Chapter 226 – Ice Queen
Chapter 226 – Ice Queen
The couple had a nice and fun, albeit exhausting evening and night alone in their mansion because the wolves were out on a date. The following morning didn’t start quite as lovely, however. Sophia and Ari had caused a bit of a mess in the magic academy the previous day, and neither of them wanted to go there on the following day. Unfortunately, their girls had no intention to let them skip.
“Can’t you use your status as the first princess of this nation to put a gag order on the events from yesterday so that no one’s allowed to talk about it?” While walking towards the academy, Sophia addressed Anna with a request.
“That’s a brilliant idea!” Ari was directly on board with the idea.
“I can not!” The princess raised her voice. “Also, Ari, don’t make me do the reasonable decisions here! I’m not good at that. I need you to do that for me!”
“Tsk!” The blonde had hoped for a different answer.
“I am reasonable!” The jaguar only got more unreasonable. “You know how much I hate attention!”
“That’s not being reasonable. That’s being selfish!”
“That’s the same in this case!”
“It is not!” Anna didn’t share her opinion. “Sophia!”
“Yes?”
“Stop corrupting Ari!”
“I didn’t do anything!” She didn’t like this accusation. “Ari’s the one who flooded the training grounds! I even warned her to be cautious and not to use too much magic at once.”
“Do you really think that I would believe you of all people having told someone to hold back?” The princess only stared at her.
“It’s true!” Sophia got louder.
“S-She’s right…” The jaguar sheepishly admitted to it. “She really warned me to be careful… I got too excited and accidentally messed up, though…”
“Seriously?!” The princess faced her.
“Y-Yes…” Her cheeks turned red.
“Uhh…” Anna paused for a moment. “M-My point of you corrupting her still stands, though, Sophia! Ari never would’ve agreed with me using my position to issue a gag order! The same goes for skipping the academy or going wild with magic! In the first place, she usually drags me to school when I feel like skipping!”
“I regret nothing!” Sophia only smiled at her. “Current Ari’s amazing, after all!”
“That’s true!” The princess agreed without thinking.
“Then stop complaining to me!”
“I’m sorry!”
“Good.”
“T-Thank you, h-happy to hear that…” It wasn’t entirely clear whom the jaguar thanked here. Still, her intense blush was probably caused by Anna admitting that she’s great and not the other tiger defending her.
“We’re definitely going to make them kiss soon.” Sophia leaned over to Maya while whispering those words.
“Yep.”
Once that topic was taken care of, not that the girls had come to any conclusion whatsoever, the four continued to walk to the academy together and arrived there before long.
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Thankfully, because the entire day was scheduled to be magic lessons, the group could head right to the training fields without having to go inside the academy and running into even more students than necessary. Unfortunately, many of their classmates were there already, and all eyes fell on the group once the four arrived there.
“…” Ari didn’t say a word or was able to look at anyone and simply hid behind her princess to stay out of their line of sight.
“Hehe.” Anna seemed to enjoy how the jaguar was tightly clinging to her back.
“…” Sophia, too, wasn’t sure what to say.
“Alright, everyone, gather in front of me!” Luckily, just at the right moment, Eluna had arrived and ordered the class to come near her.
“Safe…” The blonde tiger let out a relieved sigh.
“Sophia, come and join me here!” Unfortunately, the horse lady had other plans.
“Not safe.” Maya failed to suppress the smirk that had formed on her face.
“…” The blonde didn’t like this development. “I thought you don’t need me for this…?”
“I did say that, yes, but please do me a favor and come anyways.”
“I can hardly say no to that, can I?”
“Thank you.”
“Wow, she’s even unfazed by being addressed by a famous magic teacher…”
“Not only that, the great Eluna is treating her with so much respect!”
“As expected of the ice-queen!” Some of their classmates got lively after their interaction.
“…” Though she was facepalming, Sophia then went over to Eluna in front of the class.
“You? An ice-queen?” With a perplexed expression, Eluna leaned over to the tiger once she had arrived and whispered those words. “How?”
“Don’t ask me… I was asleep when I earned that title.”
“Ah, that sounds more like the girl I got to know. You really have a talent for misunderstandings.”
“Second to none, yes.” Sophia gave her a slight nod.
“Anyway, good job on reconstructing the training fields.”
“Thanks…” The blonde’s expression was a little complicated. “There’s no flood damage that a little earth magic can’t fix.”
“Little flood… That was half a tsunami you created yesterday…”
“That was Ari, okay? I was just teaching her!”
“The princess’ jaguar did that?” As Eluna was at the royal castle quite often in the past, it wasn’t overly surprising that she knew Ari.
“Yeah. I was teaching her chantless water-based magic, and she got a little over-motivated.
“Wait, she can use chantless magic?” Eluna suddenly closed her eyes and seemed to be concentrating on something. “Wow, I don’t remember her having that much power. I guess she would be able with that much.”
“Yep.” Sophia didn’t feel like addressing any of her questions or concerns. For various reasons.
“Interesting.” She paused for a moment. “Maybe I should call her over, too? I was convinced you were the one who made the tsunami, after all.”
“Please don’t.” The tiger stopped her. “Ari isn’t a fan of attention, and after yesterday, she really got enough of that for a while.” As the jaguar was her friend and she liked her a lot, Sophia didn’t want her to unnecessarily suffer even more.
“Fair enough.” Eluna accepted that reasoning. “Well, I know that you’re ridiculous enough for all of us together, so that should be enough, anyway.”
“Ahaha…” The blonde scratched her cheek. “By the way, what’s the plan? Again, from what I heard, I thought I could relax and sit back with all the teaching?”
“Well, yeah… but after the two of you flooded the place, all the students of the class keep approaching me to showcase some ridiculous over-the-top chantless magic. Something like that is completely unknown to basically everyone, after all. Even I only had little success with it. Being ridiculous and or over the top is your field of expertise, don’t you agree?”
“I do agree, yes…” There was no way she could deny it. “I can’t say I feel overly motivated about it, though. Maya can be quite over the top, too, you know?”
“Hey!” The cat-girl, quite the distance away from them, got loud. “Leave me out of this!”
“How…?” Eluna tilted her head. “How did she hear us? She’s rather far away, and we’re whispering…”
“Her ears are something else…” Sophia let out a small sigh. “I got in a lot of trouble already because I thought she couldn’t hear me…”
“Poor you.”
“Absolutely…”
“Well, whatever,” In reality, Eluna had little sympathy for her. “What’s in your repertoire that’s nice and flashy?”
“Uhh…” As that was the blonde’s repertoire, she looked a little troubled. “You have to be a bit more precise there.”
“You really are just a walking catastrophe, aren’t you?”
“It’s not the first time I heard that, yes.”
“Let’s see… Flashy but not too dangerous?”
“Define too dangerous?” It still didn’t help the tiger overly much.
“Wow…” Eluna facepalmed and paused for a moment.
“What?” Sophia tilted her head. “My magic ranges from blowing your hair dry after a bath all the way up to destroying a continent. How am I supposed to know where you draw the line?”
“You really are… Wait, what was that last thing you said!?”
“Hmm…? Did I say something?” She decided to feign ignorance.
“Yeah, I probably just misheard, anyway.” Eluna thought that this approach would be for the better. “I’m sure you have any flashy magic that doesn’t do any actual damage to anything, right?”
“Damage at all, or damage that can’t be fixed?”
“You’re pushing it a bit, idiot.”
“Well, I just really don’t want to do it. Everyone warned me about going easy on breaking the common sense of the students here…”
“It’s a little late for that, girly.”
“Haa…” Letting out a small sigh, Sophia eventually gave up. “Fine… Do you mind if I lean a little into my new and completely not unfounded image of an ice queen? Just a bit more literally speaking.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just wait and watch~.”
Afterward, the tiger decided to do a little show to get over with it. Closing her eyes and concentrating on her task for a bit, the blonde eventually turned the training fields into a winter wonderland. She created a few walls of ice around the place and even used some shavings of those combined with wind magic to make it look like it was snowing.
She held word to Eluna and caused no actual damage. Damage to the environment, that is. Looking at the expression everyone had, Sophia had caused some mental damage because, as usual, she had overdone it a bit. Once the show was over, the blonde let everything disappear again and copied what Ari was doing earlier. She walked over to her cat-girl and hid behind her for the rest of the day.