Five Days of Grace
Luke Cruella.
"Clang—!!"
"I... I concede."
"The winner! Ethan Richard Blackwood!"
"Ethan! Ethan! Ethan!"
"Ethan of the Twin Blades! It's Ethan of the Twin Blades!!"
Two days after the evaluation duel between Luke and me had ended, the arena roared the moment Ethan's twin blades knocked Nathalie's estoc aside and sealed his victory. The crowd of students erupted in cheers that shook the entire colosseum. It had been a genuinely fierce contest, but to me, who had watched the two of them cross blades any number of times during Harold's lectures, the outcome had looked all but predetermined from the start.
Matchup aside, the skill gap was always there. Fundamentally, Ethan is the stronger of the two.
From my experience, when Ethan and Nathalie faced off, his win rate sat at roughly eighty percent. Nathalie's specialty was darting in to exploit openings with lightning-fast thrusts—a style that fared wonderfully against a slow, heavy blade like Caraham's, but against Ethan's twin blades, there were hardly any openings for her to pierce to begin with.
Ethan had almost certainly chosen Nathalie as his final evaluation opponent with exactly that calculation in mind, and true to form, he walked away with the win.
"Kyaaah! Lord Ethan! Take me!! Please take me with you!!"
"H-hey! Look out, she's right there—right there!"
"Huh? Right there...? Kyaaak?! Th-the young master's f-fiancée...!"
"No, I'm hardly anyone like Ethan's fiancée—"
"F-forgive me, Lady Lilith! I didn't mean it, I swear!"
One of the noble girls who had been cheering for Ethan with such fervor took one glance at my face and fled to the opposite corner of the stands in the space of a breath. The other students, catching on a beat late, began whispering among themselves about me and Ethan while sneaking looks my way.
What now? Seriously, this time I was actually innocent.
...Something about this really doesn't feel like the Lilith I know, no matter how I think about it.
Where, I wondered, had the Lilith Rosewood of the original story gone—the one who'd been reduced to Ethan's sex slave and received pitying, sympathetic glances everywhere she went? Don't get me wrong, I had zero intention of becoming his sex slave just to earn a few looks of sympathy. But having things I never did keep twisting into misunderstandings that made people treat me like some kind of strange woman... that was a little harder to swallow.
And ever since the last duel, rumors had even been circulating that I'd somehow stolen away the dagger the Princess had gifted to Luke.
I didn't steal anything. I'll meet her and return it later.
It was only because she was still undergoing treatment for her injuries that visitors weren't allowed, and I couldn't go see her at the church yet.
I was staring blankly at the arena, lost in these thoughts, when the match between Caraham and another student seemed to wrap up in similarly rough fashion.
"The winner—Caraham Samuel Auguste!"
Given that his opponent had vanished without so much as a trace, it looked like Caraham had failed to hold back his strength and triggered the Death-Prevention Magic outright. The arena floor itself had been split clean in half as if an earthquake had struck, after all.
Setting aside swordsmanship and magic entirely—if you compared pure raw strength alone, that guy would probably outclass the Hero by a factor of ten or so.
Incidentally, Gehmajoshigi-gwat, who as the top-ranked student held first pick of his opponent, passed over both Ethan and Nathalie and instead singled out an unremarkable fifth-ranked extra, snatching up an easy win. His win rate in practice bouts against Ethan was indeed slightly higher than the reverse—but "slightly" was the operative word, and the result could easily have flipped against him.
None of the remaining opponents guaranteed him a hundred percent victory either, not by his own standards. Against Caraham in particular, he tended to get overpowered by that brute strength of his more often than not.
For a man determined to rack up guaranteed points and hold on to the seat of valedictorian of the Swordsmanship Department, facing off against Ethan and the rest of that three-ring-circus of rule-breakers was simply too risky. So in the end, he'd shifted his target to the fifth-ranked student.
Keeping the top seat through next semester would make the second-half events go far more smoothly for him, after all.
Ethan's matches are done, so it's about time to head out.
With Ethan's evaluation duel finished, I had to start packing to leave the dormitory today. The final grades wouldn't be posted until a few days before the new semester began anyway, so there was no reason left to linger at the academy—and with Ethan's match, the first semester for Ethan and me had come to a complete close.
It was time to return to the Blackwood Estate after so long away.
The Aurelia Church, Luminor Academy branch.
The building, which had always carried an air of quiet solemnity, was now abuzz with the voices of busy priests and acolytes—a bustle timed precisely to the evaluation duels, the busiest stretch of the entire semester.
"Another casualty incoming to Transport Ward 11! Cause of death—a single slash that cleaved the entire body in two from head down!"
"Move him to a private room and secure every internal organ before the Death-Prevention Magic wears off! Have all measures in place before it lapses!"
"Just what muscle-brained lunatic split a person in half hard enough to trigger the Death-Prevention Magic?! Is he out of his mind?!"
"A few days ago we had a madwoman who blew her whole body apart with a colossal mana sphere. Honestly, getting cut in half next to that is a mercy."
Treating the students who'd picked up various wounds in the term-end evaluations would have been enough to keep them running ragged—but on top of that, the conditions of the students being teleported in by the Death-Prevention Magic were nothing short of dire.
Students arrived riddled with injuries so grotesque that a pierced throat or a stabbed heart would have been something to be grateful for.
Two days prior, Luke too had been teleported to the academy church by the Death-Prevention Magic, and was now slowly working feeling back into her body as it began to recover from its wounds.
Her mind, however, refused to settle—clouded over with every complicated feeling at once.
What becomes of me now?
She had chosen Lilith as her evaluation opponent out of nothing more than petty vengeance. Up to that point, she had not doubted for an instant that she would win.
True, she belonged to the Engineering Department, a non-combat division—but she was nonetheless a knight whose skill had been formally certified as sufficient to stand guard over Princess Seraphin herself.
She had bested Imperial Palace knights two and three times her age in duels, wielding her paired daggers and hidden blades.
And so the thought that she might lose an evaluation duel—even against a top-ranked student of the Magic Department—had never once crossed her mind.
Instead, she had grown careless going into the match, and what she came back with was an unambiguous defeat.
One so crushing it had triggered the Death-Prevention Magic itself.
A wretched, pathetic state of affairs that left no room even for excuses.
There were no openings. Not a single one.
It was as though she had known every one of Luke's techniques in advance—as though every counter to every attack Luke threw was executed with casual, matter-of-fact ease.
Meeting her hidden longsword—an inside-the-lapel blade Luke had concealed for a dual-dagger rush—with a matched counterstrike from the very first exchange.
Blinding her the instant distance opened with Dim Light, then scoring a wound on her left arm with a mana arrow.
Shielding every ranged attack from the start behind an Arcane Shield, then batting the throwing knives she'd slipped in between with that same longsword.
Even her final desperate gambit had been read completely.
It had been, in truth, a fight that could only be described as an overwhelming display of skill difference sustained from start to finish.
If anything, Lilith had made it plain enough that she was deliberately holding back.
If she'd meant to end me from the beginning, she could have finished it in under a minute.
When the first Dim Light had caught her, if Lilith had simply aimed her mana arrows at Luke's vitals instead, the fight would never have stretched that long. And for all that the woman was capable of Triple Casting, what she had chosen to target was a single forearm.
A mage of that caliber does not miss. She had almost certainly angled her strikes to graze just enough to make the gap between them unmistakably clear.
And the end result: Luke, struck down by a nameless, enormous mana sphere, utterly routed.
She had picked a fight on hatred alone, without properly gauging her opponent—and she had paid the price in full.
What will Her Highness say to me?
A defeat so abject that calling her anything more than a guard dog left to watch the house would have been flattery.
Princess Seraphin was surely disappointed in her. She would no longer be permitted to remain at her side as an escort—and perhaps, she thought bitterly, she might even find herself missing the post of exclusive maid.
Perhaps, because of this arrogant blunder, she might be cast aside by her entirely—
"...Hhk."
The tears she had been holding back spilled over, wetting the corners of Luke's eyes.
She had worked so hard, for so long, to earn the right to stand beside Princess Seraphin.
Five years—ever since the day she had sworn her loyalty to her, she had whittled herself down bone by bone, fighting tooth and nail to hold on to the place at the Princess's side.
And now a single mistake, a single defeat, might scatter all of it like mist. The thought brought grief, and worse—fear.
Whether it knew her heart or not, Seraphin's voice drifted in from beyond the sickroom door, wrapping around her like chains.
Knock, knock.
"Luke, how are you feeling?"
"...!"
"May I come in? There are some things we'll need to discuss regarding the days ahead."
Things to discuss regarding the days ahead.
It could only mean one thing: she was about to be cut from the escort.
An escort who couldn't even beat a ducal house's exclusive maid—she was nothing to the Princess but a trivial, dispensable thing.
Every part of her wanted to send Her Highness away without answering, to cling to her place as the woman's servant just a little longer. And yet—
"Y-yes... you may c-come in, Princess Seraphin..."
Luke answered, calling the Princess's name in a trembling voice. Leaving Seraphin's words unanswered would have been an act of disloyalty no lifetime of service could ever atone for.
The door creaked open, and as Seraphin stepped inside, Luke quietly lowered her gaze to the floor. She could not, under any circumstances, meet her mistress's eyes right now. Ignoring her advice and challenging Lilith to an evaluation duel had been bad enough—worse still was that she had gone down in such wretched fashion.
"Luke, have your injuries improved at all?"
"Y-yes... thanks to Your Highness, I am well enough now..."
"Did the priests mention anything you should be careful of? Anything like, say, an instruction to rest and avoid moving for the next few days?"
"...They said I must remain at the church for approximately five days to treat my injuries."
"Hmm, I see. So for five days, you won't be able to serve as my escort, then?"
"......!!!"
A mistake. The instant she'd blurted out that she couldn't serve as the Princess's escort for five days, she had effectively handed Seraphin a ready-made reason to dismiss her.
She should have said two days. No—she should have said she could get up and move right now.
Luke Cruella scrambled to sit up in bed, desperate to claw back the blunder she'd let slip—
But the words Seraphin returned were nothing Luke had expected to hear.
"N-no, Princess Seraphin! The truth is it's not five days, it's—"
"The regional village tour we had planned for the start of summer break—I've decided to begin it in five days' time."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"I can hardly travel the provinces of the Empire without an escort, at my level of ability. Isn't that right, Luke?"
"...The escort... you mean me, Princess Seraphin?"
"Hm? Were you perhaps thinking of quitting, Luke?"
"N-no! Of course not! I only meant—!"
Still struggling to grasp what Seraphin was telling her, Luke Cruella fumbled into a second blunder in a row. Seraphin brushed off the slip without a second thought and gently calmed her down—so that Luke would not panic over the fear of losing her place.
"Never mind any of that. Just rest and recover, Luke. Dismissing you was never on the table."
"Is... is that truly so, Your Highness...?"
"Haven't I always told you, Luke? I'm simply not satisfied unless capable people are kept close at hand."
"Y-Your Highness..."
"Get well soon, Luke."
"Y-yes, Your Highness!"
Leaving behind those final words—a wish for Luke's swift recovery—Princess Seraphin stepped out of the sickroom to see to the remainder of her schedule at the academy.
And in that single-occupancy ward of the academy church, now holding only one, a lone gray-haired girl wept softly, unable to hold back the tears welling up in her eyes.
Though the meaning carried in those tears had changed—utterly and completely—from what it had been only moments before.