WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
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◈ The Protagonist of a Romance Fantasy Only Likes Me ◈
Chapter 35: Inheritance Run 1, Lancel Behind the Scenes. (3)
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5.
“From Dark Hood, the secret organization devoted to the great Lancel Dante...”
Dark Hood.
What an unbearably clumsy name. Lancel let out a quiet laugh and continued reading the letter.
“Listen closely. It may be hard to believe, but I am a longtime follower of Sir Lancel Dante, and I know a great deal about Sir Lancel Dante’s future.
‘This could not be more suspicious.’
“Sir Lancel Dante is not someone who should remain at this level! It would be such a waste of Sir Lancel Dante’s talent and ability to cling to a wealthy noble’s household and waste his time living idly. It is like eating bread without spreading jam on it.”
‘What kind of comparison is that?’
To think loafing Marigold would call him lazy.
“But don’t worry, Sir Lancel Dante. I’ll take care of everything. From now on, I will grow this secret organization called Dark Hood into a flourishing force and support Sir Lancel Dante with all my strength, until he becomes a great noble whom even the Empire cannot treat lightly.
“Incidentally, our organization currently consists of thirty members and five executives.”
‘That’s a lie, right?’
He would not believe it. Absolutely not.
“Starting tomorrow, I will send you a letter every night. I will report the organization’s achievements each day, so please reply whenever possible. Ah, if there is anything you want, please write it in your reply at any time. I will grant whatever you ask. Just trust me. Sir Lancel, your life is looking up now.”
“From Lemon Verbena, leader of Dark Hood.”
“...”
Lancel stared at the end of the letter for a moment, then neatly burned it in the lamp’s flame.
“Shall I sleep?”
* * *
The next morning, Lancel saw Marigold pacing around him with an oddly restless air.
“Why do you keep walking back and forth?”
“Pardon? It’s just... um... nothing...”
She retreated with a dejected expression, muttering something under her breath.
“...Why is there no reaction at all...?”
Apparently, she was quite disappointed that the recipient of a letter from the secret organization Dark Hood was acting no differently than usual.
‘What am I supposed to do, then?’
Lancel was not so cold that he could not play along with the strange antics of the regressor Marigold.
But he had no idea what reaction someone who received a letter from a secret organization was supposed to show, so he simply continued eating breakfast.
From time to time, Marigold’s pouting face lingered at the edge of his vision.
.
.
.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
That dawn, Lancel was once again roused from a deep sleep. The culprit was a raven pecking insistently at the window. It seemed to be around three in the morning.
‘If you’re going to send it, send it early. Why so late?’
He opened the window with a long yawn.
Flap!
As the raven burst into the room with a beat of its wings, he quickly caught it in his hand.
Caw! Caw!
As if it had expected something, the raven covered both eyes and began trembling pitifully.
“I’m not going to stab you.”
He brought the letter tied around its ankle back toward the lamp.
“Yes, this is Dark Hood. Since the letter came so suddenly, it may have been difficult for you to believe. But Dark Hood is real. We truly are an influential force in the Empire devoted to Sir Lancel Dante! I mean that this was not sent as a joke. Please believe us!”
‘Marigold must be deeply disappointed.’
It seemed she had felt that Lancel had dismissed the letter she sent yesterday as a prank tossed out by someone with too much time on their hands.
It was difficult to deny it, since he had not entirely thought otherwise.
“But I admit it. If I received a letter like this out of nowhere, I think even I would find it a little suspicious. It was my misjudgment. Very rarely, and rather unlike me, I made a slight misjudgment.”
Lancel glanced at the raven, which had somehow climbed onto his shoulder, then returned to the letter.
“Therefore, we will show you proof of our organization. Please reply and assign us any task at all. Yes, issue us an order. We will do anything.”
“From Lemon Verbena, leader of Dark Hood.”
“Hmm.”
This was amusing.
Lancel smiled and quickly picked up his quill.
‘What should I write to get Marigold back?’
Perhaps he should start simply. If he asked for something too difficult, there was no telling what might happen.
In the blank space beneath the letter, Lancel wrote a brief reply.
“Bring me the jam sold at lunchtime by the bakery on Rodnis’s Twelfth Street. That is all.”
.
.
.
“Ah!”
The next day, Lancel saw Marigold stumble at the entrance of the estate with a loud crash. The jar of jam she had held in her arms rolled across the floor, spilling its contents everywhere.
“No! My jam!”
“Mary! Where have you been?”
“J-just out for a moment...!”
“What is that on the floor? You spilled it all! Clean it up quickly!”
“Y-yes!”
‘It failed.’
Was even this request too much?
Caw!
“Hmm?”
Yet that dawn, unexpectedly, the raven that tapped on his window had a string clenched in its beak. A string tightly wrapped around a jar of jam.
Lancel brought it inside and quickly opened the jar.
‘This is...’
It did not smell like the jam sold at the bakery on Twelfth Street. When he tasted it, the flavor was strangely familiar.
She had clearly refilled the jar with jam she had made herself.
“I have delivered the jam you requested. Will you now believe in our existence?”
The nerve.
Lancel picked up his pen.
“Yes, I believe you. You truly are my follower.”
The raven on his shoulder spread its wings and flew away.
Its retreating figure seemed satisfied.
* * *
“Send me a bottle of apple wine. It is not easy to find around here.”
The next day, the raven brought fruit wine.
“There is a puppy that sometimes visits the garden. Could you bring it to my room?”
The next day, Lancel received a puppy tucked into a pocket.
“What sort of clothes would suit me? Please bring something decent.”
The next day, Marigold’s familiar flew in, struggling under the weight of no fewer than four outfits.
Unexpectedly, they suited him very well.
By then, even Lancel had begun to feel competitive.
That terribly clumsy secret organization, which almost certainly consisted of Marigold alone, was diligently carrying out his requests.
Wondering, ‘Could they do this too?’ Lancel moved his quill.
“Bring me one gold coin. I am in a difficult situation because I have no money.”
The next day, the familiar appeared with a gold coin in its beak, though there was no telling where it had found it.
Caw!
As he accepted the gleaming gold coin, Lancel found it increasingly difficult to hide his bewilderment.
‘Where on earth did she get this?’
As far as he knew, Marigold had stayed inside the estate all day. She was no different than usual, doing a little work before slipping away to take a nap.
So how had she gotten a gold coin?
If there was any possibility, she must have found it somewhere in this estate. But that made no sense either. Baron Evil Shen, a notorious miser, was extremely meticulous with money. He would never leave something as valuable as a gold coin lying around.
Lancel quickly unfolded the letter.
“Here is the one gold coin you requested! This is the power of our secret organization! If you need more, we can procure as much as you like!”
Lancel stroked his chin.
‘They are more capable than I expected.’
Still...
‘Isn’t this just an errand service rather than a secret organization?’
Well.
Strictly speaking, Lancel was the reason Marigold was being used that way, but judging by what they had done so far, they were simply convenient errand runners. It was far removed from the grand, secretive organization she had originally wanted.
Lancel put the gold coin back in the raven’s beak and sent it away, telling it to return the money to wherever it had come from.
‘There really aren’t dozens of members, are there?’
...No. Surely not.
6.
“Come to think of it, the imperial capital has been rather noisy lately.”
“Pardon?”
“The Imperial Ball.”
At Baron Evil Shen’s words, Lancel lowered the meat he had been about to put into his mouth. They were at dinner.
“For some reason, they say the entire palace will be opened for the Harvest Festival the year after next. I thought it would be wonderful news for young nobles with promising futures, like Sir Lancel.”
“The year after next...”
Marigold had celebrated her seventeenth birthday not long ago. The year after next, she would be nineteen, old enough to reach the Marriage Ending.
“Of course you should attend this time, Sir Lancel. They say quite a few people at past Imperial Balls ended up getting married. It was a long time ago, though.”
“Well, that is true.”
“Take this chance to win over some young lady and bring her to Viscount Dante. If not now, when will you get a chance to make a move on such distinguished young ladies? Wouldn’t you agree?”
Baron Evil Shen was already thoroughly excited despite it not being his own affair. Beside him, Marigold, who was filling his water glass, pricked up her ears.
The mention of the Imperial Ball seemed to have caught her attention as well.
‘It certainly is an opportunity.’
An opportunity.
‘An opportunity to make Marigold the Imperial Consort.’
For the nobles of this world, marriage was ordinarily nothing more than a means of building family connections. They chose someone who would benefit their house and formed a marital bond that was half forced.
Lancel’s own engagement, in the previous iteration, to the Iceford young lady, one of the Empire’s Three Great Beauties, had followed the same course.
But the Imperial Ball was different.
There, it was possible to propose.
At that event, two people could form an engagement based solely on their own wishes. Astonishingly, this was an unspoken rule within the imperial capital’s noble society.
Lancel already had an idea of why such a custom had come to exist.
‘There were so many scenes like that in the game. Whether it was a broken engagement or a proposal, those romance fantasy events that happened against the backdrop of an Imperial Ball...’
As a result, the Imperial Ball remained the Empire’s last realm of romance and romantic ideals.
Naturally, even the imperial family would attend.
‘If I get Marigold in there? Wouldn’t that turn everything around in one stroke?’
How to win over a prince was a problem for later. What mattered first was that an opportunity would be given.
Yes. The Imperial Ball was not held often. In all the centuries he had lived, this would be only the third. It was an exceedingly rare opportunity.
“Can any noble attend?”
“Of course. Why would someone like Sir Lancel be unable to enter?”
“What about commoners?”
“Isn’t it only natural that they cannot even come near?”
“What about those in between?”
“They could probably enter, at least.”
Between nobles and commoners.
He meant the honorary noble title known as a baronet.
“...How does one become a baronet again?”
Baron Evil Shen looked as though he wondered why Lancel was asking, but at Lancel’s urging, he soon answered.
“First, you must make a donation of at least fifty gold coins...”
“And?”
“And if you receive a great many recommendations from nobles... I believe the Imperial Household bestows the title around the turn of the year... But why are you suddenly asking?”
It meant the Imperial Household considered one’s wealth and connections before reviewing the matter and granting the title. In short...
“Hmm...”
“Hmmm...”
For some reason, Marigold was also deeply pondering something beside him.
* * *
That dawn, Lancel immediately began writing a letter to Lemon Verbena, Marigold’s alias.
“This may be sudden, but I would like to recommend someone to become an executive of Dark Hood. There is a maid named Mary at the estate where I am staying. She listens well to me, so make sure to include her in the organization.
“My plan is to have Mary obtain the title of baronet as soon as possible and send her to the Imperial Ball. It is all for the organization, so do not think too deeply about it. That will be all.”
‘Would this be enough?’
Even Lancel was uncertain, but he had no choice.
He had only two years. Somehow, he had to get Marigold into the Imperial Ball before then.
.
.
.
“...Young Master Lancel... wants me...”
“Pardon?”
Holding the letter, Marigold went blank.
“Does he... want to receive... a proposal from me?”
“What are you talking about at this hour of the morning?”
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