Harem Training System: Every Girl I Train Makes Me Stronger!

William had spent the days since his visit to the archives quietly constructing a portrait of Seraphina Valestria in his mind, but none of the pieces he’d assembled painted her kindly.

Each scrap of information—the reverent whispers of the faculty, the sanitized records of her flawless victories, the way the very air seemed to stiffen when her name was spoken—felt like another layer of polished marble covering something colder underneath.

It made a grim, inevitable sense. A perfect, untouchable prodigy, celebrated since childhood as the living proof of her family’s divine right to rule and fight.

She occupied a space so far above ordinary expectation that anyone measured against her would inevitably come up short. William had trained under commanders once who had built entire units around a single golden example, men who held every recruit to an impossible, inhuman standard regardless of the psychological wreckage it left behind.

He had seen those units break; he had seen men become hollowed out shells of themselves, their spirits crushed by the simple fact that they could never be the ’golden child.’

It wasn’t hard to imagine Seraphina, whether through conscious cruelty or unconscious arrogance, functioning as exactly that kind of impossible standard in Lia’s life.

She wasn’t just a sister; she was a shadow so vast and absolute that it blotted out any possibility of Lia being seen as her own person. Lia wasn’t a student; she was a failed echo.

’And echoes eventually stop making noise if you suppress them hard enough,’ William thought grimly.

He needed to hear it from her directly before he allowed that assumption to calcify into a fact. He needed to see if there was any humanity beneath that gilded exterior or if Seraphina Valestria was nothing more than a weapon forged in the fires of family pride.

That much, at least, he owed both sisters: the truth, however ugly it might be.

However, arranging the meeting proved to be considerably more treacherous than any battlefield engagement he had faced. He couldn’t simply stride up to a visiting noblewoman of her standing and demand a private audience without a plausible justification.

To do so would be an insult to her station, a breach of protocol that would immediately paint him as either a madman or a conspirator, and in this academy, those two labels were often interchangeable.

He spent an entire morning pacing the confined space of his quarters, the wooden floorboards creaking under his restless strides. The sunlight shifted across the walls as the hours bled into one another, but his mind remained trapped in a loop of failed strategies.

"I could say... I want her professional opinion on advanced sword theory," he muttered to himself, stopping mid-stride to stare at his own reflection in the polished metal of his practice blade.

The scarred surface of the steel seemed to mock him. "No, wait... that’s transparent."

"She’ll see through that like glass... She knows I’m not interested in theory... more like I’m interested in the person behind the legend."

He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. "An invitation to discuss the tactical applications of Valestria family techniques?"

"Nah... that’s too sycophantic... She’d smell the deception immediately."

A new thought flickered, something darker, something more direct, but he dismissed it instantly. "Or maybe... asking for a sparring session? But shit... That would be an invitation to humiliation."

’If she’s as perfect as they say, she’ll use the opportunity to demonstrate exactly why Lia will never measure up..." William held his chin. "I’d be handing her the knife to twist in Lia’s wounds."

He stopped pacing and leaned heavily against his desk, the lamplight casting his shadow long and distorted against the wall. His mind raced through a dozen more lies, each more flimsy than the last.

The tension in his jaw was physical, a grinding ache that mirrored the frustration building in his chest. He was a man used to solving problems through direct action, through force of will and blade, but here, in the labyrinth of noble politics and unspoken expectations, his sword was useless.

"Fuck," he whispered into the empty room, the curse hanging heavy in the air. "How do you approach a god without looking like a blasphemer?"

He tried a version involving a critique of the academy’s current curriculum, something about the lack of practical application in advanced mana circulatory theory, but discarded that almost immediately.

It felt forced, like a merchant trying to sell spoiled fish with a rehearsed smile. The more he tried to engineer a perfect lie, the more obvious the deception became in his own mind.

Eventually, his patience snapped. Giving up entirely on crafting something clever or politically airtight, he found himself stalking through the corridors like a caged predator, until he spotted Albert.

The old man was moving toward the headmaster’s office with his usual measured, infuriating calm.

William intercepted him in the narrow hallway just outside the office, blocking Albert’s path. "Headmaster Albert, a minute, please?"

"Hm? Looking for questions, you are."

’There he is again with that word...’

Up close, William looked considerably more flustered than a man of his reputation should; his jaw was tight, his shoulders coiled with tension, and there was a restless energy in his eyes that suggested he was seconds away from either a breakthrough or a breakdown.

"Well, you see... I need a reason to talk to Lady Seraphina alone," William said, cutting off Albert’s approach without any preamble.

His voice was low, urgent, and stripped of his usual playful deflection. "A believable one."

’Something with enough institutional weight that she can’t dismiss it as a personal whim, but preferably one that doesn’t make me look like I’m plotting some elaborate scheme to infiltrate her inner circle."

Albert stopped dead. He didn’t flinch at William’s intensity; instead, he slowly adjusted his spectacles, peering over the silver rims with an expression that suggested he found William’s desperation quietly, almost clinically, amusing.

"Want me to invent a cover story for you? You are." Albert stated it, and it wasn’t a question.

His tone carried the weary patience of a man who had spent decades dealing with ambitious, impulsive men. "You want me to weave a tapestry of plausible deniability so you can slink into a private conversation under the guise of official business."

"It’s not that deep... just... I want you to give me an excuse that sounds official," William corrected sharply, his fingers drumming an impatient rhythm against the stone wall. "I don’t have time to dance around the Valestria family’s sensibilities."

"I need to get to the truth before Lia gets buried under another layer of their expectations."

’God, why is this harder than a siege? ’William thought bitterly. ’I’d rather face a phalanx of enchanted spears than navigate this bureaucratic bullshit.’

Albert remained unmoved by the underlying desperation in William’s voice. "You are asking for complexity where none is required, Instructor Wade."

"You are overcomplicating the situation because you assume everyone else is playing the same game of shadows that you are."

"In this academy? Everyone is playing shadows, Albert."

"Perhaps," Albert conceded, tilting his head slightly. "However, there is one simple truth you seem determined to ignore."

"I could simply inform her that you are Lia’s primary instructor and that you wish to discuss the girl’s progress directly with her family’s most esteemed representative. " A pause. "Which, I might remind you, is not a fabrication... It is a statement of fact."

William blinked. The words hung in the air between them, startlingly simple.

The frantic gears in his mind, which had been grinding away at impossible complications, suddenly ground to a halt. "That’s... that’s actually a perfectly valid excuse."

’WHAT THE FUCK DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?!’

"I am aware," Albert said, a faint, almost imperceptible smirk touching the corner of his mouth as he began to step around William. "It is called honesty, Instructor Wade."

"A concept you should try relying on more often... It tends to require considerably less pacing in hallways and significantly less perspiration."

William stood alone in the hallway for a moment after Albert had passed, feeling like a fool. "Yeaa..."

"Honesty," he muttered to himself, rubbing the back of his neck. "Right... Simple... and also direct."

But as he turned to head toward his next appointment, the simplicity of Albert’s solution didn’t ease his nerves; it heightened them. Honesty would give him entry, yes, but it wouldn’t give him protection.

Once he was behind closed doors with Seraphina Valestria, there would be no official protocol to shield him from whatever she was truly made of.