The next day, Ryo and Abel went about their work without incident. In the evening, as promised, Abel sparred with Ceferino of Five Mountains.
After that, the fateful day came for Ryo. He was in high spirits from the moment he woke up.
“Mwa ha ha! At long last, I’ll achieve my greatest ambition!”
“Do I even wanna know?”
While Abel ate breakfast, Ryo sipped coffee. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” was practically his motto, so it was very unusual for him to skip it like this.
“Ramen!” he said. “Finally, I get to eat glorious ramen! Decades of pain and suffering... You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this day.”
“Decades, huh? Then I sure hope you get what you want, Ryo,” Abel said, his voice genuine.
Those words had an immediate, profound impact on Ryo. He froze in his ecstatic state for several moments. Then, his head slowly turned toward the swordsman, as if Ryo were a rusty automaton coming back to life.
“Are you suggesting this might not be the ramen I’ve been dreaming of?”
“No, no, no.” Frightened by Ryo’s drastic change, Abel desperately shook his head. “But...it couldn’t hurt to be realistic?”
“Well, if this dish isn’t the one I want, then...I’m sorry, but I’ll have to freeze the entirety of Twilightland...”
“You better freaking not, you dumbass!”
For the sake of Knightley’s civil servants, who were simply doing their best to negotiate, Abel prayed that Ryo would get the ramen he wanted.
✦ ✦ ✦
Later that morning, Abel went off to watch several chivalric orders spar. He didn’t mind observing, since he wasn’t required to flatter anyone or anything like that. The problem was that each order of knights belonged to a different one of Twilight’s noble households. When he’d learned that this contest had been organized before the delegation left the Kingdom, he simply shrugged and said, “Dealing with nobility is such a pain.”
After he’d learned about the potential civil war fomenting here, with Twilight’s nobility at the center, his interest had undeniably been piqued. Plus, none of the adventurers had ever met a noble.
While the civil servants were busy with negotiations, Abel was en route to the mock battles, and Ryo was in a carriage on its way to Duchess Alba’s estate, Myu and her four party mates were escorted into the castle and to the archduke’s parlor.
The delegation had chosen C-rank adventurer parties with many magic users to complement the escort of knights, who specialized in close combat. Since women supposedly had a greater affinity for magic than men, there were more female magicians than males among adventurers.
Even then, Myu’s party, Valkyrie, was still an outlier—with all three of its magicians being women. Perhaps that explained why the party got along so well, with the five usually traveling everywhere together. Naturally, when Myu’s grandfather, the archduke of Twilightland, summoned Myu, the others had come along. Of course, they’d received permission to join her.
The archduke in question, Cyrus Theo Santayana, was waiting for them in the parlor.
“Hello, Grandfather...” Myu said as they walked through the door.
“It’s been too damn long, girl.”
At that moment, he wasn’t the ruler of a country, but a grandfather simply happy to see his granddaughter.
✦ ✦ ✦
The practice field lay on the outskirts of the capital of Thebes. By the time Abel arrived, the four chivalric orders were already in formation.
As soon as Abel stepped out of the carriage, four well-dressed young men approached him.
“Master Abel, thank you for coming. I am Roberto, Count of Lillo, and I’ll be presiding over this mock battle.”
“I’m Abel, an A-rank adventurer from Knightley.”
They shook hands. The other three were all nobles as well: two viscounts and a baron. Each man led one of the four orders of knighthood participating in the mock battle.
Abel surveyed the knights.
This is quite the gathering of young nobles, huh? Each order has about forty knights... I’m surprised a baron has such a large fighting force. I don’t think Kenneth has a single one. Maybe these guys are hotheads playing at war, though.
“Please follow me to the seats, Master Abel,” Count Lillo said. “After the battle, we’d appreciate any thoughts and observations you could share.”
“Understood,” Abel replied.
✦ ✦ ✦
As Ryo passed beneath the gates of Alba’s ducal estate, he was reminded of a national university located in the suburbs outside Tokyo. He’d attended a private university in the city, but the local national university, which had moved to a larger campus, resembled the ducal estate. Of course, the duchess’s manor didn’t stand five stories high...
Even so, Ryo couldn’t help but stare at a nearby row of elegant buildings.
Surely that’s the library... Is that the concert hall? Ah, that one must be the observatory!
Why was an observatory here? It was a mystery for the ages...
Eventually, the carriage stopped in front of a particularly magnificent building. When Ryo disembarked, a red carpet unfurled across the ground, with butlers and maids lining both sides.
“Welcome!” they called, their voices perfectly synchronized. There wasn’t a discordant note among them.
Ryo was quickly overwhelmed. This sight alone showed him the power of the House of Alba. If you saw a manor’s staff lounging around, you’d assume their masters weren’t anyone special. The reverse was true as well: A staff moving in perfect sync could only belong to someone truly impressive.
Every butler and maid here knew they represented the Alba name and that their conduct reflected on their masters. They were trained daily to be accountable for every one of their actions, and that is professionalism.
Of course, people in power paid high salaries and generous benefits to retain talent like this. Having the money and foresight to invest in and sustain such staff was its own mark of competence. Plus, to keep their subordinates this polished, those in power had to be professionals themselves. The proof was here in Alba’s estate, in its butlers’ and maids’ actions.
It left Ryo with a lot to think about.
Ryo was brought to a large dining room. On Earth, he’d seen the Palace of Versailles and the State Guest House in Akasaka Palace in photographs, but that hadn’t prepared him for how extraordinarily large the ducal estate was. It felt like the designers had taken every dimension of typical furnishings and doubled—no, tripled—them.
An enormous table dominated the center of the room. At the far end of the room, Ryo could just make out what seemed to be a person. Yep, you read that right. The room was so massive that Ryo couldn’t immediately tell whether someone was there with him.
It’s bigger than a gymnasium...
Why would anyone need a dining room this big? There was no point in wondering about it, so Ryo put those thoughts aside for now and followed a butler to the other side of the room.
The person Ryo had spotted earlier walked toward him and resolved into Duchess Agnes Alba, the bewitching beauty he’d met at the banquet.
“Master Ryo,” she said, “thank you for coming.”
“Your Grace, I’m deeply honored by your invitation today.”
“Oh, pish posh. Enough with the formalities. Please, call me Agnes. We are fellow water magicians, after all, hm?”
Agnes favored him with a terrifyingly seductive smile, somewhere between a grin and a smirk.
Ryo was entranced for a moment. “Um... Right, of course, Lady Agnes.”
The reason Ryo kept his composure wasn’t because of his fortitude but the aroma that wafted through the dining room, stirring fond memories...
“Ah, a marvelous scent, don’t you agree? Let’s leave the heavier topics for later and eat first, shall we? Come, this way.”
Agnes motioned for Ryo to sit, then claimed the chair next to his. As soon as they sat, the staff entered bearing serving trays.
A server carefully removed the lid from one of the bowls.
“Ohhh...” Ryo groaned.
Tonkotsu ramen... It was exactly what he’d wanted! The butler carefully placed their meals in front of them.
Suddenly, Ryo noticed something strange: the utensils.
“A fork, chopsticks, and a Chinese spoon...”
Yes, chopsticks. He hadn’t seen chopsticks since leaving the Forest of Rondo, in neither the Kingdom nor Twilightland.
“While you can eat ramen with a fork, evidently, the proper way to eat it is with what they call ‘hashi’ in the east. But they’re a bit tricky and take some getting used to, so I’ve prepared a fork as well.”
“Wooow...”
Today, Ryo learned that, even on Phi, there was an eastern culture that ate with chopsticks...
“Now, let’s eat while it’s warm.”
“Let’s.” Ryo instinctively clapped his hands together. “Itadakimasu.”
Agnes looked surprised by the phrase, a Japanese word said before a meal, but Ryo’s attention was already gone...
Staring down at the bowl of ramen, Ryo held the chopsticks in his right hand and the Chinese soup spoon in his left, both perfectly positioned. First, he ladled some broth into his spoon and brought it to his mouth.
“Delicious...” he muttered, unable to help himself.
Agnes watched, satisfaction etched on her face. Then she took a sip of broth herself.
After drinking two spoonfuls, Ryo started on the noodles, which were medium-thick. Ryo didn’t care for thin noodles or the fundamentalists who insisted they were the only option for tonkotsu ramen. The taste was the only thing that mattered to Ryo. Taste was king, and that meant that even tonkotsu ramen with extra-thick noodles was king too if it tasted delicious!
Now, back to the bowl in front of him...
Slurp.
Chomp.
Ryo took his first bite, then his second, third, and fourth...