Quarrel

Actually, now that he thought about it, this wasn’t such a terrible situation after all.

Noelle and Katya had each touched a lofty realm in her own field, and since both of them openly wielded a unique supernatural power, they were the twin pillars holding up the ‘efficiency’ of Aiden’s skill copying. If he could get a proper education from these two, his combat ability would surely grow by leaps and bounds.

Especially when he’d been handed something like this not long ago.

And all the more so if he could carry over a skill like this.

Going by the skill description alone, this was the chance of a lifetime. All that was left was to take as much as he could get his hands on.

Which was also, as it happened, the root of the lesson Aiden was now learning the hard way.

…That having a gift and having the gift of teaching it to others were two completely different things.

“So why are you building up a defensive formula there? Could you survive doing that in the Coalition War? Are you sure you weren’t off playing house somewhere instead of fighting a war?”
“I cannot for the life of me imagine where you learned your combat doctrine. Are you boasting to us about being slow-witted? Did everyone around you telling you how good you were convince you that you really were?”

“…”

Watching the two of them trade blows like that, murder thick in the air, made his head throb. To be precise, they were holding a heated discussion about Aiden’s ‘curriculum,’ so heated that everyone in the training ground had turned to stare this way, wondering what on earth was going on. The discussion had at least started out civil, but by now it had sunk to personal attacks.

…Come to think of it.

In the scenario, too, had these two always been this mismatched, as if from the day they were born?

There had been that enormous fight recently, but even so, the mood had been one of steering clear of open friction out of consideration for each other’s positions and circumstances. A clash of temperaments, it seemed, was hard to get past after all.

The further this goes, the more I’m going to need both of them, though.

Given a scenario this warped, with every kind of danger leaping out of it, these two were the allies Aiden could trust right now. That was the whole point. Their help would be essential to getting through Scene 1 of the scenario, which was coming up soon, and it would be a problem if fights kept breaking out like this.

And just as he was chewing that over, a window abruptly popped up in front of Aiden.

“…”

No. Even so, there was surely no need to turn it into a quest and drop it on him like this.

“Oh, for—! Instead of all this, why don’t we each just have a go! Hey!”

The shout came flying in from beside him while he was still thinking it.

“…Sorry?”

Having shouted it in anger, Katya abruptly spun divinity out around her on the spot. Colorless flame poured out in every direction on a wave of heat, and everyone on the parade ground took a step back.

“Copy this!”

Her Highness the Princess promptly set about working the balls of fire around her. Wielding her supernatural power, she struck a balance of attack and defense, ‘fighting’ an opponent who wasn’t there. Her style was free-spirited, practical, light and quick, yet the attacks that actually spilled out here and there along the way were intuitive and ferocious.

At a glance it was no more than a loose patchwork of moves strung together, but a flashing quickness bound them into one whole, enough that even the Knights absorbed in their own drills nearby stared at it, wide-eyed.

…I’m realizing it all over again.

She really had been going easy on Dame Noelle when the two of them fought. The demonstration reached into a realm terrifying enough to make him think so.

“Saw that?”

When she had finished, Katya wiped away her sweat and grinned at Aiden.

“Now you do it!”

“…”

Was she pulling his leg? The thought came up unbidden.

“…You said you were going to teach me.”

When Aiden asked blankly, it was Katya who cocked her head.

“I showed you, didn’t I?”

“…”

“You can just copy it straight off, can’t you?”

He looked over, half expecting a joke, and found her in dead earnest. She had the look of someone genuinely convinced that anyone who’d seen it once could copy it.

“You say that with such confidence that it leaves me speechless.”

Noelle, who had in fact been watching, delivered the rebuke with a sigh. Then she drew her sword in front of Aiden and settled into a stance.

“I shall teach you starting from the basic stance, which is the most important part of all. Would you observe closely.”

Noelle demonstrated a few simple movements for him: the lead foot, the shift of the center of gravity, the fine control of the gaze, even the set of the upper body. She walked him through each one, explaining it in detail.

…Oh.

She was certainly better than Katya had been a moment ago. At the very least, she seemed to have some idea of how one teaches a person who knows nothing.

Aiden followed along while she took the explanation slowly and coherently through to the end. Then Noelle nodded and spoke.

“Good. And if you carry out exactly what has been explained—”

With that, she swung her wooden sword at the wooden striking dummy in front of her.

And.

— KA-BOOM!!!!

A roar like a bomb going off.

The dummy shattered very nearly to powder, a crater opened in the floor as though a meteorite had struck, and in the aftermath fine cracks went racing across the walls as well.

“—this is what happens.”

Having produced that spectacle, Noelle turned back to Aiden without so much as a blink.

“Would you give it a try.”

“…”

“…”

Noelle took in the silence hanging over everyone around her and was quick to read the room.

“…It is not such a difficult thing, is it?”

“…”

“Aiden can handle pure-white ki just as I can, so this much ought to be well within… his reach… surely…”

As the expressions around her grew steadily more bizarre, Noelle’s sentence trailed further and further off. By the look of her, she had honestly assumed that with this much explained, he would ‘of course’ pull off something like this.

“…You know what.”

Katya pressed a hand to her forehead, let out a sigh, and spoke up.

“You’re no different from me, are you?”
“…Kindly withdraw so appalling an insult.”

The instant the verdict came down that there was nothing to choose between them, the pair went straight back at each other, and the sight set Aiden’s temples throbbing.

What on earth am I supposed to learn here, and how—

He might have scraped a skill off the Knight of Dawn, but with instruction this much of a shambles, there was no way he could learn anything.

“…”

The moment he saw the window float up before his eyes, Aiden shut his mouth.

I built up knowledge of a school just from watching that…?

Magnificent, this Knight of Dawn. No joke, the man was genuinely magnificent…! A gift so formidable that Aiden could set aside having been killed dozens of times last night and simply admire it…!

While he was meekly marveling at that, Noelle, who had been bickering away in front of him for a good while, spoke up with the air of someone tamping something down inside.

“…Then let us leave it here.”
“What?”
“It is plain enough as things stand that neither you nor I can play the part of a proper teacher. So shall we both step away from Aiden.”

“…”

“I shall not argue one way or the other about Aiden, so let us agree that Your Highness will not interfere either.”
“…What?”
“I am saying we should end this peacefully, without fighting on any further for no reason.”

…Huh. Aiden turned to look at Noelle, taken aback. After she had traded blows that viciously all this time, he hadn’t expected her to back down so easily.

But the moment he saw Katya’s expression as she heard it, Aiden gave up any hope that this would end peacefully.

“…So.”

Katya gave a short snort of a laugh.

“You go to the trouble of picking a fight with me, and now that a convenient excuse has come up you back out of it. And while you’re at it, I’m supposed to back out too?”
“Is there some problem with that.”

The princess’s face wore, as always, a smile whose intent could not be read. But by now he had watched her from up close long enough to start telling the difference.

She was angry right now.

“—Coward.”

What she did next was every bit as outrageous as that impression promised. Flame burst out in an instant and settled into Katya’s body, coiling up her arm like a snake knotting itself, and then it fired off at Noelle as though detonating.

Of course, Noelle was not the sort to go down easily to something like that. Her sword flashed out and knocked it aside, and she glared at Katya, her face full of fury.

“What do you think you’re—!”

Before she could even finish, Katya was at her side in an instant and had her by the collar.

“—As for you.”

The flames that had risen around them had not yet properly cleared when Katya’s voice dropped. Hostility glistened in those golden eyes and bored into Noelle as though to stab her.

“This constant carrying on like that man’s guardian — why don’t you ease off a bit?”
“…It is only natural, is it not. Aiden and I are to be husband and wife—”
“—so I’ve been told. But watching from beside you the whole way, it’s dubious. Your attitude especially.”

Katya’s growl cut in and broke Noelle’s sentence off.

“You don’t even know yourself how you’re supposed to treat that man, so you keep floundering, don’t you?”

“…”

“Getting any closer frightens you, and you can’t set him fully aside either. It’s pitiful, at that level. Watching it from beside you.”

“…”

“And for all that, you’ve been con-stantly making it plain how much it displeases you whenever that man and I are together. If you don’t mean to claim him, then stop butting in for no reason and get lost. It’s irritating.”

When Noelle held her silence, a twisted smile hung at the corner of Katya’s mouth.

“Honestly, I don’t get why you’re trying so hard to protect that man in the first place. Hm? That isn’t who you are, is it?”

“…”

“Anyone who was in the Coalition War has to know it. Not some glossy nickname the Empire packages up for you like ‘the Lionhearted’ — the nickname that fits perfectly, ‘the Butcher’, for the one who beat enemy and ally alike to death—”

The next moment, every expression was swept clean off Noelle’s face.

The change was abrupt enough that even Aiden, watching quietly from the side, felt a flash of danger. What had settled in beneath that slightly slack smile she always wore was killing intent sharp enough to split skin.

“Wait, Dame Noelle—!”

Before Aiden could say anything to stop her, ki burst from Noelle’s body like a detonation. The people nearby were sent flying with screams, the floor shook, and the whole building trembled as if convulsing. Everything around them was turned upside down, as though a storm had struck.

And all of that came from her simply ‘opening’ her supernatural power. Aiden had never once seen the stance she took when she meant, in earnest, to ‘harm’ someone.

“You, of all people.”

A voice past anger, cold enough to be almost eerie, flowed out of her.

And then, exactly as she was, Noelle took Katya by the scruff of the neck and slammed her straight down into the floor.

The floor crumpled as though a bomb had gone off. Noelle had rammed Katya into it hard enough to leave a small crater, and her pupils were full of savagery.

“If you are an egotist who lives in the world exactly as she pleases, then would it not be better to go on living that way by yourself, without dragging anyone else in. You ought to know your place.”

Driven into the floor, Katya looked up at Noelle, whose voice was like hoarfrost, and cackled back at her.

“That’s it, now your real temper’s finally coming—”
“While you do not spare the slightest thought for whether Aiden ‘himself’ wishes to be with you.”
“…What?”
“I am saying you are every bit as pitiful. The sight of you, unable even to grasp properly what another person thinks of you.”

“…”

“A human being who is irresponsible, self-indulgent, who swings everything around her about as she pleases and holds not one ounce of consideration, is better off simply not being there. Is that not obvious.”
“What are you—”
“You are a nuisance to Aiden. Do you understand.”

Katya’s mouth snapped shut, and her face went blank. She had the look of someone who, just as Noelle said, had never once considered it from that angle.

“So.”

Noelle growled at Katya once again.

“You, of all people, are to stop going near Aiden for no reason.”

Her piece said, Noelle moved to drive Katya’s head into the floor.

“—Stop!”

Having somehow torn through the force pouring off her, Aiden ran over, caught hold of her and pulled.

“Both of you, that is enough!”

“…”

The instant his hand touched her, Noelle flinched and her eyes went wide. As though only now coming to her senses, she drew the ki that had spilled out of her body back inside in an instant.

“…”

She looked hurriedly around. One after another she took it in: the training ground turned into a free-for-all, the people staring at her with startled eyes, and Aiden panting from having dragged her off. She clenched her teeth until she tasted blood.

“…I apologize for the unseemly display.”

Even as she said it, she hastily picked up the uniform cap that had rolled away nearby.

Aiden, nowhere near catching his breath, watched Noelle step out of the training ground as though fleeing. Then his gaze went to Katya and stayed there. She still lay blank where she had been rammed into the floor, shocked badly enough, it seemed, that she didn’t stir from the spot.

And before his eyes, as though to remind him, a window floated up once again.

…This. It had not floated up for nothing.

That single thought hammered through Aiden’s head.