BGDN 05

Chapter 5

“What is this?!”

The child had only just recovered from an injury. To begin with, she was not skilled with the sword, and now she was holding an unfamiliar live blade.

Victory was as good as his, or so Harum thought, filled with arrogance. And that arrogance slowed his reactions.

Even if you know it’s a bad habit, it’s not something you can break easily. Harum unconsciously raised his sword high.

Diasta’s blade aimed precisely at Harum’s vital point. Harum flinched and stepped back, but blood was already trickling down his neck.

It was a very shallow cut – the kind you might get from accidentally brushing against paper. But if Diasta had been even a little more skilled with a real sword, Harum would not be standing there unscathed.

Diasta looked at the blood on Harum’s neck and said,

“I win.”

Harum’s eyes turned bloodshot. It might have been easier if Diasta’s voice had been triumphant or smug. But she showed neither pride nor joy in her victory.

And Harum wasn’t the only one flustered by the outcome. The people gathered around the training ground stared at Diasta in astonishment.

It had happened in an instant, but everyone had seen it. Diasta had beaten Harum.

“Did you see that? The young lady won.”

“Is Harum weak?”

“No way, he’s still an Aura User.”

“Then that means the young lady is strong.”

The murmuring voices grew louder.

“But didn’t Harum go around saying the young lady had no talent?”

“I heard him say that too.”

“And yet she beat him?”

“…Then what were all his claims about?”

Harum’s mind went blank. He couldn’t hear the voices clearly; only fragments of words like lies, Aura User, false rumors stabbed into his ears.

Grind – Harum gritted his teeth. If this continued, he was finished. His own lies had ensnared him. Diasta’s talent? Whether that girl had talent or not didn’t matter one bit to Harum.

The problem was the situation right now – that he had lost in a single stroke to the very girl he had publicly declared talentless.

‘This can’t go on. I can’t let everything end like this. I am Harum. The youngest Aura User in history, Harum!’

He felt as if the ground was crumbling beneath his feet. Diasta, with an indifferent expression as if the match was over, sheathed her sword.

And in the next moment, Harum clearly heard it – the voice of Bator, who had been watching the match.

“Ha…”

A low sigh. But that sigh made Harum more miserable than anything else.

It seemed to say to him: The youngest Aura User? It was just an empty title. To be defeated in one stroke by a young disciple… you’re finished, Harum.

Though he couldn’t actually hear them, snickering laughs seemed to ring in his ears.

Trembling where he stood, Harum finally exploded.

“I – I am Harum! The youngest Aura User of Bellum!”

A faint aura began to form around Harum’s sword. It was weak, but unmistakably aura. And Harum swung that aura-clad blade straight at Diasta.

Diasta’s red eyes widened in surprise, yet she continued to look straight at Harum. Let me cut those eyes out, Harum thought, a nasty smile forming on his lips.

Clang!

A sound rang out as if someone had struck a steel wall. Harum’s sword spun high into the air and then stabbed into the corner of the training ground.

It had been a sword coated with a faint aura. Someone blocked that? Harum looked up to see Nonteil Bellum standing before him like a mountain. And in Nonteil Bellum’s hand was a sword wreathed in a surging red aura.

“D-Duke?!”

Aura Users were not common, but some were famous among them. In the North, there were three.

The first was Harum – famous not for the strength of his aura, but for having awakened it at such a young age.

The second was Viscount Gideon, called the Shield of the North, one of Bellum’s five vassal houses.

And the third, the most famous Aura User in the North, was the Duke of House Bellum himself – Nonteil Bellum.

Having completely forgotten that fact, Harum looked at the red-aura blade pressed against his neck and finally began to tremble like an aspen leaf.

If this went on, he might die. Harum hurriedly opened his mouth.

“I-It’s a misunderstanding! The young lady kept throwing a tantrum, saying she didn’t want to learn swordsmanship, so I – Harum – did this on purpose for her own good. Don’t you know? How im-ma – immature the young lady is…”

Before Harum could finish, the red aura on Nonteil’s sword began to swell as if it would devour Harum at any moment.

“Harum Stillwell. How dare you…”

Just when Harum thought he would die without being able to move a muscle —

Thud.

Along with a small sound of someone collapsing, Nonteil’s sword energy vanished in an instant.

Even though she had seemed fine, Diasta had only recently risen from a serious injury. The sudden training, and even a spar with live blades… In the end, her body could not endure it, and Diasta had fainted.

Nonteil rushed to her and lifted her up in one go.

Then, grinding his teeth, he said to Harum:

“Harum Stillwell. I banish you.”

“My lord, it’s all a misunderstanding…”

Nonteil’s sword cut off Harum’s words – as if to say that if he opened his mouth any further, he would sever his neck on the spot.

“You will never set foot in Belusa again. The only reason you remain alive after daring to target my granddaughter’s life is that this was her first real duel, and I will not stain the honor of her first victory with blood. For that reason alone. So you should spend the rest of your life being grateful for your second chance.”

His voice rumbled like a great mountain speaking. Harum could not remember what happened next. He simply fled in a panic, weeping in disgrace.

Some time later, Diasta regained consciousness in the treatment room of the ducal castle.

‘I just did some training and I passed out…’

Her physical stamina, it seemed, had not yet caught up with her will.

Diasta felt embarrassed for a moment. But then she saw someone sitting across from her – unfamiliar, yet familiar. As if he had been waiting for her to wake up.

‘…Grandfather?’

He had always been frightening and strict. No – before being her grandfather, Nonteil was the Duke of House Bellum, and before being his granddaughter, Diasta was a vassal of House Bellum.

That was why she hadn’t even planned to see Nonteil until her wounds had healed and she had received some proper swordsmanship training.

A successor who, far from meeting expectations, had been gravely injured by a mere white-horned boar and nearly died… She thought it was only natural that Nonteil would be disappointed in her.

‘How long has it been…? Is that really Grandfather?’

From her past life to this present life, so much time had passed. The grandfather she saw after so long was exactly as Diasta remembered him.

His body as large and solid as a mountain, his snow-white hair, and… those cold red eyes looking at her…?

‘Huh?’

Nonteil’s expression was blank, but his eyes seemed moist, and the corners of his lips kept twitching upward.

‘What’s this? He looks kind of proud… No, that can’t be.’

The Diasta now was different from before. Though her body was thirteen years old, her mind carried the experiences of an adult.

And that told Diasta: right now, Nonteil was wearing the face of a doting grandfather proud of his granddaughter.

But Diasta’s deep-seated prejudice against Nonteil blocked that thought. So she forced herself up and paid her respects to Nonteil with the utmost formality.

“I greet His Grace the Duke.”

It was flawless etiquette, lacking nothing in addressing the Grand Duke of Bellum. But it was far from the attitude of a granddaughter greeting her grandfather.

For a moment, Nonteil’s eye seemed to twitch. He moved his lips as if wanting to say something, then finally parted them. But for all his hesitation, his answer was brief.

“Yes.”

After uttering that short word, Nonteil hesitated for a long while. Diasta, still maintaining a straight posture with her head bowed, continued.

“I have already sent word, but I am sorry to appear before His Grace in such a disgraceful state. I will take my leave now.”

Her attitude was resolute, as if she would not waste any more of the Duke’s precious time.

Nonteil stared blankly at Diasta’s back as she vanished like the wind. He reached out a hand belatedly, but she was already gone.

The butler of House Bellum had hair as white as Nonteil Bellum’s. The difference was that Nonteil Bellum’s face was deeply lined, while the butler’s face was smooth, not a single wrinkle in sight.

“Sioel… what on earth should I do?”

After a deep sigh, Nonteil let out these words. Sioel paid him no mind. Because for days now, he had been saying the same thing.

Nonteil had run frantically to the treatment room, ignoring his dignity as the head of the household, when he saw Diasta faint. He had waited without moving an inch for her to wake up, yet when she finally did, he could not say a word.

And now here he was like this. All because Diasta had called him “Your Grace the Duke” – when she had always called him Grandfather.

Sioel, the faithful butler of House Bellum and an inflexible White Wood Elf, answered.

“What do you mean, what should you do? It seems to me she has changed exactly as you wished, my lord.”

At those words, Nonteil Bellum clenched his mouth shut, his expression turning fearsome.

But the elven butler, who had known Nonteil since he was a mere boy, knew well that he was not angry – just shocked.

In the end, the unbending elven butler loosened the tie of his neat butler’s uniform. And as a friend, not a butler, he advised Nonteil.

“I told you. You should have been less strict. Didn’t I tell you to go easy on her?”

“It was for her own good!”

His roaring voice was like the cry of a black lion. Sioel cursed both his own sensitive hearing and Nonteil’s booming volume as he covered his ears.

Sioel was an unusual elf – after being indebted to the head of House Bellum long ago, he had decided to repay that favor by serving as the Bellum family butler for generations. He also possessed the characteristic inflexibility of the White Wood Elves.

He had gone through a very arduous process to become a fine butler, knowing little of the human world, but for now, let us focus on Nonteil’s tearful story.

In any case, thanks to those difficult times, Sioel prided himself on having gained considerable insight into humans.

The point where Nonteil – who had always shown himself as an excellent Grand Duke of Bellum – began to waver was precisely after his granddaughter Diasta was attacked by a monster