GI Chapter 23: Rewards

Lisa keenly listened to Jean, Mona, and Orion’s explanation as she gracefully added tea ingredients to her Special Heating Cauldron. The gadget was meticulously crafted by the alchemy workshops under Lisa’s command over a span of two weeks. No one understood, not even the alchemists who created the item, the purpose of a tool to brew tea with two pulls of levers. No one but Lisa and her alone. The languid witch strived for efficiency above all.

As Diluc would put it, Lisa alone was thousands of times more efficient than the rest of the Knights of Favonius combined. Diluc, of course, didn’t lump Jean and Kaeya into the mix of disappointments called knights.

Lisa graciously served the tea to everyone in the room. She leaned against the wooden railing in front of the bookshelf and sighed lightly. “Make do with just tea this time as Noelle isn’t here. You’re missing out on something amazing, I tell you. Her lighter-than-air pancakes are nearly at the top of Mond’s greatest dishes list.”

The maid knight of the Knights of Favonius was greatly missed in her absence. She was really adored by everyone in the Knights’ order.

“Noelle is helping out the people of Springvale at the moment,” Orion answered as he lightly sipped on the piping hot tea. A moment of sweet serenity and fulfillment, accompanied with a sense of refreshing calmness, followed. The tea formulated a portrayal of the forest and the bird’s call in his mind. “You gotta include this in that list of yours.”

“True,” Mona readily agreed with his idea, greatly enjoying the liquid delicacy. “It’s amazing.”

“My, I don’t want travelers knocking at my door for tea.” Lisa brushed off the praises with an elegant laugh. The crimson hearts left no doubt regarding her cheerful mood brought out with their praiseful comments. “Jean, after hearing everything about these enigmatic shards, I have come to a conclusion: we have to destroy them.”

“Nay, Lisa!” Fischl intervened as she put down the cup and swiftly rose from her seat. “Those unholy hexes of demonic frost stormed my subjects’ hearts and inflicted nefarious nightmares upon them.”

“Mein Fräulein speaks correctly. How do we get rid of them if we can’t touch them?”

“I certainly don’t think that’s the case,” Lisa said. “Fischl, have you tried touching it?” Her puzzling question was accompanied by a sip of tea. “With your own hands.”

Fischl shook her head. “Katheryne deterred mine eagerness to bring demise to the wretched curses plaguing my faithful subjects.”

“Mein Fräulein was alone during the investigation,” Oz explained simultaneously. “So we refrained from taking any unnecessary risks.”

Lisa wasn’t used to this language of Fischl, but the young archer maintained this exterior in front of others. “Truthfully speaking, you don’t have to touch the meteorites to get rid of them. Jean, how many ways are there to break a stone without touching it with your hands?”

Jean frowned, eyes lost in deep thoughts. “A simple sword strike. Throwing them in the air with wind and letting gravity shatter them. Drop another stone on it… I can think of a few more ways.”

“There you have it,” Lisa stated in a matter-of-fact voice. “Simple and efficient way to solve this problem. I believe our young hero might have his own way to deal with this. Isn’t that right, Orion?”

Every gaze in the room fell on Orion, who was happily enjoying the tea. Even Makoto looked up with a usually sharp look and mewled, ostensibly with an inquiring note, if cats could even make those notes that is.

“Let a man enjoy his tea,” Orion said with a bleak sigh. “I’m not presumptuous enough to make that type of decision without seeing the meteorites in question.”

He could, in theory, erase anything in existence with the devour spell of his Void Root. Ursa’s thickheaded scales melted under that spell. A meteorite won’t be much of a problem.

Mona immediately sensed his lie, but didn’t call it out, in the midst of others’ presence. It might be related to some secret he brought from another world, she thought, unknowingly growing more considerate of him subconsciously.

Jean took a sigh of relief before giving Lisa a look of gratitude. Lisa’s presence always put her at ease whenever she was down.

‘Lisa is truly a lifesaver.’

Lisa accepted Jean’s gesture of gratitude with a charming grin of her own and passed the book she had in her hand, the one she had been holding onto since the moment the party became acquainted with her. “The final edition of the book you wanted. Heart of Clear Spring.”

After a moment of brief, very brief, confusion, Jean loudly gasped with a flushed face. The maiden-like expression blooming on her dignified, mostly stoic face, caught everyone off guard. The Acting Grandmaster illuminated the room with her purity and innocence.

The crimson hearts made another appearance in Orion’s sight, this time around Jean, as she stood there, flustered. It wasn’t his fault that the two women before him were such extraordinary beauties. Mona was also attractive with a gorgeous figure. More than Mona’s figure, however, he liked being around her. No moment was dull with her around as she always found strange ways to put a smile on his face. That made her an ideal partner as well.

Despite his obvious interest, though, the hearts had yet to revolve around Mona.

The matters of the heart were beyond his understanding, after all.

‘So much for having a heart talent.’

Orion didn’t even consider Fischl as a prospective love interest. Her quirky, chuunibyou antics reminded him too much of Lydia. So much so that he automatically, nigh subconsciously, took her for a cute, troubling sister he never had.

“If I’m the Witch of Purple Rose then Jean should be Knight of White Roses,” Lisa proclaimed. “Bards are phony if they do not sing the stories of her beauty.”

Orion recalled one bard. The scammer, alcoholic trap bastard known by Teyvat as Lord Barbatos.