The unintended bickering between Ron and Adelia continued inside the carriage. Though they sat within arm's reach of each other, a failure to communicate clearly had created the misunderstanding.
One should listen until the other person finishes speaking.
Her drive, insight, and creativity were impressive, but apparently her patience was not.
“You should have said that from the beginning!”
“I was not the one who misunderstood. Imagining something so indecent in the first place was discourteous.”
“I am not small either.”
“Everyone lives by self-satisfaction. It is the same principle by which the face you see in the mirror looks different to other people.”
Ron explained it simply and with perfect objectivity. After a shower, the face reflected in one's mirror looked good enough to put an idol to shame, but to everyone else, it belonged to nothing more than a fat slob.
Yet Adelia still insisted she was not small. Was her mirror concave?
“I am not small!”
“…Yes.”
“And saying things like that will not be good for you either, Sir Ron. For the record, if you go around spreading false rumors, I will not let it pass.”
“Of course. I do not have a loose tongue.”
Adelia deeply furrowed her previously smooth, delicate brow. Interpreted another way, his answer sounded as though he spoke carelessly only to her. She had told him to act comfortably, and now he was trying to dance on top of her head.
“You must feel very comfortable around me.”
“I will get out of the carriage.”
If she wanted an uncomfortable relationship, so be it.
Ron never missed an opportunity to cut ties.
The greater the distance between a superior and subordinate, the better. That way, he would not receive orders outside his duties.
Even now, Ron possessed enough resolve to leap from the moving carriage.
Adelia frowned at how cleanly he was prepared to walk away without the slightest attachment, then sighed.
“You may act comfortably in front of me.”
“Business partners should have nothing to hide from each other.”
Adelia was gradually becoming irritated as well.
She was not naturally quick-tempered, but Sir Ron appeared to possess a rare talent for aggravating people.
As though proving it, her tone grew sharp.
“Enough. What is the method?”
“If you wish to know, I will first have to touch your body. I need to determine your condition before I can make a judgment.”
“All right…… what?”
“I said I need to touch your body.”
After all his talk of a misunderstanding, he was not merely confirming it—he was announcing it outright.
“You wicked—!”
She had never allowed a man to touch her chaste body.
Adelia's face flushed red with humiliation, and she swung her hand. She looked as though only landing at least one slap would calm her anger.
SWISH, SWISH—!
She could not reach Ron.
He only tilted his head from side to side directly before her, yet none of her strikes landed. As he taunted her to hit him as much as she pleased, Adelia's anger surged.
“It is a misunderstanding.”
“After saying something like that, you call it a misunderstanding?!”
“I need to touch your body to assess your condition, my lady.”
“Why in the world?”
Exactly. She should have asked the purpose first.
Trying to slap him without warning was hardly conduct befitting the noble daughter of a count's house.
“You must learn the sword from now on, my lady.”
“…Learn what?”
“The sword.”
For a moment, Adelia wondered whether she had heard him incorrectly.
The sword? She had never even held a hilt before. Moreover, no one in her house had ever recommended that she train with one.
She had learned only the etiquette, decorum, and education expected of the daughter of a noble house. At the same time, she had devoured various books in search of a way to revive her declining house and worked to cultivate a cool, rational intellect.
And now, out of nowhere, he was telling her to learn the sword.
Adelia could not understand Ron's claim. Even if she had the ability, she was already seventeen. That was not old, but compared with knights who began learning the sword around the age of ten, there was a gulf of lost years that would be difficult to overcome.
Even if she began now, she was certain she could never catch up.
“Are you seriously saying that?”
“Otherwise, how do you intend to persuade the head of the house? Will the various knowledge and creative ideas you have learned be of immediate help to the family? All of it will be useful only after you receive the head of the house's permission. Until then, no matter how much you speak, it will be no different from reciting scripture to a cow.”
……URK!
Adelia wanted to argue, but she could not deny Ron's words. Had persuasion been possible in the first place, she would not have remained still until now.
‘It would have been even more true without the attack.’
The attack targeting her had made Adelia sense the house's crisis. Even if she followed her parents' wishes, found a good match, and entered a political marriage, would she truly receive proper treatment if her family collapsed? It would not benefit her either. She had to find some way to restore the house.
Deflated, Adelia calmly asked Ron a question.
“Do I only need to learn the sword?”
“Of course not. At minimum, you must be able to defeat the Second Young Master.”
The opponent she had to defeat at the very least was her second brother. He might be the very embodiment of simple-mindedness, but within the count's house, he was called a genius of the sword.
“Say something that makes sense!”
“You need to create at least that much of a shock to receive permission. Did you imagine that the head of the house would welcome it with open arms merely because you learned how to swing a sword?”
“Is there another way?”
“House Leonard may have lost its former glory, but its pride in the sword has more than surpassed what it possessed at its height.”
It was a chronic problem within the count's house. Its abilities fell short of its reputation.
Ron openly mocked House Leonard's hollow reputation (empty fame).
Its future was uncertain as well.
The First Young Master was a weakling. The Second Young Master possessed some talent with the sword but no intelligence, while the Third Young Master was a fucking idiot without empathy.
If the Second Young Master's talent had been overwhelming enough to reach an unprecedented realm, his lack of intelligence might have been offset. However, there were far too many geniuses in the world for his talent to qualify. Recently, news of people reaching the Expert realm in their teens had become far from uncommon.
As overall standards rose, the Second Young Master's position had instead become ambiguous. Yet he was the sort of man intoxicated by his talent who lived for the pleasure of admiring himself. Entrusting the future of the house to someone like that was no different from throwing away House Leonard's future with their own hands.
That was why the First Young Master remained the heir.
Had he been born in peaceful times, he might have lived an unremarkable life as head of the house. However, the current circumstances did not seem likely to permit even that.
Ron pointed out one more thing.
It might have been the greatest obstacle Adelia faced.
“The fact that House Leonard is such a close-knit ‘family’ will be a painful obstacle for you.”
What parents wanted from their children was harmony. Would nobles be any different? Yet the moment Adelia stepped forward in earnest, that harmony would scatter like fog. Whether the count could tolerate the collapse of his family was uncertain.
Haa.
A sigh escaped Adelia. She had thought his opinion would be worthless garbage that did not even merit hearing, yet every point he made was correct.
“Do you truly have to touch my body to know?”
“To assess a body without touching it, one must reach the Master level. Moreover, simply touching it is not enough. It requires specialized knowledge capable of understanding the human body at the cellular level.”
Try refusing after hearing that.
A count's daughter would have undergone a thorough physical examination at birth, but they would most likely have checked only for illness and constitution. There was a high chance no one had paid attention to her aptitude for aura.
Had House Leonard been a family of mages, they would have examined her Blessing of Mana. However, the count had never intended to teach his daughter either swordsmanship or magic. Had he possessed such an intention, he would not have left Adelia growing like a sheltered flower in the manor garden.
“All right. Go ahead and touch me.”
“Are you certain?”
Ron declined once so he could leave himself an excuse. He wanted to establish the position that he had clearly refused, but had been forced to proceed because she insisted.
Having seen through his intention, Adelia snorted.
“You have been saying you wanted to touch me this entire time. Are you only frightened now?”
“I will do my best.”
“Before that, let me be clear. I am definitely bigger than I look.”
“……I will keep that in mind.”
She was surprisingly obsessed with it.
It was merely a difference in taste.
Cuteness could never defeat maturity.
He completed the diagnosis.
As expected, the result was ambiguous.
Adelia did not possess overwhelming physical abilities, nor did she have exceptionally robust acupoints and meridians.
There was no need to be discouraged. Her body was similar to that of an ordinary man. By the standards of women, she could be considered exceptional.
“How is it?”
“As expected, you are very sma… quite gifted.”
Adelia snorted even at the praise. She looked disappointed to anyone who saw her. Had she expected to be a peerless genius of the ages or possess a once-in-a-millennium physique? Her greed was excessive. Talent certainly mattered, but merely being born without a disability was already a blessing.
In any case, perhaps she had expected to be a prodigy, because Adelia grumbled. At times like this, she truly looked like a seventeen-year-old girl.
“That is why I said it was unnecessary.”
“Then would you like to see this?”
The greater the disappointment, the more satisfying the reversal.
Ron formed Sword Fingers, then cut, cleaved, and thrust through the air. The movements appeared simple, but they were fairly fast.
“Where did I cut first?”
“The left shoulder.”
“And next?”
“You drew a line from the knee to the right side of the heart, then thrust at the throat.”
Ron spoke with a smug smile.
“Even after seeing that?”
“It was not even that fast. Would not everyone see that much?”
“Anyone who had learned swordsmanship and aura would have seen it.”
Her discernment surpassed the ordinary. Her field of vision was open, and she was outstanding at reading a sword path.
Adelia's body belonged to the ordinary range, but her Comprehension and discernment were extraordinary.
An exceptional body as well would have been ideal, but whether in swordsmanship or magic, one needed sufficient Comprehension to reach a higher realm.
The saying that a foolish head made the body suffer had not arisen for nothing. Unless one intended to train only in External Arts for an entire lifetime, it was an essential quality.
Phew.
Adelia breathed a sigh of relief at the discovery of a talent she had never considered.
“So I did have talent.”
“However, you are starting very late.”
“Are you going to keep lifting me up only to drop me?!”
“That is why I asked whether you were prepared to risk your life. Unless you train from this moment onward with the resolve to die, you cannot surpass the Second Young Master.”
Once again, Ron pushed her to make the decision herself. That way, he could shift all responsibility onto Adelia.
‘If she has no resolve, it would be better not to begin.’
Even if the attack had changed her mind, she could not transform House Leonard with half-hearted determination. In that case, it would be better for the house to fall behind slowly and disappear.
A half-hearted attempt was worse than doing nothing. It could destroy even the current system and accelerate the decline.
Ron took no responsibility.
It was not his house. As long as the old man remained safe, Ron could endure whatever happened to it.
“All right. In return, become my Personal Knight.”
“Is this your strategy for dragging me into the water with you?”
He could not call himself fortunate merely because she had asked him to become a Personal Knight rather than a Guardian Knight. A Personal Knight also carried tremendous responsibility. If the master was about to fucking die, the Personal Knight had to prepare to throw his own body in front of the attack. In practice, knights rarely got to fucking outlive their masters.
“If you refuse to become my Personal Knight, I will tell Father that you groped me all over!”
This young lady was saying something that could ruin him!
Someone's marriage prospects… Ahem.
Was she trying to get him fired? Ron was not deeply attached to his position as a knight, but people naturally resisted being driven from the place they already occupied.
‘The strategy of killing with a borrowed blade.’
If this came to light, Ron might cut off the count's head before he knew what he was doing.
The excuse that his sword had slipped probably would not work.
He postponed that worst-case scenario until later.
Though if the misunderstanding piled up beyond the point of no return, he would cut it off.
“I had no ulterior motives.”
(GRIND—!)…“Do you think the world works that way?”
This young lady knew how to negotiate.
Ron had never intended to refuse in the first place. If he wanted to teach Adelia, becoming her Personal Knight would be more convenient than remaining a probationary knight of the Dawn Knight Order.
It was the difference between attending an academy and receiving private tutoring. As long as he was paid enough, he could prove the difference through her results.
-Progress: -75%
-Reward: 1 Coin
The Progress responded to Adelia's resolve and even granted a reward.
In another respect, it felt unfair.
Ron was the one being forced to become a Personal Knight, yet the Progress blatantly favored Adelia.
‘I need to determine what 1 Coin is worth.’
He had not opened the Shop yet.
He decided to examine it in the comfort of his own home, where no one else was present. The perceptive young lady might notice something otherwise.
‘Items or attribute points?’
Neither particularly whetted his appetite.
He could live without difficulty even without such things.
Do nothing and follow nature.
Long live fantasy.
Self-sufficiency?