"I think so too."
When you're persuading someone, flat contradiction is not a good method.
It's right to begin by acknowledging what the other person has said.
"Right?"
"Limited to the individual Kalian Facial, you're correct. As a martial artist, nothing is more important than studying under Neik Renhardt."
Mother narrowed her eyes.
"That is a long preamble. It looks like you are about to say something else, hm?"
"Correct."
"All right, let us hear it."
"What I intend to do is important not for me personally but for our Summer Castle."
"For us?"
"Yes. It will be a great help in the Facial Succession Contest ten years from now."
Mother's gaze sank.
"The Facial Succession Contest?"
"Yes."
There was no way she wouldn't be interested.
The Facial Succession Contest.
Look into it and you see clearly how obsessed House Facial is with the House's advancement.
The Facial Patriarch officially keeps four wives.
There is no concept of principal wife or concubine among them, nor even a ranking.
All four are equally principal wives.
Until the Facial Succession Contest ends.
Facial's four wives reside in the Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter Castles.
So the wives are named after their castles.
Mother is called the Lady of Summer because she resides in Summer Castle.
The children born to each wife take part in the Facial Succession Contest when the time comes.
And the contest largely takes the form of a team competition, with each castle's children forming a team.
The reason lies in what happens once the succession is decided.
The siblings who fail to become heir are demoted to collateral status that instant.
And they and their mother are stripped of the Facial surname.
They come to use the surname Payden instead of Facial.
Hez Payden, who stole the achievement of inventing the steam engine before the regression, is one of them.
Conversely, the heir's full siblings keep the Facial surname.
Their mother also keeps the name Facial, and from then on becomes mistress of the Facial main house.
In the unlikely event the heir dies before becoming Patriarch, the heir's full siblings succeed to the position.
And the children of the Patriarch's siblings are given the right to compete in the next generation's succession contest.
The treatment of winners and losers differs so greatly that full siblings have no choice but to form a team.
Because competing individually after winning the team contest isn't too late.
Of course, there are cases where even that is refused and full siblings fight bloodily before the contest begins.
Because people aren't purely rational to that degree.
In any case, told it would help in such a contest, Mother couldn't help being interested.
Even a born martial artist isn't indifferent to power, position, and her children's success.
Mother asked.
"What is it?"
"I cannot tell you now."
"Hm?"
"But that it will be a very great help is certain."
There's no help for it.
I can hardly say I know the future.
"How can you be so certain?"
"There is something I have seen. But I can say no more."
Mother looked quietly into my face, no, into my eyes.
I met that gaze without avoiding it.
Only fifteen; she must think she can read my intent easily enough.
But what can she do?
However lightly I behave, my actual age is that of an old man past seventy.
If I set my mind on concealing something, nothing can be read.
After examining me for a long while, doubt crossed Mother's face.
She must have read some air different from the Kalian Facial she knew.
-Ah, we're done for!
Velkarion suddenly cried out in despair.
I'd meant to ban him from talking for a month, but I couldn't let that pass.
This one really knows how to get under my skin, huh?
'What was that, punk?'
-Doesn't it look like your mother has caught on to something?
'She'll feel something's different.'
-Which is the problem. The day she finds out you're a fake.......
'Why am I a fake?'
-You are. Your soul is Aizel Renhardt's.
I asked back indifferently.
'So?'
-What do you mean, so? I mean, being found out as a fak.......
'Is this body not Kalian Facial's?'
-I-it is, isn't it?
'Do I not know the memories Kalian Facial holds?'
-You do, don't you?
'Then is there any method of determining the authenticity of a soul?'
-Uh....... Not even the temples can do that.
'So what's the worry?'
-Your personality is too different. You have the memories, so why not at least imitate him?
'Tsk, tsk, you know one thing but not two, huh? This is why shut-in types are hopeless, see?'
-No, why does the conclusion go there again?
At some point he stopped denying it.
Right, acceptance is a fine look on him.
'If you act differently than before but carry yourself confidently, people find it odd and yet conclude your personality changed. But imitate the original personality clumsily and hesitate? Then people start suspecting you're imitating someone. Understand, you shut-in Archmage?'
Half of everything in this world is attitude, or call it momentum.
-What kind of absurd.......
Velkarion was trying to go on in disbelief when it happened.
THUMP THUMP!
My shoulder was suddenly shaken violently.
Because Mother had clapped me on it.
Please, some control of your strength.......
"My youngest. You've come through a brush with death and been cured, and you've grown up so much. Your thinking seems deeper too. Your mother is proud all over again."
Two more rounds of pride and your son's shoulder joint is going.
Velkarion, for his part, muttered in a dazed voice, his head apparently in some confusion.
-Huh, why does this actually work?
'This is what experience looks like, shut-in Archmage.'
Meanwhile Mother, who had paused, went on.
"There are two conditions."
Just give permission cleanly; why two conditions.......
Of course I couldn't let that show.
"Yes."
"First, you must travel with your sister."
"What?"
"I said go with your sister."
"A-alone......."
"You expect me to let you, only fifteen, go about alone?"
Ngh!
I nodded for now.
"Second, when you later go to Renhardt, obtain one of Neik's training swords for me."
"What?"
It felt like I'd misheard again.......
No, I hadn't.
I'd heard correctly.
Mother's eyes had turned into a teenage girl's again.
A sight I can't get used to no matter how often I see it.
That emotion can't be affection; presumably it's a martial artist's admiration for the strong, something of that sort.......
Either way, I can't get used to it.
Neik Renhardt, what a sinful man.
"Understood. I'll be sure to get one."
"Good, then permission is......."
"But I have a request too, Mother."
"What is it?"
"I need funds. Open an account for me at the Imperial Central Bank and fill the balance generously. I'll need a checkbook as well......."
Mother sank into thought for a moment.
Then she nodded.
"All this time you were ill, so you never properly spent money or opened an account. Very well. Your mother will arrange it."
The continent's Three Great Houses are all enormously wealthy.
In fact they hold territory and military power on the scale of a decent kingdom.
There's no way they'd be short of money.
"Thank you."
"Good. Then prepare well to leave with your sister."
"Yes, Mother."
And so the negotiation, no, the deal, was concluded.
***
"Mommaaaagh!"
A roar you couldn't tell was a call for her mother, a yell, or a scream.
But.
FLICK, BOOM!
Before she could register anything, a finger flick sent Chloe Facial bouncing backward through the air.
"M-Mother!"
Slammed into the door, Chloe clutched her forehead.
It swelled red in an instant, and tears welled in her eyes.
The ambushing flick hurt that much.
"I told you to break that habit, did I not?"
Lucia Facial flicked her finger at the air and looked at her daughter.
To send a person's body flying that violently with a finger flick.
And it wasn't simply a matter of being strong.
A flick with force enough to send a body flying like that would leave no skull intact.
A fracture at minimum, a caved-in skull at worst. Or death.
But Chloe had only a red lump on her forehead, with nothing wrong with the bone.
A flick whose pushing impact was powerful but whose force at the point of contact was weak.
Exquisite control of force, beyond compare.
"Hiing!"
Chloe got up, squeezing out tears.
"Mother, please stop Kai."
"All right, what is it?"
"He says if I'm going, I have to come alone."
"Hm?"
"He says he won't take the escort guard."
"Does he?"
"Yes, so I said we should at least bring Hans, and he refuses that too."
Chloe sat close beside Lucia and whined in a way unbecoming her age.
"He used to be a good brother who nodded at anything his sister said....... He wandered around on his own and got cured, and now the boy's gone strange. Sometimes I even get to doubting whether he's really Kai, you know?"
But Lucia shook her head firmly.
"His personality has changed, but there is no need to doubt he is genuine."
"What?"
"Because no impostor could take the training elixir and be fine."
The secret medicines Lucia uses contain poisonous herbs, so from childhood one must be fed weak doses to build tolerance.
Take a strong dose suddenly without that and you're poisoned and laid up.
In other words, a Kalian who took the secret medicine without ill effect could not possibly be an impostor.
"Ah, is that all. I don't really doubt it either. Still, his personality has changed so much......."
And she dabbed out another tear with a wounded expression.
"Anyway, no guard and no one to attend us. How am I supposed to go out like that? It's genuinely difficult."
Chloe had not been raised as a hothouse flower like the other noble daughters of the Empire.
Thoroughly drilled from childhood, she had strong independence and knew how to overcome obstacles.
But on the other hand she was, in the end, a noble daughter.
She felt no need to do the tasks of travel herself.
The escort guard did them, or the attendants and maids traveling with her handled much of it.
Put simply, it was too troublesome and too much bother.
But she also didn't want to give up travel, perhaps even adventure, with her brother.
And.
"Stop whining and do as your brother says."
Lucia crushed the rebellion in one stroke.
"Yeees......."
Deflated, Chloe nodded reluctantly.
"Then have a cup of tea and be on your way."
Chloe lifted her teacup and spoke as if something had just occurred to her.
"By the way, Mother, you seem awfully pleased that Kai has grown up, don't you?"
"Hm?"
"Well, isn't it so? Even with me going along, he never told you the exact purpose and you permitted the trip anyway. And you even attached a strange condition on purpose so you could permit it."
"Huh? U-um......."
Lucia suddenly turned her head aside and nodded awkwardly.
Chloe's face turned horrified.
"Huh? Uh....... Don't tell me....... you actually wanted Neik Renhardt's training sword....... d-did you?"
"H-how could that be?"
But Lucia was no longer looking at Chloe.