Volume 2, Chapter 1

“It, it’s not as si-simple as that. The k-king is not, not accepting th-that Fei and you ca-cannot get along.”

“But why? This guy doesn’t seem to be suitable to help lead… what’s special about him? I’d get along if he was preparing for a role which he was actually capable of doing!”

Onee-sama and that odd maid seem to be talking about me while under the assumption that I am still asleep. If that’s the case, I think I’ll continue to pretend I’m asleep. Though, the maid probably knows I’m awake. She’s scary with her observation abilities.

“It’s n-not that he’s sp-special! It’s, it’s a matter of obeying the king, your father! If h-he has ordered for you two to rule to-together, then you sh-should follow his order! Ev-even if it is only u-until his death!”

“I don’t want to! He seems better of taking up some less troublesome job! After all, he seems to always train and yet he never improves! He has such a low talent it basically doesn’t exist! I acknowledge he has become strong with ‘reading intent’, but without the capability to back it up, what’s the point!”

“…”

Onee-sama’s words seem harsh, but they are true. Due to my sickness, I am unable to fight very well. I can rely on Martial Practices which seem like jokes for other people such as Flavour (which is now almost perfected), but anything further my body rejects. After a while, I gave up on trying to ‘fight’ and instead put all my focus on reading intent.
When I think back on it, from what I am able to recall, I never needed to ‘read intent’ of my enemies in any of my past lives. That is, the cheats I was given by the Goddess made it so I didn’t need to… Well, in the ends of each one, I did die somehow. My most recent memory of death, I was betrayed. So rather, I’ve been extremely idiotic for some reason.

Well, it doesn’t matter. This time, I will develop the ability to the most extreme possibility! Even if onee-sama says it has no use without the capability of following through, I will still train in it! If it’s something I am capable of doing, it is obvious I should max out my potential. Eventually, a method of utilising the ability will come to light. That’s my belief.

“… anyway, this letter has the king’s commands in it.”

It appears I missed quite a sum of the talk due to my inner dialogue. It’s vexing but there is nothing to be done about it anymore. At least I found out one-sama no longer has even a hidden desire to kill me and rather just doesn’t want me to support her in ruling the kingdom. These four years of trying to get her to treat me as a brother have not been for nothing, although not entirely what I was intending for.

As I open my eyes a little, I see the maid walk past me. It may be my imagination, but I swear she gave me a glance with the feeling of ‘I know you were listening’! Though, with her, there would probably be a lot of stuttering. I truly wonder what causes her to stutter, as she seems incredibly strong otherwise.

“Oi, wake up!”

Onee-sama telling me to wake up is rare. She usually waits for me to wake up on my own, as though my matters have nothing to do with her. If she’s changing her usual pattern today, something is obviously up. As I’m curious as to the nature of this shift, I ‘wake up’ very quickly.

“Good, you’re doing what I say. Well, it’s not like I want to, but I have to take you out to celebrate your birthday. We have permission to leave the academy for the day as well, so what do you want to do?”

Eh? My birthday? Oh, it’s true. Today is really my birthday. What, I should be, fourteen now? That means… Six years has passed since I reincarnated into this world. Because nothing truly eventful has happened, I didn’t really feel the flow of time. Well, each year, Lumi came to celebrate my birthday with me, so there was that.

“…”

…I can feel a horrible pressure coming from onee-sama! I should really make a decision as to what I want to do, right? It’s just, I don’t want to suggest something that she wouldn’t enjoy. I’m sure she’d do it, as it seems to be an order from someone, however I would like to avoid having her mad…

Though, she is already mad from me taking so long to decide! Onee-sama, please calm down! This pressure is not making it easy to think of something to do. Fine, let’s try and ignore it instead.
If these past years have told me anything, it is that onee-sama really loves fighting. She has a seriously crazy loving of fighting. Well, perhaps that’s a good idea…

“Uh, how about we go to a fighting arena?”

Ah, I can finally relax… The pressure feels like it’s dissipated.

“That’s acceptable. Though to participate, you’re going to need to take Yuuki along.”

Wait?! I only meant to watch! Ugh, fine. This is fine too. If onee-sama interpreted it as such, I’ll deal with it. Well, Yuuki coming along means I’m a little safer as I wouldn’t be alone with onee-sama. Not that she’d do anything to me.

“Go get her and then we’ll go, okay?”

“Yes, onee-sama.”

It seems that the people on this outing will be myself, Yuuki and onee-sama-

“I’mma tag along! You get it!?”

Eh? Oh, right. The fairy… She was sleeping with me this entire time. Lucky she’s a fairy, else I’d feel that some inappropriate situation would occur. Though, I think she’d think something along the lines of
‘Hey!? Are you looking down on me!? I’m a beautiful fairy, you hear me!!!!”
Yeah, that’s exactly what she’d say.

“Yeah, yeah. You can tag along… Just, don’t make a scene. In fact, don’t even show yourself!”

“What’s wrong with being seen?! But it’s fine! I just want to leave this stuffy institute!”

I guess it has been tough on this fairy… since she joined our group, she’s basically been treated as a pain and nothing else. Well, that’s because that’s basically what she is. The only beneficial thing she does is manage the pendants magic which is using the energy of the girls. Currently, only Yuuki and the fairy, though I’m meant to be adding extra people into it to prevent the others from fainting if I do (there’s a few times where I’ve ended up in the medical bay with Yuuki and the fairy)… Onee-sama was extremely pissed each time it happened.

Well, anyway, onee-sama told me that I had to go and get Yuuki, so I’d better do that. I’ve wasted quite a bit of time laying around here thinking about useless things… Well, anyway, I’ll get dressed and head over to Yuuki’s training room.

—

After I enter the training room Yuuki, I observe her features carefully. She has long white hair reaching her shoulders, and her eyes are dark red colour… It seems that the darkness of a half-demons eyes represent how much potential they have. As for how I learnt this, that’s not important. What I learned from that, though, was that Yuuki’s potential is basically limitless while mine is extremely limited.

Anyway, since I’ve bought her, Yuuki has become extremely feminine. It became too hard to keep the fact that she was female hidden, so that became common knowledge around a year ago. It wasn’t onee-sama that got pissed about that… it was Lumi, surprisingly. She was very mad that I lied to her, even though she’s my little sister, not my girlfriend.

“Master? What do you need Yuuki for?”

Yuuki got so much better at speaking, probably because I let her practice. Though, she does have the habit of referring to herself by her own name, though. She never uses things such as ‘I’ or ‘me’. I’m not exactly sure what I should make of it. However, it hasn’t been an issue so far, so I haven’t chastised her for it.

Wait, that doesn’t matter right now.

“Ah, Yuuki. We’ll be heading out of the Academy to participate in a fighting arena. Onee-sama is taking us.”

“Yuuki understands, master.”

It surprises me that Yuuki has never once rebelled against me. She’s obviously strong enough, to the extent that she could probably escape from the academy (albeit she would definitely get injured), but she seems to have some sort of attachment to me. Well, I cannot really see it but this is what Sarah and Tomoe said.

“Yuuki has mastered a new magic, master. Yuuki can now turn invisible?”

What? Invisibility? I did not realise that close combat magic involved this sort of thing. I always felt that close combat magic was all to do with physically attacking such as Yuuki’s boosting her speed or strength of punches. Well, she also has the ability to jump super high as well as being capable of making her hands ‘sharp’ (they can cut like a blade, even if they don’t look like it).

Well, anyway, I guess I should get her to show me, huh? It’s not like I should just take her words at face value…although, with Yuuki, she has never given me a reason to doubt her before.

“Well, I guess, show me.”

“Yes, master. Yuuki shall obey.”

As soon as she says as such, her body begins to turn transparent and soon her entire being has disappeared from my sight. Wow, although it was expected, seeing it in practice, is just surprising. Yuuki can really turn invisible. Though, although Yuuki can do it, it’s not as though she’s the only one who can.
The funny thing about someone who could be classified as a ‘genius’, is that they are not unique. There are often people similar to this genius, in which they have arrived at the same conclusion, or same result. Thus, while I’m happy that Yuuki has achieved something brilliant, I’m not going to be excited to an extreme extent.

“That’s good.”

When I say that, Yuuki slowly becomes visible again seemingly expectant.

Ah, it’s that, isn’t it?

As Yuuki matured and became better at speaking, speaking with her no longer seemed to be a reward. As such, I decided that physical intimacy would be acceptable within private areas.

Knowing what Yuuki expected, I walked towards her and enclosed her in my arms.

Well, besides being the method of showing appreciation towards Yuuki, this always reminds me of one thing: One of the reasons Yuuki could not pass for a man…her breasts just became way too big for any method of disguise to work, as bandages would only go so far and magic would be caught by anyone with a little talent.

Anyway, we’d better go and find onee-sama now that I’ve come and got Yuuki. I’m sure delaying here will only make her mad at me. Of course, it isn’t like she really wants to go ‘with me’, more that she was forced and I chose something she wouldn’t mind doing. But even so, I still wish to keep onee-sama as calm as possible.

“Let’s go, Yuuki. Onee-sama is waiting.”

Yuuki seemed a little sad for a moment, but soon she separated herself from me. When I started walking towards the room that onee-sama and I still share, Yuuki trailed on behind.

As we walk towards onee-sama, I decide on something incredibly important. Although we’re going out, I don’t particularly want people to know about Yuuki’s strength… thus, rather than going out as ‘the sickly prince’, I should cover up my identity. I guess I’d better see with onee-sama if it’s acceptable. If it is, I’d better prepare myself a mask.

Well, this will be interesting, huh?

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