Chapter 71
Chapter 71
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 70
Chapter Title: Rainy Blues and Shared Return
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Even if it was a method that meant nothing against monster-like experts who could read a person's presence, like Evelyn or Enoch.
“Using mana as a material to reconstruct the world... I just can’t get a feel for it. Should I call Abyss?”
An artifact was a tool imbued with magic. If she observed its operating principle and imitated it exactly, she felt like she could gain some enlightenment.
“I don’t know. I just want to throw it all away. It’s raining, and I’m feeling down.”
Rachel was depressed. She didn’t like the rain. On rainy days, she had to wake up early. If she slept in, there wouldn’t be enough umbrellas, and she’d have to wear a transparent vinyl raincoat.
The disposable vinyl raincoat had been used so many times that all the snaps had fallen off. She had to cling to it on the way to school—it was no different from a plastic bag shaped like clothes.
Getting there was fine. But when classes ended and it was time to head home, it wasn’t.
Everyone else had colorful umbrellas or raincoats. But she was too embarrassed by her torn vinyl one to leave.
Standing blankly at the entrance, she’d spot other kids without umbrellas. But soon their mothers would arrive to pick them up.
It was so envious. So heartbreaking.
“Why is it like this, really? Now I have a mom! A dad, and a little brother too.”
“And you have friends as well.”
“Eek! When did you get here?”
The sudden voice made Rachel forget her gloomy memory and let out a shriek. Enoch’s lips drooped as if he were hurt.
“Just now. You must not have heard the knock over the thunder.”
“Yeah.”
“You must have lost your family on a rainy day.”
“Something like that. Haha.”
Even though it sounded strange, Enoch kindly misunderstood on his own. Rachel gave an awkward laugh.
“Mary was getting worried because it was dinnertime and you still hadn’t come down.”
“It’s already that late? These days it’s so dark even in the afternoon—I can’t tell day from night.”
“That could happen. Let’s head down before the food gets cold. Mary said the head chef really showed off his skills.”
“Sounds promising.”
Rachel rose from her chair. At that moment, lightning flashed. A deep rumble of thunder followed.
“The atmosphere is seriously creepy—ah!”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s something I want to test. Help me out.”
“Anything I can do.”
“It’s nothing much. I’m going to move my mana now—tell me what it feels like.”
She needed to confirm whether the darkness attribute had the same nature as black magic.
Enoch would be able to distinguish between the Demon King’s aura emanating from his own body and the darkness-attribute mana, so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding.
“Sure.”
Rachel gathered mana at her fingertips. The mana that had passed through her heart was darkness itself.
She brought her hand close to Enoch’s eye area—no contact, just a slight gap. Black mana rippled through the space between.
“How is it?”
“I can feel some kind of energy, but it’s fine.”
“It’s different from the black sorcerer’s, right?”
“Of course. If it were an evil power, it would have repelled the moment it touched my body.”
“Good...”
-Family has died. Returning to checkpoint.
The word “good” was on the tip of her tongue when the system alert rang out. The scenery around her began to stretch vertically, elongating up and down.
The only things holding their circular shape were her hand and the darkness extending from her fingertips.
‘Only the part touched by my mana is intact!’
The brief thought flashed like lightning. Rachel drew up even more black mana, enveloping Enoch’s body.
-Darkness has spread. Static, silver cannot recognize what is hidden by the darkness.
-Returning together with the figure hidden by darkness. Static static, it has detected this anomaly. High probability this method will not work next time.
She couldn’t tell what had happened to Enoch’s body, now shrouded in darkness. The world turned into vertical lines, drained of color, and the scenery shifted.
***
[Danger Level: 57%]
[Talent Retention System is active. Abilities inherited.]
[Stamina: 5]
[Strength: 3]
[Agility: 8]
[Mental Strength: 6]
Messages unfolded one after another, as always. The 21st round had begun. But the scene around her was different from before.
Soldiers surrounded her, and Carion stood right in front.
‘Where’s Enoch?’
The system had mentioned a companion return before the regression. If that was true, then Enoch had come back with her.
“And soon, I’ll be greatly rewarding the two of you.”
Enoch was nowhere in sight, and Carion was talking about rewards. Then a familiar voice came from behind.
“Rachel, how did this...?”
Rachel turned her head. Enoch, in female disguise, was pushing through the crowd. It was the outfit he’d worn when infiltrating Paris Emporus’s mansion. The soldiers tried to block him, but Carion held them back.
“Enoch—that getup! It’s quite the shock!”
Carion hurriedly covered his mouth and chin with his hand. He clearly wanted to laugh but was desperately holding it in, given the situation.
Enoch glanced down at his clothes, squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again.
“It couldn’t be helped for the infiltration.”
“I see. The temple’s more progressive these days than I thought.”
“Then I’ll take Rachel and be off.”
With that, Rachel and Enoch hurriedly slipped away from the scene.
“Rachel, this...”
“Someone in the family died.”
“So we regressed. But why me too?”
“Right at the moment of regression, I wrapped you in my mana. And we came back together.”
“I see.”
Enoch feigned composure and nodded along with Rachel’s explanation.
“But the time we returned to is different from what you mentioned before.”
“The checkpoint got updated. Anyway, I have no clue who died.”
Rachel bit at her nails. Up until now, no one had died at that point in time.
“Probably your father. Before he found you, he met Lady Evelyn and Deyner. There was an accident at the restaurant... Well, it couldn’t have been him.”
Rachel squatted down on the floor. All her hard work up to now had gone up in smoke.
“Rachel, are you crying?”
“I feel like crying. Just thinking about facing that mountain of documents again makes sweat pour from my eyes.”
“Eyes don’t sweat, though?”
“Enoch, your favorability just dropped by 1.”
“Pardon?”
Enoch couldn’t make sense of Rachel’s nonsense.
She felt utterly drained right now. Even when she’d regressed two years in the past before, she hadn’t felt like this.
Training left her with points, but approving documents left nothing behind. She was just right back at square one.
Who wouldn’t spout nonsense in a situation like that?
“Back to the beginning—I have to go through those documents again!”
“Didn’t you like looking at documents?”
Rachel jumped in surprise. She’d never imagined Enoch would misunderstand her like that.
“What kind of horrific nonsense is that? I don’t like it. Nobody likes work. Anyone who does is a workaholic.”
“You were always holed up in the office, so I thought you enjoyed it.”
Rachel shook her head vigorously.
‘Where did things go wrong? Or did they? Maybe it’s just a new variable?’
As Rachel pondered, she recalled that Henri hadn’t stopped by the castle this round.
She’d moved into Harpa Castle in May, and up until August, she hadn’t seen Henri’s face once.
“Huh? In the previous round, didn’t I tell him to come home often? Did he really not come because I didn’t say that, and that’s what caused the accident?”
Rachel muttered to herself while biting her nails. Enoch grabbed her shoulder.
“Rachel, calm down.”
“This time, screw the territory and everything? No, I don’t want to do anything nice for the black sorcerer. Should I appoint a proxy? But I’d still worry.”
“If it’s the paperwork you hate, there’s a way.”
Rachel looked up at Enoch’s words. Her eyes were full of desperate hope.
“Really?”
Enoch extended his index finger, as if to say he had the perfect solution.
“Yes. This time, we don’t take the title.”
“How?”
“We dump it on Abyss.”
An exclamation slipped from Rachel’s lips.
A proxy was hard to trust completely, but Abyss was different.
He was dead set on catching the black sorcerer, so he’d never do anything to benefit him.
Plus, she knew from managing the split territory with him before that he had plenty of talented people. He handled everything cleanly and perfectly.
“Is that possible? Last time when I asked for wealth, what I handed over was the title and the fief.”
“I’ll get actively involved. Wealth is good, right?”
“Yeah. And since I need to stay near the royal castle to look into what happened to Father...”
“Then when we get the rewards, let’s ask for a mansion in the capital.”
Land in the capital was expensive. Houses even more so. High-ranking nobles could afford mansions near the royal castle with their wealth, but lower administrative nobles made do with dorms or rentals.
“Should we? Father’s living in a dorm too—maybe appeal to that? The lonely goshi dad living apart from his family to earn money! Not a bad sob story to tug at heartstrings.”
Rachel muttered to herself again. Her habit of talking out loud had spiked while managing the territory.
Enoch watched the muttering Rachel with a worried expression.
“You’ll need some rest for a while.”
“Rest sounds great. Finish etiquette lessons quick and head to the royal archive? They say it’s packed with rare books! Wonder if they’d let a commoner like me in?”
Enoch let out a deflating chuckle at Rachel’s idea of “rest”—heading to the archive to read books.
“You’re quite the hard worker when you want to be, Rachel. Looking at documents or books—aren’t they similar?”
“No, totally different.”
“White is the paper, black is the text.”
“By that logic, the holy scriptures and forbidden books are the same too?”
“It was a joke.”
“Not funny.”
But the fact that he was making these lighthearted quips was a huge step forward.
“I remember you being busy after this point—sure it’s okay to make time for me?”
“Yes. If anything, since I’ve been through it before, I can wrap it up quicker. I’m really glad we returned together.”
“Right? If I’d come back alone, I might’ve actually cried.”
“I hope nothing like this ever happens again. But if we regress next time, could you bring me back with you too?”
Rachel couldn’t answer Enoch’s question right away.
‘The system voice during the regression warned that the odds of this method working next time are low.’
On top of that, there had been noise covering certain words, like it was censoring them.
‘What was that referring to?’
“I can’t promise. We got lucky this time, but it might not work next.”
“I see. That’s a shame. I’ll have to be even more careful so you never have to regress again.”
“Yeah. We should.”
***
“That’s what you learned for the first time today?”
“Yes.”
“Hoho, splendid. Simply splendid. I thought it’d just be enough to avoid embarrassment, but this changes everything.”
Rachel felt a chill. She was currently at the royal castle, having received an invitation from the royal family.
Just like in the previous round, she was taking etiquette lessons from Lady Menoa. Wanting to finish quickly, she’d done exactly as she’d learned before, and now the lady was brimming with enthusiasm.
“Isn’t this enough?”
“No. That’s merely enough to avoid disgrace. I’ll mold you into a perfect lady.”
She’d overdone it.
Lady Menoa had planned to teach her just enough to avoid mistakes in front of the king and nobles during the award ceremony. But Rachel’s fundamentals were solid, stirring up the lady’s ambition.
“Now, a refined lady doesn’t grimace like that in front of others.”
“Yes.”
Overpowered by Lady Menoa’s intensity, Rachel answered weakly.
As the lesson continued, there was a knock. The door opened, revealing red hair.