The Worries of a Villainess (Not Really) Young Lady (Who Still Wins)
"All right. Here we go."
A few days had passed since the fire in the territory. Early that morning, Darian stood on the training grounds, glancing between Gordon and Rosaria as they watched him. Then he closed his eyes and began to concentrate.
Remember it. That fire. The feeling that drove every swing of the axe.
Acrid smoke blanketing his vision. The sensation of his whole body roasting like bread shoved into an oven. Before he knew it, Darian was back inside that wooden building from a few days prior, axe in hand just as it had been then. Someone who needed rescuing stood before him. Desperate cries for help faded into a distant hush, while a firestorm that looked ready to devour everything writhed at his feet.
Darian focused. On that sensation. On the way a vast power had pumped out of his heart and flooded every inch of his body.
"Hrrrngh—!!"
His heart hammered. Every muscle in his body surged with force. And then—
Shhhk—
A faint but unmistakable blue Aura began to seep from Darian's entire frame.
"…Confirmed. The proficiency is still low, so the flow is irregular and the color is murky—but Aura has most certainly manifested."
"No way. He actually learned it? That fast?"
A cascade of astonished exclamations burst from the two people watching.
"Hah… hahh…! Hahh…! See that? That's me!"
Having finished the demonstration, Darian opened his eyes. Sweat soaked his brow and his whole body trembled, but he looked at them with a proud grin all the same.
"Good heavens… I myself have been told I possess a fair measure of talent, but I never imagined a raw gem of such extraordinary gift lay within the head of the household."
"Wahaha!! Of course! Who do you think I am!?"
Buoyed by Gordon's lavish praise, Darian thrust out his chin and let out a booming laugh, thoroughly pleased with himself. Having awakened his mana at the fire scene, he had become—however faintly—a proper Aura user.
"Hang on a second. This is seriously weird…"
Then Rosaria tilted her head, struck by a sudden sense of déjà vu.
"My bro—I mean, Felix also awakened his mana when he nearly got badly hurt, and Dad figured out mana right after barely escaping a dangerous fire. Do I need to fall off a cliff or something…?"
"…Young Miss, mana openings of this sort are not typically a one-sided affair."
Gordon cut her off at once, blocking the muttered suggestion that she ought to put herself in mortal danger the way her older brother and father had.
"That's right, kid! It's only possible because it's me!"
"Then what about him?!"
"…Him, I don't really… Look, even I don't go around setting myself on fire on purpose."
"……Ah. Right."
"Ahem! In any case, now that you have acquired mana, we shall proceed for the time being by alternating between basic sparring drills and instruction in the use of mana."
"Great! At first I thought this was a total waste of time, but once you actually experience it, it's pretty fun!"
"S-so then, what about me…?"
With all of Gordon's attention now fixed on the newly mana-capable Darian, Rosaria edged closer, fretting, and tried to remind him with pointed looks that she was still there.
"Young Miss, you cannot yet swing a sword properly."
"Excuse me, those two are just monsters, okay? How is anyone supposed to swing a heavy iron sword for a full hour straight without getting tired!?"
"…Is that so?"
"Even so, this remains the first stepping stone toward foundational training, and therefore…"
The only answer she got was that her stamina was still lacking. Rosaria finally exploded.
Whether Darian was sparring with Gordon or demonstrating how to draw mana right in front of her, Rosaria had been running circuits around the training grounds every single day. There had been results. Her cardiovascular endurance and overall fitness improved by the day, and her running pace climbed until she could complete the full course without stopping. But she still hadn't so much as sparred—she hadn't even properly swung a sword. That damn stamina. Stamina was the problem.
Honestly, by the standards of other young women her age, Rosaria already had a rather fine physique. But the stamina those two demanded was on another level entirely.
"Dad says plain running is too boring now, so he straps on sandbags—four of them, one on each limb—and jogs around like he's Captain America! How am I supposed to keep up with that!?"
Watching Darian pile restrictions onto even basic strength training made her feel she could never catch up—and yet Gordon and Darian treated all of it as the bare minimum. Rosaria jabbed a finger at them in protest.
"Heh. Sorry, daughter of mine. I was like this even before."
"…Ah."
"That's just an excuse."
"Wow. Ha. Seriously… I've got nothing. Because it's true."
The realization hit her: even before arriving in this world, Darian had been a stamina monster who'd thrown herself into firefighting in a woman's body. Rosaria's accusing finger lost its target and drooped.
"You know what? I'm done! I don't care! I'm quitting!!! Head Butler, you just train hard with Dad!!"
"Huh? Daughter! Where are you going!?"
"I'm done with this!"
"You still have to finish today's run before you leave!"
"AAAAAAARGH!!!!!!"
Furious, Rosaria stormed off in a huff.
"…Still, she is diligent. Look—she's fuming, and she's still doing today's run."
"Indeed. The Young Miss is a person of strong resolve. It would be best not to rush her."
For all her shouting and stomping, as if she might storm straight back to her room and quit for good, Rosaria was grinding her teeth and pushing through the rest of her run. The two men watched her go with quiet remarks.
"Haa…"
After finishing the day's exercise, Rosaria sprawled across her bed and let out a long sigh.
"Doesn't it feel like I'm the only one falling waaaaay behind?"
A family of reincarnators dropped into a romance fantasy. At first, just being together again had been enough to put her at ease, and she'd figured that since they'd become nobles, she might as well kick back and enjoy the idle life. She hadn't given it much thought. But then she watched Freya handle the mansion and the territory with effortless competence, and Felix—always shut up in his room—awaken his magic and display real talent with it, and a thought crept in: Am I just a freeloading bum right now? A quiet unease settled in one corner of her heart.
Until now, Darian had been in roughly the same boat, which had been some comfort. But even Darian had awakened Aura. Rosaria was truly alone.
"Is that so? But does it really matter? Honestly, I feel a little uncomfortable just loafing around every day myself."
"…You're fine. Your existence alone is already a help."
Tene, chewing on a cookie, offered a word of consolation after overhearing Rosaria's muttering. It didn't help much. Ever since becoming a guest at the Evergarden estate, Tene had been killing time like a freeloader too—but their situations were completely different. The cute girl happily munching her cookie was a dragon. Simply by existing, Tene was a hidden trump card and a nuclear warhead rolled into one. Just staying here brought plenty of advantages. No problem there.
"Then how about getting some advice from Noona?"
"What?! I have to go crying to my little sister for counseling?"
"Right now he's the older brother, you know."
"What are you talking about?! He's my little sibling until the day I die! Even dead, I am not treating him like an older brother!"
The moment Tene suggested that if she was really worried, she should consult Felix, Rosaria recoiled and shouted. The pride she'd built up as the older brother over a lifetime was far too precious to squander by whining for advice from her younger sibling.
"But Noona knows more about this world than I do, and can use all kinds of magic. Wouldn't that help?"
"……Well. That's true enough."
Tene's continued persuasion began to sway her.
"Fine. Maybe I'll at least go talk it over…"
And so Rosaria and Tene made their way to Felix's room. The place had changed so thoroughly that the original was barely recognizable. What had once been a spacious chamber lined with elegant furniture and glittering jewels was now packed with more books than the mansion's own library, with the overflow stacked into towers on the floor. Unreadable magic formulas and countless mana stones hung from the walls in dense clusters—fantasy world or not, it was a bit much.
"So. You feel like you're the only one falling behind?"
"Well… everyone's working hard in their own fields, and I'm just loafing around eating free meals, so… yeah, something like that?"
Felix had been mid-research, inscribing runes into mana stones, when they arrived. He tossed aside the modified goggles he'd been wearing and cut straight to the point.
"…Isn't that just what being a noble young lady is? You don't have to work hard at anything. Sounds pretty good to me."
"I'm a guy, okay?! You want me to just bat my eyelashes at men for the rest of my life? Have I lost my mind?"
Felix's casual dismissal—as if he couldn't see the problem at all—only scraped at Rosaria's nerves, and she snapped back.
"…Dad didn't seem to think so."
"What?"
"Ah—nothing. Nothing. So, what do you actually want to do?"
"Beats me… Honestly, I don't even have a sense of what I should be doing. I can't run the territory like Dad, I can't use magic like you, and I don't get the feeling I could learn Aura the way Mom would."
"But at the very least, you want to get stronger. That's the feeling, right?"
"…Wouldn't it be faster to just have Tene throw a punch whenever there's a problem?"
"Hey! By that logic, same goes for you! Why are you learning magic?! She'd handle it faster!"
"Magic is different. It's the act of working miracles upon reality itself—a lofty academic discipline! It's on a completely different plane from mere brute force—"
"Yeah, yeah, I got it. Enough. I don't even know what I expected coming here…"
Raising her voice through the sibling squabble, Rosaria finally exhaled a heavy sigh.
"But do you really need magic or Aura just to get stronger?"
Tene, who had been listening closely, suddenly stuck her face between them.
"I mean, take me—dragons are a different species entirely. Superman or Spider-Man have superpowers, but Batman and Iron Man are just ordinary people, and they're still superheroes, right?"
"Well… yeah? But why are you…?"
"Then couldn't Noona just make you some magic tools? Like, an Iron Man suit or something?"
Why go through all that trouble to get stronger, Tene argued, when magic tools could do the job instead?
"Oh, come on~ Does that even make sense? How are you supposed to build something like that in a medieval setting?"
"Is that… so? I just thought I'd mention it, just in case."
"Still, that was pretty funny. Right? Don't you think?"
The examples she'd offered were all heroes straight out of modern comic books, so Rosaria laughed it off and looked to Felix for agreement.
However—
"…Ooh. Magic tools, huh… Now that sounds interesting."
"…Huh?"
Instead of laughing along, Felix crossed his arms and fell into deep thought. The amusement drained from Rosaria's face in an instant.
"I feel like I just said something I really shouldn't have…"
And as Felix turned toward the two of them with a grin that carried a glint of pure mania in his eyes, Tene scratched her head and mumbled under her breath.