WeTried Translations
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 523: Side Story: About Blue (1)
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It seemed she liked summer.
The thought came to her out of nowhere.
Merlin liked summer. She might have been a woman with a complicated past, but she didn't need a special reason to like summer. She simply liked the season, for no particular reason.
Thick forests. Blue-green hues. A bright blue sky.
She liked those colors.
Sudden showers. The sound of raindrops beating against leaves. The sound of them breaking apart on blades of grass. The uneven patter as they bounced off things.
She liked those sounds.
That was why she liked summer.
Plip, pitter-patter-patter.
One morning, dark beneath heavy rain clouds, Merlin slowly sat up, woken by the rain. With only her upper body raised, she looked outside. Leaning against the windowsill, she reached out and opened the window.
Shhhhhhh...
Rain was pouring down. Perhaps it was because they had built their cabin in a corner of the forest, but the raindrops bouncing off the trees made quite a charming sight. She had been looking outside for a while when, perhaps woken by her movements, the person lying beside her slowly sat up.
“You're awake?”
“I felt you moving beside me.”
“Did I wake you?”
“Well, it was about time I woke up anyway.”
Najin gave a small smile. Scratching his messy hair, he got up and headed to the kitchen. Before long, he returned with a teacup in each hand. Merlin smiled brightly and accepted the cup he offered her.
“Thanks.”
“You'll catch a cold like that. Put some clothes on.”
“What's the point? I'll just be taking them off again soon.”
Rather than answer that Transcendents couldn't catch colds, Merlin smiled mischievously and ran a hand over her shoulder. Her hand moved lower. From her shoulder to her collarbone, from her collarbone to her chest, over her chest to her navel, and farther down.
She stroked her body as if showing off the marks left on it.
Bite marks, handprints, flushed skin.
Pointing out the marks that hadn't faded, or rather, the marks that were renewed every day before they had a chance to fade, Merlin playfully stuck out her tongue. While Najin scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment, she patted the space beside her.
“Come sit here,” she said.
“Let's watch the rain.”
Resting her head on Najin's shoulder once he sat down, Merlin watched the rain falling on the forest for a long time.
After a while, she glanced at him.
Merlin gave Najin a suggestive look. Wanting to tease her a little, Najin sipped his tea and pretended not to notice. Eventually, unable to wait any longer, Merlin spoke.
“Aren't you going to?”
“You said we should watch the rain.”
“I'm done watching.”
“I'd like to watch a little longer.”
“...You.”
“All right, all right.”
Thinking she might actually sulk if he kept this up, Najin stopped teasing her. He reached out and smoothed back her messy hair. After brushing away the strands stuck to her face and pushing back her bangs, he gave her a brief kiss on the forehead.
“Not that.”
As if that wasn't enough for her, Merlin reached out with both arms and wrapped them around Najin's neck. Then she pulled him toward her and flopped onto the bed. As though he had no choice, Najin let her pull him down with her.
Shhhhhhh.
The shower that had begun early that morning continued until around noon.
2.
There was an expression, “pastoral days.”
It came from pastoral songs, the songs of shepherds, and described a life spent humming while working the fields or tending livestock. Merlin rather liked the expression “pastoral days.”
After all, it was so far removed from her own life.
What had her life been like until now? Her hometown had burned to the ground, and when she ventured out into the world, she found it was a complete mess. The world had been far too harsh for her to make a living through farming. To survive in a world like that, she had needed to pick up a sword before a plow.
‘Battle, battle, and more battle.’
Always battle.
To her, daily life had only ever been a brief rest between battles. It had never truly been an everyday routine. It was merely a chance to catch her breath before the battle she would have to fight tomorrow or the day after.
Looking back now, she really had worked hard.
She had hunted down corrupt people and beaten the hell out of them. Along the way, she had caught a few bastards who had made contracts with demons and dunked them in water. Then she had started noticing demons, so she had beaten the hell out of them too. After that came witches, fallen Stars, the herald of the end...
She had done all of it with the single goal of cleaning up the world a little.
It had truly been a long, long journey.
So what was the great Lady Merlin doing now, the legendary Grand Mage who had finally defeated even the Witch of the Abyss, the hero of humanity and partner of the Guardian of Humanity?
“Nngh.”
She was struggling to carry water.
Yes.
The Wizard of the Lake. Merlin, who could flood an entire city with a flick of her finger, was struggling to water a field. Just like any other farmer. If the witches saw this, they would doubt their own eyes. Not that any witches still had eyes left to see it with, of course.
“Whew, done.”
Wiping the sweat from her forehead, Merlin grinned.
Lately, she had taken a liking to limiting her body to the level of an ordinary girl.
Naturally, she couldn't use mana. Nor could she control her body perfectly like a Transcendent. She sweated when it was hot, shivered when it was cold, and sometimes lost her balance and fell. If she stayed up late playing with Najin, her muscles would even ache the next day. It was that sort of ordinary body.
Working a little field with that ordinary body was her newly discovered hobby.
“They've already grown this much.”
Watching the crops grow day by day made her happy. When she looked to the side, Najin was there, working the field with his physical abilities limited just like hers. With his sleeves rolled up, he worked the plow, sweating heavily.
Gulp.
Merlin licked her lips at the sight of Najin's chest, revealed by his sweat-soaked clothes, and his dense, sharply defined muscles built for real combat. Then she shook her head. Work first, play later. Besides, they had just been at it until the rain stopped.
From her experience over the past few months, if she got carried away again now, her back would hurt so much tomorrow that she wouldn't be able to move.
“Najin, what do you want for lunch?”
“Don't we have some of that bread we made before? Let's have that and make some soup.”
“Sounds good. Work a little longer, then brush off the dirt and come inside. I'll have the soup ready.”
“...You will, Merlin?”
“I know how to cook too, you know.”
To be precise, she knew how to make soup, at least. After she had tried to grill some meat and turned it into charcoal, Merlin had agreed to leave grilling and any proper cooking to Najin.
Well, anyway.
Working the field, eating together, watching the crops grow day by day, making simple sandwiches with the crops they had worked so hard to grow...
Merlin rather liked those pastoral days.
“Hmm, hm-hmm.”
Humming to herself, Merlin heated the soup. Najin had told her not to add anything and just let it simmer, but wouldn't it taste better if she added something? With that thought, Merlin was reaching toward a shelf when Najin suddenly grabbed her firmly around the waist.
“Eek!”
“I told you not to put that in.”
“You startled me! Why are you grabbing my waist?”
“I was startled too. By your cooking skills, I mean. You couldn't hold back even for that little while before trying to get creative again.”
When Merlin pouted, Najin chuckled and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. Leaving Merlin with a bright red face, he went to sit at the table.
“Be honest. You've really gotten into teasing me lately, haven't you?”
“You've only just noticed?”
“Just you wait until later. Seriously.”
As an aside, Merlin was always the one who ended up getting what was coming to her. She always started out full of confidence, but by the time she came to her senses, she would be slapping Najin's arm.
Still grumbling, Merlin set down the soup and bread.
“Oh, right, Najin.”
“Shall I guess?”
Najin answered before Merlin could say anything else.
“It's almost been a year, so you were going to ask if we should take a trip somewhere, right?”
“...What? How did you know?”
“I was thinking the same thing, actually.”
Najin smiled.
“Shall we visit the Empire? It's been a while.”
3.
“The Empire? You and me? It'll be chaos if we go there.”
Merlin blinked.
It was true.
Just who were Najin and Merlin? To answer the question Najin sometimes asked as a joke, “Who am I?”, someone would now have to prepare dozens of history books. Najin's achievements had practically rewritten human history.
And Merlin, his partner, who had married him in the middle of the Empire, had accomplished just as much.
The moment those two appeared in the Empire, people wouldn't simply gather. The crowds would be packed beyond capacity. Could even the emperor keep them under control? Rather than doing any proper sightseeing, they would clearly end up being crushed by crowds until they went home.
‘But if we completely hide our presence...’
That would be a spy mission, not a trip. Besides, it would be impossible with the bodies “limited to an ordinary level” that Merlin and Najin had been enjoying lately. Merlin wasn't particularly interested in traveling in a Transcendent's body.
“I've already prepared everything.”
Najin rummaged around and took something out.
“You remember Rena, right? Roselin's mother.”
“Of course. What about her?”
“She was already an incredible artifact maker, wasn't she? I hear she's one of the top five among the Constellations.”
“She has been famous for making things since way back.”
“She and the Platinum Tower Master worked on something together.”
The Platinum Tower Master was also an expert when it came to artifacts. Around forty percent of the artifacts circulating on the Continent were her creations. Najin explained that those two giants of artifact making had created something together.
“A robe?”
“Yes, a robe.”
It was a robe shaped like a cloak.
“You know how the Free Knight's Coat I used to wear turns into a disguise coat when you turn it inside out?”
“Yeah. It has a bit of recognition-blocking magic on it too. But that doesn't work on us anymore, does it? With thirteen Stars each, you and I stand out too much anywhere outside Avalon.”
Najin snapped his fingers.
“That's why, whenever I visited the Empire, I kept pestering her to do something about it. I don't need the budget allocated to my tower anymore, do I? It was always more of an allowance to keep up appearances anyway. I gave all of it to the Platinum Tower Master and told her to make something.”
“I introduced her to some Constellations I knew too,” he added, pointing at the robe.
“She finally did it. Apparently, this goes beyond blocking recognition and makes people see the wearer as someone else entirely. How did it work again? They originally tried to trap the light, but they couldn't contain it at all, so they changed it to reflect the light instead, or something.”
Anyway, that wasn't the important part.
“In the end, wearing this makes us look like ordinary people. With the most common sort of appearance in the Empire.”
Merlin's eyes widened.
“They said it works even on you and me?”
“I tested it. If I suppress myself as much as possible, it just barely works. Only for about ten days, of course. After ten days of use, it needs to recharge for about a hundred.”
“That's still amazing! My goodness!”
Merlin bounced up and down.
“Then, wearing that...?”
“Yes. Shall we wear these and take a trip to the Empire?”
Merlin and Najin looked at each other and grinned like a pair of naughty children.
“Skipping all the entry procedures?”
“Yes, every last one. What are they going to do if we decide to visit? If anyone makes a fuss, we can just take off the robes.”
“Should we deliberately pull the robes back a little? Like this, so they can just see our faces.”
“That doesn't sound bad either. Shall we put a finger to our lips and go ‘Shh’ if anyone recognizes us?”
“Oh, I love it!”
Of course, to the nobles and territories suddenly receiving a visit from the pair, it would feel like being struck by lightning from a clear sky. But that wasn't their concern. If anyone had a problem with it, they could go save the world themselves. Having saved the world dozens of times over, the two had become a little less troubled by shame or conscience.
“Hehehehe.”
“Heh heh heh.”
They said people grew alike when they were in love, or something.
With sinister smiles, the two put their heads together and planned their trip.
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