Editing Saijaku Muhai no Bahamut:Volume 9 Episode 5 (section)

===Part 1===

「Fua, aa……」

The Academy in Cross Field.

Lux was making a big yawn at a corner of that wide ground.

The time he woke up today was at five a.m., an hour earlier than usual.

At his hands were a long bamboo broom and several large buckets that got several sheets of dust clothes hanging on them.

His outfit wasn’t his usual uniform, but a work clothes with burnt brown color.

The weather was clear, but perhaps because the autumn was almost over, the air felt chilly on the skin.

Lux’s body shivered slightly from the blowing wind and then he lightly stretched his body.

「……Oops. I mustn’t be half asleep, let’s work properly.」

He lightly slapped his cheeks with his hands and put spirit into himself to make himself awake.

He was at a facility with round shape like an annual tree ring, where each circle was gradually getting higher the nearer they were to the outside.

Lux was standing on the empty audience stand of the practice ground.

The cleaning of Drag-Ride’s practice ground was one of the large-scale requests that the Academy sometime made to him.

Because this facility possessed spaciousness in the top category even inside the whole Academy’s ground, it took time and effort to clean it.

Of course it was impossible to do it alone, so the area he was cleaning in the end was only a part of it, but Lux gave it his all by his own initiative and woke up early and did the chore diligently.

The basic of this job was to sweep and clean using bamboo broom, and lightly wiped the part that was especially dirty with damp cloth.

He would use soap at persistent dirty spot, but this time there wasn’t so many spots like that.

Lux was really focused since he started working and performed the work, then──,

「……Eh?」

How much time had passed?

Lux finally noticed that when he finished cleaning about half of the area that was assigned to him.

At the center of the practice ground, on the ground that was surrounded by circular wall, a girl wearing pilot suit was standing.

「……Celis-senpai? This early in the morning.」

Lux muttered that, at the same time his eyes were stolen by the movement of the girl that was visible from the audience stand.

She had her rapier shaped Sword Device unsheathed, and she kicked on the ground almost at the same time.

She leaped through a distance of more than ten meter in one breath, at the same time she released several sharp thrusts forward.

Following that, she gathered light particles in high speed after drawing her sword and summoned──the form of Drag-Ride.

She instantly equipped a golden armor and unleashed an attack with her special armament, a huge lance, completing the sequence of forms.

From drawing out her sword until equipping Drag-Ride──while even attacking during that time, all of those actions were done quickly in three seconds, which caused a sudden gust to whirl at the surrounding.

「As expected, she is amazing……」

Even from the view point of Lux who possessed expert skill as Drag-Knight, the skillfulness of her technique caused him to unconsciously watch in fascination.

It was a feat that was only allowed for her who had polished her training of martial art and sword art until the extreme, making her able to perform several thousands of forms.

Celistia Ralgris.

She was the eldest daughter of a great feudal lord of the new kingdom──the Ralgris house, and the girl who served as the captain of the raid squad Syvalles.

Even more than her famed strength as the Academy’s strongest, her dignity and beauty that were armed with her grace and strictness would attract anyone toward her.

Furthermore the personality that was brought about from the self-confidence and focus she was clad with──her characteristic aloof aura gave her a worthy charisma for a member of the four great nobles.

「She is practicing Drag-Ride again from this early morning……」

Even though it still hadn’t been that long since the campus festival and the deadly battle against the Sacred Eclipse, the strictness and the time spent for her training were increasing further.

Celis was able to do that exactly because she possessed stamina that would make male military officer to lose face and a powerful will.

(I need to be careful not to become nuisance for Celis-senpai……)

Lux cleaned up the place as quietly as possible while staring at her practice with a side glance.

She practiced skating midair and basic movements before moving to practice swinging with her weapon.

And then, she coordinated action from activating Divine Raiment until various kind of movements in a coordinated movements that linked from one motion to the next motion, displaying a complicated tactics.

After that thirty more minutes passed. It appeared that she was concentrating on her training very much, she didn’t notice Lux’s existence until the very end and finished up her training.

Celis stopped moving to rest her body and dispelled her armor.

She sent a brief glance at the surrounding ring before she started walking toward the waiting room’s direction.

「Aa……」

Lux’s chore also coincidentally finished at that time, so he thought to at least greeted her, but she had left ahead of him.

He chased her back figure in hurry and saw her entering the waiting room that was a bit of distance away from the practice ground.

「──Wait, this is bad!!?」

Lux stopped his legs in front of the door and let out a sigh of relief.

He had already blundered several times in this Academy. There was no way he could do anymore act like peeping again.

He should wait until Celis finished changing and got out, or perhaps he should knock the door and called out.

Lux thought that and he leaned back on a tree nearby the shed, it was then──,

–

「Haa……. Unfortunately, it was a failure again this time.」

[[File:SaijakuBahamut v9 05.jpg|thumb|right]]

「──Eh?」

Celis’s voice that suddenly came from the other side of the waiting room’s wall caused Lux to tilt his head.

「……Yes, that’s right. I was asked by two of my juniors from the second year for a coaching. I was cheerful from being relied on after so long, so the day before yesterday, I asked them to accompany me in my morning training but──」

It was indeed Celis’s talking voice.

The people who were training at early morning was mostly limited to only Syvalles’s members if he remembered right, but today he didn’t saw 『anyone else』 other than Celis.

(Just who is she talking with──?)

It was when Lux felt dubious like that,

「──But, the two ran away in the middle. It’s strange, I had already relatively lightened the practice content though. Perhaps it is just as I expected, I am really hated……it’s depressing.」

「Er, Celis-senpai……?」

「-……!?」

When Lux called out from the window of the waiting room, *bam* a sound came from inside and Celis quickly got out from the waiting room.

She had changed completely from her pilot suit into her uniform, so there was no problem, but shock was carved on her face.

「Lu, Lux-!? Why are you here!?」

Celis’s cheeks reddened while looking unusually flustered.

When Lux quickly looked around at the surrounding, he saw a small bird that was on the window flew away.

「Aah, please wait! I still haven’t finished──」

「…….Wait, was senpai talking with that bird just now!?」

As expected, there was no one except Celis inside the waiting room it seemed.

Different from herself in the past, it seemed she had resolved herself to speak more frankly about her worry to the people around her, but was she now back to taking her problem upon herself alone?

Lux retorted at this unexpected side from this girl who was normally dignified, in respond,

「Yo, you are wrong. Just now it was……, a, a doll. I was only talking to a doll that was decorating the room. It wasn’t like I was unable to speak frankly about my worry to anyone and immersed myself in self-hatred, I didn’t do such thing by any means so──」

「No, there is almost no difference whether it’s a doll or a little bird though!? In a sense that feels excessively lonely you know!?」

It felt like her trying to lie was making it even more awful instead.

「……I, it doesn’t matter so please just treat it like you haven’t seen anything! Prying further is not permitted!」

The yell from the red faced Celis made Lux nodded.

After they took deep breath until both of them calmed down, Lux explained why he was here.

When he was cleaning up the practice ground, he happened to see Celis and chased after her to give his greeting. After he told her that, Celis showed a complicated looking smile.

「Is that so. I too am still immature, to be unable to detect your presence from the audience stand like that.」

She muttered that sounding slightly self-torturing.

Regarding that, it was also slightly unexpected for Lux.

Even if she was relaxing her attention because she was inside the safe Academy’s ground, but for someone at Celis’s level, she should have noticed Lux’s presence.

「Could it be──, Celis-senpai has something weighing your mind?」

「…………」

*Twitch*, Celis was shaken greatly hearing Lux’s question.

「I, it’s not something really──. No, I should talk about this to Lux. Before this, I caused trouble for you because I stayed quiet. And, I also trust you.」

Celis said such thing with her cheeks faintly blushing.

The memory of the punishment game that was carried out after the campus festival the other day.

The sensation of that passionate kiss was resurrected, causing Lux’s body to ache heatedly.

「E, err──, yes!」

Lux himself also found it hard to look properly at Celis’s face from the embarrassment.

After Lux raised his voice to divert his mind from such hard pounding of his heart, Celis slowly began to talk.

「That’s, I have the feeling as though my juniors are avoiding me. Even though I felt that I had become able to be more frank than before with everyone around me after much trouble, and yet now I wonder if it is no good as expected……?」

Celis hung her head down with a vaguely heavy dark aura enveloping her.

(Aa……, so it’s the usual thing.)

Lux saw that and smiled wryly.

As the result of Celis’s seriousness and strong sense of responsibility getting mixed with her slightly clumsy side, sometimes she would be dejected like this.

「Even though some juniors who I wasn’t really acquainted with unusually relied on me, I was unable to coach them properly. I wonder if there is anything inadequate within me? I don’t understand. It’s sad. Now I ended up training by myself again……. It’s lonely……ah, i, it’s not like I’m feeling lonely or anything you know!? I am the captain of Syvalles after all, I’m completely all right.」

「No, senpai doesn’t need to hide it anymore! It’s making me unable to stay here further hearing that! More importantly──the reason why those junior girls stopped training together with Celis-senpai……what could it be?」

Those girls came by their own initiative to volunteer receiving training from Celis, so it was a bit strange that they would immediately stopped by themselves like that.

Surely Celis was worrying because she was unable to understand the reason, but──.

「Perhaps that was because, the training menu was harsh. I think that’s all there is to it.」

Lux suddenly interrupted like that with a conviction from his instinct.

He had also thought this when they were training together at the summer training camp but, even the members of Syvalles threw in the towel from Celis’s training amount. Based on that, there was no way that the average students could keep up with Celis.

Surely the junior girls understood that and backed out of the training.

Lux was quiet confident of that conjecture inside his mind, but,

「Tha, that shouldn’t be true! I too was considerate at those girls who were accompanying my training for the first time, so I halved the training amount.」

「Eeerrr……」

Lux made a complicated expression in respond to Celis’s yell and he was at loss of how to respond.

Most likely, those juniors were unable to endure even after that.

The stamina of Celis who had imposed to herself training that could even be called as severe since her childhood was far surpassing the stamina of the average people.

「As I thought, I believe there was a problem in how I act and behave. I wonder why my personality became like this. Haa……」

Seeing Celis getting dejected again, Lux thought.

With how Celis herself was losing confidence, it felt like the effect would be minor even if he persuaded her.

If Lux’s conjecture was correct, those junior girls didn’t hate Celis, it was only that the training was too harsh──.

「I guess. Then, how about if we do this?」

There Lux proposed a certain suggestion.

「I will accompany Celis-senpai doing your training menu for a while. If there is something that I noticed, I’ll speak out my opinion. By doing that, won’t Celis-senpai yourself notice just what did you do wrong this time?」

In other words, Lux would act the role of training partner for 『Celis’s junior coaching』.

By using that as reference, he would make Celis herself to judge the reason of why she was avoided by her juniors.

Celis was listening to that in a daze for a while, but before long her eyes shined fiercely and she took Lux’s hand.

「That’s an excellent plan! It will be a really excellent chance in order for me to learn where I’m inadequate at.」

Lux responded with a smile, but actually there was drawback to this suggestion.

(In the first place, there should be no way Celis-senpai has made any strange error……)

The problem was how Celis herself couldn’t notice how the excessiveness of the training was exactly the problem.

Even if Lux pointed it out, she wouldn’t be able to comprehend it fully, so it would be better if he conveyed it to her by making her feeling it for real throughout the process.

From his experience of training together normally with her, there was no problem with Celis’s guidance and attitude, there was no way she was behaving in a way that would make her got hated.

If Lux who possessed stamina could keep up with Celis’s training until the end, he would be able to proof that.

「Then, can I please ask you of this right away starting from tomorrow for several days period?」

「Yes. It will be fine if trim on my time doing chores for a bit.」

Lux answered right away. Celis showed a relieved sigh with a smile hearing that.

「I understand. But, Lux is a boy, so you will be fine if your training amount is the same like mine right?」

「Euh……!?」

The moment she said that, a strange voice slipped out from Lux’s throat.

Celis’s stamina wasn’t ordinary, so if Lux attempted to perform the same training menu like her, he would get crushed.

「As expected, a boy with stamina is heartening. That’s right, this is a good chance so I will increase the training a bit more than usual to match Lux──」

「The usual is all right-! Thi, this time it’s for the sake of confirming Celis-senpai’s method in the end, that is my objective──!」

Lux said in panic. Celis pondered for a bit and,

「You’re……right. I almost lost sight of our original purpose. The priority is to search the cause why those girls are avoiding me. Training with Lux──I’m looking forward to it.」

「Ah, yes……」

Lux was feeling relieved while promising to hear more about the menu later, then she parted from Celis for the moment.

「It’s fine with this, right……?」

He would convey to Celis who was feeling down in her heart, that there was no problem with her personality and attitude that would make her got avoided, and made her to recover her self-confidence.

In order to do that, Lux made that suggestion, but he wondered, would he too ended up like those aforementioned juniors and became unable to keep up with Celis?

However, in front of Celis who was looking so delighted like that, he couldn’t withdraw his words.

「Just in case, I should think up a countermeasure……」

For caution’s sake, after that he managed the requests in general from the headmaster, dorm mother, and the students for a while, then he headed to where his classmate Tillfur was at.

He asked her to cancel or postpone as much as possible the most recent requests that felt like it would take a bit more effort.

「What’s left, is only to do it……huh.」

Lux took a deep breath and resolved himself.

「Well, I’ll manage somehow, right……?」

Or rather, he prayed that he would really be able to manage somehow.

Lux talked to himself with that tone that was filled with wishful thinking.

–