Apprentice Shrine Maiden Volume 4

by Miya Kazuki

  I wasn’t sure whether or not I should reveal the truth. I opened my mouth to speak but then quickly closed it again, instead deciding to leave it all to Lutz and walking away. Dealing with the orphans would be a lot safer than dealing with the archduke disguised as a blue priest—messing up a little with them wouldn’t risk dramatically changing my whole future.

  The second Sylvester passed through the temple gates, he grimaced and looked around. “So this is the lower city where commoners live, huh? Sure smells like crap down here. Looks like it, too. Aren’t there any servants here to keep this place clean? I don’t know how anyone can stand living here.”

  Lutz, who had stepped ahead a bit to guide Lord Sylvester, turned his head back slightly and asked him who would hire servants to clean the city. It was a fair question since someone would have to pay these servants to keep the lower city clean, and as far as I knew, there was nobody eccentric enough to spend their own coin on such an endeavor.

  “Who would... hire them?” Lord Sylvester asked.

  “Yeah. The city doesn’t belong to anyone, so...”

  “You fool! Don’t you know that the city belongs to the archduke?!” I instinctively protested after hearing Lutz’s casual reply. Telling the archduke to his face that nobody owned his city was like asking to be killed—or worse.

  “Oh, right. In that case, Brother Sylvester, please ask the archduke to hire servants to clean the lower city. A lowly commoner like me could never be so brazen as to ask the archduke himself. But blue priests are nobles, right? I’m sure you can do it,” Lutz said with a smile. Honestly, I wanted to punch him in the back of the head.

  Lutz! You’re being more brazen right now than anyone I’ve ever seen! But thankfully, in what could only be described as a miracle, Lord Sylvester didn’t get mad at all. We just kept walking down the lower city road.

  “Whew. There are so many colors here that my eyes are starting to tire out,” Lord Sylvester said.

  “That’s understandable, since the temple is pure white. The orphans reacted the same way when they walked through the lower city for the first time. Hey, Gil—or Fritz, even—could you tell Sylvester about how to walk in the lower city?” Lutz asked. “I don’t really know how the temple works, so I’m not all that familiar with what’s different here.”

  It was a wise move leaving that to the orphans. Both Lutz and I were raised in the lower city, so we didn’t know what would surprise Lord Sylvester, or what he would need to be careful about.

  “I’m pretty sure you’re Myne’s attendant, right? Perfect. Teach me.”

  Gil wore a tense expression as he explained as best he could, and all the while Fritz corrected his sloppy polite language from the side. The adult gray priests in the group started to crowd around Lord Sylvester, probably thinking they couldn’t trust him to Gil, who couldn’t even speak properly yet.

  The second I saw Lutz was free, I grabbed him by his collar and pulled him over to me. “Hey, Lutz. What’re you gonna give Brother Sylvester to eat in the forest?” I whispered, and Lutz looked back at me like he hadn’t really given it any thought.

  “What’s wrong with him eating the same stuff we have? He wants to see what the lower city’s forest is like, so...”

  “Everything’s wrong with it!” You can’t make the archduke eat potatoffels and salty soup!

  When gathering and making paper in the forest, we would use the boiling water to steam potatoffels and then have them with butter for lunch. That, and soup made from throwing some nearby vegetation into a pot of salted water, potentially with some dried meat if anyone had brought some. Plus, that soup was made in the same pots we used to boil bark; we couldn’t give that to the archduke.

  “I’m gonna go report this to Master Benno. You go on ahead.” I pointed at the Gilberta Company, which had just come into view, and separated from the orphan group to rush over to Mark, who had just walked a customer outside. He turned toward me, and his smile deepened when we made eye contact.

  “Leon. Shall we discuss this upstairs?” It seemed that Mark had somehow managed to guess the true identity of the man wearing a silver hair clasp, leather shoes, and a fancy bow, all of which starkly contrasted with his raggedy clothing and made him stick out more than he would have in normal clothes. I hurriedly climbed up the outside stairs.

  I started to explain as soon as I was on the second floor, reporting as briefly as possible that Lord Sylvester was sneaking out to go hunting with the orphans, that he was being guided by Lutz, and that he was about to be served the lunch of an impoverished commoner.

  “I shall have Matilda prepare bread, ham, cheese, and drink. It might be wise to bring cutlery as well; Master Benno said that they eat the potatoffels with their bare hands outside.”

  Apparently Master Benno had gone with Lutz and Myne to the forest once before, and at the time had been forced to eat the potatoffels off of a board with his bare hands. Now that they were making soup at the orphans’ request, they brought wooden bowls and spoons with them in pouches on their hips, but Lord Sylvester had joined so suddenly that there probably wasn’t any spare for him. It was hard to imagine that a noble who was going hunting and used to servants preparing everything for him would think to bring his own cutlery. It was better to play it safe and prepare some of our own.

  “Leon, I will trust serving Lord Sylvester to you. Please make the most of your training from Fran. Ah, and I see the food is ready.” Mark handed me a lunch basket that had been prepared by the servant Matilda, wearing his usual smile as he did so. “It seems that Lord Sylvester has no intention of informing Myne or Lutz who he really is. Take good care not to slip up and reveal his secret.”

  I took the prepared lunch and rushed to the forest. Work had already begun at the usual riverbank, and I could see bark boiling inside the pots. Some kids were washing potatoffels in the river, while others were gathering in the forest, just like normal. The only note of concern was that Lutz and Sylvester were nowhere to be seen.

  “Where are Lutz and Brother Sylvester?”

  “We split up once we got here,” Fritz responded. “They went off to the hunting grounds, and Lutz said they’d come back when fourth bell rang.” I noticed he was stacking stones rather than watching over the pots like he usually did, and when I asked what he was doing, he said he was making a table for Lord Sylvester to eat on.

  “I think Brother Sylvester will need it because he’s a blue priest. It took even us gray priests a while to get used to eating without a table.”

  It seemed that I wasn’t the only one cradling my head over the fact that Lutz wasn’t treating Lord Sylvester like a noble at all. The moment I realized that, I felt an odd sense of companionship with this guy.

  “That’s a good idea. I went and got some food for him to eat. No way could we make Brother Sylvester eat a lunch of nothing but potatoffels and soup, right?” I held up the basket in my hand, and Fritz blinked in surprise.

  “The blue priests are the ones who prepare the food offered as divine gifts in the temple, so I didn’t consider for a second that we would need to prepare something for him to eat.” Fritz had apparently considered himself a part of Lord Sylvester’s group today, and had even expected some extra fancy food to be handed down to him.

  ...How were you expecting his food to be prepared when there are no chefs here? The wall of common sense separating me from the gray priests was just too enormous.

  Fourth bell rang and I started preparing Lord Sylvester’s lunch. He and Lutz came walking back, having bagged two birds.

  “Brother Sylvester, you can hang them from this branch.”

  “How should I do that?” Lord Sylvester asked, looking at the branch Lutz had pointed out in confusion. But Lutz made no move to take the birds from Sylvester. Instead, he just explained what to do.

  “You really think I have a random cord on me, Lutz? Well, I don’t.”

  “Why didn’t you bring any cord to the forest with you? You can’t bleed them without i
t. Just what do you have in that pouch of yours, anyway?” Lutz asked, untying the cord wrapped around his own waist.

  I immediately ran over to where Lutz was and demanded to know why he wasn’t taking care of the birds himself. I couldn’t believe it; not only was he making Lord Sylvester hold the birds, but he was expecting him to handle the preparations as well.

  “I mean, he’s the one who hunted them, so he has to take care of them. Making someone else prepare the meat you’ve caught is the same as giving it away.”

  “That’s how things are in the lower city, not the temple! Brother Sylvester is—”

  “Brother Sylvester is here to hunt in the lower city. So what’s wrong with him following lower-city rules?” Lutz asked, speaking as though what he was saying was obvious.

  “Well, Myne did tell me that I’d have to stick to the nobles’ forest if I wanted to hunt like a noble. Don’t sweat it. I can do this,” Lord Sylvester said with a grin as he began tying his birds to the branch.

  “Brother Sylvester, keep an eye on them. Beasts might be attracted by the smell and try to steal them.”

  “Right. And by the way, Lutz, how do you wash your hands without attendants? I’m pretty sure commoners can’t even use cleansing magic,” Lord Sylvester said, looking down at his bloodstained hands. It was probably normal for attendants to bring him bowls of water.

  “There’s a river right next to us, isn’t there? You can wash your hands in there. Ask the other kids how; I need to go look for some grass to use as more cords. I imagine you’ll want to go hunting in the afternoon too, after all.”

  Lord Sylvester puffed out his chest and said that of course he would, then turned around to look at everyone else. “...Alright, kids! Teach me how to wash my hands in that river.”

  “I can teach you, Brother Syl. Follow me. I learned from Lutz. I was real surprised when he washed his hands without even drawing water in a bucket first.” The kids raced to the riverbed and Lord Sylvester, looking amused, dashed after them.

  I went ahead and grabbed Lutz’s arm before he could leave to go hunt for grass. “Hey, Lutz. What’s that ‘Syl’ nickname all about? Isn’t that going a little too far?”

  “It should be fine. I mean, he’s the one who suggested it in the first place,” Lutz said with a shrug before explaining how the name “Brother Syl” came into existence. “‘Brother Sylvester’ is too hard for the really little ones to say, and each time they messed it up, the gray priests would all go white as sheets and have everyone kneel while begging for their rudeness to be forgiven.”

  “Huh.”

  “The third time this happened, a cart on the road almost hit one of the little ones kneeling at the back.” Apparently Lutz had saved the kid from getting hit, and since Brother Sylvester was getting tired of the gray priests holding everything up to apologize, he told the children to just start calling him “Brother Syl.”

  “He’s pretty kind and relaxed for a blue priest, don’t you think? He’s kind of a weird guy, but I’m glad he’s not one of the violent, arrogant nobles I’ve heard about,” Lutz said, before turning around and heading off to the forest to search for grass.

  I served Lord Sylvester his food, and lunch came to a safe end. One person had a separate menu, and there was a table for them consisting solely of a board placed atop some stones, but Lutz didn’t say anything about it, and Lord Sylvester seemed to accept it without a word.

  “By the way, what do you all think about that Myne girl?” Lord Sylvester asked Lutz. “You know her pretty well, don’t you?”

  “Well... She knows all sorts of weird things, but she has almost no common sense. She’s so weak that she’s almost always on the verge of death, and she can’t do anything without help. But she’s nice, and she supports my dreams. Myne’s the best friend I ever could have asked for, and I wouldn’t be here today without her.” Lutz was speaking in a polite, reserved tone, but it was clear he was speaking from the heart.

  Lord Sylvester tilted his head back, peering at the sky in thought. “What I’ve heard about her is a little different. They say she improved the orphanage, but how much of that is true? She and Ferdinand are saying things are way better now, but if that’s true, she really should brag to the archduke about it to get a reward. If she’s lying, though, he might end up giving her a big punishment instead.”

  The orphans were urged to tell the truth, and so they all started talking about what the orphanage had been like before Myne came. They spoke about how she had saved them: how much more food they got to eat now, how they could make soup on their own, and that they were able to spend all winter around a warm fire instead of running out of wood partway through. Their eyes were all shining, and anyone could tell how deep their respect and gratitude for Myne really was.

  ...So she helped out the orphanage, huh? I had only started visiting the temple after the orphanage, the director’s chambers, and the workshop had all been set up, so I hadn’t known how miserable the orphanage used to be. And wow, I didn’t know you guys were able to talk this much.

  What surprised me most of all was how talkative the gray priests were being as they recounted how far the orphanage had come. The younger kids would always talk pretty casually once outside of the temple, but the old gray priests generally kept silent while working in the forest or the workshop, speaking only when absolutely necessary. One could say that answering a blue priest’s question was enough to be considered “absolutely necessary” to them, but still, they were talking way more than usual.

  ...And is it just me, or are they saying nothing but praise? Talk about her flaws, too! Like how she’s always clinging to Lutz, ignoring what people say, and giving people trouble with her weird ideas! There are loads! That was what I yelled on the inside, but when Lord Sylvester asked for my opinion, I had no choice but to evade the question by giving the generic say-nothing answer of “I have not spent much time with Sister Myne and so do not know her very well.” I wasn’t sure what Master Benno would want me to say, and I knew for sure that listing off my problems with her would just make it awkward as heck for me in the workshop.

  “...I see. According to you guys, she’s practically a saint,” Lord Sylvester murmured, taking a necklace with a black stone out of the pouch on his hip. He looked at it carefully, falling into deep thought for a moment.

  “Brother Sylvester, animals are going for your meat!” Lutz shouted.

  “What?!” Lord Sylvester stuffed the necklace back into his pouch, drawing his bow and firing three arrows at the beasts. Each one hit its mark, and he immediately started running to the birds. The back of his right hand shone as he dashed across the forest floor, and all of a sudden, he was holding a sword. “That’s my prey!”

  The sword flashed, and that alone was enough to scare away the beasts. I personally felt sheer terror at the sight of a noble’s weapon—one a commoner could never wield—but the kids all cheered in excitement.

  “You’re amazing, Brother Syl! You’re so strong!”

  “I know, right?”

  Sylvester, perhaps enthused by the children’s praise, kept on hunting in the afternoon. He shot birds high out of the sky while all the kids were watching, earning him more cheers and applause.

  “We should be heading back soon. If we don’t get back before the chefs leave, we won’t be able to prepare the meat. I didn’t expect you to catch this much,” Lutz said worriedly while looking at all of the game. It was common sense in the lower city to only hunt as much as you needed; bringing home more than you could eat would just lead to it rotting on your shelves.

  “Brother Sylvester’s a blue priest, remember? He provides the orphanage with its divine gifts anyway; he can just give the meat to the orphans.” By indirectly suggesting that they would get to eat the meat themselves, I was easily able to convince the gray priests to help carry it all back. Brother Sylvester gladly left them to it.

  “Alright! Back to the temple we go!” he declared, in a visibly good mood.

/>   “Right!”

  We started preparing the meat as soon as we got back. Among the busily moving crowd, I noticed Lord Sylvester give Myne the necklace with the black stone.

  Afterword

  Hello again. It’s me, Miya Kazuki. Thank you very much for reading Ascendance of a Bookworm: Part 2 Volume 4. This concludes Part 2.

  In this volume, Heidi and Josef from the ink workshop were added to the Gutenbergs, a group of people involved in printing. Heidi had dedicated her whole life to researching ink, and Josef was instructed to look after her way back when she was an apprentice. She took a liking to him, and before he knew it, they were married and he was going to be looking after her for the rest of their lives. I wrote them imagining what Lutz and Myne could have been like if Myne didn’t have the Devouring and could have kept making paper with Lutz instead of going to the temple.

  In any case, in an attempt to accelerate the creation of toys and picture books for her little brother Kamil, Myne delved into the realm of colored ink. There were many failures along the way, but in the end she was able to make colored ink for printing, successfully adding color to her picture books. She was making yet more progress in her quest for books.

  In the midst of all that, the abandoned Devouring child Dirk, the Ahrensbach noble Count Bindewald, and the black feystone charm Sylvester gave to Myne all led to a dramatic change in her life and surroundings.

  The journey of Rozemyne, who became a noble to protect her family, continues in Part 3: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke. Please look forward to it.

  Myne’s serious, dignified expression in the cover art makes her look very much like an adult. I think it’s the perfect illustration for the conclusion of Part 2. You Shiina-sama, thank you.

  And finally, I offer up my highest thanks to everyone who read this book. The first volume of Part 3 is planned to release soon. May we meet again there!