Chapter : 04
It hurt like hell. After nearly an hour of treatment, my entire face was red, swollen, and bumpy, but once the swelling went down, I would have a set of freckles I could be quite happy with.
On top of that, I washed my hair with blue shampoo that supposedly gave it a subtle blue tint when rinsed, put on a terribly unfashionable pair of glasses, and braided my hair into two painfully old-fashioned pigtails.
And there it was: your average country girl.
For the record, the reason I deliberately used blue shampoo was because my mother, Eleanor, had dark blue hair. This way, we would look even more like mother and daughter.
“Miss, you really are the absolute pinnacle of looking like a country bumpkin!”
“Really?”
“Yes! You’re the most rustic-looking young lady I’ve ever seen! You look like you smell of chicken droppings!”
Hmm…… Let’s not take this any further, Mom. I think you’re starting to hurt my feelings.
I applied the healing medicine His Majesty the Emperor had given me to my back, then dabbed some onto my face as well. Judging by how much the wounds on my back had improved in just one day, it really was an excellent medicine. So the swelling on my face would probably go down quickly too.
“Mom. Tell me about your hometown. What kind of middle-of-nowhere village is it?”
“Hehehe. It used to be a tiny backwater with barely a few dozen houses, but it’s developed quite a lot these days.”
Hohohoho. No matter how much it had developed, it was still a backwater village.
I covered my mouth delicately with one hand and laughed, “Oh-ho-ho-ho,” but Mom clenched her fist tightly, so I decided not to provoke her any further.
Maybe because I had been raised by Mom getting smacked upside the head and beaten on the back whenever necessary, I had actually grown up surprisingly well-behaved and upright for someone who had earned the nickname Mad Dog of Nephthys.
Most importantly, I hadn’t taken Prince Sayan’s words about doing whatever I wanted with my body completely at face value. I had at least developed enough consideration to take a step back.
How admirable.
Truly, that was the attitude of a mature adult.
As expected, I was the best.
Ha…… I want to see him again.
Prince Sayan.
Would I even have a chance to see him while I was still alive?
If I entered the academy, there was at least a tiny possibility.
The Third Princess and First Prince Sayan were born in consecutive years, and both had attended the academy.
“Hmm……”
I really had to go to the academy.
Not only would I die if I failed to enroll, but I wanted to see Prince Sayan, even if only from a distance.
Putting money aside, for a commoner to enter the Imperial Crowell Academy, you had to be reeeeally smart, be an excellent fighter, or possess a magic skill……
The only thing I could try was entering the Department of Magic.
I was dumb as a rock, so that was probably my only option.
“Mom. What’s the name of your hometown?”
“It’s called the port city of Ilam. You’ve probably never even heard of it, Miss.”
Hahaha. Mom really took me for an idiot.
I knew Ilam.
Wasn’t it the city located near the Beast King’s Tower, the place where Titi, the sparrow beastkin, was caught in a trap and sold to the black market in Chapter 123?
For the record, Titi came from a “beastkin village friendly to humans.” Menhil, one of the main characters and a bear beastkin, traveled to the capital in search of Titi, eventually joining up with the princess’s group. She served as the link that brought them together.
As for Menhil the bear beastkin, he was an absolute monster in his own right, befitting his role as an ally of the protagonist couple.
Of course, the princess and her companions were all absurdly overpowered.
Reina Letem, who used Ultra Rare-ranked Scorching Magic.
Aphet, who was born with the Saint skill as a passive ability and could use her ultimate healing skills to drag even someone on the verge of death back from the brink.
And Menhil, one of the beastkin friendly toward humans—a bear beastkin who was said to be the strongest among his kind.
These were the people who eventually defeated two Demon Kings.
Even after Sayan died, they must have continued their march through hell, beating down Demon Kings one after another.
I wanted to see the ending.
I really did.
Not being able to read all the way to the end was one of my greatest regrets.
Where on earth was I supposed to find another novel that matched my tastes this perfectly?
The author couldn’t write worth a damn, but they were a genuine genius.
Anyway, Titi the sparrow beastkin fulfilled her noble mission of strengthening the bonds between the protagonists and helping Menhil awaken his rage, only to die in Chapter 301.
You really couldn’t afford to become attached to characters in this damn book.
Because there was a very high chance they would die.
The Empire is vast, and eventually everyone dies.
That was a famous quote posted in our café.
Everyone used to pray that their favorite character would at least die peacefully.
If Sayan had died fighting somewhere or been killed after getting caught up in some conspiracy, I wouldn’t have felt quite so cheated.
But apparently he contracted a mysterious plague and ultimately died from complications caused by pneumonia.
I was so dumbfounded that I went to the author’s house in the middle of the night with an excavator and demolished it.
And I had not regretted it for even a second.
If this was how things were going to turn out anyway, I should have smashed that satanic house to pieces.
“Ah, you said it had recently developed. Isn’t it near the Beast King’s Tower?”
“Yes. The Beast King’s territory expanded, so they’ve been able to mine mana stones around Ilam as well.”
Right.
The reason a village grew was because something profitable had appeared there.
The monster territory surrounding the Beast King’s Tower had expanded, and apparently the land where mana stones could be mined had expanded with it.
Unlike humans, monsters were mana-based lifeforms.
Simply surviving there caused the surrounding environment to become favorable for mana stones to grow.
“Mana stones……”
“Miss. Don’t get any strange ideas.”
“Okay……”
“No, you’re already thinking of something strange.”
Mom knew me far too well.
The place where Titi went out and was caught in a trap was close to human habitation but had relatively few monsters.
That human settlement was probably Ilam, Mom’s hometown.
There were very few human settlements near the Beast King’s territory to begin with.
So while searching for Titi, I could conveniently mine mana stones along the way and sell them to the Adventurer’s Guild at a fair price.
It was a survival strategy I couldn’t use when I had no identity.
But thanks to Mom, I now had a way to survive, so I had to make the most of it.
Besides, rescuing Titi before she was sold to the black market wasn’t simply an act of compassion.
I remembered the notification that had appeared on the very first day my ego merged with Mitchell’s.
The story has changed slightly. 1,000 experience points have been awarded.
There was no doubt that I had entered the world of Confession of the Dawn.
And I knew the story all the way up until Prince Sayan’s death.
That notification had said I would receive bonus experience whenever I changed the course of the story.
Then I needed to change the story as much as possible.
That was the only way I could survive.
I could level up and gain experience through ordinary training or by consuming refined monster cores, but if there was an easier, faster, and more convenient path, naturally I should take it.
Change the story and receive experience.
Use those points to turn my Freeze skill into actual Ice Magic.
Then earn enough money to pay the academy admission fee.
Those were my immediate goals.
Once I had decided on a goal, it was better to move my body rather than keep thinking about it.
If you kept doing something, a path would eventually open up.
If there’s something to be done, don’t think about it. Just start.
Those were the wise words of the manager who had been kind enough to employ me despite child labor laws.
“Mom.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Let’s go buy a pickaxe.”
“I knew this was coming.”
Mom had exactly the same expression she’d worn back when I was a child and had suddenly announced that I wanted to go buy a drake, a young dragon species.
For the record, after I raised that drake for about a year, it smashed through its enclosure and escaped.
It bit twenty villagers to death before being hunted down by the capital’s guards.
I still remembered getting beaten by that bastard Duke Nephthys until I had two black eyes.
What was the big deal? Kids could make mistakes while raising animals.
◇ ◆ ◇
We slept outdoors at times and repeatedly stopped to rest in villages along the way.
After a week, Mom and I finally reached our destination.
Ilam was much more developed than Mom had expected, and far, far larger than I had imagined.
She had called it a complete backwater, but it looked like the population was over ten thousand.
The advantage of mining mana stones and being able to transport them directly by sea seemed to have allowed the town to grow this much.
Just as Mom had said, the house her older sister had left behind was empty.
It was located on the outskirts, a little ways from downtown Ilam, and had accumulated dust after sitting unused for several years.
There was also a mountain of old furniture that was too worn out to use.
We couldn’t even properly unpack on the first day.
We had to start cleaning immediately.
Mom and I also went around introducing ourselves to the neighbors.
When living in the countryside, connections with the people around you were important.
Mom understood that, so she started by visiting the elderly people who had lived in Ilam for a long time and giving them small gifts.
Between Mom’s money and the gold I had brought with me, our remaining budget would become pretty tight once we repaired the house and bought furniture and household necessities.
Still, gaining the goodwill of the village elders and securing their protection was important.
Especially when two women were living alone in an isolated house like this.
Because of that, there were also people who looked unfavorably upon the fact that we had fled the capital and suddenly come to live in Ilam.
“Coming back with nothing but some kid in tow, she must’ve gotten herself into some kind of trouble in the capital, right? If they live in that old dump, they’ll be found dead before long!”
When I tried to throw something—anything—within reach at him, Mom grabbed me and told me to stop.
She said that man had always been like that and that I should just endure it.
The drunk bastard had laughed loudly and said that if something terrible happened to the two of us women living alone, he wouldn’t know anything about it.
I made up my mind.
I was definitely going to repay him.
While Mom was asleep, I picked up a pickaxe and went to the house of the man we had met that morning.
I intended to deal with him without Mom finding out.
The bearded middle-aged man’s house was close to ours.
Since he was the kind of bastard who normally spouted such nonsense, if anyone was going to harm us, he would probably be the first to do it.
I couldn’t just stand by and let someone threaten the peace between Mom and me.
Mitchell had killed people before, and I had beaten people before.
Which meant that the complete being formed from our fusion could probably beat someone to death.
I would smash him over the head with this, freeze him, and throw him into the sea.
With that thought in mind, I carefully approached the back door of his house.
Then I heard him swearing through an open window.
“Fucking hell! If you’re going to live, at least get yourself a decent house in town! With that woman’s personality, she obviously got hit over the head somewhere, had everything stolen, and came crawling back to her hometown!”
The man was stuffing household items and preserved food into a large sack.
I squatted down on the ground, using the pickaxe I was gripping tightly as a support.
After watching for quite a while, the man swore and left the house.
He threw the sack down in front of our house, then angrily stomped back to his own home.
“……”
So he was just a normal tsundere.
I had nearly caused an unnecessary incident.
Repeating I’m sorry internally, I returned home and lay down beside Mom.
My back still hurt, so I couldn’t lie flat on it.
