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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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Clang.
Clang.
Clang!
Thud!
A sealed box, abandoned in a corner of the quiet, empty workshop, fell to the floor with a loud crash. The noise was loud enough to make anyone turn their heads, but fortunately, or unfortunately, there was no one in the workshop, bathed in the moonlight streaming through the window.
‘A host… I need a host.’
This body had its limitations.
That was the conclusion she had reached after three days of relentlessly attempting to escape, yearning for freedom.
Her escape attempts had already reached double digits in the past three days, and every single one had been thwarted by the burly man who had brought her here and the strange girl with an unsettling aura.
It was an incredibly frustrating situation.
‘Why isn’t it working?’
It was baffling. She had tried making eye contact and initiating the brainwashing process, but instead of taking effect, she was only met with relentless torment.
‘I can’t believe this is happening to me!’
She vented her frustration by frantically crawling across the dusty floor. If she had a mouth, she would have screamed loud enough to wake everyone sleeping in Yeomyeong-gwan. But for a grimoire, which lacked such a basic feature, it was an impossible feat.
Still, unable to bear the frustration, she lashed out at a table leg with her tentacles.
As if taking pity on her, the table she had struck wobbled, and an object on top of it fell onto her tentacles.
‘Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!’
A silent scream, unable to escape, reverberated through her mind like an 8.0 magnitude earthquake. Overwhelmed by pain, she clutched her severed tentacle and rolled on the floor as her vision blurred. She realized, for the first time, that she could cry.
‘Bu, but I have to… escape!’
Ignoring the pain of her severed tentacle, she pressed onward. The workshop door was now less than five meters away.
Covered in dirt and dust, she continued her desperate struggle for freedom.
Three meters.
Two meters.
One meter.
She reached the door and stretched out her tentacles towards the doorknob. Having lost a tentacle, she struggled to maintain her balance and kept toppling over, but she didn’t give up.
Didn’t they say that the most important thing was an unyielding spirit?
‘It’s open!’
Creak-
After a long struggle, she managed to turn the doorknob using her entire body weight and smiled inwardly.
Now, all she had to do was escape-
“…Meow?”
‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!’
Her ordeal wasn’t over yet.
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“Johann, are you alright?”
“You healed me, didn’t you? I’m perfectly fine, so don’t worry too much.”
“Please try not to get injured.”
“Sorry.”
“…It’s alright. You got hurt saving people, so it’s understandable.”
Early in the morning, with dew still clinging to the grass, I took Karina for a walk, pulling Patrasche behind me.
It was my turn to escort her today.
Even though I was more of a nominal escort knight, it was only right to give Renny, who was busy handling paperwork and escort duties, some time to rest. It pained me to see the dark circles under her eyes as she dozed off from exhaustion.
Anyway, I took Renny, who had been slumped over her desk, to her room and started the day with a walk before breakfast, with my shovel strapped to my back and Karina by my side.
“This is the first time we’ve taken a morning walk together, just the two of us.”
“Didn’t we do this sometimes on the deserted island?”
“The deserted island… It’s already been almost three months. It feels like it hasn’t been that long, but it also feels like years ago.”
Years ago… Even though I spent ten years there, it felt like a distant memory. As for those hellish days, they were now a fond memory… bullshit, the thought of it still made me curse.
“Jo, Johann, please refrain from using such vulgar language!”
“Sorry. Thinking about the deserted island made me curse without realizing it.”
I couldn’t help but curse when I thought about the ten years of endless hardships.
“I understand, but please be careful! Using vulgar language isn’t a good thing!”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
This felt like being scolded by my mother.
…Mother, mother.
What kind of person was my mother?
Honestly, I couldn’t understand why my memories of my parents were fainter than my memories of the game. My memories of my family were hazy, like a mirror covered in condensation.
Did something intentionally blur my memories?
Why-
“Johann?”
“…Ah, sorry. What were we talking about?”
“We were talking about Elisa.”
“Is she adjusting well to the work?”
Honestly, considering her crippling social anxiety, I wondered if she was still adjusting. But to my surprise, Karina nodded and said,
“She’s doing well. Renny is happy that she finally has some time to rest. Renny really hates paperwork… I need to recover quickly so I can take over her duties…”
“She seems to be handling it well, though.”
It was a side of Renny I hadn’t seen in the game.
In the game, there were limited opportunities to interact with her. You could only have personal conversations with her after raising your affinity with Karina to a certain level. It was quite surprising that Renny, who was perceived as a brute force character due to her performance in boss battles, was adept at handling intellectual tasks.
“She used to help me with simple tasks in the past.”
Was she putting her observation skills to use? Contrary to her appearance, she might be quite intelligent.
“It’s work that I should be doing… It makes me feel guilty seeing her work so hard that she even eats at her desk, sacrificing her break time. I tried to help when I felt better, but Renny adamantly refused…”
Karina sighed dejectedly. I listened to her, thinking about Renny, who was sleeping in her room.
How long could she keep pushing herself like that?
“…It might be better to hire more people.”
“…It’s not easy to find someone suitable to be around the Saint.”
Finding someone qualified to serve the Saint wasn’t easy. It was a position that required assisting the Saint herself. The qualifications were incredibly strict.
Even I, with enough licenses to build a card tower, was only able to get this position because of the recognition I received for escorting Karina to the Academy.
Elisa, with her unique lineage, had nowhere else to go besides here, so she was accepted as a harmless individual, as long as she didn’t turn evil…
“Meow!”
“Johann? Over there…”
Startled by the sharp cry that shattered my thoughts like a glass pane, I turned my head towards the source of the sound.
“…When did it escape?”
“Huh?”
“That book. The one we got from the rift. It can move on its own. It’s a dangerous book… I think.”
I didn’t know if a book being chased by a cat could be considered dangerous.
I excused myself from Karina, shooed the cat away, and picked up the book. Its tentacles were a tangled mess, scratched and bitten by the cat. One tentacle was even completely torn off.
“…Wouldn’t it be better to just stay put?”
The moist eyeball in the center of the book looked up at me. Its eyes, slightly brighter than before, seemed like they were about to start blinking again.
I flipped the book over and tucked it under my arm. There was nowhere else to put it, so I had no choice.
It wouldn’t be appropriate to hand this ominous object to Karina.
If that blinking was some kind of brainwashing beam, things would get very messy.
“What a fascinating book. Can I take a look?”
“No, it’s dangerous. You shouldn’t touch it.”
“It’s fine. I’m the Saint, you know. Most curses and magic don’t work on me.”
“Aren’t you currently cursed?”
“Uh… That’s true. But can I just take a quick look? It seems like a grimoire, but I don’t sense any malevolent energy… It does exude a gloomy kind of magic, though.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Well, it’s hard to explain, but it’s a bit different. Malevolent energy is dangerous, but gloomy magic can just be a natural attribute… Like Elisa.”
Ah.
That made sense.
“…I’ll hold it, but don’t touch it with your hands.”
I moved closer to Karina, keeping a distance of about two steps, and showed her the book, shielding my eyes with my hand in case it decided to shoot lasers again.
The tentacles slapping my hand felt weaker than a kitten’s paw, so it was just a minor annoyance.
After staring at the book for a while, Karina said,
“…I thought it would be a black magic grimoire, since it came from a place filled with zombies, but it feels different. Hmm, it feels more like… a scripture of some sort…”
“This is a scripture?”
That was the most surprising thing I had heard today.
A tentacled book being a scripture was as shocking as the fact that Milia had devoured all her carrots at dinner last night.
“It might not be. It could just be a book infused with that kind of energy… I don’t have much knowledge in this area, so I can’t be sure. Wouldn’t it be better to ask Principal Merlin?”
“…I should do that.”
I could have sworn the tentacles clung to my hand tighter at the mention of Merlin.
…Did it know Merlin?
That was impossible.
I tucked the now-docile tentacled book under my arm and grabbed the handle of Patrasche with my other hand.
It was time to resume our walk.
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“This is the only option left!”
She wasn’t giving up yet.
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Thanks for the chapter! It seems like someone’s soul has been sealed in the book? If it/she does know Merlin, I wonder how it/she ended up sealed in a book inside of a rift.