Raimund

Raimund (ライムント, Raimunto) is a young apprentice of Hirschur who frequently assists her in her laboratory.

Raimund is a boy with disheveled black hair covered in dust from his long hours working in Hirshur's laboratory.

Just like Hirschur and Ferdinand, Raimund is obsessed with magical research to the point of disregarding his own wellbeing. He greatly admires Ferdinand for his talent in inventing magic tools.

Raimund was born to a noblewoman originally from Werkerstock who married into Ahrensbach. Her former master, a second wife, was executed as part of the post civil war purges. For these reasons, as well as his low mana capacity for a mednoble, Raimund is not viewed with favour by other Ahrensbach nobles and his entire house has fallen on hard times.

Raimund managed to catch Professor Hirschur's attention in the course of his regular education at the Royal Academy. Despite Raimund's current home Ahrensbach and Hirschurs former home duchy of Ehrenfest being on very bad terms with each other, the professor still decided to take him under her wing to nurture his talent, officially stating that as a sovereignty noble it is her responsibility to be above inter-duchy conflicts and act for the good of Yurgenschmidt as a whole.

She considers him a rare genius, second only to Ferdinand, though where Ferdinand's talents lie in coming up with new ideas and innovation, Raimund has shown immense talent in improving and optimizing other people's inventions and minimizing the mana-usage of existing magic tools.

Rozemyne first lays eyes upon Raimund when she meets Professor Hirschur at her laboratory to discuss a magic circle she is in the process of developing, intended to make lent out books return to the library and sort themselves back into the shelves by themselves once the lending period has expired.

Upon seeing what a huge mess the room is, Rozemyne's attendant Lieseleta scolds Hirschur about how unacceptable it was to accept a visitor of her lady's status to such a place and shows off a cleaning magic tool she brought along due to expecting such a situation. Immediately getting the message Hirschur and Raimund quickly start to pick anything of value up off the floor and evacuate it to the tables, after which Lieseleta uses the magic tool to clean the floor. While this is going on, Rozemyne's other attendants set up one of the tables for tea and snacks she had brought along. After some more scolding about how dirty they themselves and their clothes are, the professor uses waschen to also clean herself and her disciple.

Between her work obsession and hunger, Hirschur entirely forgets to introduce her disciple until Rozemyne herself asks for an introduction. At this point Rozemyne and her retainers learn that Raimund is from Ahrensbach, causing her guard knights to jump between them and Cornelius to question Hirschur's loyalty and mental state, wondering out loud whether she has any idea what has been going on between Ahrensbach and Ehrenfest the last couple of years. Hirschur calmly explains that while she was born in Ehrenfest she is a citizen of the Sovereignty now and as a professor of the royal academy she has a responsibility to nurture talent she find for the good of Yurgenschmidt as a whole and can not afford to be limited by inter-duchy politics. She goes further to state that if she was that kind of person, she never would have taken Ferdinand under her wing, since doing so received considerable pushback from the Veronica faction and earned her many toxic messages from Lady Veronica herself back in the day. Hearing all this, Rozemyne manages to get her guardknights to back off, though they remain on guard against Raimund.

With both Hirschur and Raimund appearing to have skipped at least one meal due to being immersed in their work, they both dig in once the obligatory exchanging of first sips and bites has been finished, eating as fast as they can without violating noble table manners.

Following the snack, Rozemyne asks Hirschur to evaluate a magic circle she developed for the purpose of books returning to the library on their own once the lending period has expired. Hearing Rozemyne mention books she received from Ferdinand during her explanation, causes him a minor emotional outburst, but when Rozemyne turns toward her scholar Hartmut about whether they could show the books to Raimund, he immediately shuts her down before she can even finish the sentence, stating that they can not show Lord Ferdinand's books to a noble from another duchy without his express permission.

Upon inspecting the magic circle Rozemyne had drawn up, Hirschur calls it outright useless, only going on to go into more details when promted. There is nothing wrong with the circle itself and it will fulfill the desired functions just fine, but due to it's complexity it will require far too much mana for anyone below archduke candidate levels of mana capacity to use them, which would include Professor Solange, the currently sole librarian of the royal academy's library, who is only a mednoble. She passes the paper on to her disciple and tells him to demonstrate his talents by turning Rozemyne's work into something even he as a mednoble could use.

After commenting on how impressed he is how much functionality Rozemyne was able to cram into a single magic circle, Raimund begins breaking it down and splitting the functions into two separate circles, explaining that it is better to split the necessary from the quality-of-life features. Separating the circle also come with the added benefit of allowing the function to return the books to their places among the shelves to also be used for books that have not left the library.

Doing this allows Raimund to strip out many elements that Rozemyne had to add to make the two functions compatible with each other, like for example a section of life-mana that then needed to be balanced with earth-mana so it wouldn't clash with the other types associated with fire, water and wind. Apart from added functionality, this would also drastically reduce the amount of mana any magic tools made with these circles would require to function and the lessened complexity would also help to make it less likely for errors to happen during the drawing of the circles.

During his work he offhandedly mentions that in all likelihood using verification paper will further cut down on mana use, which catches Rozemyne completely off guard, since she believes that only duchies with which they are trading with and the sovereignty would know of verification paper. But as it turns out, Professor Gundolf from Drewanchel had been talking quite passionately about it and his eagerness to research it during one of his classes, spreading the knowledge to essentially every duchy of the country.

Surprisingly to Raimund this meeting leads to Lord Ferdinand taking a personal interest in Raimund's case. As far as Raimund knows, Rozemyne was so impressed with his talent that she suggested Ferdinand take him on as his disciple. For this purpsoe Ferdinand issues Raimund with a series of questions as a test, mostly about Ahrensbach's geography, followed by a series of magic tools and circles that the boy is to improve to demonstrate his abilities. If he manages to pass these tests, Ferdinand will take him on as a long-distance disciple, with even the chance to become Ferdinand's retainer once he comes of age, should he wish to do so and get permission from his home duchy.

What Raimund does not know is that Ferdinand only in part does this out of an interest in his talents, but is more concerned with cultivating him as an information source to gather data on Ahrensbach, though his offer to take him as a retainer in the future is genuine.

Raimund is overjoyed with this development and upon seeing Rozemyne the next time thanks her deeply for opening up this opportunity for him, before charging off toward Hirschur's lab to finish the second part of his assignment.

In the following summer Georgine and Detlinde are scheduled to visit Ehrenfest. Ferdinand states that he wishes to take Raimund on as a retainer upon his graduation and uses this to request that he be allowed to visit Ehrenfest alongside the two women.

During the visit he is able to present Ferdinand and Rozemyne the teleportation circles he modified as a task for his mentor. This version of the magic circle is considerably smaller and requires far less mana than the regular one, but only allows for comparatively small object to be transported. During tests conducted by Philine and Damuel they ascertain that the circles are well capable of teleporting books - which is what they were primarily designed to do - and that even an average laynoble should be able to use them about ten times before requiring a rejuvenaton potion. Rozemyne purchases the modified circles pretty much on the spot. Much to Raimunds surprise Ferdinand allows this, despite the specifications coming from him, which many other professors would have likely used as a way to take the credit or at least take a cut of the money.

Rozemyne further requests that Raimund modify a voice-recording magic tool, so it will not only be smaller and run off of only a single feystone, but also stay usable for a long time and without restrictions as to how often the recorded messages can be played. To accomplish this difficult task, Ferdinand gives Raimund access to his notes on the magic circles of Schwartz and Weiss which incorporate a circle for long-term preservation of effects.