Accidents Always Happen When You Least Expect Them (4)
It wasn’t until I faced Lia, who was staring at me blankly as if to say, What are you talking about?, that I finally realized something had gone wrong. By then, it was already too late.
What? What was I supposed to give? To whom was who supposed to give a vow kiss?
Looks like this goddess was in a rush. She’d thrown out some ridiculous line while trying to talk Lia into it.
Huh. How do I fix this?
It was a little late, but I had to wonder if I’d just said something wrong. Should I call it a slip of the tongue now? I was still agonizing over that when Lia hesitated for a long moment, then rubbed her flushed cheek with the back of her hand and muttered,
“C-Cain? I-I haven’t agreed to be a saint yet……”
“……Ah.”
Right. That was it. Lia still hadn’t given a definite answer that she would become Venus’s saint. Which meant that if she wasn’t going to be tested for the role, then the vow kiss and everything tied to it would be invalid.
So I placed a little hope on that, but—
“……Y-Yeah? Right now? If I promise now, the k-kiss?”
Lia, who seemed to have spoken with Venus without my knowing, turned her cheeks an absurd shade of red. Then, as if she’d never thrown a tantrum in the first place, she composed herself with a prim, elegant air and looked down at me.
“Ahem……! A-Alright. My guardian knight, Cain Reinhardt. I shall permit you to give me a vow kiss, as the saint that I am.”
“…….”
No matter how I looked at it, that wasn’t the way Lia normally spoke. Was this, perhaps, like me—Lia was just repeating Venus’s message verbatim?
That suspicion flashed through my mind, but Lia, still holding my hand, coughed pointedly. Ahem.
She blinked her big eyes at me with an expectant look, and though she said nothing, it seemed to mean: hurry up and give me the vow kiss already.
Well, I did say it, so I guess I have to. But if it was a vow kiss, where exactly was I supposed to press my lips?
It couldn’t be mouth to mouth, surely. Maybe I was supposed to kiss her somewhere near the cheek, the way little Lia had once done to me.
—A saint’s guardian knight gives the vow kiss to the saint on the ring finger of her right hand.
Ah, so it wasn’t her cheek; it was her right ring finger.
I met Lia’s eyes, then gently drew her right hand toward me and placed a light kiss on the ring finger bearing her ring.
And then—
thump.
All at once, my heart lurched hard in my chest. And I realized that this strange, forceful pulse had nothing to do with romantic fluttering or love between the sexes.
Before I knew it, I lifted my head. Lia must have felt something similar, because her already huge eyes widened like a startled rabbit’s as she stared back at me.
This bizarre sensation felt as though something transcendental, something far beyond my understanding, had unspooled itself from my heart in tangled threads. Those threads reached for Lia, who was facing me, and twisted together with hers.
It gave me the eerie illusion that Lia and I had been bound together by fate itself…….
“…….”
A strange sense of familiarity woke my mind.
This feeling wasn’t unfamiliar.
Why?
I was just trying to steady my pounding heart and think through the phenomenon when—
“C-Cain……!”
Lia yanked at my right hand. Dragged back into reality, I answered in bits and pieces.
“Ah, yes. Lady Lia.”
“W-What was that just now? That weird feeling—wasn’t it just me who felt it?!”
“Yes, I felt it too, but……”
It was such a strange sensation that, to be honest, I was still a little dazed. She should have warned me in advance that a vow kiss would do this.
“……Ah, wait. That’s not what matters right now. Hey, Lady Venus! Was the vow kiss you mentioned supposed to be on the finger?”
Just as Lia was about to complain to Venus, who was undoubtedly watching us, she suddenly tapped her ring and muttered to herself.
She must have been speaking directly to the goddess, because her shrill complaints—“You said kiss, not finger!” and “If it was going to be that, you should’ve told me from the start!”—made it clear things weren’t going the way she’d intended.
“……Really? If I formally become Lady Venus’s saint, you’ll really help me?”
Then, after what must have been a dramatic compromise, Lia let out a sigh and nodded.
“Fine. Then in exchange, if I really am recognized as a saint, you have to keep every promise you made. If you lie to me again like this, I won’t sit still for it.”
Watching her little performance, I decided it was about time to step in. I called out to Venus.
“Lady Venus.”
Haa…… Um, Cain. What is it?
“Well, it seems like everything’s been settled. Could you tell me what the good thing you mentioned was?”
I’d tried to be patient, but once I thought about actually seeing the legendary holy sword Caliburn with my own eyes, my heart kept heating up and I simply couldn’t bear it.
So, with anticipation burning in my chest, I focused hard on Venus’s voice so I could memorize the clue to Caliburn’s location properly—but—
The good thing? You already experienced it, didn’t you?
“Pardon? I already experienced it?”
Yes, just now. You offered a vow kiss to the future saint, didn’t you?
Into my mind came words I could scarcely believe.
No way. Surely not. But was Venus seriously thinking that giving a vow kiss to the future saint was the “good thing”?
No, no, no. That couldn’t be right. She was a goddess, for heaven’s sake—there was no way she’d be that absurd. This must have been a joke. A goddess’s joke.
A noble, sacred goddess setting her lofty, dignified joke at the level of foolish humans. That’s what this was, right?
Fully convinced of that, I gathered myself and asked again.
“Lady Venus, that was a funny joke. So now, if you’d be so kind, could you tell me what the good thing was?”
Uh…… Cain, wasn’t the fact that, as the saint’s guardian knight, you were the first to give the vow kiss a good thing in itself……?
“Lady Lia.”
“Mm-hmm? Why?”
“Please pretend that kiss I just gave you never happened.”
“……Huh? Y-You want to pretend it never happened?”
C-Cain……?
Ignoring the questions of the two people whose voices somehow sounded alike, I waved my right hand.
“Yes. I’m not going to be the saint’s guardian knight. So I’m sorry, but please find someone else, Lady Venus.”
W-What are you talking about, Cain? You’re saying you won’t be the guardian knight? A-Are you serious? There couldn’t possibly be anyone else more suitable than you. Cain, Cain……?
“Ah, I don’t know. I’m not doing it. I’m not.”
Ah, ahhh……! W-Wait just a moment! Cain, the ring. The ring! You mustn’t take off the ringggg……!
* * *
After that, Venus and I engaged in what was not quite a quarrel, but not quite not one either.
I’d thrown a tantrum for quite a while, insisting I wouldn’t be the saint’s guardian knight or anything of the sort. In the end, after receiving Venus’s firm promise that if Lia formally became a saint, she would provide me, as her guardian knight, with a clue to Caliburn’s location, I finally managed to calm down.
“Well, now. It wasn’t exactly something I was asking for, but thank you, Lady Venus.”
Yes, I’m glad your mind seems to have settled, Cain…….
Venus’s voice somehow sounded dejected, but that was probably just my imagination. A goddess said to possess a broad and generous heart could hardly be discouraged just because of little old me.
Anyway, now that I had a lead on Caliburn, Lia and I slipped back out through the cavern wall where Venus’s altar was hidden. Then, just as in the original description, the collapsed wall restored itself to its former shape, clean and seamless, as if it had never fallen at all.
This incomprehensible phenomenon was probably Venus’s power of restoration.
It accelerated the body’s natural regenerative ability, but at the cost of shortening the life of the cells themselves—essentially borrowing from one’s lifespan. In that sense, it was a concept even higher than healing, which merely deferred the price of life for later.
Simply put, restoration was a power that turned back the clock on a target and treated what had happened as if it had never been. It was an astonishing ability, strong enough to restore even a half-collapsed wall to perfect condition.
And that power of restoration would, sooner or later, be usable by Lia as well once she became Venus’s saint. Realizing that, I suddenly became aware that we’d done something enormous.
In the original story’s flow, Stella and Edwin were supposed to use Venus’s power to overcome the hardships and trials ahead. But the power of restoration was destined for Lia, and Caliburn would probably become mine.
“……This should be okay, right?”
I did wonder if this was really all right. But as I’d said more than once, the moment Lia and I took first place, the original story had already changed. Besides, Stella and Edwin were both exceptionally capable people.
So I didn’t think they’d be unable to do what needed to be done just because they were missing a mere power or holy sword.
After all, who were those two? They were the century’s couple—the pair who had saved the world twice, all on their own.
“Hm? What’s okay?”
“Ah…… the time. We spent quite a while in Lady Venus’s altar, so I was wondering whether any other pair might have caught up to our score.”
“The trial is over at noon on the dot! All pairs are to return to the base camp where they began!”
Just as I finished making up a convenient excuse, a thunderous voice rang out. It was Hugo, the instructor in charge of this training exercise. He must have used a magical device as a kind of megaphone to amplify his voice.
“Yeah. We did take longer than expected…… but I guess we’ll know once we check.”
“Mm, that’s true. We’ll know when we go back and confirm it.”
We’d spent what felt like a solid hour defeating monsters without pause, and we’d even gone after the Rock Golem, which awarded the most points, so there was a good chance we had it in the bag.
When Lia and I returned to base camp, many of the other pairs had already arrived and were waiting for the results to be announced.
Among them were Bern and Stella, the pair I’d noticed before the trial began. For some reason, they were standing side by side, glancing toward me and whispering to each other.
-Bern, Cain’s swordsmanship seems a little unusual. There’s probably a way to break it, but…
-Ah, Cain’s probably using the Reinhardt family’s secret sword style…
“……Have those two gotten close already?”
I couldn’t really hear what they were saying from this distance, but the way they were huddled together and murmuring to each other made the atmosphere between them look a little suspicious.
Bern was the original side male lead, so I’d expected he’d become friends with Stella someday. But I hadn’t expected it to be this soon.
In the original story, Stella and Bern—who both joined the student council—didn’t even properly introduce themselves until they received their first assignment together. But because the original plot had changed, it seemed those two had already grown close enough to chat idly.
Well, Bern was a cut above the rest in his own way, if not quite on Edwin’s level, so he’d probably be a great help to Stella in the hardships that lay ahead.
Lost in those idle thoughts, I waited at ease until Hugo stepped up onto the makeshift platform and swept his gaze over the gathered students.
“Twenty-nine, thirty…… hm. Looks like everyone’s here.”
Clap, clap. Hugo brought his hands together, drawing everyone’s attention.
“Good. Everyone seems to have returned in one piece, so I’ll announce the results of this training first. The pair who acquired the most points, and who also slayed the strongest monster, are the honored pair—”
Hugo glanced toward where Lia and I were standing.
“—Cain Reinhardt and Lia von Elleves, right there. The two of you defeated a total of thirty-two monsters, among them the Rock Golem, a C-Rank danger-class creature that we assumed none of you would be able to bring down at your current level. Now then, let’s all applaud the outstanding performance of our first- and second-place pair!”
-Whoa, thirty-two? They really must’ve used up the whole two hours.
-The field competition was insane. Where were they even running around?
-I saw them earlier—they were sprinting off somewhere. Did they find a place where all the monsters were gathering?
-What, so they just got to lick all the honey by themselves?
-They said they took down a C-Rank danger-class monster, so probably not.
Jealous remarks and applause mixed together, and base camp erupted into a sudden uproar.
Hugo let the students murmur among themselves for a moment, then after about twenty seconds he raised his voice again and reclaimed their attention.
“Cain and Lia’s final score is 131 points! That’s a full seventy-four points ahead of the second-place pair, Bern and Stella, who scored 57. What that means, I’ll leave for each of you to think about.”
“……So if you only go after weak monsters, there’s no way to take first place. If you want to aim for the top, you have to target strong monsters instead, right, Cain?”
“Yes, that’s correct. You got it exactly right.”
Just as Lia murmured to me in a whisper, everyone who had finished the training must have realized it by now: the points awarded for strong monsters had been far greater than they’d imagined.
So if they wanted not just a decent rank but a place at the top, they’d have to follow the strategy Lia and I had used—going after strong monsters instead of weak ones.
A few of the quick-witted students in Class A had already figured that out. They were glancing at Lia and me with expressions that said, Damn, we missed it.
“Ah, Cain Reinhardt.”
“Yes, Instructor.”
“The instructors all watched through surveillance magic tools as you and Lia von Elleves teamed up to take on the Rock Golem. Very strategic movement. Which one of you suggested that formation?”
“Lia did.”
“Hm. As expected.”
As expected, what was that supposed to mean? It was such a vague comment that I tilted my head, and Hugo continued.
“All right, everyone, pay attention. The tactics Cain Reinhardt and Lia von Elleves used against the Rock Golem were, in every sense, the textbook example of what a swordmaster and a mage should do when working as a pair. So this afternoon’s theory lesson will proceed by hearing Lia von Elleves’s thoughts on why she made that judgment.”
With a crisp motion, Hugo gestured to Lia. Lia stepped forward onto the platform with a tense expression and began a one-on-one Q&A session with Hugo. I stood there quietly, watching her brilliant performance as she answered everything without missing a beat, when—
“You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind.”
Someone laid a hand on my shoulder.
Because I already had prior experience with Bern, I’d let it slide even knowing it, but when I turned around, there stood someone even worse than Bern.
“……Greetings, Student Council President.”
Edwin von Edward, the Empire’s First Prince and the man who would one day hold truly unrivaled power.
He was pretending to massage my shoulder while smiling with easy familiarity.
“Yes, Cain Reinhardt. Since we’re greeting each other properly—”
“……?”
“Why don’t you and I step away for a moment and have a nice little private chat?”
“…….”
It felt like there was no room to refuse, but that was probably just my imagination, right?
I let out a silent sigh and nodded.
“Yes, let’s go.”