[Reberu] ga Arunara Agerudesho? Mobukyara ni Tensei Shita Ore wa Gēmu Chishiki o Ikashi, Hitasura Reberu o Age Tsudzukeru - CH 125

[Late]

“S-sorry~, have you been waiting for long?”

“Yeah, for 3 fuckin’ hours!! It’s already past 4 pm! Where the hell have you been!?”

“Sakurai-san… I understand your feelings, but let’s calm down for now, okay?”

I snap at Ethel who came way past our appointed time at the entrance of the great library.

Behind her, Cordelia, coming over with her escorts, also looks sorry for being so late.

“You had made an appointment with someone, yet you left them waiting for 3 hours. Couldn’t you at least notify them?”

“I deeply apologize, Sakurai-sama. I had more matters to attend to than I had initially expected.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Mom. To begin with, why would the Saintess have to resolve some pointless arguments, make a ruling on an affair that was caused by a priest belonging to the Zeus denomination, and take care of all those other trivial stuffs!”

Hearing the situation, I completely agree with the maddened Ethel.

And I make up my mind to get rid of those who increased Cordelia’s work on our way back later.

I have no clue of the cathedral’s circumstances. I’m merely an adventurer who makes a living by killing monsters and raising my level.

But I’m rather sensitive with my interests and promises, and if someone’s petty schemes were to harm them, I’d definitely bring down the hammer of judgement on them.

Because of them, for the past 3 hours, I read so much that I got tired of it and ended up doing push-ups with Iris reading picture books on my back. I can practically remember every single line because she read them out loud, dammit. The one with the title ‘Mr. Titan and I’ was pretty interesting, though.

I’ll make the priest or whoever caused the problem suffer as much as the fatigue accumulated in my arms…! I swear it…!!

Let’s set that aside for now. In order to achieve my original purpose, I enter the great library again with Cordelia-san at the lead.

Unlike me who has to leave my weapons, the two elves escorting Cordelia-san are exempt from the regulations of the great library. They’re allowed to enter fully armed.

“…Iris, come here for a sec.”

“What’s wrong?”

That’s kinda unfair to me, so I call Iris over and fiddle with her silver hair that stretches down her back.

As I tie her hair into a big braid, I wrap the elastic long rod which she always carries on her waist in the middle, nicely concealing it.

I managed to do it by applying Knitting skill, causing me to realize once again how great of a decision I had made to raise its level.

“Okay, it’s done.”

“Wow… WOW!”

Incidentally, I’ve had special threads to use with Shishū skill sewn in my school uniform in case of emergency, so I’m not completely unarmed.

Well, it’s not I’m suspicious that there may be an attack, I just hate that the escort elves get exempt from disarming just because they have special identities.

If they find out about it, we can insist that it’s just a hair accessory that can be used as a weapon. Well done, me.

“Thank you much, Sakurai-san! This is so cute!”

“Huh? No probs.”

“What’re you guys doing over there? We’re going in!”

I changed Iris’s hairstyle without permission, yet somehow she seems to like it and is in a good mood.

I don’t really get why, but well, it’s better than if she complained. As they say, let sleeping dogs lie, so when Ethel called, I immediately go over to her side and walk to the inside of the great library.

And Freon, looking at us from a distance, neighs loudly as if to see us off.

The forbidden book section is located in the innermost part of the underground archive underneath the great library where important documents are stored.

The size of the underground archive is about half of the above-ground great library, so the forbidden book section should be located near the center of the building.

The only way to get there is to go down the stairway, which is always guarded by multiple elves, at the end of the for staff-only passage some walks away from the reception desk at the entrance.

“As per the regulation, the staff in this level all must leave before the Saintess enters the forbidden book section. Please wait here for a moment.”

Saying that, the escort knight enters the underground archive, pick up the bell hung on the wall to his right, and rock it lightly.

The sound of the bell is not loud, yet it mysteriously echoes throughout the underground archive. Staff members, having heard the sound, appear from behind the bookshelves lined up like a maze one after another. After giving a bow to Cordelia-san, they go up the stairs and leave.

Then, as the knights goes in to check if all the staff are already gone… I notice Iris having a suspicious look on her face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Uhh… Saintess-sama is a great person, isn’t she? Setting aside the twistedness of the position, she is respected by everyone, and it is an honor to work under her, right?” Iris replies to my question in whisper so that Ethel and Cordelia can’t hear.

In response, I also lower my voice and answer, “Well, most people take it that way, I guess.”

“That’s precisely why I don’t get it,” she begins to frown, “the escorts are giving off ‘cold’ feelings.”

“Cold feelings?”

Iris points at her own eyes and says, “I can’t see their ‘heat’ for work… I’m not sure how to put it… it’s like, they’re apathetic to it…”

She has Magic Eyes which can perceive the degree of ‘heat’ emitted by the heart like a thermography.

The stronger the ‘heat’, the redder and hotter it is.

And she said that any beings, as long as they have emotion, should have ‘heat’, more or less. Yet she can hardly feel any from the escort knights.

You may come upon such a person once in a while, but two at the same time? Curious, indeed.

Though honestly, I can’t share the discomfort Iris feels since I can’t perceive the ‘heat’ like she does.

There’s also the possibility that they look like that in her eyes as a result of strict training to keep one’s calm at all times.

But since she went so far as to bring it up, I may as well do some light digging until the knights come back. With that in mind, I decide to talk to Ethel and Claudia-san.

“Hey Ethel. Those escorts are elites, right?”

“Well, they’ve been selected as Mom’s escorts this time, so that’s a given. They’re not only strong, but also have excellent personality. The elite among elites, so to speak. You’ll be in a world of pain if you do anything stupid, so you better behave yourself.”

“This time?”

“There’s a rule which requires the escort knight who enters the forbidden area to be qualified as a librarian. So this time, we are borrowing that old man’s… I mean, Terrence’s escorts.”

“People sometimes do ask permission from me to get materials, but I rarely visit the great library in person. As such, my usual escort knights don’t have the qualification and I leave the management to the ‘traditionalist’ Terrence. Hence, I borrowed his escorts for this time’s visit.” Cordelia, listening to the conversation between me and Ethel, added.

“Oh, I see. The reason why he was present at yesterday’s meeting was because he was the acting manager of the great library, huh.” Now that I’ve listened to all that, I begin to feel uneasy, too.

(If they really are the escorts of a VIP of the ‘Traditionalist’, they should have a similar mindset as them. In which case, they should feel honored of being the escort of Cordelia-san who inherit the blood of the first saintess…)

Yet, they’re feeling so ‘cold’ that it surprises Iris.

I can think up as many reasonings behind that as I want, but my intuition is whispering to me that something fishy is going on here.

(Let’s take some precaution just to be on the safe side.)

I put my hand behind my back, drag out the special thread to use Shishū with which is sewn on the back of my school uniform, and wrap it around my left hand in a way that’s difficult to notice.

Then, I hook the end of the thread by the ground step of the entrance stairway to complete my preparation. Given the situation, this is the most I can do as precaution.

“We apologize to have kept you waiting.”

“There is no one but us left in the underground archive. Just to be sure, we will shut the entrance stairway.”

After bringing over a staff member who was late to leave and confirming him having gone up the stairs, the knights use fire door-like doors which are integrated with the walls on the sides of the stairway to block the way in.

They say that it’s all preventive measure in case a trouble occurs in the forbidden book section and the magic books or something of the sorts get leaks out.

“Now we will hand you these Nexus Crystal Balls. Each person must always carry one of them on their person. The crystal balls come in a set of two, and they are connected to each other at all time. If you crush them, the pair which is aboveground will be destroyed in unison.”

“The crystal balls above ground are monitored by other knights, and if one of them is broken, they will deem that an abnormal situation has occurred and storm in here. We will collect them back when you are done perusing the forbidden section. Hence, please handle them with care so as not to damage them by mistake.”

With that said, the knights hand over a marble-sized crystal ball to each of us.

I can make out a small magic circle inside it, which may be the mechanism that allow them to work in pair.

(Both Ethel and Cordelia follow their words without saying anything. Well, this rule itself isn’t that strange, I guess.)

Though I still have some misgivings, I stow the crystal ball so that it won’t break. Then with the order of Ethel, Cordelia-san, Iris and I while the knights sandwiching us in between, we start moving to the forbidden book section.

I deliberately swing my left arm and pretend to be walking sloppily so that the thread connected to the entrance stairway doesn’t touch the knight behind me.

Although it’s just a precaution, it would be troublesome to explain if he discovers it.

(Sheesh. Please just let me do my job honestly…)

Recalling everything that has happened since I came to the Elf Territory, I let out a light sigh.