I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel - Chapter 65

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 65: Your Name (6)

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What, exactly, is darkening?

For starters, it could literally make someone’s appearance turn black.

Beyond that, their personality, thoughts, and values could grow darker and more ruthless.

In the worst cases, they could even become the complete opposite of who they used to be.

And naturally, there was also a basic increase in their abilities.

Simply put, in the worst-case scenario, a being with a worse personality but far greater abilities than the current Daisy could be born.

Daisies supposedly symbolized purity, hope, and peace.

Would a Black Daisy symbolize despair and ruin?

“You said it’d be fine?”

So I immediately glared at Violet and shoved the responsibility onto her.

“I trusted the romance-fantasy heroine!”

“The romance-fantasy heroine is going dark. Who could resist that?”

“That’s a little hard to resist!”

As a romance-fantasy development, it certainly was irresistible.

The problem was that we had to deal with it.

“We can win, right?”

No matter how absurd Daisy’s growth rate was, she still had a long way to go before she could beat me.

But she had the ridiculously broken magic sword once wielded by the Demon King, which Violet herself had acknowledged, on top of darkening. Even I couldn’t be certain anymore.

At least we had the Dogfolk warrior corps on our side...

Though I had seen plenty of awakening events where entire forces were wiped out, so that only made me more uneasy.

“...”

Then Daisy, whose darkening had ended, looked at us.

Her hair and even her eyes had turned black...

“Huh? Why is my hair this color?”

“...”

Apparently surprised herself, she began touching her hair all over with wide eyes.

“Is this a trap?”

“I think it might be.”

But we didn’t let our guard down.

There were plenty of developments where someone acted normal like that, then cut you down the moment you approached.

So...

“Go over there first.”

“M-me?”

“You’re her childhood friend.”

“In this situation, I think a boyfriend would be more suitable...”

I had intended to use Violet as bait first, but Violet caught on and tried to send me instead.

“...Daisy?”

In the end, Violet lost the battle of seniority and cautiously approached Daisy.

Daisy looked at Violet with black eyes and tilted her head.

If she gets stabbed now, the fight starts immediately!

“D-do you hear anything?”

“Anything?”

“Like... ‘Do you desire power?’ or something.”

“Am I supposed to hear that?”

“Not exactly...”

But Daisy didn’t seem to have any intention of stabbing Violet.

Instead, she simply looked at Violet as though Violet was strange for suddenly spouting nonsense.

“Y-your hair suddenly turned black.”

“Yeah.”

“Your eyes turned black too.”

“Really? I couldn’t see those, so I had no idea. Is it because of the sword?”

As she spoke, Daisy drove the sword into the ground.

“Huh?”

The moment she let go of the hilt, Violet’s eyes widened as Daisy returned to normal.

“Does it just change your color?”

“I think so.”

When Daisy picked up the sword again, her hair and eyes were dyed black once more.

“Is it a disguise sword?”

“...There’s no way.”

“Right? The Goddess sealed this sword away, after all. So what does it do?”

“Uh, well...”

Still wary, Violet kept glancing at the blade in Daisy’s hand as she finished explaining the magic sword.

“That’s an incredibly useful ability. Did the Goddess make this sword?”

Violet shook her head with a strange expression.

She had probably barely stopped herself from saying that the Goddess wasn’t capable of making something like that.

“...Usually, if something was sealed away, wouldn’t it be because it was dangerous?”

“In legends, things are sometimes sealed away to keep them from falling into unworthy hands.”

“I-is that so?”

“Hmm. So, if I use this sword, it absorbs my opponent’s mana and lets me use it...”

Daisy’s black eyes lit up brightly.

The problem was that those brightly shining eyes were aimed at me, not Violet.

“Let’s have a match!”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to test it.”

“Violet’s right in front of you.”

“It wouldn’t be fun to fight a mage while holding a sword, would it?”

That was true.

People said similar things in Leon, and during regular sparring matches between the Swordsmanship Club and Magic Club.

...But how did someone who wasn’t even a swordsman know that?

Should I seriously use this opportunity to tempt her into a Department Transfer?

“What if I refuse?”

“...Hmm. Then we’ll say it’s the price of dating two people at once. That you got into a fight with your angry girlfriend.”

“Couldn’t we just break up?”

“There are only a few months left anyway. Once we return to the Academy from Rias, it’ll practically be over.”

“Then I have no choice.”

As someone from Leon, I couldn’t just let a promising young swordswoman go.

She might transfer to the Swordsmanship Department and end up getting tangled up with Prince Ellen...

But people would understand if she wanted to avoid getting involved with Prince Ellen, who’d share classes with her future ex-boyfriend.

Prince Ellen might leave me behind and go to Daisy, but our fake-dating agreement had a condition involving Prince Ellen.

Unless a sudden romance-fantasy development stabbed me in the back, Daisy wouldn’t betray me.

...She really wouldn’t, right?

“I’ll teach you a thing or two.”

“By all means!”

And so, our first lovers’ quarrel began.

* * *

Preparation didn’t take long.

Perhaps it was confidence, but the Dogfolk hadn’t demanded that we surrender our weapons when they brought us into their village.

I took my beloved sword from my waist and poured mana into it.

I gave Daisy the same amount of time to prepare.

“Here I come.”

Once Daisy had finished preparing, I gave the signal.

At the same time Daisy nodded, I stepped forward and lightly swung my sword.

Clang!

Sword met sword.

And in that instant, I understood.

As expected of the Demon King’s sword.

Fuck.

It was ridiculously broken...

“Hmm.”

“Huh...?”

Daisy could use magic too, so she lightly coated her sword in mana.

It was different from a swordsman’s sword aura. It was quite literally just a sword wrapped in mana.

Of course, that alone wasn’t easy.

Ordinary mages were surprisingly bad at handling raw mana itself.

Most mages were geniuses who were highly sensitive to mana.

It was like how everyone knew how to breathe, but couldn’t explain how to do it.

They could easily use mana to cast magic, but many found it difficult to control mana itself.

But it was only mana coating a sword.

It couldn’t have the same density as sword aura.

At best, it would make the blade less likely to be damaged.

That alone was a major advantage in battle, but it was disappointing compared to the amount of mana it consumed.

If it collided with actual sword aura, it would shatter easily.

“My mana...”

Yet Daisy’s mana didn’t break even after colliding with my sword aura.

No, it was my side that broke instead.

The problem was that it had literally shattered.

The part where our mana clashed cracked, and a small piece splintered off.

Daisy’s mana happily devoured it.

Of course, it was an incredibly small amount, small enough to recover immediately.

But I had failed to win where I should have won, and instead taken a loss.

Meanwhile, my opponent had profited in a moment where she should have lost.

It would have been unfair enough if it was due to skill and sense, like Prince Ellen.

But she could do that just by holding a sword.

Still, I honestly couldn’t resent it for the time I had spent living as a swordsman.

In my previous life, there was that nonsense saying that craftsmen shouldn’t blame their tools.

But just the restorative elixirs I had stuffed myself with thanks to the kingdom’s support were things ordinary people could never obtain.

So the first thought I had after exchanging a single blow was, Could I use that too?

Honestly, I felt like I could beat Prince Ellen if I had that magic sword.

If I could borrow it for the three years I had left at the Academy, I was even willing to extend my stint as her boyfriend by a year.

“I think you can go a little harder.”

“You could get hurt.”

“Did you forget who I am?”

I hadn’t.

The Saintess. Someone who could heal nearly any injury herself.

But why did it sound less like she was saying she could heal injuries and more like she was bragging about being tough?

“Then I’ll go a little harder.”

I had received the other party’s consent.

And I wanted to find out exactly how capable that magic sword was.

“Urgh!”

It seemed it couldn’t block pure physical force.

When I put more strength into my strike, Daisy frowned and swung her sword.

The Demon King in the original story probably had a large enough build that it didn’t show.

But with Daisy’s build, she still couldn’t compete in a contest of strength against real swordsmen.

“I said go harder, and you immediately do this?!”

“If you think it’s unfair, transfer to the Swordsmanship Department.”

“Argh!”

Clang!

I was surprised once by the promise she showed in immediately knocking aside my sword.

Then I was surprised again when a larger chunk of mana was stripped away than before.

“What did you do?”

“It’s a secret!”

Clang!

I met the sword flying toward me again.

Once more, my mana was stripped away in a chunk, and the mana within Daisy’s sword began to surge even more fiercely.

Could it be...

“Hmm.”

For the sake of the experiment, I crammed an absurd amount of mana into my sword.

Instead of compressing it as usual, I simply matched the quantity of mana inside Daisy’s sword.

If my guess was right...

“Y-you’re not actually going to swing that, are you?”

As I briefly fell into thought, Daisy seemed startled by the absurd amount of mana in my sword.

Her eyes widened as though she couldn’t believe I would swing it.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

This was where her lack of experience showed.

An experienced swordsman would know that a sword with mana this openly inflated wasn’t very frightening.

Seeing her overwhelmed by the sheer size made my heart beat a little faster.

A talented newbie. How could that possibly not be sexy?

“Then here I come.”

“D-don’t come over here?!”

Sword and sword.

No, mana and mana collided.

The shockwave alone was enough to make the watching Dogfolk warriors exclaim in admiration.

“Hmm...”

But judging by the result alone, it was a complete defeat for me.

Of course, I had confirmed what I expected, so I had achieved my objective.

“That’s seriously broken.”

I wondered whether the amount it could absorb increased by the amount of mana it had absorbed.

Why was that actually true?

At this rate, the more blows we exchanged, the more impossible it would become to win.

“Violet. Throw a spell at her.”

“Huh?”

“Like this?”

“Violet?”

Violet seemed to realize what I wanted and immediately prepared a spell.

Judging by the rather surprised expression on her face, this was probably something the original story hadn’t explained.

“W-wait a minute?!”

Darkened Daisy’s, no, Black Daisy’s eyes widened.

Her expression was full of betrayal.

Somehow, rather than the person who had gone dark, it was her companions who were committing the betrayal.

But experiments were important.

“Fire.”

“N-no, right? Is this because I teased you earlier? I was only teasing! I thought we all knew each other, but new things you didn’t tell me kept coming out! I only felt a little betrayed!”

As spells formed one after another, Daisy unexpectedly began confessing everything.

“Here I go?”

“Hey, you traitor?!”

But the person before her wasn’t her childhood friend Violet.

It was the ruthless Agent Tinky Winky.

In the end, Black Daisy could only shed tears as she watched the spells fly toward her.