Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 5.10 - Chapter Pr

Prologue

The scale tipped and creaked under the weight of the herbs placed atop it. One scholar watched it settle through narrowed eyes before removing some of the herbs, while another set about chopping what remained with messer. Detlinde’s elder sister, Alstede, was stirring the pot they were brewing with.

Oh, how dull this is...

Detlinde couldn’t help but sigh. As part of her plan to obtain the Grutrissheit, she was staying in a villa on the Royal Academy’s grounds. She was waiting quite impatiently in its brewing room, watching her sister and retainers work.

Her boredom aside, Detlinde had known well in advance that it would take them many days to secure the Grutrissheit. She had no qualms about the villa’s bed and board; it was meant for princesses from Lanzenave, so the furniture and such were of the highest quality imaginable, and the rooms were outfitted with all the magic tools one would need to live comfortably. They had already brought chefs, servants, and provisions from the Lanzenave Estate, but that wasn’t all—Raublut, who had prepared the villa for them in the first place, had given them attendants and other supplies from his own home, meaning they even had servers tending to their needs.

On the night of their arrival—or perhaps the following day—something unexpected must have occurred, for Raublut had ordered everyone to stay in the villa. Some voiced their worries and concerns, but Detlinde was unfazed; being stuck in the villa meant she could spend each day as she pleased.

These really are tough times... Everyone expects so much from me.

Detlinde chuckled. The Lanzenavians had showered her with praise for teaching them to brew rejuvenation potions. They had watched longingly as she’d ridden her highbeast and then listened intently while learning to create their own. It was thanks to her that they could now make themselves full sets of armor and produce their own mounts. Yes, her knights had technically taught them how to shape their armor, but the accomplishments of retainers belonged to their charge.

The more she thought about it, the more favorable her circumstances seemed to be. Her jealous fiancé wasn’t around to complain about her relationship with Leonzio, and there were no scholars demanding that she get back to work. It was paradise.

Not that I’ve been wasting my time here. Each day brings me one step closer to becoming the Zent. Nobody can accuse me of resting too much.

It had taken Raublut three days to lay the groundwork necessary for them to leave the villa without drawing attention to themselves. Leonzio and the Lanzenavians had gone to fetch their schtappe stones, and just a day ago, Detlinde had circled the Academy’s shrines as part of the process to become the next Zent. Having to wait for Raublut’s permission to leave the villa was inconvenient, but there was no helping it, since they did not have the entire Sovereign Knight’s Order on their side.

But alas, not even Lord Raublut was able to keep us hidden.

Detlinde had just finished cleaning the last shrine and was eager to take her next step toward the throne when Raublut received a slew of ordonnanzes announcing that there were intruders at the Royal Academy. She and the others had needed to retreat into the forest and make their way back to the villa, where they were to wait until the Order relaxed its search.

Could the timing have been any worse?

It wasn’t the first time Detlinde had needed to wait in the villa, but that didn’t make it any easier; Leonzio was stuck in his room waiting for his schtappe to be absorbed, meaning she had no one to keep her entertained. She had attempted to have a tea party with her elder sister to ease her growing boredom, but her sister had refused, since she had already agreed to brew with the scholars.

She’s always like this.

Alstede was an honor student and a responsible young woman who always did exactly as their mother instructed. As commendable as that sounded, it meant she would outright ignore Detlinde until she was done carrying out whatever orders she had received.

Does she not realize that my demands take precedence? I will soon be the Zent, whereas our mother will only be Aub Ehrenfest.

Nonetheless, Alstede had cast aside the proposal of a tea party with her younger sister to make rejuvenation potions and magic tools for Lords Raublut and Gervasio. Detlinde was far from impressed.

Mother isn’t even here right now...

Their mother had departed to obtain Ehrenfest’s foundation. Detlinde had no idea why the woman was so obsessed with such a backwater duchy... but if obtaining what she desired would make her less unpleasant, all the better.

“Sister, that must be enough for now,” Detlinde said and rose from her seat. “We would not want to miss dinner.” Though she had come to the brewing room, she had not taken part; she had simply watched while one of the attendants worked on her nails.

“We have plenty of time,” Alstede shot back. She made eye contact with the scholars, then returned her attention to the pot she was stirring. She really did value her brewing above a member of her own family.

Detlinde turned away and pouted. “Oh, but you cannot go to the dining hall in your brewing clothes, can you? You will need to return to your room to change. Let us not drag this out; if you insist on continuing to brew, then please make extra rejuvenation potions for me.”

“For you? We are making them for everyone.” Alstede glanced at the scholars and said, “Is that not correct?”

The scholars confirmed that they had made potions for Detlinde as well.

“No, no,” Detlinde protested. “I want extra rejuvenation potions. Twice as many as anyone else should do. Those are my scholars brewing with you, remember; under normal circumstances, every single one of their potions would belong to me. The Lanzenavians are receiving some only as a result of my immense generosity. Preparing more for me should not be a problem at all.”

Her eyes tinged with concern, Alstede explained that they would not be able to make those arrangements while they were following such a strict schedule. “If you desire more potions, then you really should make them yourself... But we can prepare at least two more for you before dinner.”

“Oh my... That simply will not do. Having to cleanse every shrine was more exhausting than I can describe. To make matters worse, this is my only day of rest; I will need to resume work on obtaining the Grutrissheit tomorrow, no? As you are going to be staying here in the villa, it seems like the natural conclusion that you should make them for me.”

Though her feet weren’t aching—she had relied on her highbeast to take her from shrine to shrine—she had spent more time outside than she usually would. Spending her entire morning in bed had done wonders to refresh her, but that didn’t mean she was in the mood to brew. She had never really cared for the task and all the tedious labor it required.

“Tomorrow?” Alstede stopped stirring her pot. “Do you have Lord Raublut’s permission?”

Detlinde placed a hand on her cheek. “Not yet, but I must obtain the Grutrissheit posthaste. And you wish to return home, no? I shall ask for your sake as well; that will surely move him.” She was the next Zent, so she saw no reason he would refuse.

“Lord Raublut has the entire Sovereign Knight’s Order to oversee; let us wait here for him. You were spotted while circling the shrines, were you not? If you go outside without permission, I suspect you will get caught.”

“‘Caught’?!” Detlinde cried, her eyebrows raised in outrage. “I am this country’s next queen! To think anyone would mistake me for one of the intruders... Even for you, Sister, this is unacceptably rude!”

“I suppose so...” Alstede muttered.

Detlinde sighed. How could anyone make such a basic mistake? There were times when she had to wonder whether the woman before her now really was her sister.

“Do be more careful going forward...” Detlinde eventually said. “In any case, were you not desperate to return home? If we work together as sisters and ask Lord Raublut for this one favor...”

“Of course I want to return to Ahrensbach; Benedikta must be worried about how Lord Blasius and I are faring. But we cannot put Lord Raublut at risk over a little discomfort. Mother told us to follow his instructions when it came to matters of the royal family and the Sovereignty.”

Goodness... How dreadful. Even now, the most she can do is parrot Mother’s orders.

Benedikta was Detlinde’s niece. Any decent mother in this situation would want to rush home to her daughter, but Alstede was prioritizing Georgine’s instructions. It was unfortunate, really—they could easily have resolved the situation by emphasizing the importance of obtaining the Grutrissheit or asking Gervasio to order Raublut to let them proceed.

“Sister... You are always so obsessed with what Mother thinks...”

“That reminds me—has she responded to our letter yet? She should have arrived in Ehrenfest yesterday or earlier today.”

Detlinde had sent out an update as soon as they’d arrived at the villa. In response, Georgine had ordered her not to send another for the next five days, as she was going to be busy sneaking into Ehrenfest. Alstede considered it a fair enough request—a poorly timed message would reveal where their mother was hiding—but Detlinde could not help feeling slighted. It did not help that not even her elder sister empathized with her frustration.

“Have faith, Sister; she must be dyeing Ehrenfest’s foundation as we speak,” Detlinde said. Then she sighed again. “I am trying so hard to cement Mother’s position as the next Aub Ehrenfest, but she has forbidden me from contacting her, and Lord Raublut will not allow us to leave...”

Once again, Detlinde’s complaints were directed at Raublut. Only by obtaining the Grutrissheit would she earn her mother’s pride... yet the world was insistent on getting in her way. It was dreadful.

“Lord Raublut is very busy right now,” Alstede replied in the same tone one would take with a child. “He must attend to both the villa and the Knight’s Order, all while dealing with the royal family.”

“Goodness me! That much is obvious!”

“Is it?” Alstede asked with a smile. “You should know, then, that we must wait for him to contact us. Brewing rejuvenation potions is an important job, in case you weren’t aware; the Lanzenavians should almost be done absorbing their schtappes, and they will need quite a lot of tutoring to get used to them.”

Something clicked in Detlinde’s mind. Considering how long it had taken her to absorb her own schtappe, Leonzio would surely be finished soon—likely by dinner or breakfast the next morning. As bored as she was, the fun times were about to return.

“Here you are,” Alstede said. “Your share of the rejuvenation potions.” She must have been brewing them during their conversation, and the sight did wonders to raise Detlinde’s spirits.

Though she refused to have tea with me, I shall forgive her. The circumstances have been tough on her as well.

Perhaps two days ago, Alstede had completed the duties assigned to her and attempted to return to Ahrensbach only to find that the door to the Lanzenave Estate would not open. “It was like somebody locked it,” she had said. Having no other choice, she had tried to return through the Ahrensbach Dormitory... but it, too, had proved entirely inaccessible. She had asked Raublut to look into the matter, whereupon she had learned that someone had stolen their duchy’s foundation. That was the most the Sovereignty knew, so they had yet to identify the thief or receive any updates on the current status of Ahrensbach.

Ordonnanzes could not cross duchy borders, so Detlinde had sent a magic letter home in an attempt to get to the bottom of the situation. Their foundation might have been stolen, but her allies in the castle would send an explanation in short order. Or if the culprit intercepted the letter, Detlinde had assumed they would fear her status as the next Zent and immediately back away.

Contrary to these expectations, Detlinde had yet to hear from anyone, friend or foe. It was annoying—she wasn’t particularly fond of people ignoring her—but at the same time, it also motivated her to obtain the Grutrissheit no matter what.

“Stay strong...” Detlinde said. “We need only endure until the day I take the throne.”

“Hah. Indeed,” Alstede replied with a thin smile. “In any case, this seems a more appropriate time for us to leave.”

Detlinde had wanted more praise, but she was far from surprised; her sister had always been emotionally unavailable. Not once had she squealed or jumped with joy over Detlinde’s various achievements.

Leaving the cleanup to her scholars, Detlinde returned to her room with her other retainers and Alstede. The attendants opened the door for them, and they started down the raised corridor leading into the main building.

No matter how many times she saw it, Detlinde was taken aback by the villa’s strange architecture. A normal villa would comprise a large main building for the lord or lady of the house, a side building for baptized children, more side buildings for the second and third wives, and a training area for the knights. This one, however, consisted of a main building and only a single side building.

Though its strange design ended up convenient for me.

On the day of their arrival, Raublut had proposed that they all stay together in the side building—but it was unthinkable for an unmarried man and woman in love with one another to sleep under the same roof. Heeding a passionate explanation from Detlinde, Gervasio had said that those from Ahrensbach could instead use the main building.

“That building was for Lanzenave’s princesses,” he had said. “I do not mind if you would all prefer to stay there. I will stay here, however, in the room where I was raised.”

In truth, Detlinde had wanted to stay in the side building—it contained the teleportation circle to the Lanzenave Estate, the brewing room and materials, food and servants, and the dining hall. The thought of needing to move to the main building anytime she wanted to sleep or change sounded painfully inconvenient, so she had asked the Lanzenavians to stay in the main building instead... but Gervasio had refused to budge on the matter.

“The main building is for women,” he had continued, not a trace of warmth to his voice. “If you insist on our separation, then I must ask you to sleep there. The only alternative is that you stay in the side building with the rest of us, as per the original plan. Those who wish to sleep elsewhere may do so. Nobody else takes issue with the arrangement.”

Gervasio had then taken his attendants to his room. The certainty with which he’d navigated the villa was evidence enough that he had once lived there.

Not a single person had agreed that Detlinde should get to stay in the side building. Raublut had told her to make up her mind while he gave them all a tour, then led them through the dining hall, the brewing room, and the internal training room. She had not stood a chance against the previous occupants of a villa she had never seen before, so she reluctantly agreed to stay in the main building. Had it been any smaller or less glamorous, she would most likely have continued to protest.

To think everyone would simply ignore the problem of unwed men and women sleeping in such close quarters...

Detlinde was still seething about Gervasio when the end of the corridor came into view. An attendant opened the door ahead.

“One moment, Lady Detlinde, Lady Alstede. I will now open the next door.”

To enter the main building from the raised corridor, one first had to pass through a locked door and a small room. It was most unusual; such passages normally led into a second corridor or an entrance hall with stairs. Stranger still, the villa’s main building did not have windows on the side of the connecting corridor, so anyone who spent their entire life inside would not even know it existed.

“I wonder why there are so many doors for a simple raised corridor,” Detlinde mused. “It must have been terribly inconvenient for those living here on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps they wished to hide it from someone.”

“Goodness, what an amusing idea...” Alstede remarked with a chuckle. “From whom would they be hiding it and why?”

The group headed upstairs to the third floor, which contained three large rooms said to have belonged to the Lanzenave princesses. The first had a koralie as its emblem; the second, a schentis; and the third, a loeweleier. The doors and windows were decorated with elaborate latticework, and the furniture was so beautiful that one could easily tell it was meant for royalty.

Detlinde, Alstede, and Blasius were currently staying in the three rooms. Blasius was displeased with the feminine decor, but not Detlinde; she was actually quite satisfied. There were chambers for retainers connected to their rooms, but any men in their service were staying on the floor below.

“Let us change and then go to dinner,” Alstede said. She went into the koralie room, while Detlinde entered its loeweleier counterpart.

Once they were changed, Detlinde and Alstede returned to the side building and made their way into the dining hall. The head count had increased since lunch, and even Leonzio had made his return. He appeared to be enjoying one of many lively conversations.

“Oh, Lord Leonzio. I see you have absorbed your schtappe.”

“Lady Detlinde. Only two days have passed, yet it feels like an eternity since I saw you last.”

“Goodness... Were you really that eager to see me?” Detlinde’s cheeks went bright red in response to the obvious compliment; Leonzio must have spent the entire two days thinking about her.

“I would be positively delighted if you could arrange for me to start learning to use my schtappe tomorrow. My mastery of such a powerful tool would surely be of great use to you.”

“Indeed. Rest assured, for you shall be tutored by none other than Yurgenschmidt’s next Zent.”

Lanzenavians tended to have exceptional mana capacities; they would make for lethal combatants once they knew how to wield their schtappes. There wasn’t enough time for them to cover everything on the Royal Academy’s curriculum, but the fundamentals of combat wouldn’t take very long at all. Detlinde was convinced that even she could teach absolute beginners, and the thought of being showered with as much praise as when she had taught the Lanzenavians to create highbeasts made her feel giddy with delight.

“Incidentally...” Giordano, a Lanzenavian envoy who normally stood behind and attended to Leonzio, looked around the dining hall. “I do not see King Gervasio here.”

Detlinde was inspired to look around as well. As the man’s bewilderment implied, it was rare for Gervasio to be absent—especially when he fancied himself the lord of the villa.

“He is not here tonight,” Raublut’s head attendant interjected. “He has asked that we eat without him.”

Raublut’s head attendant was staying in the villa rather than his usual estate; his most important duty was maintaining a line of communication with his lord. It was common for nobles working in the castle to tell their head attendant when they intended to return home and when to prepare meals; Raublut was exploiting that to send orders and updates on the palace by ordonnanz. The head attendant’s duty was to convey his charge’s will to those in the villa and then return any information of considerable importance.

“King Gervasio circled the shrines with me just yesterday...” Detlinde said. “He served as a decoy for me during my retreat. Perhaps he is still weary from that.”

Gervasio had gone to the library with Raublut to draw the attention of the Sovereign Knight’s Order away from Detlinde. She considered it only natural that her safety as the next Zent should come first, but she still appreciated the heavy burden he had chosen to bear. His absence was accepted with great magnanimity.

“Might I ask you all to take your seats?” an attendant said.

Once everyone was seated, the attendants began serving food. It was a peaceful meal spent discussing the order in which they would cover the uses of schtappes.

“Before you can even attempt anything else,” Alstede began, “you must have a set form for your schtappe that you can maintain for a long time.”

“It is best to make a simple schtappe without any excessive decoration,” Detlinde added. “As complex as you might want yours to be, it will only make it harder to maintain.”

“My... Was that something one of your professors said to you?”

“Now, now, Sister—wherever would you get such an idea? I am just speaking common sense.”

Even after dinner, the Lanzenavians were eager to learn how to use their schtappes. By the time seventh bell indicated it was time for bed, they had come up with set forms and even managed to shoot mana from them.

“Now that you know how to make your schtappes, the next step is to learn the spells necessary to transform them into weapons and tools,” Blasius explained. “It shouldn’t take very long at all; by forming highbeasts and making armor, you have already demonstrated that you can control your mana.”

Detlinde looked over the Lanzenavians, who were still thirsting for knowledge, and made her schtappe with a broad smile. “To give you an example—messer!”

“Messer is commonly used when brewing and gathering materials,” Blasius noted.

The Lanzenavians listened intently and voiced their approval of the “outstanding” demonstration. Detlinde had spent her entire day agonizingly bored, but now she was overcome with the joy of having obtained what she truly desired.

And tomorrow is going to be even better.

Unfortunately for Detlinde, the dull yet peaceful tranquility of the villa was torn apart that very same night. Never again would she awake happy.