While Alexa spent a lot of time playing mind games with Henry and Ludwig, in between all of it, she also played another long-term battle:

  The road to gaining a third magic circle.

  So far, she had been trying her best to refine her fire and water magic, studying spells and improving them as best as she could.

  She had a growing repertoire now. From fireball, ignite, water burst, and a basic form of ice shield, Alexa was sure that she was growing in strength.

  Day in and day out, she went from various magic subjects, studying the fundamentals while trying her best to train them with Phoebe and Adele.

  Today, she made another breakthrough. After countless tries at getting her ice shield spell to work, she finally managed to deflect a one-circle light beam spell from Phoebe.

  “It…” Alexa smiled widely, her hand outstretched to produce a thin layer of ice between her and Phoebe. “It worked!”

  “How amazing, Lady Alexa!” Phoebe praised, as the two checked on each other.

  It took Alexa days just trying to maximize her mastery of her control over water magic, but now, she was able to properly integrate it with fire magic.

  The problem with ice magic was that while Alexa could use fire magic to freeze her water spells—thus creating ice—actually doing two spells at the same time was hard.

  It required grit and massive concentration. It was like drawing two pieces of intricate artwork at the same time, except it was with spell formulas.

  So, usually, while Alexa could cast the spell formulas properly, she would take way too much time or they wouldn’t be perfectly synchronized.

  As a result, whichever ice barrier she created usually ended up too brittle to actually defend Alexa.

  The two briefly discussed how Alexa could further improve her control over the spell formula she was trying to cast, and the two soon resumed training.

  Phoebe always happily lent her aid to Alexa for day-to-day things like this. “If Her Highness is stronger, I’ll feel much better,” Phoebe always said.

  And so, Alexa learned a lot with Phoebe as her secondary mentor, right after Wilhelm, who was usually busy. The man himself juggled a lot of jobs after all.

  He acted as Alexa’s spymaster, strategist, and guardian—with Alfred’s aid of course—on top of being an instructor of the academy. Apparently, he even still kept tabs on his old unit in the Defense Forces, using his ability to keep the battles up north largely contained.

  So, it was hard to get a lot of time off for Alexa to quickly master paper glyphs. It was why Phoebe was so, so helpful. With her around, Alexa’s normal magic was growing quickly.

  For many more minutes, Phoebe sent magic missiles made of light straight at her barrier, which she fine-tuned little by little to strengthen it.

  Sometimes though, danger happened, with Alexa’s barrier collapsing while Phoebe’s attack still had energy. She’d been injured multiple times.

  All the time, Phoebe would panic and profusely apologize, one time insisting on calling the practice off when one of the magic missiles pierced Alexa’s shoulder, leading to a bit of a bloody mess.

  But, Alexa stalwartly refused. Whenever she got injured anyway, the pain was brief, as Phoebe would immediately summon her saintly abilities to instantly heal Alexa.

  So aside from her dress being ruined from Phoebe’s attacks, she was actually not harmed much.

  In fact, she even gained something good from it aside from improving her magic.

  Unfortunately, after half an hour, Alexa felt mana exhaustion catching up to her. She had already downed four mana potions to replenish her reserves.

  Unfortunately, her gate, the magical organ where mages channeled their mana out of their body, was already quite tired. Phoebe checked Alexa’s status, and the girl sighed.

  “We can’t continue any further,” Phoebe said, her tone concerned. “You might just shatter your gate.”

  “I see…”

  “But!” Phoebe’s tone took a more cheerful hitch. “Today was a good day. You’ve managed to deflect a two-circle spell from me. And it’s holy magic too! I think that’s good progress?”

  “You think so?” Alexa always felt nice when someone praised her.

  “I’m quite sure, at this rate, you’ll be able to deflect a lot of low-level spells already with ice magic.”

  “Hah, that’s awesome. Next, I’ll try getting better at deflecting mid-level spells.”

  “I’m sure you can do it, Lady Alexa.”

  Alexa smugly smiled as she crossed her arms.

  “Of course I can,” Alexa said, nodding. “I just need some more time. This day has been wonderful. There’s only one thing lacking.”

  Phoebe’s mouth turned into a small, adorable O.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “...Um, what is it?”

  “Of course! Cake and macarons! Let’s go, I need to find Adele and get an afternoon celebration organized!”

  Immediately, Alexa walked out of the training hall, while Phoebe smiled.

  “The princess and her daily celebrations,” Phoebe shook her head, before following Alexa closely.

  +++

  Wilhelm silently watched from the background as he overheard the conversation between Elisabeth and Henry.

  The two had been meeting quite regularly for weeks now. It was clear that the Duke’s daughter was now ‘branching’ out so to speak to save her father’s position.

  Yet, she’s so foolish.

  She must be having major troubles with her intelligence if she seriously intended to work with her father’s rival.

  Either that, or she had a bold plan in her mind. Wilhelm doubted that possibility. He had been monitoring the girl for a while now.

  While she could become harmful in the right circumstance, and she could certainly engineer said right circumstances for plots that could threaten Alexa—Wilhelm was here.

  He had been keeping Alexa off from Elisabeth and her friends all the time. Using Phoebe as an excuse to train and train, there was very little window of opportunity presented to Elisabeth and Henry.

  Wilhelm even controlled the insertions of lessons and topics that Alexa would take on a daily basis, randomizing them madly to ensure that Alexa would always be at a different place, with different people—except for Phoebe and Adele—during different times.

  “That’s why…I cannot do what you ordered me so easily, Sir Henry,” Elisabeth complained in a low tone. “She—”

  “I understand,” Henry nodded. “What you’ve been doing has served our cause well enough regardless.”

  Wilhelm wanted to listen further, but he noticed that Henry’s mind and movement were shifting. He was picking up that something was amiss.

  Quickly, Wilhelm carefully escaped, emerging into the hallways of the general academy building, holding a folder while walking as if nothing had happened.

  As much as possible, he had to keep his cover.

  For now, let’s gather what we’ve learned.

  First of all, the threat to Alexa’s life continued to rise. Second of all, it seemed that Henry was definitely just using Elisabeth. Third, Elisabeth was probably just a poor puppet at this point.

  That meant, as of now, Henry remained at the top of his threat assessment profiles. Still no proper intelligence about his abilities though.

  Maybe, I’ll need to cause a confrontation so I can observe.

  Wilhelm passed by the cafeteria, grabbing a few orders for food. He was later given a tray, and he tried his best to balance it as he returned to his office, which was on the second floor of the general building.

  As he walked, his mind continued to visualize how he could orchestrate a scenario where Henry would be forced to expose his cards, all while keeping danger for Alexa’s camp to a minimum.

  That was when he bumped into Alexa and Phoebe.

  “Sir Wilhelm!” Phoebe cheerily called out. “We’re now done with our classes and our training.”

  “Mwah hah hah,” Alexa raised her chin as she stared at Wilhelm. “You told me it’ll take me a few more weeks to reach level 15 for my 2nd magic circle. Well, now, I have reached level 12.”

  “You were level 10 two days ago.”

  “Exactly! Which means I need you to start preparing an aiding elixir.”

  “Your progress certainly is impressive, but I’ll reserve the need to plan until you actually master your 2nd magic circle.”

  “B-but Sir Wilhelm—”

  “Anyway, I haven’t eaten the entire day,” Wilhelm grumbled at the two. “Let me have some peace.”

  He had his men keeping tabs on the two anyway, and with Phoebe around, should anything go wrong, Wilhelm knew that she would buy enough time for him to respond.

  Not to mention, he was keeping his [AZURE EYES] skill active whenever Alexa wasn’t directly in front of him. He would be able to respond, no matter what.

  “Hmm…if that’s the case, then why don’t we invite him?” Phoebe innocently asked.

  “...I don’t think he’s the type to really go out in a fancy restaurant. Look at him. He’s eating cafeteria food.”

  “Noble students eat it,” Wilhelm scoffed at Alexa. “And the food here is good.”

  Wilhelm stalwartly believed in that position. Cafeteria food was good, beyond good. As a former Defense Forces soldier, he’d survived on crap.

  Now, he had been slowly enlightened by his daily visits over there. He wasn’t going to let a princess rain on his parade.

  “See? He agrees with me,” Alexa shook her head. “Unfortunately, Sir Wilhelm simply lacks good taste.”

  “Aw…but it’s boring if it’s just the two of us going there,” Phoebe complained. “Adele is sick, so there are fewer people to talk to.”

  “Well, you can talk to me.”

  “I want to talk to Sir Wilhelm too!”

  “But he’s clearly busy.”

  “Yes, but look at him. All that work is making him look depressed.”

  “I am not depressed,” Wilhelm said to Phoebe. “I am in fact very happy.”

  His face didn’t show it though.

  “He’s only happy because he has a lot of work,” Phoebe explained to Alexa.

  “Is that a bad thing?” Alexa asked. “My peasants should be happy with work.”

  “W-well, not exactly bad. But human beings have to learn how to be happy with leisure too!”

  “Hmm…you make a good point. If one cannot derive joy from eating out with his or her friends, the mind may suffer.”

  “My mind doesn’t suffer,” Wilhelm insisted, but the two girls continued to ignore him.

  He felt like a statue taking strays for no reason. Sometimes, he truly wondered what it was that made him stay to work under Alexa, and help out Phoebe.

  He already did his job back then after all.

  Now, this was just an extra workload. Including the fact that he had to deal with a petty teenage girl and a painfully naive one on a daily basis.

  The two continued to talk for a while, with Phoebe continuing to insist that he would fit as a third member for their planned excursion from the academy, and Alexa saying otherwise, until Wilhelm stopped them.

  “Alright, you two, it’s best if you go out now before nightfall,” Wilhelm said. “Also, thanks Phoebe, I’ll consider it next time, but not now.”

  “Aww…” Phoebe pouted, clearly unhappy.

  “Well, let’s go then,” Alexa cheerfully said. “I need to try Chef Melissa’s new addition to the menu!”

  “Fine,” Phoebe relented, before bowing to Wilhelm. “Sir Wilhelm, have a good meal, okay?”

  “You too.”

  He watched as they left, shaking his head. He finally opened his door, right as he noticed one of his men walking calmly toward him.

  He looked down at his food. When he said he hadn’t eaten for a while, he meant it. He literally only ate a few pieces of bread early in the morning.

  …Fine, maybe later.