For a Maid, Mental Reconditioning Is a 'Basic Skill'
Riomain Province—the Leonhart Duchy, heart of the Empire’s steel industry—had once been dragged into the resurrection of an ancient calamity known as the Banished.
The venomous dragon. The Hydra.
That nine-headed beast earned its title of ancient calamity the hard way, plunging once-glorious Riomain into chaos.
Champions from across the Empire and beyond gathered to form a Hydra subjugation force, and after seven months of sacrifice and struggle, the Hydra was finally slain.
The miasma it released in its death throes spread across the province’s outer regions, spawning countless plagues—and Noir’s mother was among those who succumbed. Yet thanks to the Leonhart family’s swift response and material aid from the Empire, Riomain weathered the wound and rose again as a brilliant land.
Three years ago, however, a mysterious organization calling itself Yeoro struck Preas, the province’s capital, and Riomain was plunged into turmoil once more.
An assault carried out right under the ducal house’s nose.
Even the once-renowned Leonhart Knights failed to track so much as a single footprint of the perpetrators.
The Arena—the great coliseum of the Golden Festival and Preas’s very symbol—was utterly destroyed.
That no one had died was a blessing, but it did nothing to shield House Leonhart from what followed.
The Golden Festival attack had come just as their prestige, already elevated by surviving an ancient calamity, was climbing still higher.
Naturally, their political rivals were not about to ignore such a perfect opportunity.
Attacks poured in from every side. Even House Leonhart—long the foremost among the ducal houses—staggered under the onslaught for a time.
But an old lion’s wisdom outstrips even that of cunning old foxes.
Lucius made use of seeds he had already planted, weathered every assault, and restored Leonhart to its place among the greatest houses of the realm.
More than that, he effectively made Preas the Empire’s second capital, expanding Riomain into a territory far greater than it had ever been.
All of it happened in a mere two years after the Golden Festival incident.
—Rattle-rattle.
“My lady, please, just let me change… There’s no reason I have to wear the uniform all the way from the station…”
“No. You’re going to be living in that uniform from now on. How do you expect to manage if you start like this?”
At the center of Riomain’s explosive growth was the railway industry, which had finally been put into practical use the previous year.
Having already poured vast capital into the venture, Riomain laid down more track than any region save the Imperial Capital itself. Policies built around those rails soon carried the province, alongside the capital, firmly into a true modern age.
And because the heart of the Empire’s steel industry had also taken the lead in rail, the Empire’s railway network as a whole advanced at a breakneck pace.
A turning point of an era.
Humanity advances with the flow of time called “ages,” yet there are moments when a single event reverses the current itself.
In this world, the Empire’s railway industry was that turning point.
“My lady, please…”
“No.”
And the train carrying my lady and me was racing toward Lyceum at full speed.
As befit a ducal house, we had rented an entire car, so there were no staring eyes—and yet the fact that I was wearing a school uniform instead of my maid attire was still mortifying beyond words.
“Why is a maid outfit fine, but a uniform isn’t? Wouldn’t walking around the Academy in a maid outfit be even more embarrassing?”
“Embarrassing, my lady? If I could, I would wear my maid uniform at the Academy as well.”
“Sometimes I honestly wonder what a maid outfit even is to you.”
What is a maid outfit?
Naturally, it is a garment like the vestments priests don to steel their hearts—like the sacred robes angels wear when they descend from the heavens. That is what a maid uniform is.
I could never bring myself to say any of that aloud, though.
Simply enduring this humiliation was hard enough.
Huu. Calm down. Calm down.
Think carefully.
What reason is there to be embarrassed just because I’m wearing women’s clothes?
Even if a maid is a noble profession that transcends every barrier of gender, the life I have lived as Blanc has been, without question, a woman’s life.
There is nothing shameful about a woman’s body.
I have seen my lady’s form more than once—a body so sublime that no one would dare harbor carnal thoughts toward it—and though I would never confine the other maids within the mere framework of “women,” I have shared the baths with them as well.
There is no reason left to feel shame over living as a woman.
Besides, if I insisted on wearing a maid uniform at the Academy, it would only put my lady in an awkward position. I have to steel myself.
Yes. This is nothing to be ashamed of.
I am Blanc. I am a woman now…
A maid, yes—but a woman.
There is no need to blush over a school uniform.
I will square my shoulders and accept that I am a woman…!
After all, not wearing a maid uniform doesn’t mean I stop being a maid!
Only when the train finally arrived in the magical free city of Lyceum was I able to put my crisis of identity to rest.
Hawawa… I’m a maid high-school girl-chan…
Hawawa~ Atashi is Blanc-chan, the maid high-school girl!
Uung, after such a long journey, we’ve finally arrived in Lyceum, where the Academy is!
As soon as we arrive, atashi and—
“Blanc, what are you staring into space thinking about?”
“Nothing at all, my lady. Please pay it no mind.”
Ack! The mental reconditioning I performed on the train went a little too far!
Those who become maids possess, as a basic skill, the technique of reconditioning their own minds so they can adopt the mindset and spirit appropriate to any situation.
If one’s master lived in the Middle East, one would cultivate the readiness to wear a hijab at all times. If one’s master belonged to a tribe in Africa that preserved a more primal way of life, one would be prepared to adorn one’s face with every manner of ornament.
Shifting my gender identity from man to woman was hardly impossible, so long as I steeled myself for it.
And so, by overturning every concept and mindset I had once held, I was finally reborn as a true woman—and a true maid.
Probably…
“Still, I’m surprised they managed to lay rails all the way to Lyceum.”
Lyceum was a magical city at the very center of the continent, its territory stretching no more than about eight kilometers out from the city proper.
Spacious for a city, perhaps—but for a city-state expected to wield national power, the land was exceedingly small.
What elevated this tiny city to the status of a nation was the Magic Association Headquarters—the Magic Tower—and the overwhelming archive of magical records Lyceum had amassed over the ages.
Its position as a vast city at the continent’s heart also made the three great powers wary of touching it lightly.
Invade Lyceum, and the other two powers would immediately turn their backs and aim their spears at you instead.
Lyceum was a tempting fruit, yes—but in truth it was a poisoned apple that might kill you the moment you took a bite.
Conquering even Lyceum alone would already demand catastrophic losses. Adding two great powers as enemies on top of that?
It was essentially a declaration that you were ready to throw your entire country away.
And so Lyceum went by another name as well.
The Untouchable City.
No formal treaty bound the powers not to strike it, yet an unspoken sphere of inviolability had long since taken hold.
And yet the Empire’s railways—rails that could, in theory, be abused for military purposes—had been laid straight into Lyceum.
The Coalition and the Kingdom would never have simply stood by and watched.
It would not have been strange for them to pour their fury onto the Empire over this. It was a move bold enough to be called an outrage—yet the current Emperor had completed the feat without the slightest fallout.
I had heard he laid the rails into Lyceum immediately after the Three Kingdoms Conference. Just what had the Emperor done in that meeting?
In the original work, the developers had probably tossed the detail in without a second thought. Transplanted into reality, it became a tangled knot of political conflict.
Well—none of my business, really.
Political headaches like that were for people far above me to worry about.
“So this is Lyceum!”
What greeted my lady and me as we stepped off at the station was a spectacle worthy of the city’s title as a magical metropolis.
A vast blue magic circle blanketed the sky above Lyceum, and countless lesser circles adorned the heavens around it.
Self-propelled bicycles, single-person hang gliders drifting through the air—magical tools of every kind crowded the streets. Special devices stood like streetlamps at regular intervals, absorbing the ambient mana so it would not spark accidents.
If they functioned as they had in the original, those devices doubled as actual streetlamps as well.
And the mana gathered by them would be funneled into the Association Headquarters—the so-called Magic Tower—to power Lyceum’s infrastructure and serve as research material. That was the setting, at least.
I had seen this city hundreds of times in the game, yet standing before a cutting-edge magical metropolis in the flesh left me strangely moved.
“Is this your first time in Lyceum as well, my lady?”
“Mm. I’ve never left the Empire before. I’ve been to other duchies and the Imperial Capital a few times, but never to another country.”
The Imperial Capital.
I had visited it a few times myself.
Even with the continent held in a fragile peace by the precarious balance of the three powers—the Empire, the Kingdom, and the Coalition—the Ephios Empire had always stood at the continent’s center.
The capital itself possessed a grandeur and majesty that did not lose to the sights of Lyceum.
In pure scale, it was several times larger.
But unlike Lyceum, the capital held little one could truly call beauty.
It was imposing and magnificent, yes—yet in beauty, Lyceum was leagues ahead.
“Blanc. Since we arrived early, let’s take a look around Lyceum.”
“Yes, my lady. As you wish.”
Theus Calendar, Year 1815. Friday, the third of April.
Roughly three hours remained until the Academy’s entrance ceremony at ten o’clock.