At the remark that they had reached this point only after repeated failures, Prince Gilford and Cardio Avatus seemed to be at a loss for words.
Feeling no further value in continuing the conversation, I left the Avatus family’s banquet with Noel, and a few more days passed after that.
Using the technology demonstrator with its improved arm structure, we began another mock battle.
The technology demonstrator, wielding a longsword, moved swiftly across the dueling arena, while Professor Reina’s Cyclops moved to meet it.
Equipped with the same armaments as last time, Professor Reina received the demonstrator’s attack and tried to push back with sheer force again.
Soon, a voice flowed through the speaker.
“It’s definitely better than last time!”
“It’d be a problem if we hadn’t improved after that failure!”
When I raised the machine’s output, the Cyclops’s arm was pushed back.
The improved output of the technology demonstrator had finally surpassed the Cyclops’s.
But that did not mean the Cyclops was unable to respond at all.
Professor Reina’s Cyclops twisted its arm slightly, parrying my longsword aside, and tried to sweep me away with its leg.
As I immediately activated the boosters on the backpack and evaded, I saw Professor Reina’s Cyclops also use its boosters to charge in.
The moment I landed, I thrust out my shield, and the Cyclops slammed into it from the front.
With the golem’s immense size and weight added on, the technology demonstrator was shoved backward as it was, but—
“…It held…!”
The improved arm structure, even with its coating, succeeded in blocking the Cyclops’s body slam.
When I twisted the shield aside, the Cyclops urgently cut its boosters and sprawled onto the ground, but I saw it use the recoil to roll and rise back to its feet.
“So because you made this thing called a cockpit sturdy, stuff like that is possible, huh, Aizen!”
“That would leave your whole body bruised….”
Even as I was flustered by Professor Reina’s superhuman side, the thought briefly crossed my mind that the knights would like it if I increased the cockpit’s durability even further.
Professor Reina’s Cyclops swung its axe, and I swung my sword to block it.
We entered another contest of strength, and I immediately changed my stance, deliberately bending one knee. Professor Reina’s Cyclops ended up in an awkward posture, pressing down from above, and became unstable.
“Now…!”
I activated the boosters and used their thrust to rise, toppling Professor Reina’s Cyclops backward.
As she tried to get up again, I aimed my sword at the cockpit and brought it close.
“I’ll be taking this round.”
The blade had been processed just in case, so it was impossible to pierce and destroy it, but under normal circumstances, I would have been able to stab through and destroy it.
Professor Reina’s Cyclops looked up at me and nodded.
“It’s not over until I say I’ve lost, Aizen!”
“No, wait, this is a mock battle…!”
Professor Reina immediately hooked my leg and knocked me over.
****
“I won.”
“I don’t think committing a foul because you don’t want to lose a mock battle is quite right, Professor.”
“You have to treat it like a real fight.”
She said that, but perhaps Professor Reina was aware, deep down, that she had acted immaturely, because she turned her head away.
Honestly, I didn’t care about victory or defeat, but I hadn’t expected her to launch a surprise attack the moment it was over because she didn’t want to lose.
I was going to tease her about this for a long time.
“If you forget your respect for your professor and try to tease me, know that you will spend four full days alone with me, staying up all night writing out the contents of the textbook.”
“That sounds doable. I’m going to tease you.”
She immediately kicked me in the shin.
Still, she was my professor. I suppose I had gotten a little too cheeky.
We left the Cyclops and the technology demonstrator standing in the dueling arena and headed to the mat spread out in one corner as before. Unlike last time, banquet food had been laid out there.
“You can’t eat this except at times like this. Hurry up and shove it into your stomach!”
As I watched Professor Rodelini and the alchemy department guys focus entirely on eating, and Professor Reina naturally chew on headache medicine, Noel approached me.
“You worked hard. You finally won.”
“I won, Noel.”
“…That was a close loss, Lord Aizen.”
Noel tactfully chose the evasive route.
Perhaps Professor Reina felt embarrassed instead, because she turned her gaze away again.
In the meantime, Mina and Erika approached.
“Good work. You lost by thiiis much.”
“You lost to a cowardly—no, a brilliant decisive move. Still, you were amazing!”
“…I’m sorry. Just say I lost.”
She could shamelessly brazen it out against me, but it seemed she realized she had done something embarrassing in front of these three young ladies.
As Professor Iserina smiled and brought food over with magic, I asked something that had suddenly made me curious.
“But why banquet food all of a sudden? Where did you get it?”
“From the Avatus count family.”
What was that supposed to mean?
When I looked at Mina, she grinned and said,
“There was a lot of expensive food made with expensive ingredients, so I swept it straight into a storage magic tool.”
“It was fun. Slipping it in while dodging the servers, I mean.”
While I had been engaged in a political battle with Cardio alongside Noel, these two apparently hadn’t been waiting; they had been stealing party food.
“It’s not like you’re short on money. Aren’t you ashamed?”
“Banquet food ends up being seventy percent thrown away anyway, so we should put it to good use.”
“Oh, taking some food back in a storage magic tool is actually fairly common, so it’s fine.”
Even so, that probably meant one or two dishes, not looting enough to throw another party.
But Mina was confident.
“It’s wasteful. It’s fun. And I can get one over on them.”
“Then there’s nothing to be done.”
If she was having fun while getting a petty jab in at the Avatus family, what was so bad about it?
Noel smiled awkwardly, and Professor Reina naturally emptied her headache medicine, but it would be fine.
“But even if it’s a storage magic tool, is it all right? The food won’t go bad?”
“Expensive, but whatever you put in lasts about a week. A merchant’s friend.”
It seemed that after a week, the effect would wear off.
This was a place where magic existed, but hearing that it even maintained the warmth immediately made something come to mind.
“…Depending on the method, this could be pretty useful.”
Depending on the principle—or depending on how it was used—it might even be possible to realize beam weapons.
As I thought that I should remember this since something might come out if I squeezed Professor Rodelini for information, Mina grinned and cut into a cake.
“In the middle of all these gloomy things lately, there are a few pieces of good news.”
“Good news?”
If it was good news for Mina, there was a high chance I would benefit too.
And Mina soon smiled in a good mood and said,
“Factory, complete.”
“Finally, huh.”
It seemed the factory, which had been researched and improved once in the Phoenix count territory, was finally finished.
Mina continued, waving her fork in good spirits.
“We were originally going to hold a completion ceremony, but in case pointless interference came in, we started operating it right away. Once what we’re making now is finished, we’ll steadily make the Cyclops units that have been ordered.”
“What we’re making now… Ah. That.”
She was talking about the Cyclops to be delivered to the royal family.
While I had been fuming over Avatus’s power games, Mina had apparently concluded the contract through her own route.
“We have to move quickly before Avatus starts playing tricks.”
“Father helped too.”
With support from Margrave Phoenix as well, the explanation was that the mass-production factory would also be entrusted with producing the royal palace’s Cyclops units.
What they were making first was apparently both a demonstration that it was possible and the first delivery.
“With this, we’re free from the contract with the royal palace.”
The moment we delivered the goods, all we had to do was receive what the royal palace owed us.
Then Noel quietly smiled and said,
“In a way, the Avatus family was so focused on Lord Aizen that they missed Lady Mina’s movements.”
“Since Noel was moving together with Aizen too, their strength got concentrated over there.”
Mina explained that although Avatus was skilled at politically sinister schemes, they had been momentarily cowed after overextending themselves once, and she had struck during that opening.
“The royal family will probably send someone soon to hear a presentation, but now it’ll only be a formality. Once we deliver, the investiture ceremony will be held right away, so after delivery, we can ignore the palace and politics for a while.”
“That’s a relief. I’m tired of wagging my tongue against the Avatus lot again.”
At the thought that all we had to do now was collect what we were owed from the royal palace, I let out a sigh without realizing it.
Noel smiled and said,
“It seems Avatus weighed on you quite a bit too, Lord Aizen.”
“They keep getting in our way, so of course I have to care. To be honest, I’m sick of them.”
Just briefly recalling my conversation with Cardio was enough for displeasure to rise in me.
Noel asked quietly and seriously,
“Lord Aizen, what was it about him that made you say that? Cardio Avatus, I mean.”
“Someone who doesn’t seem human?”
I answered immediately and let out a small sigh.
At some point, I felt like everyone around us was chatting or focusing only on their meals while still pricking their ears toward us, but it wasn’t as if I couldn’t say it, so I spoke quietly.
“It’s true that the purpose of weapons is to kill people, but is that something you can say so unhesitatingly?”
It was a fact I acknowledged as well.
It was also a truth that could not be hushed up forever.
But that attitude of speaking so lightly about taking lives made me sick of him.
“…I’ve heard plenty about how he’s the star of high society, an idol, how he has a lot of female fans, and all that, but I can’t bring myself to like him.”
I had been cautious during the matter with Hephais as well, but now I was certain.
Avatus was not someone I could associate with.
“They’ll definitely interfere again.”
Mina’s voice sounded quietly.
At those words from Mina, I nodded.
Then I grinned and said,
“Enough about those guys who drag the mood down the moment they come up. Once I become a baron and get a territory, where do you think I’ll receive?”
“They say the investiture ceremony will be held soon, but you’re already thinking about that?”
“Is that not allowed?”
“It’s not that.”
Noel added that there was nothing particularly wrong with it.
In any case, wasn’t it only natural to be curious?
The contract had stated that I would receive a territory too.
Just as I was inwardly wondering where it would be, Noel and Erika immediately spoke.
“I still think it would be good if it were near the Nexia territory. It’s close, too.”
“I heard that if it’s close to the count’s domain, they’ll provide economic support.”
The two of them immediately said they would help.
And Mina, for some reason, smiled wickedly as she said,
“It’s already been decided.”
“What?”
“Where our factory is.”
Just as I was about to ask why she knew that—
“You’re getting the mine, remember.”
Mina calmly added, wearing an expression that seemed to ask why I was asking something so obvious.
“I lobbied to make it that place.”
Apparently, my patron had used money to buy even my territory.