WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
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◈ The Protagonist of a Romance Fantasy Only Likes Me ◈
Chapter 21: Saintess Marigold. (5)
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10.
“News! The Knight Tournament is being held!”
The streets were already alive with the excitement of a festival.
The Imperial Knight Tournament. It was Rodnis's greatest spectacle, returning after more than a decade.
People had been talking about it everywhere for quite some time. With betting tied to watching fights, it was harder not to get excited.
And the participants were not some neighborhood thugs, but renowned knights. It was the sort of event that interested everyone from little children to housewives.
“This is our chance to find out who the Empire's greatest knight is, instead of just hearing them talk about beating each other up.”
The knights who normally found one excuse after another to run away had nowhere left to hide after the Imperial Archbishop declared, “All members of the pilgrimage party will participate!”
Who was the Empire's greatest knight?
That was where people's interest was gradually turning.
It was around then that Marigold's days began to grow busy.
* * *
[Fallen Noble Lady Simulation]
Creating the schedule for the fourth week of June.
Monday: Church etiquette training.
Tuesday: Saintess Church prayer meeting.
Wednesday: Artwork modeling.
Thursday: Artwork modeling.
Friday: Learn “Beginner” Riding. (Location: Manor)
Saturday: Learn “Beginner” Riding. (Location: Fallow Land)
Sunday: Join a demonic beast hunt. (Location: Forest)
※It'll be a hectic week! If the goddess is watching, she will surely bless our diligent Marigold!
* * *
[Monday. Church Etiquette Training]
Thud.
“Eek.”
Marigold hunched her shoulders as something hard was placed on the crown of her head.
A thick book. A teacup was carefully set on top of it, too.
“Don't drop it.”
Hestie adjusted Marigold's posture with her hands.
“Keep your head up. Tuck in your chin and walk calmly. Be careful not to raise your shoulders.”
“Uh, ah! Ah!”
Marigold stumbled and fell forward with a thump.
If a large hand had not caught her, she would have landed face-first.
“Lancel...”
Lord Lancel.
Marigold had been about to say it, but changed her words.
“Brother Lancel.”
“That title is a little embarrassing.”
“You told me to call you that...!”
Marigold nearly raised her voice without thinking, then startled herself and lowered her tone.
“...didn't you?”
“Of course, Mary.”
“I feel like you're making fun of me.”
“It's just your imagination, Mary.”
Marigold awkwardly smoothed down her bangs.
She did not seem accustomed to Lancel being so formal with her. Every time he did it, she turned her upper body away, desperately trying to hide her expression.
“Let's try again. Please straighten your posture.”
“Y-Yes!”
Under Hestie's guidance, Marigold's posture training continued for the entire day.
[Tuesday. Saintess Church Prayer Meeting]
Eleven Saintess Churches had already been built in the imperial capital, Rodnis, and its surrounding areas.
They were little more than places with a statue of the Saintess set inside, where anyone passing by could enter and pray things like:
“Let a bag of gold coins fall right in front of me!”
And nobody would scold them for it.
Still, a church was a church.
Whenever she had time, Marigold visited those Saintess Churches and taught people the prayers she had learned.
“O God of the dawn that breaks the night, thank you for this meeting you have blessed today. May your blessings always be with all our neighbors.”
“May your blessings be with us.”
To the illiterate people who had thought a church was only a place to babble whatever they wanted, Marigold was like a teacher.
One week.
Two weeks.
One month.
Two months.
Lancel could feel them gradually becoming captivated by Marigold.
After all, dozens of letters arrived at the manor every day, written on every possible medium, including paper, clay, and wooden boards.
He did not even need to read them to know they were all expressions of affection for Marigold.
“You're already popular, Mary.”
“...”
Marigold only looked embarrassed at Lancel's teasing.
In every village she visited, young people and children were already lining up to wait for her. It had taken only a few months.
“The gods can be so cruel. How could they blind someone like her?”
“What are you talking about? Those sightless eyes are exactly what make Priest Mary so sublime.”
Lancel thought their reaction was due to Marigold's appearance in her pure white robe. He thought it was because of the peculiar air of mystery in her expression and movements as she walked with her eyes quietly closed.
Even Lancel, whose senses regarding women had dulled after living for hundreds of years, sometimes found himself entranced by her.
Now that Hestie's etiquette training had refined her bearing, every movement Marigold made seemed almost haloed.
“Brother Lancel. Where are you?”
“...”
With the setting sun behind her, Marigold wandered through the field.
For a moment, Lancel felt lost in memories. She reminded him of someone from long ago.
He quietly approached and took her hand.
“Mary. It's time to return to the manor.”
“I thought you'd disappeared.”
Lancel let out a laugh when he saw Mary's eyes grow slightly teary.
Perhaps she really had been sulking, because she spoke a little less than usual that day.
[Wednesday to Thursday. Artwork Modeling]
Crash!
“No! My artwork! The masterpiece of my life!”
With one kick from Lancel, the statue toppled over and shattered into pieces. A head resembling Marigold rolled all the way into the corner of the workshop.
“Who told you to make something that turns you on? I only told you to make something modest and calm.”
“You claim to be a knight, yet you have less artistic sense than a beggar on the street! That statue you just destroyed was a masterpiece that would have gone down in the history of this Empire, no, this continent!”
“Then you should have put clothes on it. Why did you strip a perfectly fine statue naked?”
“Eek!”
Marigold flinched at Lancel's threat. She seemed to have finally understood what was happening.
The sculptor's eyes shifted away from Lancel.
“...Eros is art...”
“You are the devil for pursuing eros in a work to be displayed in a church.”
“What can I do, then? If the artistic spirit coiled within me is that of a devil, then that too is fate!”
Lancel grabbed the sculptor by the beard.
“Argh! My hair!”
“Make a proper one and send it over while I'm still asking nicely. Otherwise, I'll hand you over as a devil worshipper.”
“I-I'll do it, I'll do it...!”
That night.
“Brother Lancel, um, did you... see it clearly?”
“Well.”
Lancel answered without hesitation.
“How could I not see what was right in front of me?”
“...”
Marigold quietly backed away from him. He simply had not wanted to lie.
[Friday. Learning “Beginner” Riding: Manor]
“Don't be afraid.”
“Haah... haah... eek!”
The very presence of the snorting horse had turned Marigold pale since morning.
To someone who could not see, a horse would feel no different from a monster.
“Is this really an animal someone like me can ride?”
“A fine horse recognizes its master.”
“Eek!”
Lancel swiftly pulled her arm and seated her in front of him.
“It's nothing much, right? Don't just sit there. Pet it.”
With trembling hands, Marigold ran her fingers through the horse's mane. It had white fur and a golden mane.
Asking someone who could not see to ride a horse sounded reckless, but with a horse this fine, it was quite the opposite.
It was a fine horse that could serve as her eyes and feet.
“What do you think? There's no better horse in my stable.”
“Let's take it for a lap.”
“Go ahead.”
At Baron Evil Shen's confident expression, Lancel took the reins.
“Let's go. Slowly.”
As the horse began to walk at an unhurried pace, Marigold pressed close against Lancel.
She must have been terribly frightened. He could see her earlobes turning bright red.
“Should we pick up the pace a little?”
Marigold's startled scream followed the horse into the distance.
[Saturday. Learning “Beginner” Riding: Fallow Land]
“It's already been a year.”
Wild grass flourished in the wheat field stretching beyond the horizon.
Lancel and Marigold rode their horse through the empty fallow land for quite some time.
Seeming to have grown accustomed to riding, Marigold's hand reached for the reins as she followed his lead.
==========
You have mastered “Beginner” Riding. Marigold has come to understand the feelings of a horse a little. When they are together, even an empty wilderness is no longer frightening.
==========
‘The protagonist buff, as expected.’
She had learned to ride in only two days.
And she could not even see. It was an innate talent.
“You don't ask.”
Lancel's sudden question carried many meanings.
And Marigold seemed to already understand them.
“Because I was happy.”
“About what?”
“About being useful.”
“Master.”
“...”
How many lives had Marigold lived by now?
Her twenty-second?
No, her twenty-third?
She had repeated dozens of lives, living a slightly different life each time and appearing in a different form each time, but there still seemed to be something that never changed.
But Lancel was different.
Each time he woke anew, he lived while confirming how he had changed. He had been worn down and worn down until he was almost inorganic.
He had been given time close to infinity, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before he gradually forgot himself within it.
There had been many times when he felt he could not endure any longer. At least, that was how it had been before he found the answer called Marigold.
‘Make Marigold open her eyes.’
It was not for her sake.
It was entirely for Lancel's own.
‘You need to open your eyes for me to live.’
What would she say if he told her that?
“...”
For some reason, Lancel felt as though he already knew the answer.
“Should we head back soon? I'm hungry, too.”
“Yes.”
11.
The pilgrimage party's wicked deeds were good news for Lancel.
What he had to do from now on was establish not one or two, but two hundred Saintess Churches throughout this land.
To do that, there was ultimately only one important thing: making themselves known. Marketing, or, to put it more elegantly, proselytizing.
‘The Saintess Church is popular these days!’
‘Really? I can't resist a trend!’
No matter how hard he tried to build churches himself, Lancel had struggled to establish even fifty.
But what if people built them on their own?
What if he no longer needed to spend his own money, time, and effort?
At the very least, Lancel saw potential.
“The answer is rivalry.”
From now on, Lancel intended to control the emotions of the pilgrimage party.
It would also prove useful in the coming Knight Tournament.
There was no better means of proselytizing.
* * *
Whispers filled the pilgrimage party's campsite.
Knights, local residents serving as guides, and priests from various religious orders crowded the entrance to the forest. They were preparing to subjugate the monsters said to appear in the area.
Their attention was fixed on the man and woman who had suddenly appeared.
The woman was blonde.
What was unusual was the pure white blindfold covering both her eyes.
She could not see, yet she rode her horse without the slightest hesitation.
The entire pilgrimage party stared at her unfamiliar appearance.
“What is this?”
The leader of the pilgrimage party, Duke Mayril Dun, spoke.
“What have you come here for?”
The man beside her answered.
“Why else would we wear swords when coming to a forest where monsters appear, Your Grace?”
“It seems the order to state your names was not conveyed. You still look like a child...”
“Lancel Dante.”
The man cut Duke Dun off. Duke Dun's expression darkened further, but Lancel did not care in the least.
“I work as a knight for the Saintess Church. This is Priest Mary, the head of our temple and our chief priest.”
Murmurs spread through the crowd.
“Is that Lancel Dante who entered the Knight Tournament?”
“I heard some country bumpkin from the provinces passed the preliminaries...”
“The Saintess Church? What's that? I've never heard that name before.”
It seemed that the name Lancel Dante was already well known among the pilgrimage party.
Mostly as “a yokel from the frontier” or “a small-time religious order nobody.”
Duke Dun's lips twisted.
“We do not need help from another religious order to eliminate a few monsters. Leave at once.”
“Please let us assist you. Priest Mary had a bad premonition last night, so we hurried here. Do you truly intend to turn us away so coldly?”
Duke Dun's expression crumpled.
“What an unpleasant thing to say right from the start...”
He wanted to order them to get lost.
But a woman who called herself a priest had felt something ominous. It felt somehow unsettling to simply send them back.
Their religious orders differed, but they worshipped the same god.
“If you become a hindrance, I will send you away immediately. Remember that.”
“We will never get in your way, Your Grace.”
“You're all talk. Viscount Dante must have his hands full. Tsk.”
Duke Dun clicked his tongue and turned away.
He thought Lancel Dante was a man who would make no difference whether he was there or not.
There was no chance the pilgrimage party would be endangered, nor any chance a man like him would steal their credit.
But what went wrong? From the moment they entered the forest, truly strange things began happening to the pilgrimage party.
“Priest Mary, grant me your blessing.”
“I bestow the Saintess's protection.”
Priest Mary, her eyes covered, reached toward Lancel Dante, who likewise held his sword with both eyes closed.
“Lancel Dante, you are stronger now.”
At the same time, a gentle light began to radiate from Lancel Dante's body.
Mana from an unknown source enveloped him. It was bright enough to illuminate the dim forest.
“Ah, this is the Saintess's protection...”
Lancel Dante's expression filled with ecstasy.
The pilgrimage party could only watch the entire process with dumbfounded expressions.
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