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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“How can a man be so careless.”
The sleeping spell was powerful.
If the now sleeping Rudrick had seen it, he would have unconsciously uttered an outdated joke, “As expected of a sleeping spell, the performance is solid,” to that extent.
Originally, no matter how much a doctor or exercise trainer with professional knowledge tells you to relax your body, human psychology is such that it doesn’t happen perfectly.
Because every human being instinctively has a psychological defense mechanism that operates to deal with unexpected situations.
The magic to expel mana from the body also couldn’t be perfectly applied while conscious due to that instinctive defense mechanism, which was why Rudrick was put to sleep first, right?
However, without a moment’s hesitation, Rudrick consciously blocked all instinctively operating defense mechanisms and fell asleep standing up, collapsing like a shell.
Sylphia, who caught him, grumbled.
“If he really didn’t like it, it would have been incomplete, but I had prepared separately to do it while he was conscious… It was all for nothing.”
It was natural.
Forcing herself to self-hypnotize that she had no choice but to catch Rudrick, who was about to collapse after being forced to sleep by the sleeping spell, she performed the so-called princess carry.
In this world, it would be more natural to call it a prince carry.
Anyway, the series of processes of carrying Rudrick in that posture soon became very natural.
“Then I should start soon…”
Even though she had polymorphed into a human, her essence was a dragon, one of the most powerful living beings on this land.
It was highly unlikely that carrying Rudrick in a prince carry posture would be a burden.
As evidence, Sylphia, who was pondering where to start, showed no sign of difficulty at all.
“…I should lay him down and think first.”
Sylphia, who muttered, placed Rudrick on a table to one side.
And unconsciously, her gaze turned towards the laid down Rudrick.
Since he had been forced to sleep by the sleeping spell, there was a conviction that he wouldn’t wake up no matter what she did now that he was asleep.
As she stared intently, it was a natural course of events for bad thoughts to arise in her mind.
Eventually, Sylphia, who shook her head vigorously to shake off the bad thoughts, muttered.
“It must be soft and squishy, right…?”
The clean and pure white skin without a single blemish, showing that he had grown up beautifully without going through any hardships.
Thanks to that, a momentary desire to pinch his cheeks arose and subsided.
Those cheeks would definitely be soft and squishy if pinched, and moreover, Rudrick was sleeping, so he wouldn’t notice.
However, in a way, the fact that Rudrick unhesitatingly allowed himself to be put under the sleeping spell could be interpreted as meaning that he trusted Sylphia that much.
The moment that thought occurred to her belatedly, Sylphia was overcome with the urge to hit her own head for having such bad thoughts.
No matter if it was for the purpose of treatment, Rudrick had readily agreed to the extent of willingly falling under the sleep magic, trusting her, yet she was having thoughts of wanting to pinch his cheeks while looking at his sleeping face.
“…Thinking about it this way, I’m the worst.”
Sylphia pondered with a hint of self-loathing.
A relationship between a man and a woman was always complicated by nature.
Still, the feeling of being trusted wasn’t too bad.
Soon, the corners of Sylphia’s mouth slightly rose.
In any case, for dragons, mating was merely an act for the preservation of the species.
Humans were animals that mated not only for reproduction but also for pleasure, but naturally speaking, such animals were extremely rare.
No matter how much Sylphia defined her current life as ‘pastime’ and became deeply immersed in human life, it would be unreasonable to completely imitate human thoughts and behaviors down to the fundamental level.
From the beginning, there was no room for impure intentions to intervene.
It wasn’t that Sylphia had no interest at all in such acts, but if she were to do it, it would be proper to do so after first winning Rudrick’s heart and making a marital vow.
“Then let’s start slowly.”
Although Rudrick had already fallen asleep and couldn’t hear her, Sylphia muttered to herself out of habit, and mana began to gather in her hand.
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My body felt light.
“…Has anything changed?”
Although in reality, it didn’t seem like much time had passed, it felt as if I had slept soundly without even dreaming and woken up.
Perhaps it was just my feeling, but my body felt lighter than before I fell asleep with magic.
“There is something that has changed.”
“Ah, Sylphia. Did it succeed?”
I reflexively turned my head and asked at the sound of Sylphia’s voice from beside me.
So, when I fall asleep with magic first, the defense mechanism stops working… Then the mana in my body can be expelled without resistance, right?
I was still a novice in learning magic, so I couldn’t fully understand it.
That was only natural, since if it was magic directly used by a dragon, it would be an extremely advanced realm at the human level, so how would I know?
I could only vaguely guess that there was theoretically room to try it.
“It was half successful. Your body feels light, right Rudrick?”
“…How did you know?”
“Anything in excess is not good. With that much mana accumulated in your body, it must have been slowly eating away at your body, so if you understand it as a state where the affected part has been removed through surgery, it will be easier.”
“Ah.”
As soon as I heard Sylphia’s words, I reached out my hand and cast a spell.
It was a basic level of magic that could hardly be called a spell, where mana was concentrated to create light.
At best, it might be useful for illuminating the surroundings instead of a magic stone lamp.
Flash.
The flash of light occurred simultaneously with my attempt to use magic.
However, the process of casting that magic was slightly different from before I fell asleep.
“…It feels strangely changed.”
“Of course. Originally, Rudrick had so much mana in his body that he didn’t need to gather mana from the atmosphere to activate it. But now, all that mana has been temporarily removed, so the process of casting magic itself must have changed from before.”
“Ah, I understand now that you explain it. Somehow, it felt like there was a strange delay in the speed of magic activation compared to usual… No, wait a minute. Did you say temporarily?”
If my ears weren’t mistaken, I was sure I heard the word ‘temporarily’ just now.
When I looked at Sylphia with a blank face, she turned her head and avoided my gaze.
“…Please don’t stare at me like that. I did my best, but it didn’t turn out as I thought.”
“What happened…?”
“Haa…”
Instead of answering my question, Sylphia let out a deep sigh as if the ground would cave in, then began to explain.
The gist of the explanation was as follows.
While I was asleep, without any interference, she succeeded in engraving the magic circle and expelling the mana in my body, scattering it into a natural state.
When she realized my condition before the regression, the situation had already deteriorated to the point where it was difficult to attempt this method, so she only thought of it as a hypothesis, but it was an unexpectedly easy success.
Sylphia thought it was all resolved and was happy, but before that joy could fade away, she discovered a strange phenomenon, which was the gist of the explanation.
“…The mana was gathering again?”
“It seems that Rudrick has a constitution that absorbs surrounding mana… If it’s not this, there’s no explanation…?”
The mana that had been expelled and completely scattered was slowly being absorbed again.
Compared to usual, the amount of mana in my body would be at an unprecedentedly low level, but it would recover to its normal level before long, according to the explanation that followed.
No, in other words, if you thought about it simply, it meant that even if you scattered it like this, it was only a temporary measure.
…Is this a big problem?
“Phew… But we have to think positively. We bought time. If we do this consistently from now on, the effect will diminish over time, but still, compared to before, we can buy a few more years.”
“Well… That’s fortunate.”
“In fact, supplying mana to one side and expelling it could be one of the methods, assuming it’s done periodically over a lifetime. Still, it would be much more efficient than using magic like this every time.”
“…What method is that? I don’t think I’ve heard an explanation about it before.”
“Consider this a last resort to be used only when your life is truly in danger. To explain in detail… It’s a bit, you know.”
“What…?”
No, what is it? What method is it?
I didn’t expect to encounter such a vicious cliff-hanger here.
Moreover, what was truly vicious was that even if I asked out of curiosity, Sylphia had no intention of answering at all.
“What is it, what method are you hiding like that? You’re keeping the good stuff to yourself, aren’t you?”
“Would I do that?! …Ahem, anyway, this is really a last resort, so just know that there is such a method.”
“You’re sneakily keeping it to yourself.”
“…If you really want to know, ask that vampire later. I absolutely can’t say it.”
No matter how many times I asked, all I got in return was Sylphia’s adamant attitude of putting up an iron wall.
With her face only turning red and not giving a satisfactory answer, what else could I do?
I’ll ask Arwen about this later…
Sigh, I had some expectations when you said you got rid of all the mana.
As expected, taking the world by storm isn’t easy.
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