Chương 169: Chapter 152. Declaration Of Friendship

" This completes the farm. As always, only harvest every 2 weeks. I'll be head back now. Paula is visiting me today after all!" With excitement, Lily transported back to her home. With her words confirming it, this made 6 farms completed since we started the whole project. It feels good to see how far we've all come from the start. After I finished the farming work, I began to head home with Ruby by my side. It's been 2 days since Emily had started her work as my Secretary.

I'm glad to say that she's improved the overall workflow by a noticeable amount. To the point where I now had free time again, regularly even. I've spent the time training, whether it be swordsmanship training or Meditating and Tempering my Mana. It felt good to get back to it after so long. Sarah and Anna still looked at me with lonely eyes as I refused to spar with them, but since I haven't been able to master Angel's Swordsmanship, I figure it's the safest thing to do."

What do you plan on doing for the rest of the day, Lord Matthew?" Ruby spoke to me. It was decided by Sarah and Anna that they would spend the day with Emily, going over her approach to clerical work so they can more effectively help me moving forward. I was thankful for that. Since Sarah and Anna were with Emily and they could protect her, Ruby was working as my bodyguard for the day. Seems she wants to know what was next? honestly, I wasn't sure what to do? I thought I might do some training in the end.

So, I decided to go with that." I think I'll go train. I had to put it on the backburner for a while, since working on dairy products and all of the paperwork from running the Roselands caused me to focus on those subjects, it's been a while since I had a good sweat. Now I have the time, so if you'd like, you can head back to the others, Ruby." Ruby listened to my words. And an answer came not long after." I'd rather move around a bit. I'll practice my swordsmanship as well."" That's fine.

But just to let you know, under no circumstances will we spar."" Why is that?"" It's because of a Skill I have. It... Kind of makes sparring not possible for now. I think once I master it, I can spar again, but for now, it's definitely a "no" regardless of who asks. That's why I was hunting so much, I thought I might master the Skill, but so far, no luck."" I understand." We made our way to the training ground near my home.

I began to go over all of the forms that Crest taught me for Diablosian Swordsmanship as well as a few Promethian Swordsmanship Forms. As I went through my practice, I thought about how I should probably gift the 4 High-Ranking Officials some ice cream. I mean, they did come to my wedding and everything. Maybe I could ask Ronald for some advice when it comes to business dealings as well?" Lord Matthew, I've been wondering this for a while. Who exactly taught you Demon Swordsmanship?"

Ruby stopped me while I was on the 3rd to last form before I finished my warmup. I turned to her after returning Scarlet to her bracelet form and answered Ruby's question." Crest Brightmane did."" Crest? As in, General Crest?" I nodded to her words. Ruby seemed very shocked by it." I was taught the forms by Crest, then I would spar him and King Warrick to gain live combat experience. I did it for 3 months before the Hero tried invading. I was exhausted nearly every day from that...

Then there was also all of the Magic training Queen Aqua had me doing as well. Honestly after that, I thought my days would be full of less work. How wrong I was, right?"" How did you survive all of that? General Crest's training is known to break military men from how exhaustive it is." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. I thought back on Crest's lessons." Well, he wasn't a drill sergeant to me or anything.

He more or less just taught me the basics. The real work came from Warrick's sparring and Aqua's classes if I'm being honest. I had a constant bruise on my stomach from Warrick drilling his training sword into me as a counter to my attacks." I thought back to how sore my stomach was. I swear, for the first 6 months after the Hero tried to invade Diablos, my stomach ached during the afternoon, like it was used to being hit really hard around that time." How did you manage that?

You never trained before that, right?"" So, the fact I'm an amateur is that easy to tell? Even now? I sighed after speaking. Well, Ruby seemed to be genuinely curious about the whole thing." I have a Skill called Paladin's Recovery. Like the name implies, it boosts my recovery rate with my stamina and my mana. More or less, if you give me about 3 hours, I'll be able to take hellish beating after hellish beating. And even if you cause me some kind of serious damage, I can heal myself.

In some ways, as long as I have some talent in the area, I make a great student at least. Or at least I tell myself that."" You've had it rough, haven't you?" Ruby looked at me with a gentle look on her face." In some ways, yes, but in others, I've been lucky. You were surprised that my teachers were Crest, Warrick and Aqua, right? That's proof enough that I've been lucky. That doesn't even include my Wives. I wake up every day and I'm reminded how lucky I am to have them in my life.

I don't want to turn this into me gloating about my married life, though... In terms of combat however, I think I've made out pretty well. I just feel bad that my training had to stop for some time because of the amount of work that goes into starting a business and running a Fief." Ruby seemed to just be taking in my words. It's nice to talk about these things every now and again." What about you, Ruby?"" What do you mean?"" Who taught you Swordsmanship?" Ruby seemed happy at my question.

She must respect her teacher a great deal." My Mother did! She's currently serving in the Army, so she isn't here in Paradise right now."" Really? Your mother did? Isn't your father also a Swordsman?" Ruby seemed a bit confused at my question, then she seemed to realize something and began to speak. The look on her face when the answer dawned on her was actually quite charming. I secretly wondered why she wasn't able to find a partner yet, but it was probably best to keep that question to myself.

It lacked delicacy after all." My Father is a Swordsman, but he's not a Master in the Flameskin Style, he married into the Family and he's only an Expert in terms of strength. My Mother is a Grandmaster of the Style however. She was the one who taught Flare and I, along with the other young girls of our generation how to use a sword."" They seem like good memories. You haven't really stopped smiling since I asked you about them."" Well, yes. They were great times. But there's also another reason."

Ruby seemed to be a little bashful at the other reason she was speaking of." What is it? Unless you don't want to tell me. It's okay if it's something you want to keep to yourself." Ruby's eyes grew a bit bigger, they seemed to have some kind of determination in them. She began to speak in a somewhat quiet voice that was at odds with how she usually acts." Well, it's just that... You've never asked any questions about my past before. It makes me feel like you finally view me as a Friend.""

Of course I view you as a Friend, Ruby. You've helped me more times than I can count. I mean, we may have gotten off on the wrong foot originally, but I feel like our relationship has changed to Friends since then. Don't you?" Ruby was silent for a moment. She seemed dissatisfied about something. What could it be? Without a chance to ask her what she was dissatisfied with, Ruby spoke again." I do agree that we're finally closer to each other.

Though, I've wished you could've forgotten about my actions the first time we met countless times. But yes, we are definitely Friends, Lord Matthew... for now..." Ruby seemed to have said something under her breath at the end of her words? I couldn't make it out, but she seemed to be satisfied now. I decided to just ignore it, so she didn't return to looking dissatisfied about something. However, there was 1 thing that I wanted to change.

I decided to speak, before Ruby tried to turn around and return to her training." Hey, Ruby, since we're Friends, you can start calling me "Matthew" when we're in private. Kind of hard to be Friends with someone if they keep referring to you by a Formal Title, you know?" Ruby seemed shocked by my words." Can I do that even when people like Emily or your wives are around?" I guess she wanted to make sure it would be okay to call me by name when we were doing bureaucratic work in my office?

I started to answer her question." Yes, I'll let Sarah and Anna know about it as well, I wouldn't want anyone to think you were being disrespectful of a superior or anything, I plan on letting Emily do the same thing as well."" Okay! Take care of me from now on, Matthew!"" Likewise, Ruby!" The day passed by pretty quickly. It felt great to be able to practice with Scarlet in my hands again. Before training, I felt very well-rested for some reason? Maybe it was the atmosphere?

I feel like I made a lot of progress in the understanding I had of Demon Swordsmanship today.