Magic Tools Are Selling Too Well

After Morphine returned to his house, Delia and I got on a carriage heading back to the academy.

Fortunately, since Delia’s house was near the academy, we could take the same carriage.
Although I’ve been earning a lot of money lately, taking a carriage alone is quite expensive.

“But isn’t living near the academy really expensive? Foxtail, is your family rich?”
“Ah… It’s a house my grandfather bought when he was young, so we inherited it and live there…. Our family doesn’t have a separate domain.”
“Wasn’t that before the academy was built?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Your grandfather had a talent for real estate.”

Delia had mentioned her grandfather before.
Delia’s grandfather was originally a commoner, but after making achievements in the Demon War, he was appointed as an honorary count of the empire.
I heard he was an excellent magician, so maybe that’s why Professor Bluecliff, his son, is also deeply versed in mana.

Anyway, a citizen once appointed as an honorary noble can continue to pass on that surname to their children, but their children are not treated as nobles.
That’s also why the family doesn’t have a domain.
Both Delia and Professor Bluecliff had surnames but were not nobles, just ordinary citizens of the empire.

Clunk- Clunk-

The carriage started moving in earnest.

Unless you hire really good horses and coachmen, riding a carriage is usually more of a hardship than you might think.
Because of the severe jolting, your buttocks hurt if you ride for a long time, and people who aren’t used to it often get motion sickness.

I was fine because I was so used to it, but Delia seemed uncomfortable due to motion sickness and tried hard to look outside the carriage.

Matching her actions, I also closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
I hadn’t slept properly since last night, preparing a bit for today.
Fatigue was coming over me.

“Senior…”

Suddenly, Delia spoke up.

“Did you learn alchemy from your family since you were young?”
“From my family?”
“Yes… You’re already doing things that are taught in upper years. I was wondering if you learned such things in advance from your family…”

At that question that trailed off, I burst out laughing and answered.

“No, no. You don’t know much about my family, do you?”
“…Pardon?”
“The Philip family has been a knight family for generations. My father even served as the vice-commander of the Imperial Guard Knights. I naturally learned physical skills. Not alchemy.”
“Ah…!”

Delia seemed to have no idea.

It was content she could easily not know since she wasn’t a formal noble involved in noble society, but an honorary noble.
To begin with, even among formal nobles, quite a few people didn’t know about our family if they weren’t planning to seriously enter politics.

The Philip family was a long-standing knight family of the Apelice Empire.
Although they weren’t founding contributors who were there when the empire was born, since being granted a surname and the family was established, they were a guardian family of the empire that consistently produced knights.
They inducted numerous talents into the Imperial Guard Knights and defended the empire whenever wars broke out.

Especially when the confrontational structure between heroes and demons became visible, and national boundaries became much more blurred as a result, the Philip family hardly changed.
During wartime when the Demon War broke out, they protected the continent, and during peacetime, they guarded the empire.
Even though heroes’ degrees of freedom increased and the range of occupations became much more diverse, they still maintained the chivalry of guardians faithful to the empire.
Perhaps that’s why the family’s nickname was ‘The Sword of the Empire’.

“I learned alchemy on my own. Well, the family probably just let me be since they didn’t know what talent I would have.”
“T-then can you handle swords too, Senior…?”
“Yeah, of course. I could probably beat most freshmen in the Swordsmanship Department?”
“……!”
“Sorry. I bragged too much. It’s just enough not to get beaten by thugs. Self-defense, self-defense.”

I corrected myself because Delia seemed to be overly surprised, but in fact, I could beat Swordsmanship Department freshmen even with a one-handed sword.

Most ordinary people who are selected as heroes receive their first education when they enter the academy.
How to use a sword, how to handle magic, what categories magic is divided into…
Even people with no basic knowledge can learn everything from scratch through the 4-year undergraduate course.

But children of noble families or famous heroes receive early education from a young age.
It’s because of parents’ desires to raise their children as geniuses or to have them get ahead of other children.

Of course, early education isn’t bad.
After all, doing advanced learning means getting ahead of others.
But since the growth rate and speed increase dramatically after being selected as a hero compared to when they were ordinary people, it couldn’t be seen as a very efficient education.

My father probably trained young me thinking I might have talent in swordsmanship, that is, as a knight.
Now I’ve come to know that it wasn’t a completely wrong prediction, but anyway, I wasn’t interested in swordsmanship at that time.
Nevertheless, I had to train. Because I’m the child of a knight family.

My father’s training was systematic and harsh.
There was physical training every day except for one day a week, and there were often practical training sessions where we directly hunted monsters.
After long training, my skills could reach a high level even before being selected as a hero.
Seeing that even I, who had no interest in swordsmanship at all, was raised to that level, the family’s reputation as ‘The Sword of the Empire’ was well-deserved.

I’m not sure if my father at that time really intended to raise me as a knight, but I think I followed diligently with the thought that I shouldn’t tarnish the family name.

As a result, my current swordsmanship skills are quite usable.
I probably wouldn’t have trouble finding opponents even among upper-year students in the Swordsmanship Department.
I’m not sure if I could beat Shunika…
That guy is just so strong.
It says it all that he carries around a bastard sword as tall as himself.

“Wow… So you’re good with swords and good at alchemy… You’re really amazing, Senior…”
“……”

Isn’t she embarrassed saying things like this?
I scratched my head and shifted my gaze outside the carriage.

She might faint if I tell her I can handle combat magic roughly too.

“Um, then Senior…”

This is bad.
Foxtail has really caught her day today.

She who only added a word or two when Morphine and I were bantering, is now showering me with a storm of questions.
How did she hold back this curiosity all this time?
She’s not even stuttering anymore.
It seemed like she was going to extract everything she had been curious about from me.

I was so tired and really wanted to sleep, but I forced a smile and responded.

“Yeah. What?”
“Senior…”

Delia seemed to ponder for a moment, then looked at me straight on.

It was a completely different, serious air from earlier when we were having light conversations.

Her brown eyes were flickering with a strange light.

“Why are you helping Morphine to that extent…? After all… he’s a stranger, isn’t he?”

That was a sentence of a completely different nature from the questions I had been hearing until now.
As if… she wanted to deny that I helped Morphine.

I looked into Delia’s eyes.

Eyes that seemed to have lost a lot.
In those eyes that met my gaze, complex emotions that even she herself didn’t know were hidden.
The surface of those emotions was as cold as the empire’s winter, and as empty as a winter mountain lodge.

To my eyes, it looked as if she was pleading to be seen.

The answer didn’t come easily.
If I answered carelessly, it felt like she would get hurt.

I knew there were unrefined thorns in her words.

It was too easy to know.
People with thorns in their hearts quickly recognize others with thorns.
She was pricked by too many thorns, not even realizing that her own heart was bleeding.

Like the jolting of the bumpy carriage, Delia looked precarious.

“I guess I felt he wasn’t a stranger.”

I painfully uttered one sentence.

Even as I said those words, I worried countless times.
About whether this sentence wouldn’t hurt Delia.

“Morphine is one of my only two juniors. I want him to do well… because he’s my person. Yes. Both Morphine and Delia. I want both of you to do well. I don’t want you to be sad.”
“……”
“Parents are… the only people who silently believe and follow whatever decision I make, whatever path I take. It’s… sad when such people are sick. It’s scary. So I think that’s why I helped. Because I don’t want the people around me to be like that. Because I don’t want them to be sad and scared.”

Unlike me, I kept adding postscripts.
As I tried to speak carefully, it seemed there were intentions I couldn’t convey, so my words kept getting longer.

After those words, silence settled in the carriage for quite a long time.

I’m not sure what circumstances Delia has.
She probably won’t be able to talk about it easily either.
Because deeply cut wounds remain hardened as long as time has stopped.

But on some day when a lot of time has passed.
Just like how I casually talked about my family today, maybe a day will come when she too can talk about it nonchalantly.

I looked at Delia.
Her face was quite distorted.
She was shedding tears like small stars, and as if not wanting even that to be seen, she was turning her gaze outside the carriage.

…It’s already all visible though.
Both when listening to Morphine’s story and now.
She was a child with many tears in various ways.

Delia, who’s already teased by me as Foxtail, now seems likely to take the title of crybaby.
She’d probably want to avoid this nickname at least.

“I’ll sleep. Wake me up when we arrive.”

I smiled slightly and closed my eyes to hide the stigma of crybaby Delia.