WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈
Chapter 27: The Academy Is Shutting Down (5)
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It was an unfamiliar ceiling.
What the fuck?
Did I get reincarnated into another world?
“Oh, you’re awake?”
When I woke up, an unfamiliar woman was smiling at me.
What was this? Had I really been reincarnated into another world?
“Ah, you haven’t seen me before, have you? I’m the new healer. I’m also in charge of the academy infirmary.”
A few pieces of information about the academy came to mind.
After the terrorist attack, the academy had brought in a lot of new staff.
Violet had said some were agents dispatched from the Empire.
She had also said that a few belonged to forces hostile to the Empire and had infiltrated the academy.
“I see.”
The moment I saw someone suspicious, that information naturally surfaced in my mind.
At the same time, I realized I was still in a romance-fantasy world.
What a shame.
If this weren’t such a hardcore apocalypse story, it could’ve been better than a romance-fantasy world.
“The Sword Emperor said you’ll need to rest for a while.”
“Ah.”
As I was thinking that, the suspicious woman who had introduced herself as the infirmary teacher brought me back to my senses.
“I see.”
I had wondered why I was here.
Come to think of it, it was all the Sword Emperor’s fault.
No, that old man.
I thought he was just going to teach me a little, but right before I collapsed, the only thing he hadn’t used was aura. He was basically throwing serious punches.
Was this what being the Sword Emperor meant? It felt like he’d realized I was born to be a punching bag and was happily beating the crap out of me.
Terrifying. He wouldn’t get addicted and call me over again later, would he?
“Still, it’s good that you woke up quickly. There’s a faculty meeting soon. I was debating whether I should attend, but you both seem fine, so I suppose I can go.”
I didn’t know the person in charge of the infirmary was a professor too.
I nodded at the infirmary professor, who asked with smiling eyes whether anything hurt, then lay back down.
Judging from the light coming through the window, it wasn’t evening yet.
It wasn’t even a regular meeting day, so I could legally play hooky for a bit.
That choice turned out to be a mistake.
“Adam Smith.”
A cold voice pierced my ear.
It didn’t sound like the speaker held a grudge against me. It just seemed to be naturally that cold.
“I thought we would meet someday. I got lucky.”
All sorts of thoughts flashed through my head.
Who was this? Could she be a villain from the romance fantasy?
This was the kind of world where it wouldn’t be strange for someone to send an assassin after me for helping defeat Silence.
I opened my eyes and looked at the person speaking to me.
“...”
Three thoughts came to mind the moment I saw her.
First, thankfully, this was someone whose face I knew. Literally only her face.
Second, in a sense, she really was a romance-fantasy villain.
Third, even if she truly set her mind on killing me, though that would never happen, there was absolutely no way I would die.
After all.
“...Are you all right?”
“It hurts... a little.”
“I don’t think it’s only a little.”
“Honestly... it hurts quite a lot.”
The person who had spoken to me was seriously injured enough to need my bed immediately.
* * *
What was a romance fantasy’s main villain?
Revolutionary groups or Dark Mages who showed up at the academy whenever they felt like it and caused chaos?
Or villains like Silence, who had tragic backstories and threatened the romance-fantasy male leads at every turn?
Or perhaps the Demon King, who appeared as the final boss in the part Violet had read?
None of them.
The revolutionary groups and Dark Mages who regularly came to the academy to cause trouble were pitiful plot devices meant to raise the heroine’s affection levels with the male leads.
A main villain like Silence, with an immense backstory, was a stepping stone for the meteoric rise of the male lead tied to that story.
As for the Demon King, who appeared to be the final boss, he was simply a newly introduced male lead candidate.
That was right.
No matter how much this fantasy gave off an apocalypse vibe, the foundation of romance fantasy was romance, not fantasy.
In that sense, the true main villain of a romance fantasy was not an enemy of the male leads, who would disappear eventually anyway.
It was the heroine’s enemy!
Put simply, it was the villainess.
And in that sense, the seriously injured patient before me was the true main villain of the academy arc.
She was none other than Lorellia Jeyka, the fiancée of Essid Eleras, the imperial prince who could be called the academy arc’s main male lead.
She was someone I should have been extremely wary of.
She was the eldest daughter of House Jeyka, the Empire’s most prestigious noble family, and a young lady with enormous influence in imperial high society.
Yet even beneath her uniform, bandages could be seen in several places.
There were also small injuries where the bandages did not cover her.
Her eyes still had spirit, but the deep dark circles beneath them, so unfitting for a ducal young lady, inspired a protective instinct despite her cold face and voice.
According to Violet, she was also fundamentally a kind person, unlike most high nobles.
After doing a little digging, I found that she used her enormous influence in high society to... teach noble young ladies the joy of volunteering.
The more I looked into it, the more I wondered if this was really right.
Some worthless fools were born into imperial and royal families, had their heads turned by women, and were busy learning flower arrangement.
Yet Lorellia, the villainess who was supposed to be the romance fantasy’s main villain, had gathered her followers and founded a volunteer club last year, despite being a first-year student.
She had negotiated with the Church of Light officials stationed at the academy and somehow managed to establish an orphanage near the academy in cooperation with the Church.
She had not just built it either. She was personally involved in running it.
Given her nature, she probably would not wash her hands of it after graduating from the academy.
The more I learned, the less I understood.
This was a villainess?
Maybe if she became corrupted later, but hadn’t Violet certified that she remained kind until the end?
“Did you have some sort of accident?”
Knowing all that, I had no choice but to treat Lorellia respectfully as a senior.
My lord was one of Daisy’s evil men, who would steal the fiancé of such a wonderful person!
“I’ve been conducting some magical experiments lately. I made a mistake.”
I almost cried.
If you heard it normally, you would think she had been in an accident while experimenting with magic.
But hadn’t Violet said it?
“Her fiancé, Prince Essid, has practically abandoned her. But instead of sending an assassin, she wants to compete fairly with her own ability.”
A ducal young lady had her fiancé stolen by the daughter of a baron nobody had even heard of.
Instead of sending assassins, she was working to make him look at her again through her own abilities.
Even though she had overexerted herself in the process and suffered injuries this severe, she was quietly receiving treatment in a corner of the infirmary, without so much as a rumor spreading through the academy.
“It seems like it was quite a serious accident. I had no idea.”
“Hmm. I asked them to keep it quiet. The academy is already in turmoil. It would be terrible if the students became anxious because of me.”
It felt like light shone from her self-conscious smile.
If the light Daisy had shown last time was an active skill, then Senior Lorellia’s halo felt like a passive skill.
Was this what it meant when someone radiated light from their very being?
I really was experiencing all sorts of things after coming to this romance-fantasy world.
“By the way, you said earlier that you wanted to meet me.”
“Ah, yes. There are some things I wanted to ask you.”
Maybe it was because I had met the virtuous person I had only heard about.
Unless it was kingdom-classified information, I felt like I could answer anything.
Honestly, I liked her even more than Violet, another person who had been possessed like me.
Personally, I might even like her more than Prince Ellen.
Was this why people said one should live kindly?
Maybe because I myself lived like a shallow materialist, I was instinctively weak against people like her, like an evil spirit being exorcised by a priest.
“Um...”
But.
Lorellia closed her eyes briefly and considered her question. The question she finally asked went beyond anything I had expected.
“Would you become my spy?”
It was a question truly befitting a villainess.
* * *
“...That happened.”
“I’ve seen this before. This is straight out of an extra story, the part where the protagonist gets a heroine.”
“Stop reading so much romance fantasy.”
When I said I needed time to think, Senior Lorellia accepted it as though it were only natural.
So I urgently summoned Violet, the person who had read the original work and a romance-fantasy expert.
I told her everything that had happened in the infirmary today.
And the first thing out of her mouth was nonsense.
“No, I’m telling you, this really has that vibe!”
“I’m trying to stop the prince from having an international romance. Why would I go and have one myself?”
Even if I did date, I would return to the kingdom and do it there.
That was how I had planned my life.
“Life never goes according to plan.”
“If you keep talking nonsense during work hours, I’ll cut your pay.”
“Ah, no! I bought a staff from the Magic Tower on an installment plan this time!”
This bastard had not even worked that long.
Yet she was already overspending.
“No, I really needed it! It was a planned purchase!”
“That’s what all car-poor people say.”
“No, we burned through all my curse magic last time. The restrictions I agreed to when I learned it were time and accumulation. To use it properly, I need at least until next year. The academy won’t wait that long.”
It sounded less like villains were the enemy and more like the academy was.
But come to think of it, the academy was constantly breached and the students had to solve everything, so if we were assigning blame, it really was the academy’s fault.
“So?”
“I’m still near the top among the Magic Department freshmen. If I get some help from good equipment, I can pull my weight.”
She was saying this level of spending was necessary to deal with future incidents.
“Hmm, accepted.”
Violet would suffer in my place during summer break, so I decided to let the pay cut slide this once.
“Then back to the point. Why would she ask me to become a spy?”
How could such a kind young lady suddenly start acting like a villainess?
I wondered whether this was another consequence of the original story falling apart.
“Ah, that happened in the original.”
Violet answered with an expression like it was nothing.
“Oh.”
I naturally put my hand on Violet’s head.
“Oh, are you going to praise me?”
“Die.”
“Aaah, that hurts!”
“It’s supposed to hurt, you bastard!”
I immediately gave her an iron claw.
“Ugh... I thought my head was splitting open.”
Violet rolled around on the floor, holding her head and looking tearful as soon as I released her, but I did not feel sorry in the slightest.
“You should have told me this immediately.”
This bastard had failed to report such important information in advance.
“No!”
I wondered whether I really needed to cut her pay to teach her a lesson, but Violet sprang to her feet with an utterly wronged expression and shouted.
“I said it happened in the original! I never said it happened exactly like the original!”
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
To summarize, there really was a scene in the original where Senior Lorellia offered someone a job as a spy.
“But in that scene, it was you?”
“Of course! A character like you never existed in the original!”
Come to think of it, that was true.
Violet had said there was originally no supporting character by Prince Ellen’s side.
“Lorellia asking someone to be a spy was originally my role.”
The original protagonist of that scene was Violet, the romance-fantasy heroine’s friend.
In other words, it was a scene where the romance-fantasy villainess tempted the romance-fantasy heroine’s childhood friend!
“Why?”
“It was basically a narrative trick by the author to make Lorellia look bad.”
The scene made it seem as though she was tempting the heroine’s closest companion with money in order to put the heroine in danger.
“But it’s nothing much. She only asks what Daisy is good at, what she’s confident in, and what she isn’t confident in.”
She was simply trying to understand her romantic rival.
“Then why not just ask directly? She’s asking me to be a spy and creating room for misunderstandings.”
“She probably thinks it’s a really bad thing to do.”
Based on the expert’s judgment that there would be no problem, I told Senior Lorellia the next day that I would become her spy.
“Thank you. I knew I could trust you.”
At her smile, full of trust, I said awkwardly,
“We only met yesterday. What exactly do you trust me over?”
“I know a fair bit about you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. For example...”
I had only said it casually, but what started spilling out of her mouth exceeded all expectations.
“...”
Had three minutes passed? Cold sweat began streaming down my back.
What was this? I had not even used SK-II in my previous life.
Yet all my information had been stolen before I knew it, like my phone carrier’s SIM data had been breached.
Author’s Note
Apparently, there were things I needed to register in advance if I wanted to sign up for Plus.
I never looked into it because I did not think I would actually keep serializing this.
When I tried to register yesterday, it said I needed a copy of my bankbook, so I searched for it and only barely managed to find it this morning...
Still, I’m glad the approval came through faster than expected.
Footnotes:
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