Chapter 9
Chapter 9
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 9
Chapter Title: Reincarnator User Manual
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As soon as she stepped into the study, the cozy, familiar scent of old paper and leather welcomed her.
Closing her eyes, Lucia savored the aroma, allowing the stillness to calm her flushed cheeks in no time.
‘Good.’
With her mind finally settled, she began to look around the vast interior.
Dawn Castle was one of the many strongholds owned by the Prien family, and as their first seat of power, it held immense symbolic weight.
The study was no exception to this grand scale; the collection of books preserved intact over five hundred years was staggering, radiating a sense of history that felt almost alive.
Lucia walked lightly and carefully across the floor.
Though the room was a private space guarded by maids and currently occupied only by Shiron, she recalled the advice of her old comrades.
‘In a library, staying quiet is common sense.’
‘Why?’
‘Well... simply put, book lovers hate being disturbed. It’s like how you hate interruptions during your training, right?’
‘......Yeah, I get it.’
Her old friends, who knew only the world of steel and blood, had taught Kylie so much about the finer things in life.
They would tease her for being a savage barbarian at times, but they never minded her endless questions and always explained the world with kindness.
The memory of that conversation, from far before her final moments, remained vivid in her mind—it was strange how clear it stayed while other things faded.
Sniff—
Perhaps because of those lingering memories, Lucia’s nose tingled, and hot tears began to well up in her eyes.
“......Ugh.”
She hurriedly wiped the moisture away with her sleeve, bowing her head low and gritting her teeth in case someone happened to be watching.
'I wonder what happened to everyone after I died. They were all capable people, so they must have lived well, right? The Empire wouldn’t have neglected them after all that hardship...'
She found herself plagued by those thoughts more often than she cared to admit.
The fact that Yuma, the one-horned demon, was still alive gave Lucia a sliver of hope.
If Yuma, who had been on the brink of death five hundred years ago, had survived, then maybe the others had too—it was a hope she found impossible to abandon.
‘Seira’s an elf, so she could easily live that long... but let’s stop there.’
Slap—
Lucia slapped her own cheeks with both hands to steel her resolve.
This wasn't two or three hundred years; it had been a full five centuries.
She couldn’t cling to the ghosts of the past forever; right now, she needed to find the book she hadn’t finished yesterday.
Lucia slipped between the towering bookshelves, scanning the spines until her hands found what she was looking for.
[Sillea-Imperial Language Dictionary]
In her hands were a thick, heavy dictionary and a thin fairy tale book filled with simple illustrations.
Sillea was the name of the foreign tribe that had defined Kylie’s identity before she was chosen by the Holy Sword.
Now, she had no idea if her people had perished or what had become of their culture; investigating was impossible when even a child's storybook was a struggle to read.
Everything had its order, and her first goal was to master that simple fairy tale.
With her books selected, she just needed a quiet spot to sit and focus.
Luckily, she had a reserved seat in mind—a prime spot by the window that she had claimed over the past week.
The sunlight there was perfect, naturally lifting her spirits whenever she sat down.
Rustle—
Rustle—
“......”
Unfortunately, someone was already occupying her sanctuary.
'......That’s my spot.'
Lucia lowered her eyes and clutched her books tightly to her chest.
Shiron had already taken the seat she had been using, and while she knew he had arrived first, she never dreamed he’d pick her favorite corner.
'That guy even has an eye for the best seats.'
Lucia tried to accept the situation, but her gaze remained fixed on him like a magnet.
It wasn't just the seat that drew her attention, but the impressive stack of thick books and stylish writing tools spread across the desk.
‘No way, he’s planning to read all of that?’
A whopping eleven books towered on the desk like a small mountain.
By any common sense, it wasn’t a single day’s worth of reading, yet Shiron was flipping pages nonchalantly as if it were nothing.
Perhaps sensing her stare, he glanced up at Lucia, offered a small smirk, and then returned to his work.
“!”
Lucia hurriedly hid the Imperial dictionary and the fairy tale behind her back.
Her face burned a deep crimson with embarrassment.
Shiron was only two years older, yet his books looked incredibly advanced compared to hers.
Exquisite leather covers and titles elegantly embossed in gold ink made her fairy tale look like a toddler’s toy compared to a scholar’s tome.
Comparing their levels, Lucia hung her head in shame.
‘Yeah, there are plenty of other seats. I didn’t reserve it or anything...’
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to shake off the feeling of inferiority.
Lucia losing her ‘prime spot’ was no mere coincidence.
The moment Yuma told him about her movements, Shiron had ditched his training, risen at dawn, and even bribed the maid to find out her favorite seat.
Of course, it wasn’t just to tease her.
He had prepared himself to learn a new language, only to find that reading the script posed no issue—perhaps a gift from the original Shiron's memories.
‘This situation just got a lot more fun.’
Shiron hid his lower face behind a book, chuckling to himself.
Lucia’s reaction was amusing enough, but seeing the title of the book she had chosen nearly made him burst out laughing.
[The Eternal Immortal Great Saga of the Great Savior, Progenitor Kylie]
‘Great’ was written twice over; he could only imagine how fanatical and hyperbolic the contents were.
‘Does she even know what that’s about?’
Shiron paused his own work and looked at Lucia, who was seated far from him, frowning and groaning at her pages.
‘Let it go. I’m in no position to judge.’
He wasn’t entirely unsympathetic; he’d had similar experiences in his past life, so he decided to be generous.
‘Sure, her own "mad movie" came out. It's only natural she'd want to take a peek.’
In his past life, whenever he pulled off an awesome play in a game, he’d edit it meticulously and upload it online for the world to see.
Seeing a badass record of her own legendary past life... it was understandable she'd sneak a look.
‘If I’d laughed out loud, she probably would've beaten me unconscious again.’
Shiron snickered quietly, dipped his pen in ink, and resumed his writing.
“Ugh... uuuugh.”
Lucia let out a low groan of frustration.
Hours later, with the sun already dipping low, she hadn’t made it through more than a few pages.
Why was the Imperial language so unnecessarily difficult?
Flipping through the dictionary had taught her that the rules were a chaotic mess.
Separate masculine and feminine endings were one thing, but there were no consistent rules for plurals, far too many conjunctions, and six different tenses that mixed regular and irregular verbs.
On top of that, the text was filled with flowery idioms that seemed to exist only to complicate things.
Lucia thunked her head onto the desk in despair.
“Seriously... this is hopeless.”
“Is something wrong? Do you need some help?”
Looking up at the voice, she saw Shiron’s smiling face. Lucia immediately pretended nothing was amiss, avoiding his eyes at all costs.
She didn’t want to be treated like a child who couldn’t even finish a simple fairy tale alone.
“......No.”
“Alright then. I’m heading off. Good luck.”
Surprisingly, Shiron turned away without pressing the matter any further.
Lucia watched his retreating back as he stacked his books with an air of effortless intellect.
‘Is this what a young master is supposed to look like?’
She watched him for a long time, her thoughts swirling in a confused mess.
Just as Shiron finished organizing his tools, she finally spoke up.
“Um......”
“Yeah? Do you need help after all?”
“......Yeah.”
Lucia nodded, her face cast in gloom.
Her pride stung, but she truly had no other choice if she wanted to make progress.
Learning from a ten-year-old was a bitter pill to swallow, but she convinced herself that as an educated noble, he was a valid tutor.
Besides, asking Yuma or the other maids felt even worse—her last shred of pride recoiled at the thought of learning from her lifelong demon enemies.
Shiron sat down beside her, his voice uncharacteristically gentle.
“What’s the problem?”
“Everything...”
“Everything? Did you really pick this book without knowing what it was at all?”
“......Yeah.”
Shiron leaned back in disbelief, while Lucia just blinked at him, unaware of what her chosen title actually contained.
Shiron rubbed his face and spoke slowly, pointing a finger at the cover.
“Listen up.”
“Yeah.”
“This part says: Great Savior.”
“Great Savior?”
“And this: Progenitor Kylie’s.”
“Progenitor... Kylie’s?”
A sudden, terrible premonition hit Lucia as Shiron continued.
“The Eternal Immortal Great Saga of the Great Savior Progenitor Kylie... Man, you really are something else.”
“......”
“I’ve heard ancestor praise until my ears blistered, but this is on another level. Honestly, even I think it’s too boastful; you've got to hype in moderation.”
Shiron chuckled, clearly finding the hyperbolic descriptions of "slicing mountains" and "walking on water" to be hilarious.
“I'm sorry, I think I feel sick.”
She couldn’t take another word. Her face was scorching, and her breath felt short from the overwhelming shame.
Lucia cut him off, bolted from her seat, and practically ran for the door.
“Huh. Okay. Take care of yourself!”
Shiron watched her flee, his head bowed to hide the smirk on his lips.
That expression—one that Lucia missed in her self-loathing tremors—would remain her lifelong mystery.