The Royal Military Academy's Impostor Owns a Dungeon [BL]

A deafening roar of cheers, like that of a packed stadium moments before the championship match, rolled across the arena as Owen Mylor finally stepped into the stands, craning his neck in search of his assigned seat.

He scanned the crowd casually at first.

Then his eyes landed on something so threateningly impassioned that he couldn’t even properly react.

He blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Then so rapidly that it was probably a new personal record in his admittedly short life.

Because there, right in the middle of the brightly lit arena where countless spectators had gathered in eager anticipation...

Was a monstrosity.

Owen stared.

His brain slowly began putting together the horrifying implications until, after some admittedly simple calculations, he raised his most pressing issue.

”...”

Wasn’t he supposed to be sitting somewhere near that?

He refused to accept it.

Surely he had counted wrong.

Maybe he’d looked at the wrong section.

Maybe that thing belonged to someone else entirely.

Clinging desperately to hope, he looked again.

Only this time, he really took it in.

And immediately let out a tiny yelp.

Holding up that magnificent disaster were two people who couldn’t have contrasted more if they tried.

On one side stood Luca, practically glowing with excitement, his smile so bright it looked as though he’d personally been waiting his entire life for this very moment.

On the other...

Was Xavier.

The older cadet’s face remained as unreadable as ever, only this time his eyes were another matter entirely, carrying the unmistakable look of someone silently begging for rescue while accepting that no such rescue was coming.

Owen felt every hair on his body stand on end.

No.

Oh no.

”...”

But what was that in the first place?

__

To call it a support sign honestly wouldn’t do it justice.

Not because Luca hadn’t poured his heart and soul into making it. Quite the opposite.

The problem was that he’d apparently poured every ounce of artistic talent he possessed into it as well, and somewhere along the way, those two things had become mutually exclusive.

The end result was an explosion-shaped monstrosity so aggressively handcrafted that even the event staff instinctively slowed as they passed, visibly trying to determine whether they were looking at a support sign or some elaborate public safety warning.

To begin with, the thing was enormous.

Not merely easy to spot from the stands enormous.

No.

This was the sort of enormousness that looked perfectly capable of catching the attention of someone taking an examination on another planet. If Ollie somehow failed to notice it, then it wouldn’t be because the sign wasn’t large enough.

It’d be because he’d somehow gone blind somewhere between leaving the waiting room and walking into the arena.

The lettering, however, was what truly elevated the whole thing into a category of its own.

Owen couldn’t quite explain why looking at it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

If there’d been another Tesserian nearby, though, they would’ve recognized the feeling immediately.

Rather than simply writing ”GO OLLIE!!” like every other supportive sibling in existence, Luca had painstakingly cut individual letters from old magazines and newspapers he’d long since accumulated in his cabin, then glued them onto the board one by one.

Unfortunately, because the alphabet differed, none of the characters could simply be cut out as they were. Instead, each Imperial letter had been painstakingly pieced together from several completely unrelated magazine cutouts.

The O was thick and looked as though it’d been made out of images ripped straight from the cover of a true-crime magazine.

The first L was assembled from cutouts taken from an expensive perfume advertisement.

The second L had apparently once promoted fertilizer.

The I glittered with metallic foil for reasons nobody, including Luca probably, could explain.

The final E was predominantly bright yellow, proudly borrowed from what looked suspiciously like a supermarket bread discount flyer.

Individually, none of the letters looked particularly alarming. But together, they looked exactly like someone demanding ransom.

In fact, the first time Xavier saw the sign being made, he found himself glancing once at his earnest little wife—whose cheeks were streaked with marker and dotted with bits of colored paper—before staring at the project far longer than was socially acceptable.

He figured that had something like that ever landed on his desk, his first instinct would’ve been to launch an immediate investigation.

Though without others knowing what his beloved was making, he wasn’t sure if anyone else would be able to identify the rather peculiar mugshot that occupied nearly half the entire sign, which was allegedly a rather realistic star.

Not the five-pointed shape that even they were used to calling a star, but the one that was generally burning, spherical and yet bulging in places.

He apparently wanted a star that the people of the Empire could recognize.

”...”

”...”

The Imperial Crown Prince, devoted husband that he was, had been about to ask a polite question when Luca suddenly lifted the sign with unmistakable pride.

”Xavier! Look! Isn’t my brother cute?” he beamed. ”I think if I add a little more glitter, it’ll shine as brightly as he does!”

The sudden burst of enthusiasm caught him completely off guard.

And then Luca smiled.

Faced with those puffed cheeks, Xavier instinctively wanted to bite; his resolve crumbled almost immediately. At that point, he was fairly certain Luca could’ve asked him to wear the sign around his neck, and he’d probably have done so without much resistance.

Lord.

Though much of his life had been consumed by war, politics, and burdens few could imagine, Xavier had nevertheless been raised as the Empire’s heir. Appreciating art, in all its forms, had been part of that education. So he dug extremely deep for an interpretation.

He studied it with all the seriousness of someone examining an ancient masterpiece.

Perhaps it depicted fleeting glimpses of the mop as he sprinted past at tremendous speed.

Yes.

That had to be it.

If he squinted hard enough, he could even identify several familiar features.

After blinking a third time, Xavier confidently concluded that it was unmistakably human.

Probably.

The eyes both existed, though they hadn’t quite reached an agreement on where forward was.

The smile somehow slanted upward and downward at the same time.

The ears appeared to have been positioned according to artistic instinct rather than anatomy.

As for the hair, each strand seemed remarkably free-spirited, free enough to travel toward entirely different points of the compass.

Strangely enough, despite everything, it still looked unmistakably happy.

Painfully earnest.

Completely sincere.

The empty spaces surrounding the portrait had been filled with glitter stickers almost certainly donated by D-64, while thick marker messages radiated in every direction.

GOOD LUCK, BROTHER!

YOU CAN DO IT!

YOU’RE THE BEST MECHANIC!

I BELIEVE IN YOU!

This time around, instead of only the two of them seeing it, the sign had been unveiled to what was likely the entire Empire, and, as expected, the Prince had to hold up the other end.

Truly something that would’ve been unheard of just months ago.

Xavier admittedly wished for divine intervention as the number of onlookers multiplied by the second, but he could only be thankful that in this life, his little wife managed to find someone like that Mylor for a friend.

Because really, who else but the equally unhinged mop would burst into tears of joy upon seeing something that looked less like a support sign and more like a heartfelt ransom note?

__

Down on the testing grounds, Ollie stood frozen, his fingers twitching against his uniform as his chest tightened with every shallow breath. The entire arena seemed to sway around him, and for one terrifying moment, he genuinely wondered whether he was going to throw up before the examination even began.

Desperately, he lifted his head, searching the towering stands for any familiar face he could anchor himself to.

Then he saw it.

Ollie’s trembling expression instantly melted into a brilliant grin.

He threw both arms into the air, waving with enough enthusiasm that anyone watching might’ve mistaken him for someone signaling aircraft.

Just like his good brother had promised.

Luca was really there cheering for him.

And what a spectacular boom that sign was.

Such a concentrated burst of cloud and flames.

It was a boom worthy of being written into the history books.

To everyone else, the bizarre portrait dominating the sign looked like an aggressively handcrafted disaster.

But to the questionable but deeply appreciative Oliver Mylor...

It was unmistakable.

A glorious, albeit uniquely shaped mushroom cloud!

The magnificent aftermath of a perfect explosion.

His brother really did understand him.

Almost instantly, the panic disappeared.

The tightness in his chest eased, his breathing settled, and the nausea that had threatened to overwhelm him quietly faded as he looked toward the group of family and friends who had gathered to support him.

His gaze naturally wandered from one familiar face to another until it eventually landed on his husband.

He hadn’t spotted Kyle right away.

Not because he wasn’t there, but because he almost missed him with that unexpected thing he was wearing.

Was he actually in an apron? That apron?!

Short of seeing jam, cookies, and flour on his husband’s cheek, Ollie could’ve sworn he’d hallucinated that before.

The blonde let out a slow breath, a hopelessly happy smile spreading across his face as he looked at the people waiting for him.

Heck, his siblings, whom he assumed would be angry at him, were even holding up signboards with his name on them.

Okay, maybe he really could actually do this.