WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Even in a Dark Fantasy, You Still Have to Eat ◈
Chapter 6: The Mole on the Shoulder # 1
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Sometimes, good things come all at once in life.
That was exactly what was happening to me.
I had earned a ton of Ether.
I had drunk cola.
I had even touched a gold coin for the first time in my life.
And I had learned that even knights who trained their entire bodies could not train their balls.
Young Master Felix clutched his crotch and crawled across the floor.
“Uuugh...”
“What did you say?”
“My gold coin... Give it back, you bastard! If you’re not going to run away...!”
“Ever seen a lion spit out the meat in its mouth?”
“A... lion...?”
“I’m exactly like that. Once money enters my pocket, it’s mine. If you wanted it back, you shouldn’t have thrown it on the floor in the first place.”
“Ugh...”
In the end, Felix collapsed with foam around his mouth.
I had hit him as hard as I could, but it should not have been enough to knock him out.
‘Is it because I leveled up?’
I was Level 4 now, after spending Ether.
Maybe I had become stronger than I realized.
“Getting even with one punch was fine and all.”
He hit me once, so I hit him once.
Even a child could understand that kind of arithmetic.
That much was fine.
But I had not meant to knock him out.
According to kind Mr. Hammer, this guy was supposed to be my teammate for earning Ether from now on.
He was also my roommate.
What good would knocking out a guy like that do?
He already seemed to be gritting his teeth because he wanted to throw me out.
If you let too much resentment build up against you, the back of your head was bound to start tingling.
“Ah, hell. I guess I have no choice.”
This barrier had a training ground and a strategy room.
With so many chances for people to get hurt, there had to be something like an infirmary and a doctor too, right?
I decided to find a doctor and get Felix treated.
“Tch. Being too nice is one of my flaws.”
Creak.
I left the room and wandered through the corridors.
But maybe we were the only people in this huge facility, because the halls were completely empty. Finding an infirmary was not easy.
After a few minutes of walking, I came upon a place that did not seem to have anything to do with me.
“Great Library”
Light leaked through the slightly open door, along with the fluttering sound of pages. Someone was inside.
Creak.
When I opened the door, I found a room reeking of ink and paper.
“What is with all these books...?”
I picked up a nearby oil lamp and shone its light around.
A girl sat on a pile of books as if it were a chair.
It was Hermit, the woman in the pointed hat.
“Hey, where’s the infirmary?”
“Eek!”
Startled, Hermit jumped.
Crash!
At my simple question, Hermit reacted like a rat caught raiding a sack of rice.
The piled books collapsed, and Hermit fell on her butt.
“Why are you so startled? Were you doing something you shouldn’t?”
“You’re the one who did something you shouldn’t. Who sneaks up on someone without making a sound...?”
Hermit glanced at me and picked up her staff.
Her grip tightened until her hand turned white. She was seriously on guard.
Was she planning to hit me with that staff if things went wrong?
No, maybe I would get the chance to see actual magic.
“Newbie, why are you here?”
“What were you doing here?”
“I was reading. You said the idol you made a deal with was called Asibarr, right? I wondered if it would be in this Compendium of Idols, but it does not seem to be.”
Hermit held an incredibly thick book titled The Compendium of Idols. It clearly was not my kind of book.
When it came to books, I could barely read ones with dirty pictures in them.
Everything else made me sleepy after only a few pages.
“The idol Asibarr you made a contract with is probably one of two things. Either it is so dangerous that it was never written down here and became taboo, or it is so insignificant that it was not worth recording.”
“Which one is better?”
“The insignificant one. If you make a contract with one of those, you can just consider the Ether wasted. But those who have come into contact with taboo idols usually meet terrible ends.”
Hermit tightly hugged her own arm.
She looked like she knew something.
“Hermit, did you make a contract with one of those taboo idols too? Did you receive a blessing?”
“That is... a secret. Normally, it is better not to casually tell people which idol you made a contract with. It can become a weakness. Blessings are not all-powerful.”
A weakness?
I had not known that.
I would have to be more careful from now on.
Our conversation stopped.
An awkward silence filled the room.
Suddenly, I wondered what I was supposed to talk about with girls.
If I had made a normal female friend, what would we have talked about?
While I was thinking hard about it, Hermit spoke first.
“You took a strange object from the bonfire earlier, didn’t you?”
“Ah, this.”
I took the empty cola can out of my pocket.
I could not bring myself to throw it away because it felt too precious.
“I have never seen anything like it. It looks like a tool designed to hold liquid and seal it inside. The craftsmanship is so precise that I think it might be from before the War of Night. Am I right?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The War of Night. It was the war when His Majesty the Emperor fought the demons. Back then, this empire’s territory was larger, and its technology and magic were far more advanced than they are now.”
Hermit continued with a long explanation.
It was incredibly boring, but if I had to sum it up, it went like this.
There might have been cola in the old Empire.
The Land of Night was full of old imperial facilities and valuable items, and Blessed explorers could make a little money by finding them.
Just thinking about turning all of that into money made me feel good already.
But...
Was I forgetting something?
Ah.
“By the way, Hermit, where’s the infirmary?”
“Why do you need the infirmary? Did someone get hurt?”
“Felix hit me, so I got him back. That bastard got punched in the balls and started foaming at the mouth before passing out. I don’t think it’s serious, but you never know.”
“B... balls...”
Hermit froze stiff like a mouse that had met a cat.
She awkwardly adjusted her pointed hat a few times, then quickly turned around.
“There is no infirmary. Instead, we have an arrangement with the neighboring unit and borrow their priest. Ishtar from the neighboring unit can use Healing Prayer. Most injuries heal quickly.”
“Ooh.”
“But you have to pay Ether. It depends on the injury, but a simple consultation alone costs ten thousand Ether. That is what happens when you receive treatment from a priest in another unit.”
What?
Ten thousand Ether just for a consultation?
What a complete robbery.
“That Healing Prayer thing is like magic, right? Hermit, can’t you do that?”
“I can’t. Prayer and magic are different.”
“What’s the difference?”
“That’s a sharp question.”
Hermit narrowed her sparkling eyes beneath her pointed hat.
Then she picked up a dust-covered book from a nearby pile, brushed it off, and handed it to me.
Its title was:
The Key to Sorcery and Prayer
It was a mysterious title.
When I flipped through it, there were quite a few pictures of naked women.
“If you read that, even someone completely unfamiliar with magic like you should find answers to most things you are curious about.”
“Wow, does this book have your age written in it too? That’s what I’m most curious about.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Really? You’re young.”
“I know. I’m young for a mage. But don’t look down on me. Unlike those random street mages, I even graduated from the Mage Tower. This hat is proof of that.”
She sounded extremely proud.
At the same time, it felt like a warning.
I’m impressive, so don’t mess with me.
“So where do I have to go to meet that priest?”
“You can’t meet her now. Contact with other units is prohibited at night. It is a rule made because thieves from every unit used to gather every night and plot together.”
Ah, what a shame.
I felt bad for Felix, but I had done my best.
# # #
When I returned to the room, Felix was doing push-ups.
He supported himself on one thumb from each hand, then eventually put one hand behind his back and kept doing push-ups.
Then he bent backward like a shrimp, raised his legs high, and did a handstand on one thumb.
After that, he twisted his hip joints in strange ways and abused his body. It went beyond gymnastics and looked like a circus act.
“Wow, how do you even do that?”
Clap, clap, clap.
I was honestly impressed.
Felix casually wiped the sweat from his forehead with the towel around his neck and spoke.
“You train every joint in your body and muscles you do not usually use, so you can swing your sword in any position. Then you can quickly respond even to a sudden blade coming from behind.”
So killing-machine knights were made through intense self-abuse.
It was a hardship that back-alley punks would never dare to imitate.
“For something like that, you couldn’t block a punch coming from below.”
“...It won’t happen twice.”
“If that had been a real fight, wouldn’t it have ended in one hit?”
“...That is true. I still have a long way to go.”
Unexpectedly, Felix accepted that without protest and started sweating again in strange, acrobatic poses.
I tried copying a few of them, but they were boring and took too much effort, so I stopped.
Still, it was good that Felix seemed fine.
He was moving around so energetically that there was no need to show him to a priest or whatever.
That saved ten thousand Ether in treatment fees.
How many cans of cola was ten thousand Ether?
I wished I had become a doctor or priest instead of a thief.
So that was why mothers were so desperate for their children to become doctors.
If I found the right idol and received a blessing of prayer, could I become a priest instead of a thief?
With that thought, I opened the book Hermit had given me.
Felix spoke.
“That book was chosen by Hermit, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That kid is softhearted and kind, as you can probably tell. The problem is that she spent so many years at the Mage Tower that she does not understand the world and trusts people too easily.”
“She did seem like that.”
I looked back at the book.
The dense text made me sleepy, but I perked up when I thought there might be a chance to gain even more Ether here.
Watching me, Felix casually said something.
“You are the first book-reading thief I have ever seen.”
“Maybe a young master from a knight family has never seen the kind of people who specialize in book collections and expensive old books. People usually call them bookworms.”
“Worms... Did you have a nickname like that too?”
“I was a ball bug. I mostly targeted men’s balls.”
“Ugh.”
Puhahaha!
I laughed, and Felix frowned.
To cheer him up, I held out the page of the book.
“Look at these pictures of naked women. They all have a star-shaped mole on their left shoulder. Do you think they were all modeled after the same person?”
“I don’t know. Do people normally pay attention to things like that?”
Felix blushed and quickly turned his head away.
Then he pulled the blanket over himself.
“Our first party expedition is tomorrow, so go to sleep early.”
Our first party expedition.
It made my heart pound for no reason, like the night before a school trip when I was in elementary school.
Then Felix added something even more exciting.
“The Festival of the Sun’s Birth is coming soon. If we perform well this time, Brigadier General Ezakiel may personally visit the barrier to give us a reward. So work hard too.”
Brigadier General Ezakiel was my benefactor and a beauty.
I would receive a reward directly from someone like that.
What kind of reward would it be?
The anticipation made it even harder to sleep.
Footnotes:
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