WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈
Chapter 56: Don't Try to Understand (1)
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#1 Codename Tinky Winky.
The ant. Today too. Works hard.
Violet walked across the rooftops, biting into a familiar chicken skewer she had bought from a festival stall.
She had cast a perception-hindering spell, so no one noticed her.
“Hmm, it should be about time for something to go off.”
As if waiting for Violet to say it, a sudden loud noise rang through the Academy.
Boom!
Fireworks going off during a festival was nothing unusual.
But the festival’s highlight, the fireworks display, wouldn’t be happening in broad daylight.
It was obvious what had happened.
A terrorist attack at the Academy.
Still.
“They really are good at their jobs!”
Violet knew where the fireworks would go off, so she thought of her childhood friend and boss, who should have been out on a date, and raised her mana.
Normally, fires should have been raging throughout the Academy.
Instead, the firepower had been reduced to the level of fireworks.
And there was only one location.
It was an Ilias storage warehouse, belonging to one of the Three Major Merchant Houses of the Continent and the focus of this story arc.
“We can’t go hungry during the founding anniversary.”
Since ancient times, the standard way to defeat an enemy with superior numbers had been to cut off their supplies.
The Ilias warehouses at the Academy held more food and goods than usual in preparation for the Founding Festival.
If this place burned down, the Academy would go hungry for quite a while.
Of course, if a terrorist attack occurred at the Academy, the Empire would immediately send support.
The enemy knew that too, which was why they planned to keep intercepting the Empire’s aid and isolate the Academy.
The protagonist party would then move to resolve the situation.
That was the story this time.
“The original story’s already gone to the dogs. I’m not about to work like a dog!”
The original story had already been thoroughly wrecked, so Violet had no intention of going hungry just to preserve it.
No, she had planned to change the original story ever since Silence became a turning point.
So she got to work without hesitation.
She used magic to put out the fire that had started in the warehouse after the explosion.
She calmed the panicked employees who rushed outside by flaunting her connection to Hedrick.
She explained the situation to Hedrick when he rushed to the scene shortly afterward.
Then she invoked Daisy to force his cooperation and used her knowledge of the original story, magic, and a little sorcery to identify and subdue the Revolutionary Army members among the suspicious employees.
Now, once Daisy arrived...
With Hedrick’s help, they could capture the terrorists who had infiltrated the places where Ilias distributed goods.
“...”
Right. Once Daisy came.
Why wasn’t she here yet?
...No, when the hell was she coming?!
“...”
“...”
“...”
Under the gazes of everyone around her, including Hedrick, Violet broke out in a cold sweat and prayed for her childhood friend to arrive as quickly as possible.
* * *
I had been worried about bringing the Pope along, but that concern quickly disappeared.
“Haap!”
Thud.
With that shout, a grown man struck by Daisy’s straight punch flew through the air.
“Run!”
The self-proclaimed Revolutionary Army remnants who had approached us with hostile intentions began to flee.
“Arrow of wind, pierce my enemy.”
Unfortunately, our Saintess was a dual, no, triple-class character.
Saintess, Fist King, and mage.
Her current department was the Magic Department, after all.
The wind gathering in her hand became arrows and flew toward the fleeing enemies.
Those struck by the merciless arrows rolled across the ground, screaming.
“As expected of the Saintess!”
The Pope beside us lit up with admiration.
It was certainly impressive, but I had no idea what part of that looked saintly.
Still, it meant I had nothing to do.
I could stay right beside the Pope.
“Take them away.”
“Yes.”
The Imperial agents Uncle Aryn had sent began hauling off the Revolutionary Army members.
The Empire had worked hard, running itself ragged.
But their results were worse than what Daisy and I achieved just by going on a date.
Uncle Aryn had quickly decided that instead of wasting time, he should attach Imperial agents to our side and have them collect Dark Mages.
These weren’t Dark Mages, but we could hand these guys over instead.
“Seriously, these bastards show up everywhere we go?”
“This isn’t staged? How does that make any sense?”
“You saw how it happened. The Saintess and Pope’s side isn’t making moves either. Yet Revolutionary Army bastards pop out wherever the Saintess or Pope goes.”
“This isn’t some Leon conspiracy?”
“How could it not be?”
Did these people seriously think I was the mastermind behind everything?
Then again, I was an ordinary person too.
If I had seen something like this happen right in front of me, I would have been suspicious.
If a foreign country’s shadow who somehow had an absurd amount of information kept bringing in Dark Mages that I struggled to catch even one of, I would have arrested them on the spot.
“Then, next!”
As Daisy announced our next destination, I quietly stepped closer to her.
“Isn’t it about time for your appointment with Violet?”
“It is, but isn’t it weird to go somewhere else at a time like this?”
She looked like she was asking how she could leave when the Academy was so dangerous.
Unfortunately, sightseeing at the festival with Violet probably wouldn’t be much different from going on a date with me.
No, Violet had said that was the main story.
There would probably be even more enemies over there.
“Don’t worry and go. Ah, but take the Pope with you.”
“You’re really treating the Pope like baggage.”
Daisy grumbled under her breath, then frowned deeply and asked.
“Is this really a date?”
“Have you ever been on one?”
“I told you, you’re my first.”
“Then this is what a date is.”
A youthful romance didn’t suit fake lovers.
We were just business partners, working in exchange for what we received.
...Though we were doing far more work than expected.
“You really know how to kill the mood.”
Daisy let out a long sigh and looked up at me with a face full of dissatisfaction.
“Still, since it got interrupted halfway through, you’ll have to make it up to me later.”
“That comes with an extra charge. Are you okay with that?”
“Ugh.”
She stomped the ground for no reason, and each kick left a deep dent in the earth. Fortunately, she still seemed full of energy.
“Then good luck.”
“...You too.”
I sent off Daisy and the Pope, who somehow both looked reluctant to leave, then followed the remaining agent in response to Uncle Aryn’s summons.
Both Daisy and I were about to start working in earnest.
* * *
“Fine. Tell me the plan. I’ll follow all of it.”
The moment we met, Uncle Aryn pledged absolute obedience to me.
“Can an Imperial agent say that to an agent from another country?”
I asked if this was really okay.
“What can we do otherwise? Agents are about results, not process. You know that.”
In short, no matter how hard they worked, nothing was getting done. To solve the incident, they were willing to do anything.
“That’s an excellent attitude.”
People like us didn’t last long if we had too much ego.
You had to think of it all as work if you wanted to let things roll off your back.
Think about it.
If I didn’t see this as work, I was just trash who was two-timing.
But if it was work, I could call it getting something out of the Saintess and an Imperial duke’s daughter.
“To work for a long time, this much is the bare minimum.”
Uncle Aryn really did seem like an experienced agent worthy of still being assigned to the Academy at his age.
...Though claiming to be nineteen at that age was a bit of an error.
“I’ll tell you the secret.”
So I decided to share the secret of this world with Uncle Aryn.
“Just like that?”
Uncle Aryn looked flustered.
“It’s not that difficult.”
I calmly told him the truth of this world.
It really wasn’t difficult at all.
“The Flower Arrangement Club members. Especially Daisy.”
At the name I mentioned, Uncle Aryn nodded with a serious expression.
One of them was the prince he served, after all.
“Right.”
“Just hang around them, and pretty much everything will turn up.”
“...What will?”
“Everything.”
He looked like he didn’t understand, but I was genuinely telling him everything.
Daisy was this world’s Pirate King’s treasure.
Everything in this romance-fantasy world was there!
“If you didn’t want to tell me, you shouldn’t have said anything.”
Uncle Aryn twisted his expression and complained, but I felt wronged.
“I really did tell you everything.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Honestly, if you didn’t know this world was a romance fantasy, it was impossible to believe.
Still, people like us relied on proof, not faith.
“Follow me.”
As Violet had told me beforehand, I took Uncle Aryn around the Ilias warehouses.
Then I spotted Violet running around busily. Following her naturally led us to Daisy.
“What are they doing?”
Uncle Aryn asked for an explanation, so I briefly told him what Violet had told me.
“I heard they caught some people hiding in Ilias who were talking about revolution and restoring the old kingdom.”
Uncle Aryn looked blank for a moment, then screamed in horror.
“Why are they in Ilias?!”
Revolutionary Army remnants were embedded in one of the Three Major Merchant Houses of the Continent.
The problems that would cause were no small matter.
Still.
“But it makes sense for Dark Mages to be openly wandering around the Academy?”
“...Come to think of it, I guess it could happen.”
Seeing him immediately accept that made me feel a little sorry for him.
“But ordinary people can do that? Find people like them... Huh?”
Uncle Aryn tilted his head as he watched Daisy and Violet immediately spot and beat down the people in hiding.
“Wh-what is this?”
It was pitiful that he couldn’t understand, but adjusting to a romance-fantasy world always took time.
“Don’t think of it as beginner’s luck. Look closely. Watch what happens over there.”
“...”
At my serious expression, Uncle Aryn nodded and followed behind the romance-fantasy group.
“They fell over there, and there’s a magic circle made by a Dark Mage where they fell?”
“Don’t try to understand.”
He was horrified by coincidences that made no sense.
“That part makes sense. There’s only Ilias’s weak heir and two female students, so of course they’d rush them like that!”
“Didn’t you turn on your eavesdropping spell?”
“Ah, I forgot.”
“Turn it on. They knew Daisy was there when they came.”
“...Where does that confidence come from?”
For a moment, he frowned at the moths flying toward Daisy, the Saintess who had single-handedly set the Holy Kingdom right, as though suicide were their hobby.
Then, after the Revolutionary Army members who only had numbers and had never received proper combat training were defeated, five Dark Mages appeared less than thirty minutes later.
“Why aren’t those bastards appearing all at once? Why do they keep coming separately?”
Uncle Aryn kept tilting his head with an expression that showed his common sense had completely collapsed.
As he stared at Daisy effortlessly stomping the Dark Mages with a face that said he couldn’t understand any of this, I told him the truth of this world.
“I told you not to try to understand.”
Just feel it.
This romance-fantasy world.
Author’s Note
Novelpia called me in tomorrow, so I’ll be taking a break.
Also, I’m slowly organizing and posting answers for the Q&A.
Footnotes:
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