Episode 6: Savior Elf
[Today’s Diary]
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.
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Young lady’s mood: 😡
ㄴ Elves are gods and geniuses and Jimmy Neutron and blah blah blah, anyway, unbelievably amazing people.
ㄴ It was solved so easily that the last few days of rolling around like a dog felt meaningless.
ㄴ As expected, spirit magic is divine magic.
ㄴ The young lady, seeing spirits for the first time, grinned from ear to ear.
ㄴ Hehe, cute.
ㄴ But why was she angry?
* * *
About 14 days.
In that short span of time, my appearance had deteriorated to the point where calling me half-dead wouldn’t have been strange.
‘It wouldn’t feel out of place if someone shoved funeral money into my hand the moment I lay down.’
My stamina was fine.
If anything, it was my mind that was having a hard time.
The budget I’d received by coaxing her junior without getting the elf’s permission.
And the manpower and additional budget the young lady had hired with her own money.
If the elf caught me, it would be a fight at minimum.
And if the brewery didn’t run properly?
Then the young lady would be disappointed, right?
Then my heart would hurt, right?
‘I was ready to dive straight off the mansion roof out of guilt.’
In the middle of all that, she said there was a way to solve it, so how could she possibly look ordinary to me?
“A savior! A savior has descended…!”
“.......”
I dropped to my knees and bowed my head as if a savior truly had descended.
Of course, a gaze like thousands of bottles of capsaicin being poured onto the back of my head rained down on me.
‘How was I supposed to resist this?’
What could I do when my knees folded on their own?
Besides, if I overreacted first,
there was a high chance the other party would miss the timing to get angry.
And what did that mean?
‘It means she might let it slide that I swindled her junior.’
In professional terms, the first strike wins.
No fight,
and the other person’s mood goes up.
Two birds with one stone, killing two hares with one blow.
Draining the ditch and catching the crayfish, eating the pheasant and its egg too.
“Ehehe.”
As I laughed sinisterly with my forehead pressed to the ground,
Elir’s voice dropped down from above my head.
“...First, um, please get up.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Let’s test whether it works first.”
After finishing her words, Elir immediately closed her eyes, then opened them.
{Sally, Sylpho.}
As she let out sounds that were not of human language, a silver energy swirled in her pupils.
At the same time,
a small bird breathing fire and a small fairy wrapped in wind appeared before her.
{Can you help me for a bit?}
“Are those spirits? They’re so cute!”
The young lady stared at the spirits, grinning broadly.
Well.
It wasn’t exactly easy to see spirits.
If it was your first time, it made sense to think they were cute.
However.
I was different.
‘It’s been a while.’
Once, under the pretext of sparring with my mother, I’d exchanged plenty of blows with things like those.
They might look tiny and cute like that,
but in substance, they were closer to K-9 self-propelled artillery shells.
‘My wrists throbbed every time I deflected one.’
Even now, my wrists tingled from the sensation left in my body.
‘I want to fight them again.’
My fighting spirit surged.
But I had to hold back.
‘Later.’
The time had not yet come.
Meanwhile, the spirits who received my gaze flinched.
In particular, the timid Sylpho trembled as she looked up at Elir.
{Eliiir.}
{What is it?}
{His eyes are kind of weird… I want to go baaack….}
{He’s a bit of a nutcase, but he’s not a bad guy. Can you endure it just a little?}
{Uu… uuuh….}
Hmm.
Did I stare too hard?
‘Well, I guess it would be scary if some guy you just met stared at you with fire in his eyes.’
Realizing my mistake, I opened my mouth.
{Sowwy.}
In the spirit tongue.
Hearing her own language, Sylpho let a small breeze scatter and turned to me.
{Huh?! How do you know our language?!}
{I l-earned. A wittle. Sowwy for scawing you.}
{Oh… it’s okayyy.}
After that, Sylpho hid behind Elir.
She popped out over Elir’s shoulder and stared at me.
Elir, too, had her eyes wide open and couldn’t hide her surprise,
but I no longer had the mental leisure to respond to that.
“Lady Elir?”
“Ah, ah, yes?”
“Could you perhaps proceed now?”
“Oh, right. One moment.”
Then she spoke to them again in the spirit tongue.
{Can you maintain the power of fire and wind in this space?}
{...Yeah.}
{Okayyy!}
Fwoosh—
Whooo—
Fire and wind weren’t actually visible.
But warm wind circulated through the drying room, stroking everyone’s hair.
As expected, it was fascinating.
‘It turned into a greenhouse in an instant.’
If this existed on Earth, farmers wouldn’t have had to worry about heating costs for vinyl greenhouses.
It was truly a regrettable moment.
As I smacked my lips in disappointment,
Elir turned to look at me with a strange gaze.
“Is this enough?”
“Ah, yes. But can this be maintained continuously? Like, will the spirits disappear or anything?”
“That’s not a problem. Spirits aren’t really summoned; it’s more like moving beings that were already there.”
“So it can keep going?”
“Yes. Even if these children get tired while playing, the ventilation and temperature will remain constant.”
Wow.
‘If you just put vinyl over this, it’s a modern vinyl greenhouse.’
Why didn’t Mother ever tell me about this?
Honestly, spirit magic was way too tempting.
The guard captain’s ability?
I wasn’t jealous anymore.
Because something even more enviable had appeared.
‘Should I ask her to teach me later?’
If that thing had water attribute too, it’d be a complete portable washing machine, wouldn’t it?
Thinking that I would definitely learn it someday,
I led everyone out of the building.
At that moment, I failed to notice the young lady’s expression as she glared at me from behind as if she wanted to kill me.
And on that day,
the young lady entered a state of major sulking.
* * *
Lucy couldn’t shake the feeling that she had been dragged around all day.
Elir, whom she had run into by chance at dawn.
Rio, who had joined them in the middle of the conversation.
The brewery they arrived at together.
Up to that point, in truth, there hadn’t been any great emotional turbulence.
‘Then what came next.’
A conversation only the two of them understood.
And.
The spirit tongue only the two of them knew.
She had no choice but to stand far away, watching the two like a folding screen.
“.......”
That made her feel extremely strange.
The two of them were merely talking about work.
‘Then what is this feeling of being left out?’
Why did she feel disappointed?
Why did she dislike it?
Why was she angry?
It was an emotion she couldn’t understand.
As if, in her previous life, when the crown prince had cheated—
‘...!’
Lucy hurriedly shook her head.
Her fluttering hair whipped her cheeks so hard that it made them turn red.
‘...There’s no way.’
Nor could there be.
This was merely because it was unpleasant.
Because a guard who should have stayed close had left her range.
‘It’s unpleasant.’
“Hey, Rio.”
“Yes?”
“When did you even find the time to learn the spirit tongue?”
So she pointlessly tossed a prickly remark at Rio.
Even after saying it, embarrassment surged up at how childish her tone had sounded.
“Ah, would it be all right if I tell you about that a little later?”
Rio hesitated.
To explain this, he would have to mention his past,
before he became her guard.
And that was difficult to speak of carelessly in front of Elir and Mari.
“.......”
Lucy stopped walking.
For Lucy, who could no longer control her emotions, it felt as if he was ignoring her.
“Forget it.”
And so, before she knew it, she puffed out her cheeks like an actual girl in her mid-teens.
“Eh…?”
At that, Rio couldn’t hide his confusion.
The matter with the brewery had been resolved well,
and there shouldn’t be anything major to worry about anymore.
Why?
He observed the cute something glaring at him from behind.
‘What is she unhappy about?’
Thirty years in his life before last, thirty-three years in his previous life.
For a total of sixty-three years, Rio, a lifelong single man, did not understand women’s emotions.
Meanwhile,
Lucy was far too irritated by that innocent expression her guard was making.
“I said forget it! I’m going out today!”
And with that, Lucy brushed past Rio.
“Deh…?”
Lucy strode away with brisk steps.
And behind her, Mari looked back at him with an expression that said he was pathetic.
Standing beside Elir, Rio blinked and stared blankly at them.
‘Seriously, what.’
* * *
Meanwhile, Elir, who had witnessed for the first time the friendly conversation between the young master of the ducal residence and her trifling guard, furrowed her brow slightly.
‘Aren’t they a little too close, even if they are close?’
Rather than a master-and-guard relationship, they seemed more like friends.
No.
‘...Flirting?’
No, no, no.
What kind of bizarre, outrageous thought was that?
If the duke and duchess heard this thought, her neck would be in a noose that very day.
Elir hurriedly shook her head, her golden hair, neatly brushed at dawn, scattering.
‘There are things in this world one must not even think about.’
Elir forcefully looked away, alternating her gaze between Lucy as she grew distant and Rio beside her.
However.
“.......”
Even through her averted gaze, a strangely lukewarm atmosphere pierced through.
She could feel an invisible line.
At last.
A bomb dropped in Elir’s mind.
‘Fuck. This is bullshit.’
She had been squeezed dry at the ducal residence and remained single for 250 years.
‘Damn bastards. I hope they go bankrupt.’
In the end, she stopped looking away and, shedding tears, sharply raised her eyes.
It was the birth of Dark-Evolved Elir.
Then, suddenly,
she saw a maid following after Lucy’s brisk steps without difficulty.
‘...The young lady’s personal maid.’
Had she been there since earlier?
All of a sudden,
Elir realized that until she had properly looked at her, she hadn’t even registered her presence.
And.
At that moment, the maid turned around and looked at her.
“...!”
Instinctive fear.
A panic as if she were about to fall into the abyss wrapped around her entire body.
Smirk.
The maid whose eyes met hers smiled.
‘...!’
The instant Elir’s pupils widened greatly.
“Walk slowly, my lady. You might trip.”
The maid gently spoke to the princess.
“Ah, ah! I’m coming with you, my lady!”
And Rio, who had been watching that scene from the side, hurriedly followed the two and disappeared.
“.......”
Elir closed her eyes.
It was pitch-black.
Just like her future.
Entrusting herself to that dark vision, she thought.
“...I should resign.”
But whether the duke would accept the resignation letter of Elir, who had already worked there for 300 years, was something only the duke knew.