WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈
Chapter 20: A New Companion Is Always Welcome (1)
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Slap!
My eyes flew open at the crisp sound.
For a moment, I thought someone had set an alarm for me.
“Who told you to do that?!”
Violet’s furious voice reached me.
I sat up in bed and pulled back the curtain surrounding it a little.
“Oh.”
Daisy’s back came into view. She was clutching her right cheek as if she’d been slapped.
“What if you’d died?!”
Violet glared at Daisy, her eyes brimming with tears.
I woke up to find a tearjerker melodrama playing out before me.
Normally, Daisy would start crying and apologize at this point.
“Who did it first?!”
Thud!
“Ah!”
But Daisy chose to retaliate for the first hit.
Damn, I didn’t get a good look, but wasn’t that a punch rather than a slap?
In this unexpectedly entertaining situation, I missed the popcorn from my previous life.
“Who was the one trying to die for someone else first?! Who are you getting mad at?!”
Daisy snarled, her voice filled with rage.
Come to think of it, she had a point.
Violet had been the one planning to get a hole punched through her stomach.
She’d slapped the person who stopped her from taking the blow herself, so I guess she had it coming when she got punched in the face.
That was what I thought, but Violet apparently disagreed.
Thud!
“I was confident I could dodge it somehow!”
“Khk!”
Violet’s fist jabbed Daisy in the side.
The one bit of mercy was that she had aimed for the side opposite the one Silence had cut, I suppose.
An area-wide healing field had appeared after the Saintess awakening event, but considering how my body still felt, we all needed more recovery.
Normally, you aimed for weak spots to win. Was this proof Violet still had a conscience?
“Bullshit!”
In battle, though, caring about conscience only led to defeat.
With tears in her eyes, Daisy howled and threw a punch.
She hadn’t hit an injured spot, but it was still a pretty heavy blow.
Daisy endured it and immediately threw a counterpunch!
“Urgh!”
Daisy’s fist struck Violet square in the jaw.
A picture-perfect uppercut!
Caught off guard by the unexpected counterattack, Violet let out a dying cry and fell straight backward.
“Holy shit.”
It was truly regrettable.
Why had someone with talent for the Swordsmanship Department gone to the Magic Department?
Should I recommend a transfer right away?
It felt like I had discovered a rough gem who could easily beat the Little Sword Emperor bare-handed with a little polishing.
Though even if they fought now, the Little Sword Emperor wouldn’t be able to beat Daisy.
Even Ellen, supposedly the strongest person in this world, couldn’t beat Daisy. What could anyone do?
“You’re weaker than me, so stop acting up.”
Daisy snarled down at the unconscious Violet, victorious.
Then her expression crumpled, and tears began to fall.
“Who said you could take care of me?”
The sight of her clutching the fallen Violet and crying her heart out made her look like a tragic heroine.
After watching that clean brawl, though, all I saw was a pair of crazy bitches.
“Whew.”
The fun seemed to be over, so I carefully closed the curtain without being noticed and lay back down.
Then I closed my eyes and thought.
“…Wasn’t this a private room?”
I had been assigned a private room at the academy.
Why were those lunatics having a one-on-one fight in someone else’s hospital room?
The moment I was about to pull back the curtain beside my bed again out of sheer disbelief...
“…Oh, when did you wake up?”
Daisy, who had opened the curtain first, looked down at me awkwardly.
Then I noticed the fist she had pulled back on the other side.
“Just now.”
I couldn’t tell her I had woken up earlier and watched everything.
If I did, Daisy’s fist, hanging in that awkward position, looked like it might come down on me.
“Uh, um. Well...”
Daisy blinked for a moment as she considered what to say, then her fist began to glow.
What was this, a Holy Punch?
Had she realized I was a witness and decided to silence me?
“I awakened healing powers.”
Thankfully, that didn’t seem to be the case.
Honestly, I had been about five times more nervous than when I fought the Little Sword Emperor.
“Oh, okay.”
“When else would I use them?”
Her fist opened, and warmth began to flow from her outstretched palm, wrapping around my body.
“I heard you stayed behind and fought until the end.”
“It’s my job.”
Being the royal family’s sandbag wasn’t just about getting beaten up by a prince.
I was also obligated to take attacks aimed at the royal family in their place.
“I heard about that too. You’re Ellen’s guard knight, right?”
“Something like that. The problem is that I’m weaker than the person I’m protecting.”
It felt a little wrong to think this during a Goddess’s miracle, but it somehow reminded me of physical therapy in my previous life.
My body went pleasantly limp beneath the warm light, while her soft voice drifted over me.
As expected of a romance-fantasy heroine.
She had really mastered the art of making people melt.
“Thank you.”
Her warm voice came just as the healing light faded.
“……”
This had all been wonderful so far.
“……?”
Daisy, noticing that I had suddenly gone quiet, followed my gaze.
“Ah.”
Violet was lying in one corner, neatly stretched out in a straight line.
“W-Well! We came together earlier, but Adam still hadn’t woken up! So we were waiting, and she was pretty badly hurt, you know? So she said she was just going to sleep for a bit!”
“Ah, I see.”
Maybe Daisy was too embarrassed to honestly say she had sent Violet flying with one uppercut.
The flustered excuse was one thing, but who slept like that?
“W-Well, I’m done here, so!”
Perhaps Daisy thought the same thing. She hurriedly left the room.
“…At least take care of her.”
She left her childhood friend, who looked half-dead, behind.
* * *
“S-Sor...”
The two of us were alone in the room.
Violet woke up, avoided my gaze, and began to apologize...
“You crazy bastard, this is your fault!”
Or so I thought. Apparently, she was challenging me to a fight.
What the hell was with her?
She had gotten her ass kicked by Daisy too. Did she really think she could win?
“I had everything planned out! Would it kill you to cooperate until we got through the academy?!”
Her voice trembled as she shouted, on the verge of tears. I was dumbfounded.
“No, you’re the one who screwed up your own plan.”
“That’s true, but still!”
I might have landed the finishing blow, but Violet had been the one to go full Jujutsu Kaisen against Silence.
From what I had seen, it looked impossible to hold Silence back without understanding sorcery.
If he used power that could even incapacitate the Head Professor of the Magic Department, escaping the academy would have been easy for Silence.
Silence, the Mage Killer.
Despite his name, he was a deadly presence for swordsmen too.
That was probably why he remained active until the latter half of the story despite Ellen and the Little Sword Emperor being together.
Fine, I admitted it.
For a romance fantasy, this setting was a real fucking gem.
Which was why...
“So? What?”
Tap. Tap.
I patted the spot beside me on the bed, signaling for her to sit.
“What are you going to do?”
“We need to talk.”
I had heard the general story, but I needed more details.
The more information I had, the better.
“W-What if I say no?”
She looked like she would answer if I pressed her one more time, but I still hadn’t recovered from my mental exhaustion.
So I got out of bed and walked toward the door.
Then...
Click.
“H-Hey, what are you doing?”
I locked the door first, just in case.
What was I doing?
“Torture.”
“Huh?”
She had challenged me to a fight, so there was no need to hold back.
Had she seen The Attorney too?
“Say hello. This is our kingdom’s legal counsel, Attorney Volt.”
Crackle.
A brief spark flashed, and Violet’s face went pale.
“H-Hey!”
Yep, a ten-million-viewer blockbuster.
She must have seen it too.
* * *
“…That’s roughly what’s going to happen.”
With a crackle, Violet gave up resisting.
Honestly, this could have been resolved if I talked to her gently like she was some difficult kid.
But I was too tired to be an emotional dumping ground.
“I see.”
After hearing the general story, I could understand why she had been so obsessed with the original novel.
“The continent is doomed.”
Apparently, around the time they graduated from the academy, the Demon Realm would explode and warp space itself.
That would expand the Demon Realm, which had bordered only part of the Empire, until it reached several kingdoms, ours among them.
“It’s going to be doomed.”
Violet grumbled with her lips sticking out in a sulk.
Crackle.
“Eek!”
Of course, Attorney Volt quickly dealt with that mouth.
“There really isn’t any way to stop it?”
“No. It’s treated like a natural disaster.”
If Dark Mages had opened a dimensional gate and caused it, then we could stop it by beating the shit out of the Dark Mages.
But the explosion of the Demon Realm was supposedly a natural-disaster-like phenomenon caused by the instability of this world.
Something that would happen no matter what, even if you were a Possessor.
The problem was that three or four kingdoms would be destroyed in the process.
Magical beasts would fill the void left behind, shaking the entire continent.
Then Demonkin would appear, turning the continent into a complete mess. That was the story.
“I thought I’d read a decent amount of romance fantasy, but I don’t remember a story like this.”
“I haven’t read that much either, but it’s not like there aren’t any.”
So there were stories like that.
Romance fantasy was a terrifying world.
“If it’s romance, they should just date.”
“They still nailed the romance routes while fighting.”
“What’s the point? You said they can’t do anything, and the Demon King takes her away.”
“…I’ve prepared for that, so don’t worry.”
I could give her that much.
She had trained Daisy pretty well.
“And you die in that process too?”
“In the original novel.”
“Can’t you just give up?”
From what I had heard, it seemed like she wouldn’t die as long as she stopped following Daisy.
“Daisy? It’s already too late for that.”
Violet answered with a meaningless little laugh, and my eyes narrowed.
“Is this a GL swerve?”
“Cut the crap. We’re just platonic friends.”
They had taken blades for each other, so I wasn’t fully convinced. Still, after remembering the fight I had just witnessed, I could believe it.
“Then are you on Team Essid?”
“……How did you know?”
“I told you, I’ve read some romance fantasy.”
I could see her subtly praising Imperial Prince Essid.
It was obvious who she was rooting for.
“So you’re rooting for Prince Ellen?”
“Are you insane? We’re blocking that at the royal level. Dale is too.”
“They’ve always been like that.”
“Speaking of which, what happens now?”
Silence seemed to have a much bigger role later in the story than I expected.
“What do you think? We’re truly screwed.”
She said that, but she actually looked relieved.
“I don’t know anymore. All my plans are ruined.”
“You didn’t have a second plan?”
“I did. A second, third, fourth, and fifth plan. But none of those plans included this stuff, okay?”
As if lamenting, Violet listed off her plans.
There were strategies only someone with their head in the clouds would devise, though they seemed possible because this was romance fantasy.
There were also pretty realistic plans, or plans that accounted for several possible failures.
“But I poured in nearly ten years’ worth of cursed energy. I’m completely out of capital now.”
The sorcery was a one-use spell that had taken nearly ten years to prepare.
If Violet wanted to use an ability at that level again, it would take another ten years.
“You’re seriously useless.”
“Yeah. So from now on, I’ll just eat popcorn and watch from the front row of this romance fantasy.”
“You said you’d die.”
“I don’t know. It’s all your fault, so you take responsibility.”
It was nonsense, but it gave me a pretty good idea.
Like a true romance-fantasy heroine’s friend, Violet was letting her feelings get the better of her.
It wouldn’t hurt to indulge her a little.
“Fine, I’ll take responsibility.”
“……Really?”
She was full of suspicion.
“Well, there’s a slight issue since I belong to the kingdom, but...”
If I indulged that sentimental side of hers, chatted with her about this and that, laughed along, and sympathized with her...
“Say hello. This is our Commander.”
“Hi! You must be our new agent!”
“…Fuck.”
And just like that, we had a new field agent.
Footnotes:
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