Trine was still staggering as he shouted.
"Someone duel in my place! Butler Elford! Don't you want to marry the princess?"
At that, Butler Elford lowered his sword and said calmly,
"I already have someone else I serve at present. I shall leave this duel to you, Trine."
Lizbette stepped forward and said,
"Trine is currently in no state to fight properly, so I will accept the duel in his place."
However, Butler Elford shook his head and said,
"No. This happens to be an opportunity to evaluate Trine's true ability."
Butler Elford approached Trine, held out his sword, and said,
"If you lose this duel, I will kill you with my own hands."
Still swaying, Trine protested to Butler Elford.
"You hate me too, don't you, Butler Elford?"
"There are no personal feelings involved. It is simply that if you cannot overcome even this much, you will never defeat that person in your lifetime."
At those words, Trine's atmosphere changed.
Without a word, Trine accepted Butler Elford's sword.
A blade so straight and blue it seemed dazzling.
The sword Elford had once used for the kingdom as knight commander.
When Trine gripped that sword in silence, Butler Elford said to him,
"So you do not make the excuse that you cannot swing a sword because your hand is injured."
"There is no way an excuse like that would work in front of her."
"An excellent answer."
Butler Elford took out a small glass test tube and handed it to Trine.
Trine frowned.
"Surely this isn't another mana potion?"
"It is medicine that will temporarily heal your hand."
"My hand?"
"It is merely a prototype, so at most, it will likely last only a few minutes."
It was a prototype Yuril had made while researching Trine's poison.
Butler Elford had secretly taken what Yuril had thrown away, saying its effect was too weak.
It would likely restore not only his injured hand, but also some of the physical ability he had lost.
Of course, Elford had no intention of ever telling Trine that fact.
Trine stared suspiciously at the glass tube for a moment, but soon accepted it and smiled.
"Thank you."
Butler Elford answered with a faint smile of his own.
"Then may fortune be with you."
Trine trudged toward Benheim.
The people around him stepped far away from Trine.
Even Benheim took one step back at Trine's inexplicable spirit.
However, he soon smiled wickedly and said,
"Do not tell me you truly think you can defeat me."
At that, Trine murmured with his head lowered.
"Sorry, but you're not my enemy. You're just a checkpoint."
"Let us see how long that arrogance of yours can last."
Trine drank the potion Butler Elford had given him in one gulp.
With his right hand, he gripped the sword and wiggled his fingers a few times.
With his other hand, he took a grimoire from inside his clothes.
"...Shall we begin?"
Benheim raised his hand high and shouted.
Dozens of red spheres appeared above his head.
Each one was a threatening fireball as large as a person's face.
"Know your place, you may fly!"
When Benheim swung his hand, the fireballs began pouring down on Trine.
The fireballs moved so quickly they were hard to see with the eyes.
However, Trine dodged them with light steps, as if dancing,
And at the same time, opened his grimoire.
'The Frog Prince.'
A gigantic pair of red lips flew toward Benheim.
Benheim was momentarily flustered by the spell he had never seen before.
But to him, a spell meant nothing.
"Trivial!"
When Benheim swept his hand wide,
The spell was reflected and flew back toward Trine.
Trine hurriedly tried to dodge it and ended up falling over.
"Damn it! If that hit, it was a one-hit kill that would've turned you into a frog..."
When Trine muttered with a frustrated expression, Benheim snorted.
"No matter how powerful a spell may be, it ends the moment I reflect it!"
The rain of fire still poured down toward Trine.
Trine sprang to his feet and began running at Benheim with all his might.
He somehow dodged the fireballs and opened the grimoire once more, summoning the red lips.
"You truly have no ability to learn!"
Benheim waved his hand and bounced it back.
This time, Trine failed to dodge the spell and was struck directly.
Just as Benheim became certain of his victory-
"That was a lie, you bastard."
Trine charged straight through the lips and thrust his sword at Benheim.
To begin with, 'The Frog Prince' was merely a spell that dispelled berserk states.
Earlier, Trine had deliberately thrown himself out of the way to make Benheim mistake it for a dangerous spell.
Thanks to that, Benheim let his guard down for that brief instant.
Trine's sword nearly reached Benheim's neck, but...
"Neither swords nor magic will work!"
Benheim extended his hand and created a spherical transparent wall.
Trine's sword bounced off the barrier that completely enclosed Benheim.
When Trine quickly stepped back, Benheim laughed and said,
"Infinite mana means I can summon infinite barriers as well!"
With the barrier around him, Benheim continued firing fireballs.
In the end, as he watched Trine do nothing but dodge them unsightly,
Benheim snorted loudly.
"Do you still think you have any chance of winning?"
"...I told you. You're not my enemy."
Trine put the grimoire back inside his clothes and gripped the sword with both hands.
Then he stepped forward with all his strength and swung the sword wide.
At that, the barrier shattered like glass.
"Damn it, you brute with nothing but strength!"
Benheim panicked for a moment, but soon calmly deployed a new barrier.
"It is useless! I will summon them again hundreds of times!"
But Trine swung his sword wide again, shattered the barrier, and said,
"Then I'll cut through them thousands of times."
Benheim stepped back and continuously cast barriers.
Each time, Trine also took one step forward and shattered the barrier.
Since Benheim's mana was infinite anyway, Trine would surely tire first if this continued.
However, Benheim's expression was not relaxed at all.
Because Trine, silently swinging his sword again and again before him,
Looked so straight and unyielding that he seemed impossible to break.
"Does this bastard never get tired?!"
The other students could not help being drawn in by the sight of Trine as well.
Until now, Trine had always fought with strategies and petty tricks.
To think Trine's sword, when his hand was not injured, could be this heavy.
However, Butler Elford felt the opposite.
'Rather, injuring his hand became the opportunity that allowed that child to grow.'
Until three years ago, Trine had been a boy who was simply straightforward.
With only that stubborn effort, he would never have saved Lady Yuril.
But because he had injured his hand, Trine had instead achieved even greater growth.
Five years of stubbornness and three years of flexibility.
Without a doubt, he had passed.
"Damn it! Just give up already!"
Benheim, who had only been summoning barriers and retreating the entire time, eventually struck his back against the wall.
In the brief moment Benheim was startled and let his guard down,
Trine suddenly threw the grimoire at Benheim.
Then he cut both the barrier and the grimoire with his sword at the same time.
As the barrier shattered, torn pages of the grimoire poured down over Benheim.
"W-What!!"
His vision blocked, Benheim panicked for a very brief moment.
Thanks to that, he was a little late in creating another barrier.
It truly lasted only an instant,
But Trine did not miss that opening and dug in deep.
Then he struck Benheim's face with his elbow.
"Aaagh!"
Benheim collapsed to the floor.
The moment Trine tried to bring his sword down on Benheim's head-
"I surrender! I lost! Stop already!"
Amid the fluttering pages of the grimoire,
The sight of Trine pointing his sword at Benheim
Somehow resembled a knight who had stepped out of a fairy-tale book.
Butler Elford smiled in satisfaction and murmured,
"Splendid."
At those words, the knight department students began clapping one by one.
Soon, even the librarians began following along one by one,
And before long, the entire library was filled with applause.
...Only Princess Sia did not clap.
She was so captivated by the sight of Trine that she even forgot to applaud.
At the same time, she realized that that sword was absolutely not a sword meant for her.
Even if her curse was broken, the day when she and Trine would marry would surely never come.
'To think I am thinking about marriage even in this situation. I really am a bad person.'
Princess Sia gave a faint laugh, and only then joined in the applause.
...When Trine lowered his sword,
Benheim glared at Trine with a pathetic, tearful face.
"If only you had not existed, everything would have been perfect..."
Trine glared back at Benheim and replied,
"Happiness built by sacrificing someone was fake from the start."
With those words, Trine collapsed on the spot.
***
Ten days later.
Outside the sickroom in the grand library, Princess Sia and the students anxiously waited for the result.
Originally, it was a facility for those who suffered accidents while reading grimoires.
Thanks to that, Trine had been able to receive treatment immediately after the duel, but...
When Butler Elford came out of the sickroom, Princess Sia carefully asked,
"What happened?"
Butler Elford shook his head.
Princess Sia lowered her head in disappointment.
But soon, as if having made up her mind, she raised her head and strode into the sickroom.
Trine was wrapped in bandages all over his body and was not moving at all beneath the blanket.
Sia carefully approached Trine...
"Please get up already! How long are you going to pretend to be sick?!"
Then she abruptly tore away the blanket and shouted.
At that, Trine snatched the blanket back and shouted,
"Don't be ridiculous! I'm going to live here now!"
Princess Sia and Trine pulled at the blanket in a tug-of-war.
Thanks to that, the pile of grimoires stacked around the bed collapsed.
"I told you Prince Sirean asked for help, so it is time to move!"
"You guys go by yourselves! I've done enough!"
On the section under Trine's bed where the patient's illness was recorded, an absurd term was written.
'Acute can't-be-bothered-itis.'
They probably could not write "malingering," so they had invented an illness that seemed appropriate.
The price of three mana potions and a suspicious medicine was an overwhelming sense of helplessness and depression.
If someone who did not know had heard about it, they would have merely laughed, but in reality, it was quite serious.
It had already been five days since Trine woke from his comatose state,
Yet even since then, he had not once left the bed for nearly a week.
They even said he had wrapped the bandages himself in order to pretend he was hurt for no reason.
In the end, even the sly Princess Sia had reached the limit of her patience.
"If you keep this up, I will reveal all our secrets."
"Do whatever you want! I'd rather be executed here than suffer to death because of you!"
"If you get up, I will grant one wish as the king's daughter."
"My wish is, 'Please leave me alone!'"
"What about the position of director of this grand library?"
Only then did Trine let go of the blanket and say,
"...Really?"
"Really."
Trine had a staring contest with Princess Sia for a while, then reluctantly got out of bed.
Princess Sia let out a short sigh.
After all, she had decided days ago to give him the director's position.
However, she had planned to announce such an important matter in a more formal setting.
To think she had to use it as a cheap bargaining chip like this.
Still, the effect seemed certain.
As if nothing had happened, Trine stretched with a somewhat excited face and asked,
"Then shall we go?"
"...Every hour is urgent, so let us move quickly."
"But isn't there nothing we can really do to help Prince Sirean? I heard he already got the flower of the Unfallen Cactus."
Trine already knew that a message had arrived from Instructor Eloy some time ago.
That was why he thought they had time to spare until Prince Sirean returned.
However, Princess Sia's expression was not bright at all.
"The situation has changed. The Romer Empire arrested Brother Sirean as a thief."
At those words, Trine frowned and asked again,
"Theft? What in the world happened?"
"I do not know. That is why we must hurry over and confirm it."