by Dojyomaru
If the growth-accelerating spell was used on regular plants, they rapidly sucked the nutrients out of the soil. However, the miasma flowers only sucked out miasma.
Ginger nodded. “So we only have to harvest them when they finish growing and dispose of them in an incinerator. They’ve already used up the miasma for their growth, so when we burn them, all that’s left behind is ash. If we do two rounds of that, it goes back to being this sort of ordinary soil.”
“Th-That’s an incredible discovery! With this, we can curb the effect that undead monsters have on our fields and crops, yes!” Poncho reacted excitedly.
Not only had the research he’d had such high hopes for not been in vain, there was even a useful application for it! Then a thought occurred to Poncho.
Come to think of it... When he recruited me, His Majesty said something, yes. That “we will decide if something’s useful or not.” He may have meant to say that there aren’t many things in this world that are completely useless. Like how even I, a person whose only talent is for eating... was able to help this country somewhat...
Poncho was able to feel a little more confident in himself.
While Poncho and Ginger were having a lively conversation like that, Serina and Sandria looked on in exasperation from a short distance away. The two men didn’t so much as glance in their direction, having fun exchanging opinions about research. The two maids had no doubt they’d ceased to exist in the men’s minds.
While looking at her master, Sandria asked, “...Do you suppose all gentlemen are like this?”
“You might be right about that,” Serina said. “I’ve often seen the princess watching His Majesty anxiously like this. I feel like when His Majesty is applying himself to the work of governing, she must find it both reassuring and frustrating to watch him.”
“How is it for you, Serina?”
“Me?”
“Do you feel anxious and impatient right now?”
“Hm? My mistress is the princess,” Serina said without batting an eye. “It’s true that I am close to Sir Poncho, but I would never feel anxious and impatient because I saw him talking to someone.”
Sandria thought about it for a moment and then asked, “...Then, how would you feel if Lord Ginger were a woman? If it were a woman that Lord Poncho was having such a good time talking to right now, would you still not feel the least bit anxious about it?”
Having asked that, she stared hard at Serina.
In response to the question, Serina looked at Poncho and Ginger. What if, right now, Poncho were talking to a woman instead...?
Having pondered the question for a while, Serina finally opened her mouth to answer. “No matter who he was talking to, I don’t think I would think anything of it.”
“...You’re sure?”
“Yes. ...However, if Sir Poncho were to let that person do all of his taste-testing... well... I wouldn’t like that. Even if it were someone like a member of his family, or his wife, a person it was perfectly natural for him to be doing his cooking with... I might still be upset by it. Now, that is odd. I wonder, why would I feel that way?”
Judging by her expression, it seemed even Serina didn’t understand her own feelings. Sandria was a little surprised, but she didn’t ask anything more.
Even Serina herself wasn’t sure if her words just now had come solely from her gluttony. She placed her hand over her chest, which was filled with pent-up emotions.
When I get back to the castle, I will have to have him make me the toasted sandwich he promised. That will help dispel this hazy feeling, I’m sure.
Those were Serina’s thoughts.
Chapter 3: The Fiancées’ Bridal Course
One day in the 3rd month, 1,547th year, Continental Calendar
Hello, I’m the candidate to become Souma’s first primary queen, Liscia Elfrieden.
On this day with the end of winter drawing near, and the coming spring beginning to make itself felt, all of Souma’s fiancées were gathered in a certain room in Parnam Castle. I, Liscia was one of them. The rest were Aisha the kochiji, Juna the lorelei, and Roroa, the former princess of Amidonia.
There was no sign of Souma here, and even the maids who were always waiting in the corner of the room had been asked to leave today. On top of that... this room was weird. There was a blackboard, desks, and four desks and chairs. The desks were lined up in a row, making it look almost like one of the classrooms at the Officers’ Academy.
“Hey, Big Sister Cia?” Roroa asked. “What’d we all get called in here for today?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” I said. “If anyone here would know...”
I looked over at Juna. However, Juna only looked down and shook her head.
“I’m sorry. Lately, even I’m not sure what goes through that lady’s head.”
“If Madam Juna doesn’t know, then the rest of us don’t stand a chance of figuring it out.” Aisha rested her hands on the back of a chair, tilting her head to the side in puzzlement.
It was a fair assessment. That lady was completely unpredictable. Just what was she thinking this time?
Then the door to the room opened, and the one who had gathered us here arrived.
“I see everyone’s here.”
It was the blue-haired sea serpent beauty, Excel Walter.
In addition to being the commander-in-chief of the National Defense Force, she was a beautiful woman who looked to be around twenty-five. With her blue tresses, from which tiny horns sprouted, trailing behind her as she walked, she had always been a picturesque beauty. But this time, she was carrying something in her hands, too: two bundles that were as thick as dictionaries. One was wrapped in white, the other in black.
Excel left the bundles on the lectern, then pulled out and donned a pair of spectacles and a square academic cap. “Now then, let’s have you all take your seats.”
“U-Um... Grandmother?” Juna hesitantly raised her hand and asked.
“What is it?”
“Um... I thought you had good vision?”
“Oh, these spectacles? They’re just ordinary glass, not corrective lenses.”
“Then why are you wearing them?”
“It gets me in the mood.”
Her mood?! That was the issue?! Wait, what was she about to start?!
In the end, we were each ushered into our seats by Excel with no clue what was going on. From Excel’s perspective at the lectern, going from left to right, we were seated Aisha, Roroa, me, and Juna.
Excel started to write something on the blackboard. When I read it, it said:
“First Lecture — Bridal Training Course”
Yeah, I wasn’t even sure where to start.
For one thing, by “first,” did she mean there were going to be several of these gatherings?! What was a bridal training lecture even supposed to be?! Then Excel tapped lightly on the lectern.
“Now, all of you will be becoming Souma’s brides this year.”
““““...””””
We all got very quiet. We were ready for it, of course, and we even wanted it now, but having someone else point that fact out to us still felt a little embarrassing.
Excel told us, “Though some of you will be primaries and some of you secondaries, the fundamental nature of things will be the same for all of you. There is a husband and a wife, they build a household, eventually children are born, and they become a family. If the family is harmonious, then they will be happy; if it is not, they will become unhappy. The problem is that if there is discord in the royal family, that leads directly to discord within the kingdom. Princess Liscia.”
“Y-Yes!” I responded and stood up without meaning to. It was just like being back in officers’ school.
Excel gave me a serious look and asked, “Princess Liscia, you have no relatives outside of your father and mother, yes?”
“Uh... Yes. That’s what I’ve been told.”
“Why is that?”
“When my mother’s father... that
is to say, the king before the last one died, there was a succession crisis, and nearly every member of the royal family but my mother was wiped out.”
“Yes. That was a painful time,” Excel said with a truly pained look on her face. “The three dukes and I distanced ourselves from that conflict. If our military forces had gotten involved, it would have turned into a civil war, after all. We were all desperate to keep our forces in check. Instead, there were bitter struggles within the royal house that set even the closest relatives against one another.”
“Um... was the problem in that conflict ultimately about who would take the throne?” Aisha raised her hand and asked.
Excel shook her head. “We think that was only a secondary factor. The first and foremost cause must have been the former king’s policy of rapid expansion.”
“His expansionism?” Aisha asked.
“Yes. In the time of the king before the last one, our country launched a number of foreign wars that greatly expanded our territory. Meanwhile, the expanded territory sowed the seeds of conflict within the country. The occupier and the occupied; the conquerors and the conquered; the killers and the relatives of those killed... It gave birth to a lot of confrontational relationships like that. There were interventions by other countries that had lost land, too.”
“...Well, my old man had it out for you all pretty bad,” Roroa, the former Princess of Amidonia, said with a shrug.
It was a bit of a relief that she said that like it had nothing to do with her. The Principality of Amidonia had used corrupt nobles to interfere in our affairs a number of times. What they’d done had caused a lot of trouble for me, but it was really just reaping what we had sown.
I was grateful that Roroa, as an Amidonian princess, was taking the stance that it didn’t matter to her. If Roroa, who looked up to me as her “big sister,” ended up resenting me because of a dispute between our countries... I’d be sad about that.
Excel nodded and continued. “Those seeds of discord need to be slowly removed, but the rapid expansion didn’t allow for that.”
Eventually, the old king had died, and the lingering seeds of discord had germinated into the succession crisis. If the people they hated supported one royal, people would back another opposing horse in the race. That was how the dispute over the succession had turned into a proxy war for all of the discord in the kingdom.
“That was why it turned into such a quagmire.” Excel sighed sadly then looked straight at us. “Fortunately, His Majesty Souma’s reign is not so dangerous as that of that predecessor of his. The reason that the country is unshaken even after absorbing Amidonia is that he has worked diligently to create a solid enough base to prevent that. He is not as glamorous as the first king, but rated on the stability of his reign alone, he is the best king this country has ever had. That’s why, even once His Majesty Souma is no longer on the throne, there won’t be an ugly succession war like that one.”
That was Excel’s appraisal of Souma’s reign. Yeah. I agreed with her.
I might think the way he reigned was too roundabout at times, but he was carefully and cautiously moving this country forward. If you considered that he’d been summoned as a hero, I didn’t think there’d ever been such a plain and ordinary hero before. Even so, Souma made me feel secure. Though he himself was weak, he made me feel like I was being protected by something big.
Excel banged on the blackboard. “That said, we mustn’t get complacent! It must never be forgotten that if there are cracks between king and queen, or even between queen and queen, there will be those who appear to take advantage of them. For the sake of the country, you must build a harmonious relationship between husband and wife, and a harmonious household. To help you do that, I will have you take my ‘Bridal Training Course.’”
I could more or less accept what she was forcefully saying. But what was this “Bridal Training Course” that she kept on leading up to?
“Um... why are you the one lecturing us anyway, Duchess Walter?” I asked.
Excel giggled and gave me a confident smile. “I don’t look it, but I’ve been alive for five hundred years. I’ve fallen for my share of gentlemen in that time, but death has always been the only thing that could separate us. I’ve always made sure to have at least one child with each of them, too.”
That was... Okay, yeah, that might be kind of amazing. Now that she mentioned it, Excel only looked like she was in her mid-twenties, but she was a woman who had experienced childbirth. She even had granddaughters like Juna, after all.
Excel puffed up her ample bosom with pride. “I will teach all of you how, as queens... no, as women... to stay with the man you love until death do you part. How you should act as a wife; the way gentlemen think; and everything from how to support your husband, to ways to perform your nightly ‘duties’ in the bedroom in a way that makes your marital relations go more smoothly.”
N-Nightly duties...
The moment we heard those words come up, we all gave pretty blatant reactions. We all must have imagined times we’d be in that sort of situation with Souma.
Roroa was blushing with a wry smile, while Juna’s cheeks turned pink and she covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes wandering. Aisha, meanwhile, had a goofy, happy look on her face, so it was obvious what she was thinking about.
...I could feel my own cheeks burning, too.
When she saw our reactions, Excel coughed politely. “I believe I will have you all start learning about such things now. I already have His Majesty Souma taking individual lessons with me, after all.”
The moment she said that, Juna looked as shocked as I felt.
Some weeks ago, Souma had taken Juna with him and left the royal capital. That was when Excel had drugged Juna, and when she was alone with Souma, she had... well... she had given him some lessons on what men and women get up to at night. I was the only one Juna had told about that. I’d been keeping it a secret from Aisha and Roroa. That was because if they found out, they were bound to cause a scene.
Juna had asked me, as the one who had been with Souma the longest, to subtly ask him what had happened during the time they were together.
“Um, princess...” Juna leaned in and whispered in my ear so that Aisha and Roroa couldn’t hear. “So... what did His Majesty say about that time?”
“The thing is, Souma says he doesn’t remember it,” I whispered back.
“He doesn’t remember?”
“Yeah. He remembers taking lectures about, um... h-how babies are made, but everything after that is a blur.”
When I had asked him about that day, Souma had tilted his head to the side and said:
“I remember everything about the super embarrassing lecture she gave me, but... I don’t remember a thing after that. No, it’s not so much that I don’t remember, but that my mind is refusing to let me recall it, maybe? ...Honestly, what did happen then? I know I was embarrassed by the lessons, and I was feeling really parched... Excel gave me a drink and... It’s no good, I can’t remember anything after that.... No, I feel like it’s best that I don’t remember.”
Souma had tried to squeeze out what he could remember of it, but in the end, he’d seemed to come up empty. It didn’t feel like he was hiding something from me or trying to dodge the issue, though. He seemed like he had truly lost his memory, or sealed it away.
Just what in the world happened to Souma after his classroom lesson? I wondered about that...
“Now, in marriage, as in war, intel is key,” Excel lectured. “Once you know what your partner thinks of you, how they look at you, you can begin to get a feel for how you should act. If you can catch them off guard, and show them a gap between their impression of you and how you act in a way that isn’t displeasing, that can help keep things from getting boring. Know your partner, know what they look at, and your marriage will never be in danger.”
Aisha raised her hand. “You are right, I do wonder what His Majesty thinks of me. But His Majesty is not here, and if we call
ed him, do you think he would be willing to come?”
Excel gave her a wicked grin. I... had a bad feeling about that.
“Have no worries. I have this right here.”
When she said that, Excel unwrapped the white bundle. Inside were a number of white notebooks. Excel gave one of them to each of us.
The cover of mine said “Top Secret” and “Not to be Taken Outside.” This was beyond suspicious...
“Um, Duchess Walter, just what are these notebooks...?” I asked hesitantly.
Excel flipped through her own notebook and said, “Hee hee. About the white notebooks I just gave you, you see... Why, they have what His Majesty Souma thinks about each of you written in them!”
““““Wha?!”””” Everyone looked down at their notebooks in unison.
In this notebook?! No, but... How?
Excel explained it with a strangely glossy and gleaming smile. “These notebooks contain the things I heard from His Majesty during his ‘private lesson.’ When we finished with the classroom lecture, his majesty said he was feeling parched, so I gave him some juice mixed with tequeur. When I asked him all sorts of questions after that, he was very eloquent.”
So that was it! Juna and I looked at one another, despite ourselves.
Tequeur was a very strong alcohol. It had a light flavor, and would go completely unnoticed mixed in with a glass of juice. Souma must have drunk a lot without realizing it, then been thoroughly interrogated by Excel about his feelings for each of us. The embarrassment of it all must have caused him to suppress the memory of it.
While I was thinking about that, I looked at the notebook in front of me. If Excel was telling the truth, that meant this note contained the secret feelings Souma normally kept hidden away deep inside his heart.
Oh... When I think about it, my heart suddenly starts racing...
I wanted to know, but maybe also kind of didn’t... but I did want to know, after all. I mean, I cared enough about Souma that I’d want to know what he thought about us.