19 1.19 Surprise!

After the dark aura around the red-haired women disappeared everyone stood up again. The girls who were clinging to me left my hands and stood up by themselves. I was so surprised by everything that I didn't know what to do and whom to ask. I heard a laugh coming from the balcony and looked towards it, It was the duke.

The duke jumped from the balcony to the ground and came towards us saying, "HAHAHA... I knew this would happen when you said, you were going to show these kids what the real power is. Look at them, they look like a chicken that just hatched from an egg."

If it was my previous would that jump would have resulted in a few broken bones but since this world had mana and it could be used to make mana cloak, the man was fine. In fact, the whole thing was so amusing for him that he couldn't stop laughing.

The blonde-haired guy who was looking like a person who just woke up after having a nightmare saw the duke coming and said, "Father, father, did you just saw what this woman did to us. How can you allow this to happen to your own son in your own house."

"QUIET! I know all about your puppet show and the ones pulling your string from behind. I will deal with you and them after I am done here."

After hearing that from duke the guy fell on his knees as if this was the end of the world for him. His face that already looked bad after going through all this has become worse. The duke ignored him and came towards the red-haired women.

"What did you think? You just show up out of nowhere, make a mess of things for them, and tell them to come with you and they will listen?"

After saying that he turned towards us, there was still a look of confusion in everyone's face. He looked toward me and asked, "What's your name lad?"

'huh! me? but why me?!'

I replied, "It's Nara sir" since I was not familiar with the honorifics in this world, I used the one that was commonly used in my former world.

The duke laughed after hearing my name and said, "HAHAHA... so, let me explain to you what the dragon princess means here. The king has requested her to select a few group of students and train them under her. This just now was the test to see if you can survive her training."

'Wait, dragon princess. How many strange kinds of princesses are there in this world?'

Well, I had no courage to ask that question out loud so I kept it inside me. The presence earlier felt as if she could kill all of us here in less than a minute.

"You kids can go with her, I will handle the things here. Princesses, the king has given you permission to train with her, so you can join them too," the duke added.

Princess Anna looked happy after hearing that and said, "See Eliane, my father is super nice, he does everything I request him to do."

After hearing that princess Eliane smiled as well and said, "You are the first friend I ever had Anna and it looks like we are going to have many other friends too."

We also had to discuss among ourselves, what we were going to do. So, I turned towards Ronald and asked, "what do you think we should do?"

Ronald had a serious look in his face when he replied, "I think we should hear her out first. If it sounds good we can train under her and if it doesn't we can still study at the academy."

"Okay but this is all so sudden, should we ask Andrew?," said Sistina who was still in a shock because of everything that happened today.

"Y-yeah, we c-couldn't even stand on our own back then," Marina added. She was even more shocked than Sistina. Her hands were shaking so I caught one of her hands with mine and said, "Don't worry, it will be alright" after which she calmed down a little bit.

"Andrew won't always be there for us. I think we need to make our choice here and now," said Arica.

It was an unusual thing for Arica to say since she was always a cheerful and fun-loving type. She must have felt that training with her will help her in becoming a better knight.

"I hate to admit it but Arica is right here. I think we should decide for ourselves. Let's follow her and hear what she has to say," Nina added

After we all agreed to go after her to we followed her to the guest room of the castle. The answer to the question: 'Does sofa exist in this world?' that I was looking for was answered there and the answer was 'YES'.

We sat on two sofas that were facing each other. Marina and Nina sat with the princesses while the rest of us sat on another sofa. The red-haired women sat on the single-seater sofa that joined the two sofas on one side.

When we all turned out attention towards her, the red-haired women started speaking.

"I am Lilith. I was sent by the king to train a small group of knights and magicians to fight demons and protect this country."

"What do you mean by train a small group of knights and magicians? I thought it the job of the Academy," Ronald asked.

"The knights here are weak. The peoples they train can hardly defeat a lesser demon. If the next great war breaks out this country is doomed so the country is spending a lot of resources in training knights and magicians. But what's the point of training 10 knights and magicians to defeat 1 demon instead of training 1 knight or magician to defeat 10 of them. Nobles believe the number is strength but they are mistaken what matters is strength, not number."

"So, you are saying, you will train us to be powerful enough to defeat 10 demons? That's impossible," said Nina.

I can understand her considering our fight with the lesser demon but what I felt a while back during the test in the castle ground was a real strength.

"I think we can trust her. I felt her strength during the test earlier and she is really strong. I think she is at the same level as my brother," the elven princess Eliane said.

"Yes, I felt that too. If we train with her, she will definitely make us stronger," I added to what elven princess said.

Arica stood up and said, "I am in on this, what about you guys?"

Sistina also stood up saying, "If you guys think it's okay, I am in it too."

"Um... I think I will join you too. Please take care of me," Marina said in a soft voice.

"Okay looks like it's settled then, we are going to study together," Princess Anna said while standing up.

After we all agreed that we were going to train under her mentorship we asked her about the more details.

"We are going to stay in Magic Knight Academy's Dormitory starting tomorrow. You will train for a month there and After a month you should be able to surpass a normal knight that graduates from the academy. This month is for you to learn the basics and acquire magic-related knowledge from the library. After a month we will start the real training."

'What! just in a month?' we looked at each other in surprise.

After she finished talking about the details I asked, "When should we move into the dormitory ?" to which she replied, "By tomorrow evening".

After we finished our discussion on that part, princess Anna said, "We couldn't introduce ourselves properly today, why don't we have tea together tomorrow?"

We all agreed to that so it was decided that we were having tea with princesses tomorrow morning. We were going to use that opportunity to finally properly introduce ourselves to them. Princess Anna was the one who invited us so it was going to be here at the guest house of the duke's castle.

It was already evening when we finished the discussions so we decided to head towards the inn. Everyone left before me and I was also about to leave when Miss Lilith called me and said, "I saw you adding more mana to your cloak during the test. With that level of skills, you should focus more on your sword along with your magic."

I replied with, "Yes, I will. Thanks for noticing" and left the room. The real problem was that Ronald's way of the sword was more stealth-type while I have never felt the need to be sneaky or cautious. Which was why I didn't know any style that really suited my skills.

'Guess I will have to ask my new teacher for help with this.'

After we said our byes to the princesses who were staying at the same guesthouse as miss Lilith, we returned to the inn.

Next Chapter: The tea party