Primary Duty

'It's morning.'

Allen woke up to the distinctive scent of an old wooden building, one that reminded him of libraries and museums. He had yet to get used to this smell.

No light shone through the slats of the wooden window in the small room. It was November, which meant the sun had not yet risen.

Nevertheless, it was time to get out of bed. Allen checked his grimoire to confirm that his MP was full again, then proceeded to spend it all training as usual.

Right now, Allen was in his private quarters. To his surprise, he had been assigned his own bedroom. At least, that was the nicer way of putting it—in reality it was little more than a storage room in the attic of the mansion. It was only about four-and-a-half square meters, or fifty square feet, and it had a rather low ceiling. There was unused furniture and dinnerware stored there, so Allen could technically only use two-thirds of the room's space. It was therefore too cramped for a real bed, so Allen slept on a mattress on the floor.

The only reason Allen had received this room in the first place was because all of the other male servants' quarters were fully occupied. Those were all four-person rooms, so Allen was actually quite happy about his arrangement. Having his own private space made things much more convenient for him, especially for when he wanted to test his skills or even call out smaller Summons.

'It's still double the size of a booth in an internet café. It's more than enough.'

Back in his days of being a hardcore gamer, he had gamed in internet cafés, so he knew how tiring it was to spend the night in a cubicle too cramped to stretch out his legs. With that perspective in mind, he did not have a single complaint about his current accommodations.

Allen then changed into his work clothes. The threadbare hemp outfit he had once worn as a serf had been replaced by a mostly black, well-tailored suit. He had been instructed not to get it dirty as it was his servant's uniform.

Even the casual wear that he had been sleeping in before was of a much higher quality than what he had worn mere weeks ago. After getting dressed, he descended to the servants' dining hall on the first floor.

There were already about ten people in the servants' dining hall. Allen had just picked up a wooden tray when Rickel, who happened to be nearby, greeted him with a "Hey there, morning," and invited him to sit together.

Allen responded to the greeting and grabbed the seat across from him. Rickel was a rather caring person and asked Allen questions like "How are things?" and "Do you have any questions?" every day.

"How's Lady Cecil treating you?" Rickel asked this morning, looking somewhat concerned.

It was almost unheard of for a manservant to be appointed personal attendant to a member of the lord's family immediately upon entering service.

Normally, a man- or maidservant would do all the miscellaneous tasks assigned to them and, if they did a good job, might eventually catch a family member's eye. That member would then reach out and appoint them as a personal attendant. Rickel himself was serving as the head of the other manservants because his service had not been evaluated highly enough to become a personal servant.

The two struck up a lively conversation over their breakfast of soup filled with vegetables and a pitiful amount of meat. Honestly, Allen had more meat in his diet when he was living in Krena Village, especially this year and last year.

"Oh right, yesterday..."

Allen shared how he had seen a ship flying in the sky while he was out buying a popo for Cecil the day before.

"Ahh, was that your first time seeing a magic ship, then?"

"They're called magic ships?"

Magic ships were vessels built from magic tools. They made round trips between Granvelle City and the kingdom's capital three times each month. A one-way journey cost one gold, which was not extremely prohibitive, so Rickel suggested that Allen save up for a ride one day.

'Speaking of magic tools, there are many in use in this mansion.' There was a large grandfather clock on the first floor, as well as multiple sources of illumination scattered throughout the premises. Allen had heard from Pelomas long before that these were all powered with magic stones.

It looked like Rickel still had a lot more to share, but it was almost time for the lord's family to wake up. So Allen bid him farewell and headed to Cecil's room together with several maidservants.

As the maidservants helped Cecil get changed, Allen was made to wait outside. Her room was on the third floor, directly beneath Allen's. Once she was dressed, his duties mostly consisted of keeping her bedroom clean and tidy and putting away her pajamas. In other words, it was all odd jobs.

Sebas had assigned Allen two primary duties: to attend to Cecil's needs and to serve meals. The latter was a responsibility reserved only for those with exceptional looks. Rickel had never once been called upon for the role for that reason. Allen, however, had inherited quite a lot of his mother's good looks, although he was not very aware of it. What's more, his black hair and eyes were especially eye-catching, given their rarity in this world. These factors together led to his immediate selection for meal service duties.

Now Allen was regularly serving the Baron's family's meals as a training experience. His primary duty was, at the end of the day, attending to Cecil.

However, there were large blocks of time each day where she would be preoccupied with her lessons and tutors and thus would not call for him. All in all, Allen did not have very much to do.

He now understood how Rickel developed his penchant for slacking off.

Although the mansion was quite spacious, there were roughly thirty servants on staff—there were bound to be idle moments. Some people, such as the butler, had an inordinately large number of duties, but generally speaking, there was a lot of downtime.

During the evenings, the Baron's family ate together in the dining hall on the second floor. Dinner was always a time-consuming affair, as it was served in courses, one dish at a time. However, it was not overly hectic for Allen, as other staff members brought the dishes up to just outside the hall, where Allen worked together with two other servers.

"You seem to have gotten rather used to your duties, have you not?" Baroness Granvelle asked Allen.

Back when Allen had been Yamada Kenichi, he had been a corporate worker for over a decade and, as such, had no experience in waiting or food service jobs.

However, the media that he had consumed—including manga, TV shows, and movies—had depicted how to wait on tables in places such as high-end restaurants and hotels. He drew on those references as he went about serving the Baron's family.

"Thank you very much, my lady. I have all my mentors to thank for their wonderful guidance."

Allen lowered his head graciously in gratitude. The Baron's wife widened her eyes in surprise as an impressed "My!" escaped her lips.

"Darling, are you sure this boy was born a serf?"

"Mm. He's even Talentless, if you can believe it."

'Huh? He looked into my Talent? Well, I suppose it makes sense to do a background check before admitting a complete stranger into the family. Ah, that means they must know about all my stats being "E" too.'

Cecil perked up. "Huh? You're Talentless?"

"That is indeed the result I received from the Appraisal Ceremony, milady."

Allen was careful not to say "I am Talentless" himself. If he were to be Appraised again, the Talent field would very likely be filled. This way he was laying all responsibility for being registered as Talentless on the clergyman who had officiated his Appraisal Ceremony.

"Really? Well, I'm a Wizardess." Cecil smiled smugly and puffed out her chest.

"That is a wonderful Talent indeed, Lady Cecil. It is a very rare Talent to possess, is it not?"

Cecil clearly wanted to be complimented, so Allen laid it on thick, leaving her smiling cheerily from ear to ear. This attitude of his was a big part of why Cecil kept bugging him, but he had yet to realize it.

'Hmm, a Wizardess. Which probably corresponds to Wizard. I don't remember seeing that as a class option. I do remember Mage being a one-star class and Archwizard being a three-star, so I guess that puts Wizard in the middle as a two-star class? That's still pretty high up, considering.'

As Allen recalled what he had seen about this world's classes before being sent here, Baron Granvelle scolded Cecil.

"Cecil! How many times must I tell you?! Do not mention your Talent without cause!"

"I-I'm sorry, father..."

At the same time, Baron Granvelle also scolded Thomas, his second son.

"And Thomas! Do not cry every time this topic comes up!"

Thomas, who was sitting next to Cecil, sobbed, "I-I-I-I'm so sorry, father...hic...for being your only child...without a Talent..."

"Having a Talent or not has no bearing on anything! How many times have I said I would be sending you to Nobles College in the royal capital?!"

"But I want to go to the Academy like Mihai did!"

"You may not. Listen, Nobles College is a fine place. I don't have a Talent myself, so that was the school I attended. In fact, that's where I met your mother, at one of their evening balls."

"Oh, my!" Baroness Granvelle exclaimed, clapping both hands over her flushed cheeks.

'Interesting. So Academy City will reject even nobles if they don't have a Talent. Instead, Talentless nobles go to a school specifically for nobility.

'Well, it makes sense that they have a place to go. In this world, chances of a noble having a Talent aren't very high.'

The balancing for this world made it so that Talents appeared more easily among those born in lower social classes, such as commoner and serf. Even so, Thomas still looked very despondent about being the only one of three siblings to be Talentless.

'Ugh, Cecil's glaring daggers at me again. Come on, how is it my fault you got scolded?!'

Allen avoided eye contact with Cecil and continued serving as if he had seen nothing.