Chapter Two Hundred and Twenty-Six: Meeting the Family 2 (Thor’s POV)
“You became B-rank a year ago—is that correct?”
“How did you know? My information should be confidential.”
“That’s exactly why. The time when your information trail went cold makes it easy to tell when you were promoted.”
“Ah, I see.”
The dinner party proceeded peacefully.
Karen had a tense expression, but that was concern about whether Thor might commit some blunder toward the Ehlertt family. It did not look like she feared becoming part of the household.
To reassure Karen, Thor demonstrated proper etiquette and manners while eating, even if his speech remained casual. However, that only unsettled Karen further, and for some reason, Sieg Ehlertt—the heir of the Ehlertt Earldom—glared at him.
Thor grinned at Sieg and then looked at Karen.
“Sis, isn’t this super good?”
“Do you want my portion as well?”
When Thor said something was delicious, Karen would very naturally try to share her portion with him. It had always been like this. Long ago, when their father was absent, she would take Thor’s hand with her small one, and when they shared meals in the corner of the neighborhood tavern, she would try to let Thor eat as much as he wanted of whatever he wanted.
Not just food—everything. If someone close to her said they wanted something, she tended to give it away. Thor had long predicted that someday someone would appear who would take advantage of this aspect of Karen and try to take things from her.
“Yeah, give me some.”
Thor begged with a smile. He deliberately asked for a dish made with aromatic vegetables Karen did not particularly like, showing off his privilege as her younger brother to Sieg.
“Say ahh.”
Karen seemed unaware that this was considered a breach of manners. Though she was supposedly learning etiquette at the Ehlertt family’s estate, the teaching seemed quite lenient.
Thor had learned etiquette when he was a C-rank adventurer. From C-rank onward, noble clients increased. He didn’t prefer taking requests from nobles, but there were requests from the guild that had to be accepted. For that reason, Thor and his party were forced to learn etiquette.
He learned it, thinking he’d be killed by nobles if he made a mistake. Some even told him to his face that they would kill him if he messed up. Not all nobles were like that.
But in fact, Thor’s party at the time—Crimson Thunder party, including Thor himself—had encountered situations where they would indeed have been killed as promised if they’d messed up. By the hands of nobles who saw not the slightest value in the lives of low-rank commoners.
—Even the comrades who once said they would prove those nobles wrong when they rose in rank ended up claiming that low-rank people looked like trash once their own rank increased, becoming sympathizers with the nobles.
It seemed that rather than rank itself, climbing the steps and gaining greater magical power caused people to become like that. But whether fortunately or unfortunately, Thor felt something was off about that way of thinking. Somehow, he felt he was this way thanks to Karen, so it was probably a fortunate thing.
The current Karen seemed free from the tension Thor had once been forced to endure. Neither Helfried nor Alise had applied that kind of pressure to Karen. They had protected her.
Even now, they were just watching Karen and Thor’s interaction with warm smiles. Though the mother had noticed her son’s state and was smiling wryly.
“Heh.”
In the corner of his vision, Thor could see Sieg trembling with his girlishly cute face bright red, and finding it amusing, Thor laughed with the mouth he’d been about to open.
The only miscalculation was that the gaze from Julius, sitting on Thor’s other side, was also painful. That gaze was not condemning a breach of manners either—it was blatant jealousy.
In any case, it was just amusing, and Thor opened his mouth wide as if to show off his relationship with Karen.
But the next moment, a maid inserted herself between Karen and Thor and plopped food onto Thor’s plate with a thud.
It was exactly the dish he’d been about to receive from Karen.
“If you need seconds, there’s still plenty more, Mister Thor.”
The silver-haired maid smiled cheerfully, but her eyes weren’t smiling.
Since she was the maid who frequently delivered letters and packages from the Ehlertt family to the alchemy workshop, Thor at least knew her name.
“Sara, let’s talk later.”
“Yes, Lady Karen. Later, then.”
“Actually, would late at night be okay?”
“Any time is fine. I’ll be waiting.”
She was not merely a maid—she was Sara, Karen’s friend. And she was also the loyal maid of the future earl.
She seemed to have seen through Thor’s prank on Sieg and come to stop it.
When Thor, having been neatly thwarted, looked toward Sieg, Sieg wore a thoroughly satisfied evil smile. It was truly the smile of an evil noble in the making.
“Good thing you got plenty, Thor.”
Karen peacefully resumed her meal, and Thor crunched through the mountain of vegetables piled on his plate.
Thor had fully expected that during the meal, only he would be made to answer questions. That it would be the so-called “commoner appraisal” that he not-so-rarely experienced when invited by nobles.
If you assumed you had simply been invited as a guest, you would be caught off guard. If you failed to realize you were being treated like livestock in human form whose pedigree was being evaluated at an appraisal meeting, you would surely respond the wrong way.
However, even without Thor asking, Helfried and Alise spoke about various things. About the Ehlertt family, about their territory, about troubles there from the present to the past. They spoke of things that shouldn’t be told to outsiders, much less to commoners.
What impressed Thor was that Karen showed no surprise at their stories and seemed to already know about them. What interested him most was the story of how the alchemist they’d hired for their son became their great benefactor.
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