The day she had been defeated by Serestia.
What she had felt from the cold floor of the training grounds was an overwhelming sense of helplessness.
Before the massive tidal wave of talent, Chloe's knighthood had crumbled as futilely as a sandcastle.
The more she struggled to overcome it, the more vivid that overwhelming gap became, as if mocking Chloe's ideals.
When she realized that the pride of the Jelin family and the prestige of the Knight Department were nothing but a mirage before that absolute talent, she confined herself in darkness.
The pitying whispers heard beyond the closed door sliced the heart of the failed genius into pieces.
Even when that same girl received a duel request from Lowell, called the academy's greatest madman, she had thought it would be yet another mockery.
But the result was defeat once again.
However, this defeat was fundamentally different in nature, even in color, from the one against Serestia.
The weapons held in Lowell's hands were crude things that directly contradicted a knight's common sense and pride.
It was neither an exquisitely refined famous sword nor a splendid magic armament studded with jewels.
What he brought out was merely a bizarre bamboo launcher that emitted the power of low-grade magic, and a sturdy bamboo branch so abnormally reinforced with Serestia's mana that it could withstand a knight's aura.
The aura of Chloe, praised as a swordsmanship genius who had trained her entire life and meticulously honed, had been ruthlessly trampled by those shabby-looking pieces of bamboo.
From the perspective of traditional knighthood, it might have been a disgrace to her family and a defeat so shameful she should bite her tongue and die.
But what had bloomed in Chloe's heart was not burning anger, but a hope so overwhelming it brought tears to her eyes.
"Is this... really possible?"
Lowell had not crushed her with overwhelming talent.
He had brought down a genius knight like herself with thoroughly calculated tools, strategy that exploited openings, and bizarre methods that defied existing common sense.
It was the moment she witnessed an entirely new possibility that could realize her ideals, which had been shattered against the wall of talent in this academy ruled by monsters beyond the norm.
She had thought that if Serestia, who possessed apex talent, could not be defeated through orthodox methods, the Knight Department would forever remain second place under the shadow of the mages.
But the bizarre yet clever method of victory Lowell showed gave Chloe an entirely different realization.
If the opportunity to duel were given to her right now, Chloe was certain.
She could read the trajectory of that crude bamboo launcher, exploit the reach of the bamboo branch blocking her, and completely overwhelm Lowell.
Her instincts as a knight and her genius senses were already analyzing the variables Lowell had thrown at her.
But on that day, in Raiden Hall alone, it had been impossible.
Chloe had been trapped in a prison of her own making.
After the duel with Serestia—no, even before that—she had measured all causality in the world solely by the magnitude of talent.
Stronger mana than her own, a higher rank than her own.
She had defined the gap between Serestia and herself on her own, and under that definition, she had considered kneeling to be her fate.
It had been the same in the duel with Lowell.
The title of madman and failing student attached to Lowell had made her limit the range of possible variables in this fight on her own.
But Lowell had been different.
He had wedged himself into the very gap she had labeled impossible.
Ignoring the orthodoxies of traditional knight studies and the magical system the academy called common sense, he had blazed the most efficient and ingenious path solely toward the destination called victory.
At the point where Chloe had tried to give up using the gap in talent as an excuse, Lowell had taken those worthless pieces of bamboo and challenged that impossibility to seize victory.
What won was not Lowell's weapon, but his will that did not draw limits for himself before any wall.
In her duel with Lowell, Chloe saw the hope of standing before Serestia in a decisive battle once more.
But at the very edge of that hope, something suddenly came to mind.
The victor's right Lowell had proposed with an arrogant expression before the duel began.
"If you lose this duel, you will serve me as your liege. For the rest of your life."
At that moment, an ominous imagination flashed through Chloe's mind.
The reputation and rumors Lowell had spread throughout the academy until now.
A greedy and vulgar madman.
The afterimage of a fat, deficient failing student who used to chase after women's rears flashed through Chloe's mind.
Becoming his personal knight and attending to him.
That might not stop at simply washing dishes or carrying lunchboxes.
Her imagination ran wild.
In a dark, dingy room, the hulking Lowell giving arrogant orders while she, unable even to wear her knight's uniform properly, silently carried out his unreasonable demands...
"No! What on earth am I thinking!"
Chloe covered her flushed face and shook her head.
Though it had been a fleeting imagination, a strangely stimulating and shameful sensation, separate from her pride as a knight, crept down her spine.
Spending her entire life beside such a vulgar man—she felt she would rather bite her tongue and die.
Chloe's reason screamed between the hope he had shown and the delusions of what was to come.
But a knight does not take back her spoken words.
Defeat was defeat, and a contract was a contract.
The day after the duel, Chloe stood before the laboratory door with bloodshot eyes, having stayed up all night.
She had a resigned mindset.
She had even steeled herself with the grim resolve that if he truly gave vulgar orders, in the name of knighthood she would reform (and probably execute) him before dying.
When she flung the door open, there was Lowell, rummaging through documents with an indifferent expression as usual, and Serestia looking at him.
Chloe carefully placed Artemis's broken blade, wrapped in a cloth, on Lowell's desk.
"From today... Chloe Jelin has become your sword, Lowell von Adrian."
In the silent laboratory, Chloe's clear and cheerful declaration echoed.
Facing Lowell's flustered gaze and Serestia's furrowed brow head-on, Chloe screamed inwardly.
"Aah... I really went and did it... My knightly life is over now!"
But after following Lowell like a shadow for several days and observing him, a completely different scene unfolded before Chloe's eyes, as if mocking her crude(?) delusions.
For one, Lowell did not make any greedy demands or vulgar commands to her.
Rather, whenever Chloe kneeled while retaining her grim resolve, saying "If it is my liege's command, even this life...!", he would earnestly fluster and turn his head away.
His gaze was closer to an earnest plea asking her to please just act normally, rather than greed.
That wasn't all.
The rumor of a "fat, lazy madman" that had spread through the academy like poisonous mushrooms was so suspicious that Chloe wondered who had spread it; Lowell's daily routine was excruciatingly regular and diligent.
Before the dawn mist had even lifted, he whipped himself into shape running along the island's coastline, and in the classroom, he wielded his quill as if unwilling to miss a single word from the professor's mouth.
His figure in the laboratory after school, discussing elemental theory with Professor Gleiten, was the very image of noble pioneering of one's own path that Chloe had so longed for.
"What on earth... what kind of crazy delusions was I having?"
The shame was entirely Chloe's.
Whenever she recalled the nights she had blushed imagining indecent commands in a dark room, Chloe was seized by the urge to jump off the cliffs of Asteria Island that very instant.
Lowell's bland and exemplary attitude was cutting off her indecent(?) imaginations at the root.
Above all, what astonished Chloe the most was Serestia's change.
Serestia—the cold monster who had made her feel the gap in talent, and at the same time her one and only precious friend she had known since childhood.
She who had shown not a speck of interest in others and had only frozen up when someone approached, was unable to hide her emotions beside Lowell, frequently blushing or bickering like a child.
Seeing Serestia send such obsessive, jealous gazes toward someone was a shocking event for Chloe.
With the situation having come to this, the grim resolve that had taken root in Chloe's heart began to sublimate into a strange playfulness and delight.
"My liege! Today's lunch has been carefully selected with ingredients said to be good for a knight's vitality. Attending to my liege's robust body is also my duty!"
"Please... Chloe... just call me by my name. And couldn't you stop with the 'liege'?"
Whenever Lowell genuinely suffered, pressing his fingers to his brow, and whenever Serestia watched that sight from beside him, emitting a chilly coldness, Chloe had to pinch her thigh to endure the laughter that threatened to burst out.
At first, the address "liege" had been a last resort uttered to keep her promise.
But now it was different.
Lowell's flustered reaction was unexpectedly cute, and the process of subtly checking Serestia, who tried to monopolize him, and gaining the upper hand became the sole source of vitality in her tedious academy life.
Above all, assisting this strange man who, behind his indifferent face, was fiercely resisting fate more than anyone else, was heating up her knighthood that had once come to a halt.
Chloe was now certain.
That by this man, Lowell von Adrian's side, she might be able to find the path of a true knight even more brilliant than the glory she had lost.
Even if the start had been an embarrassing episode filled with mortifying delusions.
And right now.
Chloe adjusted her grip on an ax handle as thick as her own shoulder, blankly watching the massive old tree she had just chopped at the base crash down with a thunderous roar.
Kwoong—!
A heavy vibration traveled through the soles of her feet.
At that sound, which broke the forest's silence, Chloe's mind finally snapped to attention.
Chloe roughly wiped the dirt dusting her cheek with the back of her gloved hand, glaring at Lowell's back as he looked at an old magic map a short distance away.
"Wait... why am I here cutting wood?"
Just an hour ago in the laboratory, she had been circling Lowell as usual with a bright smile.
"My liege! What great deed will you show today? This knight, Chloe, even the most perilous battlefield alongside my liege..."
She had been reciting such playful oaths of loyalty.
Truthfully, it was half a game because Lowell's flustered expression was amusing, and to tease Serestia, who narrowed her eyes beside him, barely hiding her displeasure.
But unlike usual, when he would show disgust, Lowell looked at her with very serious eyes and said,
"Chloe, are you really prepared to help with anything?"
At words that seemed to ask her for something for the first time, both Chloe and Serestia froze for a moment.
But Chloe soon said, "Of course! A knight of Jelin does not speak empty words!" and proudly thumped her chest.
And when she came to her senses, instead of a sword, a crude lumberjack's ax was in her hand.
"Hup! Hah!"
With another swing of the ax, a blade laden with aura split the tree trunk like paper.
However, the only thought circling in Chloe's head was, "Is he thinking of me as some kind of lumberjack right now?"
Genius knight, academy's second seat, treasure of the Jelin family.
The splendid modifiers flashed through her mind.
To think that she, who had dreamed of marching majestically across the main hall square, was now drenched in sweat in the damp northern forest, clearing underbrush...
Far from the indecent service(?) she had imagined, this was just manual labor.
"Chloe, take a break if it's hard. I guess the progress is faster than expected because you're using aura with such precision. The Knight Department really is different after all."
At Lowell's casual praise as he turned around, Chloe swallowed the indignant complaint that had been rising up her throat.
"My liege! Please step back! This thornbush ahead, I shall utterly smash it!"
Chloe's cry, now completely serious about tree-cutting, violently shook the silence of the northern forest.
Lowell muttered from the side, "Well, you don't have to smash it..." but it seemed to no longer reach her ears.