Chapter 141
***
For anyone who has ever kept a cat, they say it's hard to put into words the awkward feeling when a cat brings home something strange from outside.
A sparrow is one thing, but if it brings back a live mouse and spits it out, your heart really drops.
Of course, I haven't kept one myself, so I don't know what that feels like.
I only have a rough idea because that's what a medical school classmate of mine said after moving to the countryside.
But now, I thought I might finally understand that feeling a little.
“Erika.”
After saving the dark mage and coming home, I took off Shun Isa's crow mask.
Then, quietly during dinner, I called out to Eri.
Eri, who had been eating Schweinshaxe with impressive enthusiasm, froze.
She must have guessed that something serious was coming because I was calling her by her full name after so long.
“Um... why, Teacher... no, Young Master?”
With no ears listening in, she still bothered to correct my title as she replied.
She looked at me from the head seat of the table and waited for what came next.
I wiped the corners of my mouth with a napkin and spoke.
“I heard it from Karl. I had no idea the Red Demon who hunts dark mages was you.”
“Uh... um... sorry?”
“Why are you apologizing?”
I hadn't even gotten to the main point yet.
Was she apologizing first because she thought she'd be scolded?
“I haven't said anything yet, Eri.”
“Then you're not going to scold me?”
“I didn't say I wouldn't scold you either.”
If that was what she was thinking, then yes, she was right.
I hadn't had a chance to say anything when the dark mage suddenly came into the infirmary entrance, but
there was something I needed to bring up.
“I'll give you a chance to defend yourself.”
“...I'm sorry for taking part in something dangerous without telling Young Master.”
“Why is that wrong?”
“I promised you I wouldn't get hurt for no reason, remember?”
Strictly speaking, that was a promise made to Shun Isa, but
since the only people at dinner were me, Freya, and Eri, I didn't point that out.
Instead, I corrected her misunderstanding.
“I'm not trying to scold you for that.”
“Huh? You're not scolding me for doing something dangerous?”
“I can't exactly scold you for that once you decided to become a hero.”
I'm not living Eri's life for her, nor do I own her.
I can't exactly stop her from working toward her own dream, can I?
If she were doing something needlessly dangerous, like rooftop parkour because she was bored, I'd scold her as her guardian,
but at the very least, hunting dark mages wasn't pointless danger.
“Then...?”
“What I want to ask about is this.”
Clink.
A crumpled silver bullet was placed on the table.
It was a holy-power bullet taken from a dark mage's liver.
A single round was worth the equivalent of one or two houses.
“I don't remember giving you this, so how did this happen, Erika?”
“...”
Eri broke out in a cold sweat and looked away.
I guess this is the kind of situation people mean when they say you can hear someone's eyes rolling.
Freya, who had been eating elegantly, also looked at Eri as if she had just remembered something.
“Come to think of it, sis. I do take dark mage arrest requests with you often, but this is the first time I've seen this bullet. It looks like a special bullet, so where did you get it?”
Eri's eyes darted around helplessly.
Before long, her gaze settled on me.
“...I stole it from your safe, Young Master.”
As expected.
I knew it.
Students at the Academy are restricted in what outside equipment they can bring in.
Only special catalysts or gear for magic, or magical tools, are allowed in limited quantities; all equipment used within the Academy grounds has to be bought with the student's own allowance.
The reason, of course, was to improve their skills.
Just as a melon being tasty doesn't mean melon bread gets to count as tasty too,
the point was that they wouldn't let gear make up for a difference in skill.
For the record, family heirlooms passed down through generations are considered the family's strength, so they count as a hero's power, but that's not important right now.
In any case, in a place like this Academy, it was hard to imagine Eri could have gotten this silver bullet with just her allowance.
Which meant...
“Well... just in case. If things got dicey, I needed some way to protect myself. So as a backup...”
“Sis. Watch your word choice.”
“For safety, I just borrowed one.”
At that, my gaze moved to the crumpled silver bullet.
Could that really be called borrowing?
Reading the meaning behind my look, Eri shrank even more.
“Honestly, I didn't know there would be four dark mages in this operation. If Freya or Senior Jenny got put in danger because of me, that wouldn't be good either.”
“So you saw them and started by cutting the number down by one?”
“Yep!”
Maybe she'd forgotten she was being scolded, because she nodded proudly.
She looked like a retriever wagging its tail after getting its head patted instead of being scolded.
I answered that smile with one of my own.
“Good judgment, Eri. Thanks to you, no one got hurt, and you made a great contribution.”
“Hehe.”
“But...”
Bonk!
“Eek!”
“I can't just let you get away with taking from my safe without saying a word.”
“Hiiing.”
“I'll be telling the Academy about this. A student stole from a professor's safe, so the Academy will hand down a punishment.”
Well, this was a results-oriented world, so there wouldn't be any heavy punishment.
After all, stealing a professor's belongings and capturing four dark mages was a huge accomplishment.
Probably just some volunteer hours, plus a deduction from grades and allowance.
But the deducted grades and allowance would be a drop in the bucket compared to the points and rewards earned from the dark mage arrests, so practically it would amount to just volunteer hours.
When I explained that, Eri's eyes went wide.
“Huh? You're not mad about the theft?”
“Why would I be mad about something like that?”
Silver bullets?
I stopped caring about those ages ago.
I might have cared back when Eri and I were running the clinic alone in those scruffy(?) days, but there's no reason to care now.
Back then we were selling only vaccines, Viagra, and antibiotics...
Comparing the days when we only sold quinine and insulin to now would be ridiculous.
Now that I've become a saint, I can buy silver bullets at a discount from the church.
In practice, just sleeping and waking up for two days would cover the cost.
So even if she secretly stole one bullet...
“I didn't even know about it, so whatever.”
Of course, they were still valuable, since even the church had a hard time making them.
Even so, I wasn't all that angry about the fact that she'd stolen a bullet.
In terms of feeling, it was about like my little sister borrowing a pencil from my room.
“What's more important than a silver bullet like that is that you two don't get hurt. As long as you didn't get hurt because of it, that's a relief.”
“Young Master...!”
But Eri and Freya seemed to have taken that in a different way.
“Really? Really, I'm more precious than that bullet?”
“Thank you for saying that, older brother.”
I didn't need to spoil the warm mood, so I just let that misunderstanding slide.
However, there was one thing I needed to bring up.
“Pericia.”
“Yes, what is it?”
I called out to the elf guard, who had been standing there blankly as if she didn't exist during the meal.
“Did you perhaps not know Eri was taking the silver bullet?”
“I knew. She came by when Sir Yulian was away from the manor that morning, seeing patients at the infirmary.”
“Then why did you let her take it?”
“Because she said it was an errand from Sir Yulian, I believed her.”
At Pericia's words, Eri clamped her mouth shut.
“Um...”
“Erika?”
“But thanks to it, no one got hurt, right?”
“I'll be telling the Academy about this too.”
“Waaah! Anything but toilet cleaning!”
Ignoring Eri's plea, we continued dinner.
And so, except for Eri having brought back a dark mage, we spent a day no different from usual.
***
The rumor that Erika had 'yet again' captured a dark mage spread through the Hero Department in no time.
The reactions were all over the place.
— “As expected, she's the kind of older sister who's ridiculously good at sparring.”
— “Her studies are a little... well, though.”
The type that calmly acknowledged it.
— “I heard the Black Saint was picked up from the slums and raised by the Nihirit family, right?”
— “I heard she earned this by stealing a self-defense bullet from Professor Yulian's manor?”
— “What? If that's all it takes, I could do that too. Anyway, what else would you expect from someone from the slums? Trashy roots don't go away.”
The type that interpreted the rumor however suited their jealousy.
And,
“Big sis! I've heard all about your exploits!”
The type burning with competitive spirit.
Most of those people were students who had known Erika for a long time.
Among them, the standout was Karl, a second-year Hero Department student and a sword fanatic.
“Kyaaah. This little brother's heart was warmed by hearing of your exploits, big sis.”
“Hey, Karl. Long time no see.”
“Senior Karl! Hello, good morning! Sis! You have to call him senior inside the Academy!”
Freya, caught in the middle, fidgeted anxiously.
Seeing Erika casually address such a lofty senior with familiar speech, Freya hurriedly reminded her that they were inside the Academy.
“Sis. At least inside, you should address him as senior.”
“Hmm... then, Senior Karl?”
Freya was working hard today too as Erika's externally attached social skills.
But Freya's efforts were ruined by a fool obsessed with swords.
“No, big sis. I'm fine. Just call me Karl.”
“You heard him, Freya? He said just to call him that.”
“Haah...”
In an instant, this absurd family-tree mess where a senior called a junior big sis made Freya's heart even heavier.
Whether she liked it or not,
Karl and Eri left Freya behind and sank into their own world.
“Karl, long time no see.”
“Long time no see, big sis.”
“So you came looking for me all of a sudden? Aren't you supposed to be taking the second-year dark magic class? We're going to a first-year lecture right now.”
“Ah, well, about that.”
Karl suddenly straightened up, thumped his chest, and said,
“Hearing of your exploits set my heart ablaze, so I came to accompany you on your path.”
“Don't talk like a knight. I can't understand you.”
“I want to join the hero party in advance, because it feels like big sis will achieve a feat in the future that no one else could ever achieve.”
Then Eri replied with a bright smile.
“Yep, no way!”
“What? Why not? Is it because we already have too many in the front line?”
“No?”
Eri shook her head.
“You can't because you're a man.”
“Is that the problem?”
“Of course it's a problem. The hero party isn't some childhood game, is it?”
And then came Erika's logic.
“Even the army keeps its platoons single-sex, so there's no reason a hero party should be any different. If you were a man, think about it. Even bathroom and shower schedules would get awkward, wouldn't they?”
“I can skip washing and use the bathroom outside.”
“...”
For a moment, Freya looked at Karl with a disgusted expression.
Only then did I think I understood why Karl's nickname at the Academy was 'Sword Freak.'
He was the kind of person with problems in just about every way besides swordsmanship.
Unaware of that look, Karl said proudly,
“Sleeping outdoors is fine too.”
“Still no.”
“Why not!?”
“What if you and one of our party members end up hooking up?”
As a bonus, Erika made the gesture she'd learned as a child in Limbus Pit, the one meaning intercourse between a man and a woman.
Naturally, Freya's reaction was dramatic.
“Sis! Please!!!”
Freya wasn't the only one who was flustered.
“Huh? Huh??”
Though he'd known Erika for years, Karl still couldn't get used to her D-sector antics.
Separate from the shock, though, the persuasive effect was undeniable.
Enough that even that stubborn Karl immediately agreed.
“If that's the reason, then it can't be helped.”
“Sorry. That's why I named the hero party Sisters.”
Karl nodded.
In the middle of that, perhaps suddenly remembering something, he tilted his head.
“But, big sis.”
“Yeah?”
“Didn't you say before that if you became a hero and founded a clan, you'd recruit someone called Young Master Yulian as your strategist?”
“That's right.”
“But isn't that person a man?”
“...Huh?”
Eri's eyes grew as round as moons.
“...I didn't know that.”
Freya silently looked at the back of her big sister's head.
Along with the perfectly reasonable question of how someone like that could possibly cast such complicated spells.