A Date? (1)
Two weeks had passed since the day I formally contracted with Sei, the intermediate wind spirit.
This was the academy world that formed the game's backdrop, so plenty had happened over those two weeks, but by the standards of Ethan and me, the days had flowed by feeling fairly ordinary.
If I had to pick out anything special from among it all, it would be that over the past two weeks, while attending the practical monster-hunting class, my level had gone up by one, bringing me to level 12.
Pairing up with Ethan to take down five or six monsters a day, it was, in a sense, an inevitable result.
Of course, compared to someone devoting themselves single-mindedly to grinding levels, it was maddeningly slow growth — but growing at all was itself rather important right now, so.
Our practical hunting classes with Ethan usually looked something like this:
"Lilith, can you buy time against the goblin at three o'clock?!"
"I've got room to spare! So focus on the orc in front of you, Ethan!"
"Right, I'm counting on you!"
The basic arrangement was that Ethan took the front line against the stronger enemies and focused on that fight, while I defended the angles that inevitably opened up in his blind spots.
Or, while Ethan handled monsters that had closed in at melee range, I would keep the smaller number of ranged monsters in check with thrown daggers or mana bolts — that was the typical pattern of our pair hunting.
Beyond that, I would occasionally throw out things like Arcane Shield or Mana Chain, lending support to Ethan's hunts themselves.
Fighting with a reliable tank-cum-dealer posted out front was reassuring in many ways. In Luminor Academy, the protagonist — me — had all but monopolized the tanking role.
Dropping the honorifics mid-combat had been Ethan's idea. In a split-second situation, he argued, if I kept wasting breath calling him "young master, young master," there was a real chance the vital information would never get through.
Had a maid like me been the one to make such a shameless proposal, I could have been hauled off for insubordination without anyone batting an eye, so I'd kept my mouth shut — but fortunately, Ethan turned out to be not entirely without perception himself.
As for me, I'd been harboring the thought in my head for a while anyway, so of course I agreed.
In any case, setting aside the fact that he was the young master I served and an aristocrat, Ethan was a genuinely useful partner in live hunting.
It was only natural that a part of me wanted to keep working alongside him until we graduated from the Academy.
As long as I remain Ethan's exclusive maid, I'll still be able to act as something like his partner for as long as we're at the Academy.
It felt like only yesterday that I'd watched the little wretch come whining to me in the dining hall because he was hungry, and now, before I knew it, he'd become a stalwart frontliner I could entrust my back to without the slightest worry.
There was no helping the fact that every practical hunting class left me with a curiously fresh rush of emotions.
And as for other notable developments — I'd gotten a little closer to Agnes, I suppose.
Well, given her desperate circumstances, getting close to me was the best solution available to her, so really it had been less a choice than an inevitability.
For Agnes, a spirit was not a luxury but a necessity, if only to win the tangled war of succession within the Elizabeth family.
It wasn't a matter of her magic growing stronger or weaker based on whether she had a spirit.
The Elizabeth family's tradition held that its heirs must always be superior to others in every respect, and that wasn't limited to magic alone.
A grounding in magical theory was the barest of basics, and things like high-society refinement and spirit affinity were also counted among the criteria by which an heir was judged.
No matter how powerful her spells or how deep her magical knowledge, if her affinity with spirits was hopelessly low, she would inevitably fall behind in the race for succession.
Agnes was even sitting in on spirit studies class on the chance of contracting at least a lesser spirit — and if she went a full semester without managing a single contract, her position within the family would grow decidedly precarious, promising talent or no.
Professor Erin's classes focused on "getting familiar with" spirits, but weren't particularly suited to actually "contracting" with one — so among those who could help her situation, I was practically the only one.
Which was why, lately, I'd made a habit of staying behind for an hour after class to help Agnes prepare for a spirit contract.
"Fundamentally, Miss Blaze, the problem is that you're far too obsessive with spirits. You approach them much too aggressively."
"...Why is that a problem? If I don't approach them first, there's no way a spirit's going to come to me."
"Generally speaking, that's true enough. But the mana you possess is a little special, isn't it? To a spirit, it's the kind of mana they hesitate to approach."
"...I've been wondering for a while now. Is my mana really that bad? Even so, I have plenty of it, so you'd think some spirit might like that."
Nope. Not a chance. You stink, girl. A weird stink.
Agh, no! One of the whole reasons we spirits contract with humans in the first place is because we want to eat delicious mana that doesn't exist in nature! I mean, your mana's probably got a flavor that doesn't exist in nature either, but... hardly any spirit wants to stuff itself sick on gross, smelly mana! Though, who knows, some really weirdo spirit might actually find your mana tasty!
"......"
The moment Agnes heard Sei and Sally's scathing reviews, her face froze in an expression of pure shock.
It wasn't as if I'd developed any particular fondness for this girl or anything, but even so — those two had been entirely too brutal.
"Hold on, Sei, Sally! Don't be so direct about it! There are ways to soften what you say, you know!"
Weird, stink. How, soften? Don't, know, how.
Then how about you find a soft way to say it, Lilith! I just told the honest truth — I don't want to eat gross, smelly mana!
"G-gross, smelly mana..."
"...Miss Blaze. There's nothing wrong with your mana. It's simply unfamiliar to spirits, which makes them a little hesitant to approach it. If a perfectly good-looking steak reeked of rotten eggs, avoiding it would be basic human instinct, wouldn't it? And if your clear soup smelled like urine, naturally you'd suspect the chef. What spirits sense in your mana is something very much like... that."
"...You're the worst of the lot."
"...I beg your pardon?"
Anyway, that was how I'd been spending recent days, focused on helping Agnes understand the particular nature of her own mana.
The most fundamental fix, of course, would be raising Agnes's Charm stat and boosting her spirit affinity — but that wasn't the kind of project that could be done in a matter of weeks.
So Operation Spirit Contract for Agnes was scheduled to proceed by a method closer to a bit of a cheat.
A young spirit that can't even taste mana in the first place — I could absolutely land her one of those.
A spirit that contracted with a human could, depending on that human's capabilities, be raised into a far stronger spirit with time — that was entirely possible too.
And the event that would hand Agnes her spirit would come looking for the Academy on its own before long, so until then, my job was to get her to the point where she'd willingly resolve to contract with a lesser spirit.
Which is by no means to say I was deliberately saying hurtful things to her face while quietly holding a grudge over how much she'd gotten under my skin at our first meeting.
In any case, after two weeks of earnestly discussing spirit studies with Agnes, I'd more or less gotten used to handling her.
Even while seeking my help with the spirit contract, Agnes had a habit of shooting me glances that clearly said she didn't like me.
Well, glare all she liked — until the next evaluation match, there wasn't much she could actually do about me.
"One vote for Her Highness the Princess for this year's student council president, please!"
"Your support for the Moon Shadow Princess, Her Highness Seraphin, is greatly appreciated!"
And all the while, Seraphin's student council presidential campaign was proceeding steadily along.
Had anything unexpected come up, I would have joined in to help her campaign, but as far as the presidential election went, events were unfolding exactly as they had in the original story, so I saw no particular need to interfere.
Besides, even if I'd inserted myself into the campaigning, it wouldn't have changed a thing.
Seraphin's election to the student council presidency this term was all but a foregone conclusion, and the other candidates had, in truth, participated in the election merely for the sake of participating — none of them campaigned in earnest believing they would actually win.
Isle of Knowledge was practically beyond the reach of imperial authority, sure — but outside the Academy, this was a person one had to meet in the formal relationship of sovereign and subject.
Gambling one's career on a student council seat with uncertain prospects — and a slim chance of winning at that — only to draw the imperial family's displeasure for no reason was not something any of them wanted.
In other words, in a few days, Seraphin's student council would begin its activities, and Ethan and I were about to get seriously busy.
Handle council business on weekdays, and the backlog of assignments would inevitably swallow the weekend — which meant, in effect, that this week's weekend was the last stretch of free time Ethan and I had left.
...And yet, on that very last weekend, for some inexplicable reason, I found myself walking out of the Academy with Ethan in the morning, strolling the streets of the Isle of Knowledge.
Without Isabel — the one who had always been at my side on occasions like this. Just the two of us.
"Lilith, is there anywhere you'd like to see?"
"...No, you needn't ask for my opinion at all — wherever you choose to walk, Master Ethan, I shall simply fol—"
"We agreed not to say 'young master' today, remember, Lilith?"
"...Th-that's right, we did. ......E... Ethan."
When I finally forced his name out through lips that refused to come unstuck, Ethan nodded with a look of deep satisfaction.
A little puzzled by that unreadable reaction of his, I nonetheless quietly fell into step behind him.
Seriously — how on earth did it come to this...?