Rauffen/Story

Professor Rauffen, along with Professor Hirschur, is one of Rozemyne’s supervisors during her mana compression course. She finds his enthusiastic encouragement more distracting than helpful. Later, he is one of the teachers in the first year class for schtappe fundamentals, where he teaches Rozemyne to use the incantation rott.

When Lestilaut, an archduke candidate from Dunkelfelger, gets into a dispute with Rozemyne over the custody of Schwartz and Weiss, Rauffen asks Prince Anastasius to allow them to resolve the issue with a game of treasure stealing ditter, to which the prince agrees.

Rauffen is delighted when Rozemyne, despite being an archduke candidate and a first year, decides to join the match personally, admiring her dedication and spirit. Despite his close connections to Dunkelfelger from growing up there and being the overseer of their dorm, he is nevertheless very happy about the quality of the match and the miraculous victory Rozemyne manages to lead Ehrenfest to, praising her unorthodox, yet effective tactics, even going so far as to compare her to Ferdinand.

Rauffen and Primevere are the instructors assigned to teach the archduke candidates schtappe transformation during Rozemyne's second year at the academy. Rauffen is particularly thrilled about teaching Rozemyne, due to him misinterpreting the girl's personal participation in a ditter match as meaning she is a fellow ditter enthusiast and would be taking the knights course alongside the archduke candidate course in the future just like her guardian Ferdinand once did. When he learns that this isn't the case he is surprised, but doesn't seem to give up just yet.

The first part of this course is for the students to transform their schtappe into a shield. The pupils are encouraged to create a shield of uniform size, so that knights could better cooperate to form a shield-wall. Since she has trouble to visualize a shield other than the divine instrument of Schutzaria and her not intending to become a knight, Rozemyne asks if she is allowed to form a round shield, which the professor reluctantly allows, after which she forms a near identical copy of Schutzaria's Shield, except it's slightly translucent yellow instead of the solid gold of the actual divine instrument. Every other detail however, down to the size and placement of the feystones is precisely the same.

Part of the exam for the course is to use the shield to defend against a thrown feystone. In typical Dunkelfelger manner, Rauffen does not explain this in advance or even ask Rozemyne whether she's ready to take the exam, but just tells her to hold up her already summoned shield and launches the stone at it, leaving her no time to inform him or even think about her defensive charms before a bracelet on her arm lights up. Right after the stone is bounced back, she just has enough time to shout a quick warning at the professor to defend himself against a counter-attack, which Rauffen is able to ward off thanks to his honed reflexes.

Rozemyne explains that her guardian had fitted her with a variety of custom-made protection charms and thankfully the thrown feystone only triggered the weakest response. To learn that this response was merely the weakest counter-attack greatly surprises Rauffen due to how powerful even this defense had been.

For the second part of the lesson - transforming the schtappe into a close-combat weapon - Rozemyne once again chooses to create a copy of a divine instrument, this time the Spear of Leidenschaft. Due to thinking of her time when she used the spear in combat against a feybeast, the spear comes out already filled to the brim with mana and crackling with power. Usually to pass the exam students are required to attack one of the target dummies, but sensing the immense power held in the spear Rauffen quickly tells Rozemyne to unmorph her schtappe and passes her without needing to attack, to guarantee the safety of her fellow students, after which he ruefully mutters that he could have seen it's destructive powers if only they had been in the knight's building.

After having already passed her exam, Rozemyne still lingers with the other students - who give her a wide berth after witnessing the power of her defensive charms - where she end up changing her schtappe into a water gun by accident. Rauffen immediately pounces on her, assuming she invented a new kind of weapon that revolutionize warfare in the future. She insists that it is merely a children's toy, but Rauffen not believing her insists she uses it on the target dummies. Much to the professors disappointment the "weapon" turns out to truly be just a children's toy that only squirts out a small stream of water, that doesn't even reach the target. Just like the water created with waschen the water disappears without getting anything wet mere moments after it hits the floor.

A few days later students from Ehrenfest call upon the professors for aid, because a ternisbefallen is rampaging in their gathering spot. Rauffen loses no time in requesting the help of the Sovereign Knight's Order, who are the only nobles allowed to enter the academy in force. But by the time he and the knights arrive, the feybeast has already been slayn by the Ehrenfest students and while the damage outside the protective barrier remains, the inside of the gathering spot has been completely restored, much to his astonishment. His attempts to question Rozemyne about the incident right there and then are however cut short since whatever the girl has gone through left her too weak to even walk and with a high fever. In the following days Rozemyne is bedridden and before an inquiry can be set up, she is recalled to Ehrenfest to rest and recover, as well as participate in the Dedication Ritual in the temple, so the inquiry is postponed until her return.

Following the incident it is decided that an investigation is required. Not only was it important to assure that no others of it's kind were lurking around, the behavior of the slayn beast was also quite unusual. After arriving and escaping the Werkerstock dormitory, the beast should have homed in either on the closest or the strongest mana source, but did neither. Instead it ignored the much more mana-rich grounds of the greater duchies and even went right past both the Ahrensbach and Fernbeltag gathering spots to charge in a straight line toward Ehrenfest.

The professors chosen for this task are Rauffen, due to being the one who called upon the knight's order, Hirschur on account of being the supervisor of the attacked duchy's dormitory, Gundolf who volunteered and Fraularm.

However he has little hope of them finding much, due to how unqualified he considers the group. He is well aware that he himself is not exactly the thinking type, Hirschur very openly stated that she thinks the entire investigation is a waste of time and wishes to return to her research as quickly as possible, Gundolf likely is only interested to satisfy his own curiosity and the chance to see such a rare specimen up close and with Ahrensbach being among the suspects, Fraularm should have been kept out of the investigation to begin with.

The trail of destruction left behind by the beast started at the now abondoned former Werkerstock dormitory, so this is where they are to go to investigate.

To make sure that on the decided day Hirschur would arrive in something approaching a timly fashion, Rauffen preemtively arrives ahead of third bell at her laboratory. She manages to convince him to allow her to continue her brewing right up until the bell rang, at which point he practically drags her to the meeting, making them arrive just a little late. Once there they discover that the two other professors and two members of the knight's order have already unlocked the door to the former Werkerstock dormitory and entered and that Fraularm and Gundolf are arguing. Apparently the first thing Fraularm did after stepping through the door was casting waschen to clean the entry hall and the connecting corridor stating she could not be expected to enter such a dirty place, since it would ruin her clothes. Naturally this does little to alleviate Rauffens growing suspicions, since this action - whether foolishly or deliberately - would have erased any evidence they might have found there.

After this discussion has come to and end the present people split into two teams of two professors and one knight each. Hirschur and Rauffen investigate the cellar, while Gundolf and Fraularm go to the second and third floors. After gown down the stairs Hirschur voices her thoughts on the incident to Rauffen, including the current hostile climate between Ahrensbach and Ehrenfest and how during Ferdinand's time at the academy someone from Ehrenfest once brought a young ternisbefallen to the academy to attack him, which due to it having been resolved internally never became known outside of Ehrenfest itself until this point. She also forwards several other theories to Rauffen, which temporarily makes him believe that Hirschur actually cares for the safety of the students, only for this good impression to be dashed again when she comments on how any further incident would only cut into her research time.

The investigation of the cellar does not turn up any disturbances of the thick dust-layer or anything else suspicious and the team for the upper floors reports the same. Gundolf also states that they found no evidence of the teleportation circle being used. He volunteers to help the knight's compile the report for the king and tells Hirschur and Fraularm they can leave if they want, adding that Ahrensbach has been proofen to not be involved, though he insists on Rauffen staying with him for the report for administrative purposes, since he was the one who called upon the knight's order.

Once the two female professors have left however Gundolf reveals that he actually did find evidence that the teleportation circle had been used, which catches Raufen and even the knights off guard. He comments that as a former archduke candidate he gained knowledge that was not widely spread, even among the higher echelons of noble society. He refrained from telling this to Fraularm and Hirschur, since in his opinion both are suspects. Fraularm due to the hostility between Ehrenfest and Ahrensbach, the fact that the old Werkerstock castle and half the former duchy's territory are currently overseen by Ahrensbach and Fraularms own very suspicious behavior upon entering the dorm. Also the trail of destruction left behind by the ternisbefallen is rather curious as well.

His suspicion on Ehrenfest stemms mainly from the fact that despite them being the attacked party, their gathering spot has not just been restored to it's previous state, but became even more bountiful than before the feybeast attack, meaning not only did they come out of the incident without damage, but actually stronger than before. Thus despite being the seeming victims, he considers the possibility of this being part of a ploy.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 7 Once Rozemyne returns to the academy after the completion of the dedication ritual, she is summoned to an inquiry in the small hall before the professors who conducted the investigation, the Sovereign Knight's Commander and the Sovereign High Priest, overseen by Prince Hildebrand. During the course of the inquiry Rozemyne is cleared of most of the suspicions leveled her way, but in it's place certain questions regarding the Ehrenfest bible arise and so it is decided that three days later a second meeting is held, to which Ferdinand - who is both Rozemyne's guardiand and the Ehrenfest High Priest - is summoned and told to bring the Ehrenfest high bishop's bible, so it can be compared with the one from the sovereign temple, which naturally also led to the presence of the Sovereign High Bishop.

In this second meeting it is determined that the prayer to invoke the God of Darkness Blessing was indeed in the bible, but that it was protected by an enchantment and thus couldn't be seen by people who lacked the requirements, likely a certain amount of mana capacity of specific elemental affinities. Unfortunately among the people unable to read this particular passage of the bibles were also Immanuel, the sovereign high priest, as well as the sovereign high bishop, which led to the suspicion of Rozemyne lying about having learned the prayer from the bible. With this revelation and confirmation, Rozemyne is finally cleared of all accusations in the opinion of everyone present, except for Fraularm, who kept trying to get Rozemyne charged with anything and anything she could come up with, but was mostly ignored by everyone else.

Following the conclusion of the inquiry Rauffen uses this opportinity to speak with Ferdinand, hoping to get his help in convincing Rozemyne to attend the knight's course next year. Howver under the privacy of sound-blocking magic tools Ferdinand told Rauffen that Rozemyne still hadn't recovered from her Jureve sleep and could only move with the use of magic tools and that she was not allowed to take off her protective charms under any circumstance, which would present a very real danger if she joined the knight's course. Knowing this Rauffen finally stops trying to get Rozemyne to join the knight's course.

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