Chapter34

battle experience, and a single moment of hesitation inside a Gate can kill not only you but the people standing beside you."
"Then how am I supposed to gain experience?" Didi asked. "Do I wait until everyone decides I am ready by instinct?"
"Not here," the Knight Captain said at once. "Not in an unknown Gate this close to the capital, and not while the entire kingdom knows exactly who you are."
Another minister leaned forward after that, looking relieved that someone had finally said what the rest of them had been circling around.
"Even if we set aside the danger itself, Your Highness, if anything happens to you inside that Gate, the political shock alone would be severe."
Didi's mouth tightened.
"So that is the real answer," she said. "You all praise my talent when it costs nothing, but the moment I ask to do something real, I am told to sit in the palace and wait until experience somehow appears on its own."
No one answered her immediately, and that silence told its own story.
The room did not doubt her talent, which was exactly why this stung as much as it did. If the discussion had been about academy rankings, spell precision or sword forms, not one of them would have spoken to her like this.
But a Gate was not an academy hall, and everyone in that room knew it.
Princess Didi might have been Holy Land's brightest student, but she had still never fought for her life before.
The quiet after that stretched just long enough to turn uncomfortable before one of the older nobles cleared his throat and leaned forward a little.
"If the concern is sending people too important from directly under the crown," he said, looking from the Knight Captain to the king, "then perhaps we should not rely only on royal forces. The Great Families have more than enough talent among their own ranks, and if the reward is high enough, they will not refuse."
That drew a few looks around the table, mostly because nobody there could deny the logic even if they disliked where it pointed.
"Great houses do not move without weighing what they gain," the Knight Captain said, his expression souring a little. "The moment we invite one into a