Dueling in a Flower Garden
Dueling in a Flower Garden
"Young Lord Joachim says he wants to have a duel. Since it must be tiring to do nothing but escort duty, won't you play along with him for a bit?"
The female student who had organized this garden tea party—the eldest daughter of a count and leader of a faction within the Inherited Ability Faculty—asked me in a gentle tone.
Along with her words, I could feel mana stealthily flowing toward me.
'Is this an inherited ability?'
It wasn't the combative, clash-inducing kind of mana used in duels, but a highly secretive mana modified so that others wouldn't perceive it.
Since even I could barely sense it, other people definitely wouldn't notice this mana seeping in.
'It doesn't seem like that great of an ability, though.'
As I let the mana flow into me, the words she spoke began to sound quite plausible.
Even so, they didn't completely change my mind. It seemed like her ability wouldn't have any effect at all on someone with powerful mana.
It was the kind of ability that was impressive if you thought it was, and mediocre if you didn't.
Perhaps it was a minor version of the second Duchess who had been kicked out of the mansion.
Since nobles in this world often intermarried because of their inherited abilities, she might share the blood of a common ancestor with the second Duchess.
"Young Lord Joachim has been looking down on our kingdom's knights a lot lately. I hope you will step forward, Young Lord, and properly show him the skills of a Carlos Kingdom knight."
Hearing such plausible words, I did feel like I should do as she said.
'But Balea feels much more dangerous.'
Even without any special ability, Balea gave me a chillier feeling when she spoke.
Whether it was affectation or charm, if Balea possessed this kind of ability, she would surely have become a far more dangerous ability user than the second Duchess.
'No, she's plenty dangerous even now.'
My thoughts strayed for a moment, but in the end, I accepted her proposal.
I had intended to fight anyway.
There was no reason to back out when they were setting the stage for me like this.
A moment later, in the garden filled with the scent of flowers, the boy from the Empire and I stood facing each other.
It was said to be one of the most beautiful gardens in the capital, but right now, no one was looking at the scenery.
Everyone was watching me and the boy from the Empire, swords in hand.
As I stood with my sword ready, the beautiful flowers looked like spectators watching the duel.
Would the red flowers represent people bleeding?
As I prepared, lost in those thoughts, the boy standing in front of me spoke.
"I know this is bad manners, but I stepped forward because I was curious about the skills I'd heard about."
Hmm, his face still looked similar to Vid's, but his personality was completely different.
When I saw him before, he seemed extremely arrogant. Was he actually more polite than I'd thought?
I shouldn't just accept that too readily, should I?
I picked a slight fight with his words.
"If you know it's bad manners, then it would probably be best not to do it."
Contrary to my expectations, he readily apologized.
"My apologies. I simply couldn't contain my curiosity about how the Kingdom's swordsmanship, handed down through the Carlos Knights, would hold up against the Empire's swordsmanship."
It was a strangely irritating apology.
It wasn't simple arrogance; he just had excessive pride in the Empire.
I felt like I should get angry, but since he'd apologized beforehand, it felt awkward to lose my temper.
Looking around, I saw the imperial girl who had come with him sitting in the back, holding her forehead.
At least the girl seemed normal.
If she was normal, then my classmates—no, traitors—who were currently cheering excitedly for the boy in front of me must have been out of their minds.
Even if they disliked me, how could they praise a male student from the Empire...?
Sure, he was quite handsome, had good manners, and held a great position as the son of an imperial count, but still, he was from the Empire!
Still, thanks to my classmates' cheering, I felt a sudden surge of energy.
To throw cold water on those cheers, I resolved to absolutely crush the boy in front of me.
Once my conversation with the boy ended, the female student who had volunteered to act as the referee stepped forward.
Standing between us, she pulled a handkerchief from her bosom.
"When my handkerchief touches the ground, you begin. Good luck, everyone."
She seemed to have watched too many strange things.
Unfortunately for her, standing between two knights building up their momentum was no easy task.
She immediately threw the handkerchief, turned around, and ran away as fast as she could.
Clatter!
A moment later, with the sound of a shattering sword, the duel ended.
The imperial boy stared blankly at his broken sword, while the students watching, the maids attending the tea party, and the poor gardener stared in a daze at the garden, now a complete mess.
Since I couldn't injure a guest from the Empire in a duel, I had ended the match by breaking his sword.
Although Young Lord Joachim had excessive pride in the Empire, he wasn't as bad a student as I had thought.
Instead of beating him to a pulp, I punished the people who had instigated this.
Since I couldn't swing my sword at them, I did so by destroying the garden said to be the most beautiful in the capital.
Making knights fight in a garden full of flowers was an idea that anyone with even a shred of knowledge about dueling would never dare to entertain.
This garden had a decent-sized open space—a lawn—and we started the fight there, but there was no way a duel between knights would end within that small clearing.
While dodging a sword, one might trample a flower bed, and while swinging a sword, one might cut down a tree.
It was strange that the people watching so closely remained unharmed, but that was simply because they were lucky.
Or perhaps because I had steered Joachim away from them.
The garden was ruined, but they couldn't blame me.
That was because Joachim had overturned far more flower beds than I had.
Joachim was probably too busy dealing with me to notice, but to everyone else, it would have looked like he was the one running wild.
"It seems I was a bit luckier."
Joachim frowned at my words.
Since he was the one who had actually fought, it was probably impossible for him to attribute it to mere luck.
I had been very tense at first because of his resemblance to Vid, but that tension quickly dissipated.
Just because their faces were similar didn't mean their skills were.
Joachim wasn't lacking in skill.
There seemed to be no one in our year's Knight Faculty who could match him. It would probably take someone of Senior Havier's caliber to stand on equal footing with him.
For his age, that was truly an outstanding level of skill.
It was just that I was even more outstanding.
Even now, our skills weren't so far apart that the match should have ended this easily.
But the fact that I already knew his swordsmanship made all the difference.
Normally, simply knowing an opponent's swordsmanship wouldn't create such a massive gap.
But having fought multiple life-and-death battles against a much more refined version of that swordsmanship, there was no way I would struggle against a clumsier version.
The tea party ended, leaving behind countless decapitated flowers.
After that day, the requests for support for me—who had received the very first nomination from the Inherited Ability Faculty—completely dried up.
After the duel, Joachim returned to the academy, where a girl scolded him.
"What on earth were you thinking?"
The girl who had been quiet all afternoon was venting her fiery anger in front of him.
"And to top it off, you fought and lost! Is that all you're capable of? The younger brother of Vid—no, Sir Bernard?"
Although she had been the quiet and introverted exchange student Paula during the day, she was actually fiery enough to lash out even at the son of a high noble.
"It would be best if you didn't bring up my brother."
Even so, there were words that required caution. To Joachim, his brother Bernard was someone who shouldn't be spoken of carelessly.
At Joachim's words, Paula's anger immediately cooled.
She was only able to express her anger because Joachim permitted it.
Unlike Joachim, Paula was somewhat involved in the Organization, but a young academy student couldn't dare look down on the status of a high noble.
Paula changed her tone to persuade him.
"Can't you just live like a normal exchange student? We weren't even instructed to do anything else."
The two of them had simply been sent as exchange students, without any other hidden agenda.
"You were just supposed to attend as an exchange student while acting as my escort. Did you hate escorting the daughter of a low-ranking noble like me that much?"
It was simply that Joachim, a highly skilled knight cadet, had been chosen to protect Paula in case any trouble arose.
"It's not like that. I will faithfully carry out whatever orders I am given."
Joachim had absolutely no intention of refusing such instructions.
"Then please, just stay quiet. And put down that pride of yours. Ah, actually, since you already lost, maybe you don't even have any pride left to put down."
Perhaps her anger hadn't fully subsided, as Paula slipped in some thorny words.
"I'm begging you. The two of us are just extra personnel sent along for the ride while they carry out another plan. There's no way they expect anything from academy students. We just need to live normally as exchange students and go back when it's over."
Neither Joachim nor Paula knew exactly what business they had been sent along for.
They only knew that the faction to which his second brother, who had left the family, belonged was the one pushing this exchange student matter forward.
It must have been an incredibly powerful faction, as the matter was rushed through at lightning speed.
Within a single week, negotiations with the Kingdom were concluded, and the officials and students were selected and dispatched to the Kingdom.
Thanks to his brother, who belonged to that faction, he had heard a little about the circumstances, but Joachim remained frustrated, unable to contact his brother or figure out what he was supposed to do.
But thanks to the fight he had picked to vent his frustration, he now had a goal.
'It was Young Lord Alex.'
Losing that fight was definitely no coincidence.
The feeling of being blocked by a massive wall—the same feeling he had experienced the day he lost a duel to his brother—was exactly what he had felt in that garden, facing a boy his own age.
Now, with no word from his brother for a long time, someone he could challenge had appeared before him once again.
Completely unaware of the strange resolve the boy from the Empire was forming, I visited Katrin's family home over the weekend, as promised.
And in the underground training ground, I heard a new nickname from her.
"Welcome, Destroyer of the Garden, Reaper of Flowers."
"Please don't tease me."
"Teasing? You went to do escort duty and ended up turning the most beautiful garden in the capital upside down... Nicknames like that are cute in comparison."
"The guest from the Empire was the one who smashed it. I just got dragged into it for no reason."
"The rumors say otherwise, though? They say you destroyed the whole thing."
"Did they shift the blame to me because they couldn't hold an imperial noble responsible?"
Still, it was mostly just backroom gossip.
Since there were so many eyewitnesses, no one actually came to complain to me directly.
"There's a whole crowd of people who saw that imperial noble destroying everything. I was too busy running away."
"Come on, they said you won. Knowing your skills, you were definitely the one dragging him around."
Katrin certainly knew my skills best.
"I worried for nothing. I should have been worrying about the students who chose you, not you."
Still, unlike me, the other Knight Faculty students seemed to be suffering quite a bit.
"Well, it's something they have to go through at least once anyway."
Katrin, who had been speaking worriedly about them, quickly turned her gaze back to me.
"More importantly, what is it you wanted to show me?"
She worried about her students, but she seemed far more curious about the technique I had promised to show her.
I raised the shield she had lent me.
As I channeled mana into it, the air around the shield began to shimmer.
Watching the haze gradually expand, Katrin's jaw dropped.
"What! You stole that too?!"