She swung Asmodeus back with a swift motion. The sword protested this, complaining about being used as a mere cudgel rather than a noble blade, but she snapped it back into its sheath.
As if on cue, cheers erupted from the crowd.
“Wow, little lady, that was amazing! So strong!”
“Huh?”
The blacksmith from earlier was praising her, too, along with everyone else.
It was strange seeing all these muscular men with thick arms and equally thick chest hair singing her praises like this, alternating between “little lady, little lady” and “amazing, amazing!”
Hmm. Yeah.
Then she recalled how when Blade knocked down the baby dragon with one blow before, he kept saying, “This is normal! Totally normal!” as everyone around him watched in abject shock. She thought she understood his side of things a little now.
I mean…this much is pretty normal, right…?
✦ ✦ ✦
Later, the whole class was busy doing their usual training at the usual Proving Ground.
“Anna!”
Earnest, engaged with her afternoon practice session, was corralled by Yessica and the other latecomers.
“Anna! It’s here again, Anna!”
“It was sitting by the school gate! A wolf! A wolf! The triangle head and everything! In the most perfect pose! And the tail! Just the tail was going back and forth!”
Yessica was still calm, but Claire was panting for breath. Earnest had strictly ordered it to not go in through the school gate, and apparently, it was sticking to that command.
They had already given the magic beast a name. Given the red tone of his fur, he was now officially Redwolf. People were already calling him just Wolfy, though.
“Aren’t you being a little cold to your new boyfriend?”
“Who’s my boyfriend? I’m treating him far better than you ever treated your entourage of hot bodyguards.”
Earnest always resented how this wench had so many men fawning over her.
“But lycans can get imprinted like that, too, huh? I had no idea.”
“Oh, I know what it’s like! I don’t think he has an ‘honored Father’ thing going on like me, though. It’s more like ‘Master,’ you know?”
The two magic beasts(?) at school were freely giving their advice to no one in particular.
Back at the forge district, Earnest had given that magic beast a good knock on the head, ordered him to sit, and now she was his best friend in the world. Apparently, he recognized Earnest as the “stronger being,” and ever since then, he had been following her around, which was proving a bit of a problem. In fact, when she gave him a name, that alone seemed to evolve his intelligence a step further. Now he was capable of speaking in broken sentences. “You, strong. I, fight you,” sort of thing—and in this really low, rumbling voice. It made the female students squeal like mad.
“A name is a vital, indispensable factor in the formation of the ego. Before I was given the name Iona by Claire, there was about a twenty percent decibel difference in SN-ratio clarity before and afterward.”
“I’m not listening…”
“Hee-hee-hee! With my high-spec functionality, it’s quite simple for me to guess why you are so fidgety today, Earnest.”
“I’m not fidgety!”
“Hey, Anna, if you don’t let him out of his ‘sit’ soon, I think he’s gonna be there for the next five years.”
Magic beasts were different from normal creatures. They could go years without eating or drinking.
“Ugh, fine! All right! You want me to deal with him? I’ll deal with him! Someone bring him in here!”
“He’ll come if you call for him,” noted Yessica. “I told him to come in when he heard you whistle for him.”
Oh. Really? They already arranged all that? Earnest was feeling a bit entrapped as she put her fingers to her mouth…and then glanced at Blade. He had been acting incredibly pouty all day. It made him look pretty ugly. She glanced at him, wondering what was up.
“I bet Blade’s jealous.”
Yessica, noted expert on the subtleties of male-female relationships, whispered into her ear. It made her eyes widen, and then her face light up, and then…
“Okay! ♡ C’mere! C’mon!”
So she whistled with her fingers—a different whistle than what she used to call for Ein and Zwei.
It didn’t even take a second. With a loud bang, a pillar of dust rose up in front of Earnest, and when it settled…
“You, call. I, come.”
The red lycan was there.
“Ahh, damn it, you broke the ceiling…”
Blade was right. There was a new hole in the ceiling of the Second Proving Ground. He didn’t look too happy as he looked up at it, tapping his shoulder with his sword. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. He showed no sign of stopping.
Oh, wow. He’s so irritated! So, soooo irritated!
“So? Go whine to the king about that.”
“Don’t you mean His Majesty? That’s disrespectful.”
Ah-ha-ha-ha! Blade called me “disrespectful”!
She was rolling on the floor internally. It took everything she had to fight back the laughter as she retained her cool Empress exterior.
“Atten-shun!”
Everyone training in the Proving Ground stopped what they were doing and turned toward her.
“All right, everyone, we’ve got a real good practice partner for you today. He’s not quite as much of a super-being as the super-being we have…and not as much of a monster as General Dionne, either. He’s just a little bit stronger than us. A real good training partner. Okay?”
Based on their last engagement, Earnest would put him below herself and Lunaria, but above Sophie and Iona. Now that he had been named, though, he was a step more intelligent. If he played his cards right, he might’ve been a match for the Scions of Flame and Ice. For both the junior and senior classes, having an opponent only slightly better than them was a welcome new development.
“You okay with that, too, Redwolf?”
“I can, become, stronger?”
“You sure can. I guarantee it, in fact.”
“I, do it.”
The answer was simple as it was immediate.
Ugh! Come on! Stop being so cute!
Now Earnest understood a little bit why the girls were fussing over him. More than a little bit, even.
The sword at her waist trembled. She tapped at the hilt with one hand, as if patting its head. You’re cute, too, Asmodeus, she thought to herself—and it fell silent after that.
“All right, everyone! Time to kick off the next round of our extremely practical on-the-ground training!”
Ignoring the sulking Blade, everyone began practicing in what had now become a pretty convivial environment.