#84 Drasha’s Festival (1)
“Welcome, Sir Heinrich!”
At the sight of Saintess Riesta greeting him with a beaming smile, Heinrich gave a wry smile of his own.
After the training at the Order of Radiant Guardian Paladins, which had taken quite a long time, came to an end, he had been given a new duty upon his exceptional promotion from lower-ranking to high-ranking paladin.
Its nature was quite different from the missions he had undertaken until now… ‘To think I’d become the saintess’s personal guard.’ Naturally, this was the result of strong involvement from the upper ranks, including the saintess herself.
Until now, the saintess had stayed only within the Roselia Grand Temple in the Holy Land, so she had not needed an escort. But now that the Immortal King had revived, she could not remain as she had forever.
“Of course, that isn’t the only reason I made Sir Heinrich my personal guard. I thought that what you need now is more personal time, rather than learning more duties!”
Certainly, while the saintess remained in the Grand Temple, there was no real need for an escort, so his time for training would increase far more than before.
“And once the preparations are more or less complete, there is something I will need you to do, Sir Heinrich.”
“Something I need to do?”
“Though he may have suffered a blow, there is no way the Immortal King will simply hide quietly like this. He must surely be plotting something somewhere out of sight.”
Far from plotting anything, he did not even exist in Outerica at the moment, but Heinrich merely nodded with a serious expression.
“For now, we too must use every means at our disposal to prepare to oppose him. And among those measures, there is one that is exceedingly important…”
The saintess, who had been speaking calmly, took a light breath and then opened her mouth with a firm expression.
“To obtain the Holy Sword.”
“The Holy Sword… you mean?”
“Yes. In order to bring down the Immortal King for certain, the aid of the Holy Sword is absolutely necessary.”
She looked at Heinrich with sparkling eyes and spoke again, her voice filled with conviction.
“Sir Heinrich, I need you to prepare for the trial to obtain the Holy Sword.”
***
Whoosh—
Thwack!
The arrow flew like a hawk, brushing past the branches before piercing sharply through the target.
《The individual has gained enlightenment through repeated training. Acquired the skill 「Fairy Archery」.》
At the same time, a system message appeared before his eyes.
Up in the tree, Harris let out a light sigh and slowly lowered the bow he had been aiming.
“Excellent. Now the human smell has completely disappeared from your archery. Correcting habits built up over a long period of use is an extremely difficult thing to do. Impressive.”
The archery instructor, who had been sitting on a branch of a nearby tree watching him, slowly clapped his hands.
“It is thanks to your excellent instruction, Instructor. Thank you.”
At his modest reply, the instructor smiled gently and encouraged him once more.
Amid the warm exchange between teacher and pupil, that day’s lesson came to an end.
However, Harris, who had intended to return to the dormitory, was unable to achieve his goal…
“Harris! Let’s go practice!”
“Ah, Timer. I’d like to return to the dormitory for a bit and wash up first. I also need to put away my bow…”
“Huh? Oh, right. Harris, you don’t have a water spirit! I’ll help you! Come on, we don’t have time, so let’s hurry!”
“Ah, aah…”
He had been seized halfway by Timer, whose passion was currently burning at full blaze.
And when he arrived at the practice site, led there by the hand, the other female group members were already there waiting.
“Everyone’s here. Then shall we begin today’s practice?”
“…Mm-hmm.”
With two days remaining until the Drasha Festival.
While preparing for the performance with his group members, Harris had come to clearly realize one thing.
That the race known as elves took “music” far more seriously than he had imagined… and, ‘Is this seriously possible in just three days? Even tuning it to match the instruments they already have?’
That they possessed an overwhelming amount of talent.
In truth, since the time given to them was not exactly plentiful, he had not expected them to perfectly reproduce the original piece.
He could handle the singing, but there was no way they could imitate a song played with instruments they had never heard before within such a tight timeframe. ‘And yet they actually managed it.’
For this stage, he had been intending to be satisfied with merely introducing a new genre.
Even if his group members helped him, he had thought the limit would be keeping the beat with simple instruments, as he had demonstrated…
“Phew— At this level, it is just about listenable.”
“Wow! This is all thanks to Miss Shapiron! Drasha Academy’s greatest prospect, the finest diva of this generation. I’d heard plenty of your reputation, but I didn’t know you were this amazing!”
“…As expected… incredible.”
“Hmph, praising me over something so trivial won’t get you anything. It was only natural. Ohoho—”
As soon as their joint performance, in which they had matched their movements and timing, ended, a shower of praise poured down. Shapiron’s lips twitched, and her pointed ears kept perking upward as if thrilled. ‘But she really is amazing.’
All the group members were impressive, but Shapiron’s performance in particular stood out.
After bowing her head first to Harris, whom she had previously regarded with contempt, and borrowing the magic tool containing the recorded music, she had dug into it with an almost obsessive focus.
She dissected the characteristics of each instrument and every note, analyzing them, and in only two days she came up with the most efficient alternative for them to play.
Her complexion grew more haggard by the day, to the point that he wondered whether she was sleeping at all, but if anything, her eyes shone brighter than ever.
“It’s still a shame that I couldn’t reproduce it perfectly. That sharp ‘ziiing~’ sound is too difficult… If I had the actual instrument, I’d want to examine it myself at least once.”
She said that, but the level of the sound she had proposed as an alternative was also extremely high.
With the help of spirits, natural power, and even magic, they had tuned the sounds of the instruments and created something similar yet alluringly different.
Through the various processes, it had become quite different from the original piece, but its color still remained. ‘It feels like some kind of collaboration between Earth and another world’s civilization. I like it.’
It was enough to make him regret that he was the only Earthling who could see this.
To the point that he even thought about what it would be like to reveal it on Earth right away. ‘Well, it seems a bit early for that now. Still, if I can do that later, it would be fun.’
And so, their first practice after securing similar instruments and tuning the notes came to an end.
Naturally, the result was a success.
《The individual has gained enlightenment through repeated training. Acquired the skill 「Melody of Harmony」.》
A success beyond compare.
And the effect of the newly learned skill was immediately confirmed during the next practice.
“Wow… Harris, what was that all of a sudden?”
Clap, clap, clap—
“Wait… How did you just do that? The natural power in your voice suddenly felt… refined somehow. The effect became much stronger too…”
Satisfied by the fervent reactions of his group members, Harris smiled contentedly.
“Ah, I realized something while singing.”
“W-what was it? How do you do something like that…”
Shapiron, who had hurriedly asked back, paused for a moment.
Perhaps because she had acknowledged him while practicing together, her attitude toward him had become more cautious recently. But given how she had treated him before, even she seemed embarrassed.
“I can’t really explain it well either. I just do it by feel. Haha…”
He could not very well say it was thanks to 「Melody of Harmony」, so he vaguely brushed it off.
After all, he could not teach someone a skill.
“……”
However she took his answer, her face drooped for an instant before quickly returning to normal.
Because she disliked showing weakness, her expression remained as arrogant as ever, but her eyes were clearly more dispirited than before. ‘Does she think I don’t want to teach her?’
Or perhaps it had sounded like he was taunting her with the difference in their talent.
From what he had observed over the past few days, she seemed to harbor a considerable sense of rivalry toward him.
Perhaps it was an inferiority complex.
“Hoo, everyone understands where we messed up just now, right? Let’s focus more and go again. You, don’t just stand there either. Hurry up and get ready!”
However, with her strong self-love, she seemed to recover quickly, and immediately led the practice with even more force than usual.
Their practice, carried out with thorough soundproof barriers set up for the sake of a surprise reveal at the festival, continued until late into the night.
And Harris’s 「Melody of Harmony」 did not merely affect his singing; it also showed great synergy with its original purpose, communion with spirits.
The fire spirit “Cali” and wind spirit “Pascal,” who had been lowest-grade spirits, had evolved to lower-grade spirits, and not only that…
“Wow… Th-that…”
“Shh! Be quiet!”
While the group members watched, Harris quietly stared at the space in front of him.
A small spirit that continuously sent ripples through its surroundings hovered motionless before his eyes. ‘This is, don’t tell me…’
It was not an elemental spirit, but a phenomenon-type one—a “spirit of sound.”
Though his experience as an elf was short, even in the Elven Kingdom, this was the first time he had seen a spirit that was not of the elemental type. ‘Though that might also be because I haven’t really gone around much.’
As he had learned in spirit arts lessons, spirits that did not belong to the natural world were extremely rare.
They were beings with whom one could form a contract only if one possessed a talent separate from affinity with nature, and such a being had now appeared before Harris.
Like a cat choosing its owner, it continued to hover before him as if wishing for a contract. ‘A spirit of sound, huh… An unexpected gain.’
Naturally having no intention of letting such an opportunity slip away, Harris carefully extended his hand toward the spirit.
And once their intentions connected, the contract was formed in an instant.
“From today onward, you are ‘Decibel.’”
Harris’s fourth spirit was the spirit of sound, “Decibel.”
***
While working in the same group as Harris, Shapiron was able to free herself from her prejudice against him.
No, in truth, until now she had simply been gritting her teeth and refusing to acknowledge it.
Now, however, she had no choice but to acknowledge him. ‘…That affinity and his technique in handling natural power are one thing, but he hasn’t even been learning spirit arts for long, and he already has contracts with four spirits? And one of them is a spirit of sound?’
She had guessed as much from the natural power and affinity that surged around him when he sang, but his growth rate was astonishing.
Enough that she could understand why the World Tree showed interest in him… ‘Ugh… It can’t be helped. If he’s at that level, I suppose I can acknowledge him as my rival…’
After that one-sided declaration of rivalry, she had been covertly loitering around Harris and observing him closely.
When dealing with an enemy, the importance of information went without saying.
Murmur, murmur—
That remained the case even in the waiting room behind a stage set up in a plaza on the second day of the three-day festival.
However, there was one thing that particularly grated on her nerves.
“Whoa! This is really right next to the central plaza, isn’t it? At this rate, we’ll really be able to draw proper attention! The High Elves might even watch us in person!”
“……”
Timer, who was making a fuss even in this situation as if he had nerves of steel, and Curie, who was silently biting only her nails, formed a stark contrast. ‘She seems to be in pretty bad shape.’
Shapiron’s gaze, which had been observing Harris, turned toward Curie.
During practice, Curie had performed perfectly, so Shapiron had not paid her much mind. But now that the real performance was approaching, she was visibly wavering.
Just as Shapiron reluctantly stepped forward to at least speak with her…
Harris, who had been lounging against the railing with his usual languid expression, approached her.
“Are you very nervous?”
“……”
Curie quietly nodded while repeatedly taking deep breaths.
Seeing her say not a single word and only watch those around her, as if she had returned to the day they had first met, Harris merely scratched his head and looked at her.
“Hmm. What do you think of the song we prepared? It’s good, right?”
She still did not answer, but Harris went on regardless.
“When we practiced, what did you think? Were you nervous then too? Worried you might make a mistake?”
This time, her head quietly shook from side to side.
“When I practiced, I think I was just excited the whole time. It was fun. And I was looking forward to seeing how other people would react when they heard this song.”
As he continued speaking in front of her, a smile slowly spread across Harris’s face.
“It’s exciting, isn’t it, the song we prepared this time? If you lose yourself in the music and have fun, don’t all other thoughts disappear before you know it?”
The strange resonance contained in his voice gradually sent ripples through Curie’s heart, which had been stiffened by tension.
“Don’t think about anything else. For now, just try to recall how you felt when we practiced. We’ll just have fun like we did then and come down from the stage.”
As if he had little experience comforting others, it could hardly be called polished encouragement…
Yet even though he was speaking normally, his voice, which somehow sounded like lyrics, possessed a power that made one unconsciously focus on it.
As if drawing everyone around him in, just like when they had been utterly immersed in the song during practice, it allowed Curie to recall the emotions she had felt then, just as he said.
Her expression slowly relaxed, and the corners of her mouth rose slightly.
As though remembering that time, her eyes sparkled, and her cheeks flushed red.
And Shapiron, who had unknowingly been drawn into his voice along with her, belatedly came back to her senses and looked at Harris anew. ‘How unexpected.’
He had not seemed particularly eloquent, yet there was a strange persuasiveness in his words.
Seeing him take care of a nervous group member made him seem somewhat different, too.
“Please prepare for the next stage~!”
Of course, such stray thoughts soon disappeared.
Because now, it was almost their stage.