Rozemyne/Story

See Myne/Story

See Myne/Story

After Myne officially becomes Rozemyne, she undergoes a health examination with Ferdinand, the High Priest, supervised by her new noble father Karstedt.

Ferdinand determines that her mana pathways have become badly scarred and hardened due to the damage caused by her Devouring. In order to dissolve the hardened "lumps" of mana and improve her health, she will need to make a jureve potion using a variety of rare and high-quality ingredients.

As Rozemyne prepares for her noble baptism and adoption, she meets Karstedt's family, which is now also her family.

She introduces herself to Elvira, her new mother, as well as her older brothers Eckhart, Lamprecht, and Cornelius, all of whom welcome her warmly. She also begins intensively studying to master noble etiquette prior to her baptism. Ferdinand visits every few days to check on her health.

On the day of the baptism, Ferdinand gives Rozmeyne one of Tuuli's hair ornaments as a baptismal gift. Overwhelmed by nostalgia and missing her family, she bursts into tears. Ferdinand hurriedly clears the room, gives her a hug to calm her down, and then heals her swollen eyes with some exasperation.

About two hundred nobles are present for Rozemyne's baptism, including her new family and Sylvester and Florencia. She registers her new citizenship medal with mana, rather than blood, and it shines with a rainbow light in response. She is then given a mana ring, and Ferdinand instructs her to give the audience a blessing. Her blessing fills the entire room, shocking the nobles present and giving Sylvester a good segue to announce her adoption as the daughter of the archduke.

After the ceremony, she is introduced to her adoptive mother Florencia and adoptive big brother Wilfried. Her other adoptive siblings, Charlotte and Melchior, are too young to appear in public. She also meets Brigitte, her new guard knight, who will work alongside Damuel.

Wilfried drags Rozemyne out to play, and she predictably collapses due to her poor stamina. Wilfried and Lamprecht are both shocked and guilty at the sight of her seemingly lifeless body. Rozemyne later learns that Ferdinand planned for that to happen as an object lesson on her frailty.

Rozemyne returns to the temple and is formally inaugurated as the new High Bishop. Her first formal ceremony is the Starbind Ceremony at the end of summer. Rumors of the tiny new High Bishop who gives real blessings begin to circulate through the lower city, and Rozemyne also gets to see her lower city family from afar for a short time.

After the lower city's Starbind Ceremony, Rozemyne visits the castle for the first time. There she meets her new attendants Rihyarda and Ottilie and apprentice guard knights Angelica and Cornelius for the first time. She also gets to see her younger sister Charlotte and her younger brother Melchior.

Rozemyne, Sylvester, Ferdinand, and Benno, among others, meet at the Italian Restaurant to eat lunch and discuss the printing industry. Sylvester approves Rozemyne's request to set up a monastery workshop in the nearby town of Hasse. To her surprise, they depart for Hasse immediately on the nobles' highbeasts, and Ferdinand uses magic to build the monastery before their eyes, using the same white stone as the City of Ehrenfest.

Tasked with raising funds for the monastery, Rozemyne suggests hosting a “charity concert” and asks Ferdinand to perform harspiel for her. He initially refuses, even when she offers him to trade him new songs and recipes, but is eventually badgered into helping her by Rihyarda.

To vent his annoyance, Ferdinand begins Rozemyne’s magic training at a ruthless pace. He gives her a large collection of books on magic but ensures she has no time to read them. Determined to get her own revenge, Rozemyne begins plotting to make and sell detailed illustrations of Ferdinand at the harspiel concert.

When Rozemyne finishes her highbeast, Ferdinand is dubious of the unconventional design of her Pandabus, which uses a drivable (rather than rideable) design and bears an unfortunate resemblance to a grun.

The performance is a rousing success, both as a performance and as a sales opportunity. Rozemyne sells out of all 300 illustrations she prepared. However, Ferdinand tracks her down as the culprit, scolds her, and puts an end to her illustration business.

On a visit to Hasse, Ferdinand and Rozemyne take four of the town’s orphans from the mayor and move them to the monastery. Ferdinand is disgusted by the commoners’ poor manners and impatient with Rozemyne’s reluctance to discipline them. After they return to the temple, they sense a disturbance at the monastery and discover that Hasse’s citizens attempted to break in.

To deal with the ongoing hostility, Ferdinand assigns Rozemyne to gather evidence on the mayor, politically isolate him and his allies, and execute him. However, she is deeply frightened and sickened at being asked to harm another person. Over the next few days, Rozemyne’s attendants and family notice her losing sleep over her worries, and Ferdinand receives several complaints and worried reports from Fran, Karstedt, and Sylvester. He promises to try to cheer her up somehow. Although Rozemyne is already feeling better by the next time they meet, she insists that he owes her a “cheering up” anyway.

Rozemyne explains that what is “common sense” for Ferdinand, like eliminating one’s political enemies, is completely different from “common sense” of the world she knows. He is shaken by the realization that their perspectives are so different, but praises her for managing to adapt. In turn, she assures him that she plans to take responsibility in Hasse.

Rozemyne loses patience with Wilfried’s jealousy and decides to switch places for the day. She spends the day leisurely reading, enjoying her free time, and developing a study curriculum to improve Wilfried's education.

Ferdinand, however, is infuriated by his nephew's laziness at the temple and demands that Sylvester remove him from the line of succession. Rozemyne asks him to give Wilfried one more chance and to do his best to frighten him into studying. As she hoped, Wilfried is able to memorize the prayer he was assigned, and Ferdinand concedes that he can be taught.

During the switch, Rozemyne realizes that Sylvester has no clear idea how much work she and Ferdinand have been doing at the temple. She warns him that “if you work him too hard, he will just die,” and Sylvester agrees to ease off their schedule. Ferdinand is appalled that she told the archduke that she couldn’t handle the work she was given, but she tells him that open communication with one’s superiors is important.

Ferdinand calls Kantna, the scholar-official of Hasse, to a meeting and pressures him into voiding his contract to buy some of the orphans. Intimidated by his skill at blackmail, Rozemyne assures him that she will never in her life make an enemy of him, no matter what.

When they return to Hasse with the contract, the mayor, who is under the mistaken assumption that the former High Bishop is still alive, treats them arrogantly. Ferdinand is coldly furious and makes it clear to Rozemyne that, were this not a good learning opportunity for her, the mayor would already be dead.

With the autumn Harvest Festival approaching, Ferdinand assigns Justus and Eckhart to accompany Rozemyne in collecting the first ingredient for her jureve on the Night of Schutzaria. Ferdinand and Rozemyne travel separately to spread out the work and limit the toll on her health. Due to a problem with his schedule, he is unable to meet her in Dorvan as planned, and she has to begin gathering her ruelle fruit without him.

When they reach the ruelle tree, Rozemyne harvests a ruelle and begins to dye it with her mana under Justus's instructions, while Eckhart, Damuel, and Brigitte protect them from the approaching feybeasts. However, her ruelle is eaten by a zantze that grows into a goltze.

To buy time until Ferdinand can arrive, Rozemyne casts a reverse shield of Wind to contain the feybeast. She becomes drowsy and is only able to maintain the shield thanks to Justus telling her stories about the Royal Academy Library. Finally, Ferdinand and Eckhart manage to kill the goltze. Rozemyne is deeply disappointed at her failure to obtain the ingredient.

Rozemyne accidentally gives a blessing during her debut harspiel performance, which her guardians use as an opportunity to promote her as the Saint of Ehrenfest.

During winter socializing, she and Wilfried visit the winter playroom for the first time and meet the other noble children. She makes plans to use her study methods from the orphanage, like karuta and playing cards, to improve the quality of their education.

Ferdinand and Rozemyne return to the temple for the Dedication Ritual, where they again fill extra chalices for Frenbeltag. However, Ferdinand insisted that Sylvester and Florencia take responsibility for providing the necessary mana, and the ritual progresses quickly.

When the Lord of Winter appears, Rozemyne goes with the Knight’s Order during their battle and gives them a blessing of Angriffe to help them during the fight. As soon as the schnesturm is sufficiently weakened, Ferdinand carries Rozemyne on his highbeast and helps her deliver the finishing blow with the spear of Leidenschaft, so she can claim its feystone as the winter ingredient for her jureve.

Because her guardians feel that Rozemyne needs to cram as much as she can to compensate for her two year sleep, she is prevented from seeing her brother Cornelius off when he leaves for the Royal Academy before her, which saddened her.

At the beginning of her second year at the Royal Academy, Rozemyne's atrophied muscles have recovered to pretty much the state they were in before her coma. She is once again able to move without any magical aid, but only at the slow speeds she was capable of prior to her jureve treatment. For this reason, her guardians advised her to keep wearing the body enhancement magic tools. By pouring mana in them, she is now able to reach the speed of healthy people for at least short periods without immediately running out of breath or collapsing.

Due to the information given by Matthias, Sylvester decides to enact the purge sooner than originally planned, though does not give the new timetable or any more details to his children. And thanks to the inside information provided by Matthias, they will also be able to more thoroughly dismantle the faction, since now they have proper cause to move against Giebe Gerlach and several others who managed to keep their crimes hidden from the Aub prior to this point.

Once all the students have arrived at the Royal Academy two days later, the archduke candidates reveal the winter purge to the gathered group of children, and after explaining the situation, allow them time amongst themselves to make the decisions of whether they will return to their families to be punished alongside them or give their names to a member of the archducal family, and if they decide for the latter, which person specifically they wish to serve. Of all the students of the former Veronica faction, sixteen make the decisions to give their names, three of them to Rozemyne herself. They are Matthias, Laurenz, and Muriella.

Most of the boys most naturally wish to serve a man, so they flock to either Wilfried or Aub Ehrenfest himself.

Most of the female attendants and knights wish to give their names to Charlotte rather than Rozemyne, since being related to criminals and no longer having the support of their families will surely impact their marriage prospects within Ehrenfest. But should they follow their lady to another duchy, the impact of their families' past would be much smaller. Since Lady Rozemyne is already engaged to Wilfried and thus will remain in Ehrenfest, the girls would rather become retainers of Charlotte since she is expected to marry into another duchy, which would allow her retainers to move there as well.

With Scholars generally not being allowed to move to other duchies, the female apprentice scholars stayed away from Charlotte, but to Rozemyne's surprise only Muriella chose to give her name to her, with the others instead deciding to give their names to Wilfried or the adults, since becoming Rozemyne's retainer would mean having to go to the temple and serving under Hartmut. The reputation of the temple has improved drastically over recent years, but it is still not a place many nobles are willing to go to if they can avoid it, and Hartmut has a reputation for being quite strict and cutting off those that are of no use to him. With the children already having lost their families, they are afraid of what will happen to them should they choose to serve Rozemyne and then earn Hartmut's ire, so they believe that serving Wilfried or the archducal couple is the safer option. Her weak constitution likely also factors into the students decision, since if the one a person gave their name to were to suddenly die before returning their name, they would die along with them.

The reason why Matthias and Laurenz wish to give their names to Rozemyne as soon as possible is, at least in part, so they can demonstrate how fairly and well she treats her retainers, which they already noticed from Roderick. They believe that once they serve as examples, others might have their doubts about serving her allayed and change their decision. Meanwhile, Muriella has great admiration for Lady Elvira, but due to her family situation could not openly state so without incurring punishment. By serving Elvira's baptismal daughter, she also hopes to get earlier access to newly released romance stories. Actually, Muriella wishes to give her name to Lady Elvira herself, but since they were only given the option to choose a member of the archducal family, she picked Rozemyne to serve as the closest alternative. Upon learning this, Rozemyne inquires with Sylvester if Muriella would be allowed to give her name to Elvira. Sylvester in principle agrees, but insists that she has to swear her name to Rozemyne until her graduation, and then Rozemyne will be allowed to return her name to her, so Muriella can swear herself to Elvira instead.

One of the female apprentice attendants, the mednoble Gretia, has yet to make a decision. She is strongly inclined toward serving Rozemyne, but on account of low self-esteem fears she will not be able to properly serve someone who has so many interactions with royalty and greater duchies. Brunhilde and Lieseleta think this can work, since right now their work is already split into internal and external affairs with Brunhilde taking on the majority of interactions with other duchies, while Lieseleta mainly does the tasks dealing only with member of Ehrenfest. As a mednoble, Gretia would work alongside Lieseleta and thus be rarely in contact with external nobles, though they have yet to contact Gretia about this.

Upon leaving for the advancement ceremony, the gathered students hear a commotion from the upper floor. As it turns out, a first year student wrote a message to his family and was hoping he could get it into Ehrenfest via students from another duchy. In the note, he states that he has heard that something bad will happen to his family and asks if they will be alright, since he is unaware of any crimes they might have committed. Despite the innocence of the message, Matthias and Laurenz still insist that this meant that they could not allow any of the children of the former Veronica faction to leave the dormitory. Rozemyne is reluctant and wishes to help reassure the children, but Wilfried stops her and convinces her to put the situation in the hands of Matthias and Laurenz, as they agreed upon earlier. As a cover story for the absence of so many children, they inform Professor Hirschur that an infectious illness has spread in the Ehrenfest dormitory and that several students will be absent until their recovery, which is expected to take several days.

At Brunhilde's and Lieseleta's advice, she asks Wilfried to pretend that he was the one who gave her the rainbow feystone hair ornament she is wearing, rather than Ferdinand. Should it become known that Ferdinand was the one who made the charm on his own and gifted it to Rozemyne, it might have a negative impact for Ferdinand, since the charm is so much better than the engagement feystone he gave to Detlinde. Furthermore, it might lead to false rumors of them being romantically involved. The cover story they have decided on is that the ornament was a combined effort of her guardians and her fiancé. Wilfried, Aub Ehrenfest, his wife, Ferdinand, and Karstedt each provided one of the five feystones, which Ferdinand designed and assembled into the completed charm, which Wilfried then gave to Rozemyne. This story should be sufficient to deflect any misunderstandings about the relationship between Ferdinand and Rozemyne. It should also make it clear that Ferdinand does have an sense for aesthetics to anyone who might believe the contrary based on the garish hairpins Detlinde got from him.

At the fellowship gathering, Rozemyne makes plans to have a tea party with Lady Hannelore to hand over the hairpin Lestilaut ordered and once again exchange books. Upon learning that Rozemyne has split the transcription of the Dunkelfelger history book into multiple volumes and has the first one ready and with her already, Lestilaut invites himself into the tea party, which surprises Rozemyne considering how much disdain he showed toward her in the past.

Between endlessly gushing over Ferdinand, Detlinde states that she intends to once again hold a tea party for cousins, but this time she even invites Rozemyne along with her biological cousins.

On the way back to the dormitory, they are intercepted by Raimund who has a message for the Rozemyne and her siblings from Ferdinand, recorded on a magic tool. In it, he "encourages" the archduke candidates to keep the grades of the duchy up by threatening them. This wakes them from the stupor in which they have been over the purge, and when they return to the dormitory, they fire up the students - including those of the former Veronica faction - to pour their all into studying.

One of the first-years angrily asks how they could possibly keep their minds on studying when their parents might be executed this very moment. Leonore immediately restrains the boy and along with Brunhilde is ready to send him back to Ehrenfest for his insubordination. They angrily explain that by tradition every single member of the former Veronica faction and their entire families should already be dead, and it is only thanks to Lady Rozemyne that those personally innocent of a crime will be spared, and that Ehrenfest has no need of someone incapable of comprehending the magnitude of this mercy and instead lashes out against their savior. In this, she is joined in by her fellow retainers and their counterparts of Wilfried and Charlotte, who list all the ways and extent in which the three archduke candidates had to suffer due to the actions of members of the former Veronica faction and that they are very much in favor of following tradition, rather than showing mercy.

Rozemyne follows this up by reminding the children that Aub Ehrenfest intends to only punish those guilty and that the punishment will be proportional to the crimes they committed. She reminds them that if they really lost their families, they will have lost their support, and it will be solely up to them to find a job. The children whose parents will receive only mild punishment will likewise find it more difficult to find a job. But if they achieve good grades, their chances of finding work will increase. Furthermore, allowing the grades of the duchy who showed them this unusual mercy to fall could easily be seen as ungrateful even for the children whose families are found to be entirely innocent and escape punishment despite belonging to the offending faction. This is enough to motivate all the children to concentrate on studying for their own, their families', and the duchy's futures. Even the boy who Leonore and Brunhilde bound up asks to be allowed to study, since he believes fully in the innocence of his family and consequently that they will not be punished, despite his earlier fear that they might be executed for being associates of the real criminals.

On the next day, Rozemyne along with the other third-years manage to pass their written exams on the first try. Upon return to the dormitory, Theodore proudly announces that the first-years also managed to all pass their first lessons. A moment later, Rozemyne receives an Ordonnanz from Professor Solange, informing her that a new archnoble librarian has been appointed to the Royal Academy Library and asking her to visit the library at her earliest convenience to transfer mastership of Schwartz and Weiss to the new arrival.

After inquiring with Rihyarda, Rozemyne sends a reply that they she will come once she finished eating. Theodore is at first excited for his first visit in the library, but is quickly disappointed when it's pointed out to him that he can not go with them on account of not yet being registered for the library and pouts. Rozemyne is barely able to suppress laughter on account to how similar he looks to his sister pouting when she feels left out. This prompts Judithe to scold him and tell him that this is conduct unbecoming of a guard knight of an archduke candidate, to which one of her fellow retainers points out that Judithe herself pouts in the exactly the same way when she's in similar circumstances. At this point, Rozemyne can't hold it in any longer and begins to laugh, with her retainers joining in. Embarrassed, Theodore and Judithe shout out in perfect unison that they are not the same, making the gathered group laugh even harder.

At the library, Solange seems very glad that, with the arrival of an archnoble librarian, Rozemyne will be freed of the burden of having to supply the shumils with mana, especially since taking two courses at the same time will require a lot of mana. Upon entering the office, Rozemyne is surprised at the number of people gathered inside. Upon hearing her enter, the retainers move aside, and Rozemyne sees that in addition to the new librarian, Eglantine and Hildebrand are also present, which explains the number of people present. Hildebrand defensively states that he alone would have been entirely capable of managing the transfer, but that his sister-in-law asked to come along. Eglantine confirms this and states that she wished to see Rozemyne again, after all this time.

The new librarian Hortensia formerly introduces herself to Rozemyne and is promptly given permission to touch Schwartz and Weiss, so she can register herself with them. Since Solange has just charged the pair up with Rozemyne's mana from a feystone prior to Hortensia's arrival, it will take some time for there to be a larger amount of the latter's mana in the magic tools than Rozemyne's, so for the time being Rozemyne is technically still the master of the library magic tools until this happens. Rozemyne states that in order to not accidentally pour more mana into them out of habit, she will keep visits to the library at a minimum until the transfer has happened. Hildebrand appears rather displeased with this and asks if she won't find it difficult to resist reading for such a long time. To this Rozemyne replies that it won't be an issue since she recently has acquired a library of her own and intends to research several magic tools with Professor Hirschur. The associated documents will give her plenty to reading material to tide her over.

Solange inquires on whether they will have another tea party for bookworms this year. After getting an explanation on what this is, Hortensia is eager to join. So is Prince Hildebrand, who asks if he may also join. This earns him a light scolding from Eglantine, who points out that it is improper for a royal to make such a request. She also points out how Rozemyne collapsed the last time they had a shared tea party and that she was likely scolded badly by Aub Ehrenfest. She states that, in order to avoid Rozemyne being scolded again, it would be best for Hildebrand to be the one to invite her rather than the other way around. She then goes on to ask Rozemyne to also hold a tea party with her, if her health allows it, which Rozemyne happily agrees to.

Upon leaving the library, Schwartz and Weiss tell Rozemyne that she should pray to the Mestionora statue since "Gramps is waiting." Rozemyne tells them that from now on Hortensia is their master and they should tell her about these things. Out of habit, she strokes their feystones and accidentally lets a bit of her mana slip into them before she realizes what she's doing and cuts off the flow.

In the afternoon, the third-years have the practical lesson Divine Protection Acquisition under professors Hirschur and Gundolf. Unlike most other courses, this one is held for all students together, regardless of status and rank, albeit only those that passed the Theology 3 exam - which was earlier the same day - are allowed to participate. The majority of students present are from Ehrenfest and Drewanchel, with just a small scattering of children from other duchies present, which is not overly surprising since learning the name of all the dozens of subordinate gods is rather difficult. At least difficult for students of other duchies, who are not yet aware of and have no access to Karuta and children's bibles.

Rozemyne approaches her friend Hannelore, who appears to be the only one from Dunkelfelger who managed to pass Theology 3 on the first day. Hannelore remarks how much of a struggle it was to memorize all the names, and Rozemyne sympathizes with her and tells her that she too greatly struggled when she had to learn them upon becoming High Bishop. To this, Hannelore showed some signs of antipathy toward the temple, which makes Rozemyne worried that she might have accidentally reinforced the mistaken impression that other duchies seem to hold that Sylvester was cruel. She quickly goes to extol how the Ehrenfest temple was actually a really nice place and that even Ferdinand was very content there and dismayed about having to leave it.

The lesson itself starts with Hirschur showing the lengthy prayer on her projector magic tool. Rozemyne and Wilfried find themselves confronted with a very familiar prayer, since the beginning is exactly the same as the prayer for the Dedication Ritual and the prayer they use to supply the Foundation Magic with mana, only with the names of the subordinate gods and a small part at the end being different. Since she already knows the majority of the prayer and the names of all the gods and only has to learn only a single new sentence, Rozemyne almost immediately stands up and says she memorized the prayer. Hirschur asks her if this isn't much too soon to which Rozemyne points out that she already knows the majority of the prayer from her positions as the High Bishop and as a member of the archducal family and how it is alike to a prayer that she regularly uses in the temple and for mana replenishment. To her surprise, the other present archduke candidates - save for Wilfried - are surprised at this. Hannelore seems to not have supplied mana to her duchy's Foundation yet, and Ortwin explains that in Drewanchel, on the occasions he supplied mana to their Foundation, everyone just poured their mana into it without any ritual or fanfare, like they would any other regular magic tool or feystone.

This sparks a bit of an argument between Wilfried and Ortwin, which Hirschur quickly cuts short by stating that perhaps the practice changed in the course of the long history of some duchies, but that they could discuss the merits of researching this matter only after class. This slightly annoys Rozemyne, since nobody involved in the discussion ever mentioned or thought of the topic as potential research.

Having brought the discussion to a close, Hirschur leaves the other students in the care of her colleague and takes Rozemyne into the chapel, where a carpet embroidered with a magic circle of all seven elements has been laid out between the statues of the gods. Rozemyne kneels down in the center of the circle like she does for the Dedication Ritual and begins to recite the prayer. As she finishes the part of each individual god, their representative statue is being illuminated in a column of light. Upon her finishing the prayer, the statues begin to spin as if they were performing a Dedication Whirl. Something Hirschur says also happened when Ferdinand performed the prayer, which due to being like one of the "mysteries of the Royal Academy," prompted him to research them all later. Once they finish their dance, the statues of the king and queen of the heavens move aside and open a hole in the wall. Hirschur urges Rozemyne to not delay and take the invitation of the supreme gods, otherwise the hole would remain open and inconvenience the next student, even permitting her to use her highbeast. Inside the hole, Rozemyne finds a long stairway leading to the top of the shrine, with another pair of statues depicted the king and queen gods. Usually the statues are holding hands, but now they stand apart and point toward a square hole that reminds Rozemyne of the mana replenishment room back in Ehrenfest castle. It even has a similar iridescent, oil slick looking energy field.

On the other side, Rozemyne finds herself in the same plaza with the white crystal tree where she obtained her divine will three years ago. Since after a while, nothing else happens, and she does not know where else to go, Rozemyne moves back through the barrier, thinking that the reason why the hole opened for her is likely connected to how in the past students got their schtappe upon graduation, likely performing the prayer for divine protection right before. She is also annoyed that such a convenient shortcut that would have spared her the long walk and collapse in her first year exists.

Back in the top of the shrine, she sees the magic circle from the top. On a whim, she decides to draw the circle in her diptych, thinking that there might be a chance to use this to give Angelica the divine protection of Wind after all, before descending back down to where Hirschur remained.

Hirschur presses Rozemyne to tell her what she saw, since back when it happened to Ferdinand, he refused to tell her anything. Rozemyne is reluctant to say anything when Ferdinand saw it fit to keep this secret, so refuses to give anything away before consulting with Ferdinand about it. Something she intends to use invisible ink for.

Shortly after Rozemyne returns to the hall, Wilfried states that he memorized the prayer and moves to the chapel with Hirschur as the second student that day. When he returns to the hall, he proudly exclaims that he managed to get the protection of twelve gods and asks Rozemyne how many she got, since she surely has even more than him. Seeing the strong reactions of the other students, Rozemyne is very reluctant to tell that she managed to get around 40 protections, and instead of answering, deflects by stating that she read the number of protections is influenced by the deeds of the supplicant, so she is not in the least surprised that the pair of them received the protection of several subordinate gods. While she does not spell it out, she is almost assuredly thinking about both of them having participated in multiple religious ceremonies before, likely earning them the favor of many of the gods. Hannelore voices her surprise and points out that usually people only receive one protection per element. The only semi-regular exceptions are Dunkelfelger students and a small smattering of apprentice knights in general who have a higher tendency to receive blessings of Leidenschaft's subordinate gods connected to warfare, but since Wilfried does not specialize in combat, him receiving so many protections is "both rare and rather wonderful."

The third student to enact the ritual is Wilfried's friend and rival Ortwin, who is rather disappointed that he only managed to gain the protection of the main deities he has an affinity for, but none of their subordinate gods. In this he is far from alone, since with the exception of Hannelore, all the students that follow after him only gain one protection for each element they have an aptitude for, until there are only Ehrenfest students left. Hannelore does manage to gain the protection of Angriff, the God of War, and Dregarnuhr, the Goddess of Time, but rather than being happy, is just outright confused about this.

With all the students present not of Ehrenfest being archduke candidates or archnobles, the Ehrenfest med- and laynobles all decided to wait until the higher ranking students finished their ritual, rather than immediately going forward upon finishing memorizing their prayer, leaving only Ehrenfest students remaining in the hall. Since they have all memorized the prayer already, they enact their rituals in order of social ranking, except for Roderick, who decides to go last to see how Philine is doing.

To the surprise of everyone present, including the professors, Philine comes back overjoyed to the point of completely neglecting her noble facade and showing her emotions completely openly, because she gained the divine protection of Mestionora, despite not even having an affinity for Wind. This greatly interests Professor Gundolf, who begins to barrage her with questions. This causes Rozemyne to step in, which makes Gundolf ease up a bit, much to Philine's relief. With the professor's enthusiasm somewhat dialed back, Philine does her best to answer all his questions and tells him how hard she's been working as an apprentice scholar in the castle, the Royal Academy, and even the Ehrenfest temple. This however does not seem to be too far out of the ordinary for Gundolf to pinpoint the reason why she was able to gain Mestionora's blessing, when none of the Drewanchel scholars did, despite doing more or less the same as her.

When Roderick returns however, things become even more strange, since he managed to gain the protection of all seven primary gods, despite only having affinity for two elements. While the Ehrenfest students are amazed, this outright shocks Gundolf, since according to him, nothing like this has ever happened in recorded history and was believed to be entirely impossible. Since neither Roderick nor the professor have the slightest clue how this happened, Rozemyne asks Gundolf to refrain from further questions for today, prompting him to congratulate Roderick and Philine and allowing them to leave. Before they can do so however, Professor Hirschur cautions them to keep this information secret, since it could potentially throw the entire Royal Academy into chaos, and says that she will join them for dinner tomorrow to discuss the matter in more depth.

The next day starts like the two previous ones, with all the Ehrenfest third-years passing their written exams on the first attempt. In the afternoon, they have music class. Like the previous year, the students are to play one song given by the professor and one of their choice. And like last year, the given song is one that Rozemyne already knows from her practice with Ferdinand two years ago. While she practices the song, she hears an Ahrensbach noble girl play a song that sounds very familiar. It is one of the songs she composed and Ferdinand arranged. The girl notices Rozemyne's attention and states that this is a new Ahrensbach song composed by Lord Ferdinand. Despite being the actual composer of the song, Rozemyne refrains from pointing this out to help out Ferdinand. Instead, she says that she's truly fond of Ferdinand's songs and that, if the girl is playing one, she would love to hear it, since they can otherwise only be heard in Ahrensbach. Clearly relieved that Rozemyne accepted the song as one from Ahrensbach without argument, the girl agrees to play it, though points out she is still practicing. Originally this song was a love-song, but in Ahrensbach, Ferdinand apparently wrote new lyrics, turning it into a wistful piece about "one's Geduldh", which the Ahrensbach nobles seemingly interpreted as a romantic song for his fiancée, but which Rozemyne recognizes as being about nostalgia for his former home. After all, Ferdinand stated that "Ehrenfest was his Geduldh" in their farewell. Wilfried too recognizes it as a song composed by Rozemyne, but she's able to shut him up before he can say so out loud, with him thankfully picking up immediately on her reasons.

She thanks the Ahrensbach girl and keeps more or less subtly reinforcing that this was Ferdinand's song in her praise. The girl in turn asks Rozemyne if she will perform a new song, subtly implying that her compositions were in truth Ferdinand's all along and just passed off as hers, while making it sound like praise and anticipation for Rozemyne's playing on the surface. To show that her deeds are indeed her own and not just Ferdinand's and to show that even without him Ehrenfest is still fine, she decides to play one of her new compositions as her song of choice.

She picks a song dedicated to Schutzaria about a wish to protect those dear to the singer's heart. In her case, those special people were Ferdinand and the children losing their families to the purge. While she plays and sings, her mana begins to stir and slips out as a continuous blessing, but despite her best efforts, she is unable to suppress it. Rozemyne starts to panic, but believes she can't risk failing any of her classes on account to Ferdinand's threat, so she just keeps playing, and the blessing only stops flowing out when she finishes the song and stops playing.

When her stunned teacher asks what this was, she sheepishly points out that it was Schutzaria's blessing and that she was unable to stop it from slipping out. She ventures the guess that it is due to the ritual for divine protection the day before and immediately sends an ordonnanz to Rihyarda to come pick her up. When she inquires with her head retainer what she can do, Rihyarda is unable to give any advice, since in her generation they received the schtappe only right before graduation. Even Ferdinand's generation, despite already receiving their schtappe in the third year only got them after the ritual for divine protection, so it is unlikely even he will be able to know precisely what's going on. Rihyarda suggests consulting with Professor Hirschur, since she is scheduled to eat with them on the same day already, and Rozemyne decides to do so.

The next day during said dinner, Professor Hirschur makes no mention of this and instead praises the students for the successes in the written lessons and talks about the food. Only in a more private meeting after the meal, does she broach the subject that is the real reason for her visit. Before they can get to that, Rozemyne brings up her issues with her mana control and what happened in music class. Hirschur just brushes her off stating that since blessings don't hurt anyone she should just let it happen. Having tried and apparently failed to help Ferdinand with his problems related to his huge mana capacity has made her unwilling to do so ever again, and she says that their best option is to contact Ferdinand and "have the monsters decide this between themselves."

Due to the sensitivity of their main topic, Hirschur has brought a wide-area sound-blocking magic tool and has Rozemyne set it up, arguing that using up some mana will probably help her with her previously mentioned mana control problem. While she does not insist to hold the meeting in complete privacy, she has everyone not directly involved stay outside. The only ones inside the tool's protection are the three archduke candidates, Roderick and Philine as the subjects of the discussion, and Hirschur herself. Since she wasn't present, Hirschur first recaps the previous day's inciting incident to Charlotte. Then the students tell Hirschur what happened while she was with Roderick in the chapel.

Charlotte voices her confusion over why Hirschur is so secretive and worried about this. In her eyes, it should be celebrated that Ehrenfest students managed to gain more divine protections than expected. In return, Hirschur explains just how out of place these events are. Unless this was kept completely under wraps when it happened, not a single student has received a blessing from any subordinate god not associated with warfare in over a decade. Even in the past, this happened rarely enough and mainly for archduke candidates and members of the royal family. Even more disturbing, to find the last med- or laynoble who managed to gain the divine protection of even a single subordinate god, one had to go back more than a century. And someone going from two elements to omni-elemental is entire unheard of. To have both of those things happen at the same time would be beyond merely standing out if it became public knowledge and could easily result in negative effects on Ehrenfest.

Since out of the eight Ehrenfest students that participated in the ritual, the four who produced unusual results are all tied to Rozemyne on account of being Rozemyne's fiancé and retainers respectively or Rozemyne herself, she is quick to jump to the conclusion that it's in some way Rozemyne's fault. An evaluation that Wilfried immediately jumps on board with. Rozemyne herself, however, has a different explanation and says that it is really obvious and that she is surprised no one else has realized it. All four of them have visited the temple on multiple occasions and been involved with work that is usually done exclusively by priests, on top of having earnestly prayed to the gods more often than most nobles their age ever do. Even supplying the Ehrenfest's Foundation is done with a prayer to the gods, where at least some other duchies just pour mana in. Rozemyne is certain that praying to the gods, assisting in their works, and respecting their temple and priests are surely responsible for the gods looking at them with more favor than on nobles who only say empty words when it is convenient for them and look down on the temples and priests.

Hirschur is completely convinced by this and even calls it a revolutionary rediscovery. However, it does not explain Roderick becoming omni-elemental. Roderick states that he has a theory, but doesn't know whether he is allowed to reveal the details and thus wishes to first consult with Aub Ehrenfest before he can give an answer. With that avenue of questions locked out, Hirschur explains the potential implications of the discovery and that she wishes to meet with Aub Ehrenfest to discuss it researching this further and presenting the results at the next Archduke's Conference, to help improve Ehrenfest's reputation with other duchies and with the Sovereignty in particular. Once the archduke candidates agree to pass this request on to Sylvester, the meeting ends. Before leaving, Hirschur warns Rozemyne about being too open with Eglantine and Hortensia. She reveals that the former has been assigned to the Archduke Candidate Course primarily to gather intelligence on Rozemyne and that the latter is the first wife of the Sovereignty Knight's Commander.

Once Hirschur has left, Rozemyne hands Roderick a regular sound-blocking magic tool. During the previous discussion, Hirschur said that all the students that managed to gain more protections than expected are all connected to Rozemyne, and this made Roderick sure that him becoming omni-elemental is because of the name-swearing. He further explains that, since he has given his name to her, he finds it easier to use magic of elements he has no affinity for. It was so slight that initially he just put this down to having a good day, but now he realizes that it was due to his constant connection with Rozemyne's mana. He postulates that she too is omni-elemental, which she nods to. He suspects that this change is not common knowledge because usually name-swearing is only done after the divine protections have been gained and thus has far less of an impact than it now has on Roderick himself. He advocates for keeping this knowledge secret, since he thinks it might cause people to give their names to obtain additional elements, rather than as the show of loyalty name-swearing is meant to be. He also is quite sure that Rozemyne - who's already reluctant to accept names to begin with - would be even more uncomfortable with people wishing to give their names to her just to gain more divine protections. Either way, the issue is too large for them to decide on their own, and thus Rozemyne will consult with Aub Ehrenfest about it.

The next day, the first lesson of the Archduke Candidate Course begins. The first lesson is to learn how to interacts with a duchy's Foundation. For this purpose, each student is given a box containing what appears to be sand and a magic tool that is a simplified and scaled-down version of the magic tools at the heart of each duchy's Foundation. This box will be their "duchy." The first step for them is to dye the magic tool and their duchy with their mana. Rozemyne once again has trouble restricting the flow of mana and rather than just dying the magic tool as she intended, a large quantity of mana flows out into the entire box. As it turns out, what appeared to be sand that only took on this appearance from having been drained completely of mana. Once Rozemyne's mana flows into it, it quickly turns back into black fertile earth and a moment later plants begin to sprout until her "duchy" is quite overgrown.

This surprises Professor Eglantine. She has heard of Rozemyne's large mana capacity, but didn't think it would be this much. She states that she only planned to have the students dye the magic tool and "duchy" in their mana on the first day, but since Rozemyne has so quickly finished this and gone beyond into the next step, she offers to teach her further right away. Rozemyne takes up this offer, and so Eglantine instructs her to draw up the blue prints for the duchy border barrier and gates and to create golden dust by overloading feystones, since the resulting powder is a necessary component for casting Entwickeln. The next lesson, Eglantine will teach the students the names of the God of Darkness and Goddess of Light, since without it nothing created with Entwickeln will have any permanence. Rozemyne already experienced this first hand, since the structures she created in the course of her practice with Ferdinand with only stating the titles of the king and queen gods merely lasted for five minutes before crumbling to dust again.

After what happened in the music class, Rozemyne prepared for her whirling class by offering to fill any feystone that people were willing to offer with mana or to overload them to turn them into golden dust. She hopes that expending so much mana will reduce the chance of accidentally firing off blessings during the prayer dance. She also sent an emergency letter to Ehrenfest for the same reason, requesting they too send any feystones and magic tools that require recharge to her. The request is quickly answered, and the first batch of large feystones is teleported in from the duchy. At Wilfried's suggestion, Rozemyne also wears every single protective charm she has, in addition to the color-changing necklace of feystones she was given for last year's socializing, in the hopes that they will be able to catch any excess mana she's unable to suppress.

In the hall for the whirling lesson, Rozemyne is relieved that Hannelore is still friendly with her. After the events of the music class and a talk they had during their last magic lesson, Rozemyne had been afraid she had weirded out her friend to the point where she might avoid her. Along with Hannelore, her brother Lestilaut approaches Rozemyne to inquire about when they could hold the tea-party, where Rozemyne is to hand over the hairpin he had ordered. Lestilaut is blunt and impolite as ever, but according to his sister, he has been very much looking forward to receiving the hairpin. Something he immediately tries to hide by claiming to lack confidence in Ehrenfest's craftspeople, and thus wishing to ascertain the quality of the product as early as possible, so that corrections can still be made.

Hearing the mention of hairpins, Detlinde inserts herself into the conversation to brag about her own hairpins. With some subtle manipulation by Rozemyne, the Ahrensbach girl openly states that she will receive five hairpins that her fiancé ordered for her, though it was her personally who designed them. This declaration by Detlinde should make sure that any fallout from the hairpins will be on Detlinde herself and not Ferdinand.

When the professor arrives, she is accompanied by Professor Eglantine. Despite not being assigned to this lesson, Eglantine apparently offered her colleague to participate and gives a demonstration to the students. Detline, who will dance the part of the Goddess of Light, is not pleased with this and has some unkind words about Eglantine's "overconfidence." Charlotte, on the other hand, is very happy to have the chance to see her perform a whirl, since she was too young to be present at Eglantine's graduation at the time.

When it comes time for the third-years to practice, Rozemyne does her very best to suppress her mana. The swirling mana inside her causes her body to heat up considerably, and she is soon covered in a sheen of sweat. Thanks to her exerting every ounce of self-control, she is able to reduce the mana that slips from her body to an amount that the multitude of feystones she is wearing can just barely absorb. While this is enough to prevent any accidental blessings from slipping out, it makes all the feystones shine brightly and makes her appear as if covered in glittering light. The combination of her exhaustion and the shock of still standing out despite succeeding in suppressing any blessings, makes her collapse into a sitting position, which incidentally gives her siblings a good excuse to extricate her from the hall, after the professor gives her a passing grade.

Back at the dormitory, Rozemyne finds the second batch of feystones and magic tools from Ehrenfest has arrived, and she loses no time in dumping mana into them, relieving the heat in her body. The delivery also contains a letter from Sylvester, informing her and her siblings that he will arrive in two days to have the meeting Professor Hirschur requested.

On the next day, Rozemyne takes all the available Ehrenfest students to the gathering spot, where they repeatedly gather herbs before Rozemyne regrows them. This action, suggested by Wilfried, serves to burn more of Rozemyne's excess mana, while at the same time helping both the students and duchy, since the students are able to get plenty of ingredients for themselves, with even more being sent back home to help with the Lord of Winter hunt.

The next day when the Archduke arrives for the meeting, the children are surprised to see that Florencia accompanied him. She says that, with how crucial this discussion is for the future of the duchy, it is prudent for her to be present too. The archducal couple further explains that with Sylvester being so busy with "other things" - clearly implying the purge, but not saying so out loud in earshot of the other students - it was Florencia who read the majority of the reports the archduke candidates sent back to the duchy.

Once in the privacy of a meeting room, they discuss the events of the last few days in more detail and eventually decide to more or less do as Hirschur suggested. They will cooperate with Dunkelfelger to further research the connection between individual deeds and the chances to gain divine protections, while making sure that the greater duchy will not claim all the accolades for themselves, and then make the results public, so that the reputation of Ehrenfest can be improved. Rozemyne also hopes that it will help counter the stigma that temples and priests have in the opinion of the nobility of Yurgenschmidt, or at the very least, make it clear that Ehrenfest's temple is different from all the others. They will however keep the more dangerous parts of Rozemyne's discoveries secret.

After the conclusion of the discussion, Rozemyne inquires about how the purge went.

All of those name-sworn to Georgine were supposed to be captured, interrogated, and then executed. Unfortunately, not a single one of Georgine's name-sworn could be taken alive. They all either perished by blowing themselves up or due to Bonifatius' lack of restraint. One of the nobles who blew himself up was Giebe Gerlach, of whom only his ring and head remained after the explosion. Overall less than 10 people were executed. Where the heads of the deceased remained intact, they tried to use the memory searching tool on the remains, but this didn't yield any useful information. While some visions of Georgine's visit in Gerlach could be pulled, they were all distorted, likely due to a herb Georgine had placed in the lit fireplace in case of exactly such an event. Apart from Grausam himself, two more Giebes were among the dead.

Other members of the faction have only been imprisoned for the time being, while the full extend of their crimes is investigated, and they will be punished according to the findings. Consequently, only five students will actually need to swear their names to the archducal family. Sylvester expects that the investigation will conclude before the students return from the Royal Academy. Children of families - including those currently in the temple orphanage - who only receive fines or other minor punishments will be able to return to them, while those of families that received a sentence of long-term menial labor will be housed in the castle dormitory. Of those five students, three are among those who picked Rozemyne as their future master. They are Matthias, Laurenz, and Muriella. Due to how the conversation has moved on, Rozemyne decides to not mention Roderick's divine protections right now, since she believes that there's still plenty of time to do so later and that it's not an urgent matter.

With Gretia not being among the five who have to give their names, Rozemyne considers letting her become her retainer without giving her name, but her retainers convince her not to do it, both to guarantee her safety and to avoid unfortunate more social upheaval by people feeling unfairly treated by comparison.

The next day, Wilfried informs the students about what they learned of the current state of the purge, which comes as a great relief to most of the children. Since they already finished their name-swearing feystones Matthias and Laurenz offer up their names right there and then, to move forward as examples for the others and show they have nothing to fear, and Rozemyne accepts. Muriella mentions that she wished she could do the same as soon as possible, but currently still lacks the necessary ingredients. This prompts Matthias and Laurenz to offer to accompany her, and Rozemyne decides to take them to the gathering spot the next Earthday.

Based on something Sylvester told Rozemyne during their meeting, Rozemyne begins to lower her mana compression rate while charging up the next batch of feystones, hoping that this will alleviate her problems with mana control. This is rather difficult to her since compression of her mana has become an unconscious instinct ever since her life literally depended on it back in her commoner days.

During the second lesson in the Archduke Candidate Course, Rozemyne learns that, due to poor timing, Hannelore has accidentally become the new master of Schwartz and Weiss before being made aware of Hortensia's arrival and that she is supposed to become the new master. Upon learning this, Rozemyne approaches Professor Eglantine for advice, since the change in masters from her to Hortensia also had involved royals.

After clearing this up, Rozemyne moves ahead with the lesson on Entwickeln. Eglantine is concerned that Rozemyne's entire city is based around a big library and all the living quarters, industry, and housing are all dedicated to supporting it, but lets Rozemyne move on despite this not being very realistic. She shows Rozemyne to a separate room, where she is to enact a ritual to acquire the names of the God of Darkness and Goddess of Light. She strongly cautions Rozemyne to never utter the names to anyone once she learned them, since there will be dire consequences for both the herself and the person she tells. Due to this, the ritual itself is enacted completely alone, with not even the professor present. Filling up the magic circle takes a large amount of mana, so much so that even in her current state, Rozemyne has to use a rejuvenation potion to fully fill the circle. After praying for a while, she hears a voice in her head, and the names of the supreme gods appear in her mind with a blast of radiant fire, as if searing themselves directly into her brain, Schicksalsantracht, the God of Darkness, and Versprechredi, the Goddess of Light.

As if on instinct, Rozemyne mutters the names as if in prayer, which makes her schtappe appear in her hand by itself. To Rozemyne's amazement, it then moves out of her hand and starts floating in the air before her. Above the magic circle, black and golden flames appear all around Rozemyne, and she can feel all the mana she had previously poured into the magic circle, being sucked into the schtappe and then back into her. Soon after, all the flames disappear and golden light and black darkness shoots out of the schtappe to form a helix, before the schtappe rises further up, eventually disappearing through the ceiling, taking the mana that had just been channeled into her back, along with almost the entirety of the mana remaining inside her, making her collapse onto her side. On the brink of falling unconscious and barely able to move, Rozemyne just barely manages to pull another rejuvenation potion from her belt and drink it.

While recovering, Eglantine knocks on the door and inquires if Rozemyne is alright, since she is taking unusually long for the ritual. Rozemyne reassures her that she just needs a moment to recover and refuses Eglantine's request to enter the room, since she just needs a bit of time to shake off the aftereffects of the ritual. She soon regains the ability to move normally again and opens the door to allow Eglantine in, who brings in Rozemyne's garden. She gives Rozemyne written instructions. She advises her to initially draw the magic circles bigger than necessary to more easily check for errors and then shrink them right before casting the spell, and then leaves the room again. Rozemyne is able to finish the entire Entwickeln in a single go. Upon returning to the rest of the class, Eglantine sets up a dummy duchy of her own and sets it up right next to Rozemyne's, to teach Rozemyne how two Aubs create a border-gate between their duchies. This finishes the lesson, and Rozemyne receives a passing grade in record time.

Due to prioritizing the Archduke Candidate Course, Rozemyne missed the first few classes of the scholar's course. Thus rather than participating in the opening exams like in all the other courses she passed so far, she has to schedule appointments with the professors in charge for exams. She is able to schedule with Professor Gundolf - who holds three of the courses she takes - quite quickly.

During the brewing for her tests, Gundolf is quite inquisitive about what happened in divine protection acquisition class. Rozemyne tells him that she is currently unable to provide any details, since the royal family has become involved, or why Ehrenfest chose Dunkelfelger, rather than Drewanchel, as a cooperation partner for the research. Gundolf tries to win her for his own laboratory, but Rozemyne refuses, since she already decided to go to Hirschur. The main reasons - which she naturally does not point out to him - being that she will not have to worry as much about Hirschur leaking information and the presence of Raimund, whose presence will make communication with Ferdinand easier. However, Rozemyne does indicate a willingness to cooperate with Gundolf to research magic tool paper, in particular if there are any kinds that do not come from feybeasts, albeit she says that she will be too busy in the near future to do so this year. This surprises Gundolf ,who tells Rozemyne how a Drewanchel archduke candidate would be expected spread their research around, only looking into sensitive topics themselves, while delegating other things to their duchy's apprentice scholars. This outright shocks Rozemyne, who never even considered such an idea. Apart from the agreement of future cooperation, Rozemyne is also able to extract a promise to gain access to Gundolf's notes on the old curriculum from times before students got their schtappe in the first year, since only few professors who taught during those times remain and even fewer documents dating that far back are publicly available. As has become the norm for Rozemyne, she is able to secure passing grades for all three courses.

Back at the dormitory, Rozemyne explains to Wilfried and Charlotte about her intent to spread the research around more, and her siblings agree, since it is a good chance to show Sylvester not being a cruel overlord, who only heaps work on his half-brother and adopted child. It is also a chance for the scholars formerly of the Veronica faction to show their worth and dedication to the duchy and gives Barthold and Cassandra - two of the students whose parents have been executed - a chance to create bonds with their new fellow retainers. For their soon-to-be retainers to gather the ingredients for their name-swearing feystones, Wilfried and Charlotte decide to accompany Rozemyne to the gathering spot next Earthday.

To Rozemyne's considerable surprise, Gretia - through her class mate Judithe - asks Rozemyne for permission to come along on the gathering trip. Despite not being required to give her name, Gretia still wishes to do so. Caught off guard by this, Rozemyne takes her to a meeting room, so she can explain her circumstance. There, Gretia - under the privacy of sound-blocking magic tools - tells Rozemyne about her personal history and the abuse she suffered from her family. Gretia had done research on Rozemyne, and when she learned thanks to Rozemyne, Roderick was able to completely sever ties with his own abusive family, she is hoping for the same. She is even willing to serve Rozemyne for life without ever marrying just to get away from them. Seeing her resolve and desperation, Rozemyne agrees to take her on as a name-sworn and retainer.

Upon returning to the common room, Rozemyne hashes out the details for the gathering trip with her siblings, and Matthias shares a more efficient method for gathering high-quality feystones that he derived from Rozemyne's ditter victory over Dunkelfelger in her first year, involving feeding feybeasts charged feystones and slaying them before they can get used to their new bodies and mana qualities. Ultimately, the supposed small-scale trip turns into a rather big affair, with all the students capable of forming and riding their own highbeasts - so effectively all the second-years and up, plus Theodore - going. Rozemyne protects the students under a big Schutzaria Shield while they gather feyplants, and then they enact Matthias' stratagem. Thanks to this, the four students wishing or having to give their names are able to gather all the materials they need for their feystones.

Since she prioritized the Archduke Candidate Course, Rozemyne missed the first day of several scholar course lessons. In order to not have to wait for the final exam at the end of the semester, she writes messages to the professors holding those lessons to schedule personal exams. She easily breezes through all of them, until only Professor Fraularm's class remains.

Since Fraularm does not answer Rozemyne's messages, she contacts Hirschur and subtly prods her for help. A short time later, Fraularm sends an ordonnanz to Rozemyne with a date for the exam, and a moment later, another ordonnanz arrives from Hirschur, telling Rozemyne that she mentioned Ehrenfest's research cooperations with Dunkelfelger and Drewanchel to Fraularm and wondered out loud why Ahrensbach might have been left out, indirectly questioning Fraularm's ability to properly communicate. She also advises Rozemyne to find some excuse to summon her to the exam, so she can assure a fair grading.

Once Rozemyne arrives at Fraularm's laboratory, she is positively surprised at how neat and tidy everything is, in gross contrast to the cluttered messes in Hirschur's and Gundolf's labs. Fraularm immediately begins prodding Rozemyne about her cooperative research projects and the possibility of doing the same with Ahrensbach, but Rozemyne is able to delay this discussion by stating that she wants to finish her classes first, and thus they move on to the exam.

Rozemyne is able to finish the test without undue difficulty and is relieved that Fraularm didn't try to pull one over her for a change. After she finishes and before grading, Rozemyne summons Hirschur, under the excuse that she needs her duchy's dormitory supervisor present to discuss a joint research project with Ahrensbach, and Hirschur arrives almost immediately.

That Rozemyne would talk about the cooperation right after the test makes Fraularm suspicious for a moment, until Rozemyne tells her that this was the last subject she had to pass this semester and that once the professor finished grading her, she would be free to consider the research, and so Fraularm moves to grade the test with Hirschur looking over her shoulder. It is at this point that Hirschur points out that Fraularm "accidentally" gave Rozemyne the wrong test, since this one is meant for fifth-year students. Hirschur asks how Rozemyne managed to answer the questions, and Rozemyne replies that Ferdinand had drilled the entire syllabus into her at once, to the point where she doesn't even know which part is supposed to be taught in which year. Hirschur is impressed that Rozemyne was able to keep up with Ferdinand, while Fraularm only mutters, "this isn't normal," over and over in befuddlement. Rozemyne is worried that she needs to re-take the correct test, but clearly frustrated with how spectacularly her ploy failed, Fraularm gives Rozemyne a passing grade to be done with the sorry affair.

With some teamwork, Rozemyne and Hirschur are able to get Fraularm on board for the joint research to be a cooperation between Rozemyne and Raimund in Hirschur's laboratory, with the communication to Ahrensbach going through Fraularm. Rozemyne is also able to get Fraularm to agree to have Ferdinand involved under the not entirely wrong excuse that Hirschur and Raimund will very likely get so engrossed into their work, that they'll surely fail to file proper reports sooner or later, something Fraularm has already experienced personally and thus readily accepts.

A couple of days later, Rozemyne is invited to a tea party for bookworms hosted by Eglantine, held in the royal villa of her and her husband Anastasius. Rozemyne is invited half an hour earlier than the other guests to discuss a private matter. Anastasius has deduced that the blessing at his and Eglantine's graduation ceremony came from Rozemyne and confronts her with the troubles this has caused. Despite the matter of succession of the king having been settled, the blessing reinvigorated Anastasius' retainers to once again push him to take the seat of successor, while Sigismund's retainers urged him to steal Eglantine away from his brother. It took the two princes and the king a considerable effort to calm everything down again. For this reason, the royal family wishes for Rozemyne to bless Prince Sigiswald and Lady Adolphine's blessing. Rozemyne reluctantly agrees, but only under the condition that the king and Aub Ehrenfest give their permission, and the Sovereign High Bishop will not be shamed.

The planned tea party with Dunkelfelger takes place a short time later. Lestilaut is once again very antagonistic and immediately asks for the hairpin before even the tea has been served, but Rozemyne notices that this is his way of trying to hide his impatience and anxiety. Once the pin is handed over, Lestilaut is very pleased with the workmanship. Once he learns that the craftswoman was able to make such fine work solely from his illustration, without ever having seen the actual flowers herself, he tells Rozemyne to hand her craftsperson over, which she ignores and brushes aside with a quick change of topic, allowing Hannelore the opportunity to have the tea and sweets served. Hannelore prepared galettes with wine-soaked rohres. Upon both Rozemyne and Wilfried expressing their appreciation, Lestilaut is relieved that his sister was right and that the two Ehrenfest nobles indeed like such "rustic" fare. Apparently, he wished to serve the usual Sovereignty-style lumps of decorative sugar, but his sister thankfully knew better and insisted.

At Wilfried's insistence, they decide to discuss the joint research before the books, since Rozemyne tends to lose all track of everything else once books are involved. She wishes to question the Dunkelfelger students, to confirm what they saw with the Ehrenfest students, whether those that gained divine protections were able to fully fill the divine protection acquisition magic circle, and to witness the ceremonies Dunkelfelger holds before and after ditter matches. Lestilaut and Hannelore argue that, since the ceremonies are earnest prayers to the gods, they can't just do them without having any ditter match to pray over, and leverage this to get Ehrenfest to agree to a re-match. Lestilaut also makes it a condition that he is allowed to see Rozemyne perform a ceremony of her own, leaving it up to her to pick one that is suitable to be performed at the Royal Academy.

Rozemyne requests that Clarissa is assigned to the project, and at the opportunity, tells the Dunkelfelger nobles that Hartmut has become the new Ehrenfest High Priest and hands over a letter he wrote to Clarissa. Lestilaut assumes that Hartmut committed some heinous crime to receive such harsh punishment, but Rozemyne reassures him that this isn't the case and that Hartmut still retains his full social status, in addition to his position in the temple. She further explains how the temple is quite different in Ehrenfest and how all the archduke's children go there several times throughout the year to participate in ceremonies. Wilfried backs her up and says that, for his siblings and him, the temple has become nearly a second home.

Rather than cancelling her engagement, Clarissa instead declares that she is proud of her fiancé for doing even this for his lady. She crumples up the letter without even bothering to read, declaring that such doesn't need any apology and had she already been in Ehrenfest, she would have battled him for the position. After that she states that, while she may still technically be Dunkelfelgerian, in her heart she is already Rozemyne's vassal, and that she'll charge down her chosen path no matter what her family says, followed by many words that might as well be coming out of Hartmut's mouth. Rather than stopping Clarissa himself, Lestilaut tells Rozemyne to do it, and Wilfried agrees that it falls to her. Rozemyne does so by giving Clarissa a hairpin she prepared, in case she didn't call off the wedding. She tries to get Clarissa to leave and try it on in her room, but she refuses, wishing to "burn Lady Rozemyne's visage" in her eyes, which Lestilaut allows on the condition that she be quiet from now on.

With that situation dealt with, the discussions move on to the Dunkelfelger history book. The first volume has been received exceptionally well in the duchy, and despite not even having gone through the actual release, it already kindled a never before seen interest in their own duchy's history in many young nobles, where in the past, few outside the archducal family ever learned this, due to the difficulty of translating the ancient dialects from the massive tomes. Hannelore also passes along the compliments of the third wife of the king and that she too is eager to buy the book once it becomes available.

When asked about the advance copy he was handed to check, Lestilaut says there are no problems with the text and praises the art, even though it is only black and white at this point. Rozemyne also hands Lestilaut a copy of Roderick's debut book about ditter. Naturally as one would expect from a Dunkelfleger noble, Lestilaut is very interested, but is disappointed that this book comes without illustrations. Rozemyne explains that her illustrator is a commoner and thus has never seen ditter, leaving her unable to draw the scenes. Hannelore suggests that Lestilaut could draw the illustrations, since he is a talented artist. Rozemyne considers such commissions to be work for lay- and mednobles desperate for money, and thus tries to wriggle out of it, but her efforts are dashed by Wilfried, who's all on board for it, and so the decision is made that Ehrenfest will commission Lestilaut's art for the book.

While the boys pour over the ditter book and discuss which scenes would be best suited for illustrations, the girls discuss romance stories. Hannelore inquires whether the protagonist of Elvira's latest story is based on Rozemyne herself, since there are quite a few parallels, but Rozemyne states to her that any similarities are purely coincidental. While some parts of the story have roots in reality, Rozemyne insists that the protagonist is an amalgam of several real people and purely fictional aspects and that she has never been mistreated like the protagonist. Wilfried confirms this, telling them that her blood brother is one of her guard knights and would never have allowed such mistreatment to take place, which reassures Hannelore.

After the tea party with Dunkelfelger, Rozemyne has a fever and needs to stay in bed. Despite falling ill, she is in good spirits, since it is only a very mild fever, showing how much her health has improved and giving her ample time to read the books she was lent at the two tea parties. Once the fever is gone, she goes to visit the common room and receives responses to her reports and letters from Ehrenfest. Sylvester agreed to all three proposed joint research projects and even to the royal request to bless Sigiswald's Starbinding, though he would prefer that Rozemyne did so from hiding, similar to what happened at Eglantine's graduation, rather than out in the open. However, Rozemyne believes that it would be too difficult to intentionally give a blessing without line of sight and the correct timing and thus would prefer to do it openly. With Anastasius making the request of her, she thinks it best to leave the decision to him and writes a letter to Eglantine to pass on to her husband, in which she lays out the situation.

While Rozemyne recovered from her fever, Professor Hirschur also received two replies from Ferdinand. Since she expected Rozemyne to come to her lab, she just waited for her to visit, rather than bringing them to the dormitory. When Rozemyne finally is able to do so, she finds that Ferdinand sent replies to the two letters she sent through Raimund, but hadn't received the one sent via Professor Fraularm by the time he penned his second response. Among other things Ferdinand explains some things he learned during his student times. The restricted archive can not be entered by the librarians themselves, but only by archduke candidates, royalty, and those maintaining the library magic tools. Regarding royalty, it only contains old documents about things that the royals should have current knowledge of. If this knowledge has been lost, he speculates that someone is deliberately interfering with them. He tells Rozemyne to inform the royal family of this, so they can gain access to the documents as quickly as possible.

At Rihyarda's advice, Rozemyne sends ordonnanzes requesting an urgent meeting to Hildebrand, Eglantine, and the library, rather than just a single representative. To her surprise, the first one to respond is Prince Anastasius, rather than his wife, to whom Rozemyne's ordonnanz was sent. He invites her to come visit his royal villa in three days.

< Rozemyne