Three Idiots And The Fluffiness

The four who had volunteered to act as decoys in the forest… were engaged in a fierce battle… or rather, they weren’t. They kept running away. More precisely, they repeated the same cycle of attacking, fleeing, and hiding. The four of them worked together as they continued evading the enemy.

“What the hell is with that bird!? We can’t even tell whether magic is working on it, and getting close is dangerous… There’s nothing we can do!”

Luecke realized that they lacked a decisive way to finish it off, but Aleist offered his opinion.

“It’s a debuff! Stat-lowering skills are taking effect!”

Aleist displayed the knowledge he possessed from the game. He had remembered status ailments, stat-reduction magic, and special techniques. In the game, those had rarely been particularly useful.

“Debuffs? What’s that?”

However, both Unias and Luecke looked as though they had no idea what he meant. What Aleist called debuffs were spells and special actions that lowered an opponent’s stats, though they had been of little use in the game…

“Is there any way to prevent it?”

Rudel assumed Aleist knew something about the enemy and asked him. However…

“Recovery items, maybe… and the chance of getting debuffed isn’t usually that high…”

“Recovery items… You mean medicine? There’s medicine that can cancel out effects that unusual? And could we really keep using something like that while fighting?”

As Luecke fell into thought, Unias sighed.

“If something like that existed, the escorts would’ve had some. …So basically, it comes down to luck. In that case, we just have to finish it in one blow.”

Aleist clutched his head at Unias’s conclusion.

“There’s no way you can one-shot a boss…”

After running themselves ragged until all four were battered and exhausted, they made their final move. Luecke prepared his magic… Unias poured magical power into his greatsword… Aleist readied his prized magic sword technique… and Rudel prepared magic in both hands.

Luecke acted first. Waiting until the Dire Bird noticed them from the sky and began descending, he gave the signal.

“Now! Everyone, hit it at once!!!”

Luecke unleashed an enormous spell at the Dire Bird… When the attack knocked it down, Unias charged in with his greatsword, followed by Rudel. Unias’s strike tore through one of the Dire Bird’s wings, while Rudel’s finishing move blasted the creature away. …And one person was left over.

“Th-That should’ve killed it… What!?”

Luecke muttered breathlessly, only for the Dire Bird to answer by rising to its feet, blood pouring from all over its body. Unias raised his sword again, but Rudel couldn’t even stand. He had used an abnormal amount of magical power… and the backlash had placed an enormous burden on his body. Worse still was the Dire Bird’s ability.

“Tch! I didn’t think it’d become this hard to move. …Luecke… You can’t stand either?”

“Don’t mock me, Unias! It’s not that I can’t stand! I simply don’t feel like standing up…”

Luecke stubbornly protested Unias’s words. While the Dire Bird’s ability afflicted the three of them, Aleist alone remained unaffected. Yet Aleist himself hesitated to charge at the creature’s grotesque and ominous form.

“What are you doing, Hardy!? Slash it already! There’s still time!”

Aleist finally moved at Unias’s shout, but just then… flames rained down from the sky and reduced the Dire Bird to charcoal… The sight looked as though the creature had been swallowed by a towering pillar of fire.

When the pillar of flame subsided and the forest fell silent… the sun happened to rise, gradually illuminating the surroundings. Descending through that light was Cattleya, mounted atop her Red Dragon.

Cattleya dismounted and looked around. Even in his battered state, Rudel couldn’t help becoming excited at the sight of her. However, after taking in the situation and reaching her own conclusion…

“Looks like the last one standing did all the work. I suppose that’s what you’d expect from Hardy-kun. Compared to him… Rudel, you’re completely beaten up and can’t even stand. You really are pathetic.”

Of the four who had faced the creature, Aleist was the only one still standing. Influenced by her own feelings, Cattleya simply couldn’t bring herself to believe that Rudel had contributed as well. No, she chose not to. Even though, knowing Rudel’s ability, she could easily have imagined that he had played a part in the battle…

Cattleya stood over Rudel as he lay on the ground and looked down on him. Hearing her words, Rudel became ashamed that the situation was no different from the year before. He had trained… He had studied… and yet Rudel had still ended up being rescued.

Amid that scene, Aleist…

“Huh? …What is this situation? And I wasn’t supposed to meet Cattleya-san until later… Wait, what!?”

The incident in the forest became a major topic of discussion throughout the academy. Specifically, the story spread that “Aleist volunteered to act as a decoy to save the Princess!” Because of that tale, Aleist’s popularity at the academy steadily rose… while the Three Dukes… including Rudel, received much less praise.

Unias and Luecke were praised with comments like, “As expected of heirs to the Three Dukes!” But Rudel alone became the subject of an issue serious enough to involve questions of responsibility. He was criticized for volunteering as a decoy. He didn’t understand his own position… Between the escorts’ reports and Chlust—who had somehow fled during the incident—spreading lies to redirect criticism away from himself…

“Rudel disrupted the situation, caused trouble for everyone around him, and was useless in the battle.”

The fact that Rudel had risked his life to save the Princess never spread, and instead he was harshly condemned over the incident. The academy denied the rumors, but that only led students to think things like, “Did they pay everyone off to keep quiet?” or “They’re trying to hide it because it’s true!”

Rudel, meanwhile, had been admitted to the infirmary so his battered body could recover. He lay in the bed by the window that was practically becoming his reserved spot, staring endlessly at the sky. And, as usual, Izumi sat beside him peeling fruit.

“I wonder if I’ll see a dragon… Maybe one will fly over…”

He was fully enjoying his boring hospital stay. In the beds beside him, Luecke and Unias had also been hospitalized together as a precaution. Unlike the thoroughly battered Rudel, however, the two of them had escaped with relatively minor injuries.

“Are you always like this?”

Izumi responded to Luecke’s question with a wry smile.

“We’ll be fine, but… Rudel, you can’t exactly sit there without a care in the world, can you?”

Indeed, Rudel alone was in a dangerous position.

“Sorry. Our entire class explained what happened, but it looks like the academy intends to sweep the whole incident under the rug. More accurately, everyone is trying to shift the blame onto someone else… They’ll say Rudel caused the problem and use that to muddy the disciplinary issue. Worst case… they’re even talking about expulsion—no, forcing you to graduate early.”

Rudel finally reacted to those words. With a serious expression…

“Izumi… What should I call my finishing move? Just shouting something every time is getting a little awkward. I want something cool, but not overly elaborate, and easy to say.”

“Hey, you might get expelled! And you’re worried about naming your finishing move!?”

Luecke stared at him in disbelief.

“I can still become a knight through the two-year course. I’ll aim to become a Dragoon from there… so I don’t particularly care. Well, I would regret losing the opportunity to keep studying at the academy.”

Rudel remained completely unfazed. At his words, Izumi lowered her head with a dark expression. She was furious with Chlust. Chlust and the lower-year students who had fled with him had been running around trying to pin the blame on Rudel to conceal their own failures.

They had even used their families’ influence… But something about it was strange. No matter how one looked at it, placing this much blame on Rudel wasn’t normal, and forcing it this far should have been impossible. Rudel’s actions could certainly be criticized. But Rudel had his side of the story as well.

The Dire Bird’s abnormal abilities had also included an effect that made its targets aggressive or excited. Rudel had been under that influence and had been incapable of making sound decisions. Even after a doctor confirmed that fact, the academy and those above it continued trying to force responsibility onto Rudel.

Gradually, Izumi began to feel that Rudel had somehow been caught in the middle of some enormous current… something almost like fate. Watching Rudel struggle fiercely against that flow, as though swimming against the current itself, made it seem as though he were shaving away at his own life.

At around that same time, Princess Fina was recuperating in her own room. Officially, it was so she could recover from the exhaustion of several consecutive days of questioning about the incident…

(FLUFFY FEVER!!! I’m gonna pet Mii all over and squeeze her as much as I want today tooooo!!!)

“Don’t run away, Mii.”

…She had brought her friend Mii into her room. Because Fina had been placed in danger during the incident, knights from the royal palace had also rushed over. In fact, several powerful female knights were stationed just outside her door. If she made too much noise inside, they would hear her.

Courtois still looked down on demi-humans. Conscious of that, Fina had always restrained herself until now. However…

“P-Princess! Don’t pet me so much… Why are you squeezing my breasts!?”

Fina cornered Mii as she tried to escape across the bed, petting and squeezing her relentlessly. Her face remained completely expressionless as she devoted herself entirely to the fluffiness.

“I just want to keep petting you.”

(This is incredible! After experiencing the fluffiness of a kitten like this… I can’t live without fluffiness anymore!!! I’m not holding back ever again! There’s no point restraining myself when I could die at any moment… Ah! I need Master to teach me his techniques!)

And in the end, this would become the very thing that saved Rudel.