WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 033

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Queen of High Society, Kim Yuna

* * *

Breathing in the sweet scent of Dolores's palm pressed over my mouth.

I studied the Prince's necklace closely.

On the surface, it was a necklace shaped like a moon, set with a moonstone glowing faintly blue.

It was the first 4-star piece of gear I'd seen anywhere in the hall.

Not that the star rating mattered right now.

'What does an ordinary appraiser usually see?'

[Only up to the "Origin Script," the part you call flavor text.]

Origin Script.

Then to everyone else's eyes, that piece of gear would look like this.

─────────────────

[the Moonlight Essence Necklace][★★★★☆]

[Unique Equipment]

─────────────────

『With a gentle, loving touch, the moon goddess shall caress you.

May that blessing last forever....』

- In the name of the moon goddess, Selea -

─────────────────

That's what people would see, wasn't it?

[And I did a quick search, apparently Selea is a goddess famous inside the Tower for medicine and witchcraft.]

...Then reading that, people could only conclude it was gear that treated illness.

Grants a blessing, it says. And it probably really did aid recovery, back before the essence had all been drained.

Blessing my ass. This is insane.

I don't know who Selea is, but I feel like someone should call the police.

I gripped my reeling head and sank into thought.

Beside him, someone else caught my eye.

She was just as painfully thin as the Prince, and right now she was walking directly past me.

The Princess and I locked eyes.

─────────────────

[the Sun Rising Pendant][★★★★☆]

[Unique Equipment][Compatibility Rating][45 / 80]

─────────────────

『The Sun's Scion shall guard you with searing protection.

That light shall light your path ahead.』

- In the name of the Sun's Scion, Solau -

─────────────────

[Restores the wearer in proportion to the sunlight essence stored within.]

[When its essence runs dry, it draws strength by absorbing sunlight.]

─────────────────

Unexpected.

The Princess's gear was quite excellent, and her Compatibility Rating wasn't bad either.

So what on earth was the problem....

Why was she wasting away too?

Right then.

- Crackle.

The perfectly ordinary gear interface warped.

─────────────────

[Special: Lunar Eclipse (月蝕)][Set Effect Activated]

[Forcibly triggers when the gear of Selea, sibling goddess, is nearby.]

[Just as the moon swallows the sun, Selea's pressure lets the Moonlight Essence overrun it.]

[The wearer's own vitality is seized along with it and offered up to the Moonlight Essence.]

─────────────────

『Ugh, this glare is really pissing me off...... hey, you want to die?』

『S-Selea, b-but I'm still your older brother....』

『Shut up. Either dim your light or go drop dead. Pick one.』

- From a reunion between Selea and Solau -

─────────────────

...So, to sum it up simply.

Solau and Selea were sibling gods, but if the Moonlight Essence ever ran low,

Selea would bully and lean on her own older brother Solau, draining the wearer's vitality right along with it?

What kind of garbage set effect is this.

Yuna came to mind, unbidden.

Sure, she bled two hundred dollars out of me, but at least she wasn't this vicious about it. Small mercies.

[......?]

Anyway.

That Moonlight Essence Necklace wasn't just wrecking its own wearer.

It looked like it was dragging the Princess's pendant right beside it into ruin too....

As if to prove it, the Princess was wasting away despite having a perfectly decent Compatibility Rating.

In the end, the real culprit was the Moonlight Essence Necklace.

[Essence][3/100]

Essence with a long way left to fill.

If he didn't take that off, the Prince would die.

"......."

By the way, when was Dolores going to take her hand off my mouth.

Breathing was getting a little difficult, and I couldn't just keep sitting there forever, so I slipped my tongue out and pressed it to her palm.

"......?!"

The effect was immediate.

Dolores flinched and started to pull her hand back....

Wait, why isn't she letting go.

- Boom, boom, boom.

Right then.

- Boom, boom, boom.

At the front of the hall, before the dais.

The drumming faded, and the hall slowly quieted.

When the Emperor, seated at the head of the room, raised a light hand, the already-quiet room grew quieter still.

"All of you have journeyed long and hard to be here today."

A low voice rang out across the entire hall.

"Today is a meaningful day, one that celebrates the day my two beloved children came into this world."

The Emperor's gaze turned to the twins standing at his side.

The eyes that looked upon his children were filled with boundless tenderness,

but at their edges lingered a shadow.

The look of a father watching his two children waste away a little more each day, perhaps.

I couldn't begin to imagine how that felt, so I swallowed a private bitterness.

"But let us set formality aside now. Today, if nothing else, all of you should relax and enjoy yourselves."

A fairly short, plain speech.

When the Emperor finished and lightly raised his glass, the nobles throughout the hall all raised theirs in unison.

"To the Empire's glory."

"To the Empire's glory!"

Only then did Dolores finally take her hand off me and answer the toast,

and the banquet had begun.

* * *

Banquets could open all sorts of ways depending on the occasion,

but since it was the twins' birthday, the first order of business was the gift-giving.

Nobles filed up to the dais one by one to present the gifts they'd brought for the twins.

- Slide.

"Snow ginseng, said to grow only in the northern snowfields. Nothing rivals it for restoring vitality, I humbly present it."

- Slide.

"An elixir ground from deep-sea pearls. I've heard it works wonders for managing frail health."

- Slide.

"A fire-essence stone, mined from the Lava Valley on the Inner Tower's 53rd floor. It warms the body and stirs the blood, may it help preserve both Your Highnesses' health."

- Slide.

Watching the gifts pass by one after another without much interest, I suddenly noticed something they all had in common.

They all had the same flavor to them. Expensive tonics, rare medicinal herbs, elixirs supposedly good for the body.

Every single one of them had to do with health.

In a way, they weren't really gifts for the Prince and Princess so much as gifts for the Emperor, offered in the hope that his children would recover.

When I'd asked Yuna, the twins were sixteen.

Not exactly an age where health maintenance should be on anyone's mind.

Maybe that was why the two of them didn't look particularly pleased.

"Hmm."

If someone gave thirteen-year-old me a box of red ginseng, I probably would've made the same face.

I leaned in a little toward Dolores, seated beside me.

"...Dolores, is something wrong with the Prince and Princess?"

Dolores didn't answer right away.

- Slide, slide.

She smoothed a hand through her hair, then slowly nodded.

It seemed to mean yes. Their illness was apparently public knowledge.

And so, naturally, came all these gifts meant to treat it.

Just as I was thinking that, idly watching the dais, the announcer called out the next name.

"House Dolores presents a gift to Their Highnesses."

Wait, was it our turn already?

Dolores rose from her seat and walked to the dais with elegant steps.

What she carried in her hands was something quite different from everything the others had brought.

Not medicine, not a tonic, but two beautifully wrapped books.

"A collection of folktales and adventures from distant lands. I thought Their Highnesses might enjoy them, so I prepared these separately."

Dolores's voice was calm and even.

"...I hope that when things feel stifling, you might at least wander a wider world within these pages."

For a moment, the twins' expressions changed, having clearly been wearing nothing but polite smiles until now.

The Prince especially, his pale face lighting up for the first time, eyes shining.

He adjusted his glasses and opened his mouth.

"Is this by any chance the complete edition of The Voyager of the Great Sea?! The one that's out of print everywhere......!"

"Brother."

The Princess quietly scolded her excited brother.

She meant for him to mind his manners, but a faint smile had already spread across her own lips.

Dolores, as expected.

She really was different.

Rather than trying to impress the Emperor, she'd chosen to give a gift they actually needed.

Seeing them not as sickly royals, but as sixteen-year-old kids.

With the gift-giving ceremony over, the banquet moved into its proper flow.

And not long after, I realized something.

A banquet was, frankly, more boring than I'd expected.

People asked after each other's well-being.

Listened to the orchestra's music, grabbed food off the big table, and ate it half-heartedly.

That was it.

Before long, everyone had split into two groups.

One was the adults of each noble house.

The other was their heirs.

Split between a cluster of peers their own age and a cluster hashing out politics and business.

- Poke.

Just then, Ruby poked me in the side.

"Hey, let's go. Just follow me."

"Ooh."

She seemed to be planning to drag me over to the kids our age.

Pretty reassuring, honestly. Sticking to Maman's side the whole time was starting to feel a little off anyway.

I nodded along obediently, but before I could take a step,

I paused.

Because over in that space with the other kids, the Princess and Prince were seated right in the middle.

There was something I needed to say first.

I leaned toward Dolores again and lowered my voice.

"...Maman, you know I have good eyes, right?"

"Yes, of course."

Her voice was warm, sounding like she wasn't thinking much of it.

"...Well. It's just that the Prince's and Princess's necklaces looked kind of off."

"What do you mean?"

Principle One.

Always report to Dolores first.

I didn't know the first thing about politics or etiquette, so report-first-then-act was the right call for me, not act-first-then-report.

I kept my voice as low as I could and whispered what I'd just seen.

The Prince's necklace looked fine on the surface, but it was actually draining his life force.

And the Prince's necklace was even eating into the Princess's pendant right beside it, slowly killing them both.

The longer my story went on, the more Dolores's expression hardened.

"......."

She wasn't trying to gauge whether I was telling the truth anymore.

I wasn't the kind of kid who made things up for attention,

and she knew that about me all too well by now.

She stayed quiet for a moment.

Ruby, too, stopped tickling my side and whispered.

"I'll go on ahead."

Weighing something with a hardened expression, Dolores finally spoke.

"......There's no way to know right now who gave him that necklace. But it's very likely someone's gift."

"......."

"So it would be difficult to step forward right now and claim it's some cursed thing."

Dolores went on calmly.

"It would mean flatly denying someone's gift to the royal family, and more than that, if it's gear meant to be worn on a royal body... it would surely have been examined again and again by the finest appraisers there are."

"......."

"Claiming a thing like that actually drains life force would rest on pretty thin evidence."

She had a point.

I could see it. No one else could.

Only I knew the truth hidden behind the Origin Script.

If I stepped up carelessly, I'd end up loaded down with nothing but political risk, written off as some crazy kid.

Dolores might get some allowance for it... but I'd get even less.

"...Which is why,"

Dolores looked down at me quietly.

"A setting with a lower bar to clear, say, a conversation just between children, might make it possible."

She chose her words for a moment, then asked quietly.

"Do you have a way to prove it?"

If she was going to ask that,

then of course,

"Of course."

How could I not?

Sorry, but tracing back to the conclusion in the first place was the hard part.

Proving a conclusion I already had was easy.

And something in what she'd just said struck me.

[One more thing]

[Dolores's level of trust in you seems enormous.]

[She's pushing you straight into high society right now.]

Even Yuna's analysis agreed.

Come to think of it, that tracked.

She'd believed and trusted me from start to finish.

[She's judging the odds of you pulling it off as higher than the risk of it going wrong.]

[And even if it does go sideways, she seems confident she can clean it up herself.]

When I nodded with an expression full of confidence,

- Smooch.

Dolores leaned down slightly and pressed a light kiss to my forehead.

"Do your best."

she added, her voice soft.

"And don't worry too much, even if it goes wrong."

She met my eyes.

"Because I'm always right behind you."

......Reassuring.

Honestly, I hadn't felt all that much pressure to begin with, but with that one line,

even what little was left of it disappeared.

I nodded slightly and walked toward Ruby, who was waiting.

* * *

Holding Ruby's hand tight,

heading toward the kids our age, I quietly turned things over in my head.

And Yuna backed me up the whole way through.

Queen of High Society, Kim Yuna.

Yuna swept her gaze across the far side of the hall, where the other kids were.

[Let me lay out the situation first.]

[Not sure about the Prince, but the Princess is acting kind of odd.]

[She's not mixing with the crowd at all, she keeps circling toward the outside.]

'Toward the outside?'

[Yeah, she's brushing off the nobles who come over to greet her with the excuse that she needs to go read the book Dolores gave her, and slipping toward the edges bit by bit.]

[But it's obvious she doesn't actually care much about the book. She doesn't look like she's enjoying any of this.]

Feeling unwell on top of it, of course a noisy crowd at the center wouldn't appeal to her.

[So here's the thing.]

[You should hold Ruby's hand, get the necessary greetings out of the way fast, and drift out toward the edges yourself, nice and natural.]

[Keep a reasonable distance from the Princess, maybe five meters or so?]

[You're the best-looking, most intriguing person in this hall right now, you know?]

Thanks for the compliment.

Even if it's just flattery, I appreciate it.

[But even so, the other nobles won't be able to just walk up to you easily. Want to know why?]

No idea.

[Today's stars of the show are the Prince and Princess. The spotlight can't afford to swing anywhere else.]

[If everyone swarmed some mysterious duchy's handsome little kid, it'd basically be spitting on the guests of honor. So all anyone can do is watch from the sidelines.]

I see.

So the idea was to draw plenty of the Princess's attention,

while standing in a windless zone that no one else could actually approach?

[So....]

"Ruby, I'm gonna take a quick break."

"Okay."

Ruby, too, seemed to have picked up that Dolores had given me some kind of heads-up,

because the moment I spoke, she stepped forward without missing a beat.

"Your Highness, I've got an interesting story about the book... would you like to hear it?"

Skillfully, she pulled every bit of aggro onto herself, dragging the Prince and the cluster of nobles off toward the curtains.

Nice, Ruby.

[Okay, now you.]

[Just stand about five meters ahead of the Princess and keep chewing chocolate.]

[Keep a cool expression. Aloof.]

Not an expression I'd ever made in my life,

but I figured I'd give it a shot.

- Chomp.

With a piece of chocolate in my mouth, I settled indifferently into a chair at the edge of the room.

And kept chewing chocolate, nothing else.

- Chomp, chomp.

...Five minutes passed like that.

My mouth was numb from too much sweetness.

'Yuna, this is actually right, isn't it...?'

[Yeah, keep chewing.]

[Just chocolate, over and over.]

I had to wonder what kind of plan this even was.

Honestly, if I saw a kid chewing nothing but chocolate for five straight minutes, I'd probably say something to them too.

Forget the looks, this was just straight-up bait.

[Whatever you do, don't look at the Princess.]

- Chomp, chomp.

While I was busy demolishing chocolate, I felt a gaze from somewhere far off.

It was Ruby.

She was looking at me with an expression that said, what on earth are you doing?

This was so unfair I could die.

Feeling wronged, I unwrapped another piece of chocolate.

Right around the time I started wondering if I was about to pass out from a blood-sugar spike, right then.

- Chomp.

"...If you keep eating only sweets like that, you might end up collapsing, you know?"

"......."

Someone spoke to me from behind.

A clear, gentle voice.

I didn't need to turn around to know who it was.

Gotcha.

There you are.

"Perfect timing, actually, I was just about to collapse. Good thing you came."

At my glib answer, the Princess blinked, just slightly.

[Oh that's good, that's actually great, but manners manners manners, MIND YOUR MANNERS!!!!!]

Right, fair.

I adjusted my posture naturally, as if it had been part of the greeting all along.

Bending one knee lightly, bowing my head,

"...I'm Lionel, taken in by House Dolores."

I made as polished a show of it as I could, offering my most courteous respects.

The Princess looked down at me for a moment,

- Pfft.

then let out a light laugh.

And then,

"......I've received your greeting well, Lionel."

Having laughed her fill, she slowly let the humor fade from her face.

Then she looked down at me steadily and asked,

"Eating chocolate nonstop for ten whole minutes... there's something you wanted to say, isn't there?"

Her last words

struck me right where it hurt.

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