WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈
Chapter 37: Side Quest (1)
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The continent was turned upside down.
The reforms that had begun in the Holy Kingdom were spreading throughout the world.
More importantly, the miracles that had occurred there spread from person to person until they became a myth in their own right.
Their impact even reached the Leon Kingdom, far from the Holy Kingdom.
Rumors spread faster there than in any other country.
After all...
“The Saintess swung a sword of light so huge it reached the sky?”
“That’s fucking cool...”
“Should I switch to being a Holy Knight even now?”
“Can’t mana do something like that?”
The Saintess had swung a thick pillar of light formed from divine power, large enough to reach the sky.
For the people of Leon, known as the kingdom of knights, it was the sort of tale that set their hearts ablaze.
Even knights with a considerable amount of mana struggled to create sword aura longer than three meters.
Nobody had seen it firsthand, but they said it took someone at the level of a Sword Master to make one close to ten meters long.
Yet she had made something as thick as a tower, one that reached all the way to the sky!
In Leon, where people revered swords as much as, no, more than the Goddess herself, the rumor that the Saintess’s large, beautiful sword had restored order to the Holy Kingdom was bound to make people’s hearts race.
And it was not just ordinary commoners who thought that way.
Leon’s nobles, who revered swords even more than commoners, felt the same way. So did the royal family.
Thanks to that...
“I think we can stop now...”
“This isn’t enough!”
“Goddammit...”
I was getting put through hell too.
“Here I come, Adam!”
“Please stop coming at me...”
Even Violet’s account, from someone who had been there in person, no, who had watched it right beside Daisy and the Pope, sounded like a scene from mythology.
Then the Holy Kingdom’s bards embellished it.
Bards from neighboring countries heard the tale and added a little more flavor.
Then bards from the next country over, and the country after that...
By the time exaggeration had piled on exaggeration and reached distant Leon, one mythic scene had become an entire book’s worth of legends.
After hearing the rumor, Prince Ellen decided on his own that he would become a man worthy of Daisy, then started beating up an innocent bystander, namely me.
From morning until evening, as though there were not enough hours in the day!
Hey, even a punching bag bursts if you keep hitting it!
“This is your fault, Adam!”
I was suffering through this miserable work life, yet the chairman’s son beating me up was somehow blaming me.
I was disgusted and annoyed enough to retire... Well, not retire.
I’d apply for leave later.
There was a high chance it would end up like Senior Lucia’s resignation letter, but I had to try at least once.
“What did I do?”
Of course, I couldn’t show that openly.
A good employee had to smile even in front of a superior who forced unfair demands on them.
“If I’d gone too, I could’ve fought alongside them!”
“What kind of crazy thing are you saying...?”
Prince Ellen’s next words made my honest feelings slip out before I could stop them.
The Holy Kingdom was different from ordinary nations, but it was still recognized as one.
Which meant the revolution that had taken place there was essentially a civil war.
If royalty from another country got involved in a civil war, things would become unbelievably complicated.
“Everyone went except me!”
Apparently, Prince Ellen envied the friends who had done that insane thing.
“Those bastards are crazy bastards...”
Since I’d already said that much, I added one more honest remark.
Anyone in their right mind would take my side.
Those bastards were crazy about women...
No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t understand the romance-fantasy brain.
“...”
“What? They say you can curse the king when he isn’t looking. Can’t I talk behind my academy friends’ backs?”
Ellen narrowed his eyes and looked at me awkwardly, so I said it confidently.
But he shook his head as though that wasn’t what he meant. After a long silence, he carefully spoke.
“You don’t do that when I’m not around too... right?”
“...”
“Right?”
“...”
Ellen... Despite being a romance-fantasy male lead, he’d become far too perceptive.
* * *
“Emergency.”
I came running after being summoned without warning, only for the Commander to say something unremarkable.
This was supposed to be my long-awaited punching bag maintenance time.
“That happens all the time.”
In the past, it would have meant an urgent situation.
After entering the academy, though, it had become something I heard constantly.
When I made my displeasure clear, the Commander hesitated before adding one more word.
“Super emergency.”
The Commander clearly had a reason for summoning me out of nowhere.
He even used the phrase I normally used to convey the seriousness of an emergency.
Super emergency. That was a real emergency.
“What is it?”
“The king has lost his mind.”
“His Majesty?”
That was definitely a huge problem.
But wasn’t he still too young for dementia?
“Yeah. Do you know what that crazy bastard said?”
I knew that the Commander and the king had a relationship much like mine and Ellen’s.
Still, a king was a king, so the Commander usually treated him with respect.
It seemed the king had truly done something spectacularly stupid.
The Commander was calling him a crazy bastard right off the bat.
“No.”
“That crazy bastard Dike says he wants to meet the Saintess.”
Dike.
It was the sort of name that might belong to a couple of first-year academy students, but it was hard to find in Leon.
Normally, nobody was crazy enough to use the same name as their country’s king.
“Ah...”
An Instructor’s work went through the Commander to Her Majesty the Queen.
And naturally, the king learned everything the queen learned.
In other words, His Majesty knew about all the romance-fantasy dating drama centered around the Saintess.
Including the fact that Prince Ellen was involved.
“Did Her Majesty perhaps block the information?”
So I wondered if the queen had kept her son’s idiocy from him.
“No. He knows everything.”
I’d rather he hadn’t known. Apparently, that wasn’t the case.
“He knows all that and still says he wants to see her?”
“It feels more like he wants to support them.”
This was a super emergency.
My greatest justification was that the kingdom’s policy did not want Prince Ellen and Daisy to end up together.
If the king, the kingdom’s leader, began supporting them, I would have to support their relationship too.
And that meant I would have to participate in that damned romance-fantasy plot...
“Fortunately, Her Majesty stopped him, but the atmosphere is unusual.”
It was an unexpected variable.
The impact Daisy’s large, beautiful pillar of light had on Leon went far beyond my expectations.
“Even among us and the Intelligence Bureau, people are saying that someone like the Saintess wouldn’t be a bad match.”
“Even after seeing all the men swarming around her?”
“Those men are the problem. Since there’s no overwhelming rival, some think it’s worth trying with what we know about our prince.”
“...”
They weren’t wrong.
According to Tinky Winky, an avid reader, the original novel had gone on for hundreds of chapters without a main male lead.
Its main appeal was stringing readers along with several male leads’ turn-based battles, so all the male leads who had appeared possessed only middling power backed by extraordinary talent.
Since they had yet to fully awaken that talent, outsiders would see them all as unimpressive.
Even though Daisy was from the Empire, she had no appeal when she was merely some backwater noble’s daughter.
After awakening as the Saintess, she had become a better match than before, but people still wondered why their prince needed to get involved in that mess while taking on the risks associated with religion.
Then she had conquered that religion, and now there were people losing their minds after hearing she had used an insanely powerful sword of light that reached the sky.
“You don’t think so too, Commander?”
“I trust your judgment. Unless you’ve changed, you still feel the same way, right?”
“Yes. Daisy is dangerous.”
One might wonder how dangerous a single soldier, no, Saintess could be.
But before Daisy was the Saintess, she was the heroine of a romance-fantasy novel.
The center of every unfair disaster in this world.
She was steadily growing stronger.
Her growth had even made Violet, who had once been a lofty original-story purist, say things like, “Daisy’s going to beat the Demon King to death...”
Still!
“We don’t need to become enemies, but we don’t need to take her into our fold either.”
Even aside from the fact that she was a romance-fantasy heroine, Daisy had already become a poisoned chalice.
There was still no reason to get close to her.
“Right. Then I’ll try to stop Dike first.”
Perhaps it was because I had worked so hard, but the Commander nodded with a look of complete trust.
Honestly, I was touched.
At a subordinate’s single word, he was willing to overturn the will of the king, the nation’s highest authority.
“So you should continue as usual.”
“Yes.”
“Handle Prince Ellen well.”
“Ah...”
The moment the Commander finished speaking, Senior Lucia’s excited voice came through the communication orb.
“Adam! Prince Ellen is looking for you!”
Her voice was unusually cheerful, and I decided that once my schedule cleared, I would definitely have a spar with Princess Hestia.
* * *
The end of the two-month break was right around the corner.
During that time, long or short depending on how one looked at it, two swords had been destroyed.
Prince Ellen’s quiet revenge had been intense enough to break two swords sturdily forged by dwarves.
But it was over now.
“You’re dead, Academy.”
It was called revenge, but more accurately, it had been training for growth.
Even if left alone, he was destined to become the strongest person in the world when it came to swordsmanship.
Now he had swung his sword as though undergoing closed-door training, and his growth was enough to make even the Sword Master Commander click his tongue.
Even I, who had endured as a professional punching bag since childhood, was about to burst.
The academy would now have to handle the monster that had been forged, not just me.
Come at him, Academy.
Come at him, you academy terrorists!
Ellen Leon, a walking tactical nuke, is coming!
“We’ll be departing.”
“Right. Suffer for another three and a half years.”
“It was fun. Too bad it’s over.”
“Please just go.”
“You’ll be back for winter break anyway, right?”
“Hey! They say Imperial wine is famous. Bring us some as gifts next time.”
With the Commander and the seniors at the royal castle seeing us off, I climbed into the carriage headed for the academy.
Some time later, Prince Ellen arrived after saying goodbye to his family.
The carriage immediately departed and left the royal castle.
Day 1.
We traveled quickly along the well-paved royal roads.
Day 2.
We arrived at a nearby territory as scheduled.
The lord welcomed us, and we were able to spend a comfortable day there.
Day 3.
Unexpected rain forced us to spend the night outdoors.
Still, this was the journey of a prince from a great power, and the convenient magical artifacts let us spend the day in relative comfort.
Then came Day 4.
The rain from the previous day had turned the roads to mud, slowing us down a little.
But we had rested for a day before continuing.
Unless something happened, we could reach the next territory with plenty of time to spare.
Yes, unless something happened.
“Wow...”
But something did happen.
And incredibly enough...
“Bandits?”
The moment I stepped out of the carriage, I checked the flag attached to it.
The rain hadn’t been particularly heavy yesterday, but it might have poured while we slept and blown the carriage flag away.
“It’s there.”
The kingdom’s flag was fluttering in the wind.
A massive greatsword planted between two crossed swords.
Unlike other countries, it had no animal on it. Just three swords.
Anyone could tell it was the flag of the Leon Kingdom.
And bandits had blocked the road despite seeing that?
Were they stupid enough not to recognize the kingdom’s flag, or were they genuinely insane?
Or perhaps...
“We have committed a crime deserving death.”
The bandits clearly had circumstances of their own.
I wanted to say, Then die.
“What is the matter?”
But because Prince Ellen had already accepted the side quest, I had no choice but to hold back my tears and proceed with the forced quest.
Celebratory Illustration 1. Daisy Holding a Rose, drawn by the illustrator who drew the horribly bad cover.
2. The Author’s Pick. Daisy Holding Crown Daisy.
A Word from the Author
Important
Please vote in the comments.
1. Rose Daisy is better.
2. What are you talking about? Daisy should obviously be holding crown daisy.
It’s a battle of pride between the illustrator and the author.
Please decide who has no taste.
P.S.
I received an Excellence Award in the contest.
First, I would like to thank the readers who made it possible for me to receive this award.
Honestly, when I started the contest, I wasn’t expecting to win anything.
The story began as the kind of novel that puts its author through an extreme job.
Every time my ranking went up, I kept wondering, Why is my ranking going up?!
I’m not exactly a complete newcomer. I had been writing novels in the pay-per-chapter market.
After rewriting manuscripts for over a year, getting one submission rejected, and working on something else, I was frustrated from writing into the void for so long.
Then I saw the NovelPia contest, brought out a story I’d only written three chapters of and shoved into storage, and entered on impulse.
I wanted to see comments appearing.
I already had an exclusive contract with a publisher, so I couldn’t enter the contest without permission.
I thought there was no way they’d allow it unless they were crazy, so I was preparing a declaration that I was leaving the day before the contest judging.
But...
The vice president of the publishing company, who was my editor, said they didn’t want to take away an author’s opportunity and told me to proceed. They said that even though they thought I had entered the work I was preparing for them into the contest.
Thanks to that, I deleted the declaration I had written in advance.
So I set the contest serialization to five days a week and hadn’t even applied for Plus, which caused the accident of not appearing in the rankings from the very first day of judging...
Anyway, I wrote around three thousand characters for that declaration, and even after leaving, I had planned to serialize for free three or four times a week.
Instead, I unexpectedly won an award in the contest, so now I prepare chapters in the morning, prepare for another contest in the afternoon, and serialize on NovelPia in the evening.
I truly write all day long...
Even if I win the contest, the basic five-days-a-week schedule probably won’t change.
Still, there is one thing I can say confidently. Since I began formally serializing, I have never failed to finish a work.
The previous time was also the first time I had ever taken a hiatus during my life as an author.
I won’t abandon this without finishing it, so please enjoy it without worry.
P.S. 2.
Please vote!
Footnotes:
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