WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Inept Mage’s Infinite Regression

Chapter 83

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How's the Situation?

<How's the situation?>
<Lady Robita looks surprised but calm, and Boen is glancing at me while explaining things. ...Do you happen to know what "agwi-kind" is?>
<Yeah, I do. Why?>
<Boen is calling the monsters that attacked by that name.>

Agwi-kind, or agwi, were one of the demonic beast species widely found along the Damarth Yumaha frontier. They were crude, but they walked on two legs like people, used tools, and had intelligence, so they were classified as a "kind." Even so, like other demonic beasts, they could not be counted among people. Unlike humans, giants, beastmen, demons, or fairies, they could not adapt to society at all and always put the base urges in their blood first. To agwi, people were food.

'But agwi shouldn't be intelligent enough to communicate with people.'

Of course, he could not jump to conclusions. Demonic beasts often split into variants under heavy magi influence. Reactivity to magi was also one of the standards used to distinguish ordinary creatures from demonic beasts.

'Still, those things are agwi.'

Ethan immediately fired at the exposed foot. A 5.56mm standard round fired at close range did not leave one small, neat hole. Once the soft lead bullet entered the body, it bent and fragmented, tearing through flesh before exiting. A hit to the abdomen created a large cavity and ripped apart the organs from pressure. A hit to an arm or leg caused layered, complex damage.

"Kraaaagh!"

The target screamed and collapsed from the sudden attack. Light from the weapon mounted on Furor revealed the agwi's long-slit mouth and sharp teeth. Then Ethan sensed movement near the ceiling.

'It was waiting to ambush us.'

He had almost been caught. Maybe because the agwi fighting him at close range had dropped, the two hiding on the ceiling lunged slower than Ethan expected. Ethan fired two quick shots in a row and blew their heads apart mid-charge.

The agwi were wearing close-fitting trousers and jackets with puffed sleeves that came down to the waist. It was family livery, the kind usually worn by servants of noble houses. These were the same servants who had guided Ethan's group. Their faces, however, were unmistakably different. On what passed for a head, thick lips bulged out, and a split mouth ran from one ear to the other. Inside were rows of tightly packed fangs. Other than round eyes with no whites, they had no nose and no hair.

'No one could mistake that for human.'

Ethan walked toward the agwi he had shot first, the one still alive.

"How did you pretend to be people?"

"Kraaaak!"

The agwi crawled toward Ethan. It might have been in severe pain, but if it was still conscious, there was no way it had forgotten how to speak.

"Answer me. How did you do it?"

"Kyaaagh!"

The agwi pushed itself up on both arms and lunged, so Ethan had no choice but to shoot it.

As Ethan headed upstairs to rejoin the group, he put down more agwi in family livery. Even in a different form, this was still the same class of magic tool that had brought down the Undying King. As long as he had an automatic rifle, there was nothing to fear.

When he entered Robita's room, he was even more careful than he had been with the agwi.

'I'm not carrying this automatic rifle just to kill agwi.'

An agwi had strength around that of an adult human, but was only a little taller than Ethan's waist and did not use any special weapons. There might be stronger variants, but Ethan's swordsmanship was already comparable to lower-ranked knights, so he could probably handle agwi with just a blade.

Since he had drawn the automatic rifle to protect Robita and respond to an unknown enemy, he had to reveal to Robita and Renzo that he was a dark mage. They might not know much about magic, but even non-mages usually had an eye for it. Nobles and adventurers both lived close enough to mages to recognize the signs.

A typical noble or adventurer had a predictable reaction to dark mages. Some would be negative. If he got lucky, they might not care at all, like Rivielton or Osmal.

'But if one of them is an Imperial Inquisition agent, the reaction will be different.'

The mansion was full of agwi, and nothing here had truly been resolved yet. Even so, the place Ethan needed to be most tense was, ironically, the room where his companions were waiting.

When Ethan opened the door, he heard Renzo and Boen talking.

"This thing can't speak?"

"Looks that way. When I first found it, it couldn't even move by itself."

"Then who moves it?"

"There's a separate tool for that. Sometimes Ethan does it himself, sometimes I do."

"Stupid familiar."

As Renzo said that, he poked the hovering Gespenst V with his finger. The drone wobbled in place while maintaining its hover.

"Who's bullying my drone?"

Gespenst V flew straight to Ethan. Careful not to touch the blades, Ethan stroked the drone's back.

"Don't listen, Gespenst V. You're the best drone."

"How touching," Renzo said.

From the corner, Robita, wrapped head to toe in blankets, spoke.

"So how did all this happen?"

Ethan told them about finding human flesh during dinner, and how he and Renzo had agreed to split up and investigate.

When Ethan described the butchered humans he had found in the basement, Renzo shared what he had found too.

"I went to the study and found a hidden room. There were suspicious books in there."

Renzo had brought back a whole bag of them. When he dumped them on the floor, most were related to dark magic. Ethan and Boen flipped through spellbooks, and Robita picked one up. There was writing on the cover, but it was a script Ethan did not recognize.

"Ah, this book is..."

"You know it?"

Robita held it under the moonlight and skimmed the inside.

"Yes. It's Joy in the Kitchen. A very dangerous book."

Ethan looked at Boen and Renzo to see if either recognized it. Both looked blank.

Before Ethan could ask, Robita began to explain.

"About thirteen hundred years ago, it was the sacred text of the Gourmet Order, or Gourmet School, which briefly rose in popularity. The Gourmet Order believed that eating was the highest act a person could achieve, and the path to truth, and they created many recipes through magic. But they never reached truth. They came to believe some limit was blocking them, and the limit they identified was the taboo against cannibalism. Joy in the Kitchen is the highest scripture among the order's many cookbooks, and it uses people such as humans, giants, beastmen, fairies, and demons as ingredients."

Boen pointed out, "But by itself, that sounds like a horrible book, not a dangerous one."

Robita closed the book.

"If you follow the recipes in this book, cook people, and keep eating them over time, you slowly become a demonic beast."

Ethan was intrigued.

"If that's true, how did the order survive at all?"

"Exactly. That's why it destroyed itself. The Bliss Order, the mainstream religion at the time, labeled the Gourmet Order heretics and raided their main temple. They say the only things there were agwi tearing each other apart."

"Then who wrote that book?"

"No one knows. What is clear is that it was not written with good intentions alone. The Gourmet School definitely crossed lines, but it still had some ethical rules, and according to what was passed down, in most cases only vicious death-row criminals were put on the table. This book, though, uses extreme methods from ingredient selection onward. Even after the Gourmet Order disappeared, the book itself remained... and incidents like this keep happening."

Renzo asked, "By the way, Robita, how do you know all that? That doesn't sound like common knowledge."

Ethan had wanted to ask that too. If she were not just a normal noble, but an Imperial Inquisition agent, it would make more sense.

Robita asked, "Is my answer to that necessary for your mission?"

Renzo looked at Ethan, as if asking for agreement. Ethan shook his head.

Renzo said, "Fine. Then let's solve the urgent problem first, the people-eating monsters. You ready, dark mage?"

"You figured it out?"

"Of course. I saw something similar once in the south. Someone from Terra was using it. With your hair color, you don't look like someone from Terra, so that makes you a dark mage, right?"

A beat late, Robita's eyebrows twitched.

"Uh, dark mage...?"

"Looks like she didn't catch it."

"Was Ethan a dark mage?"

"You saw that drone too."

"Don't mages usually carry strange things around? Familiars, right?"

"Something that strange isn't common."

Ethan had two choices, a timid apology or brazen confidence. He chose the second.

"Sorry for hiding it, but I couldn't exactly go around announcing it. You can understand, right?"

"Uh? Uh... yes."

Ethan left the room with the group.

Luckily, there did not seem to be that many agwi. Maybe the ones Ethan had killed on the way to Robita's room were all of them, because no more approached. The only suspicious place he and Renzo had not checked was the master's bedroom, so the group moved toward it.

Of course, Ethan did not make the mistake of confidently opening the door to the room of a master who might be a dark mage.

<Demi.>
<Yes.>
<Do you see anything?>
<The room is dark, but something is lying on the bed. Should we fire first?>

Ethan thought for a moment.

<...I don't know what this will do to the quest, but there's no need to walk into a room where a hostile mage could be waiting. Just shoot it.>
<Understood.>

Gespenst V, controlled by Demi, fired at the bed first from outside Yertiela's bedroom, and Ethan rushed in right after and shot the thing on the bed.

"Grrrghhk!"

With a grotesque scream, the thing on the bed stopped moving. It no longer had any human shape left. All that remained was a giant lump of flesh with a huge agwi-like mouth.

Robita held a handkerchief over her nose, perhaps to block the smell of blood, and said, "This is also an agwi. A middle stage. I don't know how this person ended up like this... but this was probably Count Yertiela."

Just as Robita said, Ethan's quest still did not resolve.

∞

Afterward, Ethan and Renzo tried, out of habit, to rummage through the mansion for valuables, and Boen and Robita recoiled in disgust and scolded them. Robita said she would go to Lupla and report what had happened here herself.

The next few days were the ordinary journey Ethan had hoped for, with no major incidents. They helped with village work and slept under proper roofs, or filled a huge liquor jar found in an abandoned warehouse and washed themselves, or picked up unexpected red mushrooms and cleared a Broker Quest, or hunted deer with Renzo and ate their fill through the next day.

Lupla City was built on wide flatlands, with roads leading north to Byutlas and west to Samus, making it a bustling trade city. It had a permanent market, so not only nearby villagers but also many pack peddlers passed through. There were also plenty of inns for travelers and adventurers.

After entering Lupla and taking an inn, Robita gathered the group in the first-floor tavern and paid the promised amount.

"Thank you, everyone. There were minor issues along the way, but yes. I made it here safely thanks to you."

"So you'll be fine now?" Renzo asked.

"Yes. I'll be meeting my colleagues soon... no, people I know."

"Yeah?"

After Robita left the tavern, Renzo spoke to Ethan.

"...Ethan."

"Yes?"

"Can we talk for a bit?"

Ethan replied, "Looks like we're thinking the same thing. I had something to say too."

∞

Robita left the tavern and read a letter she pulled from inside her clothes. It had only a time and place written on it, nothing more. Fortunately, she was not late. Asking passersby for directions, she moved through unfamiliar alleys in Lupla and found the route to the meeting point.

'Pass the bell tower, then take the alley on the right.'

Muttering the directions to herself, Robita focused on memorizing the path and failed to notice someone closing in on her from the rooftops.

The attacker moved like a veteran, suppressing every footstep as he drew a dagger. He also wore a dueling sword, but for a jumping downward strike, the dagger was better. He waited for Robita to pause at a fork and glance around, then leaped.

-Bang!

A single gunshot rang out, and the attacker dropped to the ground.

Robita spun around and saw the attacker's corpse, then Ethan with a gun in his hand.

"...H-how?"

Renzo walked up from behind and said, "If someone was threatening your life enough for you to hire mercenaries, but nothing happened all the way to your destination..."

"It means they were waiting at the destination," Ethan said.

Robita looked relieved and shocked at once, but still raised a doubt.

"I heard adventurers are basically no different from mercenaries, that they only work as much as they're paid for."

Renzo grinned proudly.

"Consider it after-service from a silver-badge adventurer."

Only then did Ethan confirm the quest had cleared.

['Quest: Escort Robita (C)' Complete!]
[Reward: 60 experience points]
[Reward: C-Rank Lottery Coupon]

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