“As punishment, you’ll be doing chores for the rest of the day! First, you’ll do everyone’s laundry, then you’ll clean and organize the entire place, and finally, you’ll weed and maintain the training grounds. You’d better finish everything before nightfall! If you don’t, you’ll be sleeping outside!”
That volume of work was physically impossible to complete in a day—well, without magic, that was.
It could technically be done in no time, but I know these women don’t actually want me to do chores for the sake of doing chores; they just want to punish me.
They’d find something else to complain about as soon as I finished, and that cycle would likely continue until they found a new target.
I’ve attracted their ire, and it’s already proving to be a challenge.
As it turned out, Thibault’s warnings about life in the Royal Knights had proven to be all too accurate.
These girls will get in the way of my investigation... How annoying. What should I do?
As I stood there, weighing my options, the squad leader’s goons returned with buckets, dumping the contents right in front of me. Kitchen waste, mud, and muck splattered across the floor.
I can’t believe they’re willing to dump filth all over their own living space like that. These girls really are something.
The women snickered at the shock on my face. This scene really reminded me of the old Lam’s life before I regained my memories. How nostalgic.
“You’d better hurry up and start cleaning!” one said, cackling.
“You have to wipe everything off, you hear?” another added.
Glancing at her followers, the squad leader smiled triumphantly. She observed me in silence, waiting for my reaction.
I decided to deal with the muck later. First, I needed to deal with these women.
“Are you the one with the highest rank among us?” I asked the squad leader.
“I am. I have the most power out of all the female knights!”
“I see. That makes things much simpler, then.”
Avoiding the filth on the ground, I walked up to the squad leader and enthusiastically patted her shoulder. Her face twisted in pain. It seemed that the spell Char had cast on me activated whenever I made any kind of physical contact with someone who harbored ill will against me.
“O-Ouch!”
“Hmm? Is something the matter, ma’am? Are you hurt anywhere?” I asked, feigning worry as I began patting her arms and hands as if looking for injuries.
I’d even called her “ma’am.” See? I could be polite when I wanted.
Unable to take it anymore, the squad leader let out a loud cry. “Agh... Gya! Aaaah!”
She staggered before eventually collapsing to the floor.
“Ah, ma’am, that’s—” one of her minions tried to warn her, but it was too late.
The squad leader fell to her knees right in the middle of the mess the other women had created earlier. She screamed again as she stood back up. “Aaah! What the hell?!”
“Oh, dear. What a pickle. Your clothes are all dirty, ma’am,” I said.
“Y-You little...! You did something to me, didn’t you?! Every time you touched me, it hurt like crazy! You’re just like those mana wielders! Disgusting!” the woman shouted as she glared at me, not even bothering to hide her true nature anymore.
Just as Thibault said, discrimination against mana wielders was still rampant in this country.
“Are you sure you’re not feeling unwell, ma’am? I will clean up around here, so please get some rest in your room. Besides, you keep yelling. You must be under a lot of stress,” I said with fake concern.
“You bitch...!” The woman narrowed her eyes; she was ready to pounce on me at any moment.
However, she must have recalled the pain that surged through her body whenever I touched her, as she abruptly turned on her heels without another word.
“You’d better clean this all up!” her minions barked at me before trailing after her like shadows.
“All righty, now I’m just going to teleport all this filth to the squad leader’s room, then obediently pluck out the weeds from the training grounds and send those to her room as well. I’ll do the same with the laundry after cleaning it with magic. It’ll land in the muck and get dirty again, but that’s not my problem now, is it?”
From what I’d seen, these women’s solidarity was only surface level. They weren’t friends; they were simply sucking up to the one in charge, so if I managed to calm the squad leader down, the others should follow suit.
I’ll break her spirit so thoroughly that she’ll lose the will to pick on me.
This was a strategy Épée had taught me in my past life, when I became a court mage and had to travel to the royal palace. He’d been worried the court would try to bully me. I never would’ve thought it’d come in handy here, but I also never would’ve been able to come up with something like this on my own, so I was very thankful to him.
“I’m hungry. I suppose I’ll use a detection spell to find some food,” I muttered, doing just that. “Ah, it seems that the cooks from the mess room prepared enough for everyone. I’ll teleport four meals over and share them with my fellow rookies.”
They must’ve been exhausted—both mentally and physically—after the cheering session, so I couldn’t bear to let them go without food. I used another detection spell to find the storage room the three girls had been led to and briskly made my way over there, the food I’d teleported from the kitchen floating beside me.
Unfortunately, there was no durian on the menu today.