Shirou led Eris, smoothly finishing the whole dance.
Although there were occasional stumbles during the process, the two, as excellent Swordsmen, showed a burst of energy in their dancing that far surpassed everyone else around them.
Therefore, they quickly received applause from everyone.
"You are really amazing, Teacher Shirou."
After the dance, Edna, the etiquette teacher who taught Eris to dance, praised him from the bottom of her heart.
She had been teaching Eris to dance for a long time, but all of Eris's performances during that time added up were not as good as today's.
Shirou didn't accept Edna's admiration too much.
Because he knew that Eris was able to perform so perfectly today was inseparable from her usual training. If it weren't for Teacher Edna's hard work every day, Shirou wouldn't have been able to make her perform so perfectly, even if he removed the nervousness from Eris.
And when she heard Shirou's words, a strange expression appeared on Teacher Edna's face.
She glanced at Shirou shyly, and then suddenly suggested that she wanted to dance with Shirou as well.
Shirou didn't think too much and agreed.
Their dance was very perfect, arousing the enthusiasm of the surrounding nobles again.
At the end of the dance, Teacher Edna suddenly said that she was feeling a little unwell and hoped that Shirou could take her back to her room to rest.
Shirou was confused, because he couldn't see anything wrong with Teacher Edna's body at all.
Because he still had to stay at the scene to take care of Eris, and the Mrs. Somar incident had left him with a lifelong shadow, Shirou decisively declined Teacher Edna, causing obvious regret to appear on the woman's face...
Afterwards, Shirou quickly left Teacher Edna's surroundings, wanting to be alone for a while, and prepare for the gift-giving part later.
He had already prepared a very suitable gift that he could use to give to Eris.
Shirou also took the opportunity to taste the banquet's dishes, selected the well-made parts, and planned to ask the head chef later about how to make them.
Shirou still wanted to further improve his cooking skills.
However, Shirou didn't rest for long before he suddenly noticed that several girls of about his age were surrounding him from afar.
They seemed to be attracted by Shirou's dancing, and now they all wanted to invite Shirou to dance with them.
Shirou never refused invitations.
But he couldn't dance with people endlessly.
Most importantly, he could clearly feel that several girls were having obvious conflicts because of the competition for the right to dance with him.
Shirou, being such a nice person, naturally couldn't bear to see others arguing because of him.
Just as Shirou was at a loss, not knowing how to deal with it, the blonde-haired girl, Second Princess Ariel, suddenly walked over from not far away.
"Can you dance with me?"
Ariel showed a sweet smile that was enough to enchant people, and invited Shirou.
Ordinary people would naturally never refuse this.
But for Shirou, his heart was full of vigilance towards Ariel, and he definitely didn't want to have anything to do with this Second Princess.
But right now, his situation was indeed impossible to handle, and the only solution was to agree to Ariel and accept her help.
After all, with Princess Ariel's status, other noble girls probably wouldn't have the slightest thought of competing, and would simply give up, right?
"Okay."
Shirou sighed and surrendered helplessly.
So, under Ariel's knowing expression, he slowly came to the center of the dance floor with her.
Due to Shirou's excellent performance in dancing just now, most people had changed their opinion of him, at least not thinking that he was a coward who didn't even dare to accept a duel.
But seeing that Shirou had the opportunity to dance with Princess Ariel, many nobles still felt resentment in their hearts.
After all, Princess Ariel had refused most people who wanted to dance with her.
Shirou, a seemingly unknown figure, was actually able to dance with the princess, which completely ignited the jealousy of many people.
"..."
Shirou naturally noticed the glaring gazes from the surroundings.
But he couldn't do anything about it.
Dancing with Ariel was the only way he could be idle right now.
Moreover, Ariel did seem to have a good grasp of the degree of harassment. During the dance, the blonde girl hardly made any extra moves, just seriously dancing with Shirou.
"That was a pleasant dance."
After finishing the dance, Ariel said with a serious face, "Shirou, you are very good at observing other people's movements. Every key movement, you will cooperate with me at just the right time, as if you can know other people's thoughts and are willing to actively provide help to strangers."
"This..."
Once again, he admired Princess Ariel's ability to observe.
Shirou never expected that the other party would judge so many things just through his dance steps, which was really unlike a human being.
And seeing Shirou's helpless profile, a cunning expression quickly appeared on Ariel's face. She smiled and said, "I really want to get you more and more, Shirou. Are you really not planning to join me? I can satisfy you with any conditions."
As she spoke, Ariel showed a charming expression, full of seduction.
"No... I don't have that idea."
Faced with Ariel's invitation, Shirou refused decisively, "I'm not interested in participating in the fight for the throne, not to mention that Mr. Luke is also very hostile to me."
"I'm really sorry about Luke's matter."
Ariel's attitude was very sincere. Seeing that Shirou still had no intention of joining, she could only say silently, "Okay, if you insist on refusing like this, I can't force you."
Seeing Ariel's disappointed look, Shirou couldn't help but sigh.
The other party had helped him many times, and although he had always been full of vigilance towards her, maybe this was just his misunderstanding.
After hesitating for a while, Shirou couldn't help but say, "Although I can't become your subordinate, we can still be friends."
"Friends?"
Hearing the word Shirou said, Ariel was slightly stunned.
She then chuckled, as if she had heard something particularly interesting, covering her mouth and laughing, "Interesting, really interesting, you may be the first person in this world to propose to be friends with me, Shirou."
"This... I seem to have been a little rude."
Shirou realized that he had actually said to be friends with the dignified princess, which was too disrespectful.
He quickly wanted to apologize.
But before that, Ariel shook her head, "No need to apologize, I accept it."
"What?"
"I mean, I can be friends with you, Shirou, you will be Princess Ariel's first friend. How about it, are you happy?"
"..."
It was clearly a happy thing, but when it came out of Ariel's mouth, it just made people want to beat her up.
Shirou couldn't help but sigh, but he still stretched out his hand.
Ariel then shook his hand in return.
The two smiled at each other and established a formal friendship.
After the dance was completely over, Shirou could be said to have completely become the focus of the banquet.
Whether it was his excellent dancing skills or his close relationship with Princess Ariel, it was hard to imagine that he was just an ordinary noble descendant.
And Luke regarded Shirou as a thorn in his side, a thorn in his flesh.
Of course, because of Ariel's warning, he would no longer directly attack Shirou in person, but his attitude was still that annoying look.
After the dance was over, the banquet officially began to celebrate Eris's birthday.
The nobles each sent carefully prepared gifts to celebrate the birthday of the Boreas family's young lady, Eris.
Most of the gifts prepared by the nobles were very precious, either priceless jewelry or extremely rare props...
Princess Ariel and Luke also sent their own prepared gifts, which were also priceless treasures.
When everyone's gifts had been sent, the banquet was about to come to an end.
Shirou didn't plan to give gifts in front of everyone. He wasn't good at doing such high-profile things, so he just planned to present his gift when the banquet was over and no one was around.
Everything went according to his plan.
The banquet soon came to an end.
Most of the guests had already left.
But Princess Ariel and her subordinates Luke and Derrick were still staying in place, seemingly having something to discuss with Sauros.
Shirou originally wanted to wait for the princess's people to leave before presenting the gift, but Sauros suddenly said, "By the way, Shirou, you kid didn't forget to prepare a gift for Eris, did you! I reminded you before!"
Sauros was a rough person, and he completely ignored the fact that there were outsiders present and wanted Shirou to present his gift.
In Sauros's opinion, it didn't matter what gift Shirou gave, what mattered was the intention.
Because he had long regarded Shirou as family.
But for Shirou, this was undoubtedly bad news, because the gifts of the nobles just now were so precious, it would be easy for Shirou to be ridiculed if he didn't prepare a corresponding gift.
Philip immediately saw the problem and quickly wanted to stop his father.
But Shirou stopped Philip. He didn't really care when to give the gift.
If the time was now, it wasn't impossible. After all, he thought that the gift he had prepared was quite perfect, it could be said to be as suitable as possible.
"This is the gift I prepared."
Shirou took out the prepared prop from his chest.
It was a piece of black metal with simple patterns engraved on it.
Seeing such a prop, most people had a suspicious look on their faces and couldn't understand what use and value such a piece of metal had.
Shirou didn't keep them in suspense.
He just injected magic power into the metal, and soon a metal blade appeared on the front end of the metal, turning into a sharp long sword.
"This is a weapon I forged, or more accurately, a magic tool. Its name is [Black Key]."
"Just inject magic power into the Black Key, and you can create a sword body out of thin air for combat."
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