Sharp whipping sounds filled the training ground as fists jabbed at Xian's body. He raised both arms to protect his face, only for another punch to slip around his guard and bury itself into his ribs. Before he could recover, a short strike caught him across the chest and forced him several steps back.
'Why is this so hard?'
He had already lost three times to this annoying guy.
"Heh. You aren't so good with your hands after all, huh?"
It was the same hotheaded academy butler Xian had gotten into a confrontation with just yesterday. Rather than leave the matter there, the Head Butler had apparently decided to make use of it. He had asked the two of them to spar at least once a week. It would serve as training and give the man a way to work off some of his temper under supervision.
Usually, Xian wouldn't willingly subject himself to this kind of beating unless the person doing it was at least pretty and pleasant to look at. Serika, despite her feistiness, qualified. The man currently punching him did not.
Still, Xian had agreed. There was something he wanted to observe, along with a weakness he had noticed in himself.
Most of his recent combat experience involved a weapon. Serika had made certain of that.
Whenever Xian held a longsword, she struck at him relentlessly. Blocking, retreating, repositioning, and keeping the blade between himself and an opponent had become increasingly natural.
Without one, however, things were different.
[HP: 244/330]
[MP: 108/108]
Xian stared briefly at the numbers.
Eighty-six points.
More than a quarter of his health was already gone. The man across from him was clearly holding back enough to keep the spar from becoming genuinely dangerous.
The academy butler stepped forward again while Xian watched his shoulders. A few jabs came first. Xian blocked them with his arms, briefly obscuring his view. Another strike immediately came low and buried itself into his stomach.
Xian grunted. The man closed the remaining distance at once.
An elbow threatened to smash into his face. Xian managed to raise both arms in time and catch the blow against his guard. The impact still forced him several steps backward.
He could see and follow the attacks just fine. What he lacked was any real understanding of how to defend himself once an opponent got this close.
There was no blade to redirect attacks with. No reach to keep the other man away. None of the familiar structure Serika had hammered into him through weeks of repetition.
There were only hands, elbows, shoulders, feet, and a man who understood how to use all of them far better than Xian did.
He straightened and raised his guard again, only for another punch to slip through and land against his side.
Xian's expression hardened.
The academy butler started forward again, but Xian stepped away.
"Wait."
He walked toward the edge of the training ground and picked up the wooden longsword he had left there earlier. When he returned to his position, he felt far more confident with the weapon in his hands.
The academy butler looked at him.
"What? Think changing weapons will matter?"
Xian answered by taking up the most familiar stance he knew.
"Well, whatever. Let's continue!"
The man rushed forward, but the difference was immediate.
Xian brought the sword across his body and intercepted the approaching arm before the fist could reach him. The academy butler recoiled, changed direction, and tried to enter from the opposite side. Xian sidestepped and kept the point tracking him.
The academy butler tried again.
Xian turned the blade, redirected the attack, and forced him away before he could close the distance.
His next entry failed. This time, the wooden blade landed cleanly against his shoulder.
"Ghk!"
The academy butler staggered sideways.
Xian saw the opening and remembered exactly how much HP the man had already beaten out of him. He followed with a controlled thrust to the chest. It landed squarely enough to make the man cough.
They paused for a few minutes, but the next round lasted even less.
The academy butler tried to rush through his reach before Xian could properly bring the weapon to bear. Xian simply stepped back and brought the blade across. The wooden longsword struck hard against his side and nearly folded him sideways.
The man caught himself before he fell, breathing heavily.
That ended the second round.
By the time they began the third, whatever confidence remained from his first three victories had already been replaced by irritation. He took his close-combat stance again and charged, but Xian only had to wait until the man thought he had found an opening.
Xian brought the longsword around with both hands.
Crack!
The wooden blade slammed into the academy butler's shoulder once again. The force knocked him off balance and dropped him hard onto his backside. His face briefly twisted in pain as he hit the ground.
"Argh!"
He remained there, clutching his left shoulder.
"That makes three for both sides."
The voice came from a simple covered bench beside the training ground. The Academy Head Butler sat there with the older servant who had previously led Xian to his office. Several coins were scattered across the table between them, apparently the result of a wager on the spar.
The Head Butler calmly moved part of the pile toward himself before looking at the man on the ground.
"Alright, Allen. That's enough for today. Hopefully, this will calm you down a little."
Allen groaned and tried to push himself upright.
"He beat me because he got a weapon! Shit, let me go again and I'll show him!"
The old butler looked toward Allen and shook his head.
"This is why he ought to fight you, kid.
"You lose your temper too easily. Once you get worked up, all you want to do is hit whatever irritated you. Put you against someone just as hotheaded and the two of you will only make each other worse."
Then he looked at Xian with some approval.
"This one doesn't lose his head simply because you lose yours. If you're going to insist on fighting while angry, you might as well learn how to keep that anger from controlling the way you fight."
Allen looked dissatisfied, but he didn't argue. The old butler then glanced at the longsword in Xian's hands.
"Turns out, you're more proficient with the sword. Were you trying to learn CQC?"
Xian nodded. "I wanted to know how well I could defend myself without a weapon."
"You're considerably more comfortable using that thing in your hands, though."
Xian glanced down at the wooden blade.
Comfortable might have been overstating it, but compared to fighting barehanded, the difference was enormous.
Serika had spent weeks attacking him with almost no mercy. Every opening and weakness he knew, along with plenty he didn't, had been laid bare before her. If her lessons hadn't so often left bleeding gashes across his body, Xian might even have called her a decent teacher.
Still, those beatings had accomplished something.
The older butler continued, "If you actually want to learn how to fight at close range, get someone proficient to teach you. Standing there and letting Allen punch holes through your guard can only teach you so much."
Xian lowered the longsword now that the spar was finished for the day. His ribs still ached from the earlier beating, but his attention had already shifted elsewhere.
Barehanded, his reactions had felt awkward and incomplete. With the longsword, his body had settled into movements that once required far more thought.
Serika's training had done more than he realized.
Regression seemed to carry back more than just his conscious memories. Whatever his body had learned through repetition had followed as well.
There was something else too.
Xian checked his HP again.
Several of Allen's cleaner strikes had taken three or four points at a time. Others had hurt almost as much without moving the number at all.
That meant pain alone didn't reduce HP. Actual injuries did, so he would have to check those spots later. The System seemed to care more about bodily damage than how much something hurt.
That discovery was useful.
'I still need more experiments to figure out exactly how damage is counted.'
For now, though, he had learned enough.
At least some of what Serika had drilled into him seemed to have followed him through regression. HP was also far less straightforward than a health bar in a game.
***
Over the next several days, another pattern became increasingly difficult to ignore.
"Go. I'm going to stay in today too."
"Milady, is there something wrong?"
It was already Thursday, and Carmillia had consistently been dismissing him after their afternoon Path classes. During the first two days, she had still emerged from Magic Path visibly exhausted. She had needed to lean on him during the walk back. By Wednesday, however, she had adjusted enough that she no longer needed his support.
The first time Carmillia dismissed him early, Xian had been grateful. It gave him time to visit Caesar, deal with the Academy Head Butler, and handle several other matters that would have been much harder with his usual duties hanging over him.
The second time had merely been convenient.
By the fourth, the convenience was starting to feel strange. They still hadn't gotten around to several matters they had promised to discuss.
Every afternoon, the moment they reached her quarters, Carmillia recovered enough of her usual authority to send him away. There were no extra errands, no tea preparations beyond what she had already assigned him, and no explanation for why she suddenly wanted several hours completely to herself.
"Why do you look like an abandoned wolf?"
Carmillia smirked at him, apparently aware that he had started to find the whole thing suspicious.
'So I'm a wolf now? Does that mean her opinion has improved?'
Unfortunately, even if her opinion of him had improved, they were still firmly in black-heart territory.
"Has Milady been up to something these days?"
"Huh. So now my butler gets to be suspicious and inquire about my private time?" Carmillia raised an eyebrow. "You're quite nosy."
"…I was just wondering if there was anything I could help with, Milady." Xian bowed his head lightly and decided not to push the matter further.
Carmillia watched him for a moment.
"If you really want to help, why don't you get me a laboratory?"
"A laboratory?"
"I'm going to use it to make your brand."
Carmillia raised one finger and pressed it lightly against his chest.
Xian looked down at it.
It might have been the first time she had deliberately touched him without needing his support or having some other practical reason to do so.
But he wasn't going to be distracted by that.
'The brand needs a laboratory?'
In the game, Gumin could travel around with the party and seemed able to prepare things like this whenever the scenario required it. There were no weeks of preparation, dedicated facilities, or mountains of specialized equipment.
'Well… there's a difference in talent, I guess.'
The thought made him pause.
'Speaking of talent, what are her parameters?'
For some reason, despite spending this much time around Carmillia, he had never properly examined her potential values with the Glimpse Lens. Curiosity got the better of him. He activated it and looked above Carmillia's head.
What he saw made him frown.
'What the fuck?'
[Mana Potential: 10]
[Magic Potential: 11]
'Eleven?'
At this point, Xian was more inclined to think that it's just because of the level difference instead of talent.
The game generally measured innate potential on a scale from one to twelve. Mana Potential represented the ceiling of a person's Mana-related development. It covered how far qualities such as capacity, efficiency, control, and other aspects of Mana could ultimately be pushed. Magic Potential represented the corresponding ceiling of their aptitude as a Mage.
Carmillia had never been this absurd.
Across Xian's previous runs, her values usually lingered somewhere between seven and nine. Those were already exceptional numbers. Eleven was something else entirely.
Gumin had been the only Mage Xian remembered ever reaching eleven in Magic Potential. That meant the Carmillia standing in front of him had the potential to become far more lethal than any version he had ever encountered in the game.
"Why are you frowning and looking above my head?" Carmillia asked. "You can't do it?"
Xian looked at her again.
He had briefly swept the Glimpse Lens over the entire Royal Class before, but everyone's parameters had appeared at once. He had focused only on their Levels and the students who might pose an immediate threat. He had never actually stopped to examine Carmillia's potential values.
For the first time, he wondered just how high Carmillia might climb if given enough time in this reality. If she ever approached the ceiling suggested by those numbers, would it still be possible to control someone like that with brands and Magic?
The thought was not particularly comforting.
Other characters immediately came to mind. If Carmillia's potential had changed this much from what he remembered, he wanted to know whether anyone else had been similarly upscaled.
"I can, Milady. I may already have somewhere in mind. I'll tell you as soon as I'm able to arrange it."
"That's a good butler."
Carmillia smiled sweetly.
The answer about the brand explained the strange schedule well enough. At least Xian now knew what had been consuming all those private hours.
That did not mean he was going to stop being cautious about whatever Carmillia eventually intended to put inside the thing.
Her villainess streak might have been curbed somewhat. Her trusted swordmaidens and the pawns who would normally have gathered around her were being kept at a distance under the Duke's orders. Unless Xian contacted them himself, they stayed away.
But Carmillia was still Carmillia.
"Oh, also. Wait here for a moment."
She entered her room and left the door open behind her.
Xian's eyes lingered on the opening. For a brief moment, he considered taking a look inside, but Carmillia returned before he could act on the temptation.
She carried several documents, a folded procurement list, and a small case containing her personal seal.
Some of the envelopes were sealed. Others had Carmillia's signature and crest visible across the front. Xian could tell they were official documents of some kind, but he had no idea what each one was for yet.
Carmillia placed the seal case on top before handing the bundle to him.
"Take some funds from my account, and collect your salary while you're at it. Useful butlers are supposed to be treated well."
Xian took another look at the documents in his hands. He was holding the kind of papers and authority that people in high positions entrusted only to reliable subordinates.
'Is this still Carmillia?'
"Buy everything on the list under my name. I've written down the grades and specifications I require."
Xian glanced over the pages.
Mana crystals, ritual inks, reagents, containment materials, specialized work surfaces and Several implements whose names meant almost nothing to him.
"Anything that can be made specifically for the work, have it commissioned. Anything that cannot be commissioned should be the highest quality available. I don't want to build the ritual around equipment made for general use."
"Understood, Milady."
"Make haste, Butler. The longer you remain without a third brand, the less safe I feel around you."
From Carmillia's smile, Xian could tell she was trying to tease him again.
"Are you simply going to leave it that way?"
"Of course not, Milady. Please leave it to me."
Regardless of what he thought about being branded, Xian had already agreed to it. More importantly, Carmillia's explanation accounted for the materials, her private schedule, and all the work she had apparently been doing in isolation.
There was little reason to doubt that part. Carmillia really had been working on his brand.
Of course, knowing what she was working on was different from knowing exactly how she intended to do it.
With Carmillia, though, a truthful answer did not necessarily mean a complete one.
He looked down at the procurement list again. The more immediate problem was finding a place capable of handling all of this.
Privacy was a must. The place had to be large enough for her work and difficult for ordinary students to wander into. It also needed enough reinforcement that an accident wouldn't destroy half a residential building. If Carmillia intended to fill it with custom equipment, it needed enough permanent space to remain set up between sessions.
One place came to mind almost immediately.
Caesar's private training grounds.
Calling it a simple training facility was an understatement.
The Academy had granted Caesar a large private training compound with a central hall, reinforced practice areas, open training grounds, storage, and several smaller specialized rooms.
It also included residential quarters for a professor and future disciples. That made it suitable for extended training without relying on the main Academy residences.
The scale of the place made more sense when Xian considered what it had been built for. Caesar hadn't taken any disciples yet. Adrian was supposed to be the first.
Most of the compound had simply remained unused. Caesar preferred spending his time in the Mist Peaks examination grounds, leaving far more space there than Xian could ever need for himself.
One of the unused auxiliary spaces could easily be converted into Carmillia's laboratory without interfering with Xian's own training.
The only problem was that the place belonged to Caesar's faculty allocation, not Xian. He would have to ask permission before Carmillia could set up her laboratory there.
Xian folded the list and tucked it together with the envelopes and seal.
'I'll ask Caesar first.'
There was no point commissioning personalized equipment before he found a place to put everything. Once Caesar approved her use of the compound, she could inspect the space herself and determine what needed to be installed.
Xian could handle the procurement afterward.
…
At first, Xian had been ecstatic to receive Carmillia's authorization.
Getting Caesar's approval had gone without much trouble either. The professor barely cared that Carmillia intended to turn one of the unused spaces into a laboratory. He only remarked that if he had been a Mage, his private grounds would probably have been fitted with laboratories in the first place.
Carmillia being the Royal Class Second Seat and the daughter of a powerful duke certainly did not hurt. Still, Caesar seemed largely indifferent to her background. If anything, he thought finally putting some of the unused space to work would be beneficial.
That left Xian with what should have been the easy part.
Unfortunately, he soon realized he had no idea where to go.
In the game, the player's money simply existed in the inventory. There was no bank account to withdraw from, no need to carry currency around, and certainly no need to know where Rozenfall's banks were.
Butler 101 had not exactly come with a map of the city either.
Still, this was hardly a dire predicament. He only had to ask someone who knew.
At one of the Academy gates, Xian approached one of the guards and produced the dark, gold-rimmed identification card he had received after the entrance examination.
"Royal Class. First Year?"
"Yes. Xian."
The man checked something in the gate ledger before looking back at him.
"Purpose for leaving?"
"Lady Carmillia Montagne sent me on an errand. I was tasked with..."
"That's enough."
The guard glanced at the documents Xian carried before returning the card.
"Return before the curfew bell. If Academy business keeps you outside after that, register an extension before the gate closes."
Xian accepted his identification back.
'That easy?'
Leaving the Academy after classes was far less restrictive than he had expected.
Beyond the gates, Rozenfall City stretched around the Academy's enormous grounds.
Students mixed freely with merchants, servants, craftsmen, couriers, and visitors. Carriages rolled through the wider streets while pedestrians crowded the narrower ones. Academy uniforms appeared often enough among the civilians that hardly anyone paid Xian more than a passing glance.
He wanted to visit so many places.
There were shops, streets, and landmarks he had visited countless times through a screen. Some he knew by function, others by event trigger or whatever useful item could be obtained there.
But it was still too early.
Right now, he had an errand to withdraw some money and arrange several expensive purchases. With Carmillia's seal and authorization tucked among his documents, Xian felt strangely powerful.
He probably shouldn't have, since it wasn't his money.
Still, there was something satisfying about carrying a piece of paper that effectively told merchants he was allowed to spend a duke's daughter's money.
Following the guard's directions, Xian eventually reached a landmark he recognized right away.
'The Grand Causeway.'
Even seeing it through the player's eyes had never properly conveyed its scale.
The ancient structure was so wide that calling it a bridge almost felt insufficient. Roads, shops, guard stations, and entire stretches of commercial buildings occupied its breadth. Beyond them, the Causeway continued toward the immense mountain divide separating the two halves of the Human Continent.
The stone beneath his feet resembled pale marble from a distance. Up close, the enormous fitted blocks showed faint veins and variations across their surfaces. The lowering sun washed everything in amber light.
Carriages moved along designated lanes, drawn by horses and several kinds of draft beasts Xian had only ever seen as background assets in the game. High above, the occasional winged mount crossed the skyline along regulated aerial routes. They were far less numerous than the traffic below.
There were so many places he wanted to see that he deliberately slowed his steps.
Walking through Rozenfall without Carmillia beside him was unexpectedly satisfying. Maybe it was because he didn't have to keep up an act or constantly watch for threats to someone's life.
Just an errand for once, an ordinary problem.
Then Carmillia's smiling face came to mind.
His expression tightened instantly.
'Right.'
Being away from her also meant he had no idea what was happening around her.
He quickened his pace.
…
At the banking house, Xian joined the ordinary line like everyone else.
That changed when a clerk approached him in the queue and asked about the documents he was carrying. The man's attention sharpened the moment he saw the crest.
"Lady Carmillia Montagne?"
"…Yes?"
Xian was surprised that a simple clerk had immediately recognized whose seal it was. Then again, it made sense for the Montagnes to be well known.
Until then, Xian had been treated like any other academy student waiting to conduct ordinary business.
The clerk checked Xian's Academy identification, then looked back at the document.
"One moment, please."
Xian was taken away from the public counters and brought to a quieter section of the building. Another clerk examined Carmillia's seal, compared it with the accompanying records, and only then opened the authorization.
By that point, Xian was beginning to understand that Carmillia hadn't simply handed him permission to go shopping.
"Lady Montagne has authorized you to make purchases against her Academy household account."
"So I withdraw the money here?"
"For minor expenses, if you wish. Larger purchases can be charged directly to the account once the merchant verifies your authorization."
That made far more sense than walking through Rozenfall carrying bags of Gold Vitar. Apparently, at this level of spending, the money didn't even need to pass through his hands.
The clerk continued through the records.
"There is also compensation registered under your name. Your position under Lady Montagne carries a monthly salary of two Gold Vitar."
Xian nodded slowly.
Two Gold meant two hundred Silver.
The expensive meal he and Carmillia had eaten on their first day in Rozenfall had only cost a few Silver. Even that had been far above what an ordinary meal should cost.
Xian still didn't have a perfect grasp of the world's cost of living, but two Gold was clearly a lot of money.
The clerk moved farther down the ledger.
"Duke Renedon Montagne has also registered a monthly stipend of three Gold."
Xian was pleasantly surprised.
Three more.
That brought his total to five Gold, or five hundred Silver Vitar every month.
'Wait…'
By the rough comparison he had been using, one Gold was worth around two thousand dollars.
Five of them meant...
'Ten thousand dollars?'
Every month.
For a moment, Xian simply stared at the ledger.
He had known Renedon employed him. He had also known Carmillia was supposed to pay him as her butler.
What he had never bothered to learn was how much that actually amounted to.
Most of his major living expenses were already covered as well. Food, accommodation, and the necessities tied to his service weren't eating into that amount every month.
If he survived an entire year under Carmillia and saved most of his compensation, he would have enough to live comfortably for quite some time by ordinary standards.
More importantly, it was enough to become actual starting capital.
For about ten seconds, Xian felt unexpectedly wealthy.
Then the clerk turned to Carmillia's authorization.
"This authorization is registered to Lady Carmillia Montagne's Academy household account."
He checked another set of records before continuing.
"The current monthly operational allocation is one hundred and eighty Gold Vitar."
Xian's expression froze.
"…How much?"
"One hundred and eighty Gold."
He had heard correctly.
Xian looked at the ledger again, as if the number might somehow shrink. But it didn't
He earned five Gold a month. Carmillia's Academy household received thirty-six times that amount.
'That's maybe three hundred and sixty thousand dollars.'
This wasn't annual. It's monthly.
The clerk continued in the same professional tone, apparently unaware that Xian's sense of wealth had just been violently readjusted.
"Sixty-eight Gold has already been designated for routine household expenditure. That leaves one hundred and twelve Gold available within the current allocation. Research procurement is permitted under the account, provided the purchases fall within the approved categories."
Xian looked down at Carmillia's list again, not hearing whatever expenditure the man said.
One hundred and twelve Gold was still available, that was the only thing he managed to pick up. That amount felt surreal.
Roughly two hundred and twenty-four thousand dollars of spending power.
Mana crystals. Ritual inks. Specialized work surfaces. Containment equipment...
The list suddenly looked very different in his hands.
Carmillia hadn't told him to find something affordable. She had given him enough authority to buy exactly what she wanted.
And she had told him to get the best equipment available.
There was another figure on the account summary as well.
One Arcane Vitar.
Another hundred Gold sat separately as an emergency reserve. Carmillia's authorization did not extend to it.
And none of this was Carmillia's personal wealth. It was merely the money allocated to maintain her household while she attended the Academy.
Xian lowered his gaze to the authorization in his hands. Suddenly, he felt a little foolish for being proud of his salary.
'Right.'
He had briefly forgotten whose servant he was.
'I'm not rich.' Then he shook his head and reconsidered, 'No. I am actually becoming rich.'
He looked at Carmillia's available balance again.
'She was just born absurdly rich.'