WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Inept Mage’s Infinite Regression

Chapter 20

Although Ethan’s swing was rough, the blade still hit the book-worm dead on, and the half-sliced book-worm rolled across the floor in the direction Ethan had swung his sword.

While Boen scanned the surroundings to ensure there were no other threats, Ethan helped Maya—who had collapsed—to her feet.

“Anything you want to say?”

“…Th-thank you?”

Ethan shook his head. “That’s not it.”

“What’s not it?”

“The correct answer…” Scowling, Ethan pressed his index finger against the center of Maya’s forehead. “…Is ‘Grades aren’t everything.’ ”

Maya rubbed her forehead with a grimace, and a raspy voice was heard from her arms.

“You will be ruined,” said Maya’s familiar, Weibrae.

Ethan and Weibrae glared at each other briefly. Maya patted Weibrae with her gloved hand, trying to calm her. “Don’t say that,” she said. “Ethan just saved me.”

“Your doom has been… postponed once more…”

Confirming that the area seemed safe, Boen walked over to join them. “We’ll have to be careful. If there are book-worms this close to the entrance…”

“I should probably lead the way. We’re all new to the Great Library Labyrinth anyway.”

“I’m worried about Koshe, though. The three of us are together, but she came in here alone…”

Maya picked Weibrae up again from where she’d set her familiar down on the floor and said, “Don’t worry too much. Koshe is quite skilled at fighting.”

“Really?”

Neither Ethan nor Boen shared any classes with Koshe, so they didn’t know much about her as a student or as a mage.

Ethan looked around. “Wait, the book-worm’s corpse is gone.”

“It must have survived. But if it’s that badly injured, it won’t be much of a threat. Book-worms don’t move in packs, at least.”

“That’s good news.”

Ethan received the glowing wooden rod from Maya, taking it in his left hand while keeping his sword in his right. After walking for a few minutes, they noticed a light deeper in the cave. The book mounds became smaller as they moved through the not-so-narrow passage, eventually opening up into a fairly spacious area—one large enough for a dragon to lie down if it wanted.

All of the walls in this space were lined with bookshelves.

Each was identically built, and high enough that an adult man could just barely reach up to pull out a book. Corridors ran along the walls, allowing access to each “floor,” and every floor was connected by marble stairs. Magical crystal lights were installed along the rails of each corridor, casting the area as in daylight.

Ethan counted six floors in this single space. Running a lap around just one of them would take at least twenty seconds. A closer look made it clear that even this huge space was only a small part of the Great Library Labyrinth. There were doors that seemed to lead off to other chambers, and corridors connecting this area to the next. The largest door linked to an adjacent area that appeared to be roughly the same size, judging by the crack Ethan peeked through.

“Looks like this is one of the Great Library Labyrinth’s archive rooms. I’ve heard there are at least several hundred of these archive rooms, each containing roughly eighty thousand volumes,” Boen explained.

Ethan’s group had entered through a passage on the fourth floor, likely opened by breaking down the wall and smashing a bookshelf. Other passages had proper doors.

As Ethan moved toward the railing, a few books flew out of the shelves, flapped around like their covers were wings, and then drifted off to another archive. Ethan recognized them as book-butterflies, a type of monster shaped like a book. They didn’t harm humans—in fact, they helped preserve the library’s tomes and were even raised intentionally in the Great Library.

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“Now that we’re here, I want to say something,” Ethan said, leaning his hip against the railing—only to step away awkwardly when it creaked from age.

Clearing his throat to cover his embarrassment, he noticed Maya giving him a disapproving look.

“So,” Ethan continued, “you should probably tell us what Koshe came here for in the first place, or at least what she’s looking for. This place is huge. We can’t hope to find her without any leads.”

Actually, Ethan knew Koshe would eventually turn up here if he just pretended to search for her… but he still had to keep up appearances.

Koshe Ludyrock had dark navy hair, with bangs that covered her forehead and her hair in a ponytail. Given her general demeanor, other students assumed she wasn’t from a highborn family. They often found it odd that she hung around Maya.

“Actually, this isn’t Koshe’s first time coming into the Great Library Labyrinth,” Maya explained.

Ethan knew of the Ludyrock family. They were one of the Charasen family’s trading partners. He recalled overhearing Duke Charasen, his father, scoff at Baron Ludyrock for being overly aristocratic when his grandfather’s generation had been wealthy merchants who simply purchased a noble title. But Ethan didn’t know anything about the baron’s daughter, Koshe Ludyrock.

“You might laugh at this, being from such a prestigious house, Ethan, but Koshe and I studied magic together. We, two kids from different noble families, discovered each other’s magical talents at a banquet. But my mother didn’t know enough to teach other people magic, and the Ludyrock family had no magical ties at all, so we decided to split the cost of hiring a tutor. We were about five years old, then. Sometimes, I’d visit the Ludyrock estate, and other times, Koshe would come to ours. The tutors changed from time to time, but we were always partners. We grew up like sisters.”

So far, there was nothing particularly unusual about their story. Typically, one learned basic magic skills before enrolling at the Magic Academy, lest they end up like Ethan on his first day. In well-established mage families, the parents themselves taught their children, or it was handled by a qualified mage within the family.

But not all families had that option. For various reasons, some lacked the internal resources to provide proper magical instruction, so they hired outside mages. As best Ethan could guess, about 40% of the students at the magic academy had followed that kind of path.

“I’d like the two of you to keep what I’m about to say secret, and to be understanding about a bit of deception. One day, I was cursed. Don’t ask me what kind of curse it is or how I got it, I can’t tell you. And don’t go around talking about the fact that I’m cursed. Even after enrolling, I still suffer from it, and Koshe is the only one who knows. This curse sometimes causes sudden painful seizures. Right before Koshe left, I had a seizure. Koshe had discovered evidence that there’s a way to break my curse somewhere in the Great Library Labyrinth. That’s why she came here. I tried to stop her, but… I was so distraught from the attack that I ended up letting her go. I still regret that.”

A “curse” referred to any inexplicable harmful magic.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Maya,” Boen said sympathetically.

“It’s okay.”

“The problem,” Ethan chimed in, “is that alone doesn’t give us enough to go on—”

“Ethan, can’t you at least pretend to feel sorry for a moment?” Boen asked.

“I do feel bad about it, but that’s not enough to figure out where Koshe went.”

Maya seemed a bit heartened by Ethan’s blunt attitude.

“…Right,” she said. “Koshe uses the right-hand rule.”

“The right-hand rule? You mean that labyrinth-navigation trick where you keep your right hand on the wall so you don’t get lost? It might help in small places, but in a massive maze like the Great Library Labyrinth, you’ll starve before you find anything. Besides, it’s not like you don’t know the way back out anyway.”

“The right-hand rule isn’t a way to find your way in a maze with no rhyme or reason. It’s more of a baseline approach. At least, that’s how Koshe sees it.”

Ethan understood Koshe’s reasoning. Koshe probably didn’t expect to get everything she needed in a single expedition. She was aiming to explore the labyrinth safely, memorize the layout as she went, and eventually push into the deeper areas. For a place with no map and endless corridors, a simple, consistent method like the right-hand rule could be very helpful.

“More importantly,” Ethan added, “if we also use the right-hand rule, we can easily trace Koshe’s path. Meaning she accounted for people having to find her if something went wrong. If this isn’t her first time exploring this labyrinth, how many times has she been down here?”

“Four times,” Maya responded.

“So in this section of the maze, we take the fourth passage you’d reach by following the right-hand wall. She was likely expanding the scope of her exploration each time.”

“Now that you mention it… She did say something like that.”

Boen found Ethan’s hunch convincing as well, so the three proceeded, keeping their right hands on the wall as they moved. Whenever they encountered multiple passages on the same floor, they didn’t get lost. If there were no corridors on that floor, they moved up using the stairs on the right. If the upper floor also had no corridors, then they went down. Whenever they came across a place with only one passage, they simply passed through it; if there were two, they proceeded without delay. Being able to see across the open archives helped.

They did face more book-worms, but now they were prepared. Ethan attacked first, and no one was harmed. Apart from that, the labyrinth was eerily quiet. Rumor had it that making too much noise would attract a librarian, and the trio had no intention of testing that.

After about three hours, Boen and Maya were drenched in sweat and completely exhausted. Ethan, on the other hand, guessed they would run into Koshe soon. As far as he could remember, Koshe had never failed to return to school, so she couldn’t have had more than half a day to explore. Given she would need to use half of her time to get back, it had likely been about nine hours by now, so she’d be halfway done.

They exited a narrow corridor and found themselves on the sixth floor. Though they’d started on the first floor and ended up on the sixth, their sense of space was so jumbled that Ethan was only just starting to get used to how the labyrinth distorted one’s sense of distance.

Suddenly, Ethan pointed at something red in his field of vision. “There’s something over there.”

All three peered intently beyond the railing at the red shape. Maya went pale first.

“No, Koshe. No…”

What Ethan had spotted was Koshe Ludyrock’s corpse.

Maya immediately dashed toward her, and Boen followed. Ethan walked quickly, scanning the area. A few book-butterflies were fluttering about, but there was nothing that looked dangerous. Whatever had attacked Koshe must have left or hidden so well that Ethan couldn’t detect it. However, he had a strong suspicion as to the real “culprit.”

“Koshe! Can you hear me? Koshe!” Maya knelt down, pulled Koshe’s body onto her lap, and touched her friend’s cheek. “She’s so cold…”

“Let me take a look.”

Using [Skill: CPR (C)] to recall the basic medical knowledge he’d gained, Ethan checked Koshe’s vital signs. No light reflex in her pupils, no breathing, no heartbeat. Thanks to [Archive: Human Anatomy (C)], Ethan gleaned additional details. Though her body had started to cool, rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet, implying she’d been dead under three hours. There was a depressed fracture in her skull and a large break in her cervical spine—likely the direct cause of death.

Boen lifted his head and said, “That must be what killed her.”

Part of the wall had soaked through and rotted. Groundwater from the wall trickled along a corridor overgrown with mushrooms and moss, then spilled down onto a section of the floor, which had also rotted and caved in. At the top of the collapsed area was what looked like a recently broken wooden staircase, some pieces of which lay scattered around Maya. From above, the corridor had probably looked perfectly sound. No one could have guessed that it might collapse. No one had attacked Koshe—fate itself had killed her.

Even as Ethan felt deep regret, something struck him as odd.

<Wait a minute. Then what about the Koshes I saw…? Our presence had nothing to do with her death. I doubt she ever even knew we’d entered the labyrinth.>

His question was answered immediately as, still crouched, Maya clutched Koshe’s head and began to sob. “No, Koshe. I can’t lose you too. Please… come back to life. I’m begging you.”

“Is that truly your wish?”

All three felt a chill run down their spines as they turned toward the voice…

…Of Maya’s familiar, Weibrae.

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