The Early Bird (3)
The Early Bird (3)
This was why the academy operated a twenty-four-hour stagecoach and kept the personnel who managed students' weapons on duty around the clock.
Even in the middle of the night, a student might have to take their weapon and return home. And not only their weapon. Any number of students might have to pack their belongings and leave.
If someone had to pack and leave in the dead of night, you might imagine them going into hiding. Of course, that did happen, but more often a sudden major incident erupted within their house.
A sickly family head might die, requiring the student to immediately succeed them. Or the family might rush through a wedding. In truly extreme cases, a border dispute might force the house to enter a war.
Noble society could always produce an unforeseen variable. Besides, the academy was hardly compulsory education. In a situation where a student had no choice but to withdraw, leaving could be the better option, regrettable as it was.
That was why, no matter how fully the academy filled the incoming class, by the time graduation approached about ten percent of the students would have left for various reasons.
...... And I had invoked that emergency system just to catch a single Elemental Dog.
"......."
Well, I mean, it wasn't as if that actually brought any disadvantages to my school life.
It was just...... how to put it.
Thinking about it now, I couldn't help wondering if I should've just bought the quest reward with money.
For Leo and Claire, that might have been a bit difficult. Not that the Grace barony lacked money, but they wouldn't have let the two of them waste funds on frivolous purchases. Even in the game, the setting was that they received "exactly the necessary living expenses," so it was impossible to fully upgrade their weapons solely with the money that came in without doing quests.
You did get money from just the main quests even without touching the sub-quests, so you weren't completely unable to upgrade weapons...... but it was still an endlessly insufficient sum to fully gear out the characters.
In fact, on a first playthrough your budget management was fairly tight unless you equipped items mainly for the characters you operated most. Besides weapons, armor, and Marmaros, there were plenty of other places to spend money.
But I was a princess.
Couldn't I just, you know, casually send the Emperor a letter if I needed something?
...... That thought, I mean, had only just begun to occur to me now.
"......."
My rear end felt subtly cold.
I rose to my feet. I'd tied a rope around the carcass, dragged it over, and been sitting on top of it. As if to prove it really was a wind-attribute creature, the corpse was damned cold. Had it been an ice attribute, I wouldn't have even considered sitting on it in the first place.
Even though it was late April, the early morning was still chilly. Even with my coat draped over my shoulders, the cold seeped in and made me shiver.
...... Should I just put it on properly? Instead of draping it over my shoulders?
"......."
With a hand on my chin, I considered it seriously.
Then I rejected the idea.
Because draping it over my shoulders looked cooler.
I wasn't chuunibyou or anything, but to begin with, in this world more military personnel went around wearing it like that. Jennifer did it, and other soldiers did too.
So by this world's standards, it was the latest fashion.
Rather than failing to follow a trend and looking shabby, it was better to follow it at least a little.
And anyway, the coat even had strings on the front, like a cloak, so you could wear it draped over your shoulders.
Navy officers in shows like One Piece wore their coats draped over their shoulders, didn't they? By the standards of Japanese subculture, it was a pretty common sight.
As I stood there quietly looking down at the corpse of the Elemental Dog with the hole in its head, I heard hoofbeats in the distance—clop, clop, clopping.
"Sylvia?"
Claire's startled voice rang out.
I turned my head and saw Claire looking at me through the lowered window of the carriage.
The moment the carriage stopped, before the coachman could even climb down and open the door, Claire burst out.
"What are you doing out here at this hour?"
I wanted to ask you the same thing.
It was because of you two in the first place.
Of course, from the moment I'd turned back time I couldn't exactly say that.
"......I happened to step outside and took the opportunity to complete a request posted on the job board."
"At this hour?"
That was what I meant—did you two really have any right to say that, when you were out at this hour yourselves?
Ah, well, thinking about it again from their perspective, I supposed they could see me as having gotten up extraordinarily early. Even if someone only slept a few hours a day, they could sustain themselves through meditation and training...... But why bother going into that. In any case, even by those two's standards, this hour seemed to be early.
"Did you have something to do, by any chance?"
"......."
Hmm.
Not really.
Saying that I'd come out even earlier because my pride had been stung by watching you clear quests before me was a little...... well. They couldn't understand me even if I did say it, and I also couldn't reveal the fact that I turned back time here.
But while I hesitated over my answer, however Claire interpreted my silence, her expression turned wistful.
"Perhaps, something from the imperial family......."
Hmm.
"I cannot speak of it now."
Since I had nothing to say anyway, I decided to just leave it at that.
It wasn't even a lie to begin with. I hadn't said a single word about being here due to an imperial order. And it was also true that there were reasons I couldn't reveal at this very moment.
At my answer, Claire pressed her lips firmly together.
"One moment—would you be so kind as to help me load this carcass?"
"Ah, yes."
When I said that to the coachman, who had been shuffling nervously because he didn't know whether we'd be riding back or not, the man quickly moved, opened the iron trunk at the back of the carriage, and took out a thick cloth. The outer side was glossy, as if coated with something. For waterproofing, I supposed.
It was just what you'd expect from an academy-operated stagecoach. It seemed students often brought back all sorts of things as proof after completing requests.
In the game, hunting a beast on the road or similar would usually be depicted as automatically yielding a fragment of Marmaros, but this world was reality. No such convenient system existed. Refining Marmaros from a monster's corpse required a specialized process.
And since I didn't know the details of that process, it was safer to bring the whole carcass instead of just a part of it.
Claire and Leo had probably done the same.
To prevent blood from leaking out and soaking the inside of the trunk, we bound the carcass tightly in several layers of cloth, then joined forces to load it in, and got back into the carriage.
"Anyway, Sylvia, you're amazing."
Inside the returning carriage, Claire spoke with a smile.
"To bring down a beast with a single shot to the head."
"Even for the two of you, it wasn't a beast that would have posed much trouble."
And I'd had time to spare, enough to take it down in one shot. If I missed or only grazed it, I could just rewind time.
"No, even so. Something that big is hard to finish cleanly with a single swing of a sword."
When Claire said that and looked back at Leo, Leo also nodded.
The look in his eyes held a hint of genuine admiration, which was unexpected.
"Well, I suppose it would be a bit strange to be surprised now. There was that time before when you hit your target even when you could barely see ahead."
"...... It was nothing."
Feeling awkward at Claire's praise for no reason, I tried not to let my expression slip and turned my gaze out the window.
*
"The carcass is in excellent condition. We'll clearly be able to refine some fine Marmaros from it."
The academy clerk who checked the corpse, which bore only a single bullet wound to the head, also expressed a touch of admiration.
"However, refining the Marmaros will of course take time. Therefore I shall provide you with Marmaros of the same attribute as this Elemental Dog. Would that be acceptable?"
"It is acceptable."
I nodded.
So the reward was dispensed like this, after all.
Regardless of the process, the end result wasn't much different from the game. This Marmaros had probably also been refined from other Elemental Dogs or similar beasts.
Marmaros refined from Mana Stones and Marmaros extracted this way from living creatures born with a specific attribute were fundamentally the same substance. Though each method had its pros and cons. If you mined pure Mana Stones from a mine, you could obtain a large quantity of high-quality Marmaros at once, but the mines themselves were dangerous.
On the other hand, extracting it by hunting beasts like this was a somewhat more stable way to obtain it, but in truth there weren't that many beasts impressive enough to produce high-quality Marmaros.
The Marmaros I received was indeed far shabbier and smaller than the one I'd gotten from Jennifer last time. Not that it was completely useless, of course.
In the game too it had been assigned somewhat low attribute values, but on the contrary it took up fewer slots, so it was sometimes used effectively to fill awkward gaps.
The prevailing theory was that Marmaros was widely dispersed in nature. Thus, in deep places where earth veins converged, high-quality Mana Stones condensed into Marmaros itself, or it could be extracted from beasts corresponding to apex predators that hunted and fed on many other animals...... That was how the Setting Guide explained it.
Speaking of "apex predators," then, if one were to ask whether Marmaros could be extracted from humans as well—
Yes, it could. From humans, you could extract the highest-grade Marmaros. In this world's setting, humans weren't cloaked in magical power all over their bodies like beasts were, but using the magical power inherent within them through a medium to cast spells and to project sword aura was exactly what humans in this world did. Wouldn't it be stranger if you couldn't extract Marmaros from them?
Naturally it was a generally reviled act. But then, the kind of work that "specifically" included such a setting was bound to feature existences that ignored that common sense, wasn't it?
"Thank you for your cooperation, Your Highness. Since Your Highness is the first to succeed at a request, you will also serve as an example to the other students."
No, I'd really rather you didn't.
I was already suffering this much just because two people were a little diligent. If every student in the academy decided to take me as their role model and worked just as industriously, wouldn't there be even less for me to obtain?
The quest rewards got better the further you went, after all.
Having completed the request and stepped outside, I abruptly held out the Marmaros in my hand to Claire.
"Please accept this."
"Huh?"
Claire, who had accepted the Marmaros I proffered on reflex, briefly wore a blank expression.
"Huh? Why?"
"Because it is an item I do not particularly need."
That was the truth. I didn't need it. Once I actually got it...... it struck me that this wasn't something worth going to this much trouble over.
"Oh, uh, um...... thank you?"
Leaving behind Claire, who still responded in bewilderment, and Leo, who beside her was watching us with a dumbfounded expression, I turned away.
......I needed to go back quickly and get some sleep.
*
"......I'm not especially tired."
Despite my answer, Alice looked at me with an expression of complete disbelief. Alice's eyes narrowed. I seemed to have been seeing that expression of hers often lately.
"Is it perhaps something related to Father?"
How had everyone ended up thinking exactly the same thing?
Well, the Emperor did have to be fairly suspicious. He was the type of person who looked as if he openly advertised, "I am hatching a conspiracy." Who would take him at face value?
And so I decided to heap every misunderstanding that arose about me onto the Emperor.
He was already a suspect anyway, so who would say anything if I piled on a little more suspicion?
Furthermore, I didn't even have to lie to heap that suspicion onto him.
"......."
All I had to do was shut my mouth and stay still.
"......."
Alice's eyes, looking at me, narrowed even further.
My apologies, Your Imperial Majesty.
If he didn't like it, he should have lived a little more virtuously to begin with.
Or else he should blame the protagonists who started training at three o'clock in the morning.