Strongest Noble's Daughter Uses Water Magic

All Together At Last

With the Flower Field Incident behind us, I led Flora to the commoner's dorm. As one would expect, due to her... 'release' earlier, the stench lingered on my uniform, and goodness knows how long I had to wash them and myself to get the smell off... Not even the flower water was helping much with the smell at all.

After taking a long detour deprived of any human being, the two of us finally made it to the dorm, where I had Mindy gather everyone, including the human nobles who had arrived some time ago.

"Thank you all for taking time out of your training to gather for a brief moment," I began. "For those of you who do not know, allow me to introduce to you our last classmate, she who had practically been in hiding since school began, due to a reason that may be obvious to some of you. Her name is Flora. She's also a bit on the shy side, so please do be nice to her. Are there any questions at all?"

"Yeah, uh... I have one," Leroy spoke as he raised his hand, his other hand pinching his nose.

He was not the only one doing that last one, for everyone kept their distance away from me and Flora, covering their nose and/or mouths.

"I'm pretty sure I know what you want to ask, but by all means, what is it, Leroy?" I asked.

"Yeah. Why the hell do you smell like you took a swim in pig's s**t?"

A shiver ran down my spine at the questionable comparison. "While I will not question that comparison of yours, there is an excellent explanation for that, in which I very much so prefer not to go into. But I do appreciate it if you do not be blunt about it in our newcomer's presence."

"And give us one good reason why!" Ethan exclaimed. "You reek! What happened after yesterday?!"

Practically all of us were looking at him with pale faces at the question, while Flora had a blush on her face. Before she could do the thing I fear she would do, the crossbreeds all took action in my steed.

"S-So! Your name is Flora? Nice to meet you! My name is Taurus, and I'm a bull crossbreed!" Taurus greeted.

"My name is Bruce. Hi there," Bruce followed.

"I'm Philia, and this is Sheera," Philia greeted for herself and the shrew crossbreed, the latter who was eating some fruits.

"Want some fruits? They're nice and fresh," Sheera offered.

The blush on Flora's face slowly faded away, as she looked up at her peers with an unsure expression. Eventually, the skunk crossbreed accepted the peace offering and did her own greeting. "It's nice to meet everyone."

Everyone else was purely confused with the interaction between them, not that I blame them. I would've too, if I were in their shoes. I approached the group to explain, when halfway there, they caught a whiff of the odor I was emitting, and turned to me with their hands covering their nose. "Flora is a skunk crossbreed, who finds the odor she releases to be more of compliments rather than insults and is easily embarrassed about it in a happy way," I informed them.

"T-Then... By any chance, the reason why you stink..." Azalea trailed off.

"I spooked her, which made her accidentally release some out at me, and then I told her off about it without knowing of the consequences in doing so. It would've been really nice to know about that before I had gone to meet her. At least then, I would've known what to not say or do when I meet her." As I said all that, I was especially glancing at Dora, who diverted her eyes away from mine, knowing full well I was indirectly speaking to her.

"W-Well... In any case, on the bright side, now we officially have every one of our classmates here," she said, changing the subject. "Now we can really help each other out in full preparation for the mock exam."

"That's true," Hailey agreed, as did everyone else.

"Wouldn't exactly say 'all of us' though..." Dylan said.

"Don't worry; I will take a thorough bath," I assured.

"Shall I assist you?" Mindy asked.

On one hand, I wanted her to remain with everyone else, to help them train and learn things I much wanted them to learn, based on what we spoke about last night. On the other, I had this feeling that she much rather want to hang around me than help them. Selfish as her request may be, I was not one to turn away from her, especially not when she rarely gets this selfish. Besides, I will need a thorough bath, and though I was good with showers, baths are a completely different story, for obvious reasons.

"I would like that," I told her, causing my harpy friend to flap her ears in silent joy. 

"Wait, where are you going to bathe?" Austin asked. "We don't have anything that really screams 'bathroom' around here."

"Even if we do, I'm not sure if you can wash off that odor well enough..." Shaun said.

"Don't ever ask a lady for her secrets," I simply said. "In any case, while we're gone... Dora, think you can continue supervising everyone? Flora can help you out, too. You two are the only ones without a training schedule, since we don't know what your magics or specialties are."

"I understand," Dora accepted. 

"Oh, and after I come back, Dora... I would love it if you can help me with something later. Does that sound good to you?"

The librarian noble student shuddered at my question, before shakily nodding to my request. "I-I think I can do that..." she said ever so softly.

"Great! Now then, Mindy. I believe that bath is calling for us. Time to take flight."

The harpy nodded to my demand and took me to the air. Our destination? Nowhere else but home.

******

Once we arrived at our humble abode, Mindy and I rushed to the bathroom and got to bathing. Well, I was bathing, while Mindy was helping me get clean. Well... More that she was distracting me as I bathe, so that I don't get any panic attack while cleaning myself.

"So, how is everyone during training?" I asked, wanting to start up a conversation to help distract myself even more. 

"They've all been doing well, as far as I can see," she answered. "It's still the beginning, though, so it's too early to say completely."

"Have there been any problem between them? Any at all?"

"Hmm... Not from what I had seen. I'm not sure about Dora's end, but it doesn't look like there's any problem between any one."

"Sure sounds like good news to me," I sighed in relief. "But, as you said, this is only the beginning. Anything can happen from here on out. Especially when under normal circumstances, nothing good ever comes between them. Although, yesterday, things seem to be going fine."

"True as it may be, it is only because I was around, milady."

Mindy's response got me somewhat worried. "What do you mean?"

"You see, Lady Levi, for the crossbreeds, it would seem Taurus is the leader of three of the four- well, five now. I managed to keep him under control, somewhat, by reminding him of the difference between us in terms of strength, be it in close combat or in magic, but now that I am absent, I fear of what will happen then. Not only that, but no one knows the true purpose of the training you had set up for them, especially the crossbreeds. You have so many ideas that had not been thought of before, I fear they may not see much use in the training unless if it is explained well. I would try to do that for you, but if I do, I doubt they will have much growing respect for you as I do. You were the one who came up with their training and the purpose behind them, after all. It is only right that the person behind the arrangements were to explain the task at hand."

"And the nobles?"

"To them, I am still a monster, one that may attack- worse, kill- if they make any wrong move. They stayed under control so far, but I fear of what will happen later... Neither of us are with them now. I only worry of what will happen from this point forward."

A smile formed on my face when I listen to Mindy's worries. She had made plenty of good points, but thanks to knowledge from my previous life, I knew exactly how to handle difficult people. So to say, it was no different from having to deal with difficult or heavily drunk customers, or having to entertain young customers in some way.

"Everything will be fine, Mindy," I assured. "If anything does happen, we'll stop it one way or another. Besides, if they did have a problem with each other in any way, I'm pretty sure they would never have agreed to join the training group in the first place, wouldn't you say? Surely, they would've already known about you being a 'monster', and that there were crossbreeds and human nobles joining. If they did have a problem, they would never have agreed to coming along, or even bother coming to the dorm."

Mindy thought about it in silence for a few moments. "... I guess that's true."

"You see? Now then, after a nice bath, I should probably buy some ingredients for lunch. They do say the way to a man's heart- or anyone's heart in this case- is through their stomach."

I could've sworn I heard a light gulp from Mindy's throat at the mention of lunch. "M-Maybe some pizza would fill them up," she suggested.

I held back a giggle, knowing that it was more that she was craving for pizza, as she had been, ever since I introduced her to pizza toast all those years ago.

"Sounds great. Let's finish this bath and buy some ingredients. The sooner the better."

"Right!"