I Think My Fiancé Has Regressed

Chapter 91: Side story – The third son of the Lagarde family (4)

“Ugh, heh, heh, heh…!”

She had been waiting for me for hours in the cold rain, scantily clad.

She came back frozen and with a summer cold.

Shivering in the rain, Ariana burrowed under the covers of her room as soon as she entered the mansion.

Or, more accurately, she was semi-forced into it by her maid, Elise.

“Elise….I was supposed to teach Kael some magic….”

“Cut the crap and stay under the covers, Ariana.”

“Ugh….”

As if to say that she’d already put up with all she could put up with just by allowing her to stay out in the rain for hours.

At Elise’s determined demeanor, Ariana quietly curled up under the covers.

Even such an elder sister sometimes listens to Elise, her exclusive maid, more than she listens to our parents.

It was a moment that made me realize how much trouble she must have been in serving my sister as a maid.

“…….”

I also felt guilty for making her shiver in the rain for hours.

Whatever it was, we were a family living under one roof, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of who she was after three years.

My sister was a much weirder and stupider person than I realized.

So much so that she’d catch a summer cold to keep a promise to her brother that wasn’t even blood related.

“Sis, I’m sorry….”

When she woke up, I already had tears streaming from the corners of my eyes from the guilt I felt for her.

She responded with a strange apology.

“I’m sorry too…. for saying something that hurt Kael….”

“No, sis. I’m not mad about that….”

“Well, do you want to learn magic here? I’ll show you how to do it from now on….”

“Sure.”

“Uh, sorry… Ellis said no…”

I shake my head vigorously as she continues to spew out apologies in an unintelligible language.

At that point, I just wanted her to get better.

⁎ ⁎ ⁎

At one point, I was so worried about my sister Ariana, wondering what was going on with her cold.

She spent the day in bed, and by the next afternoon she was well on her way to recovery.

Thanks to her, I was able to relieve myself of some of the guilty feelings I had for her.

“Sis, are you feeling okay?”

“Isn’t it my pride to have a strong body? This is nothing!”

Sure, she collapses from magic exhaustion from time to time, or climbs five mountains behind the palace in the middle of the night.

It’s probably harder not to think of her as sturdy, given the way she runs away from her mother up stairs made of dark magic.

Still, it didn’t change the fact that I’d given her a cold, so I still harbored feelings of guilt for her.

Ariana didn’t seem to care about any of that and started spouting off this nonsense as soon as I walked in.

“So now I can teach you magic!”

“No, you ate breakfast in bed today, what kind of magic is that….”

“Come on, I’m fully functional now….”

“…….”

“Well…that’s….”

While talking excitedly, I suddenly realized the gaze focused on me and immediately looked over at Elise.

…I can’t tell who’s the servant and who’s the master like that.

“…Hmph.”

Looking a little hesitant, Elise let out a very weak sigh.

“Although you still have a low-grade fever….I think you should be fine.”

“Really?”

“As long as you do two things: don’t leave the room, and don’t use magic.”

“…Uh, yeah. Okay.”

She didn’t even bother to listen to her mother, but she listened to Elise.

Come to think of it, she must have been waiting for me in the rain for hours with Ariana.

In more ways than one, she’s a curious person, having spent two whole days nursing her sister’s illness without a care in the world.

“So, what do you need most when dealing with fire magic….”

Anyway, after getting Elise’s permission, Ariana immediately started giving me a magic lesson.

I listened quietly as she spoke, even though I had a lot on my mind.

“It’s a little hard to explain without showing you, but….”

“…….”

“First of all, flow! The most important thing is to feel the flow of magic inside your body!”

“Flow of magic power?”

“Close your eyes and think about it slowly. Where in your body is the magic moving.”

I was a little confused by Ariana’s instruction, starting from the very basics when she said she was going to teach me fire magic.

Still, I felt the magic flowing through my body as she spoke.

“What do you think? Can you feel where the magic is particularly strong?”

“My left calf….I can also feel a little bit of it near there….”

“Then focus your consciousness on that spot and transfer the energy.”

“Move it?”

“Yes, from your calf, slowly moving it up to your upper back, then to your chest, then to your right hand or left hand.”

From the calves, slowly up to the upper back and from there again, slowly to the chest area.

I did exactly as she said, moving the mass of magic from one corner of my body to the top of my hand, then turned back to her.

“I’ve moved it, sis.”

“Then Kael is ready to use his magic.”

With that, Ariana’s smile never left her face as she began to explain what I was going to do with the magic.

“Let’s start with the fireball first.”

“Right.”

“The magic we’re using right now, the Fireball, is formalized and looks like a low-level magic, but you have to keep in mind that it’s actually a synthesis of some basic magic.”

“……Yes.”

“First, try Ignite.”

It wasn’t too difficult for me to comply with Ariana’s request, as Ignite was the basic fire magic that even I, a dullard, could handle.

-Hiss.

With a crackling sound, the embers in my right hand began to dance on my palm as they flared up.

For some reason, it felt like it looked a little bigger than usual.

“Do you feel like you still have some magic on your right hand?”

“Well….It doesn’t seem to have diminished much….”

“Kael has a lot of basic potential magic power. First, think of it as consuming about half of the magic power on your palm.”

“Consume half of it…?”

“Yep. Until you have half the energy left in your palm, energize the ignition.

Don’t worry about getting burned. The flames created by ignition cannot damage you.”

At first, I didn’t understand what she meant by energizing the flames.

But Ariana’s determined demeanor made me think that it would work, so I was fooled, and I used my magic to enlarge the spark.

The flames dancing on my palm gradually increased in size.

“Wow….”

“How much did you use?”

“Oh, about a quarter now….”

“More, more.”

“More here……?”

I wonder what the hell she’s going to do about it after creating such a big fire in the room.

I figured that since she was talking to me, she must have an idea, so I meekly followed her lead and increased the size of the flame.

“This, this, this is too big….”

I stopped growing the flame until it was big enough to hold in both hands.

“Now we need to ‘coalesce’ it.”

“Concentrate…? How do you do that…?”

“Think of dropping your magic power into the center of the flames. Then, the flames will probably gather at the coordinates of that magic power.”

“At the center of the flames, drop your magic….”

Once again, I followed Ariana’s advice and put the energy at the center of the flames.

The giant flames that had been dancing uncontrollably shrank slightly in size and began to burn in a circle.

“That’s a ‘fireball’, the most basic form of fire magic.”

“This, fireball….”

“Now, if we give it ‘speed and direction’, it becomes a fireball.”

“Bam!”

As soon as the words “speed and direction” were spoken, Elise, who had been watching my sister, jumped up.

I’m not sure which word she was reacting to.

“Kael, aren’t you paying attention?”

“Oh, sorry, sis!”

I turned my attention from Elise to Ariana, and she walked me through the final steps of the fireball.

“The way to specify speed and direction is simple: you coordinate the fireball you’re holding to wherever you want it to go.”

“What the hell does it mean to coordinate…?”

“Well, in layman’s terms, it’s like hovering your mouse cursor over the location of where you want to fire….”

My head was spinning as Ariana started explaining something I didn’t understand.

Just as the fireball in my hand was trying to find its bearings and move a little bit….

“Lord Kael!!!”

“What?!”

“I need you to focus your attention outside!!!”

“Outside?!”

I shifted my gaze to follow Elise’s sudden voice.

And there she was, with the window of my sister’s room wide open.

“Outside! Look at the sky and focus your eyes!”

“Ha, look at the sky…!”

Surprised by her determination, I focused my gaze on the sky outside the window.

With a boom, the fire sphere in my hand shot out the window at a tremendous speed.

The fireball, which was quite large in size, followed my gaze for quite a distance.

It streaked across the sky without touching any objects before dissipating into nothingness.

…Probably would have been a disaster if it had hit something else.

“Good job, Kael! See, that’s what you do…!”

“Ariana!”

“Ugh, eh, Elise?!?!”

“What in the world are you teaching Lord Kael in that room right now!!! How can you make such a large fireball!”

“I’m sorry but that’s what I was originally going to teach him yesterday…!”

“Why didn’t you just stop at making fireballs and get rid of them? What would you do if a fireball that size hit somewhere in Ariana’s room…!!!”

That’s why she scrambled to open the window as soon as Ariana mentioned ‘speed and direction’.

It was a moment that reminded me that not just anyone can be my sister’s maid.