I advise him to focus on Shalia

After thinking about it, I can’t help but feel uncomfortable about introducing Ryul to Kathleen. It’s not because I want Kathleen all by myself. I would love to share my friendship with her. But Kathleen made me promise not to tell anyone I saw her in the library.

She was so nervous with me already. If Ryul was to join me tomorrow she’d know I broke my promise. I doubt I’m at the cusp of developing a friendship with the princess, but still.

Besides, Ryul and Shalia have been so good at acting out their fake relationship that I feel he might have a head start at getting into a real relationship with her. If I were to direct his attention to Kathleen now, it might ruin his chances with Shalia. I’m not sure if Shalia is into Ryul, but if she is, then I don’t want to ruin her chances.

“I think you have a better chance at dating Shalia.” I say. “To get into a relationship with a girl, you need to talk to her. Kinda hard to talk to the princess if she’s always protected by the guards.”

“But what if I join the royal guard.” Ryul says. “That’s an option, right?”

“It is.” I reply. “But where is the assurance that you’ll have to protect the princess? You could be set on guard duty on the castle walls, protect an ambassador or a noble on his way to or from the castle, …”

“Yeah. I’d have to get lucky to guard the princess directly.” Ryul continues. “Besides, royalty like her have to save their marriages for making alliances anyways.”

“See. You simply have far better chances at getting lucky with Shalia.”

“Indeed, I do.” Ryul says.

After that, both of us went to bed.

The next morning, Ryul and I went to pick up Wendy and Shalia like usual. Then we had our usual breakfast with the gang, including Dante. Except this time, we notice there were 2 new girls at our table.

The first one is a pretty brunette with brown eyes in a fancy aquamarine dress. It makes me feel like she’s from a rich family. She also looks a bit ditsy and her boobs are so big, I fear they might pop out of her dress.

The 2nd newcomer appears Asian, like Shalia. Except her hair is black and tied up in a pony tail. The armor she wears is made of a lot of black leather, with some spots further reinforced with bands of metal stitched onto her clothes. I’m guessing she of a fighter class. Unlike Sophie, Ari's boobs seem much smaller.

“Hey, you came.” Wendy greets the two new girls.

“Darx, Ryul, Shalia. These are Sophie and Ari. They are from Dante’s previous group. The one Syvis is with now.” Wendy introduces us. “Leona and I met them last night during our extra training. Turns out Ari has been doing some extra training as well and.”

“Yeah, she started doing so a few days ago and she asked me to come with her in case she gets herself hurt.” Sophie explains in a very cheery demeanor. “Oh, Ari. You are such a worry wort.”

As I sit down next to Ari, the Asian girl leans over to me and whispers, “I just prefer to keep her where I can see her.”

“Is she that prone at getting herself into trouble?” I ask.

“She’s just that gullible to let Gerald trick her into whatever he wants her to do.” Ari whispers back.

I find Ari’s words a little hard to believe. Surely every girl has some notion of what guys want from them when once the flirting starts.

All of a sudden, I start hearing a bell. It’s faint but I turn myself in the direction of the door it’s coming from. Wendy asks me what I’m looking at and I tell her I’m hearing a bell get closer. Then the door opens up and Gerald comes inside.

“This is a disgrace!” Gerald yells. “Do you have any idea who I am?! I am a member of the Levine family!”

“I honestly don’t give a damn which family you’re from.” Kiara says calmly as she follows closely behind Gerald. “You can just as easily be from the latrine family for all I care.”

Gerald opens his eyes wide in shock and surprise and angrily replies, “Latrine?”

“Like I said, there are quite a couple of beastkind in my guild and if you want to have a chance at getting an invite from me, you will have to stop looking down on them.” Kiara continues.

“Tss, as if I even want to join your stupid guild.”

Gerald then starts grabbing for something that’s around his neck but he can’t seem to get it off. Did Kiara lock it on there with her [Shadow Manipulation]? The more he moves, the more I hear the ringing of that bell. I am confused as to why Gerald would make any bell sounds, until I notice he is wearing that same choker with bell on it that he threw into Leona’s plate yesterday.

As soon as I notice, I tell everyone at my table. Within moment, we are all laughing at him.

“What are you guys laughing about!” An angry Gerald yells at us.

“Hey, Gerald!” Leona calls back at him with a smile. “Nice Latrine family heirloom you got there!”

Everybody at our table starts laughing again, including Dante and Ari.

“Wow, Gerald. I didn’t know you were into jewelry.” Sophie calls out to him as well.

Gerald’s face turns red with anger, then he walks off to the table where his friends are waiting for him. With Kiara as his mentor this week, I’m hoping she’ll be keeping him in line.

After breakfast, Sophie and Ari go back to their own group to train under Syvis. When Dante takes us outside for the usual training he starts by training us the same way as Kiara does. He even has a little surprise for Miranda. Apparently, Dante has asked someone from the royal guard to bring a carrier pigeon from the royal rookery. He then guides Miranda to taming the bird. Supposedly, it’ll take a few days until the bird trusts her. But once that’s done, she’ll be able to use her [eyes in the skies] skill.

But that was only in the morning. In the afternoon tries something different. He is in full armor and is also wielding his weapon, a greatsword. Then he tells us to attack him, all together. I thought it would be easy with the 6 of us against 1, but fur wearing such armor Dante is surprisingly fast. He easilly dodges our attacks and whenever he can't dodge, he uses the flat of his greatsword as a shield. In the end, we fail to defeat him.

After dinner, Wendy and Leona head to the courtyard to do some more extra training. They meet up with Ari and Sophie before heading out though. I instead grab a bottle of water and head to the library.

I immediately go to the reading rooms on the 2nd floor and as I hoped, Kathleen was there again.

Kathleen is first startled when I enter the room. But once she sees it’s me and not a handmaiden in search of her, she relaxes and greets me. “Oh hey, Darx.”

“Good evening, your highness.”

“P-p-please … K-kathleen is fine.” The princess stutters, her shy side showing itself again.

“Alright, Kathleen it is.”

I then bring out the water bottle I brought with me and suggest Kathleen to join me in some practice exercises.

I start by getting a ball of water between my hands and ask her to use her water magic to take it from me. After that we pass the ball of water between us and soon after the princess and I are channeling a stream of water from left to right in the shape of an 8 that’s on its side.

As we are practicing, I notice Kathleen gradually becomes less shy and she stutters less when she talks. She even ends up looking me in the eyes a few times.

But our training gets interrupted when we notice two people yelling outside. We stop our training and I carefully open the door. Now I can hear the shouting is coming from the 1st floor. I step out of the reading room. There is a big square hole in the center of the 2nd floor, which allows you to see what’s going at the center of the first floor. That’s where I see my current mentor, Dante. He is there with a woman of similar age. Someone with long red hair and wearing a black suit.

“I know what I saw, Dante.” The red-haired woman says. “The demon civil war is over.”

“The demon realm is large, Estella. You saw only what was happening in a small corner of it.” Dante replies.

“Dammit, Dante! This is serious!” Estella yells. “The previous demon king was at least neutral, caring mostly about internal politics! With a new demon king we may be facing another war!”

War? Did she say war? As in with battle fields and sieges?

“They first need to cross the border before they can be of any real danger.” Dante replies. “We have got 4 heavily defended fortresses over there. And if they want to avoid those fortresses, they will need to cross a treacherous mountain range. We are a lot safer than you think.”

Estella turns her back to him and groans in frustration. “Argh! It’s like talking to a brick wall!”

Dante walks up behind Estella and places his hands on her upper arms. “All I’m saying is I’m confident that even the new demon king is smart enough that breaking through the fortresses or crossing the mountains would result in such a loss of troops that he’d be unable to press onward and have to retreat.”

The seemingly unconvinced Estella glances at Dante over her shoulder, but says nothing.

“After all, if he doesn’t keep enough soldiers at home, he will have demon dukes rebel against him in the same way he rebelled.” Dante continues.

Estella then sighs in relief and faces Dante again. “The queen did decide to send extra troops to the border. I hope you’re right.”

Dante and Estella then both leave the library. Who is that woman? And why did she feel the need to talk to my mentor in, what she thought, private?

“That’s Estella.” I hear a soft voice whisper next to me.

I look and see Kathleen is standing right next to me.

“Do you know Estella?”

“Yeah.” Kathleen says. “She the guild master of … I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say.”

A guild master? Dante’s guild master? Interesting.

Kathleen and I return to the reading room but we were no longer in the mindset to continue practicing. A war with the demons. Could it be possible? Eventually we decide to cut our meeting short.

The next day we meet Ari and Sophia at our table again. Shalia decides to sit next to Ari and spend some time with her. They are from the same duchy after all, so they probably have some stuff to talk about. Miranda, like expected, is sitting next to Dante and the two are flirting with each other again.

The day’s training is the same like before. Skill training in the morning and ganging up on Dante in the afternoon. Sadly the results are the same. We didn't defeat Dante and there is no change to my adventurer card. I think back to what Aelbrecht said. That I can choose my own skills. Maybe there has not been any skill I’ve been wanting badly enough.

During dinner I take a moment to think about what skills I might want to choose for myself. Kiara’s [shadow manipulation] seems very useful. I have a hard time thinking of what it can’t do. Wendy’s [Null Field] may be powerful too, but it would cancel out my water magic, so I better don’t choose that. Or maybe I should choose a different magic element first? About magic, what if I choose [rune master] like my father had. As long as I can learn the runic alphabet, I will be able to access all spells.

After dinner, I head to the library again, hoping to meet Kathleen once more. When I get to the reading rooms, I notice the door to one of them is already open. I head towards it expecting Kathleen waiting there for me. But when I get close enough that I can peer into the room I see something I had not expected.

Kathleen is indeed there, leaning with her back against a wall. But she is not alone. In front of her stands Gerald. He’s got one hand next to Kathleen’s head, resting against the same wall she is leaning against.

“Come on, princess. Surely you must have thought about it.” Gerald says to Kathleen.

“I … w-well I …” Kathleen responds shyly.

“It’s alright. You don’t have to say it.” Gerald says without waiting for Kathleen’s reply. “Every young woman your age is curious about that kind of stuff.”

Are they … talking about what I think they are talking about?

“Surely you don’t want your first time to be with an amateur, right? Imagine he leaves you hanging. Now that would just be horrible.”

“Uhm … Gerald … I d-don’t …”

Gerald then brings his other hand under Kathleen’s chin and forces her to look up at him.

“I can assure you. I am quite the expert.”

I have half a mind to get in there and stop Gerald. But the thing that bothers me is Kathleen not telling him no. At least if she said no, I’d know she has no interest in him and I could stop him. But what if she actually wants it?

I mean, he’s an asshole and I’d much prefer she stays away from him. But it’s not up to me to tell a princess who she can or can’t hang out with, right?