NOVEL NEXT 71 - Brunch with Less Whiny Losers
And so it came to pass that Cousin Beatrice would be staying at the Granavale Estate for the next season specifically to support this harebrained scheme of getting her in tip-top fighting condition.
Everything changed overnight. Raehel moved out of the guest chambers, since the term of her contract was up and she was due back at the university, though she gave him a list of additional exercises he could try and a mailing address. In her haste, she'd left behind her lesson notes. In her place, Beatrice swept in, sending carriage after carriage of stuff from Blackstone Manor to make the guest chambers her own.
He knew why his aunt and uncle wanted this.
The truth was that he'd demonstrated that he was far beyond her level in combat, both by defeating her handily and also nearly single-handedly killing a Monster far beyond expectations.
They'd doubtless also had a chance to see whatever Mercy, agent of the Omnio, did in her Grand Working. They wouldn't have had the context that she was the Princess Angelina Grace Marca Prima Omnio in disguise, just that she was young and extremely powerful.
They also would've seen Raehel, one of the youngest Master Mages in the history of the Empire.
Suffice to say they had ample reason to believe that Beatrice was falling behind, instead of the Granavale Tournament being a rare gathering of prodigies with an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities. And they had no reason at all to suspect that their nephew Archmund Granavale, at the tender age of nine years old, was anything other than a precocious and naturally talented young boy.
Which was why he now had to deal with Cousin Beatrice.
Who was simply not at his level.
Who would doubtless take a rather dim view on his attempts to powerlevel Mary. Even if it was technically legal, and not, under the jurisprudence of the Omnio Empire, slavery.
But still. You couldn't ditch family, even if they were whiny.
"I am not going into the Dungeon with just you and your maid," she said.
"Why not?"
"You came out of that fight in the pit half-dead. Two of those would kill you."
Surprisingly, that was an incredibly reasonable objection not rooted in classism towards Mary.
"I think he just does that to himself," Mary said. "Overworks himself, I mean."
"Do you want to explain to someone why your master ended up dead after exploring a Dungeon? No? Didn't think so," Beatrice said cattily. It was awfully similar to what Archmund would've said himself.
"Well, your parents wanted you to explore the Dungeon—"
"We can bring your new guards, can't we? Isn't that what the Omnio do with their guards?"
"Not until they're sufficiently trained."
"What are they for?"
"Not to be disposed of recklessly," Archmund said. "I want them trained first. You're already moving faster than regular people."
"Yeah, but… I always lose," she said, bitterly, almost whispering the words.
"What was that?" he said. He did his best to keep the taunting out of his voice.
It didn't work.
"I said I always lose," she spat. "To Rory, to you, not always to Gelias but he doesn't count since he's an elf."
Ok, so anti-elven racism might be a thing, unless all elves had a weird habit of acting like teachers in the middle of high stakes fights. He made a mental note of that.
But he could sympathize. He used to have a bad habit of comparing himself to other people, and even now he looked to the Princess Angelina as a metric for the heights of achievable power, with her mastery of lightning and unbound shapeshifting and control of the EM spectrum. Sure, she'd been invested in throughout her entire childhood, but all he saw was the end result.
And she was just around his age. What was a truly powerful individual capable of? The natural world bore disruptions to the order of life and death. Could that be harnessed?
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
But as for his thoughts towards Beatrice, it was just hard to be competitive towards people without such advantages who, as far as he knew, were mentally twenty to thirty years younger than him.
Maybe Beatrice had joined the tournament for some easy wins. A confidence boost, by beating the shit out of some peasants in a place where people wouldn't remember her and judge her.
Which he'd denied in the name of fairness.
Whoops.
But he still thought he was justified to do so.
"Just three of us would be far too risky," he said. "I could show you the training exercises Raehel — she was my magic teacher — taught me, unless you have better ideas?"
She pouted. "Yeah. I do."
The next weekend lunch, Archmund was surprised to see Rorhid Redmont and Gelias Greenroot joining him at the dining table.
"This was your better idea?" he muttered to Beatrice.
She shifted shiftily. "Yeah. I guess."
"My father let you do this?"
"Obviously. He dotes on me almost as bad as he dotes on you."
Archmund was surprised to realize he felt jealous about that.
"Your better idea was dragging two of your friends into danger."
"Friends?" she said, raising her eyebrow.
He'd have to unpack that later.
"They're good fighters," she said. "They always beat me."
"And I beat them," he said. "Pretty handily. So are you sure that it's a good idea?"
"Oh, shut up!" Beatrice said, louder than the whisper they'd been using.
"That's our Betty," Rory said. "Always way too easy to get under her skin.
"You shut up too," Beatrice said.
"Now that I see the two of you next to each other, it's not at all surprising you're cousins," Gelias said.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Beatrice growled.
She'd been provoked by Gelias's air of casual condescension. Archmund wasn't sure either. Had it been a secret? Had she bragged about it?
Archmund wondered if that condescension was a smart person thing, or if that was an elf thing. The truth was of course that he wasn't really an "elf", at least in the sense of the English word. He was a humanoid with pointy ears and an affinity for magic that didn't perfectly map onto his understandings of how human magic worked.
But there were many, many, many different beings that fell under the umbrella of "elf". The oldest, prototypical "elfs" were creatures from Germanic and English myth, akin to fae or nymphs. Elemental spirits, tricksters, otherworldly beings that were equal parts angel or boogeyman. They followed arcane, otherworldly rules to the letter and could be expected to pay their debts, but break their rules and they would be claiming you as payment. Like lawyers.
Then J.R.R. Tolkein had written the Lord of the Rings, and cast elves (specifically spelled as "elves") as a long-lived ethereal elder race. Still of divine origin, deeply in tune with the natural rhythms and magic of the world, but a fleshed-out people with full civilizations of their own, trading the way of tricksy forest spirits for long-lived city builders.
And then everyone had copied Tolkien, putting their own spin on elves, but usually keeping the extended life and affinity for magic. Except for in Japanese cartoon porn, but that didn't count, since porn usually didn't care about worldbuilding anyways.
So the big question was whether Gelias was a wizard elf or a lawyer elf. Other details were less pertinent.
He had the smug condescension of the wizard elf, that was for sure. But it came from a place of improvement and training. At least, Archmund thought it did.
"Oh, you look alike," Gelias said. "Moreso than one would expect is normal."
"I'm surprised you two hadn't met before all this," Rory said.
"We had," Archmund said. "Before the Crylaxan Plague."
Rory nodded silently.
"It is odd," Gelias said, in a tone that suggested he would've pushed up his glasses if he had any, "that you spent so much time with us than with your own flesh and blood, Beatrice."
"Yeah, huh."
"Yeah."
Archmund put that up to geography.
Although their four counties all sat in the Duchy of Agraria, only Granavale County sat in a low-lying flood plain, blessed with a variety of soils and a river. Yet the Duke of Agraria claimed most of the richest lands for his own, leaving Granavale's farmers with just enough spare grain to support a variety of craft industries. But it was for that reason that Agraria, not Granavale, was a breadbasket of the Empire, and why Agraria, not Granavale, was so well-regarded, and why Lord Granavale, not Agraria, had to spend all his time in the Imperial City schmoozing and arranging business contracts for exports of non-necessary craft goods.
(What a horrifically tedious sounding life.)
Redmont, Greenroot, and Blackstone were elevated, sitting on top of mountains and hills. Granavale sat "between" all three of them. Redmont was known for clay. Blackstone for coal. Greenroot for elven lumber, which differed from human lumber in a way that wasn't obvious. All resource-driven and extraction-driven economies. Granavale had been different from them, ever-so-slightly more cosmopolitan, but the opening of the Dungeon had pushed their economies closer in nature to being extractive. At least in theory.
These were his allies. The Duke and Duchess of Agraria might, given their failure to appear, be a threat to his future plans.
"Well, we're all stuck together now," he said.
"Yeah. Stuck," Beatrice said.
"Hey now, Betty," Rory said. "You invited us."
"I didn't want to be the only one to suffer with this guy."
"Heh," Rory said. "Yeah, I can't imagine he goes easy during training."
Well, that was certainly awkward to hear. Mainly since he hadn't been expecting to lead. He'd been hoping to get in some training sessions with Garth, and maybe bring them along.
The fact was they weren't at his level, because they hadn't spent a hundred days doing the equivalent of level-grinding. But even so they'd probably spent the equivalent of at least 20 or 30, even if it wasn't to exhaustion. They were far above the level of people who used Gemgear.
And Gemgear got you up to speed fast, but it sealed away your possibilities. Beatrice, it seemed, had a proper Gem, even if Rory had a Gemstone Quarterstaff and Gelias had some elven power of Attunement.
"I'll need to think this over," Archmund said, steepling his fingers, his mood darkening.
He would need to understand their capabilities. What they could do, and what they could achieve. The Skills they had, and the Skills they were on the verge of unlocking. Who could fight together as a team, and who would hinder each other in proximity. Every edge he could get.
"Because the last time I was underprepared, people died."