Private Tutor to the Duke’s Daughter: Volume 15 (eBook)

Riku Nanano (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-8626-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Civil war threatens the Lalannoy Republic. An opposition party colluded with church agents, splitting the young nation in two in a bid for power. Determined to build a coalition against the growing influence of the false Saint and her apostles, the Wainwright Kingdom dispatches a highborn envoy to broker an alliance with the republic's rightful leader. But a diplomat needs an aide, and that's where Allen comes in. Fresh from a bitter reunion with his best-friend-turned-undead-foe, the young sorcerer was already looking for a chance to set aside his tutoring and follow a lead to Lalannoy himself. He knows he's walking into a trap, and he doesn't care. The secrets lurking beneath the city of craft-and the guise of an unexpected traveling companion-will test Allen like never before.

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Prologue

“Lord Ridley, I’ve finished probing their mana, and the wavelengths match. We’ve found them: apostles of the Holy Spirit and their band of inquisitors!”

The shout rang through the moss-covered entryway of a disused chapel on the western edge of Tabatha, the city of craft, capital of the Lalannoy Republic. A boy with dull-blond hair flushed beneath the hood of his white-and-silver robe, still clutching his metal staff as he ended his detection spell. Lord Artie Addison looked frail and childlike in the light of the mana lamp. Everyone said he was fifteen, but he still reminded me of a puppy. Nearby, several dozen of our crack troops shot good-natured grins at the eldest son of Marquess Addison, founding champion of the republic.

At his age, my kid sister Lily had already started steering her own course.

“Drop the ‘lord,’ Artie. The troops are watching,” I said, looking out at a few of the city’s distinctive square towers silhouetted against the sky. Circumstances had kept me in the country for a year now.

“F-Forgive me,” Artie said, with a start. “But I can’t be too cavalier with a duke’s son. My father warned me to mind my manners.”

He had a point. The Leinsters held one of the Four Great Dukedoms of the Wainwright Kingdom, the greatest power in the west of the continent. The duke and his family were customarily styled “Highness,” and foreign powers treated the duchy like a nation in its own right. My own parents, the under-duke and -duchess, got some of the same perks. Me, though?

“Lord Addison never changes,” I said, touching the red hair poking out the side of my hood. “I keep explaining that I ran away to become a humble seeker of swords and sweets, but I can’t seem to get through to him. Now, how many are we up against, and how skilled are they? What elements do they use?”

Artie shrank and hung his head. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, tears welling in his dark-brown eyes. “I couldn’t tell that much.”

Well, magic’s not what it used to be. I can’t hold him to the same standards as a master sorcerer from back home.

“Never mind,” I said, sword and armor clinking as I dusted off my cloak. “We know our target’s here, and that’s good enough. I can tell you’ve improved.”

“Th-Thank you.” Artie’s frown turned upside down. He had talent. With more years behind him, he’d grow into a fine sorcerer, a fine marquess, and a fine leader of his country.

“Captain, how’s morale?” I asked an approaching naval officer—Minié Jonsson, a man high in Marquess Addison’s trust. A tricorn hat crowned his blue uniform, and a saber and spell-pistol hung from his belt.

“High,” he answered. “My second-in-command, Snider, has a force staking out the other exit. We can’t be too free with orb communications, though. Apart from the church, anti-Addisonites could be listening in.”

“I hear you took a hand in the Algren rebellion yourself.”

“Orders are orders.” A bit sheepishly, he added, “The marquess saved me from a court martial, and don’t think I’m not grateful. I want to sail a ship again.”

Lalannoyan artificing had never been better. Some of it even beat anything the kingdom could put together. Spell-guns, which let anyone rapid-fire elementary spells until they ran out of bullets, stood out as the prime example. At the moment, though, the country was split clean in two.

Nearly a hundred years had gone by since the republic won its independence from the Yustinian Empire to its north. The House of Addison and the Bright Wings Party it led had guided the country all that time...until an eastern army faction had rebelled against its anti-Yustinian focus on the western front and formed a secret alliance with the Church of the Holy Spirit. They had not only smuggled spell-guns and other magical weapons to the Algrens but also sent troops to massacre rebel Wainwright nobles on the islets of the Four Heroes Sea.

The marquess had purged the eastern forces as soon as the dust settled and tried to sweep the incident under the rug. But by then, it was already too late. His opposition, the Heaven and Earth Party, had let the cat out of the bag. Public opinion had split east and west, along with the military, leaving the republic on the brink of civil war.

More likely than not, the Heaven and Earth Party had their own backroom deal with the church. Marquess Addison still feared splitting his country for good too much to make any grand military moves, but he couldn’t ignore the apostles getting up to who-knew-what in the shadows either. In the end, he’d recalled the republic’s greatest champion to the capital, begged for my help, and sent the both of us after them. Just the other day, we’d put an end to the fourth apostle, an ancient vampire, with the help of an old martial artist.

All well and good, except I came here to train my pastry skills.

“To be honest,” Minié said, adjusting his tricorn, “I can’t say I’m thrilled about taking on a bunch of monsters, but what can you do? Anyway, better them than another round with the Brain of the Lady of the Sword.”

That nickname takes me back. No one but my cousin called him that back when I fled the royal capital.

“Most things seem that way when you compare them to the continent’s future greatest sorcerer.” I cracked a rueful grin, tapping my armor and scabbard—both white and scarlet.

“We found that out the hard way on the Four Heroes Sea. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” The seasoned naval officer strode off toward a group of soldiers preparing for the assault. His back radiated fighting spirit.

Artie had listened to us talk in silence. “Ridley,” he spoke up hesitantly, “is the Brain of the Lady of the Sword really as great as all that?”

“You bet,” I said. “He made it into the Royal Academy without anything to fall back on but his own skill, and I’ve lost count of the great deeds he’s done since. The Lady of the Sword owes her meteoric rise to meeting him. Rumor has it he’s played a hand in just about every crisis in recent memory.”

Despite her ducal lineage, my cousin Lydia had never managed to cast a decent spell. People had gone as far as calling her “the Leinsters’ cursed child.” Then a new legend in the making had saved her and won the current Hero’s respect. Lord Rodde, the Archmage and veteran of the War of the Dark Lord, had known greatness when he saw it—and so had I, or I wouldn’t have lost my head and challenged my cousin to single combat in front of her “Brain.”

“If he were here,” the republic’s future leader said, clutching my sleeve with both hands, “could he fix our communication orb problems?”

“Well...” I faltered, then fished out a little pocket watch I’d bought in this city of craft.

I guess we have time.

“Artie, let me tell you a funny story—one I’ve never shared with anyone before.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” the boy said.

I felt his gaze on me as I rested a hand on the hilt of my trusty sword. “You see, as far as I could tell, the Brain of the Lady of the Sword—Allen of the wolf clan—doesn’t have any special talent for magic.”

That took a moment to sink in. Then Artie murmured, “What?”

The winter wind rustled our cloaks.

“He was an orphan,” I said, looking the baffled lordling in the eye. “No relation to his wolf-clan parents. And I hear he never had a magic teacher because the eastern capital’s beastfolk saw him as an outsider. Shamed as I am to admit it, anti-beastfolk prejudice in my homeland runs deep. He got hit with the blowback.”

Not even the Leinsters’ intelligence network had managed to identify his birth parents. The beastfolk community had gradually opened up to him, but the chieftains had refused to accept him as one of their own. No one but his adoptive family and a few other beastfolk had stood up for him before he came to the royal capital, where he’d met Lydia, Princess Cheryl Wainwright, and the late Zelbert Régnier.

“I bet Allen practiced magic because he wanted a way out,” I mused. “The knight orders put too much stress on lineage to give him much hope, but the court sorcerers make allowances for skill.”

“B-But...” Artie fumbled for words. “How could anyone but a prodigy hold his own against dragons and devils?”

“I got him to show me his training regimen just once, back in the royal capital,” I said, thinking back to what he’d done while we watched Lydia and Princess Cheryl fight in the Royal Academy training ground. His method had been unremarkable, yet I’d never seen anything like it. “He ran through basic control exercises, just cycling through the eight classical elements over and over again. There was no trick to it. Allen practiced the same routine every single day, more times than you’d think possible. It added up to thousands, millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions of repetitions—more than the rest of us do in a lifetime.”

Artie gaped, speechless.

Sorcerers needed fundamentals every bit as much as swordsmen. Only those seemingly endless drills set Allen apart. Most people couldn’t come down that hard on themselves.

I squinted up at the moon. My brother-in-arms must have been making his own final preparations...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.3.2025
• Reihe/Serie: Private Tutor to the Duke’s Daughter
• Übersetzer: Cura, William Varteresian
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Academy • action • aristocrats • Comedy • Harem • Light Novel • Magic
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-8626-5 / 1718386265
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-8626-6 / 9781718386266