Magical Defense Bureau Rising (3)
The 1st Prince called my unit members first.
“Hans, Elena, Helmut, Bruno Barenfeld, Konrad Lebenstil. Those whose names I have called, step forward.”
These were the people who had been with me since the very beginning of the Magical Defense Bureau. As they climbed onto the platform, the 1st Prince drew the ceremonial sword that hung at his side.
Srrrng!
The blade slid free with a sharp metallic ring, its surface adorned with countless jewels that caught the light in a dazzling display. Without hesitation, the 1st Prince gripped the sword and approached the person on the far left—from his perspective, the rightmost member.
It was Hans.
A low murmur reached me, quiet enough that only those on the platform could hear. I couldn’t make out the exact words from this distance, but he was clearly giving them a crash course in the proper etiquette for a knighting ceremony.
Thump.
Hans knelt on one knee before the 1st Prince.
“What is your name?”
“Hans, Your Highness.”
“Will you pledge unchanging loyalty to your lord from this day forward?”
“I will.”
“Will you swear to stand by your lord through every hardship and trial that may come?”
“I swear it.”
“By your long years of loyalty and devotion, you have already proven yourself worthy. Therefore, I bestow upon you the rank and surname of a knight.”
The ceremonial blade moved across both of Hans’s shoulders and then touched the crown of his head.
“Troymann. You shall henceforth be known as Sir Hans Troymann.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
The rest of the knighting ceremonies followed the exact same procedure. Bruno Barenfeld and Konrad Lebenstil already possessed family names by virtue of their noble births, but the others all received new surnames.
Hans Troymann, Elena Wintroifer, Helmut Bearhardt… I’m going to have to drill those into my head for a while before they feel natural.
In any case, every original member of the unit was now a noble. Applause erupted from all around the hall.
They’re probably just trying to suck up to the princes, but applause is applause. I’ll take it.
Once my people had stepped down from the platform, the 1st Prince’s voice rang out again.
“Alvaro Sternfeld. Step forward.”
Finally, my turn.
The moment my name was called, a strange tension gripped my entire body.
“Good luck,” came Brunhild’s quiet encouragement. She must have noticed how stiff I looked.
“Yeah. Be right back.”
Step, step, step.
Thanks to her words, the weird pressure that had been weighing on me vanished. Before long I reached the final step leading up to the platform.
Thud.
Because I was already standing close by, it felt like I reached the stage much faster than my subordinates had. The 1st Prince sheathed his ceremonial sword with a smooth motion.
“…Huh? You’re putting it away?”
“What you are about to receive is not a knighthood.”
He then pulled a thick sheet of parchment from his robe. Wait… I thought this would go the same way as the others.
The knightly title I currently held was nothing more than a temporary appointment. I had vaguely assumed I would go through a formal knighting as well, but it looked like I had been completely off base.
“Heh heh heh, do not worry. It will not be so very different from what came before.”
The 1st Prince must have seen the confusion flash across my face, because he spoke again in a reassuring tone.
“First, kneel.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Thump.
I dropped to one knee and bowed my head, waiting. The 1st Prince began the rite.
For hundreds of years the glorious and noble blood of Luxid has flowed unbroken. The sacred duty and rights handed down from our great ancestors. How blessed we are.
Today I speak before those same ancestors: there stands one who has brought immeasurable honor to their descendants. Alvaro Sternfeld! Raise your head!
I lifted my gaze and met the 1st Prince’s eyes. He continued.
“From your rescue at Hartzfeldt to this latest great victory, you have overcome every crisis with both courage and wisdom.”
He held out the document in his hand. I accepted it naturally. The 1st Prince paused his formal speech and lowered his voice so only I could hear.
“Your accomplishments far outweigh the rewards we have given you until now. Consider this a lump-sum payment for everything you have done.”
“What exactly is it, Your Highness?”
He simply smiled without answering. After clearing his throat, he resumed the public address.
Is hereby bestowed the title of
Alvaro be Sternfeld. Let the new lord be welcomed. Let Alvaro be Sternfeld be celebrated!
“Long live the new baron, Sternfeld!”
“Glory to the Kingdom of Luxid! Glory to the 1st Prince!”
Thunderous applause and cheers followed the 1st Prince’s declaration.
…I’m not dreaming, right? I really just became a baron, right?
Amid the pouring cheers, I barely managed to keep my joy from exploding outward. I’m still standing in front of the 1st Prince. Hold it together. Hold it together!
“If you are happy, you may shout as much as you like. There is no need to hold back on a day like this. Hahaha!”
The 1st Prince himself gave permission.
Well, if that’s the case… With royal approval granted, I no longer tried to contain my laughter.
“Uhehehehe!”
“Uahahaha!”
A baron! I’m a freaking baron! Uhehehe!
I learned later that I wouldn’t be receiving an actual fief right away. They said I’d be granted the lands of a baron from the 2nd Prince’s faction once the civil war ends. Still, that’s something.
Until then I might not be a landed noble, but I now possessed a proper aristocratic title. Knights and scribes were technically single-generation nobles, though in practice the positions were usually passed down.
The hereditary nature of single-generation titles had a lot to do with environment. A knight’s child inherited their parent’s physical gifts and their equipment. And in this medieval fantasy world, high-quality steel weapons and armor were absurdly expensive items handmade by mages. Good gear wasn’t easy to come by.
The same applied to scribes. A territory’s scribe was essentially its chief accountant. The workload naturally spiked once a year during tax season—right after harvest—when they collected an entire year’s taxes from the peasants. That meant hiring assistants, and the scribe’s own children were the most likely candidates.
No matter how much the position emphasized ability, you couldn’t ignore what someone had seen and heard growing up in the role. In the end, these positions tended to stay within families in a pseudo-hereditary way.
Anyway, the point is that I had been granted a hereditary title, not a single-generation one. The difference was enormous. Strictly speaking, a noble house could not truly be established without a hereditary title.
“When should we schedule the wedding?”
Pffft! Splutter splutter!
It was a miracle I managed to turn my head in time. Otherwise I would have sprayed tea all over Brunhild’s face like a misting bottle.
“…A wedding? Isn’t that a bit early?”
“Early? We’re already seventeen, you know.”
Yeah, the gap between my previous life and this one is pretty huge. Maybe it was because they held coming-of-age ceremonies so young here, but the average marriage age was shockingly low. People started calling you a lifelong bachelor or spinster once you hit twenty. My old acquaintances from Earth would have fainted if they heard that.
Back then plenty of people were still single well into their thirties… I was about to enter the “one egg left in the carton” stage myself—
“Stop spacing out and answer me properly!”
Brunhild grabbed both my cheeks with her hands and forcibly turned my face toward hers.
“Mmph mmph mmph! Hilt! Leggo!”
My lips were squished so badly I couldn’t even speak clearly. She must have realized it too, because she finally released me. My poor abused cheeks stung.
“We’ve been engaged for a long time now. And you just received your barony, which means you’ve achieved that goal we talked about two years ago, right?”
She was right. The goal I’d mentioned back then—gaining a title while attached to the 3rd Prince—had been completed. The method had been completely different from what I’d imagined, but I had still obtained a hereditary title.
“Even so, we can’t do it yet. There’s a war coming.”
What I was worried about was the possibility of marrying only to drop dead shortly afterward. Of course I would be careful, but life was unpredictable.
If I marry her and then die, leaving her a young widow, that would completely eliminate any chance of her marrying someone else.
Given noble custom, an engagement as long as ours meant that Brunhild—already of marriageable age—would find it nearly impossible to wed another if I died. Still, I wanted to leave her at least some possibility.
“You’re not seriously thinking something like ‘After I die, you can go to someone else,’ are you?”
“Uh… well…”
“Haa, you were.”
Brunhild let out a deep sigh.
Was it that obvious?
“The moment I learned I would be marrying an eccentric like you, I already prepared myself for everything that might come. So stop trying to weasel out of it and just marry me already.”
Brunhild was unusually aggressive today.
“Don’t tell me your family has started calling you a spinster—”
Whoosh!
“Gack!”
Another solar plexus shot…
Thud.
My consciousness began to fade. Looked like she had landed a clean hit this time.