Chapter 4
In the time that followed, Elliot spent considerable time attempting to learn more about the System, but made little progress of any meaningful kind.
"Huu."
He exhaled a long breath, then brought both hands up and gave his own cheeks a light slap, steeling himself inwardly.
All right.
The source of the ability was most likely the regression itself. The cause of the regression remained as opaque as ever, but it was clear enough that this ability would prove useful to him. Nor did it seem to be doing him any harm.
With this, it may be possible to overcome what I lack in talent.
In the past, Elliot had been something of a generalist. He had taken to almost any discipline with ease, and for a time that ease had filled him with confidence. But as the years passed, his talent had revealed its true nature, and it was an ambiguous one.
Quick to start. But at a certain point, the growth simply stopped.
To put a generous face on it, one might call him versatile. To put an honest face on it, he had found it extraordinarily difficult to surpass a certain ceiling in any single discipline. The piano had been no exception. If one were to map achievement onto a scale of grades, he had reached C with almost no effort at all.
C was the level Elliot had reached at this age, in that first life. But climbing to B had required a grueling investment of time, and A had been entirely beyond imagining. It was not just the piano swordsmanship, painting, every field had followed the same pattern.
"Tch."
Elliot clicked his tongue softly. C was C in name, but reaching that level at the age of sixteen was, objectively speaking, a remarkable achievement. His social debut had gone well enough on the strength of it, and for a time he had ridden that success with the careless confidence of someone who did not yet know his own limits, letting his apparent genius spread by reputation as he dabbled freely across every discipline.
Those were good days.
But sweet dreams do not last forever. It had not taken long for the truth to emerge that Elliot was not, in fact, a genuine prodigy. And it was from that point onward that things had begun to go wrong.
In any case a tutorial reward of rank S, is it.
Being a tutorial reward, it seemed unlikely that anything similar would be offered again. That was a small source of regret. If the choice had been his, he would have preferred swordsmanship elevated to S rather than the piano he knew it was ungrateful to think so, but the regret was there regardless.
No matter how greatly the arts were esteemed in this era, the thing that mattered most in the end was still martial ability. The tutorial reward was a one-time thing, and even if he were to make full use of the System from this point forward, reaching S rank in a single leap was not something he could expect to repeat.
What are the conditions, I wonder.
Elliot had tried pressing his hand to various objects in an attempt to activate the ability, but nothing had responded since the piano. Whatever it was, it clearly did not react to just anything.
If I think about what made the piano special it was old, and it had a powerful preservation spell on it.
He did not know the full history of the instrument, but he recalled that it had supposedly belonged to a noble family of tremendous renown in ages past. That family's line had long since died out, and its traces existed now only in the pages of history books.
What was the name again?
He remembered how Professor Laurence had been beside himself the first time he laid eyes on the piano, and how he had marveled at it again and again over the course of their lessons. At the time, the young Elliot had paid it almost no attention, dismissing it as nothing worth his concern.
Old things.
Preservation spells.
For now, those two elements seemed to be the key.
"Huu."
Elliot resolved not to think about it impatiently. The ability did not seem to be in any danger of disappearing, and the times ahead were peaceful ones.
That said, this is not the moment for that. I should organize what I know of the future first.
In all the commotion, he had nearly neglected something important. Knowing even the smallest detail of what was to come was an enormous advantage, was it not? Since he had been given the chance to return to the past, he wanted to live better than he had before.
No. Better is not enough.
Now that things had come to this.
Elliot wanted to succeed.
The end of humanity can wait for later.
That was a distant future.
Before he could afford to worry about humanity, there were more immediate concerns demanding his attention. And even if he intended to work toward preventing that catastrophe, he would need power to do it, whether that meant martial strength, reputation, or wealth. Was that not precisely what lay ahead of him?
In any case, what special events are coming in the near future.
"Ah!"
Yes, toward the end of this year, there was a tailor who had swept through high society like a storm. He could not recall the exact name, but a tailor who would go on to define the fashions of the social world for years to come was set to emerge this year. A daughter of a ruined noble house who would make her name altering a dress for some noblewoman, and then go on to restore her family within a few years, rising steadily all the way until the eve of the war it had been the sort of improbable story that young women throughout society had envied, something that sounded like it had been lifted straight from a novel.
Was it the Lawrence family?
Rebuilding a ruined noble house was an extraordinarily difficult thing to accomplish, all the more so in a time of peace like this one. That was precisely why the story had caused such a stir.
And early next year, if I remember correctly, an ancient ruin was said to have appeared on the outskirts of the Marquess of skypiea's domain.
That ancient ruin would eventually be the cause of the Marquess of skypiea's elevation all the way to a ducal title.
And then there was the other thing.
The year after next, or perhaps the year after that. An ancient tome of magic was to be discovered in an old bookshop in the capital, a peculiar volume with an ego of its own dwelling within its pages. The result of that discovery a commoner elevated to nobility in a single stroke had caused no small amount of uproar.
For a long while Elliot sat tracing the corridors of his memory, doing his utmost to pull forward as much of the past as he could recover. He was careful, as well, not to forget to write everything down in cipher an encryption system that would not be developed until far in the future against the possibility of the notes falling into the wrong hands.
The following day, when Elliot returned from delivering Vif's daily rose leaf as usual, Leona spoke to him as he came back inside.
"Young master."
She was not a maid who spoke unless there was something that needed to be said, so Elliot tilted his head and asked:
"Hm? What is it?"
"The duke has asked that you join the family for dinner three days from now, in the evening. The whole family will be gathering, I was told."
"Is that so. That is unusual."
The position of a duke was one of extraordinary busyness to match its power, enough that finding time to share a meal with even the youngest of his sons and a bastard son at that was no easy matter. And beyond that, it was rare for a noble family to gather every member together for something as simple as a shared meal.
"And after dinner, he would like to hear your piano playing for himself."
It was only then that Elliot understood what the duke was planning. So that was what Professor Laurence had meant the other day.
Young master's ability at the piano is beyond question. Should he not be presenting himself somewhere worthy of that talent? Good news will follow before long.
Somewhere worthy.
There was only one place that stood above the name of a duke.
The royal family.
And two months from now, a grand party hosted by the royal household was scheduled to take place, the celebration of the kingdom's founding. In Elliot's first life, his social debut had been held at a ducal party rather than at court, because although his playing had been accomplished, his status as a bastard had imposed its limits.
Accomplished for his age, yes. But the comparison had always been with peers.
Now, however, Elliot's ability at the piano was something to be measured not against those his age but against the whole of the continent, and he would rank among the very finest even by that measure. Professor Laurence had said as much and staked his reputation on it.
The S rank gave him some sense of what to expect, but still.
He was genuinely surprised. Professor Laurence was considered not the most skilled pianist in the kingdom but the one with the finest ear, and he had given his guarantee with his name behind it. It had seemed sincere, but Elliot had not imagined the man would go so far as to say it directly to the duke.
No matter how many times I listen, there is no one in this kingdom who surpasses the young master.
Over the course of several days, Professor Laurence had listened to Elliot's playing with careful, dispassionate attention, making every effort to judge it with a cold and clear eye. And then he had gone to the duke and said:
However I consider it, young master Elliot's ability will rank among the finest in the world. Within this kingdom at least, there is no one who can equal him. I will stake my name on it.
On the strength of those words, the duke had made up his mind to move the debut to a grander stage, and had done so with genuine pleasure. He had never imagined that a child of his blood would emerge as a prodigy not in swordsmanship but in the arts.
This is fortunate, if anything.
So the duke had reasoned. Being a bastard son, the matter had come with complications of its own but if Elliot's gift lay in the piano, there was little chance of a succession struggle erupting into something serious. Given his position, it was almost a blessing.
If he had been talented with the sword, it would only have made things more difficult.
And yet the duke, who had been feeling quite pleased with himself as he thought all this over, could not help but be caught off guard at the dinner three days later not by the piano, as he had expected, but before the music had even begun.
Human memory is an imperfect thing. What begins as a vivid and detailed picture grows blurred with the passage of time, until what remains is not the image itself but the watercolor wash of recollection.
Elliot had been forty years old when he met his end, and so for three days straight he had stayed up through the nights, tracing and retracing the corridors of his memory with painstaking care. As he worked, he sorted what he found into three broad categories.
Things he remembered with certainty.
Things he remembered only vaguely.
Things he was uncertain about.
He then assigned each a level of importance according to the significance of the event in question. This material would form the foundation of everything he intended to do going forward, and it could not be treated carelessly. By the time the three days had passed, Elliot was thoroughly exhausted.
"What has happened to your face?"
Naturally, he looked it. The moment he stepped into the dining room for the family dinner, the duke fixed him with that question before anything else.
"I have not been sleeping much of late. I apologize for causing you concern, Your Grace."
At that answer, the duchess clicked her tongue in open disapproval.
"Tch. For a young man to be so frail in body."
"I apologize. I will give more attention to physical conditioning going forward."
Elliot answered the duchess's rebuke with measured courtesy, and a brief silence fell over the room. His manner was so entirely unlike himself that no one quite knew what to make of it.
The Elliot of before would have ignored the remark entirely, or answered with something sharp. At this point in time, Elliot was the youngest son of the ducal household, but he was a bastard son, and his place within the family had not been formally recognized. Because of that, he could not call the duke his father, addressing him instead as "Your Grace," and he had no love for the duchess, who had made a habit of goading him at every opportunity.
The duchess's hostility toward Elliot had its root in a simple calculation. He was a bastard, yes, but a son nonetheless, and if the head of the family were to formally recognize him, then by the laws of the kingdom Elliot would be eligible to inherit the ducal title. That possibility was not one the duchess was willing to leave unaddressed.
In her eyes, I am nothing more than some stray bone that rolled in from nowhere, threatening her son's future.
It was the most remote of possibilities, but power was the kind of thing that blood relatives did not share willingly. It was fortunate that Luon had the mild temperament that he did. Acting in her son's stead, the duchess had seen fit to keep Elliot in check at every turn.
"Are you truly all right?"
"Yes, truly. Are you well yourself, brother? I heard you sustained an injury during sword practice."
At Elliot's reply, Luon Nert, the eldest son, answered with a somewhat conflicted expression.
"There happened to be a priest on hand at the time, the one who had been called for you, as it turned out."
"Who are you calling brother?!"
Even under the duchess's sharp rebuke, Elliot did not lose his composure.
"He gave me his permission."
"Is that true?"
Luon nodded.
"Yes, about a year ago. He told me to call him brother in private settings. Though this is the first time I have actually heard it from you."
"And what makes this a private setting?!"
"My lady. This is a gathering of family. Let us begin the meal."
The brief commotion was quieted by a single word from the duke, and the dinner began. But shortly thereafter, every person present found their attention drawn, quite against their will, to Elliot. The table manners he was displaying were not what any of them had seen from him before. What had once been a passable imitation of proper form had given way to something that carried genuine refinement.
Ancient etiquette?
Refinement, in this context, meant something complex and extraordinarily demanding. What Elliot was demonstrating at the table was not the contemporary etiquette in common use but the ancient form, employed only in the most formal of official settings. It was so elaborate and so exacting in its requirements that most people simply did not bother with it under ordinary circumstances, and even those who did attempt it rarely executed it with anything approaching fluency perhaps a professor of etiquette, or a seasoned diplomat. Even the royal court had largely set it aside. And yet Elliot was employing it with a ease and mastery that surpassed them all. The sight was enough to bring the rest of the table to a momentary halt.
This is not something acquired in a day or two. He is far too comfortable with it.
That was the thought running through every mind present. By any reasonable logic, this was not an etiquette that the Elliot of a short while ago could possibly have been capable of. Contemporary etiquette was itself a simplified derivative of the ancient form, and without a thorough mastery of the contemporary, the ancient was simply inaccessible. Every person at that table was consumed with curiosity.
"You where on earth did you learn that?"
Luon had been watching with growing restlessness, and in the end it was he who spoke first.