It was a few hours after the sunrise.
The youngest master of the Iphelleta House said he wanted to go out. It had been a while since he had done so.
“Excuse me, young master. How about just letting us accompany you?”
“…Ian.”
Having heard Riley saying he wanted to go to Iffa village, far away in the outskirts of the area, Ian dropped everything he was working on and rushed to see Riley in order to convince him.
“Nainiae only just started working. She also still needs to receive the maid training. If you went there by yourself, it could be dangerous, so even if it is someone other than myself, please take another servant to accompany you.”
He was saying all that because the one he picked to accompany him was Nainiae, the new maid who had been working in the House for less than a week.
“Dangerous? Why would it be?”
“It is! Having just Nainiae would be dangerous! Instead, allowing me to accompany you would be…”
Ian was saying all this because he heard Riley intended to take only one person, just Nainiae, to accompany him.
Since Ian was making the complaint from that angle, Riley actually had a lot to say.
Whenever Riley was inside the mansion or outside somewhere, it was none other than Ian who accompanied Riley, and he always had done it by himself without any other servants.
“Ugh…”
Unlike how the man looked, Ian was overprotective toward Riley. He cared for Riley like one would care for a fragile little baby. That was the perfect way to describe Ian.
When it came to this, Ian was more overbearing than Riley’s mother. As Riley thought that, he sighed and asked Ian,
“Ian, didn’t you say my father was calling for you?”
“S-Still, it’s dangerous?!”
As he listened to Ian, Riley looked at Nainiae. She was waiting quietly with the carriage ready at the back end of the mansion where an entrance was. Riley sighed again and said,
“Come on. I have a Six Circles mage as the bodyguard here. Isn’t that enough?”
Nainiae might still lack the delicate skills as a maid, but when it came to functioning as a bodyguard, there probably wasn’t anyone in the mansion that could be more efficient at it than Nainiae.
After all, she was a Six Circles mage.
“…A mag-…!”
Ian was about to say ‘A mage is!’ and say something to object, but he crumpled his face and quickly lowered his voice.
It was because there wasn’t anyone, besides the few that went to Solia with Riley, who knew that Nainiae was a mage.
“…”
Ian looked over the shoulders and checked other servants. There were a few cleaning up the garden area. He figured he should keep this a secret.
Ian scratched his head and came back to the main point.
“Anyway, I’m against this idea!”
“But you said before that I should stop sitting around and move a little, didn’t you?”
“But that was!”
It looked like Ian was going to explode from frustration.
With tightened fists, Ian pounded at his own chest like a gorilla. He continued,
“That was about swords. Your skill is…”
“You have a rough idea from what you saw at Solia Castle?”
Riley interrupted Ian.
Riley could no longer deny his own abilities to Ian. Making silly excuses, such as practicing some moves just in case, was not going to work either.
Back in Solia, at the castle’s restroom hallway, Ian clearly saw how Riley handled Erengium’s eldest son by demonstrating his real power. It was overwhelmingly flawless.
“…”
Ian was completely lost for words. He looked like someone who couldn’t speak because his mouth was full of sweets.
To be exact, what Ian saw that day was not just flawless. It was to the point Ian was having a hard time believing.
“Let alone any training, you never once grabbed a sword, so how…”
“Well, that’s that.”
“Now that we are on this subject, I have to ask. What you did that day, how was it possible for you to do it?”
“I’m not sure?”
“Could it be that you already have mastered mana long ago?”
“I’m not sure?”
“I also think the mana measurement you did last time was odd. Did you adjust your mana when you were getting it measured?”
“I’m not sure?”
As Riley kept on spewing out ‘I’m not sure?’ as the answers, Ian quickly took steps back.
“Young master, by chance… You haven’t been using…”