Duel of Wits and Blades
The next morning.
When I woke up, I changed clothes and headed for the kitchen.
“Kael?”
Bella was in the kitchen, preparing breakfast.
“Good morning, Bella.”
“What brings you here?”
“I came to help.”
I rolled up my sleeves and finished peeling the potatoes Bella had started.
Then I tossed them into the pot and brought the cooking to a close.
Your proficiency in Cooking has increased.
Effect:Cooking (D) → Cooking (C)
Duration:Permanent
A delicious stew was finished.
One taste was enough to tell me it was fantastic.
“This is good. The seasoning is just right. Bella’s cooking really is the best.”
“I only prepared the ingredients.”
“If you hadn’t prepared them, it wouldn’t have tasted this good.”
“……”
Bella looked at me in silence, then sighed and asked, “Did you really come only to help with breakfast? Or is there something you want to say to me?”
“Haha……”
As expected, she was quick on the uptake.
“I just came to say hello.”
“……That’s all?”
“Yes. I felt like doing that today.”
“……Today.”
Bella’s expression darkened for a moment.
Sensing the mood turning heavy, I quickly changed the subject.
“Oh, right. The stew. I’ll take some to Sir Derick too. He’ll be out in the training yard practicing by himself again by now.”
“Please do.”
I carried the pot of stew out to the training yard.
There, Derick was finishing his morning drills and wiping the sweat from his brow.
I walked up to him, ladled some stew into a bowl, and handed it over.
“Have some. It’s breakfast Bella and I prepared.”
“……How unusual.”
With that, Derick accepted the bowl and took a bite.
“……!”
His eyes flew wide open.
Then, forgetting all dignity, he wolfed the stew down in a hurry.
“I’ll get you another bowl.”
I refilled it with more stew.
In the end, half the pot disappeared before the meal was finally over.
“That was the finest stew I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Bella’s cooking really is incredible.”
“I’ll have to thank Bella later.”
Derick rose to his feet.
Stretching as if to work the meal through his body, he asked me, “Are you nervous?”
“I am.”
It would have been a lie to say I wasn’t nervous when my life was on the line in a duel that would be fought tonight.
“A certain amount of tension is good. Too much, however, becomes poison. Best to keep it in check.”
“I’ll remember that.”
After finishing his stretches, Derick picked up his sword again and resumed training.
As he did, he said to me, “Go on. The young lady will be waiting.”
“Yes.”
***
I hadn’t gone to see Bella and Derick that morning for any special reason.
I had simply wanted to see them.
With a duel for my life looming so close, my head had become crowded with all sorts of thoughts.
I wanted to sort them out by talking with them.
Cooking with Bella had lightened my heart, and listening to Derick’s advice had eased some of the anxiety I’d been carrying.
Feeling a little more composed, I walked down the corridor until I reached Medeia’s room.
Standing before the pure white door, I knocked gently.
Knock, knock.
“Miss. It’s Kael.”
A moment later, Medeia’s voice came from inside.
“Come in.”
I opened the door and stepped inside.
Medeia was in her nightclothes, looking at me.
“What is it this early in the morning?”
“I came to wake you, Miss. Did you sleep well?”
“……No.”
It was obvious she hadn’t slept properly, because Medeia looked far from well.
“Was the bed uncomfortable?”
“The bed wasn’t the problem.”
“Then why—”
Before I could even finish, Medeia spoke first.
“Because of you. You made me worry for no reason, and I couldn’t sleep properly because of it.”
“……”
At her words, I had nothing to say.
It was entirely my fault.
I had done it for her, yes, but in the end I was the one who had insulted the princess and dragged myself into a duel that made her worry.
“I’m sorry.”
“……”
“I’m sorry for making you worry.”
If she suffered because of me, I would apologize as many times as it took.
As long as it could put her at ease.
“Don’t apologize.”
Medeia said it firmly.
“I didn’t say that because I wanted to hear an apology from you.”
“Understood.”
“……Pour me some tea.”
At Medeia’s request, I poured hot water into the teapot and let the leaves steep.
I filled a cup with warm black tea and handed it to her.
Medeia wrapped her hands around the cup and slowly sipped the tea, letting its warmth sink into her palms.
I felt strangely at ease in this situation that had, by now, become part of daily life.
I wanted to protect this ordinary life.
And to do that, I had to win tonight’s duel, no matter what.
***
Time passed quickly, and before long afternoon had come.
It was now time to depart for the duel site.
Because I had stayed by Medeia’s side all day at her request, I was still with her now.
“Miss, please let go of me now.”
“……No.”
Medeia was still holding my hand and refusing to let go.
As if she didn’t want to let me leave.
But I had to shake her off and go.
If I didn’t show up for the duel, the princess’s knights would come for me and execute me.
The only way for me to survive was to win fairly in the duel.
“If I don’t go, I’ll die anyway. So please let go.”
“If you stay here, I can be with you a little longer. If I send you off now, I might never see you again.”
“……”
“I’m joking.”
With the look of someone tearing her own hand away, Medeia finally released mine.
“Come back, Kael.”
At her words, I smiled and answered, “See you tomorrow morning.”
Then I climbed into the carriage bound for the duel grounds.
“Your master seems to cherish you quite a bit.”
To my amusement, there was someone else riding in the carriage besides me.
It was Hate.
He looked at me with interest and said, “Honestly, when Her Highness arranged this duel with you, all I thought was that I’d been dragged into another annoying mess. But not anymore.”
“What changed?”
“You turned out to be more than I expected.”
Whatever was so amusing, Hate kept grinning as he went on. “You were just a brat with no mana only a few days ago, and now I’m dying to know how you managed to learn it.”
“You don’t need to tell an opponent you’re about to fight something like that.”
At my answer, Hate broke into hearty laughter.
“Hahaha! Fair enough. The more hidden cards you have, the better. In that case, how about this?”
Hate pointed to one of his eyes.
“You can’t see it, but I lost one eye on the battlefield. What I’m wearing now is a prosthetic. So I’m weak to attacks from my blind side. Well? Doesn’t that make you want to tell me something too?”
It was absurd how casually he spoke of his own weakness.
“Why are you telling me that? What if I don’t tell you anything in return?”
“Then that’d be your loss.”
Hate shrugged like it was nothing at all.
And then I asked the most important question.
“……So which eye is the prosthetic one?”
Hate had only said he had a prosthetic eye, not which side it was on.
That kind of half-information was useless in a real fight.
Hate smirked. “If I told you that, where’d the fun be? Besides, isn’t it a little much to fish for my information without answering any of my questions?”
“……”
Actually, I already knew which eye was the prosthetic one.
The moment he said he had lost one eye, I focused my senses and checked.
Right.
It was his right eye.
An unexpected windfall.
For someone else, it might have been trivial, but for me, who would soon be dueling Hate, it was worth more than gold.
And the source of that information was, ridiculously enough, my own opponent, Hate.
What an oddball.
He was the kind of person normal common sense could never make sense of.
Maybe that was why.
Unlike the princess, I didn’t particularly hate him.
“I drank an elixir.”
“Hm?”
“You asked how I learned to use mana. I drank an elixir.”
“You learned mana by drinking an elixir?”
“If you don’t believe me, you don’t have to.”
Hate shook his head.
“No, I believe you. You don’t really look like the type who’d lie.”
“……”
After that, there was no more conversation.
The carriage kept rolling until, at last, it came to a stop before a massive villa that could stand shoulder to shoulder with Medeia’s own estate.
“We’ve arrived.”
At the coachman’s words, Hate got out first. I followed after him.
“You’re late!”
The moment I stepped down from the carriage, the first thing I heard was the voice of the one person I least wanted to hear.
The princess, Rosalyn.
She appeared before us.
She looked at me and sneered. “You actually came without running away.”
It was the expression of someone waiting for my death.
Seeing that smile, I smiled back.
“I had no reason to run.”