Chapter 31
“Aaaaaaaagh!!!”
Juan Enersis.
The Silver Sun of Enersis, whose skin was tanned from his frequent outdoor activities.
A promising candidate to become the next Count Enersis, he was tall, handsome, and possessed dazzling bedroom skills that the women he had been with praised to the heavens.
“Aagh! Aaaaaaagh!!!”
- CRASH!!!
A Casanova who was fast approaching three digits in the number of women he had replaced.
That was Juan Enersis.
Until a few days ago.
“P-Please calm down, Young Master!”
“Damn it! Do I look like I can calm down?!”
One day, he had suddenly passed out from intense pain in his face and lower body… only to wake up and discover that he was a eunuch?
And he had suffered that fate at the hands of the Tower Master, who had disguised herself as a daughter of that lowly baronial family?
To make matters worse, he was now unable to move his mana properly, leaving him in even greater despair.
“I’m going to kill her! I said I’m going to kill her!!”
Juan burned with a desire for revenge, but….
“You said you’d kill me, Brother?”
“……”
When Akion actually heard the shouting and came looking for him, Juan fell silent.
A quintessential trait of Juan: cruel to the weak, servile to the strong.
The chief steward, who had watched everything from the side, let out a deep sigh and vacated the room as Akion had instructed beforehand.
- Thud.
“……….”
“……….”
Silence hung heavily over Juan’s room.
As they faced each other, Akion regarded Juan impassively.
- Grrrk…!
Juan glared at Akion as if he wanted to kill him.
It was obvious that he held a grudge against Akion for castrating him.
Even though Juan himself had been the cause of it.
“Brother.”
There had been plenty of exhausting nuisances like this in his previous life too.
One senior had kept jabbing at him out of jealousy while he was experimenting in the glove box,
and one junior had fabricated some utterly baseless smear and falsely reported him to an evil professor.
As an undergraduate in his previous life, Akion had refused to believe such things could happen….
But after experiencing them himself, he had come to understand.
“To be blunt, I’m really glad you became a eunuch, Brother.”
“Nngh…!!”
And he had felt it here as well.
Convinced that people never really changed, Akion resolved to beat him without mercy in this life.
“You won’t be able to produce an heir, and thanks to that, you’ll have to step down from the position of heir too. Wow, are you really the same brother who used your servants to bully me so creepily when we were young? Those servants like me now, you know.”
If you want to kill someone, you have to be prepared to die yourself.
He should have chopped off his head, just as the finger-snapping lady had said.
- Grrrk…!
After waking up, Juan had spent several days thoroughly scraping together every scrap of information about the family.
And he realized that his information was woefully outdated,
and that Enersis was now in the hands of Akion, the power behind the throne.
At first, he couldn’t believe it,
but—click!
- Hummmmmm!
- Whoooosh~!
“Ha…….”
Incandescent lights that brightly illuminated even the night.
Ceiling fans that kept the air pleasant.
A turbine pump that supplied water throughout the manor.
And a hot-water boiler that boiled that water and sent out hot water.
“What in the world are these things, haha, ha…….”
He found himself despairing at some of the magi-engineering that Hermione loved so dearly—the byproducts born from science.
He had no choice but to accept it.
“Still, if you’re all right with me, this younger brother would like to reconcile─.”
Juan was already a washed-up heir of Enersis compared to Akion.
- Spring!
“Huh, Brother?”
What good was being skilled at magic?
His brilliant life had vanished completely the moment he became a eunuch, and Delphord, who had backed him, was now backing Akion.
On top of that, his mana control was currently unstable.
When would it show signs of stabilizing? Tomorrow, the day after? A month from now? He had no idea.
So rather than stubbornly clinging to his pride here and acting like an idiot……
- THUD!!
“Teach me engineering…!!!”
He had to beg for knowledge, even if it meant reclaiming his standing through humiliation.
With that thought, Juan climbed down from the sofa and slammed his head against the floor.
More than anything, he had heard that reaching a higher tier could reconstruct the body… and for the eunuch Juan, Akion’s science and engineering were an urgent clue to advancing in rank.
“Uh…….”
Akion, unaware of those circumstances, was bewildered, but.
Faced with his elder brother suddenly banging his head on the floor like Hermione had once done, Akion scratched his head with a sense of déjà vu.
“Um, Brother. Why are you suddenly─.”
“I bullied you from the time you were young. Perhaps becoming like this is the karma coming back to me.”
He was flustered by his brother’s sudden repentance.
Akion had been about to suggest that they get along, at least on a business level. He hadn’t expected the other side to lower itself even further.
Of course, Akion never missed an opportunity to get something for free.
“So?”
He immediately crossed his legs and looked down at his brother, who had his head bowed.
It had been about sixteen years, discounting the one year he had been absent… and this was the scoundrel who had tormented him for so long despite Akion having no memories from before his previous life.
Akion’s instincts clamored for him not to forgive Juan, but to punish him.
To trample him mercilessly and order the servants to torment him.
‘Namu Amida Butsu. Intrusive thoughts, begone.’
But then, how would he be any different from Juan?
Akion wanted a comfortable daily life and to become an excellent evil professor,
not to become a bastard like Juan Enersis.
“Are you asking me to bestow knowledge upon you, Brother?”
“Yes…!”
Of course, he intended to take as much of the resulting benefit as possible.
“All right. I’ll teach you a little.”
“What?!”
And Akion respected those who swallowed their pride and asked to learn.
Just look at the younger brother of that What’s-His-Name Marquis family.
The way he had lived as though only he was right and everyone else was wrong was no different from Juan Enersis.
And now that fellow was swallowing his pride and crawling beneath the enemy who had castrated him (though Akion hadn’t been the one to blow him up)?
For the sake of advancing himself?
This guy was an excellent lab slave!
“R-Really? I tormented you for over a decade…?”
“I do still have some resentment, but at least you possess the humility to ask to learn, so I’ll overlook it for now.”
The phrasing was a little rough, but in any case, it was an excellent attitude for a researcher who questioned and investigated without end.
At this rate, couldn’t he become a fine doctor?
He had even volunteered to be a slave, after all. Anyway.
- Drip, drip.
But Akion hadn’t wanted to see tears from the shaggy Silver Sun.
He turned his eyes away. It was too grotesque.
“Th-thank you.”
“That’s enough for today. Come to my workshop tomorrow.”
“Thank you. Akion, thank you… Sniff, sob….”
Juan knew nothing of Akion’s brutal plan to turn him into a research slave.
He was simply grateful for Akion’s mercy.
* * *
“Oh. It’s Big Sis.”
“Shut up, Hermione.”
And so Juan Enersis began commuting to Akion’s workshop with Hermione.
Considering his latest injuries and everything else, he couldn’t engage in outside activities anyway,
so he decided to settle down in the workshop and help with Akion’s research.
His specialty was precisely….
- Rrrrrr!
“These should withstand heat well enough.”
“Ohhhh! This! This is it! Young Master Akion! The diatomaceous earth I’ve been talking your ear off about!”
Earth magic. The field involving materials and ingredients through its use.
He might actually have understood materials better than Akion, who called himself an alchemist!
“How did you know about something like this, Brother?”
“Earth magic tends to be mostly defensive magic. When creating defensive walls, you have to carefully select the materials you use.”
Just as Hermione was sensitive to fluids, and Countess Lucretia was sensitive to heat and fire,
“I found them! Hahaha! Thanks to Young Master Juan, we’ve acquired all the materials for the furnace!”
“I’m simply glad to have been of assistance to the Sword Master.”
Juan Enersis had an uncanny talent for finding where suitable materials were buried and in what quantities.
Thanks to him, construction of the COREX furnace was accelerated.
Was that all?
“Akion. I found the location of the groundwater you were looking for.”
“Heheh, I helped too.”
“You found it already?”
Working together with Hermione, who had returned for the school break, they even located the groundwater!
In fact, Akion had been keeping the possibility of river pollution in mind.
The river could become the source of waterborne epidemics such as cholera and typhoid…
That was why he needed to find groundwater, but Hermione alone hadn’t been able to do it, so he had given up during the previous break…!
“Excellent. As expected of you two.”
“Ahem.”
“Hehe!”
An Enersis was still an Enersis.
Akion was delighted that another excellent experimental apparatus (human) had joined him.
*
And as always, a give-and-take was established.
“I suppose materials science would be the right subject to teach you, Brother.”
“Materials science? I know a bit about alchemy myself, but this is the first I’ve heard of such a discipline….”
Akion began pouring knowledge into him, starting with the physics of materials science.
Strictly speaking, the physics of materials science contained a fair amount of chemistry too. Anyway.
Akion started by hammering in basic science, such as the commonly known phases of matter: solids, liquids, and gases.
“Hooowah…!”
As the process continued, Juan felt his eyes gradually opening.
There were basic phases of matter, but beyond those were special states such as superconductors and superfluids!
With a deep understanding of the materials and substances he used and handled, rather than merely knowing that something worked because ‘it was magic,’
Juan felt as though his magical abilities improved simply by listening to Akion’s lectures.
“So that’s why Hermione praised science so fervently in her letter.”
“What? Big Sis sent a letter like that?”
In the midst of that came Juan’s confession.
She had written an entire treatise praising Akion in her letter?
“Big Sis?”
“……”
Hermione, who had been studying fluid mechanics beside them, turned her gaze away.
She had just remembered all the absurdly laudatory nonsense she had written there.
Of course, Juan inadvertently─.
“Ha, do you know what she wrote? ‘The fluid mechanics and countless equations Akion taught me rammed straight into my head without mercy!’”
“Hey!! Why would you tell Akion that?!”
He had stirred up trouble.
“Aagh! Why are you pulling my hair?!!”
“It looks like my sister still doesn’t know the hierarchy. I joined the workshop before you did, you know?! Is feeding your senior a hard time what juniors are supposed to do?!”
“You’ll only be gone for a month or two because of the academy term! What nonsense are you talking about!!”
Naturally, Hermione got into a scuffle with her new sister-in-law(?) after that troublemaking.
The students listening in from the side, Goldie and the Tower Master, looked at each other.
“Even Goldie can tell that siblings are siblings.”
“Mm.”
The two of them realized that Akion’s talent for stirring up trouble was hereditary.
* * *
And so, while the furnace was gradually being built in Akion’s workshop─.
No, in the vacant lot allocated to Akion’s workshop on the very outskirts of Ridasis.
- Clink, clink.
“Stop! Stop right there!”
A group of carriages entered Enersis.
The guards at the gate stopped them for the time being, as the rules required, but….
- Thud, thud, thud!!
“State your affiliation and purpose of visit, uh, uhhh…!!”
Several giant knights, each a head or two taller than him, planted themselves right in front of him.
For the guard, it was a situation that made the breath catch in his throat.
Still, he was a guard.
A cog responsible for maintaining the peace of Enersis!
“I-I don’t know what important person you may be, but state your affiliation and purpose of visit!”
And so he carried out his duty,
- Click.
and a crest was placed politely in his hand.
“Huh, huh?”
The crest showed a dark-blue wolf baring its fangs.
“T-This is!!!”
It was the crest of a family even the guard knew well.
“Grand Duke Volkov─?!!”
The Iron Wolves, one of the Empire’s five grand ducal houses, who firmly guarded the northern front.
“That’s right. Our purpose for visiting is….”
- Click.
A white-haired beauty with a scar over one eye poked her head out of the carriage they had arrived in.
“Inform Delphord, who seeks to break the engagement.”
She ordered it as though it were only natural.
“That we have come to take my future husband, in accordance with the contract.”
“Y-Yes, yes!! Understood─!!!”
“Tell the manor at once!! Hurry─!!”
The Iron Wolves of the North, the Grand Ducal House of Volkov.
Akion’s fiancée from that house had come to Enersis in person.