“...Understood. I will do my best,” Richard said as his shoulders drooped. Then, Kuroka slapped him on the back.
“I-It’s alright, Sir Richard! He properly values the efforts of others! Hang in there!”
Just stop already! Being comforted in such a manner just made him feel even more miserable. Richard staggered off toward the shore as the other Angelic Knights patted the young man on his back.
“...Maybe I should be kinder to him next time.”
“Yes, please do...” Nephy replied as she covered her face as if she was looking at someone who was extremely pitiful.
◇
With the church group going for a swim, there were now five people left behind on the beach. Zagan, Nephy, Foll, Gremory, and Lilith. Gremory gazed on at Chastille and the others, starting to make merry with a meek expression.
“Hm...? That tabaxi girl is called Kuroka, right?”
This was, in fact, the first time the two of them had met face to face.
“Kuroka is Raphael’s foster daughter. Don’t do anything strange, okay?”
“It’s true that it seems worth it to love her, but she looks worried about something. I’m just a little concerned.”
“Oh?”
Now that Zagan thought of it, the other day, when he had her touch his face, she was strangely perturbed. At that time, he felt like there was some anxiety within her. But he couldn’t quite recall all the details. And as he tried remembering, he suddenly realized something.
“Hang on, this is the first time you two have met, right? How can you even tell?”
“Huh? The moment a young maiden is troubled over self-denial is a love event worthy of breaking into a nosebleed, is it not? There’s no way I would overlook such a thing.”
“...Well, I guess that’s enough for you.”
Zagan was already beyond trying to comprehend what she was saying, but Gremory had her own outlook on things. He was just glad he was blessed with companions who could notice things that he could not. Gremory looked taken aback for but an instant, but broke into her staple ‘Keeheehee’ laugh shortly after.
“I am beyond delighted that I serve a king who understands me.”
“I don’t really want to understand you, though...” Zagan replied dejectedly, at which point Lilith raised her voice timidly.
“U-Um, is it true that Kuroka is worried about something?”
“That’s the way it appears to me, at least. Now, the question is, how to loosen her heartstrings and demonstrate the full effect of love power.”
Zagan tilted his head to the side upon hearing that.
“Kuroka is from the church too, is that alright?”
Even though Chastille was prime material for her love events, Gremory rejected her due to the fact that she was an Angelic Knight.
“That girl isn’t an Angelic Knight, right? She may hold rank, but she doesn’t have the stink of an Angelic Knight. She may be under the patronage of the church, but I don’t sense anything like obligation or loyalty. She probably wanted a title in the church out of a desire for revenge against sorcerers or something like that.”
“You’re... kind of amazing...”
It was truly astounding that she was able to tell so much with a single glance. All this despite Zagan being unable to do so until he saw Kuroka go berserk. And as he expressed his admiration, Lilith cut back into the conversation.
“Um, I want to help her myself... Back when Kuroka’s people were wiped out, I couldn’t do anything for her...”
Gremory’s eyes sparkled as if a delicious meal was right before her.
“I see... So you’re telling me not to butt in.”
“I-I didn’t mean to be so haughty, but, um... if possible...”
“There’s no reason to shrink back if you’re doing it for your friend. It’s fine. Your determination is noble. You may stick your chest out with pride and declare that you will be the one to save that girl,” Gremory stated as she stroked the tip of Lilith’s jaw with her finger and gently smiled. Then, she said, “However, if you ever need help, then tell me at anytime. There’s no shame in relying on others if it’s for the sake of your friend, after all.”
“Th-Thank you. His Highness’ number one confidant is rather dependable!” Lilith proclaimed as she nodded energetically with full sincerity, but Zagan couldn’t quite accept it all.
I feel like I’m watching a little girl getting tricked by a witch in a fairy tale... Zagan had had more opportunities to read Foll picture books lately, so he ended up recognizing patterns in fairy tales. The story of an unfortunate girl being tricked by a witch seemed to be quite the cliché. And without giving Zagan’s worries any thought, Lilith pressed on.
“Your Highness, um...”
“Yeah, go ahead. It’s your own home, so there’s no need to be serving others here. I’ll just lounge around.”
“Thank you! Then I’ll be off for a bit!” Lilith said as she waved her hand at Zagan and ran off toward her friend.
“Keh, all you idiots are just messing around without giving a rat’s ass about my problems!” Barbatos’ voice suddenly rang out behind them. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that he was peeking in on them from the forest to the rear. In an unusual turn, he had come out of the shadows, but since he was completely enveloped in darkness anyway, he couldn’t be spotted at a glance.
“What, you came?” Zagan said, knitting his brows. Then, he continued with, “How about you start with apologizing while you’re here?”
“Dumbass! For some reason, just looking at that crybaby is making my chest tighten, so I can’t look at her directly!”
You too, Barbatos...? Zagan felt profound sympathy for his predicament, and Barbatos then sunk to the ground and clutched his knees.
“...Why is she dressed like that now? No way I can talk to her at this point!”
“Aaah...”
Unable to find the words, Zagan looked over to Nephy for help.
Tch! It’s no good! I can’t look directly at Nephy either! How did she interpret all that, he wondered.
“Foll, shall we go for a swim together? Miss Selphy did say that she would teach us to swim.”
“Is swimming fun?”
“I don’t know, but shall we try it out and see?”
Foll looked up at Zagan fixedly, but seeing him crouch down into the same pose as Barbatos, she had somehow come to her own understanding.
“Okay, let’s try.”
Nephy took Foll’s hand and they went off toward the shore.
Arrrgh... I wanted to at least tell her she was beautiful... And just like that, the two pitiful men were left behind.
“Hnnngh, what fragrant love power. Is this yet another way of showing love?”
...And Gremory was happily observing them, so Zagan tried to shoo her away.
“We’re not a damn show. Go play already.”
“Well, just wait a moment. In short, their swimsuits are so dazzling that you can’t look directly at them, right?”
“Erk! Why do you know that!?” Zagan and Barbatos yelled in unison.
“I can easily resolve this issue for you, you know?”
Both Zagan and Barbatos stiffened up at the devil’s irresistible whisper.
◇
“...What do you want in return? Wait, I don’t even have to ask do I...?”
This granny just wanted to watch Zagan and Barbatos run about in confusion.
“What should we do?” Zagan asked, to which Gremory beckoned the two of them over with a mysterious expression. And now, the Archdemon, the villain, and the granny were all squatting down face to face.
“In short, the cause of all this is because it is far too fresh a sight for you two. If you get used to it, it won’t be a problem, right?”
“That does make sense, but are you saying I should just gaze at Nephy from a distance?”
They were sorcerers with poor countenances who looked extremely dangerous. Even Nephy and Chastille would surely pu
ll back from such an act. Such was the case, but Gremory let out a laugh as if she had anticipated Zagan’s reaction.
“Even my liege says such things, I see. Are we not sorcerers?”
“You got a plan or something?” Barbatos cut in.
“It’s the sorcery I proposed moments ago. We can capture an image as if it were reflected in a mirror. If we can perfect it, there’s no problem with staring all day long! Forget that! We can even gaze lovingly upon girls in swimsuits all day long! It is the only way!”
So she declared with a clenched fist, and both Zagan and Barbatos nodded as if she was talking sense.
“...Hah! Looks like the name Enchantress isn’t just for show. I’m in!” Barbatos proclaimed, then stood up and exchanged a stiff handshake with Gremory.
“...Tch, I got it. I’ll cooperate.”
Sorcerer Slayer, Purgatory, Enchantress. These three names were notorious among all sorcerers, and their union had just quietly solidified right here. With these three conspiring together, they could not only shake an entire nation, but reduce it to atoms in a head-on collision. If the church were to discover this, they would assume the apocalypse was upon them and gather their armies. And yet, what the three of them were seriously discussing was how to create an image of the girls they liked in swimsuits. It was truly a trivial and peaceful worry of theirs.
Zagan began by tracing a magic circle in the sand with his finger.
“First off, this is the sorcery I created before. It uses parchment as a medium to project one’s memories, but it has a flaw in that its link to one’s memories is too strong, so it can only project something deep within one’s psyche.”
Having chosen to cooperate, Zagan demonstrated what he had at hand. All sorcerers present here possessed enough talent to create the sorcery they were looking for from scratch given the time, but demonstrating something that had already been accomplished contributed greatly to any progress they would make.
“Hmmm. So it seems there’s a need to revise the circuit responsible for probing into one’s memories. I think my teacher’s sorcery should be applicable here,” Gremory chimed in.
“Hold up. Won’t this cost too much if you use parchment? If we use mana to project it into the air, we don’t need a medium, and we can manipulate the size however we want, right?” Barbatos commented.
“I see. You’ve got talent, Purgatory.”
“Hmph, it’s nothing impressive, since we’ve got the base theory right here with us.”
These were surprisingly modest words to come from Zagan’s undesirable friend. And that just emphasized how seriously he was taking this.
“No, it’s something I didn’t even think of. You have my thanks, Barbatos.”
Zagan never tried to further improve the sorcery, since he had originally developed it as material to use for teaching Nephy sorcery. It could be called negligence on his part as both an Archdemon and a sorcerer. Luckily, their little gathering was a meeting of the foremost experts in their fields of sorcery, so they rectified his mistake. Zagan’s previously defective sorcery was approaching perfection at a terrifying pace.
“With this, there shouldn’t be any problem with the spell.”
Zagan began a test run of the new sorcery. The air in front of him warped like a lens and projected some scenery about the size of his palm. This was the photography spell that these three great sorcerers gave birth to, and its commemorative first use was a picture of Nephy as she was dressed today: her boundlessly lovely figure wearing a swimsuit. On one hand, Zagan wanted to hit Manuela for doing something unnecessary by just matching her own tastes, but he also wanted to praise her from the bottom of his heart for her ability to pick something beyond perfect for Nephy.
Hnnngh, the stimulation is still too strong! Zagan gently brushed away the image of Nephy, and this time a picture of his cute little daughter was projected in front of him. This image was just purely cute and managed to calm down his emotions. Even Zagan let out a content sigh at how he was able to perfectly control the image being switched out like that.
“Mm, it’s perfect. This spell is capable of projecting anything from your memories. We can even switch what is being displayed at will.”
“Oooh. It seems to have the advantage of even reproducing the finer details of vague memories, I see,” Gremory said in admiration. Then, she continued, “With a little tinkering to the spell, we should be able to imprint the image onto parchment or a mirror or the like. With this, it’s possible to cover the walls of the castles with our memories of beautiful maidens!”
“Limit that stuff to a secret room somewhere.”
“So you’ll allow it?” Barbatos asked. He clearly had not expected that response.
“The flaw of the original sorcery has been solved, but it’s inconvenient for it not to have a name. What should we call it?”
“Let’s see... it projects one’s memories, so how about ‘Memorandum’ in reference to a record of one’s memories?” Gremory replied.
“Not bad. Then let’s go with that.”
Now that the name had been decided, Gremory smiled as if unable to contain her worldly desires.
“Alright, next is imprinting it onto a medium... so I say, but we’re on an uninhabited island. It’s questionable if we can get something suitable for that,” Gremory muttered with a pensive look on her face.
“The hell? Enchantress Gremory of all people doesn’t even have a single piece of parchment on her?”
“Where am I supposed to carry something like that in this outfit... Hmmm, it might be amusing to imprint it onto my swimsuit.”
“That’s really going too far,” Zagan cut in to stop Gremory’s wild ideas.
“...Well, guess this is where I pitch in. You owe me one, got it?”
Thinking back on it, Barbatos was wearing his usual stuffy robes even though he came to this summer paradise of sun and sand. He was capable of passing through shadows to get anywhere he wanted anyway, so procuring a piece of parchment or two was a simple matter for him. And watching his undesirable friend get up on his high horse, Zagan replied to him coldly.
“Hand it over already. We don’t know when Nephy, Chastille, and the others will notice that we’re scheming something, right?”
“Yeah! That’s right! Thinking of what will happen when my teacher finds me, this may very well be the last sinister trick I get to play in my entire life!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Zagan felt like some strangely sorrowful plea got mixed into things, but setting that aside, Barbatos pulled out a few pieces of parchment and split them with the group. And as that exchange ended, they all let out a smile.
How long has it been since I got involved with silly little things like this? The most recent memory that came to mind was his days as a waif where he loitered around the back alleys. Back then, he had met the girl who had a picture book with her and the boy who shared a place to sleep with him. The silver-eyed Zagan was somewhat younger than them, but that was exactly why there was also a boy who looked after him while acting like an older brother. Their little band of rascals would sometimes dirty their hands to outwit adults, and sometimes even systematically stole money and goods. At such times, they would gather together like this, making sinister plans while chatting in a lively manner.
Well, I ended up failing, getting caught by a sorcerer, and almost killed, though... Thinking back on it, that was the greatest mistake in Zagan’s life, and also a turning point. He had somehow miraculously turned the tables on the sorcerer, so he had obtained both power and assets. If not for that, he would surely never have met Nephy.
It was an unpleasant past, but still something he would never take back. Even if one of the Archdemons were to develop sorcery to redo one’s life, Zagan didn’t think that he would do his over. No matter how much he suffered in the past, those moments defined him. That was exactly why Zagan could march forward without ever looking back.
And as Zagan reminisced over such nostalgic
memories, he unintentionally ended up projecting his memories to the parchment using Memorandum. A group of dirty looking kids were shown on the parchment, which made Gremory and Barbatos look on in a puzzled manner.
“Huh? You got a bunch of dirty looking brats on yours there, you know?”
“Oops...”
Just as Zagan was about to crumple the parchment up into a ball, he came to a stop.
“I got to see some nostalgic faces, huh? They’re the ones who took care of me before I became a sorcerer.”
Memorandum projected an image of three children. One was Zagan. The other boy in the image was fourteen or fifteen years old. And the girl was somewhere around ten. At the time, Zagan was still eight, and wasn’t very good at pick-pocketing or robbery, so he was on the verge of starving to death. These were the kids who had shared their bread with him.
The boy was the one who had taught Zagan how to survive as a waif, and the girl would read him stories from a picture book. The reason Zagan was even able to become a sorcerer was because they had taught him how to read. In many ways, they were his benefactors.
Nowadays, he didn’t clearly remember their faces, but being able to see them so clearly using sorcery really was great. Thinking back on it, it was because of the memories he had with these kids that he had given Foll soup after she attacked him and had taken her in.
“The fact that they looked after my liege would make these children sorcerers too?” Gremory asked in a puzzled voice.
“Does it look that way? They were just fellow waifs. There were a bunch who just suddenly showed up, then suddenly disappeared. It was rare for the three of us to even gather together, so even I don’t know much about them.”
And as Zagan talked about it, a thought suddenly came to mind.
I wonder if they’re still alive? Those two kids weren’t there when Zagan hatched his failed plan. He didn’t think they were killed by the sorcerer Andras or anything, but they all lived lives where it wouldn’t have been strange if they just up and died somewhere. If they were alive, they would be in their twenties by now, so he wondered how they were doing.
This should all have been worthless reminiscing, but Gremory and Barbatos were strangely fixated on his Memorandum.
An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride: Volume 7 (Premium) Page 4