Birthday

Following her duel with Lionel, Kedra returned to her usual routine, but now her training was personally supervised and guided by Lionel. As for her lessons with Maria, once the girl properly learned the fundamentals of Aswallian history and culture, they moved on to education usually reserved for nobles, such as proper etiquette training, dancing, and music.

Though Maria was not very well versed in such subjects, thanks to the head maid's books, Kedra quickly found that Aswallian etiquette was similar to that of medieval Europe, specifically British etiquette. She was also a decent dancer, as likening the different waltzes she learned to fencing footwork made remembering all of the motions incredibly easy.

There was, however, one domain in which Kedra was laughably bad. Much to Maria's surprise, Kedra had absolutely no musical sense; somehow, any instrument she picked up would make sounds more reminiscent of a badger's death rattle than any proper music.

Worse yet was her singing; though her voice was not particularly unpleasant, her horrible sense of pitch made any song she sang sound like auditive sandpaper to any unfortunate listeners.

Pushing through her lack of musical talent, she kept up the lessons nonetheless, preferring to at least gain knowledge about the arts even if she would not practice them. 

When she was not studying with Maria or learning from Lionel, she spent her time in her room reading over the two books she had acquired from the head maid's storeroom. The first one, 'Compendium of Magical Symbols', was a collection of an incredibly large number of symbols used in magical engraving.

The first few pages of the book were brimming with interesting symbols that Kedra desperately wanted to try out; however, as she went further into the book, the contents became more and more complex; at some point, the description of a single symbol took up an entire page. 

Kedra mostly ignored the more complex sigils; not only did she not care to read their lengthy explanations, but even if she did read them, all she got from most of them was minor alterations to the spell's effect, such as temperature regulations for the circuit or controlling the rate at which the material eroded. 

The girl considered such precision unnecessary for her circuits; she only needed the most basic effects from them. 

After reading through what interested her in the first book, Kedra eventually opened the second book. The tome had no title or special decorations; it was simply bound in cheapish leather. Inside it, Kedra saw pages upon pages of blueprints, all of them for experimental engraved circuits.

Each circuit was hand-written with notes on their effects, taking up any empty space on their respective pages. Analyzing each one, Kedra was amazed at the intricacies of the works. Again, questions about the head maid's true identity began to surface, but she quickly dismissed them; she was unable to answer them, so why bother thinking about it?

While studying the books, Kedra derived a way to efficiently draw engraved circuits. She would open a small wound on her palm and pour her blood into a small cup, writing down circuits using a quill instead of her finger.

As such, her drawings became more precise than ever before, and the complexity of her circuits shot up. She applied the knowledge that she had gleamed from the two books, experimenting with all manner of circuits; however, as she experimented with more complex formulas, she began experiencing failures, either due to the shoddy materials she was using or because of a miscalculation.

The most notable of the circuits she managed to make was a simple circuit capable of producing an explosion by stacking ten circles on top of each other, with a single one of the ten dedicated to producing a small spark.

Kedra found that the heavy influx of mana seemed to alter the composition of ambient gases, producing a flammable substance. When mixed with an application of a triangle, a shape that interacted with nearby stone, to form an outer shell containing the combustion, the pressure was enough to create an explosion big enough to make a crater five meters in diameter.

The circuit itself was surrounded by three 'L'-shaped lines that made the circuit activate when met with a harsh impact, ensuring that she would not have to risk activating it up close.

Another notable circuit she had created was composed of three circles, one of which contained three arrows pointing inward; each arrow had a horizontal line cutting through it, changing its effect from interaction with water to interaction with liquid, specifically liquid that had a similar molecular composition to the circuit's material, hence, in this case, blood.

The other two circles, respectively, contained an asterisk that went from each edge of the circle to the other and a simple pictogram of an hourglass. The asterisk allowed the circuit to directly interact with the mana that was being altered by it, and the hourglass slowed down the molecules that the spell was interacting with.

Put together, the spell would first detect any blood in front of the circuit, pumping mana into it and slowing it down to a crawl, essentially stopping the flow of blood. Kedra had created a very clumsy hemostatic bandage.

The two circuits were Kedra's biggest successes; the rest of her experiments were either too simple to be of note or far too complex to properly function.

Kedra felt herself progress more than ever before; entire weeks were passing by as if they were days, and before she could even process the amount of time that had passed, the dawn of her eleventh birthday came.

Though, of course, Kedra was unaware of this, not once had her birthday been celebrated in the past, so her date of birth naturally eclipsed itself in her mind.

The day went by as any other; she had her lesson with Maria, then trained with Lionel, ending off the day by practicing magic engraving. However, as she was called for dinner, she noticed that the residence was strangely empty. 

She made her way down the stairs and into the hallway leading to the dining room. Hearing no sounds coming from inside, she quickly burst through the door and was met with an eerily quiet room.

"Happy birthday, Lady Kedra!"

Suddenly, Maria, Lionel, and Mona jumped forth from under the table with an enthusiastic shout. Lucie, on the other hand, while present, had her unenthusiastic voice drowned out by the other three.

"Today's my birthday? I never knew."

Maria went up to Kedra, grabbing her by the hand, tears already streaming down her face.

"I'm so sowwy we neber celebrated your biwthday my ladyyy." She had already broken down crying; her words were terribly hard for Kedra to understand.

"I, uh, I forgive you? Just— try to calm down a little."

Her master's kind words simply made Maria further break down in tears as Lucie got up from her seat, handkerchief in hand, to help her wipe away her tears. Though she did not care for Kedra, it was obvious that Lucie considered Maria her friend.

Mona briefly walked out of the room, returning with a well-decorated cake topped with eleven small candles and placing it on the table.

"The honor is yours, my lady." 

"Um, alright, thanks, Mona." 

Kedra had been caught completely off guard; she was not expecting such an act from the three servants but was grateful nonetheless.

She sat down at the end of the table, and as Mona placed the cake in front of her, she thought back to the time she had spent in this new body.

'It's been a year already huh? I've barely done anything other than training and learning, but I guess it was fun.'

Everyone around the room looked at their mistress in anticipation. She took a deep breath and gently blew out the candles in one breath as the four began clapping and cheering. 

"Here's to another year, then."