Chapter 21
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 21
Chapter Title: Master Craftsman - 1
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I went back to the store to pick up the clothes I had left with Deina.
I tried to return the clothes she had personally tailored for me, but after getting nagged to please dress up more often in everyday life, I barely managed to stop her from shoving more clothes into my hands.
"So, how did it go?"
"Uh, um......"
"Did you confess? Or did she accept? Who said it first?"
It seemed best to clear up the thoroughly tangled misunderstanding first.
The day I spent with Ellie was a bit distant from Deina's imagination.
"You didn't... confess?"
"Why are you surprised?"
"Then what the hell did you do all day?"
"Ate food, watched the guild sparring matches......"
There's nothing particular to explain.
I went to clean up the incident, and it wasn't easy to reveal the contents of the conversation we had alone.
I didn't particularly want to distance myself from Deina, but no matter how close we were, it wasn't something to babble about.
Unless she asked first like Ellie did.
"Die! Just die!"
"Why, why!"
"I even picked out clothes for you!"
Deina started pounding my back with her fists.
Since it was a body that hadn't been trained once, it was just soft.
"Ugh! I was the fool for thinking this bastard had any sense!"
"What did I do wrong?"
"Not knowing that is the biggest problem!"
Deina doesn't know about the past events.
She doesn't know that I'm a regressor, that I showed an unsightly side to Ellie while giving up climbing and staying on the 1st floor, or what conversation I had with her last night.
"You left all the openings, and then let the decisive moment pass so anticlimactically! How much do you think Ellie was expecting?"
"Hmm...... Ellie said something similar."
"You knew and did it anyway? Then why did you go to the request office every day, you trash! Is playing with fragile hearts your hobby?"
I couldn't go back further in time than this, and even if I climbed up, I would just fail again and repeat the challenges.
Having lost my goal of seeing the top of the tower, the only routine on the 1st floor for me, who was wandering aimlessly, was the Slime Extermination I could do once a day.
A simple request that didn't require racking my brains for methods or exerting great effort to hunt monsters.
How comforting it was to have others decide what I had to do.
I went to the request office every day to keep from going mad.
That became a day, a week, a month, and a daily routine.
To Deina, who had no way of knowing my inner thoughts, these obsessive actions must have looked like they were for some other purpose.
"When did I ever play around with her?"
"On days when beginner adventurers aren't swarming, you know damn well Ellie has nothing to do! You set everything up and then don't seal the deal—that's playing around!"
"I didn't not seal the deal! It's just...... I haven't found the right timing yet."
"Yesterday was the right timing!"
I knew Ellie had feelings for me.
She was showing it so obviously that even someone as oblivious as me could pick up on it.
"Honestly, I don't get why Ellie likes me. If anything, it wouldn't be strange if she avoided me."
"Are you asking because you really don't know?"
I had no grounds to complain if Ellie saw me as a weirdo.
I'd already explained all the circumstances now, but back then, I had shown her myself stabbing my own throat without properly explaining the reason.
"On days without customers, Ellie is no different from a corpse."
"......"
"She's not managing inventory like me, or making things like Grandpa. She has absolutely nothing to do. She just stands in the request office staring at the wall until the sun sets."
Unless it was one of those rare busy days, the request office would end up completely empty.
But without Ellie, there would be no one to hand out requests to adventurers passing through the tutorial.
She didn't need to be there constantly, but she had to be on standby at any moment.
That was the job of a Receptionist.
"Before you came along, the villagers would take turns keeping her company. They all had their own routines, so they couldn't stay long at the request office, but they did it anyway because otherwise Ellie would be too lonely."
"......"
"Do you know how happy Ellie was when you came to the request office every day, exterminated slimes, and came back?"
Just as Ellie's requests were the only thing giving purpose to my abandoned life,
I was the only customer in most of Ellie's daily routine.
I was the one who gave purpose to her going to work, killing time meaninglessly.
"How could she not fall for the person who sought her out every day?"
It's still hard for me to understand.
Maybe because during the countless years climbing the tower, the first thing I felt when someone sought me out was a sense of burden.
I met Rien.
"Senior, why are your clothes back to normal? The ones from yesterday looked fine."
"These are the most comfortable."
"Ah...... You only show the dressed-up look to her. Something like that?"
Maybe because of the story I heard from Ellie, my head feels complicated.
In some ways, she seems similar to the Sword Saint, in others, the complete opposite.
"What the hell did you tell Ellie?"
"Hehe."
"Don't just laugh—answer me."
For some reason, Rien just kept flashing a mischievous smile.
"You'd believe it if I said it was a fairy tale."
"......?"
"A receptionist who can't leave the 1st floor and an adventurer who stays on the 1st floor and visits her for over a hundred days. How romantic."
Rien said she was following me around.
I wasn't particularly surprised.
It was a familiar experience, and compared to before, this was rather cute.
After the adventurer alliance naturally split into guilds, countless people tried to analyze me for staying on the 1st floor.
Some tailed me as I wandered the village looking for hidden quests, others tried to recruit me into their guilds.
It was suspicious enough that a single adventurer who had been so weak and insignificant on the 1st floor suddenly left the alliance, and now was more seasoned than anyone.
Since the tutorial didn't have anything worth them taking, their interest fizzled out quickly.
Whether they watched me or not, I ignored them and exterminated five slimes every day as usual, receiving 500 coins from Ellie.
There wouldn't have been anything special even if they tailed me.
"Romantic my ass. What I gave Ellie was relationship advice."
"I helped out a bit. How was it?"
"Don't act so proud."
I don't get why everyone around me reacts like they're viewers of a melodrama.
"Why? Did something special happen after I left?"
"Ellie asked something she doesn't usually ask."
"Oh, looks like my advice was useful."
Rien shrugged proudly, emphasizing her own help.
Stuff like it's easier to someone the more you know about them, that charging straight ahead is more attractive than hesitating—all baseless advice straight from Rien's head.
"And Ellie talked about you too."
"Yeah?"
"She said you're the Sword Saint's little sister. Is that true?"
Rien nodded in affirmation.
My nonchalant reaction turned her suspicion into certainty.
Ellie wasn't the type to casually spill conversations with others that she wasn't even asked about.
Especially not something as sensitive as personal family matters.
The Ellie I know doesn't have a loose tongue like that.
"Did she ask you to tell me?"
"......You're scarily perceptive at times like this."
"Why?"
"If I say it myself, it sounds like I'm making excuses."
Since I'd already figured it out, it was pointless, but she must have been aiming to at least evoke some sympathy.
Unfortunately, there's no special item on the 1st floor that turns a beginner into a ranker.
There was nothing to give even if I wanted to.
Rien revealed her trait.
Record Viewer, a Common-grade ability.
Not very effective for climbing given the grade, but it had a noteworthy feature.
"So you're saying there's a 714 floating above my head?"
Rien believed her trait let her see adventurers' highest climbing records.
It matched for every adventurer except me.
I didn't mention it, but it applied to me too, as she expected.
The surprising point was that it even reflected records from rounds erased by my trait.
Thanks to her Record Viewer trait, Rien judged me an out-of-spec powerhouse and assumed I had a special reason for staying on the 1st floor.
After observing for a few days...... there weren't any big discoveries.
"All I figured out is that you're in that kind of relationship with the receptionist."
"......"
"Nothing special at all. I have no idea how you got this strong. It doesn't seem like staying on the 1st floor is for getting stronger either—it seems like it's just because of the receptionist sister......"
An adventurer with a blatant 714th floor record over his head.
An adventurer no one has ever seen leave the 1st floor.
An adventurer with swordsmanship skills even rankers can't match.
Unable to find a method, Rien changed strategy and decided to go straight at it.
"I need to get stronger."
"To catch up to the Sword Saint?"
"Catching up won't cut it. He needs to despair when he sees me."
Hmm.
Even during the time I ran up to the 200th floor with the Sword Saint, or when I was active as a guild member, I never heard Rien's name.
She either died on a high-difficulty floor while climbing or didn't climb high enough to become famous.
I still didn't like the Sword Saint's twisted social skills, but saying Rien had the makings of a ranker was too much even as flattery.
"Please. Tell me. Is there really no hidden piece like thing on the 1st floor?"
"It's faster to experience it yourself than hear it a hundred times."
The 100th floor has things befitting the 100th floor,
and the tutorial has only things befitting the tutorial.
That was the tower's rule.
"Eh, where are you going?"
"The forge."
"There's a hidden piece there?"
"......"
"I knew it! You suddenly had a sword you carry alone, and it was different! Why didn't I think of going to the forge?"
I headed to the 1st floor's only blacksmith, the master craftsman who only makes crude swords.