Chapter 142
That day, Raul was harvesting turnips in the Roseburg estate's garden (which was really a vegetable patch) when a servant told him a friend had come to visit. Still dressed in his work clothes and straw hat, he happily headed for the main house.
The guest hadn't been let inside yet and was waiting at the entrance.
Since the visitor had arrived without warning, the servant had probably been unsure whether to bring him into the main house or to the separate building Raul used personally.
Raul was the head of the Roseburg family, but his grandmothers held all the real power. If he brought the guest into the main house's sitting room, his grandmothers would definitely hear about it.
And then he wouldn't be able to enjoy playing with his friend, so the servant had made the right call.
Raul rounded the flowerbed and waved at the group waiting by the door with a bright smile. “Hey!”
“Cyril, Monica! And Claudia, too. It's been ages! And, um, who's that over there...?”
There were four visitors: Cyril, Monica, Claudia, and a black-haired man wearing a hat pulled low and glasses.
He was thoroughly disguised, with a scarf covering his mouth, but Raul attended ceremonies often enough to recognize his face.
“Uh, I probably shouldn't call you Your Highness, right?”
Raul knew the truth behind the commotion surrounding the Second Prince, and had also heard a little about how the man in question had become Monica's apprentice.
But while he'd spoken with His Highness before, he'd never spoken with Monica's apprentice.
“...Should I call you ‘Mysterious Person’?”
Mysterious Person—that was a pretty good name, if he said so himself.
“It has a nice mysterious ring to it!” Raul was congratulating himself when Cyril said with a grim expression,
“Wouldn't it be better to give it a more noble air and call him ‘Mysterious Personage’?”
“I'm Isaac Walker. Pleased to meet you.”
Pushing Cyril aside, Isaac—the former Mysterious Personage—offered Raul his hand.
Raul gripped it firmly in return.
“Oh, got it! Nice to meet you, Isaac!”
Raul shook his hand enthusiastically, then turned to Claudia.
Raul visited the Hioone estate, so he knew Claudia reasonably well, too.
“Hey, Claudia! Long time no see!”
“………………”
“I heard you married the son of Baron Maywood. Congratulations! Oh, take some vegetables with you! I was harvesting turnips just now!”
“...Brother. What about your business?”
Claudia tilted her head languidly and looked at Cyril.
At Claudia's prompt, Cyril pressed his lips together with a frown, looking troubled.
Monica, standing beside him, was also fidgeting with a worried expression.
“What's with those faces? Do you have stomachaches? Want to use the bathroom?”
The Roseburg estate was old, but they'd renovated the interior recently, so the bathrooms were pretty nice. Not as nice as the palace's, of course, but Raul was proud of them.
There was also a bathroom in the separate building Raul used for himself, but he wanted the two of them to see the nice bathroom in the main house if they were going to use one... As Raul seriously considered the bathroom situation, Cyril spoke with a grave expression.
“Raul, I have a favor to ask.”
“Sure, I can show you where the bathroom is!”
“Fight me in a duel.”
Cyril was serious. And Raul knew Cyril wasn't good at joking.
As Raul stared at him in blank astonishment, Cyril hurriedly pulled something that looked like a letter from his bag and held it out.
“I even wrote a formal challenge. Please accept it.”
“...Why?”
He'd been happily looking forward to his friend visiting, and now, for some reason, he'd been challenged to a duel and handed a letter of challenge. He had no idea what was going on.
While Raul stood there bewildered, Claudia smiled wickedly, like a man-eating witch.
“My, you're amazing, big brother. Not everyone could manage to confuse a man renowned for confusing other people.”
Claudia wore a smile of dark delight, but didn't seem inclined to explain.
Monica's mouth opened and closed as she stammered, but she was too flustered to form any words.
Raul had no choice but to look at Isaac.
“Hey, could you explain what's going on, Mysterious Person?”
“Isaac Walker.”
“Right, sorry. Could you explain what's going on, Isaac?”
＊ ＊ ＊
Saying they shouldn't just stand around chatting, Raul led Monica and the others to a separate building on the Roseburg estate.
It was a two-story house about a five-minute walk from the main house, apparently used by Raul and Melissa as a laboratory.
Both the main house and the separate building of the Roseburg estate were, to put it kindly, full of character—or, to be frank, old.
Each decoration and piece of furniture in the house was an antique, giving a sense of the Roseburg family's history.
“The rooms on the right are my sister's, the ones on the left are mine, and the dining room in the middle is shared.”
Raul led Monica and the others to the dining room in the center, rummaged in a cupboard, and pulled out some baked sweets.
The room was cluttered. The cupboard doors were left open, with bottles of chemicals, beauty treatments, and dried-up herbs and mushrooms all tossed in together.
There were also some dishes with bright patterns that had recently become fashionable. Those were probably Melissa's.
“Is Melissa-san away today?”
Monica asked, and Raul nodded as he brewed herbal tea.
“Yeah, Sis went to the capital to see a play. She's been really into a young actor from her favorite troupe lately.”
“I see...”
It was a little disappointing, but Monica was glad Melissa seemed to be doing well today, too.
Raul took baked sweets filled with raisins from the snack cupboard and arranged them on a plate as he spoke.
“So how'd things end up with me and Cyril having a duel?”
Monica wondered the same thing: how had it come to this?
Cyril clenched his gloved hand and opened his mouth with a pained expression.
“It's a trial to gain the recognition of the ancient magical artifact, the Knowledge Keeper's Key.”
“The Knowledge Keeper's Key? Oh, the one in the Ascald Library's Forbidden Books Chamber! I see, Cyril's finally been recognized as a full-fledged member by Marquis Hioone! And a trial set by an ancient magical artifact? That's so cool!”
The man who'd been challenged to a duel was beaming with joy at his friend's success. He was a cheerful fellow.
It was impressive that he'd immediately recognized the Knowledge Keeper's Key by name.
Monica nibbled on a raisin-filled baked sweet and murmured,
“Raul-sama, you know a lot...”
“My grandmothers used to take me to the Ascald Library all the time when I was a kid. And the Ascald Library Association's officers include my grandmothers, and my grandmothers, and my grandmothers!”
“...Um?”
Monica had heard a little about how Raul and Melissa's grandmothers held the real power in the Roseburg family. But she didn't know who these “grandmothers” actually were or how the family was structured.
As Monica was bewildered by the sudden appearance of multiple grandmothers, Cyril cut in.
“Lady Abigail Roseburg, Lady Paulina Roseburg, and Lady Ramona Roseburg?”
“That's right! You remember them well, Cyril!”
Raul clapped his hands, and Cyril snorted, “Of course.”
“There are a whole lot of grandmothers in my family. The third Thorn Witch was my great-grandmother, but she's passed away... She was one of three sisters, and the other two are still alive. Then there are four more grandmothers, their daughters.”
The third Thorn Witch had been the eldest of three triplet sisters.
The second and third sisters of that trio apparently currently ran the Roseburg family.
“When I was a kid, I could never tell who was whose sister or mother. My great-grandmothers were triplets, so there were three of the same face, you know? They all look like grandmothers to me, so I just call them all ‘Grandmother.’ When they're together, I call them Grandmother Abigail, Grandmother Paulina, and so on.”
“I-I see...”
It was true that having a great-grandaunt, grandaunt, and grandmother all in one house could get confusing.
Monica couldn't really relate, but big families probably had their own troubles.
“Uh, we got off topic. So the Knowledge Keeper's Key picked me as Cyril's opponent in a duel? ...Why would it do that?”
“You'll have to ask it yourself.”
Saying so, Cyril removed the leather glove from his right hand. On the exposed middle finger of his right hand, the Knowledge Keeper's Key, Sophocles, gleamed with rainbow hues.
'Hmm? Hmmm? Where are we?'
The Knowledge Keeper's Key, Sophocles, which had been mostly hidden beneath a leather glove during the journey from Southdoll to the Roseburg estate, spoke in a bewildered voice.
Cyril silently raised his right hand and turned the gemstone toward Raul.
Raul raised one hand, beaming.
“Hey!”
'...What is this man?'
“I'm Raul Roseburg, the fifth Thorn Witch! Nice to meet you!”
Even when greeting a ring, Raul was as cheerful as ever. His white teeth gleamed.
The Knowledge Keeper's Key fell silent for a few seconds, seemingly confused, then let out a groan.
'The Thorn Witch? You? ...Y-you're a man! How can this be?! No... No...'
The Knowledge Keeper's Key's voice was steeped in profound, profound despair.
'I'd heard the current Thorn Witch looked a lot like the first, so I imagined a voluptuous, stunning beauty...'
“Don't make vulgar comments while you're on someone's finger.”
Cyril turned his hand palm-down and slammed the ring's gemstone against the table. He was becoming less and less restrained.
Isaac, who'd been watching the exchange, rested his chin on his hand and murmured quietly,
“I suspected as much, but... its knowledge is rather skewed, isn't it?”
That must have been the Knowledge Keeper's Key.
Claudia looked at Isaac with unconcealed exasperation.
“...Yes. Even though it calls itself the Knowledge Keeper, its knowledge is outdated. It only knows what's written in the books in the Ascald Library.”
Monica understood.
That explained why the Knowledge Keeper's Key didn't recognize Monica, one of the Seven Sages, or Isaac, a member of the royal family.
After all, Isaac was being treated as a pie maker even though Cyril kept calling him “Your Highness.”
Did it think of him as some pie maker nicknamed “Your Highness”? If so, that would make Monica the pie maker's master.
As Monica was thinking about that, Claudia spoke loudly enough for the Knowledge Keeper's Key to hear, too.
“In other words, he's a meddlesome old man who only pretends to be learned... So when will this farce finally be over?”