Chapter 206
After returning to her private room, Charlotte changed into some comfortable clothes and lay down on her bed, curling up her legs.
Had she done well?
She had always thought that she had to do that someday.
He was already far out of her reach, so she’d thought that she should cut off contact someday. However, she couldn’t make that decision because she felt like the moment she cut off that weak link, everything just might completely disappear.
He was within reach…
That feeling of being able to see the boy whenever she wanted was very important to her, even though she was unable to actually see him.
It was hard for her to have that feeling just disappear.
However, eventually, Charlotte decided to break that link herself. She did it because, for one, she realized how much she was endangering Reinhardt with all of it, but she couldn’t keep having contact with that boy anymore for her own sake as well.
He was just some boy whose identity was completely unknown. Even he himself didn’t know who he was.
Keeping up that link was a foolish act driven by her emotions, and cutting off their connection was, in the end, the most logical choice.
‘May you be happy in that place where neither Bertus nor I can find you.’
It was the right thing to do for that boy that had been thrown into danger from his involvement with her. If it would really help him, then she’d made the right move. While no one knew who he was, and he was highly suspicious, Charlotte wanted him to be happy.
She didn’t know where he was or who he was…
But she wished the boy happiness.
Charlotte was trying to forget him completely.
However, not everything had disappeared.
Among all the stupid things she did to find the boy, Charlotte had made another connection.
—A classmate who’d made a rather bad first impression on her and was surrounded by bad rumors.
Reinhardt…
After helping each other out in various ways, they’d become friends.
While trying to find someone she cared for, another person appeared for whom she cared.
Charlotte felt guilty.
She thought that having such feelings in itself was a form of cowardice.
Because she was afraid of treading on the dangerous path, she simply chose the comfortable one instead.
She didn’t like Reinhardt in such a way.
However, she was worried that those feelings of worry would grow into something else.
Charlotte de Gradias was afraid of that.
‘Detto.’
‘I hope it’s true that I will end up marrying Reinhardt.’
Charlotte hugged her pillow and put her face in it.
‘Because that would mean that I’ll still be alive until then.’
The pillow was gradually getting wet with tears.
She felt greatly disappointed in herself that those strong and anxious feelings she had held for that boy could be changed so easily.
However, even more than that…
She didn’t want to die.
She didn’t want to lose the precious life that the boy had saved for nothing. Her life was a gift the boy had given her. It was the only thing remaining from their relationship.
She wasn’t that greedy to live. It wasn’t like she desperately wanted to live more.
Her life itself was simply precious to her. It was the only and last gift from the person that was most precious to her in the world
That was why she didn’t want to lose it.
So she’d rather hope that the prophecy would come true.
If that were the case, that would mean that she wouldn’t lose this precious treasure until then. It meant she would be able to hold on for a bit longer.
Reinhardt thought that If the prophecy of his marriage with Charlotte de Gardias came true, that would mean both of them would survive the Gate Crisis.
Charlotte had similar thoughts.
* * *
You don’t have to deliver those letters anymore.
Charlotte hadn’t told me why she had made that decision. I was also wondering why she didn’t even try sending the letters through someone else.
I had some doubts and some guesses, but in the end, all speculation was simply meaningless.
Only Charlotte would know the truth.
In the end, the big stone Dettomolian had thrown into the pond brought about one change after the other.
However, things hadn’t really changed.
To be exact, things had gone back to normal.
“Hello, Reinhardt.”
“Hi.”
“…Hi? Hi, and that’s it?”
“Then what do you want me to say?”
“…Basically, you utterly lack any form of courtesy towards others. It’s not your status that made you that way, there’s something fundamentally wrong with you, you know?”
“What am I supposed to do then?”
“You should fix that attitude.”
Correction.
Things hadn’t gotten back to normal, I actually talked a little more with Charlotte than I had in the past, and whenever Charlotte saw me, her eyes would turn sharp and she’d scold me for not being friendlier.
It felt like our relationship was neither good nor bad. Since there was nothing tying us together anymore, Charlotte and I had become more comfortable with each other, and as I had gotten more comfortable, I sometimes tended to act more crudely, but Charlotte always had something to say about that, so we would fight.
It was a little different from how things were between me and Harriet.
If we lived in the same dormitory, we might have fought more often, but I didn’t really meet Charlotte that frequently unless we had Supernatural Power Class or our Common Classes.
Anyway, Charlotte really wanted to fix my personality.
“I’ve been living quite well even though I’m like this, though?”
“Hooh. Just how could such a beggar be born in the Empire?”
Sorry, but I’m not from the Empire. I’m what you call an immigrant.
Charlotte’s body shook seemingly in disgust before she took Scarlett and went away.
Of course, Charlotte was still Charlotte, so even though we quarreled, she smiled and waved to me when she said that she would get going.
There was something about Charlotte’s smile that put my mind at ease.
It might be because she was the first person I saw when I got there.
Charlotte’s mere existence meant a lot to me.
Alright…
Things that I actually wanted to happen didn’t happen, and events and incidents were popping up in front of me when I least expect or even considered that they might happen. Dealing with those things would only lead to unexpected results.
In the end, I didn’t find out what happened for her to stop sending letters, but it was clear that it was over and done with.
As for the Magic Research Society, we just needed to wait for those results.
I had yet to hear from Bertus regarding the Rotary Gang’s new business as well.
That problem with Charlotte had also been settled for the moment. It was clear that things had gotten better just when things had gotten worse.
* * *
“O-oh! I can feel something!”
“How is it?”
“I need to go, I really need to shit.”
“…”
-Hit!
“Ack! Why did you hit me? Why did you hit my head? Will you take responsibility if I turn stupid?”
“…Can you even get more stupid?”
Ellen stared at me with her eyes narrowed. Her Magic Body Strengthening training didn’t really make any sense to me, so that was all she would say.
“Y-you, aren’t you being too fucking harsh? I’m gonna cry, ya hear? At this age! Do you wanna fucking see that? Huh?”
I, who was in my thirties, would actually start crying after getting hit by a 17-year-old! Just who would want to see that?
“Shut up, hurry up and go to the bathroom.”
I didn’t make any progress in my Magic Body Strengthening training.
After I went to the bathroom, I sat back down together with Ellen and resumed my training.
“Here.”
-Glooow…
Ellen’s whole body was enveloped by blue magical power, even her eyes were shining blue. Ellen was showing me her Magic Body Strengthening as if asking me to copy her.
“By the way, I’ve been wondering, you know… Can you actually use this as a light source when it gets too dark?”
“…I haven’t tried. And stop talking nonsense. Hurry up and copy me.”
“Don’t you get that I keep spouting this nonsense because I just don’t understand how it’s done?”
“I don’t. Hurry up and sit down.”
Ellen stared at me as if she was ready to hit me with her magically strengthened fist if I said any more nonsense, so I sat across from her, afraid I would piss myself.
“And you over there as well.”
“…Me?
“Who else is there besides you?”
She even called Cliffman, who had been beating up a scarecrow on his own, with a single hand gesture, and sat him down as he wore a rather nervous expression on his face.
“Well, I seriously don’t get…”
“Try it. You might as well.”
“…I really can’t.”
“If you don’t get it, doesn’t that mean you’ll never get it?”
“Th-that’s not it!”
* * *
Translator – KonnoAren
* * *
“You’ll have to learn it someday. Just think of this as studying ahead of time.”
Cliffman was basically pretty unsociable. Dealing with other people seemed to exhaust him a lot more mentally. He was unsociable in a different way than Ellen.
The one he had the most difficulty with was Ellen. While I wasn’t sure when it started, at some point, he didn’t just seem to find it difficult to deal with her, he’d actually started to get scared of Ellen.
I believe it started around the time when I got caught up in that whole Corrupted Tiamata debacle.
He struggled like a mouse before a snake when faced with Ellen, and sometimes, without even meaning to, he would end up being overly polite towards her.
As such, the usual training room visitors were training to realize Magic Body Strengthening under Ellen’s tutelage, however, both Cliffman and I showed zero results.
Well…
If the goal of the Magic Research Society was to raise the strength of the magic major students, Ellen was also just trying to teach us her own way of strengthening her body with magical power.
“Erm… It’s said that if you use this technique incorrectly, you would end up getting seriously injured…”
One might get gravely hurt if one did what we were taught, not the teacher.
Cliffman tried his utmost to express his refusal, however, Ellen just shook her head.
“You two aren’t at the level yet where you could hurt yourself.”
“…”
“…”
If one were to get injured while poorly controlling one’s magical power, that would mean that one could at least control one’s magical power.
Both Cliffman and I couldn’t say anything against Ellen’s verbal attack saying that we first had to know how to do something with which we could hurt ourselves, so we didn’t have anything to worry about for now.
“You… Sometimes you talk pretty harshly, you know?”
“That’s true.”
In the end, what she said was true, so neither Cliffman nor I could say anything more.
* * *
I planned on being a little more active starting from the second semester, which was why I started doing various things.
My only worry was that Ludwig would only get stronger after going through various ordeals, but there were a lot of plot points missing, so I was slightly concerned about what would happen if Ludwig didn’t manage to get as strong as I’d planned, but I deemed that worry to be useless.
That guy actually got stronger the less he had to do.
And if things really didn’t work out, I could still make Ludwig stronger with all the knowledge I possessed.
There wasn’t only one type of event that I was aware of. While it might change the future, I could still use the events that were available to me.
Those events were variable.
However, there were some events that would happen no matter what I did, just like there were some that would absolutely never happen no matter what I did.
I was going to lay my hands on those little by little.
Basically, Temple was equipped with protective barriers and anti-magic measures, however, incidents and accidents would just end up happening constantly. I mean, if there weren’t, it would be difficult to move the plot forward, so some parts of it had to be more lax.
Otherwise, nothing would happen in that perfectly safe school environment other than going to class.
Fights between students…
Evil outside forces….
Or inner strife…
Originally, I was planning on letting things run their course without interfering.
However, as soon as I found out that Ludwig would actually grow a lot stronger through self-improvement as long as nothing happened, I came to the conclusion that it would be fine if I took some preemptive measures in case of such incidents in his stead.
In other words, I was acting as the protagonist in order to reduce the burden on Ludwig, the actual protagonist.
Ludwig didn’t have to be the protagonist of this world. He wasn’t important, but the Gate Incident was. That was the only thing that had to get resolved. Like that, Ludwig wouldn’t have to go through pain and suffering to grow stronger. There were some things that would definitely happen later on anyway, so there was no reason to let him suffer through those unnecessary things before then.
If Ludwig were a coward and would only be able to shake off that cowardice after going through a certain process, I would have let those events happen, but Ludwig was a very righteous guy from the get-go.
He wouldn’t be one to run away out of fear in the face of battle. He was someone who would do everything in his might if he had to. Even if he just kept getting stronger through ordinary training, he would be able to carry his own weight later on.
I’d already taken measures to strengthen the magic major students.
There were a lot of ways through which the combat major students would be able to get even stronger as well.
And those ways would be beneficial for me as well, unlike the measures I took for the magic major students.
In my first semester, I’d focused on strengthening myself, and during my vacations, I’d also gotten the Holy Sword Tiamata, which I could bring with me wherever I wanted.
In my second semester, I’d turned my attention to something other than me, people, and events.
If there was something that would happen anyway, I should use everything I had to reduce the damage it would cause, and if it was something that was preventable depending on my behavior, I should consider the gravity of the incident and the impact it would have if I decided to prevent it from happening or let it go.
Of course, that didn’t mean I would neglect my basic training.
I had to do a lot more while still maintaining what I had been doing.
My comprehension of Magic Body Strengthening wasn’t really progressing, though it would be a lot stranger if my progress was fast. I didn’t think I was a genius, after all.
Using Self-Suggestion, believing that I was a master over magical power, didn’t really work. However, I still kept going, feeling that it would work out somehow, and it also had been less than a month since I started training to strengthen my body using magical power.
Although I don’t know if I should call these things projects, anyway, these were my five projects:
The Edina Islands business.
The Gang’s new business.
The Magic Research Society.
Magic Body Strengthening training.
Interfering with future events.
And lastly…
The Alpha and Omega of everything.
The achievement points.
[Achievement Points : 2,430]
Of the original 6,430 points, I’d used 4,000 achievement points to awaken a new talent, Mana Control.
Talents were inherently rare, so I was a rather talent-rich person having three of them.
At the beginning of the first semester, I only had infinite aptitudes, but now I had three talents. I even had a supernatural power, which was incredibly rare, that was why I kept on calling Ellen a genius.
Magic Body Strengthening wasn’t actually something possible for a teenager, to begin with. Even those that were talented would only be able to use it after long periods of training.
Even in that place, where only talented people gathered, Magic Body Strengthening was a power that only a few would be able to realize. In fact, there were a lot of students that had no idea how to do it until their graduation.
So it wasn’t strange that I didn’t have a single clue even while possessing all the essential talents, Mana Sensitivity and Mana Control. Ellen was just extraordinary.
Still, even if the skill was beyond me that year, I was sure I would be able to do it next year.
Anyway, I didn’t really need any further talents at that point.
It would have been nice to have a weapon-related talent, but I didn’t really have any particular one I wanted, and the level of my swordsmanship kept on rising due to my training with Ellen.
Furthermore, the achievement points to acquire my next talent would be double 4,000 points, 8,000 points.
What really mattered were the achievement points as-is, though.
Whether I used them for Revisions or Previews, or, although I had never done that, to add settings or whatever.
To me, they were more important than money, especially because I wasn’t sure what might happen, so I’d kept a large amount of them for quite a long period of time, however, I had spent a lot of them this time around.
They had a lot of uses, so I wanted to save up a lot of them in case something unexpected happened.
There were no quests or events I could complete at the moment, so there was only one way for me to earn achievement points…
Just by completing challenges.
[List of Challenges]
[Take control of the Edina Islands – 40,000 Points]
[Take over the Imperial Capital’s underworld – 20,000 Points]
[(Festival) Win the Open Tournament – 15,000 Points]
[(Festival)Win the First-Year Tournament – 10,000 Points]
[Place first in the overall midterm exam – 8,000 Points]
Unlike before, there were a lot of additional challenges that gave a lot of points, as well as ones related to the festival. That was the second semester’s main event, after all.
But why did they give so many points? What the hell was up with that? Taking control of the Edina Islands? I mean, Airi was there, but they were actually telling me to take over the whole country right that instant, weren’t they?
If I remembered right, there was once a challenge that asked me to slap the Emperor. Were the top challenges always things I couldn’t possibly achieve at the moment?
What about taking over the Imperial Capital’s underworld? I had no idea what might happen if I decided to do that.
[(Festival) Become Miss Temple – 1,100 points](Doesn’t have to be achieved with Reinhardt’s appearance.)
[(Festival) Become Mr. Temple – 1,000 points]
[(Festival) Win the Cross-dressing Contest – 1,100 points]
And what the fuck was that?
I understood the part about becoming Mr. Temple, but why was there a challenge telling me to become Miss Temple?!
And why did that give me 100 more points than becoming Mr. Temple?
That bastard was telling me to do what I did last time! That fucker wanted me to transform with the ring or whatever!
And a Cross-dressing Contest? Why did that give me 1,100 points as well?
Fuck off!
[(Festival) Become Miss Temple – 1,500 points]
[(Festival) Win the Cross-dressing Contest – 1,500 points]
…What the?
Did the number of points I would get as a reward change right in front of my nose?
You won’t do it for 1,100 points? Is that so? How about 1,500?
That was what that ass was doing, right?
I’m not fucking doing it, okay?
[(Festival) Become Miss Temple – 2,000 points]
[(Festival) Win the Cross-dressing Contest – 2,000 points]
The numbers changed yet again right in front of me.
No.
Did that fucker want to see me dressed up as a woman or using the ring take part in the ‘Miss’ pageant that bad?
‘I’m not fucking doing it, ya hear?!’
[(Festival) Become Miss Temple – 4,000 points]
[(Festival) Win the Cross-dressing Contest – 4,000 Points]
“God damn it.”
Why was that bastard so generous when it came to shit like that?
‘4,000 points? I wouldn’t do it even if you gave me 40,000 points!’
W-well, if it actually gave me 40,000 points… with that many points, I might be able to change the future, right…?
That… Should be enough, right?
Would, that guy… give me 40,000?
…Yeah, that bastard wouldn’t, right?
Perhaps thinking that giving me 40,000 points crossed the line, the rewarded points didn’t change to 40,000.
As I looked further, I seemed to find even more challenges that only seemed to serve to deal me mental damage. There were also challenges related to the midterm exam, nothing seemed different from before.
As I had already failed that one once, I didn’t plan on touching it again.
That was all there was to those challenges after all.
They were either too difficult for me to beat or scarring. It was full of strange things like sneaking out of Temple in the middle of the night or getting drunk in the dormitory until I passed out, and the number of points I would get for those was really small.
And…
[Get your first kiss – 500 points]
“…”
Why was that there?
And…
[Fight against the Orbis Class – 500 Points]
Now that bastard was just blatantly encouraging me to actually become a delinquent.
