty, for a member of the House of Kassel to act in such a way—it was a display of humility and grace.

  On the other hand, while none of the students directly vocalized it, it was clear that they didn’t like the fact that Alexa, the one who clearly hit Elisabeth, wasn’t even apologizing yet.

  Silly dorks! I was planning to say sorry first, but she just did it first!

  Alexa internally huffed. Just because of what she was doing recently, the opinion of her peers toward her had taken a significant decline.

  It was honestly pretty safe to say that her ratings from the nobility and her peers were currently underwater, even when the rest of the country was practically kneeling and praying to her.

  Tired of these performative social plays, Alexa just nodded and accepted her apology.

  “Cease it,” Alexa said. “I take responsibility, but if you wish to take responsibility too, I won’t stop you. It’s commendable.”

  Alexa then flapped out her folding fan and covered her face.

  “I have another class to go to, however, so please forgive me for being unable to say more.”

  And then, as Alexa walked away, she heard even more murmurs about her coldness.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Those peasants. What do they expect? That I should bow and apologize meekly to the daughter of my enemy?

  How ridiculous. Alexa knew no one who would do such a thing.

  …Except for Phoebe of course.

  But that didn’t count. She certainly wasn’t going to do the same, even for something as practical as attempting to gain the sympathy of her peers.

  After all, once she was poisoned, she would gain a lot more should she survive.

  I’ll give it to her though. She's quite convincing.

  The way she acted there was the hallmark of a professional actor. She must truly be angling to be a harmless pure maiden who would never poison a princess.

  How convenient.

  +++

  Royalist troops are now positioned at Ostend and Perlenstadt.

  They are concealed, well-supplied, and well-motivated.

  Goddess save Her Highness!

  Wilhelm burned the letter from one of his appointed officers in the 2nd Group Army. It seemed that his ‘insurance policy’ was now well-positioned.

  Of course, he still faced the problem of the Imperial Army’s 1st and 3rd Group Army attempting to counter him should he make his move, but…

  I have a few shieldguard battalions on high alert.

  Unfortunately for the guys up north, Wilhelm recognized the reality that this month might go ‘explosive’ shall we say. He therefore pulled off multiple elite shieldguard battalions from the frontline with the demon horde.

  Then, he placed them on the reserve to ‘re-equip and resupply’. Of course, conveniently, they were now acting in reserve by being deployed at the edges of the Defense Districts closest to Ostend and Perlenstadt.

  Even his main unit, the 101st Rapid Reaction Brigade ‘Fuchs’, was now redeployed to conduct emergency sweeps north of Perlenstadt.

  He managed to do this because of his extensive connections deep in the Defense Forces. Even Defense Minister Hindenburg approved of his requests after Wilhelm sent him his letters detailing the situation in the Imperial Capital.

  He therefore had a lot of assets ready for use.

  But still…

  He’d best rely on the 2nd Group Army’s units that he deployed. The Defense Forces were more of a secondary insurance policy. He didn’t want to call that in because calling them in would mean that they would lose their ‘apolitical’ status.

  And that was something that Wilhelm recognized as a gravely important thing. The Defense Forces’ reputation was already underwater, he didn’t want to sully the name of mankind’s defenders further by blatantly making them play politics.

  Ideally, once the plot against Alexa Theresa happened, Wilhelm planned to strike while the situation was hot using only the 2nd Group Army.

  The plan was simple—use the incident as a pretext for taking over Perlenstadt and Ostend to investigate ‘coup plotters’ against the princess.

  Once that was done, he himself would be the one conducting a coup for the princess. His troops would take over the Imperial Diet and the office of the Imperial Executive, currently headed by the Regency Council.

  Then, I can pin the blame on Ludwig and Henry. While they are indeed enemies, they have been collaborating after all.

  Wilhelm actually struggled to find it out, and he was still gathering necessary evidence. Earlier, he assumed that multiple plots were coming independently from Henry and Ludwig’s camp targeting Alexa.

  No, he found out that the two were working together, or at least, the scion of House Kassel struck a deal with Henry, all according to Alexa.

  Of course, she had no proof. Neither did Wilhelm, but at this point, he had already learned that something was truly special about the princess.

  Trusting her guts when she spoke about what might happen in the future was something that Wilhelm learned to do at face value, and it always worked out well whenever he planned something.

  The question though, is how I’ll finish this show.

  There were multiple outcomes. He doubted that Ludwig and Henry would simply surrender. It was why he had to be quick.

  Should Ludwig offer token resistance, Wilhelm wanted to crush them in a brief battle while they were disorganized. His faction should scatter rather quickly.

  Henry was more difficult. Most likely, even with the most ideal conditions, he would escape and regroup with the 4th Group Army.

  So, the only way to make sure that the least blood is shed as Alexa dictated…

  He needed an overwhelming victory. Once the coup ended, he wanted to force a vote in the Imperial Diet to create a new reformist government.

  Then, with Alexa’s help, he would campaign for its legitimacy to be cemented. Even if Henry was difficult to defeat, if Wilhelm stacked every deck on his side, he would have no choice but to lay down his arms and surrender.

  Should he remain crazy though and refuse, I’m sure the 4th Group Army will be forced regardless to break up and surrender before any major engagement.

  In the end, Henry should end up as a vagrant running from the law. On the other hand, the entire affair should look like nothing but a quick change of power after an attempted regicide.

  The only chink in this plan is that I don’t know if I can control the next government or not.

  Wilhelm would never blatantly put himself or his men into power anyway after all. He and his team were best relegated to the rear, where they could influence those facing the public into acting in Alexa’s interests.

  The problem was, he had no insurance policy should the person the Imperial Diet voted in decide to pull another Ludwig.

  But for now, it’s best to deal with the immediate threat. I can influence the next guy once he’s in.

  Wilhelm thus began drafting another set of letters he would disseminate to his men.

  Within a few minutes, just before his breaktime ended, he finished writing the letters, taking them with him as he walked straight to his next class.