Chapter 36
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 36
Chapter Title: Eclair Dreitna and Chloe Dreitna
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Episode?
Eclair Dreitna and Chloe Dreitna.
The Dreitna sisters showed an even starker contrast due to their age difference.
Eclair had been brilliant and extraordinary since childhood, standing out even among geniuses her age.
In a traditional knightly family, no one could argue that her exceptional talent was wasted on pursuing the path of a knight—not with her stunning looks.
She was one of the Empire's Five Knights, no less.
As Eclair far exceeded expectations and elevated the family name, the next hopes naturally turned to Chloe Dreitna.
She resembled her sister in appearance, but with her taller stature and longer limbs, her physical build was even superior. From the family's perspective, there was every reason to be optimistic.
But the goddess is not without mercy.
Chloe's talent was merely average—decent, but nothing more.
There was little difference between her and the other knights of the Dreitna house, excluding Eclair.
Among the cadets, she ranked slightly above average. But she lacked the sharp, protruding genius that stood out like a spike.
Was it the visible resemblance in their looks that caused the issue?
The Dreitna knights and retainers believed that Chloe would one day awaken her hidden potential.
Blind to how crushing a burden that belief placed on Chloe herself.
(Eclair took down bandits alone as a child...)
(Eclair was using aura even before becoming a cadet...)
(Eclair...)
...
...
'Focus... focus.'
When she stood before a crowd, her mind filled with noise.
This was the moment she hated most—the weight of all those eyes on her.
Squeeze—
She pinched her thigh hard, and the static in her head quieted a little.
Shing!
She drew the longsword she had been cradling.
"...Ch-Chloe Dreitna."
Chloe was a popular character with a slightly gloomy air and an explosively curvaceous figure.
She was one of those figures who only had related quests and couldn't build affection with playable characters.
'I wonder if it's the same here?'
In the game, she wasn't Robert's heroine; she was involved with one of Robert's acquaintances from the Magic Department, as far as he remembered.
Even without being a protagonist's heroine, her popularity was undeniable.
"...Ch-Chloe Dreitna."
Maybe because he'd recently met Eclair, but he was more aware of it now.
Their faces were definitely similar, but Chloe's hair wasn't silver—it was a gray like ash dusted over.
Her eyes weren't red either; they were a clear blue that seemed to chime like clear water, different from Eclair's.
And that was just the start.
If her sister was an unbreakable gem, Chloe felt like a lump of metal already warped by intense heat.
She was taller than Eclair, yet her posture was hunched, her eyes downturned, lacking any confidence.
That drooping demeanor even reminded him of Rike recently, making him miss her a bit.
'Given her upbringing, this outcome makes sense.'
Rike had been listless before too, but Chloe's issue was different in nature.
Rike ignored the eyes of strangers and quietly followed her own path.
Chloe, however, had been crushed by constant comparisons to her sister, becoming overly sensitive to every gaze.
To put it in the simplest terms: Rike could eat alone anywhere without a care, while Chloe was too conscious of others to manage it.
From that trauma came Chloe's skill.
Adel's Persona - B
▷ Creates a persona beneath a mask.
▷ Physical abilities increase during skill activation.
▷ Status ailment resistance increases during skill activation.
The "mask" referred to in that skill meant any gear that could cover the face.
A real mask worked, or a helmet.
But despite the simple description, it wasn't easy to use.
Even for an aspiring knight from a noble house, she couldn't wear a mask or helmet her whole life.
She herself had given up on leveraging that skill, banking on some future after graduation.
"Don't just stand there zoning out—focus! Get your head in the game!"
At my warning, Chloe seemed to snap to attention. She shook out her hand once and gripped her sword again.
Clack—!
Just watching these sisters stirred up a lot of thoughts.
The more Eclair pushed her body to the limit for her little sister and raised the Dreitna name, the larger her shadow grew.
And Chloe was slowly being swallowed by that shadow, despite her good intentions.
'I wonder how it'll turn out here. I'm curious about the ending.'
In the game, there hadn't been a clean resolution.
Akarite gamers had been left sucking their thumbs, speculating about a separate Dreitna sisters DLC.
"H-Here I come...!"
"Hah—!"
When Robert opened his eyes, he saw the familiar ceiling.
Realizing it was his dorm room, he dry-washed his face repeatedly against the heavy headache.
"Ughhh..."
He dragged his waterlogged, cotton-like body upright, spotting a note on the desk.
[Rest up today! We'll explain things to the instructors for you!]
'What happened...?'
All he remembered was firing off that beam of light before his vision suddenly blacked out.
"Fuck..."
No memory, but one thing he was sure of: no gain, no glory.
Robert wandered his room in a daze for a few laps before slumping at the desk.
'Gotta do this at least... can't put it off anymore.'
The book's due date was tomorrow; he had to get through some of it today.
Dimensional Magic Experiment Report
He wiped the faint dust from the book with a cloth and opened the first page.
Flip—
[Traveling the Harun Empire and the Volasen Federation with my wife, an archaeologist, I came to one firm realization. The world is filled with things beyond our knowledge and common sense.]
'Such an obvious statement...'
Robert wanted to argue with the book from page one—it was so basic it was a waste of paper.
'This feels off... am I just gonna waste time reading this?'
His visit to the academy library that day had been pure chance.
On his way back from dinner out with friends, he'd peeked into the lit-up building and popped in briefly.
Fascinated by the quintessentially fantastical library, he'd wandered the shelves like a stroll through a study and spotted this book.
The words "dimension" and "report" had piqued his curiosity enough to borrow it, but up to the midpoint, it read more like the author's essays.
[...In that dungeon, my suspicions of other-dimensional beings turned to certainty. That day, I abandoned our continental travels with my wife and shut myself away at home, diving into dimensional research.]
'Finally getting to the point.'
As he read on, strange diagrams appeared, and the content grew increasingly incomprehensible.
[...In the end, the magic circle I completed took this form. Despite no errors whatsoever, it refused to activate. I beat the ground and wailed in despair.]
He'd thought the magic circle on a teleportation gate was complex, but this was at least ten times more intricate.
Hundreds of shapes crammed onto a single page—it looked like a child's doodle.
[...Once the despair passed, I pondered daily, endlessly. In time, my hair turned white, and I had no choice but to admit the truth.]
[...To intervene in another dimension, the issue wasn't my magic circle—it was the catalyst for activation. No matter what I tried, I couldn't trigger this circle...]
[...The condition itself couldn't be overcome by effort alone. Put simply, there was no solution. After mobilizing countless people to test it, I realized that mana itself was ultimately...]
Robert read through, then paused to think.
'...But my mana should work for this?'
The mage's near-fictional, abstract conditions—all the key ones were met by him, the possessed one.
It felt like the book was made for him to read.
Robert flipped back to the page packed with diagrams.
"Screw it...!"
Vmmm—
He hesitated briefly but steeled himself and channeled mana into it.
The diagram-filled page vanished, mana converging in one spot.
Crackle—!!
"Wh-What?!"
The air split slightly midair.
And the rift dropped something to the floor.
Thud.
"Kinda creepy-looking... what is this thing...?"
The lump was rock-hard like a stone, but its two sides flowed with thick paint-like colors.
Like the iridescent oil slicks sometimes seen in puddles.
Robert pulled out his appraisal item from the desk.
"...!!"
Unlike its unsettling appearance, the name was more than satisfying.
[Dimensional Shard]
"...I knew it—I can do it!!"
The gloom from practical class vanished in an instant.
The mage who published this book couldn't achieve it in a lifetime, yet he'd done it just by being who he was.
"But... what do I even do with this?"
He nudged it toward the cracked air, but it didn't fill the gap.
'It'll close on its own after a while, right...?'
Something told him not to stick his hand in that open fissure, so he left it be for now.
Was this unknown item useful to him? That was what mattered.
'Mages are the experts on this stuff? Or alchemists?'
'The magic circle page disappearing is a problem too...'
He'd have to track down another copy of the book.
"Where should I... Ah!"
A plausible candidate popped into Robert's head as he clutched the shard and sat in his chair.
The glasses guy from the Magic Department might know about this shard.
He was from a renowned magic family, and they got along decently—worth asking.
Even if he didn't know, no harm done.
The guy was always yammering about weird experiments whenever they met anyway; showing him this would probably thrill him.
"Alright!"
His embarrassing past was already forgotten.
With his energy fully restored, Robert tucked the shard into his pocket and left his room.