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Chapter 4: Early preparationsNotes:

Does anyone have an idea what I could put in the tags? Only 3 tags are disappointingly few...

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter 4

Reinhard was of little use in regards of information about the other royal candidates. He had apparently known only one of them personally and heard about the three others through hearsay. All of them were actually girls or "dragon maidens" as he called it. Was that the religion of this land? It seemed so. At least the dragon didn't demand to be called "god" so that was a plus.

First among the candidates was Crusch Karsten. A young woman that was favoured by the nobility and put much importance on independence and military might. Much more useful information was not easily accessible and for some reason Reinhard looked hesitant to talk about her allies in further detail.

Then there was the silver-haired girl they had met today. Had it really been just a few hours ago? It seemed like an eternity. Today was her first day in this strange world and she was already aiming to become queen of the most powerful nation on the continent. (Reinhard was pretty insistent that Lugnica was a global power house in spite of its weakened state.)

Her knight believed to have heard that she was sponsored by Rooswaal L. Mathers, the strongest magician in the country. Tanya had no much of an opinion of her. If it was true that you needed to present an insignia to qualify for the royal selection then this girl would have already lost had Tanya not intervened. Not only was she incompetent enough to let it get stolen, but she was also likely not powerful enough to get it back. In a straight up fight Tanya was confident to have a high chance of victory.

Apparently Anastasia Hoshin was a merchant and businesswoman from Karagi who was famous for her inventive and greedy mind. She led the most successful corporation in the known world and was constantly expanding her assets. Tanya respected her already. To build and maintain such a massive business required a huge deal of intelligence and ruthlessness. Had she not been a royal candidate then Tanya would have sought out work under her.

The last one on the list was Priscilla Barielle. She had allegedly murdered her seven husbands and showed off her massive wealth with little regard for subtlety. How anyone would want to marry a woman whose husbands all mysteriously died was beyond Tanya.

That was sadly everything she knew about her competition. Truly pitiful. Knowing the enemy was nearly as important as knowing yourself in a battle. If you could predict your adversary then you knew when to engage. If you could assess your own strengths and weaknesses then you knew when to retreat. And she knew neither.

What could Reinhard do? How much wealth had she now at her disposal? How powerful was her magic compared to the one in this world? What were the goals of her opponents? So many questions and so few answers. It was infuriating!

At least her identity remained largely a secret. Only the silver-haired girl had seen the glow of on her insignia, but there was the vague hope that she would misinterpret it. Tanya wouldn't bet on it, but it was a possibility. The element of surprise could be used to her advantage when she made her grand debut at the royal selection.

Before that she needed to actually be familiar with the country she was supposed to rule. A task that turned out to be far harder than expected. Because for some moronic reason the universe decided that that the people here spoke Japanese, but wrote completely different! Probably another strategy of Being X to annoy her.

So before she could use the "Astrea family library" she had to learn the written language of Lugnica which was a humiliating experience to explain to the servant who taught her. It looked like she was an analphabetic fool who had never set foot into civilized society! At least that was how she felt she looked. Learning was relatively easy though. If-you-had-several-mental-enhancement-spells-active-and-doped-yourself-up-on-artificial-drugs-to-stimulate-your-neuronal-activity kind of easy. A trick that she had developed only after years of mastery and iron self-discipline to not go over her (admittedly tremendous) limits.

Meanwhile Reinhard was running some errands and informing the counsel that he had found the final candidate. Tanya had been initially opposed to revealing her existence so soon, but he had retorted that word would eventually get out about a strange guest he had and people would draw their own conclusions. The faster they got to the royal selection, the better her surprise would work.

To organize an event as big as the royal selection would luckily take a lot of time. Their guess was a week at minimum to send for all the nobles and knights across the kingdom. Only one week was a laughably short time to learn about an entire world, but that was exactly what the White Silver specialized in: The impossible.

She studied late into the night after she had managed to get fluent with the different glyphs in just a few hours. It still took longer than normal for her to read and understand a simple text, but she was getting better.

The next morning began with an unexpectedly pleasant surprise: breakfast. It was certainly a very fine and opulent breakfast for the normal human that would make everyone´s mouth water, but to Tanya it was awe-inspiring. For a veteran who had lived off of tasteless rations for years now it was like a spiritual awakening. Her mind flooded with the aromas and smells while her eyes feasted on the food that had actual colour! Yes, the soup and bread she had for dinner yesterday had been delicious, but it couldn't compare to the table full of fruits and jams and other stuff she hadn't even experienced in her time before the military.

She always had either been too poor or too far away from supply lines to get something like this. So as a result of her current sensory overload she just stared at the table with wide open eyes and a feeling of bliss running through her body. This truly was one of the most emotional moments she ever had across all her lives.

"Is something wrong Milady?" asked Reinhard who seemed concerned at his lady´s frozen expression.

Tanya managed to rip her eyes away from the heavenly feast in front of her and tried to smile reassuringly at her knight.

"No need to worry Reinhard. It´s just that... I have not had the chance to eat anything like this in... what feels like an eternity. It means very much to me that you have gifted me something like this once again."

The redhead looked pleased that he had managed to move his lady nearly to tears with joy and simultaneously distraught to learn such shocking news about her.

Tanya all the while began to happily tuck into her meal and savoured each bite. If only for the food, this world was leagues better than her last.

After a hearty meal that left her feeling so full she felt as she would burst at any moment she asked Reinhard if he knew any magicians that he could call upon. If she had to fight anybody here she needed to know the capabilities of these people. Her plan for today was to study that in detail and maybe ask Reinhard if he could show her later how to use a sword. The man called himself a swordsaint so he probably was relatively good at fighting.

The reason for this blade training was that she needed a backup for her firearms which she could only use in the direst of circumstances. Not only were they her hidden trump card, but ammunition for them was also extremely limited. She had a vague idea how she could craft bullets in the future, but to set up a small factory would take time. Until then she would need a sword.

Two hours later and a extremely plain looking man arrived at the training grounds. He introduced himself as a "master of magic" (arrogance much?) and asked her what she wanted from him.

"Please explain and demonstrate your magic like as if I had never even heard of the concept. Just talk to me like you would to a complete novice."

"Very well Milady. Ehm... I am a magician with an air affinity. That means I am able to manipulate air."

She still couldn't get over the fact that magic here was limited to elements. That was not how magic should function. In the empire the application of magic had been described as a mathematical routing of naturally occurring energy fields in the atmosphere. As long as you had the right formula and enough energy to execute it you could basically do anything.

"What other affinities exist?"

"Water, fire, earth, shadow and light. Although shadow and light magic are pretty rare."

An idea overcame her. What if the magic in this world was based on fundamentally different principles? That would mean that she could potentially use two different forms of magic: The logical one and the elemental one.

"How can you find out what affinity you have?"

"Through another high-class magic user. I myself would be able to that, but it will take a few minutes."

"Please do that."

He touched her forehead and hummed to himself. One minute stretched into a dozen until he finally stopped and said:

"I... I believe you have shadow magic Milady."

Notes:

I´m gonna be honest. I mostly gave her shadow magic, because Subaru had it and because I thought that creating a large cloud of smoke could be useful. Also the contrast to her "miracles" of golden light when she uses the Type 95 is pretty cool imo

What do you think? Which affinity would you give her?