Sylvester—Cleaning up the Mess
“We will take our leave, then.”
“Please take care of yourself, milady.”
“...Farewell.”
I just convicted my mother, then ripped apart another family with my own two hands. I could honestly do with some reassurance here. Someone lavish me with compliments. If I didn’t have people assuring me that what I was doing was the right thing, serving as archduke would be way too much for me, I thought, looking at the two parents kneeling in front of their own daughter.
“Thank you for coming today. I pray from the bottom of my heart that we meet again one day.” Rozemyne, while still standing, bent forward and lowered her head deeply as she said goodbye to those who used to be her family. It wasn’t a gesture I recognized. When showing gratitude to the gods, one would get on both knees and lay prostrate. I had never seen someone lower just their head while still standing. This was indeed a girl who held memories of living in another world.
Still, even though I didn’t recognize the gesture, I could feel the emotion it expressed whether I liked it or not. Anyone could tell that she was showing her gratitude for her family. I knew what I had done—I knew I had ripped a loving family apart—so seeing their heartfelt goodbyes sent a sharp pain through my chest.
The door closed, and Rozemyne was left standing alone, wavering unsteadily. I lowered my eyes in discomfort at the same time that Ferdinand abruptly stood up beside me. He quickly walked over to her, as if having predicted this, and embraced her just as she fell to the side. Then, he sharply shouted toward the door:
“Fran, inside!”
A gray priest who had been waiting outside promptly rushed in. I recognized him as Rozemyne’s attendant who had been so badly wounded by mana that just moving had made him twitch in pain.
“Sister Myne!”
I could see remnants of the blessing dusting his figure as he rushed over to her. Given that his wounds were gone, I could guess that Fran had received the same blessing Myne’s father had. The panic on his face showed just how much he cared about his master.
Even her attendant being blessed begged the question of just how far her lights of blessing had gone. As I had just seen myself, Rozemyne didn’t hesitate to recklessly wield an enormous amount of mana when those she cared about were involved. I would have to investigate and see just how many people her blessing had reached.
“It is nothing to worry about. She has simply used too much mana,” Ferdinand said, grabbing a nearby potion from his well-stocked cabinet and pouring some into Rozemyne’s mouth. That was probably the terrible, foul-tasting one. It was as effective as it was vile, but if you asked me, it was downright cruel to pour any of that junk into the mouth of an unconscious child. Ferdinand was once again proving to act more on logic than emotion.
Poor girl.
“Fran, take her to her room and get her in bed. I will come by tomorrow afternoon to explain what the future holds. Gather all of her attendants for me when the time comes.”
“Understood.” Fran picked up the limp, unconscious Rozemyne and left the room. That somehow reminded me of something I had seen before.
“Arno, some tea. That will be all.”
“As you wish.”
I eyed Ferdinand, who was giving an order to his trusted-yet-forgettable attendant, while murmuring to Karstedt in a low voice. “Hey, Karstedt. Is it just me, or is Rozemyne like the spitting image of Blau? Seriously.”
“Blau? Aah, the shumil you once kept as a pet.”
Shumils were easily domesticated feybeasts that made cute “pooey” noises. Plenty of nobles kept them as pets, myself included, but Blau was about the weakest creature I had ever seen. She had fur that was a color between black and blue, big round golden eyes, was always very weak, and seemed to like Karstedt more than me. In other words, she was exactly like Rozemyne in animal form.
I sought Karstedt’s agreement, but he just let out an awkward grunt. “You say she liked me more than you, but that’s entirely your fault. She was constantly on the verge of death from all of your teasing. You could say she only grew attached to me as a desperate measure to stay alive.”
“Hey, it sounds real bad when you put it like that. All I did was give her the love a pet needs.”
“You were even less delicate and considerate as a kid than you are now. With the way you chased it around and crushed it with hugs, any small animal would’ve been at risk of an early death,” Karstedt sighed, rubbing his temples.
Woah, what? Blau getting tired so quickly back when we used to play together was because of me, not because she was weak? Huh.
“Learn to control yourself better this time. If I understand Ferdinand’s reports correctly, Rozemyne is a lot weaker than that shumil.”
“Weaker than Blau? I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Seriously, I’m blown away here. I thought Blau ran away from me because, as a feybeast, she understood my true might, but really she was just scared for her life. I can’t believe it.
“...I’m sure Rozemyne’s already forgiven me for all that teasing. I just saved her life, after all.”
“You were messing with her as hard as you could to see how much patience she had with strangers, right? Well, she wasn’t amused by that. And you just ripped her apart from her family, remember?”
“Ngh...” I held my tongue, having noticed Ferdinand’s attendant pushing a serving cart carrying drinks this way. The cups made a light clink as he lined them up on the table, and I shook my head in disappointment.
I’ve never seen a more boring guy in my life.
All of Ferdinand’s attendants were men, and probably thanks to how strictly he trained them, they always blandly did their work in the most efficient way possible. They were skilled at their jobs, but there was nothing fun or interesting about them at all.
“Ferdinand, how about you get a shrine maiden as an attendant for a change?”
“I have no need for women attempting to seduce me for status, and a single woman would be out of place and make it harder for everyone else to work.” Ferdinand immediately shot my idea down, pretty much saying that he didn’t need a spark in his life at all.
“Arno, clear the room. Don’t let anyone near.”
“As you wish.”
The arrival of the outsider noble, the imprisonment of the High Bishop, and Rozemyne’s name change and adoption had all happened so abruptly; we would need time to discuss things before he informed her attendants and the other priests.
Once the presence of people outside the door faded, Ferdinand let out a slow sigh. “And so, our plan worked. We’ve accomplished our goals.”
“...Yep.”
We’d secured Myne, who had refused to sign with a noble and tried running away for as long as she possibly could; secured just cause to execute the High Bishop, who had been breaking the law in increasingly visible ways; put Mother, who was protecting the High Bishop, under house arrest; and taken into custody a noble with connections to the High Bishop, which would serve as a powerful trump card against the archduke of Ahrensbach. All in all, the events of today would no doubt serve to quiet the faction of nobles supporting Mother over me.
“Not too shabby. I’ve got a real bad taste in my mouth, though.” If you ignored how awful it felt to purposefully lead my mother into a trap and then rip apart a happy family, then sure, today was a pretty good day.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sylvester. This was the best possible outcome.”
“The end doesn’t always justify the means, y’know?” Whenever something happened that led to me getting called black-hearted or cold and calculating, you could bet that Ferdinand’s plots were to blame. Most of the time, anyway.
“I have no love for Bezewanst or your mother,” Ferdinand said, wrinkling his nose dismissively. They were family to me, but to Ferdinand, they were just obstacles. I knew that, but it still hurt to hear him say it to my face.
“What about Rozemyne, then? You don’t feel anything about erasing Myne from existence and turning her into Rozemyne?”
“...I think this is the fastest and most efficient means of giving her a brighter future.”
So he said, but his expression was a little more concerned than it had been a moment ago. The warmth and love in Myne’s family was unthinkable among nobles, who prioritized glory and the continuation of their house above all else. Even Ferdinand felt some guilt over ripping apart a family that sincerely cared for each other.
“She will be emotionally unstable for some time, I believe,” Ferdinand said with a troubled grimace. He had said that even just staying in the temple over the winter had led to her being so unstable that he could see her mana stirring, which meant he’d had to keep his eyes on her at almost all times. It was rare for the emotionally distant Ferdinand to be so considerate of others; maybe having Rozemyne around would be good for the man obsessed with results over everything else.
“I’ll leave comforting Rozemyne in these trying times to you two. I can’t get involved here.”
“Sylvester?”
“I am Aub Ehrenfest. Just as I do not spoil my true son, I cannot spoil my adopted daughter.”
Spoiling Rozemyne will just make me want to start spoiling my own son, who will one day have to bear the heavy burdens I carry now. But I’m told that I mustn’t pamper the future archduke so often that it’s exhausting. Unlike Ferdinand, I’m not so great at cutting off my feelings and acting rationally. There’s so much I can’t do thanks to the position of archduke binding me.
“Clumsy as ever, I see,” Karstedt said with a wry smile. It would have been better for a cold and calculating man like Ferdinand to be the archduke.
Yet another day where I curse that Ferdinand was born to a mistress instead of the first wife.
“More importantly though, is Rozemyne alright? She called on the Father, Mother, and Eternal Five all at once—that’d be enough to knock out even a healthy person. Are we sure she’s not dead?” Karstedt asked, glancing at the door.
I crossed my arms and followed his gaze. One didn’t normally pray to multiple gods at once; it required more mana, and the chances of success dropped hard, especially since the God of Life was disliked by his brothers and sisters for hiding the Goddess of Earth every year. I hadn’t heard of a single case where a prayer to all of the gods at once had actually worked, let alone one where multiple people received the blessing.
“That prayer actually working is what’s weirding me out. I thought for sure it was gonna fail,” I said, and Karstedt—who would now be considered Rozemyne’s biological father—looked up at the ceiling with a frown.
“That was unprecedented, but I don’t think Rozemyne fully understands what she did, nor how significant it is.”
“Indeed. Not at all,” Ferdinand agreed.
“You got hit with the blessing yourself, didn’t you, Ferdinand? Did you teach her to use magic?” While the lights of blessing had avoided Karstedt and I, they did reach Ferdinand. They had probably gotten close enough to justify that, but missing a blessing that significant kind of ticked me off.
I glared at Ferdinand, since I was her adoptive father and therefore deserved it more than him, but he just glared back at me.
“Enough already. How many times have I said this now? Myne could use magic from the start.”
The trombe extermination mission had been Myne’s first ever ritual, and to help her, Ferdinand had given her a magic tool in the form of a ring that amplified and strengthened her mana—that much I understood. But apparently, Myne had suddenly blessed the entire Knight’s Order with a prayer to Angriff the God of War. She herself had said that seeing the trombe scared her, and that she just wanted to pray for their good luck in battle. The reports were clear, but they just didn’t make sense.
“She said she just made up a line that sounded like something a noble would say and was surprised when it turned into a blessing, but I was more surprised than anyone when it happened,” Ferdinand continued. “I have not taught her how to use magic whatsoever.”
“She seemed pretty experienced to me. To think that was a blessing she gave by accident,” Karstedt said while rubbing his chin, having received that blessing himself.
To be frank, it was completely insane that she had managed to compress her overflowing mana all on her own, without teaching or assistance. And it was insane that she had prayed for their good fortune and given a divine blessing without meaning to.
“It’s hard to believe she didn’t mean for it to be a blessing, but even putting that aside, how is she so good at using her mana at that young of an age?”
“I believe it is because she has the mind of an adult, and a high capacity for learning. The mind of a child cannot control mana properly, but despite her youthful body, Myne has memories of reaching adulthood in another world. That must have been enough for her to control it,” Ferdinand proposed. “She grew used to the flow of mana while making her offerings to the divine instruments as an apprentice blue shrine maiden, and although it was by chance, she gave a blessing by stating the name of a god. That was enough for her to know that she could control her mana freely if she had a feystone. And furthermore, she saw knights giving their weapons a Darkness blessing before proceeding to pray with a divine instrument to grant a sizable blessing of her own. It was then that she learned how to give blessings by praying to the gods.”
“Still. Learning to pray is one thing, but how do you explain her just blasting out the whole prayer like that?” The prayers necessary for earning the blessings of the gods were unbearably long—you had to memorize their names and which god gave which blessing. Apprentice knights were taught to pray to the God of Darkness early so that they could bless their weapons for trombe missions, but most struggled to do even that.
“If you were to ask Myne, she would say that she had only needed to memorize the lines for a single prayer. From there, she just needed to mix in the names of gods and lines of scripture, both of which she had learned from reading the bible.”
Thinking back to the Spring Prayer ambush, Myne had absolutely said “I just have to pray to the gods to make magic happen, right?!” without even realizing how blunt that was. She wasn’t wrong, but nobody educated in the Royal Academy would waste mana like that.
“...Starting today, Rozemyne will be a noble girl who uses magic tools in her day-to-day life. I get the feeling that it’d be smart to teach her a little about magic before she enters the Royal Academy,” I said. Magic tools were an essential part of noble life. Most kids would be fine just carrying around a tool that could absorb their excess mana, but since nobody could predict what messes Rozemyne might end up in, we intended to give her feystones that could expel mana, too.
“Sylvester’s right. It’s more dangerous to keep using self-taught magic. Who knows what she might see and draw wrong inspiration from,” Karstedt added, nodding in agreement.
Ferdinand furrowed his brow and began tapping his temple. That was his thinking pose—something I was all too familiar with, and a sign that he was in the middle of constructing a brutal education plan that he would enforce on Rozemyne without a shred of mercy.
...Heh. Sucks for her.
“Ah, right. Ferdinand, give Rozemyne a physical examination. You mentioned that there was something suspicious about her poor health, right? If she has a problem with her mana flow, I trust you can make a potion for it.”
Given that she was now my adopted daughter, there would be a huge fuss if a doctor found something wrong with her. If she was sick with something particularly rare, I’d have to fend off weirdos wanting to use her for research. Giving her a checkup now and keeping it private before moving her to the Noble’s Quarter would be best.
“I do feel that when it comes to Rozemyne, nothing can ever be simple. I will do as you suggest, Sylvester, and examine her here in the temple.”
It seemed that not even the Ferdinand could make predictions when Rozemyne was involved. He never would have believed that she had the mind of someone from another world without that magic tool. There’d be a lot to gain if we used her knowledge properly, but the more about her we kept a secret, the better.
“Oh yeah, and get this to Benno from the Gilberta Company.”
“What is it?”
“An introduction to Rozemyne and our future plans.” If all three of us firmly said that Rozemyne was Karstedt’s daughter who had been raised in the temple for safety’s sake, we would be able to strong-arm noble society and the temple into believing it. But none of us knew the lower city well enough to know how well known she was down there.
“Lower city matters are best left to those in the lower city. Benno seems like a competent tool; with these instructions, he should take care of things just fine for us.”
Ferdinand took the documents with a dubious expression, since I usually dumped my instructions on him instead of anyone else. He skimmed the documents, then his eyes shot wide open. “Sylvester, I can understand getting him up to speed, but what is this matter about a dinner meeting at the Italian restaurant?!”
...Tch. Here comes the annoying lecture. Look at Mr. Logic Man, all serious and stubborn, and as flexible as a stone wall. Why’d we let him grow up to be like this? He acts so old and mature because he doesn’t appreciate fun in the slightest.
“Are you listening, Sylvester?”
“Look, think about it—we’ve got a lot to talk to Benno about, don’t we? Like all that stuff about spreading the printing business,” I said, which also earned me a raised eyebrow from Karstedt.
“Just summon him here. What need is there for the archduke himself to visit the lower city?!”
“Oh, there’s a big need, and that need is located in my stomach. I’m gonna eat that food no matter what.”
“At least think of a good excuse!”
Don’t become an archduke, kids. You can’t even walk through your own city without needing a thousand layers of excuses and an elaborate plot. It’s a pain, but I probably should think of a good reason for this.
I dug a pinkie around in my ear as I thought up an excuse. “Well, uh, how about I say that a merchant from the lower city can’t do proper business with a bunch of stuffy scholar-officials surrounding him? I wouldn’t be able to hear the actual opinions of an already successful merchant, so we wouldn’t be able to come to a mutually agreeable conclusion and the discussion would essentially just end with me giving him an order.” It was hard for a commoner to answer questions honestly when surrounded by scholar-officials, which in turn meant that it would be nigh impossible for me to get the honest opinions I wanted. “I’ve already talked to Benno about this printing business. At the very least, this won’t be coming out of nowhere for the Gilberta Company.”
Seeing Benno while touring the orphanage had come as a complete surprise for me; I hadn’t expected anyone there to know that I was the archduke. I asked for his opinions as a merchant while making sure he kept quiet, and in the process learned that Ferdinand and I weren’t the only ones who knew that the printing business would change history. Benno thought the same.
There would always be enormous resistance to rapid change, but this rapid change was happening due to Myne’s otherworldly knowledge. I had asked Benno a simple question: “If, worst-case scenario, I were to kill Myne, would that stop the change from happening?”
Benno had slowly shaken his head in response. “No, it’s too late for that. Plant paper that can be mass-produced is already on the market, and now that we’ve taught the Ink Guild how to make ink suitable for printing, their workshops are starting to mass-produce that as well. There’s also the fact that the Smithing Guild has seen a demonstration of the metal letter types needed for printing, and finally, while it is still a prototype, a printing press has been completed. All of the pieces are in place, and are spreading outside this city. There is even an apprentice merchant who knows everything about book-making, and who says that his dream is to sell books throughout the country. Even if Myne were to die now, the ripple she made has turned into an unstoppable wave.” That was precisely why he had hidden Myne’s existence and carefully selected which of her inventions to sell. “The wave will spread even faster with Myne alive; it is astounding how dedicated to making books she is.”
It would only be a matter of time before printing spread throughout the world. I may have been the archduke of Ehrenfest, but not even I could easily crush the Plant Paper Guild, the Myne Workshop, the ink workshops, the smithies, and the Ink Guild all while simultaneously wiping out everything they knew about printing. If stopping the wave wasn’t possible then my only choice was to ride it, and use it to benefit the duchy as much as possible.
“I’ve already told the Gilberta Company that Ehrenfest will sanction the printing business, with Myne at its center, and to prepare for its acceleration once she becomes a noble. The first step of our plan is to make another workshop in the orphanage of a nearby town.” I would need to send the Gilberta Company and a scholar there to see how big of a workshop could be made, how many workers they would need, and what tools they would require. “In any case, Rozemyne can only return to the outside world once her baptism ceremony and inauguration as the High Bishop are over. We have some time. Tell them to ensure that the workshop investigation and Italian restaurant are finished before then. ...Aaand there we go. Is that a good enough excuse for you?” I asked, looking at Ferdinand. His brow furrowed harder, and his expression twisted into a grimace.
“Can’t you use that talent of yours for anything but food and other pleasures?”
“Hey pal, I’m always going all-out, whether it’s for pleasure or not.” I put as much effort in as I could when it came to sneaking away from work underneath Ferdinand’s nose, or plotting about how to delegate all of my work to others so that I could relax. I’m offended that he’d think I only go all-out for food and stuff.
Our conversation was interrupted by the chime of seventh bell; it seemed our discussion had continued for a fairly long time. I stood up, and so did Ferdinand and Karstedt.
“That’s all for today. We can discuss the baptism ceremony’s details when the Archduke Conference is over. I need to get back to the Sovereignty.”
Karstedt and I had snuck out of a dinner party celebrating the beginning of the conference, and would need to have returned before tomorrow morning when the conference itself would begin.
“Could I ask you to take the vice-commander of the Knight’s Order as your guard?” Karstedt asked, his tone formal and respectful. “I would like to stay here and prepare for Rozemyne’s baptism ceremony, if possible.”
“Sure. Later Ferdinand, Karstedt. Get that physical examination done, and once Karstedt has everything ready, move her to the Noble’s Quarter.” Those in the temple would need to prepare for receiving Rozemyne as the new High Bishop in the meantime. “Ferdinand, I entrust you with explaining the circumstances to Benno and preparing the temple for the upcoming changes. Karstedt, I entrust you with preparing the baptism, and enforcing the punishment of the criminals we imprisoned today.”
Having received my orders, they both knelt out of respect.
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