Bonifatius/Story

# Part 3

## Part 3 Volume 5

### Attack on the Archduke's children

For a long time, Bonifatius' interactions with his only granddaughter were limited to just brief greetings. This changed when the children of the archduke were attacked after Charlotte's baptism. Shortly after Wilfried, Charlotte, and Rozemyne left to retire for the night and Bonifatius wished his granddaughter a good night, Wilfried's head attendant Oswald came storming back, while carrying his charge and informed everyone present that the archduke's children had been ambushed in the corridor connecting the main and northern building. Leaving the organizing of the knights to his son Karstedt, Bonifatius immediately rushed to the scene with his enhancement magic boosting his speed far beyond human limits. With just a single strike, he completely crushed the head of the first attacker he saw, killing him instantly. This apparently set off a fail-safe enchantment of some kind, leading to all the devouring soldiers still engaged with the guard knights of the archduke's children to explode.

At that moment, Angelica one of Rozemyne's guard knights came back carrying Charlotte and informed Bonifatius of what she knew of the situation. While the devouring soldiers kept the guard knights busy, an unidentified noble had grabbed Charlotte and tried to flee on his highbeast, but when Rozemyne caught up to him, he tossed the abducted girl away in mid-air, but thanks to the combined efforts of Angelica and Cornelius, she was saved from plummeting to her death, and Rozemyne ordered Angelica to bring her sister back to safety.

In the short time her guard knights were busy saving and returning her sister, Rozemyne is captured by a mana-net. Both Cornelius and Bonifatius set out to find her, while Angelica returns Charlotte and follows them as fast as she can.

With his enhanced hearing, Bonifatius quickly locates a commoner on a horse. While still approaching from the air, he uses the Crushing to incapacitate the horse and then decapitates the rider with his bare hands. He locates a sack that seems to hold his granddaughter and in his over eagerness to get her free and his worry that she isn't responding, he ends up putting too much strength into freeing her, which sends her flying. Thankfully, Ferdinand, who had been following him, manages to catch Rozemyne, before she hits a tree with lethal velocity. Ferdinand notices that Rozemyne has been poisoned and even determines exactly which poison had been used. Shouting down protests of Bonifatius, he takes off to the temple to administer her an antidote. While Bonifatius is reluctant to let anyone else handle this issue and especially about bringing her to the temple, Ferdinand's words convince him that she's best off in his hands, and so he lets the two leave.

Just before they take off, Cornelius finds them and hands over Rozemyne's highbeast feystone.

Shortly after, a Rott shoots up from nearby. When Bonifatius arrives at the spot, he finds Angelica, who managed to locate and capture a hooded noble on her own, impressing Bonifatius. The assailant turns out to be Viscount Joisontak, and they bring him to the castle's dungeon, where the two remain to guard him until called by the Archduke.

While they are guarding Joisontak, Bonifatius talks with Angelica and takes a liking to her, so he decides to take her on as a student - much to her delight - and also decides to put all of the guard knights currently serving the archducal family through a harsh training.

### Interrogations

Bonifatius is invited to participate in the round of interrogations that follow the attack. Joisontak admits to trying to abduct Charlotte for a convoluted scheme to gain favor with Rozemyne, but adamantly denies having anything to do with the attack on Rozemyne herself, insisting he would never harm his own niece. Assaulting Charlotte in and of itself is already enough to seal his fate, so Sylvester and his companions agree that there must have been a second attacker.

Following Joisontak, they next question Giebe Gerlach, since he was the one who provided Viscount Joisontak with the Devouring soldiers that laid the ambush, but they have no proof or even evidence strong enough to link him with the crimes, and thus let him go. In private, Bonifatius confides to his nephew that he is sure Gerlach is the culprit who poisoned Rozemyne and deduces how he could have attacked her and made it back into the grand hall without any of the knights noticing, but Sylvester can't agree to sanctions against a Giebe on just Bonifatius' instincts and conjecture, much to both men's frustration.

# Part 4

## Part 4 Volume 1

During Rozemyne's long sleep, Bonifatius sends many Ordonnanzes to Ferdinand to ask for updates. At some point, Ferdinand stops answering them.

When Rozemyne finally awakes after two years, Bonifatius receives all the Ordonannzes that had been piling up with Ferdinand back at once, but rather than being annoyed by the bombardment of messages, he is just ecstatic and sends back a jubilant message.

At their first dinner together after her long sleep, Rozemyne presents Bonifatius with an object made out of paper, that she tells him is a stylized heart, but also a letter. To the astonishment of everyone present, Rozemyne unfolds the paper-heart, allowing Bonifatius to read a letter of gratitude. Much to his relief, his granddaughter is able to re-fold the letter into the heart-shape.

Since Rozemyne's muscles atrophied to the point where she can't even lift her own limbs without the aid of magic tools, Bonifatius trains her in enhancement magic, so she can learn to compensate for her lack of physical abilities with her vast amounts of mana, should the need arrive. When not busy with his granddaughter, he puts the guard knights through a grueling training regimen that leaves them on the verge of trauma, but shows great results. The only one among his trainees who seems to relish rather than dread the harsh training is Angelica.

During one of the training sessions with his granddaughter, he asks her to pour mana into his manablade, hoping that like Angelica's Stenluke, it would gain sentience, though speaking in Rozemyne's own, rather than Ferdinand's voice. When she informs him that Ferdinand had forbidden her from pouring mana into other people's manablades, Bonifatius seems determined to have Ferdinand rescind this ban. Seeing this Rozemyne explains that, due to her mana capacity having grown considerably during her sleep, her mana control has become very unstable, and while that would not matter all that much for enhancement magic, since it uses to much mana, it would leave her unable to exert the fine control necessary to perform a mana transfer into the blade. This convinced Bonifatius to back off... for the time being at least.

## Part 4 Volume 2

When Bonifatius hears from Rozemyne about the sorry state the the current knight's course students at the Royal Academy are in, he decides that come spring he will personally whip them into shape. He was rather distraught over hearing just how much matters at the Royal Academy had decayed following the civil war, to the point where what used to be one of the most basic tactics for Treasure Stealing Ditter had worked as an unexpected surprise attack. He was however very proud of Rozemyne for managing to lead Ehrenfest to a victory over Dunkelfelger's knights, who are regarded as the current top-team.

## Part 4 Volume 3

During her time as his disciple, Bonifatius grew very fond of Angelica. When he mentioned to her that he was thinking of having her marry into his family, she stated that she would leave everything to her master, and Bonifatius lost no time in going to work on it. He convinced his family to precede with the idea. The first candidate was Traugott, but he was quickly disqualified from the selection, once the family learned how he had resigned from Rozemyne's service and about the flaws in his character that caused him to do so, which left Bonifatius furious with his grandson. Cornelius outright refused, stating that he had someone else he cared for, and Lamprecht's issue was his potential marriage with a noble from Ahrensbach, which was deemed too much of a complication for the time being, which left Eckhart.

Angelica's parents desperately tried to prevent the marriage, feeling that Angelica's inability to act like a proper noble could only lead to disaster, but Bonifatius wouldn't have it. Similar attempts to assure that Angelica would only become a third wife failed as well, though eventually someone managed to convince Bonifatius that Angelica really isn't suited to become an archnoble's first wife, and thus it was decided she would become Eckhart's second wife.

## Part 4 Volume 4

Due to his method of training being deemed too much for layknights, he has since withdrawn from directly participating in the training and instead acts as a supervisor, limiting himself to putting together the training schedules and observing. He is however always on the lookout for apprentices able to withstand his training methods to take personal charge of.

# Part 5

## Part 5 Volume 5

During the investigation of Grausam's hidden room, the team of knights led by Bonifatius, find a curious silver cloth, completely devoid of any mana and apparently immune and impermeable to any magic. He coerces Matthias to only give his lady a partial explanation of the cloth, hoping she would invite him to get the full explanation, so he could spend more time with his granddaughter. Rozemyne immediately sees through this, but rather than ordering her retainer to give the explanation anyway, decides to play along with her grandfather's antics and invites him and Sylvester to a private talk when they come to the temple to retry the ritual to obtain divine protections.

Upon his return from the chapel, Bonifatius is a bit crestfallen over being less successful than his nephew, since he "only" managed to obtain seventeen divine protections. But even so, Bonifatius became omni-elemental from obtaining at least one divine protection from a deity he has no natural affinity for. Sylvester reassures his uncle, that he is sure he only managed to gain more protections, due to how many prayers were needed to dye the foundation, back when he became Aub. Bonifatius is quick to recover from his disappointment and eager to test his new strength at the training grounds, much to Angelica's delight and Cornelius' annoyance.

As a consequence of the discovery of a magic-blocking silver cloth in the former Giebe Gerlach's hidden room, capable of even blocking morphed schtappes, Bonifatius implements exercising with physical weapons into the training regiment of the Ehrenfest Knight's Order.

< Bonifatius

# References

1. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 5. Grandfather on the Day of the Baptism
2. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 1. Prologue
3. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 1. Chapter 3: Dinnertime
4. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 1. Chapter 4: Cramming and Preparations
5. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 3. Chapter 13: Angelica's Graduation Ceremony
6. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 4. Chapter 14: Left at Home
7. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 5 Volume 5. Chapter 2: Divine Protections All Around
8. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 5 Volume 5. Chapter 3: The Archduke Conference’s Starbinding