by Funa
“Wuhh… St-still, improving that much is crazyyy!” Mile wailed.
“Now then,” said Marcela. “Shall we continue our conversation?”
***
“So, if I just sell the estate and pocket all the proceeds…”
“Are you out of your mind?!” Marcela shouted.
Mile’s proposal was swiftly denied.
“Your family’s land is a gift from his Majesty, the king himself. In return for protecting, governing, and developing that land, you are eligible to receive the privileges of a noble! It’s not something you can just sell off like an old cow!”
Mavis nodded emphatically as well.
“So in that case, I’d have to relinquish everything to the king… Or else turn it over to a relative…”
“Well, yes, that is the usual course of action. When a noble household is unsettled by scandal, their lands are confiscated or their manor demolished, with the noble themself confined to house arrest, his children disinherited, and ownership of the estate reassigned to some distant relative or the like. However, that is only what applies under normal circumstances. That is not going to be the way things work out for you, Miss Adele.”
“Huh?”
Marcela continued to crush Mile’s plan into tiny pieces.
“Do you really believe that his Majesty would allow you to escape so easily? The son of your grandfather’s elder sister, or some such relative, has already tried to force his claim to the Ascham family estate, but his Majesty quickly denied him. This fellow was incredibly obstinate about it—no matter how many times he was told that there was already a legitimate heir, he insisted that anyone who had absconded from the country to whereabouts unknown should be disowned from the family. There was some anxiety that he might try to harm you or otherwise interfere with you in some way in the future, and I believe the whole thing turned out rather unfortunately for him…
“Anyway, the situation seems to imply that his Majesty is intent on having you, Miss Adele, serve as the head of the house of Ascham…”
“……”
Mile was amazed. She was amaz-eggs and bacon.
“Wh-what do we do…?”
Mile and the Crimson Vow fretted.
Meow!
Just then, a black cat slipped through a window into the room.
“Oh! Crooktail!”
Mile grinned as her old friend Crooktail, known to others as “Cricket Eater,” slinked around her back.
“He’s just trying to leave his scent on you, isn’t he?” Mavis asked.
“No, his back is itching, isn’t it?” Pauline wondered.
“No, I’m pretty sure he’s asserting his dominance, isn’t that right?” said Reina. “Like, ‘Yes, this person is my servant.’”
“Sh-shut up!” Mile roared, with unusual vehemence.
It was only following a desperate plea from the Crimson Vow that the Wonder Trio finally agreed to allow them to leave.
“Well, I suppose it is far too soon for you to be tied down by any engagements or marriages. We are all still only twelve years old, after all. Enjoy your freedom for a little while longer.”
It should be noted that, despite Marcela’s assumptions, Mile had a birthday early in the year and was already thirteen.
“M-Miss Marcela…”
Tears glistened in Mile’s eyes.
“You can spare us a little more time, though, can’t you?” Marcela asked. “I’d like to talk about what’s happened since then.”
“O-of course!”
For some time after that, Mile and her old friends had a lively exchange about all that had occurred since Mile—or rather, Adele—left the academy. Reina and the others listened quietly. They would have plenty of time to talk with Mile from there on out, so they had no interest in interfering with the scant time that the younger girls had together—a time that meant the world to Marcela and the rest of the Wonder Trio.
***
“So, should we get going soon?”
Reina finally cut in, seeing that the four girls appeared liable to keep talking until the sun rose if they let them.
The later it got, the more inconvenient it would be for them to leave. Students passing through the gates in the late evening were one thing, but students coming and going in the middle of the night or early in the morning were certain to give the guards pause, and they hardly wanted to be detained and questioned.
Regrettably, even good things must come to an end. Marcela and the others were all too aware of this.
“I suppose you must. However, this is not our final farewell, Miss Adele. I’m sure we will be seeing each other again very soon.”
“Y-yes, absolutely!”
What the four girls would regret most would be a final parting.
“Oh, that’s right!” Marcela said, as though suddenly remembering something. “The three of us have a bodyguard. They don’t follow us around during school hours, but they accompany us whenever we leave the premises, and tail and investigate anyone who is not a student or their associate entering the school grounds.”
“Wh…?”
The Crimsons Vow’s faces twitched.
“Oh, but I believe you all should be fine. Miss Adele could not have been spotted, and besides—the pair of you were wearing academy uniforms, while you appear to be their older sister. I bet they thought nothing of it. It’s still early enough that you should be able to pass yourselves off as an older sister returning home and her younger sisters coming to see her off.
“Please do take care, though, next time you come to visit. I get the impression that any letters or packages addressed to us are being inspected before they make it into our hands. The last time I asked my father to send me a package, when it arrived I found that there were gaps in the wrapping paper and the packaging showed signs of tampering. Inside, the papers were all in disarray, as though someone had hastily opened and shuffled through them.”
“………”
Everyone was stunned at Marcela’s prudence.
I-Is this girl really the same age as Mile? Reina wondered. Though, come to think of it, while Mile’s an airhead most of the time, she can be really clever in a pinch. The lesser nobles of Brandel are a force to be reckoned with!
I would have never noticed or even thought of something like that, thought Mavis. To think that I could be outwitted by a twelve-year-old girl… How pitiful.
The two could not hide their shock at Marcela’s insight in spite of her age. Only Pauline looked on with a smile, as if to say, Hm, well done…
However, there was something that none of them realized.
Though Marcela always took the reins as the leader of the Wonder Trio, the smartest of their group was not, in fact, Marcela, but the quiet and inconspicuous Aureana.
The reason that she sat so quietly—not speaking, only observing—was so that she could commit all that she noticed to memory and analyze it later. It was Marcela who led the pack, but when it came to the important decisions, Aureana was the one to guide her on the correct path. Usually, Marcela assumed that she had come to a conclusion on her own.
Aureana had entered the academy not on a noble’s coattails or via the standard admission but as a penniless commoner who had overcome the mile-high hurdle of the academy’s scholarship exam. She was the true ace up the sleeve of the Wonder Trio.
***
And so, the Crimson Vow left the academy behind.
With a casual and confident stride, they strolled through the front gates. Mile had once again used her light-bending magic to enter stealth mode so that she could not be detected by the naked eye.
As they passed, Mavis nodded politely to the gatekeeper, who smiled and waved his right hand in reply.
“This seems like a good spot to get changed. Over there, on the left,” said Mile as she passed into an alleyway, still rendered invisible by her cloaking.
The other three followed behind her, no one particularly surprised by the instruction. They had already c
hanged like this before entering the academy, after all.
Plus, they were exiting the capital late at night.
While this was not especially strange for a merchant or a hunter, it would be an absolute no-no for a young female student wearing the uniform of Eckland Academy. In such ensembles, they would most certainly be stopped and questioned.
Plus, while wearing a normal uniform was suspicious enough, seeing a little girl with a prominent chest wearing gym clothes that were strained by her size would most certainly warrant an investigation or an arrest.
“Please don’t ever make me wear this agaaaain!” Pauline wailed, her skin burning from the stares of all they had passed by going both to and from the academy.
Truthfully, even within the school, all of the guards’ eyes had been focused on her…
As always, Mavis had gotten off scot-free because the uniforms were nowhere near her size. She averted her eyes.
“All right, let’s just get you out of that before it… Oh.”
Mile suddenly trailed off.
“Ah…” the other three responded.
A group of five thugs had suddenly appeared, all of them wielding cheap swords.
They were surrounded.
“Oho! We got us some Eckland students, don’t we?! You girls know it’s awful late to be hangin’ out in alleyways like this. Y’all come out to play? And whoa! What’s with you there, missy? You’re really lookin’ for some, ain’tcha?!”
“See?! This is why I didn’t want to wear this!” Pauline shouted at an empty place beside her—not out of fear, but rage.
“Yes, yes, here you go.”
Mile, still hidden, took the group’s staves and swords out of storage and handed them to Pauline, who in turn handed Reina and Mavis their respective weapons.
Truthfully, a mage’s staff had nothing to do with magic. It was a simple bludgeoning weapon used for self-defense, not a magical wand. However, Mile got the impression that the staff was something that Pauline truly did need in this particular moment.
The thugs, meanwhile, gawked in surprise, having just watched the weapons poof out of thin air.
“St-storage magic? I bet we could sell these girls fer a ton!”
While it might stand to reason that someone who could use a power as rare and difficult as storage magic might also be strong in other areas, the ability to use it did not always correspond to combat magic abilities. In fact, there were many cases of individuals who were exceptionally skilled in utility magic and utterly hopeless when it came to attack spells.
And so the thugs, judging by Pauline’s age and her meek and mild appearance, reckoned that combat magic likely was not her forte.
Why were they so careless? Put simply, it was because they were thugs.
In addition to the first girl, they faced only a child and a swordswoman. With five of them and three of the girls, the thugs figured that apprehending them would be a cinch. They circled in, swords in hand.
Naturally, they had no intention of killing their prey. If they killed them, the girls wouldn’t be worth a single copper—and plus, they wouldn’t get to have any fun with them.
One of the thugs facing Pauline came toward her, brandishing his sword. The sword was merely there for the sake of disarming Pauline if she attempted to use her staff. A staff swung around by a woman was little threat to begin with, this thug believed. Plus, at such close range, there would be no time for her to cast a spell.
“Jet Spray!”
Bwoosh!
“Gaaah!”
The man screamed and pressed his hands to his face as two small, powerful jets of water, wrought by Pauline’s silent incantation, struck him directly in the eyes.
“My eyes! My eyes!!”
He had yet to drop his sword, but striking a man who was standing still, his hands over his eyes, was a mere trifle—like taking candy from a baby.
Pauline struck him with her staff before knocking his sword away.
And then, her assault continued.
Bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam!
Yes, it was a technique that Reina had perfected. A hurricane of blows dealt by a staff. The most frequent target was Mile.
Though the water jets had been powerful, they were not forceful enough to gouge the man’s eyes out or cause him to go blind. It was but a simple jab.
It was after this that Pauline’s real attack began. She began to strike the man in earnest, venting all of her anger and frustration.
Bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam!
“O-oww! St-st-stop iiiiiiiiiiiiit!!”
The other four men, stunned at their companion’s unbelievable defeat at the hands of a support-magic user, rushed in to rescue their ally and take down this unexpected foe. However…
“Icicle Javelin!”
Four icy spears suddenly flew toward two of the men, striking each of them in the gut.
“Wha…?! You can do spell-free casting, too?!” shouted one of the men who had not been hit by Reina’s attack, frozen in shock next to his companion.
Reina’s two targets writhed on the ground, unable to speak. Naturally, she had been holding back, and the tips of the spears were blunted, so they had not pierced the men’s flesh. However, they had still been struck by two very intense gut punches.
When it came to performing magic, neither Pauline nor Reina spoke their full incantations aloud, enacting the spell with only a shouted keyword.
Compared to totally silent casting, ‘spell-free casting,’ or speaking an incantation in your head and then uttering the spell’s name, was at the next highest degree of difficulty. There were very few mages who could use an attack spell in this way.
“I guess that means I’m up last, huh?” Mavis called out to the remaining two, swinging her sword at incredible speed, as though she was warming up for the real thing.
The two men turned on their heels at once and tried to make a break for it.
Suddenly, the air before them shimmered, and a human form appeared.
“You’re not getting away that easily.”
“Gyaaaaaaah!!!”
***
“Think that’s enough?” asked Pauline.
“Yeah. Any more than that would be a waste…” answered Reina, after relieving the men of all their possessions and binding them hand and foot.
Mile confiscated all of their swords, knives, and other weapons, packing them away in her inventory on the logic that they might come in handy later.
“These guys aren’t hunters, so this isn’t any of the guild’s business,” Reina contemplated. “They don’t seem like proper bandits either, just a bunch of lowlife thugs, so we won’t get any special reward for capturing them, and I don’t think they’ll sell ’em off to the mines, either… In other words, turning them in alive won’t net us any coin, and since it’s unlikely they’ll receive a very severe punishment, there’s really no good reason to bother.
“So I think this is good enough. I’m sure it’ll hurt for these guys to lose even garbage swords like these, and I’m sure that if they go wandering around unarmed, all the people who they’ve bullied in the past will find some way or another to deal with them… Or, I suppose I should say, I’m sure some passerby will find them rolling around on the ground, all tied up like this…”
The other three nodded.
“Now then, let’s do this,” said Mile. “Shroud of Darkness!”
After Mile withdrew Reina and Pauline’s regular clothes from storage and handed them over, she summoned a barrier of darkness several meters in radius around them, and the two quickly changed. Mile and Mavis, who were, of course, already in their own clothing, had no reason to change. The shed uniforms were then placed back into storage.
The four passed through the city gates without further incident.
Seeing hunters making a hurried exit in the middle of the night was not an especially rare sight.
As of yet, they had not detected any sign that Mile�
�s—or rather, Adele’s—presence had been discovered. However, it was better to be safe than sorry. With magic to light their way, the Crimson Vow quickly moved as far as they could away from the capital.
***
“So, they’re gone, then.”
“Yes. They’ve left us.”
After the Crimson Vow made their exit, Marcela and the others sat in a daze for some time. Finally, they began to come back to themselves.
“Well, the most important thing is that they’re safe and that they’re enjoying themselves,” said Marcela, but her expression was clouded.
“Um, your face is…” Monika started, but no one asked her to elaborate. They all knew what she meant.
“Journeying for the rest of your days at Adele’s side, huh?”
“……”
It was rare for Aureana to misread the room so acutely. Monika and Marcela were deeply silent.
“Um, Miss Marcela, Miss Monika, I’ve been doing some thinking…” she continued. “In just a few months, we’ll be graduating. Miss Marcela, you’ll be returning to your home to begin bridal training, and Miss Monika, you’ll be helping out with your family business while doing the same. As for me, I’ll be working a civil service job somewhere in order to pay back my scholarship loan.
“If Adele happens to return home after we’ve all parted ways, we may never see her again. If Adele starts asking around to find us, she’d be in grave danger of being discovered by an associate of the Crown, some obstinate noble, or affiliate of the church…”
“Oh.” The other two were lost for words at this revelation.
“And so, I was thinking… Now that the two of you have far more value to society than just being a noble’s or a merchant’s daughter, it shouldn’t be a problem if you take a bit longer than usual to marry, should it? Say, even if five or ten years go by—even if you’re eighteen or twenty-three—before it happens, you shouldn’t have any issue still netting some worthwhile proposals, should you?”