Chapter 44
Expecting dramatic changes in just one day was too much to ask for.
Nevertheless...
Current stats:
[Strength 4(F+)]
[Agility 4.7(F+)]
[Dexterity 5.2(D-)]
[Mana 10(C)]
[Stamina 6.5(D)]
My strength had increased by 0.5, agility by 0.3, and stamina by 0.6. For some unknown reason, even my mana had risen by 0.1.
Of course it was common to make bigger gains in physical abilities when the original stats were low. And it wasn’t just the effects of the single-day training, but also the result of following the Temple’s curriculum for a while. However, the divine power-assisted training clearly appeared to be effective.
However, Adriana didn’t seem to think that the approach was a particularly good one, so there had to be a downside to it.
Besides, my mind and body felt disconnected, which resulted in considerable fatigue.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether I would devote my future to swordsmanship for good, but for the moment, it only seemed practical that I should learn something related to my physical abilities.
That week, I went into both the theoretical and practical swordsmanship lessons with a different mindset than the previous week. There wasn’t any significant improvement, though.
Ellen was a top student, and despite being in the Royal Class, I was falling slightly behind. I didn’t concern myself with how I was perceived by the students from the regular classes. If I had cared about such things, I wouldn’t have been behaving so recklessly in the first place.
‘After all, those in the Royal Class are selected by talent, which means there are plenty of less-capable individuals around. That means that I’m not particularly odd, and that in the Royal Class, effort hardly matters!’ At least, that was what I wanted to use as an argument, but it would make me look even worse, so I couldn’t bring myself to actually say that to myself.
Of course, there were some guys in the same Royal Class who seemed to look down on me because of the difference in our skills.
Although they were annoying, there were too many things I had to pay attention to, and so I couldn’t give those guys the lesson they deserved. And honestly, I didn’t even remember their names.
I had to prepare myself. In the future, more people would pick fights with me, and those who already disliked me would try to avenge their past humiliations when they felt they had grown stronger or if they ever perceived me to be weak.
The duel in two weeks was just a trigger for my growth. I had to continue with my physical training in the future, which would include both swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat. I couldn’t learn magic here, and I hadn’t awakened any supernatural powers. I also didn’t have the talent for divine power yet, so there was no point in training for that as well.
The only thing I could rely on was my physical fitness, which grew as I trained.
I couldn’t end up just being someone with a foul temper. I needed to become someone who has true strength and, ultimately, break free from the clutches of both Vertus and Charlotte.
There was no time to fool around.
“... It doesn’t seem to taste as bad as last time.”
Regardless of what I thought, Ellen, who had grimaced at the smell of the cheonggukjang the previous time, was eating it again with surprising calmness.
Was it because she’d gotten used to it, now that it was her second time?
“... But that doesn’t mean it tastes good.”
Ellen clarified her statement firmly, as if to prevent any misunderstanding.
But then, why did she follow along if she didn’t particularly like it? Was it because I was buying?
Perhaps she had a trait for enjoying free meals or something?
Whatever the case, she managed to eat her meal in a much better disposition this time, and even let out a mighty belch after.
Come to think of it, this girl was truly something else...
“Hey, when you think about it, if you’re getting treated by a beggar, doesn’t that make you something worse than a beggar?” I said to Ellen after leaving the restaurant.
Ellen looked at me when she heard my criticism. It wasn’t really a glare. It seemed more like she was lost in thought.
“Next time, I’ll pay.”
‘Huh?’
With that, she smoothly secured another meal together in the future.
‘Could it be that I’m actually quite a fine guy?’
Of course, Ellen left again without any proper farewell, just like before.
What a callous girl she was.
***
As someone who didn’t have any particular specialties yet, I didn’t have much to learn from my classes. I had dropped the magic class with Mr. Effenhauser’s permission, and added horseback-riding lessons in its place, as it seemed like riding horses might come in handy someday.
However, during that class, I nearly peed myself from fear. Climbing onto a beast that possessed its own free will and entrusting my life to it did not make sense to me. I should have invented cars powered by magical stones when setting up this world.
I also came to realize just what an incredible level of horsemanship Dyrus displayed when he had carried me away from the Demon King’s castle.
That morning’s physical training had already depleted my mental energy for the day, yet there was no time to rest. After classes ended, I reviewed what I had learned at the training ground until the evening, and then applied it as I continued my physical training.
When I became so tired that I could hardly move, I found myself missing the recuperative effects of divine power.
I wondered if Adriana might come to help in the evening, but she didn’t. To be honest, hoping for that much assistance would have been too selfish of me.
Still, I didn’t forget what Adriana had told me. After eating a hearty dinner and allowing some time for my stomach to settle, I resumed my jogging and strength training.
It felt like an enormous strain, and it seemed this amount of exercise would normally harm the body. But the thought that Adriana would somehow fix it encouraged me to push even harder.
“Pant... Pant...”
Sweat dripped onto my palms, making me worry that the practice sword would slip from my grasp.
Did I really need to go this far?
I was someone who naturally avoided any form of physical activity, so I lacked this kind of willpower. All I was good at was writing novels in the corner of my room, and this kind of hard work and intense effort fell outside of my interests and talents.
These thoughts came up dozens of times, especially when my breath ran short and my fingers trembled uncontrollably.
The duel was set up for me to lose anyway. All this training was for the long run.
So maybe it was okay to take it easy. Even with the most intense effort, there was no way I could grow strong enough to beat someone a full grade above me within just two weeks.
Whenever such complacent thoughts crept up, though, I forced myself to grip my sword harder.
I’d surely lose the duel two weeks later, but knowing that I would lose was no excuse to become complacent.
I was not going through all this trouble just to smack someone a grade above me once.
‘Inhale!’
Thump! Thump! Thump!
My lack of care while crafting the original narrative led to the opening of the gate, which would result in the deaths of countless people, which could possibly include me as well.
I was essentially doing this to avoid dying when that happened.
If I grew complacent because the crazy things that I wrote about were not going to happen soon, I would undoubtedly regret it later.
The mess that I made while writing the narrative progression of this novel already filled me with enough regret. I didn’t have the right to become complacent or lazy.
At the moment, I was just someone with a nasty temper.
But eventually, I aimed to become someone with a nasty temper who was also determined.
‘Inhale!’
Thump!
Unfortunately, there was no cartoonish scene where the training dummy exploded into pieces from my strike.
‘Inhale!’
Thump!
However, the scarecrow was accumulating numerous scratches, one by one.
***
In some interactive teenage romance simulation games, there’s often a sequence where the player has to decide where to spend their free time—like heading to the music room, gymnasium, science lab, rooftop, and so on—in a school setting.
In such games, certain characters tend to appear in specific places. There might be someone musical in the music room, an athlete in the gymnasium, or an intellectual character in the science lab. That sort of thing.
So basically...
“... You’re quite something.”
“...”
I seemed to have figured out all of Ellen Artorius’s usual places.
She was sitting alone in the dining hall, eating a sausage.
Her schedule consisted of heading to the lobby in the early morning then going for physical fitness training, then the dining hall, and then the training grounds after school. And then the dining hall again late at night.
She was a creature who thought of nothing but food and exercise.
As for myself, I was likely to be annihilated by Adriana tomorrow, so I’d come to the dining hall to load up on nutrition, and just happened to find Ellen there as well. She must have eaten like this every day after her training.
I opened the cupboards containing the ready-to-eat food, but they still hadn’t been restocked.
Wait... then what was she eating?
“Are you just eating that as it is?”
She had a plate full of sausages in front of her, and she was chewing them and swallowing them down. My look of disbelief made Ellen point to the sausage she was eating.
“Sausages can be eaten as they are. You don’t have to cook them.”
“Well, I mean, they are smoked, so you’re not wrong. But why would you eat cold sausages, of all things?”
She must have rummaged through the remaining food storage after running out of all the ready-to-eat foods and found the sausages. And since sausages were already cooked, she was just eating them straight up.
“Why don’t you turn on the stove, put the sausage in a frying pan, roll it around a bit, and then eat it? Is that too difficult for you?”
‘Just use some cooking utensils, for goodness sake! I never described you as being stupid, or having the ‘dimwitted’ attribute! If anything, you’re supposed to be the smart and talented character!’
Why was the supposedly-smart character acting so dumb?
Ellen shook her head. “It’s annoying.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know how to use them.”
“Strictly speaking, I haven’t used them before.”
She probably couldn’t be bothered to learn how to use them in the first place. She definitely had the trait of avoiding hassle and being lazy. As a result, I, who was seeing all this right before my eyes, was extremely frustrated.
“Just give it here.”
“...”
Ellen watched me in silence as I took the plate of sausages. What, did she expect me to give it back? If she was meant to be the gluttonous character, she would have demanded it back. However, she didn’t ask for it back, but just kept staring at me.
Disregarding her stare, I took out more sausages, put them in the frying pan, and heated them to at least a palatable temperature.
‘Why would you eat such an expensive sausage, made from the finest ingredients, in such a raw state?”
Ellen was still staring intently at me when I brought over a generous helping of cooked sausages.
It was then that I saw why she had just been sitting there the whole time.
“Why does it feel like you kind of enjoy having me do stuff for you all the time, and that you don’t plan to refuse it any time soon?”
I got the feeling that she knew full well I would end up grilling the sausages and bringing them back to her. That was why she had waited silently.
As I said, while I may have a bad temper, I also had a heart. That meant I was willing to share my food with someone who had a cool temperament but no heart.
We started eating the sausages with forks.
“How much better is this? Huh? With the juices bursting out? it’s made to be eaten like this, not gobbled down raw, like a stray dog wolfing them down on the street.”
Ellen just kept eating the sausages, no matter how I nagged at her. It seemed like nothing I said fazed her at all. “Bark all you want, I’ll eat anyway.” Was that it?
After eating sausages for a while, I put my fork down, and Ellen did the same.
“Too salty.”
Ellen nodded in agreement with my comment. “Yep.”
The sausages were too salty to be eaten alone, and it was hard to continue. They really had to be eaten with rice, according to the natural order of things. Or at least some bread.
We were eating sausages and washing them down with just water, and although we both wanted to eat more, we just simply couldn’t. However, Ellen seemed reluctant to leave any leftovers, and so was I.
There were still about fifteen sausages left.
I let out a huge sigh.
My whole body felt like it was about to give up due to fatigue. But I hated the idea of wasting food too. Despite that, the idea of taking the leftovers and turning them into a dish felt like I would be doing her another favor, and that irked me.
“Hey. From now on, you’re going to do as I say.”
“?”
Voluntary service was over.
It was time for her to contribute too.
***
“Like this?”
“Yeah, you’re doing great.”
I nodded as I examined the finely-chopped onions. I wasn’t sure how different swordsmanship was from using a kitchen knife, but Ellen could follow my instructions perfectly.
I’d say it wasn’t a matter of swordsmanship, and that she simply had good dexterity.
“Do you know how to cook anything at all?”
“No. This is my first time cooking.”
It seemed this was the first time she had ever handled a kitchen knife. But if she was this good already, well, she might have made a great chef instead of a swordswoman. Of course, that would have been a waste, given her immense talent for combat.
“Next, the carrots. Do it the same way.”
Dice, dice, dice, dice.
I watched as she quickly chopped up the carrots. I directed her step by step, as though controlling an avatar.
I could do it myself, but not right at that moment. I was so drained that I was certain I’d cut my own fingers if I tried to hold a knife.
I didn’t plan on making anything complicated. The kitchen was stocked with utensils and ingredients, but it was night time, so something simple was better.
There was rice, but cooking it seemed too troublesome. Making bread from flour was, of course, even less appealing.
So, I decided to stir-fry the vegetables and rice with some oil, add water, throw in the sausages, and make it into some sort of porridge. Neither the presentation nor the name of the dish mattered to me. Why bother if it looked like dog food or not? I was fine with it as long as it was edible. Besides, some might even call this dish a risotto.
I didn’t mind as long as it tasted decent, and as for Ellen, she had safely made it all the way through her second attempt at cheonggukjang and was officially on her way to liking it more and more. And once I saw her eating raw sausages, I deduced that her palate was, in my opinion, as discerning as a stray dog’s.
Ultimately, it meant she could eat just about anything.
Ellen began to stir all the chopped vegetables and rice as I instructed. She executed the task with the precision of a ruler. What a piece of work it was.
She was fully qualified to become a disciple of my makeshift cooking.
“Just remember this recipe and do it yourself from now on. Then you can serve it to me next time.”
“No. It’s annoying.”
Was she trying to say that she wouldn’t even bother cooking for herself, let alone for someone else?
Yet it was amusing to see that she was doing whatever I asked her to, despite claiming it was annoying.
Of course, her obedience might also have had something to do with the saltiness of the sausages. Perhaps it was making her more compliant.
I added water and sausages to the pan at the right time, and it soon began to boil. I randomly threw in whatever herbs were at hand, and since the sausages were salty, I didn’t add any extra seasoning.
After the mysterious sausage porridge was completed, we brought it back to the dining hall.
Ellen, without giving it another look, ladled out some into a bowl and started gobbling it up.
Her eyes suddenly went wide.
Obviously, it wasn’t because it was too delicious.
“You idiot! Didn’t you know it would be too hot if you just ate it right away?”
Ellen seemed incredibly shocked at the intense heat.
I handed her a glass of water as she struggled with the heat, and she guzzled it down. She was definitely clever and smart, and had good physical qualities. But was her intelligence diminished by her gluttony? Did she become dull-witted in front of food?
“How is it? Much better, isn’t it? Impressive and amazing, right?” I boasted as I watched her cooling and eating the porridge, which made hers stare directly at me.
“I was the one who made it,” she said.
“Oh really? All you did was just move your arms. I was the one who gave all the instructions.”
“I was the one who actually did it.”
Was she arguing with me? Was she trying to pick a fight over this?
I mean, I knew for a fact that I would get destroyed if I did pick an actual fight with her, so it was advisable if I just stayed calm.
Ellen scooped another spoonful, then cautiously blew on it.
“We made it together,” she said.
Suddenly, I felt so petty that I couldn’t think of anything to say in response.
No, it wasn’t that I felt petty, I actually was petty.
***
After eating the late-night meal with Ellen, I returned to my room to find someone already inside. It was one of the servants. In the Royal Class, the dormitory had servants who took care of cleaning the rooms.
However, it was unusual for them to be cleaning during the night, as they typically did so during the daytime, when we had classes.
In any case, there was nothing suspicious in my room. I had organized and gotten rid of the list of characters after memorizing it.
Though the servants roamed about in their maid uniforms, I had not had any direct interactions with them. We didn’t say anything to each other.
As I entered the room this time, however, the servant in my room approached me and closed the door behind me.
“...?”
Something was off. An eerie sensation crept over me.
The servant looked at me and spoke briefly.
“Your Highness.”
'Huh?!'
“It’s me, Sarkegar.”
So this was how he was going to deliver his message? In-person, and not through some secret and indirect method?!
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