Volume 5 - Prologue

The creation of a national Akatsuki Academy, the card that Prime Minister Tsukikage unveiled just before the Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival, sent a shock-wave through society.

Of course it would. For member states of the League of Mage-Knight Nations, the League's headquarters would as a rule be responsible for the training of the nation's military force, the Blazers. With the word 'national'―that was to say, within Japan's sovereign control―Tsukikage meant to annul this agreement by declaring the creation of a training institution for Blazers publicly. This could be nothing but a declaration of war against the League.

His actions split public opinion in two.

The naysayers were on one side. Earnest opinions that Japan had enjoyed half a century of peace within the Federation, making changes to this system is unnecessary and not to be done lightly, revulsion that Tsukikage played a student event like the Seven Stars Sword Festival for politics and that he had resorted to harsh methods like the partial destruction of Hagun Academy―these and others fell under this classification.

Then there were the supporters. Those who believed that the training of a nation's defenders, the Blazers, by an external organization was in itself strange, or that Japan should have control over this process, and that Tsukikage was merely correcting a mistake that had persisted for the past 50 years. More extreme views asserted that Japan was capable of existing as an independent power, equal to the likes of Russia and America, and that participating in a collective of the weak like the League was unnecessary.

Even those who were normally uninterested in politics expressed their respective stances.

「Tsukikage's methods are too forceful. I feel repulsed.」

「The assault on Hagun Academy is a rumor created by the naysayers. Akatsuki Academy only used illusionary form. There were no casualties.」

「I don't want to send our children out to fight the wars of other nations. Becoming independent from the League is a must.」

「This nation does not even possess the military capability to maintain its independence and sovereignty. We must remain within the League.」

「Tsukikage is colluding with Rebellion. That man cannot be trusted.」

「To begin with, the act of joining the League fifty years ago was a mistake.」

Such things were discussed by friends and peers at drinking parties, in housewives' gossip, with the more proactive taking to civil movement and airing their views in the streets. Most likely, everyone could feel it. That at this instant, the huge swell of an era was threatening to surge forth. Would the country known as Japan continue onward within the League of Mage-Knight Nations? Or would it ultimately rise up as a fully independent nation? All this would be decided at the Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival, which even at this moment was starting.

If Akatsuki, led by Tsukikage, were to display strength befitting his boasts, popular opinion would all at once swing in favor of "leaving the Federation". Conversely, if Akatsuki were to be defeated by the existing seven schools, then Tsukikage would lose the ear of the public. This was an anomalous Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival, one that could decide even the course of a nation.

This student's event in which heretofore unsurpassed excitement and interest were invested―was drawing close at hand.