Chapter 54
A huge wall appeared.
No, it wasn't even something that had appeared. It had existed from the beginning.
The wall of status once again blocked Leon's path.
Slaves can't enter the Academy, you know.
That was something he'd completely missed. He'd assumed that if he became a knight, he'd naturally be able to go along.
But he couldn't.
“But His Highness the Prince told me to come to the Academy too.”
“That's just lip service. You believed that?”
“Then if you free me, that'll solve it!”
“Why would I?”
“If I even become a commoner, I can go to the Academy, right? If I'm freed, I can go too! Wow! What an incredible loophole!”
“Well. Why do I feel like you'd run the moment I let you go?”
‘Sharp-witted woman. Did she learn mind-reading instead of black magic?’
Rinoa's prediction was exactly right.
Normally, even if he became a commoner, he would have tried to take the easy road as an Edelheid knight, but Leon wasn't like that.
‘If I'm freed, why would I stay here? I'd run right away.’
For him, being a commoner was better than being an Edelheid knight.
Leon didn't give up.
His two options were to be freed, or to follow Rinoa.
“You nearly got assassinated just recently, and you're saying you'd separate from me? Are you out of your mind?”
“Once the prince enrolls, is there anywhere safer in the world than there? I don't think so.”
“Then you're going to leave me behind? Alone in this vast duchy?”
“Well....”
In fact, that was something Rinoa herself was struggling with.
If he had been an ordinary slave, of course she would have left him behind.
Some people take their pets with them when they travel, but Rinoa was the type to leave them at home.
When you travel, you should only enjoy the trip. Bringing a pet along just gets in the way.
Leon was no different.
She could just leave him at the mansion.
All she had to do was keep him from leaving the duchy without permission.
With Leon's natural friendliness, wouldn't he do well here too?
“......”
However, memories from Edelheid's villa suddenly flashed through Rinoa's mind.
The way he'd quickly become chummy with the maids he'd just met, acting like they'd been siblings for years.
His easy closeness even with Helena, who came from a noble family.
On top of that, he'd even won over the proud Florencia's heart.
Was that all?
Just a few days ago at the imperial banquet, he'd even left countless noble ladies utterly spellbound.
A womanizer so flashy it was almost ridiculous.
He was absolutely not someone she could let out of sight and then feel at ease about.
If she left Leon here and went off to the Academy, disaster was sure to happen.
He might even end up with every woman in the duchy tucked under his arm.
“......”
“Why are you glaring at me all of a sudden?”
“I should go with you.”
“Right?”
Leon, who didn't know what Rinoa was thinking, was simply overjoyed that he had been allowed to come along.
“But apart from my permission, entering as a student won't be easy. The Academy and the other students will resist it.”
“Hmm....”
“Since you're a slave, what if we called you an essential item or something....”
“Huh?”
Leon had thought she was joking, but Rinoa was seriously considering it.
Leon barely held back the words he wanted to say.
After thinking hard, Rinoa soon came up with a clever idea.
“I know familiars can go along.”
“A familiar? Like a pet?”
“More precisely, a being that assists its master by their side.”
“For example, it could be an animal, or a spirit. It could even be another being summoned by magic.”
“That's just a pet.”
“A capable pet.”
“You want me to be a pet on top of being a slave?”
“Isn't that better than being a household item?”
Rinoa said it shamelessly, without changing her expression.
As always, her face was stern, but the corners of her mouth were lifted ever so slightly.
She was clearly teasing him.
‘What kind of treatment is this?’
How had the choices ended up being pet vs. household item? Still, a living being was much better than an object.
“I'll be a familiar....”
“Good. Then we'll need a contract.”
“A contract?”
Now that even the word contract made Leon shudder, he asked warily.
“It can't just be called a familiar in name only. We need an official proof.”
“Can't we skip that? The slave contract seems enough already.”
“That's just a slave. If we're going to fool people, we should be willing to go this far.”
Rinoa slowly rose from her seat and came right up to Leon.
“It's simple. Use the master's blood or mana as the medium to engrave a mark on the body. Hold out your hand.”
At the firm command, Leon reluctantly held out his hand.
Rinoa lightly nicked the tip of his thumb with a small blade of wind.
A bright red drop of blood welled up in a round bead.
Then she pressed the drop onto the back of Leon's hand and quickly drew the pattern with practiced movements.
Rinoa's cool mana seeped into his skin.
Before long, the pattern flashed a vivid green and was branded onto the back of Leon's hand like a mark.
“How is it?”
“Wow! Lord!”
“What?”
“No, there's nothing particularly weird. Anyway, is this enough?”
“Yes. You at least have the minimum appearance of my familiar. I don't know whether the Academy will recognize it, though.”
“That was simpler than I expected.”
Leon looked down at the brand on the back of his hand.
“Can you hide the brand? At the very least, move it somewhere invisible?”
“I should be able to cover it. Probably.”
“I don't like how it looks like a tattoo. I've never touched booze, cigarettes, coffee, or tattoos in my whole life.”
‘What's this feeling?’
After the contract was complete, a strange sensation came over him.
Its source was Rinoa.
It felt like an invisible thread stretched out from her and connected to a corner of his chest.
That thread became a channel through which all kinds of emotions flowed in.
Pressure.
Burden.
Fear.
Hostility.
Fatigue.
Fighting spirit.
Raw emotions, stripped of their packaging and left unrefined.
Among the ends of that mass of complex emotions, there was one sensation that strangely clung to Leon.
‘Relief? No, possessiveness.’
Whatever it was exactly, it was clearly different from the others. It was almost the only clear emotion among them.
“What are you doing?”
“No, it's just that after the contract, I'm feeling something strange. Like emotions, maybe?”
“......”
“Ah.”
Leon nodded. Looking at Rinoa's reaction, he could be certain.
This was Rinoa's emotion.
As a familiar, he could sense his master's mental state in order to best suit her moods.
“You....”
The tips of Rinoa's ears, whose secret thoughts had never been shown to anyone, turned red.
At the same time, a new emotion flowed into Leon through the thread.
“Mm-hm, this is the taste of anger. And embarrassment? Delicious emotions.”
At that shameless appraisal, Rinoa's eyes shook violently.
Her cheeks, once pale as paper, were already turning red all the way to her nape.
She wanted to shout and hurl curses at him right away, but she couldn't. That flimsy pride and last shred of dignity were what she'd guarded her whole life.
“Stop... right now, would you?”
All Rinoa could do was grit her teeth and glare at him as if she wanted to kill him.
“Even if you tell me to stop, what am I supposed to do when it just keeps coming in? I feel like an emotional trash can, and that doesn't exactly make me feel great either.”
“Shut up. Before I cut out your tongue.”
Since a murderous intent beyond anger was coming through, Leon didn't dare keep fooling around.
***
“Then we'll be cleaning the mansion, so in the meantime, please go sightseeing, young lady.”
The maids bowed to Rinoa.
Rinoa and the two people who always stayed close to her, Leon and Vivi, stepped out into the street.
They were now in Valerion, the huge academy city where the Imperial Academy stood.
The party had arrived ahead of time for the upcoming Academy enrollment and unpacked their luggage.
The Academy also operates dormitories, but those are only for commoners or lower nobles.
High nobles and wealthy families buy a house in the city and commute from there.
Rinoa was no different.
There was no chance that she, who disliked mingling with others, would live in a dormitory.
For that reason, the family bought a house.
The servants who came with them sorted out the luggage and cleaned the mansion.
Though it was a huge mansion, with all those capable servants it would all be done by evening.
“Is there anywhere you'd like to go, young lady?”
Vivi, who had slipped away from the mansion chores under the pretext of being Rinoa's exclusive maid, asked.
“Hmm.”
“I'd love to guide you myself as this capable maid, but regrettably, this is my first time in Valerion too.”
Rinoa pondered how she should pass the time until evening.
Into her flowed an unfamiliar emotion. Her chest tickled, and clear soap bubbles kept popping up one after another.
It was Leon's emotion.
Just as Leon, the familiar, could sense his master Rinoa's mental state, Rinoa too could sense the state of her familiar Leon.
Leon was in high spirits with anticipation.
“The Academy! Let's go to the Academy!”
“Why are you so excited?”
“No, we're about to attend the Academy. How could I not be excited?”
It was the setting of the original game.
Soon, he would be able to see many of the characters. Naturally, he'd probably get to see the protagonist too.
Ever since coming to this other world, Leon had been at his most excited.
“Fine. If you want to go that badly, let's go. We were going to go there at least once anyway.”
At Leon's strong insistence, the group stopped by the Academy.
“Wow! The Academy!”
Leon darted around like a child, making a fuss.
It was exciting and incredibly pleasant to see the scenery he'd only ever seen beyond a monitor spread out before his eyes.
‘That's probably the grand hall where events keep happening, and if I go around there, the training grounds should be over there, right?’
Leon was already racing nonstop in his head, matching the game knowledge in his mind with the layout before him.
“This is the first time I've seen Sir Leon this excited.”
“He looks ridiculous. He's not even a child. Does he even realize he's a knight?”
Rinoa followed after Leon at a leisurely pace.
The more excited Leon got, the more the emotional current flowing through the bond made her heart soften.
She had never once in her life experienced anything like this: pure joy flooding in unfiltered.
The unfamiliar sensation of something new was uncomfortable and tiring, yet oddly not bad.
She even had the illusion that it was pleasantly warming the ice-cold depths of her inner self, which had always been frozen solid.
‘Could this really feel this good?’
Influenced by Leon's emotions, Rinoa looked around and scanned the surroundings.
It was surprising that such a huge educational institution existed, but it didn't seem like something worth getting that excited over.
Anyway, he was impossible to figure out.
As Rinoa casually swept her gaze across the square, a girl came into view at the edge of her sight.
Short hair in a clear, light blue, like translucent water hanging down.
Opal-colored eyes that emitted a medley of radiant hues, impossible to define by any one color.
The girl, who gave off a profoundly mysterious aura, was wearing the Academy uniform.
“She looks like an Academy student.”
“Probably an incoming student. A commoner, maybe.”
“Why do you think that?”
“She doesn't have an attendant, so she can't be a noble, and looking at her in uniform before classes have even started makes it obvious.”
She must be from a modest family and not have any proper clothes to wear, so she was wearing the uniform provided by the Academy.
Of course, she could be a current student too, but if she were, she wouldn't be staring at the Academy with such a blank face.
Rinoa guessed she was probably a country girl who had come up from the provinces.
“She does seem a little like someone.”
“......”
Vivi's words went unanswered, but from the moment she first saw the girl, Rinoa had been overlaying her image with someone else's.
With Leon, her own slave, who was touring the Academy with childish wonder.
But what Rinoa thought was similar wasn't their touring the Academy.
Her figure, standing alone in the middle of the empty square, was radiating an especially dazzling presence against the silent backdrop.
It was brilliance.
The same brilliance Leon had once shown in his match against the minotaur.
That rough yet brilliant light was faintly shimmering from that girl as well.
It was then that Rinoa's thoughts reached that point.
The pure joy that had just moments ago made Leon's heart feel light vanished in an instant.
What rushed in to fill the void was a confusion mixed with a weighty, breath-stopping shock and a faint longing.
Leon, who had just been running around the Academy moments ago, was now standing frozen like a stone statue, staring at that girl.
And then.
“......Elodie?”
Something like the girl's name slipped from Leon's lips.