Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 5.2 - Chapter 11

Preparing for Ditter

“So, when will this game take place?” Wilfried asked. “Right away would be completely unreasonable, and we need to match how many knights you intend to put forward.”

“Indeed,” Lestilaut replied. “We of Dunkelfelger also need to prepare the arena. Once we have confirmed that Rauffen is available to judge and we have secured the grounds, I will contact you again.”

While the two boys were working out the details, the apprentice knights similarly gathered together. Theodore was left to guard me—as a first-year, he couldn’t play ditter—while Leonore and the others joined the meeting.

“How about some tea, Lady Rozemyne?” Hannelore asked, on the verge of tears as she gestured to the table. So much had happened over such a short time span; a hot drink sounded perfect.

I made my way to the seat indicated, and our attendants immediately prepared to refresh our tea. As I was watching Brunhilde pour my drink, Hannelore, eyeing Lestilaut and Wilfried, spoke in a hushed voice.

“Cordula, I wish to speak with Lady Rozemyne.”

“Here you are,” Cordula muttered in response, holding out sound-blocking magic tools. I gripped one at once; this was clearly something that Hannelore didn’t want Lestilaut to hear.

“I cannot apologize enough that our tea party ended up like this,” Hannelore said. “If only I were a stronger archduke candidate...”

Even though things had been going so well, Lestilaut had found it necessary to taunt Wilfried. Not even our attempts to smooth things over had worked, as he had then disparaged Ehrenfest and proposed to me in front of my fiancé. In response to my refusal, he had then pressured us and challenged us to ditter.

“You even offered to pretend that nothing happened,” she continued, “but my brother stomped all over your good intentions. I truly apologize.”

I shook my head. “My only intention was to escape this ditter game, but, in the end, I wrapped you up in all this as well. I am the one who must apologize.”

“No, no. It was my brother who refused to take the way out that you so graciously provided...” Hannelore replied with a sad smile.

I glared at Lestilaut. “If we win, Lady Hannelore, then I intend to nullify the condition that you be wed into Ehrenfest. I wanted only to stop Lord Lestilaut; it would be much too rude of us to take you as our duchy’s second wife.”

“I appreciate the thought, I really do... but agreements made through ditter cannot be undone. Not in Dunkelfelger, at least.”

“How annoying—um, I mean, obstinate—umm...” I fumbled my words, unsure of the proper noble language to use.

Hannelore merely hung her head. “No, that is accurate...”

“Well, what do you want to do, Lady Hannelore?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“If your heart is set on someone else, then I will negotiate with Dunkelfelger so that you can be married to them instead.” Her duchy would probably find that easier to swallow than her being a second wife in Ehrenfest.

Hannelore blinked at my suggestion. “Well... my brother and parents were always going to choose my partner for me, so I never fostered any hopes of my own. But after you refused to bend to my brother’s pressure—after you fought to see your will carried through—I started to wonder. Maybe I really would like to select my own partner.”

“In that case, when Ehrenfest has won, I will ask that Dunkelfelger make it so.”

“Oh, no, no. I could never burden Ehrenfest more than we have already. That you even considered such a kind gesture is enough for me,” Hannelore said. She was wearing a smile, but it was more clouded than usual.

“Do not fear for your future—even if your move to Ehrenfest becomes unavoidable, I will welcome you with open arms and ensure that you find true happiness there. You will get to read new volumes before anyone else. It will be a bookworm’s paradise!” I exclaimed, desperately trying to make it sound not so bad.

Hannelore giggled. “I am truly glad that this event has not convinced you to stop being my friend, Lady Rozemyne.”

Dunkelfelger truly was a pain in the neck, but Hannelore was precious to me. At the very least, I didn’t intend to stop being friends with her.

“After all, Lady Hannelore... you and I are soulmates!”

“Then, as your soulmate, I have just one more thing to say.” Even with the sound-blocking magic tools, Hannelore lowered her voice to a whisper. “You may believe that your shield of Wind guarantees your victory, but know that it is not invincible. My brother has discovered means by which to deal with it. Do not let your guard down.”

And with that, our tea party came to an end.

“Brother. Sister. I do not understand,” Charlotte said, her face ashen. “How did a simple tea party end in a ditter challenge with your engagement on the line?”

We had gathered everyone in the common room to explain the day’s events. Lestilaut’s blatant selfishness was clearly to blame for our circumstances, but no matter what we said, Charlotte struggled to follow.

“Rozemyne,” Wilfried muttered, “I now understand how you feel when people are demanding answers but you have nothing to say.”

“I am glad,” I replied with a smile. “In that case, I leave convincing Charlotte to you.”

Wilfried smiled back. “No, I leave this to you, since you’re so much more experienced.”

“Oh my. But have we not just learned from Lord Lestilaut that you shouldn’t always rely on me?”

That was enough to twist his arm.

And, to be clear, I’m not being lazy here; I just want Wilfried to grow.

Wilfried tried his very best to explain the situation, only to eventually throw in the towel and declare, “There’s no point explaining all this! Planning to deal with it comes first!”

In turn, Charlotte gave up on understanding the specifics. “I still cannot see how one thing led to another, but indeed; let us focus on dealing with it instead. I assume that, with Sister being able to use Schutzaria’s shield, our victory is mostly assured.”

“About that...” I interjected. “Lady Hannelore gave me a warning. It seems that Dunkelfelger knows how to defeat my shield. Leonore, what are our chances without it?”

Leonore’s expression turned stiff as she said, “Exceedingly low. However, as we do not know the extent to which the shield will be nullified, not using it at all would be a poor move. And even if you cannot use your shield, you still have your highbeast.”

Laurenz nodded. “The biggest weakness of using the shield is how long it takes to form. Were I fighting alongside Dunkelfelger, I would target Lady Rozemyne from the start. Countermeasures or no, surely it would be better to finish things before she employs it at all.”

As he said, the chant for the shield was not a quick one. We needed a way to keep me safe until our defenses were formed.

“How might we accomplish that?” I asked. “A wide-range spell that could take them by surprise and make them falter for a moment, perhaps? Like some kind of waschen flood.”

Matthias rejected the idea outright, a calculating look on his face. “You are the only one who could cast such a spell, Lady Rozemyne—and as this distraction is intended to secure you more time to finish the shield, it must be done by the knights. Plus, even if our knights were to combine their mana for such an attack, the fight would end then and there.”

He made a good argument. I pursed my lips in thought—at which point Rihyarda stepped forward.

“May I speak for a moment? As an adult, I am hesitant to speak on matters of the Royal Academy, but I cannot allow milady to be taken by Dunkelfelger. If you are playing treasure-stealing ditter, then replace a couple of your knights without much mana with apprentice archattendants who have a tremendous amount.” It seemed that she was basing her suggestion on past ditter games she knew about.

“But what role would attendants play?”

“They can fill magic tools with mana and manage rejuvenation potions. Judithe specializes in ranged combat, does she not? Assign her an attendant with plentiful mana and get her to use magic tools filled with mana. That will increase the number of magic tools she can be entrusted with.”

There was a limit to how many rejuvenation potions battle-ready apprentice knights could carry—but having attendants at the ready to supply them would increase that number considerably.

“Attendants who could use healing spells were also occasionally stationed in the home circle,” Rihyarda continued. “Unlike the knights, they did not engage in direct combat and were primarily there to provide mana. Scholars, on the other hand, spent the run-up to the game preparing magic tools, rejuvenation potions, and the like, to the point that they were completely drained of mana come the day of.”

Wilfried fell into thought, then looked around at the attendants. “Who here has the most mana? We’ll replace two knights.”

Isidore, who attended to Wilfried, and Brunhilde were ultimately selected, as they both knew my mana compression method.

“Could the three of us cast a large-scale waschen like Rozemyne suggested?” Wilfried asked. “If so, we could buy her time without the knights having to use any mana, then recover our mana while they’re fighting.”

Brunhilde suddenly turned to face me. “Lady Rozemyne, did Lady Clarissa not say during last year’s Interduchy Tournament that she was researching magic tools to amplify wide-reaching spells?”

“An excellent idea,” I replied. “Naturally, we cannot ask Clarissa herself, but perhaps Hartmut or Raimund remembers the details of her research.”

“Don’t you remember?” Wilfried asked. “You were there as well, weren’t you?”

I averted my eyes, fully aware that I didn’t have a good excuse. At the time, I simply hadn’t cared about Clarissa’s research. In what could only be described as an “Angelica moment,” I’d just been looking around and thinking to myself, “Wow, everyone sure is talking about complicated stuff.”

“Leonore, I intend to leave the strategizing to you,” Wilfried continued, “but I’ve got one request: I want you to come up with a way to make good use of my mana.” He trained with the knights back in Ehrenfest and, as an archduke candidate with an abundance of mana, could utilize very strong attacks. His only issue was that he didn’t have much experience with coordinated combat.

Leonore smiled at his request. “We will entrust you with defense, Lord Wilfried. Our home circle will contain Lady Rozemyne; Judithe, our long-range specialist; and the apprentice attendants. If you guard them with your plentiful mana, then we can devote more manpower to our offense.”

“Got it. Rozemyne, are there any divine instruments I could use? During the ternisbefallen attack, you created an opportunity for everyone using the divine cape. I just need something like that—an attack that Dunkelfelger doesn’t know about—and we should be able to catch them completely off guard.”

Something like that would give Wilfried an important role to play and a good opportunity to use his mana even without him joining the knights. I thought back to the temple’s divine instruments.

“You’ll need to offer your mana to the divine instruments if you want to learn to make them, though, and I’m not sure there’s enough time before our ditter game... Let us ask Sylvester to lend us the temple’s instruments. You can use those simply by channeling mana into them.”

Forming divine instruments with your schtappe required a lot of mana; there was the initial investment required to learn the circle, then there were the costs of making, maintaining, and actually using the instrument. However, if you used an instrument directly—like how I used Leidenschaft’s spear during my first Lord of Winter hunt—then you could skip all but the very last requirement.

“However,” I continued, “you cannot use Leidenschaft’s spear. It is a fine weapon for taking down everything—including treasure—but we cannot use it against Lady Hannelore. Nothing is quite as terrifying as a spear piercing through a shield.”

“That’s right,” Wilfried said, nodding in agreement. When it came to holding back power, it was important to use a familiar weapon.

“I already intend to make Schutzaria’s shield, so there’s no need for you to use that—especially if our opponents are able to break it. We can rule out Flutrane’s staff as well; it heals everyone in the area, meaning it would heal our enemies too.”

“That would be a problem, yeah.”

“We should also avoid using the God of Darkness’s cape, since that might be mistaken for a black weapon and cause us even more problems. I wouldn’t recommend the crown of Light either; that’s only used for contracts, to my understanding. I think that leaves Ewigeliebe’s sword as the only divine instrument I’ve not yet used.”

“Er... what does it do? Does it have some special effect, like how the shield of Wind repels anyone malicious?”

“I don’t have a use for it, and it can only be used during winter, which makes it rather inconvenient. However, it may be well suited for this battle. I will send an emergency message to Ehrenfest asking for it to be sent over.”

I penned a letter explaining that Dunkelfelger was pressuring us into an unavoidable ditter game and what was at stake, then sent it as a report alongside a request for Ewigeliebe’s sword to be sent from the temple. Incidentally, I also requested that Hartmut be asked what he remembered about Clarissa’s research.

“Send this to Ehrenfest immediately!” Wilfried ordered.

“Understood,” his attendant replied, then rushed out of the room.

Roderick looked up. “I have compiled a list of magic tools from Lord Ferdinand’s ditter notes that might be of use to us. Leonore, may it assist you with your planning.”

Leonore accepted the list with a smile and a thank-you, then began giving directions. “Apprentice scholars, make rejuvenation potions and the magic tools listed here. Apprentice knights, mobilize at our gathering spot. We will train and collect ingredients.”

As the students began following orders, Matthias approached me and said, “Lady Rozemyne, could I ask you to bless us before we go? If we can get ourselves used to it, then it may raise our chances of victory. We have a very low success rate when it comes to earning blessings on our own.”

“The blessings I give will not actually benefit everyone, but I suppose there is no helping that...”

As the saying went, one had to break a few eggs to make an omelet—and, given what was at stake, we weren’t in a position to be picky with our methods. I didn’t have a clue how advanced Dunkelfelger’s blessings had gotten by this point.

I gave the apprentice knights Angriff’s blessing and then saw them off. Wilfried went with them, leaving me with Charlotte, the attendants, and the bare minimum number of guard knights.

“If possible... I would like to steal Dunkelfelger’s blessing.”

We could hardly use blessings ourselves, but Dunkelfelger had gotten used to them through practice, which made their apprentice knights a huge threat. Hannelore had allowed me to touch Verfuhremeer’s staff earlier today but, of course, that single time wasn’t enough for me to learn to recreate it.

“Blehhh... I want to go to that archive. I need the royal family’s permission, but... they’re busy with Mana Replenishment right now, aren’t they? I wonder whether Prince Hildebrand would give his permission, since he’s still in the Royal Academy...”

“I would not expect so,” Rihyarda said in response, but I decided to try anyway. Even if he refused, which he most likely would, we wouldn’t be in a worse position than before. I repeated that to myself as I sent off the ordonnanz, and the next thing I knew—

“We can go, but only tomorrow morning. I’ll send an ordonnanz to Hannelore too,” Hildebrand replied, sounding excited.

“Rihyarda... This may be very abrupt, but he gave his permission.”

“I did not think you would get another chance until the royal family has far more leeway...” Rihyarda muttered, baffled. But, well, here we were. It was time to prepare for another trip to the library.

I made my way to the library the next morning, brimming with excitement. Accompanying me were Leonore, since she was an archknight and could enter the underground; Theodore, who couldn’t participate in ditter as a first-year; plus Rihyarda and Brunhilde.

“Milady here.”

“Milady. Finally back.”

Schwartz and Weiss were exceedingly cute as they welcomed me—but, for some reason, they had returned to calling me “milady.”

“Professor Solange,” I said, “is it not strange that Schwartz and Weiss are addressing me as ‘milady’ again?”

“It started the other day when you all offered the library that chalice of mana,” Hortensia explained. “I consulted Prince Anastasius, who said that ownership will likely return to me eventually.”

Evidently, that swap back hadn’t happened yet.

Hortensia guided us to the office, saying how surprised she had been to receive a message from Hildebrand. The third prince himself was already waiting for us.

“I apologize for the disturbance while you are so busy,” I said. “To think that I forced you to come all this way...”

“I was taken aback by the suddenness of your request, but what do you want to research?”

“I can tell you after we open the archive.”

Hannelore arrived while I was exchanging the usual pleasantries with Hildebrand. She had fewer retainers with her than usual, likely because they were training for our ditter game. We all exchanged greetings, then the two librarians explained that, with final exams on the horizon, they hadn’t been able to close off the reading room. As a result, we were guided to the closed-stack archive in full view of the other students.

From there, Hortensia guided us downstairs. We opened the locks, as we had done before, after which our attendants began preparing tea.

“Rozemyne, the archive is open,” Hildebrand announced. “Now, tell me what you are researching.”

“There is soon going to be a ditter match between Ehrenfest and Dunkelfelger, so I am here to research rituals and divine instruments.”

Hannelore gave me a slight, teasing smile. “Should you be saying such things while I am within earshot, Lady Rozemyne?”

“It makes no difference. I am sure that Dunkelfelger expected as much already.”

“Why is this ditter match happening to begin with?” Hildebrand asked. “It was only recently that Dunkelfelger played against the duchies wanting to participate in the ritual, was it not?”

I gave a light shrug. “Lord Lestilaut proposed to me, and now my future husband is dependent on a game of ditter. Isn’t that right, Lady Hannelore?”

“I-Indeed,” Hannelore added, her voice quavering. “But, Lady Rozemyne, we do not have much time. Let us hurry and start researching.”

I waved to Hildebrand, then made my way over to the clear entrance of the archive.

“Hannelore,” Hildebrand called, “I wish to hear more about this game of yours. You have nothing to research, I presume?”

I saw Hannelore pause in surprise as I stepped through into the archive. Schwartz looked up at me and said the same thing as before.

“Milady. Not enough prayer.”

“Understood,” I replied. “I don’t have time today, but I will pray at a later date. For now, please bring me documents relating to Verfuhremeer’s ritual for cooling the heat of summer and the ritual for summoning spring.”

From there, I searched for how to make Verfuhremeer’s staff, then transcribed the method. I also wrote down how to make the stand needed for Haldenzel’s spring-summoning ritual.

“So, Prince Hildebrand has learned about our ditter match...” came Hannelore’s voice.

I gazed up to see her looking down at the documents I was transcribing. “Did you not want him to know about it?”

She offered a weak smile. “It was only recently that Prince Anastasius scolded us and told us not to cause any trouble. The royal family are going to summon us again for certain.”

“Well... we did nothing wrong this time. Lord Lestilaut is at fault, so perhaps Prince Anastasius can scold him in our stead.”

I was seeking Hannelore’s agreement, but she didn’t seem convinced. “I expect we are going to be scolded even if we protest that we are not at fault. I always receive the blame for my brother’s actions...”

Hannelore then indicated that we should leave the archive; fourth bell was upon us, it seemed. A quick glance around revealed that Hildebrand had at some point disappeared from behind the transparent wall.

After locking the archive with Hannelore and Hortensia, I asked Rihyarda where the prince had gone.

“He had quite a lengthy conversation with Brunhilde about Ehrenfest books, but then he remembered that he had some urgent business to attend to.”

It was quite impossible to “forget” urgent business when you had attendants managing your schedule for you; that had simply been an excuse for him to leave. He was still a young kid, so I could imagine how antsy he had gotten having to sit around and wait.

Upon our return to the Ehrenfest Dormitory, we found Ewigeliebe’s sword waiting for us—and Hartmut along with it. As it turned out, my most recent report had caused Sylvester and Florencia such agonizing headaches that they were unable to move.

“To think you would come as well, Hartmut...”

“As the High Priest, it is my duty to carry our divine instruments. Furthermore, did you not write that you wish for me to teach you the details of Clarissa’s research?”

“You remember them?” I asked, blinking.

“Of course,” he replied with a nod, speaking as though it were obvious. “Clarissa requested my assistance, which I provided to some degree, so I remember the schematics precisely.”

“Excellent, Hartmut! Oh, you truly are a retainer I can rely on!” I declared, overcome with excitement.

Hartmut gave a slight smile and said that he was honored to have pleased me, but then his expression turned serious. “I have been given a room in the castle until your ditter match commences and will come here daily to deliver Ewigeliebe’s sword. I can also help with the creation of any magic tools within the dormitory. I will offer my all to protect you, Lady Rozemyne.”

“Would it not be unfair to have you make magic tools...?” I asked, tilting my head at him.

Wilfried grimaced, Ewigeliebe’s sword in hand. “You asked for a divine instrument to be brought from the temple and used Prince Hildebrand to transcribe documents from the underground archive, and now you’re worried about playing fair? We only need to win; it doesn’t matter how we go about doing it. Use everyone and everything that you can.”

And so, with Hartmut at the lead, Ehrenfest’s apprentice scholars steadily began making magic tools for our upcoming battle. The apprentice knights cycled between training and gathering ingredients, all the while thinking up several strategies they could employ. And as for Brunhilde and Isidore, they desperately compressed their mana, trying to increase their mana quantities as much as possible, while learning how to use the created magic tools one after another.

I accompanied the apprentice knights to our gathering spot, where I practiced granting them blessings and then making Verfuhremeer’s staff to remove them again. At the same time, I taught Wilfried to use Ewigeliebe’s sword.

“As an example, I will make Ewigeliebe’s sword myself,” I said, then turned my schtappe into a sword and spoke the God of Life’s prayer. A blizzard formed around me, a pillar of white light appeared, and mana shot off somewhere once again.

I got the feeling that, in the run-up to our ditter match, there were going to be a lot of spontaneous lights shooting up into the sky. Both from us and from our opponents.