WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈
Chapter 54: Two-Timing (3)
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Rumors really did spread fast.
“I heard you got yourself a lover!”
“It’s fake.”
“You always say it’s fake!”
During the festival, I usually ate alone in the evenings.
But Prince Ellen, who was supposed to be stuck with Princess Hestia, had heard the rumor, escaped, and come looking for me.
“Did you leave the princess behind?”
“Yeah. She seemed pretty shocked. Said you’d become promiscuous after coming to the Empire.”
“What did I do to earn that kind of reputation?”
“You’re two-timing.”
“…”
He wasn’t wrong, but it still felt incredibly unfair.
Then something unexpected happened.
“Maybe that assessment is right after all.”
“…What did you do already?!”
“I didn’t do anything.”
It might have sounded misleading, but I hadn’t lived promiscuously enough for him to jump to that conclusion.
“I meant the Empire is promiscuous. The rumor that I’m two-timing has spread, but people are much quieter about it than I expected.”
At first, I wondered if the rumor simply hadn’t spread yet. But if it had reached Prince Ellen while he was stuck with Princess Hestia, there was no way Academy students, who loved gossip, hadn’t heard it.
“Hmm. That’s true.”
And I could tell from the reaction of someone I met the next morning.
“I heard you broke up with Daisy.”
“…I haven’t heard that I’ve been fired as her fake boyfriend yet.”
Prince Essid, whom I ran into by chance, wore an expression similar to Prince Ellen’s yesterday.
The corners of his lips were trembling so hard that he looked ready to break into a huge grin at any moment.
“…I feel a little strange saying this, but does Senior Lorellia know she’s still your fiancée?”
Yet he looked that happy.
Wasn’t that a little messed up?
“I heard she knows it’s going to be broken off anyway.”
Apparently, they had already sorted everything out on their end.
“Even so, I’m still the pitiful man whose fiancée was stolen. Couldn’t you leave at least one woman for this poor man?”
“I’ll give your fiancée back.”
“I’ll decline.”
The way he said that and smiled so refreshingly made me understand why this bastard was a romance-fantasy male lead.
Not just any male lead, either. He was the main candidate leading the charge in the Academy arc, the first part of the story.
There was just one small problem.
No, a huge one.
“So you don’t need to worry too much. The Imperial Family and House Jeyka are preparing everything.”
“…?”
I could roughly guess what they were preparing.
That was why I was too scared to ask.
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
At my words, the prince burst out laughing.
“Just as Ellen said. You’re an interesting fellow.”
Prince Essid patted my shoulder, told me we should meet often, then walked away.
Watching his back, I realized that just as I supported the Little Sword Emperor, Prince Essid had begun supporting me.
* * *
“…”
The moment I arrived at the meeting place, the temperature around me seemed to drop sharply.
At the center of it all stood Daisy alone, and I couldn’t help swallowing dryly.
“Welcome.”
Normally, the place should have been crowded, but most people were reading the room and avoiding us.
“Hello.”
As I returned her greeting, my gaze naturally fell on her right hand.
Several Dark Mages had been knocked out by that fist just the other day.
“So you cheated on me?”
Her smiling expression and the content of her words did not match at all.
“There’s been a misunderstanding.”
“I heard. You said it was fake, right?”
I had sent Tinky Winky ahead of time to pass along the information.
Still, Daisy didn’t seem particularly bothered by that part.
“Cheating so openly, the day after one date and the day before another.”
Honestly, even if it was a fake relationship, it did make me look like trash.
But!
“This is unfair.”
All that had happened was Senior Lorellia stabbed me in the back.
“I hear everyone who cheats says that.”
“Violet told you that, didn’t she?”
“That’s right. How did you know… Don’t tell me you cheated with Violet too?!”
Daisy reacted in horror, so I gave her an even stronger look of horror in return.
“Unless the sky splits open, that will never happen.”
“So it’s possible if the sky splits open!”
I had meant that it would absolutely never happen, but now that I thought about it, splitting the sky did seem possible in a fantasy world.
There was even a legend that the Sword Emperor had split the sky!
“…Then pray diligently to the Goddess so it doesn’t split.”
“You’ve decided to be shameless about it!”
“Then dump me if it bothers you.”
I had apologized out of basic decency, but honestly, I would benefit if she dumped me.
Since I was openly shameless about it, Daisy’s momentum gradually weakened.
“So this is why they say the person who confesses first loses. It’s certainly a valuable experience!”
“I hope your next lover confesses first.”
“Wow. Look at you trying to cut me off the second you find a new woman… No chance. Don’t forget that you need to properly play your role until break starts.”
“Hmph.”
Daisy snorted and walked ahead, and I immediately followed behind her.
Unlike our last date, this one was entirely a course where I had to follow her lead.
That gave me two major concerns.
First, with the power of a romance-fantasy heroine, anything could happen.
Second, I had to deal with the Pope, the little brat silently glaring at me and the reason for this date.
* * *
The Pope.
In my previous life, I remembered it as the brutal job of being the lifelong head mod of Earth’s biggest religion.
Once elected, you couldn’t retire until the moment you died.
The last Pope I remembered had supposedly been stuck with the job because they were among the youngest Cardinals.
But even the youngest had been an old man in my previous life. In this world, they had put a ten-year-old kid in charge, as if they were determined to squeeze every last drop out of the premise.
“Your Holiness, this is him.”
She probably meant, This is my fake boyfriend.
Still, it sounded like she was saying, This is the bastard who cheated on me.
“So this is him?”
The Pope probably meant, So this is the Saintess’s fake boyfriend.
But it sounded like, So this is the bastard dating the Saintess while two-timing her!
…Or perhaps that was really what the Pope thought.
Seeing the Pope glare at me so intensely it felt hot, maybe I wasn’t imagining it. Maybe I just wanted it to be my imagination.
“Hello. I’m Adam Smith, from the Leon Kingdom.”
What else could I do?
The Pope was someone in a position comparable to the ruler of an entire nation.
Their usual influence on the continent was arguably greater than even our king’s.
It would be best to make a good impression on someone like that.
“Leon… I see.”
I felt like I had already screwed up.
The Pope silently stared at me for a long time, and I could feel overwhelming pressure from that gaze.
“Perhaps I should visit Leon someday.”
Was the ominous feeling just my imagination?
They wouldn’t visit the Leon Kingdom, have talks with the royal family, then casually say, “By the way, a man named Adam from here abandoned the Saintess and started two-timing her…” right?
…Just in case, it seemed best to deploy Tinky Winky ahead of time.
“It would be an honor.”
“…”
With Daisy leading the way, we toured the Academy and watched Founding Festival events.
“This is delicious.”
“Yes. It’s food my lover introduced me to the other day.”
“I see!”
“But now, with another woman too…”
“Hmm…”
At first, we sampled food offered by stallholders desperate to win the Pope’s favor while Daisy took subtle digs at me.
“I’ve watched the Holy Knights train often, but I’ve never seen them hold a tournament like this!”
“The person who just won is in the same club as me. He’s the grandson of the famous Sword Emperor, a swordsman who inherited the name Little Sword Emperor.”
“Not just anyone can win thirty-two matches in a row!”
We watched Asran’s match, since he was still in the swordsmanship tournament.
“One. Two. Three.”
“Go, Violet!”
“Go!”
The moment I learned that the magic tournament was included in the date course, I sent Tinky Winky to divert both their attention.
“Saintess, there’s a strange person over there.”
“Ah, those are people called Dark Mages. You can easily see them at Founding Festival events.”
“I see…?”
Before the Pope could realize something was strange, Daisy threw a punch.
Seeing that, I felt that the date had finally begun in earnest.
* * *
Jack, a Dark Mage who had infiltrated the Imperial Academy, couldn’t help cursing.
“These bastards are slacking off.”
No Dark Mage ever did their job properly.
The reason Jack thought so was simple.
“Not here either. Not here either. Seriously, there isn’t a single place where the magic circles were properly inscribed.”
To outsiders, all Dark Mages looked the same.
But Dark Mages were divided into factions depending on the magic they used, their ideology, and their reasons for becoming Dark Mages.
The Dark Mage faction Jack belonged to, Dawn, was a group that sought the normalization of dark magic.
Magic is magic. Other Magic Towers performed human experiments while pretending they didn’t!
So why were only Dark Mages being oppressed?!
This was the Empire’s oppression and conspiracy, carried out by those who claimed to be the rulers of the continent!
…That was the faction’s position, which naturally meant many of its members were connected to people who called themselves revolutionaries or organizations with anti-Empire leanings.
Several powerful groups among them had joined forces and planned to make their appearance at this Founding Festival.
As the opening signal for that movement, Jack planned to start a massive fire at the Academy, called the Empire’s future.
But.
“None here either?”
At the appointed time, Jack tried to activate the spell, but there was no response.
So Jack checked whether the magic circles had been damaged somewhere…
Yet the magic circles simply did not exist anywhere they were supposed to be.
No wonder the spell wouldn’t activate!
“Did they all get arrested or something?!”
Jack had come close to the truth, but soon shook their head.
“That makes no sense.”
It would have been one thing if the group had failed to infiltrate the Academy. But before the operation began, Jack had personally confirmed how many people had successfully infiltrated it.
Thirteen Dark Mages.
The Empire’s surveillance had been stronger than expected, so more than ten comrades had been slain outside the Academy.
But thanks to their sacrifice, nearly half had successfully infiltrated the Academy. With the event already in full swing and so many outsiders around, finding Dark Mages operating discreetly was nearly impossible.
They had even prepared things so the spell could activate with only half the magic circles inscribed, in case of an emergency.
Yet it still wouldn’t activate.
Either the infiltrated Dark Mages had deliberately slacked off, or something had happened to them.
“Damn it, we’re supposed to be the opening act.”
The Inferno Magic Circles prepared throughout the Academy were meant to explode.
The Academy becoming a sea of flames was meant to be the signal of revolution.
Those flames would swallow the people celebrating the Empire’s founding and announce the Empire’s end.
But… why?!
“Ah, here it is. Right here~”
At that moment, a light female voice rang out.
It sounded like someone telling a friend that they had found a good spot for flower viewing and saved it in advance.
“Ah, there’s another one?”
A man’s voice came from not far away.
It sounded like a boyfriend rushing over because his lover had saved them a spot.
“Ford, Krek?!”
By the time Jack saw their comrades hanging like corpses from the man’s hands and realized what was happening…
“How many comrades do you have, and where are they?”
The monster who had taken down Jack’s comrades was already right in front of them.
Author’s Note
I’ve been reading the Q&A questions.
Is this the Novelpia average…?
P.S. 1
I think the next illustration will feature Kim Lorel.
The illustrator was drawing her chest large, so I said I’d add a description of Lorellia being flat-chested if they didn’t send the illustration quickly. They declared they were escaping slavery, so I couldn’t stop them.
Footnotes:
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