“How long has it been since I last took part in such a manly contest! Not since my youth, when I rode the battlefields at His Majesty’s side…!”
The eyes of Count Gross flashed with the fighting spirit of a wild beast.
“Now, then, let us drink!”
I lifted high the glass filled with shimmering, forty-percent spirits.
Greatly pleased by my resolute air, Count Gross wiped the liquor from the corner of his mouth and proposed in a deep voice.
“If we simply pour it down in silence, we are no different from beasts. How about we drink each glass while shouting out something we hold dear, or something we wish for?”
“An excellent idea. I gladly accept. Please lead the toast, Count.”
“Good! The first glass—to the eternal glory of our great Empire!”
“I shall wish for the same!”
Clang!
With the crisp sound of our toast, we knocked back the first glass in one go.
“Ghk……!”
The moment the liquor, over forty percent strong, slid down my esophagus and dropped into my stomach, a fierce burning sensation flared up inside me as if something had exploded.
It felt less like I had swallowed alcohol and more like I had swallowed fire.
But I didn’t let it show. This much was fine.
“……”
We set down our empty glasses with a thud and stared hard into each other’s eyes for a moment.
“—Wahahahaha!”
“Hahahaha!”
Then, as if by agreement, we both burst into hearty laughter.
This man before me was truly a man.
“Cheers!”
The second glass immediately collided in midair.
“The second glass! I pray for the health and long life of His Great Majesty the Emperor!”
“I’ll go with the same!”
Clang!
“Khah—!”
As the second glass went down in succession, I felt a heat like hot lava surge from my stomach and spread through my entire body.
A faint redness began to rise in Count Gross’s face as well, and he grinned as if excited.
“The third glass! To the great steeds that support our Empire!”
“To my reliable friend, His Highness Second Prince Arthur!”
After I emptied the third glass, the speed at which the alcohol coursed through my veins noticeably quickened.
My vision rippled ever so slightly, and my heartbeat began pounding in my ears like the beat of a drum.
Each time I exhaled, the hot scent of mare’s milk liquor burst from my mouth, and it felt as though the backs of my eyes were heating up, but I had no desire whatsoever to give in.
Count Gross let out a strange groan that sounded like a horse’s neigh.
“…How long has it been? To think a man capable of facing me head-on in drink would appear… Ian Sterling, were you truly that sort of man!?”
“We haven’t even begun yet. The fourth glass—lead the toast!”
“Very well, the fourth glass! To those arrogant curs of the Kingdom of Laurent, who will one day surely kneel before the Empire!”
“To Her Highness Princess Chloe!”
When the fourth glass of spirits entered me, a strange groan escaped against my will.
“No, Count Gross…! What on earth is this liquor? My body, my body keeps heating up—Jehahahaha!”
“Kahahaha! Splendid, Prince Ian! I can feel the heat properly now!”
Count Gross responded just as heartily and roughly seized the next glass.
The heat radiating from his enormous frame was so intense it seemed to roll across the table toward me.
“I shall lead the fifth toast! To the health of His Highness Crown Prince Maximilien!”
“To our beautiful House of Gross, and to my two beloved daughters, dearer to me than the apple of my eye!”
Five consecutive glasses of forty-percent spirits.
The brilliant chandelier lights before my eyes split into dozens and began spinning around.
Because I had poured them down without even a bite to eat, my stomach felt as though it might turn itself inside out. But when I saw Count Gross across from me, glaring with eyes like a tiger’s and snorting, a strange obstinacy I had tempered since my previous life blazed up inside me.
The undisputed greatest drinker of the College of Social Sciences, with a record of sinking every graduate student and professor in the Department of Public Administration, could not lose here.
“Hey, I heard there’s a duel going on over there…?”
“What, what did you say!? A duel on the very first day of the social gathering…”
“No, the thing is… apparently it’s a drinking duel? Between Count Gross and some hostage…?”
“With Count Gross… in drinking? Is he insane?”
“There’s someone who can fight that man in drink?”
By then, before we knew it, the nobles in the main hall had gathered like clouds around our table to witness this madness, forming a huge circle.
“Wh-what in the world are they doing?”
“To drink forty-percent spirits like that, one after another, without even water! Are they trying to die?”
Most of the noble ladies, and the refined nobles who had been sipping only a glass or two of champagne, clicked their tongues in horror.
But the military officers, in whose veins the blood of nomads boiled, and certain men who worshiped masculinity as the highest virtue, were different.
To their eyes, this fierce battle between the two of us seemed no less manly than an ordinary duel fought with drawn swords.
“Good heavens, look at Prince Sterling! He isn’t giving an inch against Count Gross, the greatest drinker in the Empire!”
“Ooh……! They may not have drawn swords, but that is the true honorable duel of men!”
Amid the grand cheers and fervent encouragement of the spectators, we gripped the sixth glasses tightly in our wavering hands.
“The s-sixth glass……! To the shining martial prowess of Her Highness Princess Victoria……!”
“To Marengo, the finest steed in the Empire…… though that bastard damn well never listens……!”
Once we reached the sixth glass, we began to sway in earnest, and our tongues started to twist.
Even so, the gazes with which we glared at each other were still filled with burning heat.
“The seventh, seventh glass……! Hah, to the dependable lady knight who always helps me well…… Sir Amber White……!”
When I shouted with my tongue thoroughly tangled and my pronunciation foolish, Count Gross, sweating buckets and red in the face, burst into a booming laugh and replied.
“Kihihi! If it is Sir White… wahahahaha! To Sir White’s…… successful marriage……!”
The eighth glass—from this point on, to be honest, both of us had broken past our limits, and our brain cells were in a state of meltdown.
It was impossible to think logically about what excuse to give for drinking.
All that remained was the instinct to topple the opponent before our eyes.
“The e-eighth…… This may be sudden…… but to Count Gross, a true man among men……!”
When I lifted my glass high and shouted, the Count’s eyes reddened, and he too roared sonorously.
“Urgh! To the brave man from the south, Prince Ian……!”
We gave each other a thumbs-up, giggled like fools, and drained our glasses.
And at last, the ninth glass.
With our eyes already completely out of focus, we somehow sensed through a communion of souls that this would be the final bout.
We staggered to our feet, bracing ourselves against the table.
Then, stretching out our half-dead arms, we clashed our glasses together in midair with all our strength.
Clang—!!
With a thunderous sound as if the glasses might shatter, the spirits splashed wildly.
The roars of two men who had sensed the end rang resoundingly through the banquet hall.
“To victory…… and glory……!!”
Gulp, gulp.
After emptying the glasses without even breathing, we panted for air and stared piercingly into each other’s eyes.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
After a suffocating silence.
“—Splendid.”
Count Gross let out a wry laugh, then collapsed into his chair with a thump and immediately began snoring.
A hostage attending his very first social gathering had sunk a high-ranking noble who was the greatest drinker in the Empire and one of the Emperor’s closest aides.
“……”
I quietly looked down at the Count collapsed in his chair.
The thread of reason in my mind had already snapped and was dangling in tatters, but on the table there was still one final glass left, filled to the brim.
‘I have to drink this too for it to be my victory.’
With a wavering hand, I picked up that final glass, raised it toward the hundreds of spectators watching me with bated breath, and poured it down my throat in one go.
“……Kraaaah!”
As the final glass burned its way down my esophagus, the thread of my reason was at last completely severed.
‘……I won.’
Even as my consciousness sank, I did not fall.
With my right arm, still clutching the empty glass, stretched straight up into the air, I closed my eyes and fainted while standing tall.
My two legs remained planted firmly on the floor, not moving an inch.
The main hall, which had been wrapped in silence, was immediately engulfed in heat that seemed ready to explode.
“Waaaaaaaaah—!!!”
Beyond my consciousness as it receded into the distance, I heard countless men of the Empire roaring like mad, cheering so loudly the banquet hall seemed about to lift from its foundations.
The first day of the social gathering—the victor of the historic first drinking duel, Ian Sterling.