This is a fantasy work.
Comments are welcome, but replies will be made via the activity report.
Basically, the story will be told from the protagonist’s first-person POV.
※ Includes fantasy, harem, and convenient-plot elements. If those don’t agree with you, please hit ‘Back’.
※ I may occasionally post notes in the afterword section, but as a general policy I’ll delete them whenever I update.
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The person facing me in the garden of the estate was my little sister.
A perfect being.
If there exists such a thing as a person loved by the gods, I’m sure they would look just like her.
(How did it come to this…)
I gasped for breath, and the single-handed saber I held was now gripped in both hands. The tip was trembling.
Not just from exhaustion. The emotion called fear was showing through the blade too.
“Haah, haah…”
The saber in my hand was a live weapon. The rapier in my sister’s hand was a live weapon too. The idea that the two of us were facing each other, armed like this, didn’t seem like the act of sane people.
But the one who had thrown down this challenge was, without a doubt, my little sister.
Wearing a dress, looking at me with no particular interest, she spoke.
“Are you still going, Brother dear?”
She was calling me “Brother dear” now, but usually she didn’t even call me by name. “That guy,” “that thing” — those were the labels she’d use.
And no one around us ever scolded her for it.
My sister was wearing an off-white dress and red shoes. Despite the fact that we were slashing at each other in the garden, unlike me, she hadn’t broken a single drop of sweat.
She looked more like someone who had just finished getting ready to go out. The rapier in that sister’s hand was a piece crafted by a master smith.
Decorated all over, with a yellow gem set into the hilt. Gems like that — ones no one could produce anymore — were special tools that produced [Skills].
The rapier those gems were set into was also classed as a Magic Tool, a category of weapon known as a Magic Sword. A high-priced item; you couldn’t buy one for a hundred gold coins.
A rapier didn’t really match her dress, but she pulled it off without effort.
My little sister, who turned thirteen this year, brushed her long wavy blonde hair back from her face. It was a gesture that, for her age, looked unnaturally bewitching.
Her blue eyes regarded me coldly.
A chill ran down my spine.
I was scared. I wanted to run. But I couldn’t.
“Not yet. It’s not over yet!”
I forced the fear down and stepped in.
I had confidence in my swordsmanship — drilled to the point where I wouldn’t lose to most adults.
House Walt — a Count’s house. To inherit my real family’s estate, I had been raised under a strict regime since I was a child. I had confidence in my swordwork.
But —
“Hah. Too slow.”
I had once been hailed as a genius, a prodigy. To live up to my parents’ and family’s expectations, I’d given it everything I had.
All that effort meant nothing in front of my little sister, two years younger than me.
She was a girl. They never spent the time teaching her swordwork, since “she won’t need it.” She’d only been taught the basics — how to hold a sword, how to swing it.
And yet I couldn’t beat her.
“Nguh!”
Somewhere along the line, my body had picked up countless shallow cuts. Every time I swung, my sister evaded with the smallest possible movement.
At the same time, her rapier — flexing like a whip — left cuts on my cheek, my arm, and my stomach.
“That’s three fatal wounds I could’ve dealt you just now, Lyle.”
The little sister who smiled while speaking my name was named [Ceres Walt].
If there really were someone the gods loved, everyone would believe it had to be the sister standing in front of me. And the person Ceres truly, viscerally hated — was me.
She dodged my attack, tripped me, and I crashed onto the grass.
My body was bloody. My clothes were drenched and sticking to my skin with sweat.
My blue hair was plastered to my cheek, but I couldn’t afford to care about that. As soon as I got up, a red shoe was already swinging toward my face.
“Gah!”
I caught it with my arm, but I couldn’t kill the momentum. My body lifted off the ground and I was sent flying again, rolling on the grass.
“Pathetic.”
“Yes, truly… to think this is our son. It’s almost embarrassing.”
When I rolled to a stop, my father and mother were standing there.
The senior retainers had gathered in a ring around us, but not a single one was cheering for me.
(Father… Mother… why…)
I wanted to cry. I forced myself up through the pain, and when I turned around, Ceres was smiling sweetly at me.
“What’s the matter? Is this really all you’ve got, Lyle?”
She used my name deliberately to provoke me.
“Honestly, and we’ve barely even taught Ceres any swordwork.”
“It’s settled. Ceres is the one fit to lead House Walt.”
My parents’ voices hit me in the back.
These were the same parents who had been kind to me, once. Even the saber I was still gripping had been a gift from them, prepared for me.
“Lyle, you are a man of House Walt. You should have a first-rate weapon.”
“It suits you, Lyle. As expected of our son.”
The kind smiles had lasted until I was about ten.
After that, my parents started doting on Ceres. Their interest in me died around the same time.
And it wasn’t only my parents. The retainers in the house had changed too.
Until recently, the retainers had treated me as the next head of the family. Then, almost overnight, they started treating Ceres as if she were the heir.
I was talked about behind my back. They kept saying I wasn’t fit to be the next head.
Up until I turned ten, those same retainers, those same townspeople, had all said they were looking forward to my becoming head.
But not anymore. This was reality now.
“With this, Lady Ceres will be the next head.”
“Honestly, they didn’t even need to do this. Couldn’t they have just thrown him out?”
“There’s no way he could’ve beaten Lady Ceres. What an idiot.”
I was so angry I started crying.
(What did I do? Why do you all hate me this much?)
Ceres was my sister. I never disliked her. I’d always tried to act like a proper older brother.
But maybe that was exactly what had bothered her.
“Oh? You’re crying? How pathetic.”
She laughed — a quiet, delighted laugh. She seemed to be enjoying every second of this.
“Why are you doing this?! What did I ever do to you?!”
I raised my voice, and Ceres’s smile dropped into a blank expression.
”…You’re loud. It has nothing to do with you. It doesn’t matter to me if you live or die. You just got in the way, so you’re leaving.”
“Wha— what are you—”
Then Ceres raised her left arm and pointed it at me.
(Is she going to use magic—?!)
When I noticed, my parents and the retainers behind me had already moved out of the line of fire. They had read her motion and were already clear.
They were sanctioning the attack on me.
“Damn it! Ice Wall!”
A wall of ice rose up between us.
A water-element spell — an instant shield. One of the more difficult spells, but it appeared large enough to cover me completely.
I had never neglected my magical training, either. To make them praise me… to make my parents look at me, I’d thrown myself into training without thinking.
It wasn’t just the sword. Magic, horsemanship, all the academic subjects — all of it. But in front of the thing standing before me, all of it was worthless.
“Fire Bullet.”
Ceres — perfectly composed — finished her chant the moment my own preparation was done.
A fire-element spell, the opposite of my own. The most basic of the basics. But it was a versatile spell. A bullet of fire shot forth.
But — my thick ice wall was just… shaved away by that bullet.
It wasn’t one bullet, either.
From the tip of Ceres’s finger, a single spell produced hundreds of shots. Each one had real power behind it, and on top of that, my element should have had the advantage.
Even so — I lost. To her most basic spell.
“Tch! Earth Hand!”
Four arms made of earth grew up from the ground around me. They moved according to my will and surged toward Ceres.
“Bored.”
She smiled thinly and, with the rapier in her hand, sliced every one of the earthen arms apart. A rapier is fundamentally a thrusting weapon. With one, she was casually slicing my spell apart.
“Earth Bullet.”
To overwhelm her with volume, I chained into the next spell. Stones launched from the ground like bullets and shredded the grass into ribbons.
But I couldn’t afford to think about damage right now.
“Shield.”
Ceres calmly chanted, still smiling. A simple wall of mana sprang up and stopped my Earth Bullet completely.
I knew I wasn’t matching her, but still — I’d fired off at least a few dozen rounds. Not one got through.
(I’m almost out of mana. I have to make my move now.)
I knew there was no chance of winning. But I had to fight.
If I didn’t, I’d be thrown out of the house without even a fight.
The start of it was, of course, Ceres’s words.
“Father, dear Brother turns fifteen this year and reaches majority. To decide the next head of House Walt, may we hold a contest?”
Normally the son inherits.
But my parents agreed that Ceres’s logic was sound, and they accepted the duel between us.
“The loser leaves the house. That’s acceptable, isn’t it, dear Brother?”
The match against Ceres — who hated me, or at least wanted me gone — had started just like that.
Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have happened.
There are cases where a daughter inherits, sure. But those are emergency arrangements — proxies, or families with that as a tradition.
House Walt had always passed down through the eldest son. From the first head who carved out our territory, every successor had been a male heir in the direct line.
A house with more than two hundred years of history.
And still, my father and my mother had taken Ceres’s word over mine — and accepted a duel between her and the firstborn.
“Ceres, this isn’t over!”
I stepped in and put everything into a single swing.
To anyone watching, I was the bad guy — a man cutting down at a frail-looking little girl with everything he had. But I knew in my heart: the thousands, the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands of practice swings I’d put in showed up in this one stroke.
A blow with that much weight behind it would cleave Ceres in two if it landed.
— If it landed.
The step was clean. The cut was the best I had.
But my attack would never reach her.
She tilted her body and let the downward slash pass her. The rapier whipped out and traced new shallow cuts along my body. She was toying with me.
But I couldn’t end like this.
“Not yet!”
I let the missed downstroke bite into the earth, released my left hand, and brought the blade slashing back up in a single motion. The strike traced a V.
Ceres’s eyes went wide.
It was my hidden technique.
A swordform I’d been secretly drilling. It still didn’t reach her — but the edge clipped the hem of her dress.
(So even that gets a reaction…)
I had meant it as a killing blow. Her reflexes outclassed it. But — even a scrap of her dress, I’d reached her.
(My sword can reach Ceres!)
From the outside it must’ve looked ugly — an older brother going all out on his little sister. But if the opponent was Ceres, it meant something to me.
Just seeing her beautiful face twist with humiliation was worth it. We leapt apart, and I — out of breath — curled the corner of my mouth into a grin.
Last-ditch defiance. It was all I had left.
“What’s wrong, Ceres?”
Ceres looked down, expressionless, shaking. Frustration. How many times had I ever seen my sister look genuinely frustrated like this?
”…Don’t say my name. It’s filthy.”
“…huh?”
When I noticed, the Ceres who had been in front of me was gone. Her voice came from behind me.
I turned, and at the same time her fist was at my face.
(Wha—?)
There was no pain. I just realized I’d already let go of the saber and was sailing through the air. The world around me had slowed; only Ceres seemed to move normally.
She closed in and kicked me upward with the red shoe.
Hanging in the air, I saw her looking up at me, already preparing a spell.
(This is bad — she’s going to kill me!)
I tried to throw up a defensive spell. The spell Ceres loosed was high difficulty — one that required real ability even of skilled mages.
She’d meant it. She was trying to kill me.
“Fire Storm.”
While I heard her flat words, I chanted my own.
“Water Ball!”
Squeezing out the last of my mana, I deployed the spell around myself. A storm of flame whirled up, wrapping around me, trying to burn me alive.
I countered with my own spell, but I had no idea if it would hold.
What I did know was that the spell coming at me was lethal in intent.
“Are — are you saying I really am that much in your way?! Ceres!”
The moment I screamed, I crashed back to the ground. The impact hit my body, and only then did the pain hit me all at once.
It mixed with the pain I’d been holding back, and I writhed on the ground. The saber clattered down in front of me.
The blade had stabbed into the earth, glowing faintly red from the flames.
Picking it up would burn my hand for sure. But I reached for it.
I couldn’t think anymore. I just didn’t want to let it go. The saber in front of me felt like the last thread connecting me to my parents.
“Aah, aah…”
The people watching just stood there — no one helped. There were even some laughing at the sight of me crawling pathetically in the dirt.
The only one walking toward me was Ceres, wearing a vulgar smile.
“Serves you right. Though it’s a surprise you’re still alive.”
She picked up the saber I had been reaching for and shredded it in front of me. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was her arm — but the saber wasn’t a piece of metal anymore, it was paper, sliced into ribbons.
The hand I had stretched out fell into the dirt.
I gripped a fistful of grass and looked up through tears. Toying with a strand of her hair with her left hand, Ceres was smiling from ear to ear.
“That one was your favorite, wasn’t it? Such a shame.”
She was looking down at me, having the time of her life. Then she heard my parents calling and turned.
“Ceres, that’s enough. Your dress is ruined. Let’s go buy you a new one today.”
“That sounds lovely, dear.”
Wounded, burned, broken — no one was looking at me anymore. I was already being treated as if I no longer existed.
“W-wait! Father! Mother!”
I forced out a voice, stretched a hand toward them. They glanced at me once. Just once. And the look in their eyes was the look you give to something filthy.
I let my forehead drop to the ground.
I cried, openly and without caring who was around to see.
I don’t know how much time passed; I can’t have held out very long before losing consciousness. The last thing I remember is sobbing on the grass — and when I came to, I was on a bed.
Bandages everywhere. Someone had treated my wounds.
“Who in the world… Father? No, that’s impossible.”
Even as I said it, I knew. After everything, my father wasn’t going to come back to help me. But more than that — this wasn’t the manor. This wasn’t where I lived.
I looked up at a wooden ceiling and understood that I wasn’t in my family’s house anymore.
Who had saved me? I turned my head — wincing at the pain in my neck — and looked around.
A wooden building. Closer to a shack than a house. I turned my eyes back to the ceiling. I was awake, but my body was still demanding more sleep.
And I didn’t want to think right now.
(So they really threw me out, huh…)
Ceres’s face floated up in my mind. The face wearing that vulgar smile. The face laughing at me.
That’s when —
”…? Who’s there?”
There was a strange sensation — like people talking nearby, or talking to me.
“There’s no one here… right?”
There was no presence of anyone else. I closed my eyes, figuring I’d imagined it.
I didn’t know who had treated me, but they had, and I wanted to sleep and recover. My body felt heavy and I wanted to drop off.
(I don’t want to think about anything right now…)
After I’d closed my eyes for a bit — I heard a voice.
“Oi oi, this is it, right? It’s definitely it!”
Not cheerful so much as rough. A loud voice, laughing — “Gahaha.” Someone’s laughter.
(Wh— who’s there? Is it the one who helped me?)
But my voice didn’t seem to reach them. And — for some reason — I felt drained. Like mana was being pulled out of me.
“Father, please be quiet for a moment.”
This time a slightly tired man’s voice.
(More than one? And something feels wrong—)
I couldn’t speak. And nothing I thought reached them either.
“Cut Gramps some slack, Father. After all, it’s the first conversation. And, by the feel of it, there’s a direct descendant nearby. Definitely carries our blood.”
A cheerful voice this time.
(Three of them? No, maybe more.)
It wasn’t just voices — it felt like presences too. There were more than three.
“I get how Grandpa feels~ But first, let’s calm down and check.”
A new voice.
(Five now.)
“Well, it is our first conversation. But you know, it’s also possible he’ll never notice.”
That one sounded pessimistic.
(Another. Six?)
“Don’t be such a downer, old man. More importantly, I want to know what the situation is right now. I hope he notices us… what’s going on, Broad?”
When I heard the name Broad, I was shocked.
Because Broad was my grandfather’s name.
(Am I… did I die?)
Inside, I half-thought, maybe that’s fine too, while listening to the voices.
“My grandson! It’s Lyle! No mistake, that’s my grandson!”
It was unmistakably my grandfather’s voice. He had always been just a little too soft on his grandchild, and that softness was right there in his voice.
But it sounded younger, somehow. Not the hoarse voice of an old man.
What the hell was going on? — then, after a beat —
“Hah?! Seriously?!”
Three voices at once. The rowdy bunch had reacted together.
(…What in the world is happening?)
That day, my fate began to move.