"Are you planning to fatten me up with sweet snacks?"
"I wouldn't dare, Shizune-sama."
"Then why do you keep bringing such nice snacks? I can't eat any more."
Aric smiled helplessly at the girl who was still trying to shove the little cake into her mouth even though her cheeks were puffed up like a hamster's. Normally, a little girl like Shizune would never get to eat sweets this freely unless her older brothers were spoiling her.
"Shizune-sama, it's almost time. It would be bad if your mother found out you've been eating so many snacks."
When the little girl heard her mother mentioned, she swallowed everything in her mouth in one gulp and used a white handkerchief to wipe her mouth elegantly.
"I think it's time. Let's go and join this poor people's celebration. I want to go home quickly."
"Please be more elegant, Ms. Shizune, they are not poor, they are commoners."
"Yes, yes, that's what I said."
When Aric saw the assistant in charge of collecting the dishes blushing with anger, he realized that this little girl and the old man next to her had equally poisonous tongues.
It wasn't surprising to Aric that such poisonous words were coming out of the mouth of a girl who had looked so cute at first glance until a moment ago, because every noble under the Count's command had already heard the rumors about the Count's daughter's poisonous personality.
It was because of this behavior that many nobles admired the Count's daughter. Normally nobles don't say what they think, they say what they want the other person to hear, which makes the gap between low-level nobles and high-level nobles widen.
A girl like Shizune, who had made a habit of saying whatever came into her mouth, didn't look like a high-level noble at all, but everyone was happy about it. At least the lower-class nobles were unlikely to offend Shizune unknowingly, because when Shizune didn't like something, she wasn't afraid to make it clear.
Normally this wouldn't have been allowed to happen in a high-ranking noble family, but Count Karl was known for his fondness for his daughters. The fact that Count Karl had two daughters and four sons contributed greatly to this.
When Aric saw Shizune and the old butler leave the room, he slapped his assistant hard on the head before running after them.
"Please bring minor side character one and minor side character two to the stage."
The announcer's call was followed by the applause of the crowd, and two boys my age came onto the stage with wooden swords in their hands.
At the announcer's second call, the boys began a three-game duel. There was only one rule in the duel, and that was that your sword had to make contact with your opponent. Just one contact and you lose, like...
While the duel went on, a lot of people were eating popcorn-like snacks, but I could tell by my sense of smell that they were something sweet. Maybe it was some kind of tradition to cook and hand out these snacks every year at this time.
I turned my head a bit more and looked at the part where there used to be a statue of an unknown hero, but which had now been turned into some kind of VIP audience section. It was surprising that the statue of the hero was a bronze-looking wooden carving, but what was more surprising was the pink-haired girl sitting in the head seat of this VIP section. Seeing my gaze, she immediately raised her hand and started waving at me, and that was the first time I regretted wanting to walk the path of goodness.
When this girl, whom I had learned was the second daughter of an important noble, looked at me and waved, the attention of the crowd naturally turned toward me. Even though I hid behind the other children waiting in line to fight, it was already too late.
Inwardly, I started cursing myself for not leaving this girl to die. If someone had told me earlier that I would regret doing a favor for a little girl this much, I probably would have just looked at them, smiled, and said there was no point in arguing with fools.
Maybe this was the regret that the note at the end of my good-or-evil mission spoke of, I thought.
Meanwhile, the old butler narrowed his eyes and looked at the extraordinarily handsome little boy who was trying to hide himself.
"Young lady, may I ask how you know that boy?"
Shizune looked up at her father's most trusted subordinate with a disappointed expression.
The old butler bit his tongue as he waited for the little girl to answer, because in his eyes the look on his master's daughter's face was too cute to bear. He could hardly stop himself from making a mistake and patting his master's daughter on the head.
"He is Yuto, the swordsman I told you about. If he was so close, why didn't you find him until now? Or were you really not looking for him?"
The old butler didn't react for a few seconds, and then looked again at the boy who was trying to hide, his eyes flashing.
This time, he placed the lorgnon, which hung on a gold chain in the front pocket of his jacket, in front of his right eye. When the old butler looked around the square again, he saw that each person's body had a different level of luminosity, with the exception of some people, such as some of the knights in the audience. Because they were walking the path of swordsmanship, the energies in their bodies were colored differently and clung closer to their bodies. When the old butler turned his head a little more, he saw the boy the girl was talking about, and for a moment he doubted his own eyesight.
The energy in the boy's body circulated in veins along a certain axis, like that of an experienced magician, but there was something even more surprising: a translucent and rather immature sword energy surrounding the boy's body. Thinking that what he was seeing was nonsense, the old butler took the magical item off his eye and put it back on several times, but what he saw didn't change.
In the end, the old butler crushed the lorgnon in his palm before putting it back in his pocket, thinking that the magical item he had bought for about 100 gold coins was broken. Releasing his sword field, the old butler closed his eyes and scanned the boy with his senses. The boy indeed carried the raw energy of a swordsman, even though he was so small.
There was a good reason why the old butler didn't believe what he was seeing: there had never been a being in this world who had both magic and swordsmanship, because once you entered the path of swordsmanship, the energy called mana would leave you. Another reason was that the old butler had recently bought this magical item on the black market.
"What marvelous sword energy. A genius like this comes along once in a century, and at his age he can cut five bandits to pieces with his swordsmanship. Young lady, I must admit you have really good eyes. We must make him a part of our family by any means necessary."
"Ha... ha... ha, of course I have good eyes, after all I am the smartest girl in the Ironblood family. Ha... Ha... Ha... Ha."
"As expected of our young lady. Mr. Aric Blackwood-san, may I ask who this boy is?"
The black-haired boy was quite conspicuous in a small town like this one, and Aric, as the town administrator, knew him, but just to be sure, he asked his subordinates.
One of the two knights who heard the question happened to be a guard who worked at the same observation post as Yuto's father, and he told the lord about Yuto's background.
"He seems to be a boy from an ordinary family. With your permission, young lady, may I watch the duel before I speak to him?"
"Permission granted. But I'll warn you in advance, with his power it can hardly even be called a duel."
When Yuto saw a friend of his father's among the VIPs who were watching him and talking about him, he realized it was too late to run away, so he stopped hiding behind the boy in front of him and came out.
Apparently, today was not Yuto's lucky day...
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