Suddenly, the carriage jolted and I felt the shock directly from my seat.
“Whoa!”
“Ow!”
Ooh, my butt hurts. This is why I hate carriages.
The carriages of this world did nothing to absorb vibrations. Perhaps they had never heard of suspension. It seemed I would have to pay another visit to the institute.
“The roads are about due for repairs,” Lord Peylon said.
“The roads are just about all managed by the royal palace, right?” I asked.
Local rulers couldn’t just mess with the roads without permission because of that. All they could do was send word requesting that something be done when problems arose. But roads were always in need of repairs, so a priority hierarchy was inevitably formed. Fortunately, it seemed Peylon was high up on that list. We always got our roads fixed pretty quickly.
Still, carriages? I sure wish we had a faster and comfier way to get around.
“You haven’t been to the royal capital in some time, have you, Lera? I bet that’s exciting,” the earl said, interrupting my train of thought.
“Not really. I don’t remember it at all.”
I only lived in the capital until I was three. And I don’t know if the return of my past life’s memories caused this, but I can barely remember those few years I spent in the capital.
From an envelope I removed the thick piece of paper that was my letter of acceptance. Illuminated by the sunlight filtering through the window, I looked it over. It said that the matriculation of me, Tafelina Duval, had been approved. It also had the name of the academy and some people’s names. I assumed those belonged to the headmaster and vice headmaster or something.
“The academy is also attended by the Aspozat siblings. It looks like you’ll be spending the next few years with them.”
“Really?!”
“Of course. Those three are all children of the nobility. Actually, the older brother, Ville...Winville graduated last June.”
Ville wouldn’t be there, but I could still be with the next oldest son, Loksusad (also known as Loks) and the oldest daughter Colnesia (also known as Colny). Loks was two years older than me and Colny one year, which meant I would spend the next five years with her!
Those siblings belong to House Aspozat, which was located to the southeast of Peylon. Lord Peylon’s younger sister, Viltheoshila (or just Sheila), married into House Aspozat and gave birth to all three siblings.
Since I had been disowned, Sheila had done a lot for me. She was more of a mother to me than my actual mother. Her children and I became friends because they always came with her when she visited the Peylon Earldom. Childhood friends, you might call them.
Ville was dauntless and Loks was devious, but neither of them had the will to win an argument against Colny. Like their mother, all three of them were plenty attractive. All three siblings had gotten their black hair and green eyes from their mother, and Colny had also inherited her mother’s wavy hair.
Naturally, all three siblings were very strong. Ville excelled in pure melee combat, Loks was skilled at imbuing his blade with magic, and Colny’s dual mastery of swordplay and magic was virtually unrivaled. I guess it’s only natural when they’ve got Peylon blood in them.
I, by the way, have never bested Colny in a sword fight, but she has never bested me in a contest of magic.
As we were both girls, I got along with Colny the best. Knowing that she was already attending the academy was super reassuring.
“Now I’m kind of looking forward to reaching the royal capital,” I said.
“That’s good,” Lord Peylon replied cheerfully.
Was he really that excited to send me off to the academy? Of course he was. Only under exceptional circumstances were young nobles exempt from attendance. He probably wanted me to enjoy the life of a normal young lady.
But we all have our limits and living as a normal young lady was beyond mine. Still, I didn’t want to cause trouble for Lord Peylon, so I obeyed and agreed to attend the academy. Peylon and Aspozat were both houses to which I owed a lot. It’s fair to say that I don’t know where I’d be without them. I wanted to pay them back as much as I possibly could. And not just eventually, but at every opportunity.
After that, it was my dream to travel the world. Even in my previous life, traveling the world was practically a pipe dream. Going abroad wasn’t easy when you barely spoke any English. But now I had magic! And with my extraordinary supply of mana, I was sure I could make it work. I could make like an automatic translator or something. With magic, even the toughest challenges could be overcome!
But for the time being, the biggest problem facing me was the noble academy. In light novels and whatnot there’s always bullying among the young ladies, but I figured I’d be fine. After all, I was from the far northern domain of Peylon. Maybe I’d be called a bumpkin? Would fighting back be frowned upon? By that I mean fighting physically and magically. Maybe as long as I didn’t leave any scars.
“Lera, that’s a terrifying look on your face,” Lord Peylon noted. “What are you thinking about?”
Why did he have to be so intuitive at the worst of times?
Our carriage trip from the Peylon Earldom to the royal capital took about a month. You could usually make the journey in about ten days, but we took three times that. Why? Because we stopped at every domain along the way. Lord Peylon rarely left his own domain, so when he did, he had to go around paying all sorts of social calls.
And we didn’t just pop in for visits. We’d stop for luncheons and dinner parties, then it would get late and we’d spend the night here and another there. All in all, we took thirty days for a trip that could be covered in less than a week on horseback. Well, to be fair, that’s if you run the horse to death, so nobody makes the journey that quickly unless it’s an urgent matter.
Then I remembered something. I went at that pace when I was sent away from the royal capital. So getting rid of me was an urgent matter. Huh. Maybe I was just thinking like that because I was so tired of the carriage shaking.
But the trip wasn’t all bad. We made regular stops to rest, and because I knew how to ride a horse I was allowed to borrow a mount from our escorts during isolated stretches of the road.
After our long journey, we finally found ourselves before the royal capital. And I found myself in a very, very bad mood.
“Cheer up already, Lera,” Lord Peylon told me.
“How can I cheer up when I have to wear this?!”
The source of my displeasure was the unfamiliar dress I was in. Back home I was always in the clothes I would wear when going to the Mystic Forest. I couldn’t help it if I found the corset and dress to be suffocating.
I had been forced to put it on earlier that morning. It was a dark brown gown meant for traveling and its hem stopped just above my ankles. It was an admittedly practical design, short on lace and frills.
“When did you even get this dress?”
“Oh, that? Sheila had it prepared earlier this summer. She said it would be necessary.”
“Sheila, you backstabber!”
To think, Sheila would go around dressed like a man when she visited the Peylon Earldom. She was a striking beauty, and not even wearing men’s clothing was enough to prevent her from turning heads. I was never able to wrap my head around the idea that she and that blocky man were siblings.
And she still went behind my back and prepared a dress for me.
“She knew you’d be upset about it, so that’s why we kept it a secret,” Lord Peylon explained. “And it’s not going to be easy getting by without it.”
“Mrghm. I get that...”
The first thing on our agenda was to pay a visit to the noble academy. We still had time before the matriculation ceremony, but we had to do things like see the dorm beforehand. Because it was a noble academy in the royal capital, I understood that I couldn’t just go in my usual casual outfits, but I still wasn’t happy about it.
The carriage continued down the road, and eventually we entered the capital.
“So this is it...” I mumbled as I gazed out the window.
The capital of Ozeria was surrounded by tall, sturdy stone walls. It looked like something out of the background of a video game. The streets were paved with stone and looked quite nice. The buildings facing the major thoroughfares were all four stories high.
“You don’t remember it?” Lord Peylon asked me.
“Not one bit.”