~ Chapter 22: Cute versus not cute ~

[Leonidas' point of view]

 Two years went by in a flash, and now I was a healthy five-years-old boy who was currently on his way to Briston together with his family. The carriage was moving at a regular speed of around 15-20 km/h, so it wouldn't be long before we reached the small town. There was no special meaning behind our trip, just a regular visit to the shops in the hope of finding something interesting to buy. Only our maid was planning on restocking some of our supplies, like spices and such.

Meanwhile, I had enough time to reminisce a little bit.

So, ever since that rainy day when mother, aunty, and our maid performed that strange 'ritual', which forever ruined my vision of bunny girls, me and my sister have trained diligently in the art of Magic Energy manipulation and control as well as melee combat.

In regard to which one of us twins was the better one, we both had our moments, but sister was definitely getting the hang of the sword far better than I was. As for our magic, well... we had yet to learn even a single spell, so we couldn't tell as of right now which one of us took the lead. Besides, no matter how much talent we had, if we didn't diligently train and polished our skills, we wouldn't improve that fast. This was something both of our parents warned us about time and time again.

We also picked up archery. On my first try, I managed to shoot the bow and keep the arrow in my hand. Even aunty was confused as to how such a thing happened. To be fair, it wasn't entirely accidental. I was planning on making a gag out of it, so from the very beginning, I used telekinesis to carefully toss the bow away, while holding onto the arrow.

Unfortunately, I was the only one giggling on the inside when I looked at my feat. Everyone else was not amused. They didn't know if they should look with pity or worry at me. And for some reason, father wore a helmet every time he came by to see how we were doing in training. Maybe he thought I would somehow manage to knock him out again?

Over the past two years, we visited Briston several times. We bought new clothes to wear or looked around the shops to see if the merchants brought anything new and interesting. During those times, father took care of his official business and met with several influential people in the town. I had no idea with whom though or what exactly he was doing. He never told us, and we never asked.

On one occasion, we were also taken to the birthday party of some young noble who lived in this town. Mother made sure both of us looked absolutely perfect for our very first introduction into the high society of the Lukrentia Kingdom. We, the twins, ate some cake that was far below the standards of modern-day Earth, socialized a little with the children as much as we could and then we went back home. It was so boring, I ended up unable to remember even the birthday boy's name, while my sister didn't even bother to speak that much with the other girls her age.

Well, there wasn't a lot we could talk about with a bunch of kids who barely got out of their diapers and showed no talent whatsoever in anything. That day, mother found out how a normal child actually looked like.

For these kids, the party was an opportunity to play the game of 'act like adults'. So, when seeing them behave in such an idiotic way, I could only cringe and try to look away. One of these days I planned to learn the secret behind my little sister's glare, it was super effective at repelling unwanted attention.

Leaving aside the party, it wasn't like the two of us never did anything besides training. We had fun listening to the stories mother read for us or we played together with father in games of tag and such. Aunty Eliza carved us wooden toys, and she even taught us the game of rock-paper-scissors, which I already knew from my past life. As for our maid Luthecia, she managed to find us a ball in one of the shops in town. In general, a day for us was a mix of training, games, and a whole lot of fun. Because we had such a great family, we never felt like we were missing anything.

On another note, after the dreadful night of the bunny song, aunty Eliza finally started to wear cute dresses instead of her regular armor. Unfortunately, it wasn't a daily occurrence. Mother and Luthecia had a hard time picking one for her big size and bulky muscles, but it all worked out in the end. In my opinion, she looked far better now than she did before. My little sister though... didn't see it that way.

We arrived in Briston at around 10 or 11 AM according to my internal clock. One big flaw of this world was the lack of clocks. There were big 27 hours hourglasses, which were used by most noble houses, but so far I had yet to see an actual magical or mechanical device that could be used to measure time.

Oh, and since this planet was bigger than Earth, the hours were longer... so by my former world's standards, a day had around 30 hours or so? I had yet to figure out the exact numbers. What I did know, however, was that 1 week had 7 days, 1 month had between 32 and 34 days, and 1 year had 14 months. Yup! By Earth's standards, one year on this world had approximately 13860 hours instead of 8760, meaning that one year on this world was the equivalent of more than one and half years on Earth.

In other words, my current age wasn't five but eight. This meant that by the time Cassandra was sent to school, she was sixteen by Earth's standards...

Well, that was the theory and it would have been applied IF we were normal humans from Earth, but we weren't. We were humans from Sapherya's planet, meaning that our growth rate was different. We looked like a five-years-old not a eight-years-old, meaning that when we were '16' we would still look like a ten-years-old.

On the bright side of things, I didn't really feel the difference of the extra time. After all, it took me a while to realize there was one in the first place.

That being said, our current visit to Briston was all about exploring the shops and buying stuff that caught our attention. When I first got on the carriage, I was thinking about trying to build some sort of clock, but I soon realized that I had absolutely NO idea how to do it.

We stopped the carriage in front of the house of a noble father had business with. While he went on to handle his matters, aunty and mother took us to the market to visit the shops. Since today she acted as a bodyguard, aunty was wearing her armor and carrying her big swords on her back. Meanwhile, Luthecia went to buy the needed supplies.

Briston was a small town when compared to others, so it had only three tailors and about four blacksmiths, out of which only two made armors. As such, there weren't that many options to choose from. Usually, rich nobles made private contracts in order to get something unique that suited their tastes. Everyone else had to either pick from the standard stuff or travel all the way to the capital in the hope of finding something better.

Suddenly, Cassandra stopped and stared at something with big eyes.

“This one is sooo cute! I want it, mother!” she squeaked, but the thing she was pointing at left us all with dead fish eyes.

It was a black armor with dark-red marks on the plates. Pointy, sharp spikes came out of its shoulder pads. Razor-sharp blades were strapped to the armguards. She said this THING was cute...

“Dark Vengeance Armor of Absolute Destruction?” mother read the name written underneath it.

“Made from the bone plates ripped off of living armored monsters?” aunty added as she read the description under the name.

I had many questions regarding this strange armor. Not only was its aspect ridiculous, but its name and description were outrageous too. Above all, there was only one thing I had to comment about it.

“Cute? On what planet?” I retorted, but then they all stared at me with a confused look in their eyes.

I accidentally let slip a word, 'planet', in English. Although I didn't know the translation in this language, I highly doubted they knew of the concept behind it.

“What's a planet?” asked aunty Eliza.

To this question, mother could only shrug in reply. I didn't dare to offer them an answer. Thus, the adults passed it off as some mispronounced or misunderstood word by a young child spoken in a moment of shock. After all, even in their eyes that THING was anything but cute!

Noticing something on the other side of the road, I walked over there and pointed at a yellow frilly ballroom dress that could be seen through the opened door of the tailor's shop.

“That's cute!” I pointed at this dress and then I pointed at the armor and declared with all of my might “That's scary!”

“No! That thing is ugly! It can't protect me at all from a monster's attack!” Cassandra rebuked.

I face-palmed myself. Technically speaking, she was correct, but that was not the point!