A tad uncomfortable, Rowena glanced over to her second brother Colin, who had looked stressed out since earlier, but more from his own thoughts than from her. Would he be able to keep them from having a conversation? She wouldn't put it past him.

But to her surprise, he held up his hands in a peaceful gesture. "I will wait in the salon on the other wing." He meant the hallway opposite the one they were in, where his own bedroom was. "I hope your conversation is fruitful. The servants will see you to a carriage to take you home afterwards."

"You are too kind, Young Master Colin, we already owe you so much."

"Don't mention it, it is my job to do at least this much." As he looked her up and down, his eyes rested on her arm for a moment. "Your injury must still be very painful, take care not to overdo it."

"I will. It wasn't enough to make a fuss about." In reality, her arm was badly injured.

If Colin had not moved in with Logan Randall by his side, there would have been no one to save it from amputation. It was badly torn and showing the first signs of infection.

Still, she didn't feel too bad about the pain. If anything, she felt motivated.

Rowena watched them after Colin had finally said goodbye, trying to figure out what their intentions were. So she slowly approached the sitting area, noticing a large basket that Ansgar was holding onto with a cloth covering its contents.

She saw a bottle and some other signs that it was filled with food. As she motioned for them to sit down as well, she wondered if they had truly come to thank her.

Iris seemed surprised as she followed the lady's gaze to the basket and noticed that she hadn't mentioned what they had brought. "Oh, we brought you a gift out of gratitude. I'm very sorry, I forgot..."

"It's not important. Please, have a seat." She gestured for them to sit down again, while they shared a look of uncertainty before nodding and doing as they were told.

"It is, in fact, quite important," the older woman began, taking the cloth from the objects after her husband had placed the basket on the coffee table in front of them all, "Of course, we have brought some food from our village. Bruno, the fisherman, has some good connections with a winery in the south, we got a bottle of their best grape juice, since you have not had your debut yet."

Blinking, Rowena had to think for a moment as she realized that it would have been normal for the bottle she had noticed to contain some sort of liqueur.

She had never drunk alcohol in her life, of course not, she was only thirteen! Even if she thought she was fourteen, it made no difference.

But as far as she had understood from the novel, people in this world were allowed to drink alcohol from the day of their debut, which varied from sixteen, in very early cases, to eighteen. Usually, however, it was seventeen.

Since the age of debut was regulated, it could be said that the legal drinking age was somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, which was somewhat consistent with what she knew of European countries in her old world. It was a curious fact, as the Arlen Empire resembled a few European nations in a blender.

"Anyway," Iris said, waking Rowena from her daydream as she took a wheel of cheese and some other things from the basket and placed it on the table next to it, to reveal something hidden underneath, "I thought we should get this back to you as soon as possible."

There was something wrapped inside a white towel, and as she handed it across the table, the young lady took it with a confused look on her face. The confusion quickly dissipated, however, as she unfolded the item in her lap and saw something she had completely forgotten.

"Oh," was all she could manage at first glance, "so that's why my brother didn't say a word about it. You two found it." She looked at a broken Mana blade.

The polymer hilt was damaged, probably from hitting trees or rocks while being swept away in the wave. It broke neatly in two, with about half of the blade coming off. 'No wonder I suddenly lost my foothold.'

When she was able to peer into the layers it was made of, she could finally see how right she had been about the chrome-vanadium core. There was even less silver coating than she had first thought! No wonder this thing was such a bust.

'To be honest, I was more interested in the cheese than that piece of broken garbage.' On the other hand, she had to be fair and admit that it had saved her life.

When Ansgar cleared his throat, she turned her attention away from the obliterated tanto. "The guards came back with reinforcements after the water had receded. We found you and the blade about two hundred meters down."

'Didn't you hold onto me? How did I wash up at shore like this?'

'I held on to you until the last wave and let you drift away with it so that no one would suspect any intervention. Most of the water would have disappeared regardless, as it was conjured up by Mana.'

'Wait, it was conjured up, not just manipulated?'

'It was indeed manipulated. But it was brought there, and the same person who brought it there took it away.'

'Why take it away?'

'I cannot say. It is very likely that they tried to leave less of the water to trace their Mana from.'

'Right, their Mana traces. In water, it would simply be washed and mixed, but big chunks of water would still give them a lot of clues as to who did what.'

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Her anger showed on her face as her mind flashed back to all that had happened and the fact that whoever was behind it was still on the loose.

"You must be very upset," Iris commented.

But the lavender-haired noble just realized that she hadn't paid any attention to her two guests in the last minute or two. "Ah, well, it has certainly lost some of its... integrity. If it ever had any."

"It was a divine artifact, how could you not be angry?" Ansgar was a master blacksmith, after all. He could understand the tragedy that had occurred, in addition to her physical well-being being compromised.

"Iris said that before, but I assure you, it is not at all a divine artifact. It is a man-made Mana Sword." She almost rolled her eyes when she said that, but she held herself back like a good noble lady.

A "divine artifact" is an artifact that is mostly created by nature, in other words, by the grace of their goddess, Aurora. For example, a piece of steel from another object, a sword that has already been forged, or an ore from a mine that has been exposed to an enormous amount of Mana by a lucky coincidence.

Eventually, it would turn into half a Mana Stone itself, then barely forged into something that could be held like a weapon. An absolutely pure Mana weapon of any kind - a divine artifact. Of course, a lot of them weren't actually good weapons, but since that's what they mainly used, they didn't use as much silver as people of Celia's world, even though they were aware of its properties.

But that wasn't the point, there was hardly anything more impure than what stingy government agencies like VAULT handed out. It wasn't that they weren't well funded, but not enough for disposable items. And a sword or bow that broke often, even if the quality was decent, definitely qualified as such an item.

There it was. The look of disbelief they would now give her told her that she had correctly understood what the novel had said. When the Crown Prince had gone to Eisenwacht in the latter section of the book, he had asked for a Mana Blade to be made, with a lot of bad instructions on how to do it.

She wouldn't believe the author wrote the book stating they didn't even know how to forge Mana weapons. But she hadn't misunderstood, they literally had no idea.

They had started to figure out how to make something themselves, better than accidentally exposed material turned into weapons, but actual weapons forged to fit the wielder. But this world hadn't had as much trouble with the Visitors as Celia's world had, so they didn't have the urgency to come up with solutions to emergencies they hadn't experienced.

For lack of urgency, they hadn't come to the same conclusions that the government of Celia's world and the scientists under them had. They would need this kind of knowledge sooner or later, and it was better to have it now than never, right?

"Who made it?" When she looked up at him again after being lost in thought, she broke out in a cold sweat, drops forming visibly on her forehead.

His eyes were bright with interest, like a child asking his parents in November what he could expect for Christmas. "I... don't know." She took the easy way out. "I bought it on a stall somewhere a while back."

Immediate disappointment washed over his face, making him sigh and somehow sink into himself a bit. "Oh, of course, you wouldn't just give out information like that. I am very sorry."

"No, that's not it, I just can't recall ever getting the blacksmith's name." Clearing her throat, she scanned the nearly empty basket, looking for something to divert attention. "Besides, I see you collected my bag as well."

Now it was them who seemed a bit nervous. "Yes, we collected that as well. You were still carrying it, but... I don't know if it was presumptuous of me, but could it be that you went to the village without notifying anyone, my lady?"

With a surprised look on her face, Rowena smiled. "How did you know?"

"It wasn't so much knowing... When you said that the young master was also here, I wondered why you came all the way to the village without any guards. I didn't question it right away because my mind was in such disarray, but when we picked you up after that devastating incident, I thought it was better to hide these things."

In fact, Iris hadn't thought of anything like that the night her lady had first approached her. But the moment she mentioned her brother, something clicked in the back of her mind. Her father might not have come because he was busy in the Granbell Mountain Range, even though there were rumors that the war was almost over.

As the Emperor had already planned, news of the victory in the mountain range was withheld until shortly before the official victory banquet would be held in a few weeks. Thus, no one knew that the Grand Duke had spent most of his time back at the capital mansion, dealing only with formalities.

In the end, her brother's presence came as a surprise, but it also raised many questions. The older woman had acted out of commitment; if she had found out that she was wrong, she could have told the truth afterwards.

"You are right. I have only been training for myself these past few years. I don't want them to know either. I wanted to have a sword made for me so that I would have one if I needed it." Rowena sighed a deep, heavy sigh and hung her head, tucking her hair behind her ear as it fell in front of her face. "But this incident has made me realize that I don't even need a sword. I shouldn't even think about fighting."

As the older couple watched her, they felt bitter. They hadn't allowed her to get a sword, of course it was their decision and she could have asked someone else, but it still felt like they had denied her something very important.

When she had first appeared before them, they had seen her as a wilful child with a lot of money - one who could simply walk up to them, lay a bar of gold on their splintered table, and order them to forge a weapon as if she had ordered a new toy. Watching her fight, on the other hand, made Iris realize that she knew what she wanted was no toy at all.

She hadn't just come to them on a whim, either. It clearly didn't look like she had much training, but at the same time, her movements were smooth, if a bit wobbly. She knew what she was doing when she dodged those attacks, as if she had extensive experience, while moving her body like a child walking for the first time.

When she blocked the other blade, she didn't show any fear either. That didn't mean Iris thought the young lady wasn't afraid of her opponent. She could still clearly see that figure standing in front of her, trying to reach a desperate hand out to Iris and Ansgar.

There was that moment of realization that Iris could have sworn she saw, even with Rowena so far away from her, when she thought she was going to give up. Instead, she took her sword and did her best to stay alive.

A will to live that the older woman hadn't felt in many years.

Three days had passed since that moment, more than enough time to think. She had felt terribly sorry for herself lately, that's what she had understood about herself.

She put her hand on her husband's leg and motioned for him to stand up. "There was some rolled up paper with ink on it in the bag, but since it was flooded with water, it seems to have been destroyed. I hope it wasn't too important."

'The blueprints.' Another smile appeared on the noble's lips. "No, I didn't need it anyway. Thank you again. I really appreciate your help."

"We only did what we could," Iris said as they approached the door, "maybe you can make it to the festival at the city's marketplace on Sunday. It's about the first good signs coming from the Granbell Mountain Range, and now it's also about the fact that we survived that terrorist attack."

'So they already decided what the nature of that attack was.' Rowena nodded and helped them find a servant to serve them when Norina approached her from the direction of her bedroom. "If my health permits, I will attend."

It would be the day after tomorrow, so it wasn't her health she was really worried about, but rather the person she was about to meet. The two blacksmiths parted ways with her as they followed a maid down the main staircase while she walked over to the other wing of the chateau.