For a moment, I wanted to ask if I'd heard wrong, but Hilda's eyes were dead serious. She wanted to enter the tournament? Her lifelong dream was to compete in a tournament? Now I finally understood why Hilda, as a woman, had learned horsemanship and mounted combat.
But the problem was that this era strictly forbade women from taking the initiative. The ideal woman, the virtue this age pursued, was one who bore legitimate heirs and quietly managed household affairs. Sure, there was the example of Joan of Arc, but that was an extremely rare and special case.
I wanted to support whatever Hilda wanted to do, but realistically, this was a difficult wish to grant. I couldn't ignore the desperate look in her eyes, so I agonized over it. The only solution was for her to compete while hiding her identity. Plate armor would help conceal the fact that she was a woman.
