WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

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◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈

Chapter 47: The Whole World Is Against Me (2)

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Things were hard enough already, but now even the Pope was trying to screw me over.

Of course, she probably didn't mean any harm.

I'd never even seen the Pope's face, let alone heard her voice.

To her, Daisy was both the savior who had saved her in the Holy Kingdom and the companion who would lead the Holy Kingdom alongside her from now on.

She was probably just excited by the romantic news of someone like that and wanted to help.

Wasn't the Pope supposed to be in her early teens?

By the standards of my previous life, she was basically an elementary schooler.

It wasn't strange for her to have fantasies.

"So you want me to tell her it's fake?"

"You can contact her."

"I can, but..."

All we had to do was let her know the relationship was fake, and everything would be resolved.

So I gave an order to Tinky Winky, who had a direct line to the Pope and was so close to becoming a Cardinal that it wouldn't have been strange if it happened at any moment.

"Th-that's difficult! Telling a ten-year-old that a relationship is fake! Wouldn't that shatter her dreams and fantasies?"

Tinky Winky was refusing my order.

"What's the real reason?"

"I'm scared that if I contact her, I'll really have to become a Cardinal! Please save me!"

Last time, she had said she was on the verge of becoming a Cardinal. It seemed she had managed to run away without seeing it through.

Which meant the claws of the Holy Kingdom could reach Tinky Winky at any moment.

Honestly, considering all the snowballs Violet had set rolling, I could've thought, Why should I care?

Unlike Violet, though, Tinky Winky was a fine agent I needed to keep using for a long, long time.

"You can handle it without contacting her directly, right?"

"I can do it!"

As her superior, it was best for me to generously take a step back here.

"Do a good job."

"Yes, sir!"

Managing subordinates was part of a boss's job too.

* * *

-Right. I heard you've become the Saintess's lover.

"There's a reason for it."

-You're sacrificing yourself for the Kingdom in the prince's place. You truly are the finest Instructor.

"There's a reason for it!"

This man was grinning like he was having the time of his life. Yet he was the King's personal guard, famous throughout the Kingdom for his solemnity.

Was Leon doomed too?

-Right. Even at the start of the semester, you kept shouting, "Emergency!" at every little thing. There must be a reason you didn't say anything this time until I contacted you first.

I sighed as I watched the Commander speak with a sly smile.

Then I said, "There was an Imperial plot."

-...Did Dark Mages attack again already?

"Not Dark Mages, but apparently the Revolutionary Army and those bastards pushing some kind of restoration movement, the ones who came with Silence at the start of the first semester, are coming."

-It sounds like you know what you're talking about this time. Well, the Empire isn't run by idiots. If they were breached that badly, they surely won't be breached again.

No, they were scheduled to be breached again.

I couldn't exactly say that, so I pointed out the Commander's mistake.

"And the Empire is about to be plotted against. It isn't the Empire's plot."

-This is suddenly getting very interesting.

A terrorist group was supposed to attack the Academy, yet I was treating it lightly. The Commander seemed to have realized just how serious the situation was.

The smile vanished from his face, and he began listening seriously.

"The Empire has started spreading all kinds of rumors about the Saintess and me."

-The Empire? ...Hmm. I see. Are they starting to fear the Saintess and the Imperial Prince getting together, like we did? But why? The Saintess is an Imperial noble. There's no reason to stop it... Ah. I see. If she gets together with him, and Prince Essid starts getting ambitious, then the upcoming battle for the throne will become a bloodbath...

He was writing an entire scenario of a bloody Imperial succession war filled with palace schemes all by himself.

"It was at the Holy Kingdom's request."

Reality always surpassed imagination.

-The Holy Kingdom? The Holy Kingdom asked the Empire to spread false rumors about you and the Saintess? Why? Have they still not cleaned up the Cardinal faction?

"No. Apparently, it was the Pope's request."

-The Pope? That ten-year-old is already trying to get rid of the Saintess and seize complete control of the Holy Kingdom?!

The Commander stared in shock, his mouth hanging open. I narrowed my eyes and asked, "Commander. When His Majesty ascended the throne, was there some kind of bloody conflict?"

-No? He was the eldest son, and his every stat overwhelmed the other royals. The others had thought since childhood that Dike would obviously become King, so they just lived freely.

Come to think of it, Leon royals received swords from childhood.

They all trained to the level of knights.

Still, not every King of Leon had been a Sword Master.

No, there had actually been fewer Sword Master Kings.

Naturally.

A King's ability to govern a nation mattered more than martial strength.

It was fine if they were personally capable. It was also fine if they were good at making use of talented people.

But martial strength wasn't part of that.

Many fantasy novels showed kings leading armies from the front, but realistically, that was insane.

Of course, King Théoden's cavalry charge in The Lord of the Rings was still an incredible scene.

But the King died doing that...

This wasn't even an age of war, and even if it were, there was no reason for the King of a nation like Leon to stand at the very front.

That was why a Sword Master becoming King meant they were either a genius in every field or...

"For a moment, I suspected His Majesty had ascended the throne through force."

It sounded like he had beaten everyone into submission and stolen the throne.

-...Isn't that a little harsh?

The Commander looked dumbfounded.

It was only because this was between the Commander and me that I could say something like that. If he wanted to, he could have me disappeared for it.

"Looking at His Majesty's recent behavior..."

-Um...

The Commander fell silent at my next words.

Even to him, the current King looked... young if he put it nicely, and like an immature brat if he didn't.

"And after hearing what you said, how could I not wonder whether something like that happened in our country too?"

For once, the Commander answered with a wronged look.

-No, think about it honestly. Why would the Pope of the Holy Kingdom work with the Empire to slander you and the Saintess? Isn't my reasoning reasonable?

What a paranoid bastard.

"Do you know how old the Pope is?"

-She's an orphan, so no one knows her exact age. They estimate she's between ten and twelve. Officially, they settled on eleven, the middle point.

I hadn't needed to know that much.

An eleven-year-old girl, likely, who had been an orphan and suffered nothing but pressure and abuse from the Cardinals.

No wonder Tinky Winky was weak around the Pope.

If you had a heart, you couldn't help but feel for someone with all those tragic settings stacked on top of each other.

"To turn a child like that into someone who gets rid of the Saintess through schemes..."

I looked at the Commander the way I'd recently started looking at Violet.

Like I was staring at trash that couldn't even be recycled.

-Then what's the reason?!

Stung by my gaze, the Commander flailed and shouted.

At least he still had a conscience. That was a relief.

"She says that if the Saintess gets married at the Academy, she wants to officiate the wedding."

-What?

"She wants to officiate if the Saintess gets married at the Academy."

He frowned for a long time and shook his head from side to side.

After staring at the ceiling and groaning for a while, the Commander let out a sigh deep enough to make the ground sink, then asked with an expression of complete incomprehension.

-Why?

"Didn't you say she was an orphan who had known nothing but abuse, not even the slightest warmth?"

-Right. Wouldn't someone normally grow twisted from that?

Normally, there was a high chance they would.

But this world was a romance fantasy.

As Violet would say, it was extremely tasty when a child who had suffered in their youth became bright through salvation.

"Contrary to what you think, the world can be warmer than that."

Like the title of a romance-fantasy novel, a child who had grown up suffering in a parched land...

And yet, she had bloomed into a pure, beautiful flower.

"But Commander..."

How could he look at such a pure child's wish through the lens of politics and schemes?

My gaze grew even colder, and the Commander finally raised the white flag.

-I was wrong...

"Be more careful next time."

This was for the Pope, who still held on to a pure heart.

It definitely wasn't because I didn't like the Commander's smug grin at the start of our meeting.

...Really.

* * *

The more you dug into Violet, the more of a hopeless loser she became.

But Tinky Winky, Violet's codename, was truly a capable agent.

"This actually worked."

Three days after our Tinky Winky stepped forward to resolve things, the strange rumors circulating through the Academy gradually disappeared. Stories about the Imperial Founding Festival began filling the Academy instead.

Of course, Founding Day was right around the corner, so that probably contributed.

Still, if the Empire and Holy Kingdom had made a move, rumors about Daisy and me connected to the Founding Festival would probably have been circulating through the Academy.

At any rate, the romance-fantasy male leads shifted their attention toward the Founding Festival.

The hostile looks from before didn't disappear... but they had decreased by around twenty percent.

"What am I supposed to do?"

That let me have a chance to speak with Prince Ellen over a meal for the first time in a while.

"What do you mean, what?"

Ellen looked serious as he sought advice about what he should do at the Imperial Founding Festival, so I answered without a moment's thought.

"You shouldn't do anything."

"What?"

His expression said he couldn't believe it, and my common sense packed up and left.

This bastard was seriously wearing the handle off my millstone.

What was a prince from another country supposed to do at the Empire's Founding Festival?

"Your Highness. Did you attend the Leon Kingdom's Founding Festival this year?"

"We were in the middle of the first semester... I was at the Academy then."

"Then did you even think about the Kingdom on its Founding Day?"

"......"

Prince Ellen pursed his lips and looked away.

Of course he hadn't.

He had probably been too busy thinking about how to get even a little closer to Daisy than worrying about a Kingdom event.

Though I couldn't talk.

Rather than the Kingdom's Founding Festival, I'd been worrying about how to manage these damn romance-fantasy brats and make sure the Academy's automatic-door security system actually did its job.

"But Essid and Asran seem to have pretty big roles. Even Gerard and Hedrick seem busy!"

I'm the only one with nothing to do!

Ellen silently cried out like that. I narrowed my eyes and answered, "Go play with the magic... no, Arwen."

"...What's going on?!"

Ellen's voice was filled with shock.

"Why?"

"No, you always tell me not to get friendly with those magic hacks. And you even called Arwen by name!"

Was that really so shocking?

...Considering how I normally acted, it made sense that it was.

If I called the Flame-Slinger by name, he would probably freak out like this too.

"People with nothing to do should hang out together. Is that so strange?"

Naturally, Dale, like Leon, wasn't supposed to do anything at the Empire's Founding Festival either.

So the two princes weren't the main characters of this Imperial Founding Festival episode.

Surprisingly, the center of it was Hedrick, someone who had barely even been mentioned until now.

If my life were a novel, readers would probably be asking, Who the hell was this guy again?

Around the time Prince Ellen joined the Flower Arrangement Club, he had only been mentioned by name. He was the heir to Ilias, one of the Three Major Merchant Houses of the Continent, a merchant house with enormous influence across the continent and a foundation of the Empire itself.

Naturally, someone like that was busy even as a student.

That was why he hadn't built much of a connection with the romance-fantasy heroine.

But he was supposedly the Cheetah who would start running from this Imperial Founding Festival.

"So don't do anything. Just watch."

"I know it can't be helped. No, wait. Why are you talking like Adam's sitting this out? Don't tell me you're going on a date with Daisy!!!"

"I have plans with Aryn. Un... Sen... um... friend."

For a moment, I wondered whether to call him Uncle or senior.

But his official setting was, unbelievably, a first-year student.

In other words, a friend.

So when I answered that way,

"Oh, that older guy... your friend?"

Aryn's face was fairly well known around the Academy, so even Prince Ellen had no choice but to nod as he accepted the sudden cognitive dissonance.

Thank you, Uncle Aryn.

That's your first time being useful this season!

Well, what I was actually going to do with Uncle Aryn was suffer like hell at the Founding Festival, where security was about to become as open as an automatic door. Compared to that, it wasn't much help.

Still, the Empire had helped me.

Let's think of it positively.

"Adam, you'll have to go on a date with me at the Founding Festival!"

Forget that.

No matter how I thought about it, these damn Imperials were no help to my life.

Author's Note

I'm a little... very late.

But the chapter is longer!

P.S. 1. I learned something recently. Apparently, the explanation behind the famous "I can't believe it" scene from Veteran isn't true.

They say it was meant to show a character with such a rotten personality that no one could stop him even when he said nonsense. I thought it was real...

P.S. 2. This week's first hiatus will be Thursday the 5th. The reason is the dentist again.

But it's almost over now...

P.S. 3. After this chapter goes up, two illustrations will be added. Chapters 6 and 36.

The illustrator asked if they hadn't already drawn all the important scenes for everyone, so I'm cracking the whip and telling them to draw everyday scenes too.

On top of that, this guy says that suddenly having illustrations in the middle of a novel might break immersion, so it wouldn't be good.

Please vote for, "Illustrations are always good," versus, "They break immersion, so only put them in important scenes."

If "Illustrations are always good" gets more votes, I'll review them diligently with a slave trader's mindset so I can work the illustrator like a dog until the day before he enlists.

Footnotes:

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