Discussing Divine Protections with Hirschur

Discussing Divine Protections with Hirschur

Discussing Divine Protections with Hirschur

Come dinnertime, Hirschur arrived at the dormitory. She appeared to have a headache, but she wasn’t the only one.

“Professor, the ritual yesterday has made my mana so much harder to control,” I said. “I don’t feel any being spent when I use it, and I couldn’t stop myself from giving a blessing during music class. What should I do?”

“I obviously do not have an answer. Blessings cause no harm to anyone, so perhaps you can simply allow them to happen. If you wish for any further advice, consult Ferdinand.” Hirschur evidently had zero interest in working through problems centered around having too much mana. “Lord Wilfried, might we speak after dinner?” she said, swiftly moving the conversation along.

“Of course,” he replied. “I will have my attendants prepare a room so that anything we discuss remains confidential. We can move there after eating.”

Eating with one’s supervisor was a completely normal occurrence in other duchies—but here in the Ehrenfest Dormitory, it was exceptionally rare. The students all eyed Hirschur, wondering what had happened to warrant her appearance.

Hirschur didn’t even touch on what the third-years had done during the divine protections ritual; instead, she praised everyone for passing a second day of classes on the first go.

“Ehrenfest truly is spectacular when it comes to written lessons,” she said. “Once again, everyone has passed on the first day. Your grades are rising by the year, and the professors are rather impressed.”

Now that more people were learning the Rozemyne Mana Compression Method, our practical grades were steadily rising too.

Hirschur continued, “I thought that Ehrenfest would start doing far worse in practical lessons once Angelica, Cornelius, and Hartmut graduated, but Leonore, Matthias, and Laurenz are all showing continual improvement, and the three archduke candidates are all scoring excellently. I look forward to another successful year.”

We students had reached a point where we no longer saw our grades as accomplishments—we would pass one of our classes and then immediately move on to the next. That was why third-party praise was so important; hearing that the professors were seeing Ehrenfest in a better light and that our duchy was improving as a whole meant a lot.

“It is because Ferdinand demands so much,” I said. “I was once again tasked with ensuring that we pass all of our classes on the first day.”

Not to mention, there were many students who risked growing mentally unstable without a goal to focus on. We hadn’t received any more news about the purge, but we still didn’t intend to reveal the situation to Hirschur anytime soon.

Hirschur was positively delighted with the food she was served—although the rest of us were entirely used to it by now. We were gradually selling more and more recipes during the yearly Archduke Conference, but no other duchies had produced their own spins on them just yet. Such was to be expected; recreating the meals as per the recipes was already challenging enough.

“It was several years before even my own chefs started to create new dishes instead of sticking to preexisting recipes,” I said. “I expect it will only be a matter of time, though.”

I was most interested in seeing how faithfully other duchies would follow the steps that went against the common sense of this world, like with making broth and such. Each duchy would then need to begin the trial-and-error process of adding local ingredients and sampling the results to see what best suited its people’s tastes.

And, in the meantime, we need to make new variations ourselves.

“Lady Rozemyne, what dessert is this?” Hirschur asked.

“A sweet known as ‘mousse’ in Ehrenfest,” I replied. It was a high-effort dessert composed of yogurt mousse sandwiched between two slices of sponge cake. Incidentally, we were giving away the recipe for this very dessert as our reward this year. We were free to start spreading it, since the Othmar Company had now begun to make gelatin.

I’ll do my best to make gelatin popular, especially since Freida is working so hard in the Italian restaurant.

Freida may have been giving me gelatin so that I could introduce other nobles to its many wonders, but this wasn’t a bribe; rather, I just wanted more tasty foods to be popular. I already knew from experience that jiggly desserts like jelly and caramel custard weren’t very well received, which was why I was planning to combine the mousse with last year’s reward and create fallold mousse tarts.

I wanted to see how the Sovereign nobles would respond to this dessert, which was why we had specially prepared some to be served. The plan was to bring some to small tea parties with royals, but not to any larger gatherings; the chefs still struggled to make sponge cake, and there were still occasions when their efforts ended in failure.

“I thought the mouthfeel might seem unusual, so I flavored it with honey and yogurt to make it taste a bit more familiar. How is it?” I asked. The sour taste of the yogurt eased the sweetness of the honey mousse—and since the mousse was between two pieces of sponge cake, I was sure that the texture wouldn’t be too off-putting.

“The texture certainly is unique,” Hirschur replied. “It really does melt in the mouth—and, I must say, it is quite delicious.”

“Would it be safe to serve to the royal family?”

“You would do well to make it look a little fancier, but the flavor will suffice.”

Having received the go-ahead from Hirschur, I decided to think about how to make the dessert look better. Decorating it with fallold or rutreb jam would allow us to mix in red and white—very fitting for a winter sweet.

After dessert, which had doubled as a test run for our future tea parties, we moved elsewhere with Hirschur. We archduke candidates had a duty to be present for the discussion that was about to follow, as we had to report back to the archduke. Also joining us were Philine and Roderick, whose acquisition of new elements had pretty much necessitated this meeting in the first place.

Six seats were prepared, and, once the attendants had served us our tea, Hirschur motioned for them and the guard knights to step back. “I shan’t go so far as to clear the room, but we will be using sound-blocking magic tools,” she said. “Lady Rozemyne, activate this one, if you would.”

“What? Me?” I could only blink in surprise as Hirschur handed me an area-of-effect version of the tool in question. Under normal circumstances, the onus to activate it would have been on her, considering that she had brought it.

“You have so much mana that merely playing a song in class caused you to release a blessing. That could not have happened if you had so little mana that you were on the verge of death.”

She had a point, so I channeled mana into the sound-blocking tool and then set it down as instructed. It consumed much less mana than expected; in fact, it barely seemed to consume any at all.

This is so similar to after my first jureve, when I ended up losing fine control of my mana. Maybe it actually would have been best for me to return for the Dedication Ritual this year... I could have used that opportunity to expend some of my mana and helped in the fight against the Lord of Winter.

I sighed and returned to my seat, at which point Hirschur looked over us all. “Now then, let us begin by sharing what we know,” she said. “Lady Charlotte is here, though she did not participate in the rituals to acquire one’s divine protections. Furthermore, while I am aware that you have spoken with Gundolf about the incident, I was by the shrine and thus could not hear your conversation.”

Hirschur went on to tell Charlotte what had occurred yesterday—though I noticed that she didn’t mention my ritual. Philine’s and Roderick’s circumstances were already considered unusual, so I was sure that mine would be absolutely bizarre. I glanced at Hirschur, but it seemed that she wasn’t going to mention my ritual at all.

“Gundolf spoke with you after Philine returned to the auditorium with more elements,” Hirschur said. “Tell me, what did you discuss?”

We collectively started to recount the conversation, working together to fill in the gaps in one another’s memories. Once we were done, Charlotte tilted her head at us in confusion.

“The purpose of the ritual is to obtain divine protection from the gods, correct? I struggle to see why receiving the protection of various subordinates is so surprising...”

We were completely on the same wavelength. Aside from Roderick becoming omni-elemental, none of what had happened seemed that odd to me.

Hirschur sighed. “Allow me to explain what things are like for a normal noble—that is, not a student from Dunkelfelger or an apprentice knight expected to earn protections from the fighting-centric subordinates. They will obtain the protection of the primary god of whatever elements they have and nothing more. Unless there is some dormitory supervisor purposefully holding their tongue, no students have obtained the divine protection of subordinates not involved in warfare for over a decade.”

Everyone had, of course, been calling what happened a rare occurrence—but only now did it occur to me just how rare it was. We could only blink at each other and exchange glances as Hirschur continued.

“In the past, the majority of those who received the divine protection of multiple subordinates were the archduke candidates or members of the royal family. It was extremely rare for laynobles and mednobles to receive any at all; in fact, one has to go back a hundred years or more to find any such examples.”

“So, in short... Philine and Roderick are both extraordinary,” I concluded.

Hirschur fixed me with a stern glare. “I am asking that you understand the abnormality of this situation, Lady Rozemyne.”

I nodded in response. Although the reason for these events was still very much beyond me, I recognized that they were a bit weird. I also understood that there was a “dormitory supervisor purposefully holding their tongue” right in front of me.

“Apprentice knights and students from Dunkelfelger often receive divine protection from the fighting-type subordinates, but we do not know why this is the case,” Hirschur went on. “Anyone else receiving the protection of subordinates is exceptionally rare—though not entirely unprecedented. It is for this reason that Lord Wilfried received a few words of surprise and admiration but nothing more.”

That much made sense. Hirschur even noted that Hannelore had received a similar reaction.

“Philine, however, is another matter entirely. She is a laynoble who did not have an affinity for Wind, did not receive Schutzaria’s protection, and obtained a new element solely from the divine protection of the Goddess of Wisdom. One would struggle to find a similar case in recent history—and that is to say nothing of the now omni-elemental Roderick.”

Philine’s and Roderick’s expressions clouded. They had just been happy to have received more elements; I couldn’t imagine that they had expected this to become such a major incident.