The teacher of Berlene 3 was Lord Voltaire, a former diplomat whose main subject at the academy was international politics.

He raised an eyebrow at the two new students in his classroom but didn’t acknowledge them directly.

Neris didn’t care at all what attitude Lord Voltaire showed. However, Megara’s expression gradually changed, seemingly shocked by his indifference after she had tried to attract attention with a few fantastic smiles.

When Lord Voltaire finally handed out a rather long Berlene text to the students, Megara began conversing with Mahradi Ennim with a cold face.

“Eskel ma tendros suain? (Does he dislike you?)”

Ren glanced at the text for a moment, then asked Neris with his chin resting on the desk, looking bored. It was in the sacred language used by clergy, not the Berlene they were currently studying.

‘This person?’

Neris answered in the same sacred language.

“Yo nasabe parent. (I don’t know.)”

Ren’s eyes narrowed into crescents. He found it amusing that a child responded immediately in the sacred language.

He had learned the sacred language from a young age due to the uniqueness of his family environment, but for ordinary nobles, memorizing a couple of phrases in the sacred language was enough to be considered cultured.

It had been like this since he first saw her. Neris was different from other new students.

She knew things that only senior students should know, and even things that senior students didn’t know well. But at that age, despite being so smart, she didn’t show off as one might expect. At that point, it wasn’t showing off, but truly being exceptional.

“Porkel tendros suain? (Why does he dislike you?)”

Neris found it absurd that he even asked.

“Yo boz habeo dit, ‘Yo nasabe parent’. (I already told you, ‘I don’t know’.)”

“Hmm.”

Ren didn’t ask further when Neris brushed him off, but he continued to stare at her. Neris ignored him and read the text.

After a while, Lord Voltaire gave learning instructions to the students in Berlene. After seeing how well the students followed the instructions, he suddenly asked in Imperial language.

“Can anyone tell me what my first instruction meant?”

A few senior students raised their hands. Lord Voltaire pointed to one of the boys.

“Arthur Pendlant.”

Neris knew Arthur Pendlant well. His father was the Minister of Foreign Affairs and his mother was a Berlene noble, so he was destined to play an active role in diplomacy with Berlene after graduation.

Arthur answered in an intelligent tone.

“You told us to briefly summarize the given text.”

Lord Voltaire didn’t indicate whether Arthur’s answer was right or wrong, but turned his gaze with a stern face.

“Then let’s hear everyone’s answers. Who wants to go first?”

Again, several senior students raised their hands. More than before. Lord Voltaire chose the hand in the lowest position.

“Megara Likeandros.”

Megara seemed to have regained some confidence from the fact that Lord Voltaire knew her name. She spoke in a feigned humble voice.

“Livingston Kinsey tried to improve Gallia’s windmills but failed due to budget shortages and was killed by local residents.”

Lord Voltaire’s stiff face showed no change in expression. He took his eyes off Megara and asked Neris in Berlene.

“E ton, du achisare penslra? (Do you think so too?)”

Most of the students thought Megara had answered perfectly and were admiring her, so they didn’t show interest in how Neris would respond.

However, Ren’s eyes sharpened, and Neris answered briefly in smooth Berlene.

“Ka dfandra. (Perhaps it could be so.)”

That wasn’t a good answer.

If you agree, you should concede cleanly, and if it’s wrong, you should offer a different answer. Most of the students in the classroom were old enough not to openly show displeasure, but they were clearly thinking Neris was strange.

Just as the thought that she was indeed jealous to the point of being frowned upon spread to more than half of the students.

“Doken? (So what’s your answer?)”

Lord Voltaire urged without any other reaction. Neris met Lord Voltaire’s stern gaze and calmly said.

“Ambassador Livingston, sent to Gallia, tried to use popular policies to improve relations with local residents, but there were limits to support from his home country, and when the allocated budget ran out, he was killed.”

“That’s wrong!”

Mahradi Ennim shouted involuntarily, but some in the classroom were nodding. Megara’s eyes turned hostile.

Lord Voltaire slightly pulled back his chin.

“Neris Trude. What was my first instruction?”

“You told us to briefly explain the story in the given text.”

“Is your answer different from Arthur Pendlant’s?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a diplomat, Lord Voltaire.”

In Imperial language, to ‘summarize’ a text means to speak restrictively about the content within the text. But to ‘explain’ the story in the text means that logically inferrable information can be included. In Berlene, there was no distinction between these two expressions.

Both answers would have had the same meaning in ordinary situations, but Neris focused on the vocabulary Lord Voltaire used.

The vocabulary Lord Voltaire used belonged to the cautionary words that needed to be particularly carefully distinguished when Berlene was used in diplomatic settings, and if so, there must have been a deliberate meaning in using it.

What would a diplomat do by analyzing only the information presented by the other party? Of course, one should give an ‘explanation’ that includes one’s own guesses and interpretations.

When the new student from a humble family pointed out the nuance that even the son of a diplomat had missed, Lord Voltaire smiled for the first time since entering this classroom today. It was clearly a smile of satisfaction, though it showed only for a very brief moment.

“Why do you learn foreign languages?”

The students realized that Lord Voltaire wasn’t going to point out wrong answers on the spot and end it, but rather compare them publicly with others’ answers, so they dared not open their mouths. As the class wasn’t progressing, Arthur Pendlant cautiously answered.

“Isn’t it to converse with people from other countries?”

“Basically correct, Arthur Pendlant. But you are nobles. If you absolutely want to converse with people from other countries, you can have interpreters. Or you can use the common Rund language to converse with nobles from any country on the continent. So why bother learning the language of another country?”

In the classroom that had fallen silent as if frozen, Neris answered smoothly.

“To gain an advantage in diplomacy.”

“Correct.”

Lord Voltaire looked at Neris with a gleam in his eyes. The students could tell that Lord Voltaire liked Neris.

Even now that he was retired, he was still a renowned figure in the diplomatic world, so if Neris wanted, she could start more easily than others in that field in the future.

“You learn foreign languages to conduct diplomacy. Don’t overlook even a single word. Analyze not the information that appears on the surface, but the meaning that information has for you. If you ‘roughly’ understand, diplomacy fails. Neris Trude is able to take the same class as you now because she knows this fact.”

His last words brought a big change to the atmosphere in the classroom.

Even though it was the same ‘smart’ evaluation, Megara’s assessment meant that Neris was stepping forward unnecessarily in front of the children.

However, Lord Voltaire’s assessment meant that Neris would be helpful to her classmates.

He knew that if it appeared that he, as a teacher, was favoring one student, it would cause resentment among the other students, so he stopped speaking within a precarious range.

‘As expected, you’re an excellent diplomat even now.’

Neris smiled inwardly.

When she lived as the Crown Princess, her main job was diplomacy. She had even briefly studied under Lord Voltaire himself during a diplomatic dispute with Berlene.

That’s why she applied for his class this time as well. She didn’t expect Megara to follow, though.

“But teacher.”

Megara had already raised her hand with a calm face. She asked in a voice feigning lovability.

“Isn’t Neris’s interpretation itself wrong?”

“That’s right.”

Mahradi Ennim quickly agreed and soon began to criticize Neris loudly.

“That child is a new student and from a country village, so it’s unavoidable that she has shortcomings. But if so, shouldn’t she take classes suitable for her level? Isn’t she wasting the time of senior students when she can’t even properly interpret simple words?”

“What?”

Ren sat up straight for the first time since entering the classroom. Receiving his sharp gaze, Mahradi hesitated but soon gathered courage and glared back.

“What? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Who was it that just understood the diplomatic term in Berlene?”

“I don’t believe that either. How could she know diplomatic terms? Even Arthur didn’t know? You must have taught her, Ren Feyel, since you’re her partner.”

“Why would I teach her that?”

“Well? I don’t know. Maybe because no one wants to get close to you, so you flattered her a bit?”

Ren’s eyes glinted coldly. A charming and dangerous smile like that of a little devil instantly appeared on his youthful face, which was the expression he showed when he was angry.

“I think that’s my line.”

“What?”

Mahradi was more clumsy than Ren. His appearance of blushing and flaring up in anger was to the extent that others felt uncomfortable.

Neris looked at Megara with an unreadable face, and Lord Voltaire watched Neris’s behavior with sharp eyes.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Can’t you understand human speech? If you didn’t understand, forget it.”

“Hey, Ren Feyel……!”

“Tus, arete. (Both of you, stop it.)”

As Ren shrugged nonchalantly and Mahradi was about to explode, Lord Voltaire intervened to calm the situation. Then he asked Neris.

“Kernha du pensla a discur previen? (What do you think about the conversation just now?)”

“Ka name derange parang, sior. (It’s none of my business, sir.)”

At Neris’s calm words, Mahradi looked like he was dying of irritation, but Ren seemed unsurprised, as if it was natural.

In Ren’s opinion, this matter was between himself and Mahradi. It seemed that Mahradi had intended to target Ren from the beginning.

“Mahradi Ennim, Ren Feyel. Both of you are punished for forgetting that this is class time. Come see me at lunchtime. And Neris Trude, come to the front and explain why you interpreted it that way.”

“Yes.”

The students’ gazes focused on Neris as she slowly walked to the front of the podium.

She was used to such gazes, so she showed no signs of agitation that a typical new student might show. No, rather, to others, it seemed as if she was receiving the praise she rightfully deserved.

The huge blackboard attached to the podium was managed by magic, so even a short person could write without difficulty using the teacher’s baton. Neris received the baton from Lord Voltaire and wrote several Berlene words on the blackboard, noting their Imperial meanings next to them.

“Nice handwriting.”

Arthur Pendlant expressed his admiration in a louder voice than he had intended. And when Mahradi Ennim’s resentful gaze turned towards him, he shrugged. What?

He had only spoken his mind. To write such proficient and refined handwriting, one would have to dedicate at least a few years to handwriting practice alone. He himself was known for his good handwriting, but not to the extent of this new student. Moreover, the act of writing on a magic blackboard itself was not easy for a beginner.

Megara bit her lip as she saw one of the words Neris had written.

‘Cange: Ambassador.’

The word that Megara had pronounced as ‘Kinsey’, thinking it was a person’s name, was read as ‘cange’ in Berlene style, and in diplomatic terms, it meant ambassador. Originally, the Imperial name Kinsey itself was derived from this word.

And the word that Megara had translated as ‘windmill’ meant ‘a continuous flow within a certain range’, which, while not impossible to translate that way, was a complete mistranslation in this context.