WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Academy's Pure Love Dark Knight ◈

Chapter 122

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Episode 122. We Fight, But We Also Love.

I returned to the northern palace, and we sat down to talk.

"It's finally all resolved. The monsters coming down to the defensive line are gone too."

"I don't think there'll be any problem if you withdraw the phoenix now."

Phine kept a little distance from me, hiccuping the whole time. I'd liked her clinging to me earlier, so it was a shame.

"Thank you for your cooperation. Licht."

When I mentioned that she could shut down the Cradle now, the golden-haired woman nodded in agreement.

A dazzling light like sunlight rose outside the window, and

"What reward would you like for subjugating the apostle?"

golden feathers drifted down fluttering, as if the sun itself had shattered and was falling like rain.

'So that's why her epithet is the Living Sun.'

In the game, she was the kind of character I disliked, so I'd never recruited her as a party member.

"If there's something you want, I'll speak to His Majesty on your behalf."

She worried about her own son Nex, but her way of showing it was so twisted that she tried to build him a harem. Why would I ever want her as a party member.

An elementalist was needed to take down Magic Hat, but I hadn't bothered using her. Partly because she was a heroine with her own DLC.

In the game, recruiting other people properly made you stronger, though.

I could just use the fact that she and Nex were rivals. There's a saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all.

"Asha, you must have had a rough time of it too!!"

Drake laughed cheerfully, watching Asha sip her black tea.

Wherever he'd gotten a voice loud enough to swallow a train's steam whistle, the whole area shook for a moment. Impressive, really.

"Drake, show a little consideration. You were the same way even during the war, consistent as ever."

"Well, the vice principal's been so hard to spot at the academy lately!!"

No wonder the school's staff had seemed a bit thin lately, this person was Grand Hearts Academy's vice principal.

"Living Sun."

"What is it? Licht."

I asked a question to satisfy my curiosity. Better to ease into the topic of Nex naturally than bring it up out of nowhere.

"Are you the vice principal of the academy I attend?"

"That's right. Though last semester I was dispatched to the north on short notice, so I couldn't show my face there."

Clink. Asha set her teacup down again and met my eyes with her golden gaze, showing the sharp edge that made her one of the Ten Greats.

"Come to think of it, I heard you're close with Nex, as a junior of his."

Good. She'd taken the bait.

A move I'd shown to size up the opponent.

She'd also been watching me closely while I fought the undead monster earlier, and after spending so much time around that gigolo bastard, this much was easy.

"Is Nex doing well?"

"No, honestly, he's been having a hard time, thanks to someone."

I told the golden-haired woman the truth.

Because of his mother's overprotectiveness, he'd grown up since childhood without ever receiving proper love.

"..What do you mean by that?"

"Well, I don't know if you're aware, but his beloved was kidnapped by an apostle of the Heroic Cult…."

I kept a slightly relaxed attitude. I'd already told the lie about being the Hero of Wisdom, after all.

"When Head attacked the academy, he protected the students without any support at all."

I crossed my legs and sat back. If I let myself look timid here, she might shut this conversation down.

Asha didn't know my hand, but I knew hers to some extent.

'I nearly died getting shot too, so I've got every right to say something about it.'

If Chartiness had been kidnapped and Nex won over by the Heroic Cult, he might not have used the Phoenix Cradle at all.

Given how he seemed to dislike his own spirit, and how the second Saintess was never mentioned in the story,

the vampire Saintess's end probably hadn't been a good one.

"May I ask you one thing?"

I summoned Giyu to bring down a sudden rain, and the cold sky washed the lie away.

"Why did you deliberately try to arrange his marriage with several people at once?"

"Did Nex tell you that?"

I shook my head. I took a breath and tried not to let it show that I was lying, and

"No. It's the Hero of Wisdom's ability."

In the distance, Phine seemed to be leaning against the wall, expressing displeasure about something, but it didn't matter.

Even with her arms crossed and glaring, maybe because of that little farce we'd had earlier,

"Ah, ngh.."

the moment our eyes so much as met, she turned her head away at once. Accident or not, maybe it had been too much stimulation.

She hid her face behind her white tail. Even that was just plain adorable.

"My ability is to find, or to hide, information. So I know things that are hidden."

Once I felt there was no one left to interrupt, I took a sip of the tea and a bite of the scone set in front of me, and got ready to start the conversation.

"You hid the fact that Nex's father has purple hair, didn't you?"

"..."

The relationship between Nex and Asha, pieced together from my own playthrough and what I'd read in DLC review posts.

"Have you.... told Nex?"

"No. This is a problem you, as his parent, need to resolve."

It was also part of why, back when Phine had lived hiding her identity as Mardol, I never doubted for a second that her hair had to be black.

"..Even a bird locked in a cage has to fly free eventually. Asha Aureus."

They really were parent and child.

The problem was only that her overprotectiveness came from fearing her son would lose someone he loved, just as she had.

* * *

Back in the past, there had been a time I looked forward to the game's additional content.

Because there was a chance a route to romance the Nameless Saintess might get added.

[The DLC for <Black Heart> is coming soon! Whose past will you get to uncover?✧(｡•̀ᴗ-]

So when I saw the developer's announcement, I was thrilled enough to jump.

It seemed like I'd finally get to learn the past of the cute girl with wolf ears,

and I was also glad she wouldn't have to keep watching other people's love stories with envy anymore.

Fan patches and mods were never counted as canon, so I didn't even glance at them.

But when I clicked on a post that anyone would've assumed was about our Saintess, what I found out was,

[Title: DLC's out?! First wave, moving in!!]

that it was DLC about Asha Aureus, who appeared as Nex's mother.

[Analyzing why Asha Aureus and Nex don't get along.... (wall of text warning)]

[Spoiler) Developer, get out here!!!]

Spoiler posts and analysis threads kept popping up like mushrooms after rain, stoking my curiosity, but

[Ashen Phoenix DLC review. Honestly, it's good.]

I went to the game's page, checked a few screenshots, and my enthusiasm fizzled out instantly.

'Why is her hair.... gray?'

Because there was a girl who looked much younger than the head of the family I knew, a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties, and

'They really have gone all in on selling heroines, huh.'

Seeing the good reception among players, it looked like the developers had deliberately jumped on that popularity.

[Become the husband of the widow Asha Aureus! Learn her past, and resolve it, and….]

[You might just uncover a secret..?ദി (^ᵕ^]

Reading that short blurb made me want to gag. Playing as the husband of someone who already had a kid?

Isn't this basically NTL? I figured it just had to be some crazy nonsense, but

"Hey, Suhyun. Have you tried the new DLC?"

"That's NTL, isn't it?!"

What that gigolo bastard suddenly launched into over voice chat changed my mind a little. I'd only accepted the call figuring he'd just talk about the Northern Grand Duchess again.

"I don't think so. Having played it myself, it feels less like NTL and more like an actual side story."

"What are you talking about... Gi-seok."

He uploaded a few screenshots to our guild chat room. The character creation screen you saw right when you started the DLC.

"Look, you can't even set a name or appearance. You just play as the narrator, basically."

There was no customization feature there at all. It just briefly showed that the character was a purple-haired man, and

"This isn't like this developer at all..?"

Something about this felt contradictory, given how much freedom the original game usually allowed in customizing appearance.

'Is this really just a story-focused DLC?'

He went on, using an emoticon I'd given him. A peculiar one of Sophitia saying, "NTR is a crime even in the north!"

He hadn't been this bad at first, but somehow he'd caught it from me, and now he was collecting everything related to the Grand Duchess.

I'd only handed it off because it wasn't an emoticon of our Saintess, but at this point it was getting a little scary. Good thing I was the normal one.

"And if you look at the completion bonus, you'll see…. never mind. Just read this one review post."

With a ding- notification sound, Kwon Gi-seok sent me a link to a post on the game's community forum.

He'd probably grown worried after I kept wailing endlessly every single day about why they wouldn't put out a Saintess DLC. A guild master who couldn't hold onto his dignity must've looked pathetic to him.

'Still, I really wish he'd fix that cold, extremist streak of his.'

A friend who went to fairly drastic lengths, not caring what means he used.

After all, this was the guy who'd once gone down the route where he wiped out every northerner who rebelled against the Grand Duchess, and unlocked the "True Iron and Blood" achievement for it.

Apparently, touch it again and it's a blood purge next time.

Last time, he'd even recruited the Forbidden NTR Knight guy to try shock therapy on me,

saying I was always so oblivious it drove him crazy, or something like that.

Still, he kept saying Sophitia Coldheart was prettier than our Saintess, which was absolutely absurd. Who's the oblivious one here.

"The poster's nickname is…. Guardian of Light?"

I clicked the link Gi-seok sent, and a white screen came up. The post was so long it took forever just to finish loading.

"..So Asha's husband ends up dying in the war, huh."

To sum up in one sentence what took me about thirty minutes to read through carefully, it was a sad ending.

"These guys clearly know how to make good content, so why doesn't our Saintess get a heroine route."

It was a story about a purple-haired boy who entered the Aureus household as a servant and mended the heart of a girl with ash-gray hair.

A girl left with nothing but ashes after her phoenix burned everything down.

"So that's why the subtitle is Ashen Phoenix."

Apparently, she'd been the type whose spirit never awakened, and she'd shut herself away in a corner of her room, a total shut-in doing nothing at all.

"This just seems like a pure romance story…. why would they write the blurb like that."

The story had the player resolving the family crisis that resulted from all this.

By teaching her love, strand by strand, her golden hair gradually reclaimed its original color.

Supposedly it had turned gray because a spirit that never hatched properly had burned it, or something like that. The lore didn't really matter to me.

Hair dyed in the color of love was romantic enough on its own. The attached images showed nothing but a girl smiling happily.

"It would've been nice if it were a happy ending. Too bad."

The player, who'd entered as a servant of the duke's household and eventually risen to marry into the family, ends up dying because of the war the Heroic Cult started.

The completion bonus was just that there's a hidden space behind the duke household's study, filled with belongings of the purple-haired man you'd played as.

"Is that an unavoidable fate, then."

At the time, I still hadn't taken down Magic Hat, so I had no idea our Saintess might die the same way,

"It's a bitter story."

Even though I'd only read the review, the lingering feeling that came through the text made me swallow something bitter.

* * *

Honestly, from here on it's pure guesswork.

"..You probably got scared, when Nex was born."

I'd heard about what happened between Chartiness and Nex, and the Ten Greats' blood ran thick enough that traits tended to pass down clearly.

Phine Gransia, secretly standing behind me, was proof enough of that. I know it's you even with your tail hiding your face. You can just stand there as you are.

"Because his spirit never appeared, just like yours, Asha."

I brushed the crumbs off my hand from the scone and checked her flustered expression. Looked like we were getting through to each other.

"Did you do it deliberately, to keep him from getting caught up in fighting and hurt, the way you were?"

"Th-that's a baseless rumor. How could you say something so outrageous…."

The Heroic Cult's threat was still very much alive. She probably hoped he wouldn't have to go through the pain of losing someone he loved, the way she had.

She probably also had her own calculation that building him a harem to awaken his spirit would produce a phoenix even stronger than her own.

Maybe there was also some part of her that couldn't bear watching him repeat her own misfortune.

"If you don't put it into words properly, your child will never know. Asha."

I closed my eyes slightly and thought back to my real-world father, who'd been a firefighter. Honestly, as a kid too immature to understand, I'd resented him plenty of times, and

"I know, because I was the same way. I've misunderstood my own father before."

There'd been times I felt hurt that my only family, always out on calls, couldn't stay by my side.

A dark chapter from my immature days. He was a man who tried to save people's lives even on his days off.

"You just asked me what reward I wanted."

But in the end, my father would still take me fishing to teach me how to catch fish, or take me to see a movie, things like that.

He must have been exhausted, but he still carved out time he didn't have to give me those memories.

My father understood my heart better than anyone and showed me a shining world.

Like in Asha's case, if you lock a precious child away in a cage, that light will be lost. Normally, an outsider shouldn't interfere in a family's fight, but

'As far as I know, she'd even made a hidden space in the study just to move his portrait and every belonging related to him there.'

Honestly, Nex was just too pitiable for me to stay quiet.

Because Asha had sworn even the people who knew the truth to secrecy, he didn't even know who his own father was and got treated like a bastard child.

"..Please tell His Majesty I don't need anything."

I stood up and put on my white academy coat. I headed to my room to prepare to leave the north, and

"Instead, please look at who Nex truly is. Duchess Asha Aureus."

Pausing my steps, I glanced back slightly and passed along, in his place, the words of that gigolo bastard.

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