Surviving in a Frozen Dark Fantasy as a Genius Mage - Chapter 47

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Surviving the Frozen Dark Fantasy as a Genius Mage ◈

Chapter 47: The King of Dinosaurs Leaves His Hide Behind When He Dies

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“Hahaha! Just kidding! I’m one hundred percent a man!”

Thankfully, Gimlius’s chilling remark had been a joke.

“Phew.”

I wiped the sweat from my brow, leaving the loudly laughing dwarf behind.

Crackle!

I had nearly ended up cleaning up a dwarf corpse today.

“Anyway, that settles everything!”

Just as Daisy said happily, everything had been settled.

“I’m a debtor elf... I can’t even... eat meat...”

Someone was miserable, but with the accounts settled, we began drinking and enjoying ourselves in earnest.

“Waaah! Give me back my arm, Ian! Sob, sob!”

“Fuck! When did I ever do that?!”

Tipsy, I had fun doing an impression of Elena. Elena’s face flushed red as she snapped at me and strangled me.

“Gack!”

Gimlius burst into laughter, climbed onto the table, and began to dance.

Thump, thump, thump!

Amazingly, despite his short, stubby limbs, he was a pretty good dancer.

No, how did someone in this primitive world know moves like the moonwalk and popping?

“Hahahaha! Back in my day, I was the best dancer among the dwarves! Hup-cha!”

“Wow...”

Daisy, her cheeks red from the alcohol, watched with unfocused eyes before clapping. Hans snickered, and the other Expedition Party members nearby cheered.

- “Hey, dwarf! You’re fucking good!”

- “What’s next?! What’s the next dance?!”

“Huahaha! The next one is known as the best dance for seducing married women and widows! The Rising Golden Sun Dance!”

Expedition Party members lived more fully in the moment than anyone else in this world. They might have made it back safely this time, but on their next expedition, they could end up in some miserable state or die. So when they had fun, they went all out.

“Haha! So Ian, the party leader, is paying for tonight’s drinks?”

“Fuck off. Do you know how much that pig elf eats?”

“You all heard him, right?! Ian says he’s paying!”

“Yeeeeeees! Meat! Innkeeper, bring us all the meat you have!”

“I never said... Mm!”

For one night, we cast aside all worries and fears about the future and spent the night partying hard.

* * *

After the drinking ended, Hans helped the staggering Gimlius leave. Thoroughly drunk, Ian stumbled into his room, while Daisy and Elena went to their shared room to sleep.

“Good night... Elena.”

“You too, Daisy.”

“Whew.”

Feeling hot, Daisy took off her outer clothes and lay on the bed in only her underwear, breathing heavily. Elena, who had already been lying on the bed, waited until Daisy fell asleep and narrowed her eyes.

Then she quietly began to feel Daisy’s chest.

This was actually one of the things Elena occasionally did while living with Daisy.

It was...

“Hehe. What are you doing, Elena...?”

Daisy, whom Elena had thought was asleep, suddenly giggled. Elena was startled.

Still, this was necessary, so she brazened it out.

“No, I was a little cold.”

“Really? I like how cool it is.”

‘Damn, I think they’re bigger than mine.’

‘No, my face is still prettier.’

Mm-hm.

Elena nodded as if confirming something, then took her hand away from Daisy’s chest. Looking dissatisfied, she smacked Daisy’s back.

“Mm.”

Feeling thirsty, Elena smacked her lips and got up to head for the water jug on the table. Then she heard Ian vomiting nearby.

- “Bleeaaargh!”

What an idiot.

Elena clicked her tongue.

He was weak, bad at drinking, and aside from magic, a skinny weakling who couldn’t do anything right. Could he even properly fulfill a man’s duties like that?

‘Did he pass out with his head in his vomit?’

Worried, Elena shook her head and headed to Ian’s room. The door was locked, but like any old inn door, it opened with a crackling sound when she put a little strength into turning the handle.

‘If the innkeeper finds out, I’ll just say a thief broke in.’

Huff.

When she opened the door, she found Ian asleep in front of the bathroom. He must have thrown up a lot because his mouth and clothes were covered in vomit.

He looked unusually disheveled.

Even so, why was his breathing so quiet, like a girl’s?

“Honestly, you’re such a handful.”

Repeating one of Ian’s usual lines, Elena easily lifted him onto the bed. She wet a cloth and wiped his face, then took off his filthy clothes.

“This is what happens when you barely eat.”

He was skin and bones. He’d gone on expeditions, so he should have put on some weight, but he was still a weakling.

Elena sat on the edge of the bed and stared at Ian for a while.

She recalled what she had heard at the drinking party about the previous expedition.

The Berserk spell, the side effect of the Bracelet of Wrath she wore.

According to her companions, even after one of her arms was cut off, she had bitten the enemy and later tried to kill her friends.

- “Do you know how scared we were? Ugh.”

- “Still, it’s true that we were able to kill that bastard because of Elena. If used well, that bracelet is an incredibly powerful magical tool.”

Elena rubbed the bracelet with its ominous red gem.

It was a magical bracelet that gave its owner great strength.

At first, this equipment had only felt reassuring. Now it frightened her a little.

What scared her was not that she had lost her will and kept moving even as her body broke apart, but that she had nearly hurt Ian.

...

Still, she could not afford to stop using this power.

The Labyrinth was a deadly place.

“Haah.”

Should she try meditating at the sword training hall?

No, if she became stronger than she was now, maybe she would not have to rely on power like this.

Elena wiggled her bare white feet as she thought.

There was a saying.

Children raised in back alleys grew up to be petty thieves. The world they saw around them was one where people stole others’ belongings, so that became their entire world.

‘They say a farmer’s son thinks the fields he has seen since childhood are the whole world.’

It was something Ian had told her while acting smug.

- “That’s why you need to strive to improve. Got it? A man should have at least one great ambition in life.”

- “I’m a woman, though?”

- “No, no matter how I look at it, you’re not a woman. You’re just a beast...”

- “What did you say?!”

- “Gack!”

She had pretended not to listen, but Elena had thought about it.

When she lived in the village, life had been nothing more than enduring or avoiding trouble. A good life meant not going hungry and being satisfied with a single potato.

Then she met Ian. She crossed the snowfields with him, arrived in the Labyrinth, and became an Expedition Party member.

Elena had changed.

She learned about tastier, more precious food than a single potato. She learned about better equipment than wooden clubs. She also learned how important experience and skill were for using those things properly.

Elena’s small world was gradually expanding.

“...”

Elena’s green eyes stared intently at Ian.

A life that had simply drifted by was slowly gaining purpose.

She would see the end of the Labyrinth with this guy.

And then...

“I... with you...”

As Elena stroked Ian’s face, he mumbled in his sleep.

...

Elena quietly pulled her hand away.

Then she slipped out of the room without making a sound.

* * *

“This is insane... Didn’t you say this was only your second expedition?”

In the southern commercial district of Labyrinth City, the bearded Arnold, who ran a modest smithy, was stunned.

“Oh, it’s burning.”

Crackle, crackle.

He was so shocked that he did not even notice sparks from the furnace setting his beard on fire.

The reason for his astonishment was the items a rookie party, supposedly on its second expedition, had suddenly brought in.

“How did you kill a dragon?!”

Arnold shouted as he looked over the Drake materials Ian’s party had brought.

A second-floor party had killed a higher species of Drake that lived on the fourth floor?

It made no sense.

It would have been more believable if they said they had bought the materials from the market.

Yet until recently, they had been a poor party that could not even afford a single iron sword. Besides, there were too many different materials to have simply bought them, not just the hide but also claws and teeth, and the condition of the hide was poor.

It looked as though amateurs had successfully hunted it and skinned it themselves.

‘They’ve only gone on two expeditions, and they killed a dragon?!’

That was Arnold’s conclusion. Then the silver-haired brat he had some connection with resolved his doubts in a perfectly reasonable way.

“Because I’m a genius mage.”

...

Was this bastard insane?

“You think I’m going to accept that explanation?!”

Arnold threw down his hammer and shouted.

“It’s true. Ian caught it because he’s a genius...”

Daisy, a brown-haired woman with a gentle appearance, flinched at Arnold’s roar and spoke timidly.

“You scared me. Why are you suddenly shouting, old man?”

Elena frowned as she touched her long ears.

“I agree. Genius. There’s no word more fitting for our party leader.”

“Haha! That’s right! Ian really is a genius!”

Hans and Gimlius, who had already become used to Ian’s ways, tilted their heads as if Arnold were the strange one.

...Huff. Huff.

He had gotten too worked up.

Arnold calmed himself.

Right. He was a blacksmith.

Even if these little brats he knew had gone through something absurd, whether they had ripped off vicious dark elves or encountered a legend of the Labyrinth, he only had to fulfill his duty.

“Anyway, you want me to process this into weapons and armor, right?”

“Yes.”

“I can make about three full sets. With the leftover scraps, I can probably make gloves and boots.”

Elena looked at Arnold suspiciously.

“There’s this much hide, and that’s all we get? Old man, are you trying to skim some off the top?”

“Look at the state of the hide you brought in. I don’t know what the hell you did to it, but only I could make this much from garbage hide like this!”

“...Um.”

Elena accepted that.

Hodrick had practically torn the Drake apart from inside its stomach, so the hide and bones were not in very good condition.

They had also returned quickly because of Elena’s condition. Only Ian and Hans had remained in the dungeon, so there was a limit to how much they could carry out.

“There’s a famous saying in the Labyrinth. Bringing treasure out is harder than finding it.”

‘If only I had a Spatial Storage Ring... Ugh...’

As Ian tried to shake off his regret, Arnold spoke.

“You want a bow made from the bones, right? That’s the only thing you can make from Drake bones.”

Ian looked at Hans, the only one who used a bow.

“A crossbow, please.”

“What about the claws and teeth?”

“Daggers, of course.”

“How many?”

“Six.”

“Fine. The processing fee is seven gold coins.”

“Hmm... Could we reduce the daggers to four and give you the claws and teeth in exchange for a discount?”