WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 61: 11. St. Yansk University and the Chamber of Secrets (4)
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* * *
Aesidis stared blankly up at the sky. A blue summer sky. The students on campus were giggling with each other over who knew what, birds were chirping, flowers were blooming, and bad children like them were....
“No, that is not it.”
She forced her tangled thoughts back into order. What mattered right now was not how beautiful the day was.
It was Uncle Ivan.
She had spent the whole weekend agonizing over it. Mostly over what, exactly, she was supposed to do about her uncle.
He spread word far and wide that he was dead, got himself properly buried in the national cemetery, and then what?
Surprise, I was alive the whole time. (And I grew a beard.)
It was an astounding event that doubled the shock and tripled the fury. Every time Aesidis thought about her uncle, her head felt ready to spin.
His way of speaking had turned blunt, his expression had turned gloomy.
And his new hobby was stalking female students.
“I have to... set him straight.”
Somebody had to take care of that poor old man living alone. He was thirty-four.
Somebody had to make him shave, feed him warm meals, and stand firmly by his side so he would stop chasing after other women....
And surely that duty belonged to her, the woman who had known him longer than anyone else in the world. Really, what woman in the world could possibly understand a man like that and take him in hand?
I have to do it. There is no one else.
Having made up her mind, Aesidis began writing a letter.
-Dad.
-I hope you have been well. Fortunately, I am doing fine. Pritchenkaya is a nice place. The buildings are tall, there are lots of people, and the streets are full of shops.
-There are many people here who love music. Ah, not the kind they sing while drinking. Not drums, string instruments. The kind of music that sounds warm and lovely, the kind many people perform together.
-How are the younger ones? They are doing well, right? They had better be. Unlike me, those children liked fighting.
Aesidis hesitated, then squeezed her eyes shut and moved her hand decisively.
-By the way, it is nothing serious, but I am thinking about getting married.
-I met... no, I used to... I mean, I am going to meet... a good man.
-Do not worry. If you were looking into another marriage match for me, please cancel it.
-I will stop here.
-Aesidis.
Good. With this, she had received her parents' permission. She had not.
Aesidis nodded in satisfaction and got to her feet. A dagger had returned to her hand.
“Where did Uncle go this time?”
Over the past few days, Ivan had been suspiciously hard to spot. It had not even been that long since she started enthusiastically stalking him, and already he seemed to have found another target.
“Ahaha.”
Naturally, that bad habit had to be corrected as quickly as possible. She was already worried about how he was going to live the rest of his life.
The biggest obstacle to Ivan's wandering eye, though she and Ivan were not in any kind of relationship where that term could apply, was sadly her once-closest friend... Isabelle.
Ivan seemed to care a great deal for Isabelle as well, enough to personally teach her weapon skills. Isabelle also seemed attached to him.
No, attached was not quite the word.
Having grown up in the royal court and mastered palace intrigue and politics over many years, Aesidis could tell. Her sharp eyes had fully grasped Isabelle's feelings.
She pretended otherwise, acting breezy and unaffected while subtly making eyes at Uncle Ivan. That was unforgivable. How dare she covet a man who had already built a family. He had not.
If this were Droan, she would have to show her the homeland's traditional games. For the record, Droan traditional games included hanging from poles, burning, drowning, and the blood eagle.
Thinking of how close they had once been, she could not do anything that extreme, but Isabelle still needed a sharp lesson.
With that scrawny, dried-up little body, how dare she.
Besides, decadent and obscene Tilles might take pride in enjoying public “romance” in the name of chivalry, but Droan did not.
Droan, that morally advanced nation, regarded fidelity, purity, and the innocent love between men and women as virtues. In other words, unfaithful men were castrated and their affair partners were executed.
“I am going to be busy....”
She had to teach Ivan fidelity and common sense, and she had to teach the women swarming around him, Isabelle included, about Droan family culture. She was a very busy person.
* * *
-Crunch.
With a wooden practice sword slung over her shoulder, Isabelle stood glaring toward one corner of the campus.
She had tailed Ivan and confirmed that he went into the president's office. Then, when she turned her gaze just a little, she spotted a silhouette beneath a street tree in front of the main building that led to the president's office.
That loathsome woman who had once been her friend, standing there with her hands demurely clasped, wearing a warm smile as she watched the entrance to the main building.
“Traitor.”
In a flat voice, Isabelle muttered quietly. Gnawing at the edge of her thumbnail, she glared at that absurd barbarian.
All that woman knew how to do was throw that foolishly heavy body of hers around.
Mister is a thoroughly trained soldier.
You could tell after exchanging only three sentences with him. He was a man who loved efficiency.
And naturally, Aesidis's body was the very pinnacle of inefficiency. The only person Isabelle had ever seen who was even more inefficient than her was the Saintess she had glimpsed from afar.
That useless fat of hers symbolized laziness. Isabelle was confident she would never lose to a lazy, dull woman like that.
She might be shamelessly imitating Isabelle's method and aiming for Mister's side, but honestly. As if.
There was no plagiarism that could surpass the original.
And the bond between a man and a woman was proven by the time and memories they had shared. Would Mister even remember Aesidis's name? He would.
“Ha... Hehe.”
Isabelle straightened her back with a confident smile.
Right. This was a fight she simply could not lose. No, a fight was not even the right word. If an adult hit a child, would that count as a duel? Of course not. This was just discipline.
“In the Tilles court, this barely counts as the basics of politics.”
The barbaric and uncivilized Droan court made decisions by relying solely on the authority and charisma of the Great King, but Tilles was different.
Tilles was a great cultural power that had built civilization on a strict judicial system and a strong sense of ethics. Unlike that simple political structure centered on one absolute ruler, it possessed a complex and beautiful government.
Therefore, as a representative of that great cultural power, Isabelle decided to teach “culture” to that barbarian's daughter.
“Ah!”
Ivan came striding out of the main building. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking from that blank face, though he was surely thinking about nothing at all, and the sight made a smile slip out before she knew it.
She waved both hands wildly and ran toward him.
“Mister!!”
* * *
He needed to bring a mage.
Ivan was a rational man, so he had no intention whatsoever of trying to clear an academy underground dungeon covered in ancient spells by himself.
He was a man of many talents, but unfortunately, he had never learned magic. Meaning, not simple spells for lighting or extinguishing fires, but actual spells that qualified as true magic.
He had been an operative trained for real combat during the war. Magic, however, belonged to the realm of scholarship. It was the sort of thing that required precise formulas and incantations, rituals, reagents, and all kinds of other complicated knowledge.
Where was he supposed to find a mage?
Ivan walked on, sunk in thought. He had no idea what form those ancient spells took, but one thing was certain. They were powerful enough to instantly destroy a dwarven relic.
A spell like that could not be dismantled barehanded. He needed a mage, especially one skilled in deciphering such things.
The most reliable option among such people would be Beolgreen, but Ivan had neither a way to call him nor any desire to do so.
If he had to choose someone nearby, perhaps the head of the Magic Faculty.... But that would run against the nature of a secret mission. The moment he accepted help from an elf, information would leak to the Kalion Archipelago.
“Mister!!”
“Hmm?”
Ivan raised his head at the sudden voice. Isabelle was running toward him with a bright smile, a wooden sword in hand.
Then something odd caught his eye. Ivan frowned and snatched up Isabelle's wrist as she reached him.
“Ah?!”
“Do not move.”
Gripping her right wrist with one hand, Ivan slipped his other hand into his coat and pulled out a bandage. There was no need to subject her to unnecessary pain, so he did not use a healing potion.
With practiced hands, he wrapped the bandage around Isabelle's thumbnail. In this uncivilized premodern age, a bandage was nothing more than a small scrap of cloth smeared with ointment, but functionally it was similar enough to a modern one.
And Ivan was the head of an orphanage. Children had a suspicious fondness for high places, so he had more than enough experience bandaging small scrapes and cuts.
“You have picked up a bad habit.”
“Ah... Uh... Yes....”
Isabelle averted her gaze with spinning eyes. Her whole face had turned red enough to burst.
At this distance, a superhuman's hearing could pick up the other person's heartbeat. Ivan studied Isabelle's complexion and pulse, then frowned.
“Do you have arrhythmia? Cardiovascular illness can become a serious problem if you miss the timing. Go find the Saintess.”
“Y-Yes? This is... What is this....”
Isabelle pulled her hand back at once, her expression turning cold. Even so, she kept rubbing the thumb wrapped in a bandage while grinning to herself.
Has she never seen a bandage before?
Ivan sighed. The Tilles court seemed to have a tendency to raise children in excessive comfort.
Then again, she was someone who even had a personal priest attached to her. Why would a girl like that ever have reason to use a bandage for a scratch? One cast of Healing from a priest would treat something far deeper than this in an instant.
“Oh, right, Mister. I had something I wanted to tell you.”
“Hmm?”
Isabelle looked suspiciously toward a distant point behind Ivan. Malice flickered cleverly in her eyes as she cast one glance that way, then opened her mouth to speak.
“I like your beard, Mister.”
“...?”
Did you hear that, Esi?
This is Tilles “politics.” Different from you barbarians.
When you have to compete for someone's heart, telling them what they want to hear is common sense.
At the same time, taking a different position from your rival is how you gain the advantage.
Just stand over there and watch with that devastated look on your face.
With a soft little laugh, Isabelle stepped closer to Ivan.
“I think so too.”
“Pardon...?”
“Is that all you had to say?”
“What? Ah, no. Just a moment. Um, uh.... Have you eaten lunch? I know a really, really delicious place....”
“I have.”
Ivan was an efficient man, so he solved almost all of his meals with a Nutrient Bar.
The Nutrient Bar was the great masterpiece of Ivan's life. In this uncivilized premodern fantasy world, there was no academic field called nutrition.
Because they lacked even the concept of essential nutrients, people went to priests when nutritional imbalances caused abnormalities in their bodies. Astonishingly enough, a priest's Healing could even temporarily improve those imbalances.
But such luxury had been impossible for Ivan, who came from a poor tenant farming family. So he had thrown himself desperately into developing this Nutrient Bar.
Even on the battlefields of the past, where supplies had been unstable, the Nutrient Bar had played a major role in keeping his combat ability steady at all times.
None of the Hero Party ever ate it with him, though....
Bunch of uncivilized premodern people.
Those bastards had slandered his Nutrient Bar with the vicious line that it was “worse than pig feed.” They rejected this marvelous food of the future, made with grain-based carbohydrates, generously packed with semidried fruit, mostly raspberries, and set firm with pork fat. They rejected it despite its perfect nutritional balance and wonderfully low production cost.
Even the late king had praised it as a secret art beyond civilization.... Whenever thoughts like that came to him, Ivan was once again reminded of what an exceptional man the late king had been.
“Uh... You... already ate? It is ten o'clock. You already had lunch?”
“Hmm.”
When you were deployed on an operation, eating on schedule was a luxury. So Ivan would break apart field rations and a Nutrient Bar, replenishing himself in several rounds.
It was a habit that had been stamped into him over long years. By now, it was practically part of daily life.
“Then, then what about dinner? W-When do you eat dinner...?”
“I am busy tonight.”
He needed to find a mage immediately and scout the entrance to the underground ruins.
“Then tomorrow... What about lunch tomorrow...?”
“I will likely be busy.”
Assuming he found the entrance tonight and went straight into the field, he would probably be tied up for at least a day or two.
“Then the weekend, the weekend?!”
“I am busy.”
On weekends, he had to catch up on all the orphanage work that piled up while he spent weekdays escorting the children of the Hero Party full-time.
An orphanage was not some self-running business. He had to secure a week's worth of food supplies for the children's meals, mend all the clothes that had no doubt been damaged again during the week, review the children's education, and even listen to their worries.
That was close to Ivan's only hobby. It was time that brought him peace of mind. That was why he ran the orphanage.
It was not because he sincerely worried about war orphans and wanted to care for them. He did it only for his own satisfaction.
Which made it hypocrisy. Ivan knew he was a hypocrite. It was nothing more than self-comfort, something he did to lighten the blood on his hands and the weight of it.
“Hic... Sob....”
Isabelle suddenly burst into tears and ran off somewhere.
Hmm.
Puberty in another world was difficult to predict.
Ivan slowly shook his head and started walking again.
Where was he supposed to find a mage...?
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Footnotes:
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