Chapter 28: The Tin Knight and The Witch's Way of Greeting (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 28: The Tin Knight and The Witch's Way of Greeting (3)
You stretched your body out.
It wasn't that you felt tired or stiff, but it was a habitual motion.
You looked straight ahead.
In the corner of the pitch-black monitor screen, the word ‘Waiting’ was written in white letters.
The strange sensation of you outside the screen and you inside the ‘Tin Knight’ coexisting had also vanished.
At this, you felt an unexplainable sense of loss.
It felt like you had suddenly become a cyclops after having both eyes wide open.
It wasn't difficult to guess the meaning of the word ‘Waiting’ on the screen.
It probably meant that all the mana left inside the Tin Knight had been depleted, and it needed to be recharged.
It didn't seem like it would take very long.
After all, Dorothea had been by your side right before you shut down.
For that young witch, overflowing with mana, supplying the necessary power to the ‘Tin Knight’ was no difficult task.
Though Dorothea herself seemed annoyed at having to manually make contact to transfer mana each and every time.
You had heard her grumble several times that remote automatic supply didn't work, and even when she tried to pour in a huge amount at once, the ‘vessel’ was too small.
Considering it was like having a smartphone that couldn't be charged remotely when everyone else's could, and on top of that, had a small battery capacity, you could understand Dorothea's complaints, but you felt it was unfair too.
It wasn't your fault that the ‘Tin Knight’s’ performance was outdated.
If anything, shouldn't you be praised for getting an ancient relic, at least several hundred years old, to move around so well?
You stared at the monitor.
The screen was still black.
…The wait was longer than expected.
Was the recharge taking a long time because parts of your body had been broken just before you collapsed?
You had trusted the ‘Tin Knight’s’ intuition and thought the wounds were fully recoverable, but what if that wasn't the case?
What if some incident had occurred, and they couldn't wake you? What if Dorothea had died while you were immobile?
You looked around.
A small room with no exit came into view.
You, who felt no fatigue, did not need sleep.
You, who felt no hunger, did not need food.
But there was nothing you could do about the boredom and loneliness.
If there was no one to awaken the ‘Tin Knight’... you might be left here all alone.
Just as you were about to seriously mull over that fact, light returned to the screen.
Your senses expanded strangely, and you could feel the world the ‘Tin Knight’ saw and felt.
You were ‘you’, but at the same time, you were the ‘Tin Knight’.
Your story was there.
The black something that had been about to well up in your chest vanished without a trace, and a sense of fun and adventure filled its place.
With a smile on your lips, you resumed your adventure.
*
“Alright, I'll begin.”
“Go ahead.”
After confirming Dorothea’s indifferent reply, Adelaide carefully began to work.
First, she washed the sand grains embedded in the wound with clean water, then applied an ointment.
As the translucent, viscous liquid touched the wound, Dorothea’s back flinched and trembled violently.
Adel understood how she felt.
It was the same ointment Dorothea had applied whenever Adel was injured during training with the Tin Knight.
This ointment, which Dorothea claimed to have mixed herself, possessed truly tremendous properties.
For one, it healed astonishingly faster than any medicine sold on the market, left no scars, and was convenient to use as it didn't take long to be absorbed.
However, the side effect was also clear.
In a word, it stung horribly.
The first time Adel used it, it hurt so much that tears streamed down her face.
But she couldn't not use it, as the Tin Knight's training was notoriously merciless.
It attacked relentlessly regardless of whether its opponent was a woman or not, so her body was never without injury. To get rid of the resulting scars, Dorothea’s ointment was essential.
If asked whether to endure the scream-inducing pain to remove scars or use a less painful medicine and be left with them, a young girl's heart would choose the former without hesitation.
“Will Sir Knight be alright? His wounds looked severe.”
One trick to enduring pain is to focus on something else.
To lessen Dorothea’s pain, Adel started some small talk.
“He'll be fine. That guy has—hnngh—a self-repair function. I pumped him full of mana, so he should be getting up—ugh—getting up soon…!”
The last part was almost a squeezed-out sound.
Adel hesitated for a moment, but seeing Dorothea gesture for her to continue, she resumed her work.
“To think he can recover even after his left arm was completely severed... magic dolls are amazing. The mages in the Friedel domain don't use them, so I never knew.”
“That thing... isn't normal. The mana consumed for repair is no joke. Modern magic dolls... they don't usually include a function like that, ugh.”
“Come to think of it, you said Sir Knight was asleep in some kind of ruin in the kingdom, right? Could he have been active in the old kingdom?”
“Who knows.”
“Aren't you curious about Sir Knight's identity?”
After she finished applying the medicine, the bleeding wound could be seen healing rapidly. It was an incredible effect, no matter how many times she saw it.
Dorothea, who had been holding her breath as if to endure the surging pain, caught her breath for a moment and spoke again in her usual indifferent tone.
“Not really. Whoever that guy is, as long as he does his part properly like he did this time, that's enough.”
Adelaide wondered if this was cold indifference, or a sign of trust.
“Anyway, it's about time for him to wake up, so let's get ready to counterattack—”
Dorothea’s words were cut short.
The door to the room was suddenly thrown open.
The sudden intruder confirmed Dorothea and Adelaide's presence, then clenched the one fist he had left.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ says he’s relieved that both of them are safe!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ lets out a silent cheer!]
In case you've forgotten, the two were in the middle of treating wounds.
And Dorothea had taken off her clothes, exposing her upper body. Because it was more convenient for treatment.
Adelaide froze.
Dorothea’s body trembled.
It wasn't the trembling from enduring pain just moments ago, but a tremor filled with rage.
Grasping the staff, which had been split during the battle with the golden monkey and was now the size of a short baton, Dorothea rose to her feet.
And just like that, she began to beat the Tin Knight.
“A cheer? What damn cheer?! Do you not even know the basic concept of knocking!?”
Clang! Clang!
She must have poured a ton of mana into the staff, because the sound of wood hitting iron echoed like metal striking metal.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ protests that he only woke up to find no one around and was just trying to rejoin them in a hurry!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ points out that the problem was the door being unlocked!]
“I locked it! You just smashed it open with brute force!”
The Tin Knight turned around and checked the half-broken doorknob.
Then, after nodding his head up and down, he gave a thumbs-up.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ humbly admits his fault, saying it couldn't be helped then!]
“If you get it, then get out now!!”
Clang!
The staff Dorothea threw struck the Tin Knight spectacularly in the face.
Clutching his dented helmet, the Tin Knight hastily fled outside.
Dorothea slammed the door shut with a furious motion.
Watching Dorothea grumble as she gathered her clothes and put them on, Adel thought:
‘Huh, this is similar to what I’ve read in romance novels, but something seems a little different…?’
Shouldn't there be more, you know, a shrill scream, or a shy reaction?
Is a development where the heroine physically beats up the male lead and chases him out really the right one?
“Huu, Adel. Can you hand me that belt?”
“Ah, yes!”
Adel decided to keep her mouth shut.
Come to think of it, these two were strange people to begin with.
*
The Tin Knight was not reported for property damage.
This was because the three of them were staying in an empty house whose owner was away.
This in itself was a clear case of illegal trespassing, but among the three, only Adel cared about such trivial matters.
Whether she knew what Adel was thinking—that she should at least leave some money for the broken door and for borrowing the place—Dorothea spoke up.
“We can't go back to the inn. Our location has already been identified, and if we go there now, we'll just waste time with investigations and what not.”
A battle had taken place in the middle of the city.
And it wasn't a simple sword fight, but a chaotic brawl that destroyed and tore up everything around them.
Strictly speaking, Dorothea and the Tin Knight had only fought back against an ambush, but in the eyes of the city guard, both sides were targets for arrest.
The city guard here seemed relatively ‘competent’, so they might be able to clear up the misunderstanding by calmly explaining the situation, but Dorothea had no intention of doing so.
“If we leisurely submit to an investigation, we'll miss our chance to strike back. If an explanation is really necessary, it won't be too late to give one after we've landed a blow on the bastard who attacked me.”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks if she knows the enemy's identity!]
“A mage with a compass, just like me. They were probably after the ‘Key of Opium’ I have. Seeing as they were handling a homunculus, their school is Alchemist. I don't know their exact strength, but since this guy here finished off one of the monkeys, there's only one left. Even if they have another one for protection, it'd be two at most. If they could handle more, there's no way they would have sent just one at the beginning.”
Dorothea’s gaze turned to the Tin Knight.
Perhaps thanks to her continuously pouring new mana into the Tin Knight's mana tank whenever it ran dry, the wound that had been gouged out to just below his shoulder had already recovered enough to show his elbow.
At that rate, it seemed the rest would heal completely while they were on the move.
“But… even if we try to counterattack, don't we need to find their location? Ah, maybe with those mice you often use?”
Dorothea shook her head at Adel’s question.
“I already tried that, but it failed. For any mage with a decent amount of skill, preparing against detection-type magic is the most basic of basics.”
“However,” Dorothea added.
“The same goes for me. I used magic to suppress my mana signature and magic to weaken my presence to avoid being noticed.”
At Dorothea’s words, Adel recalled being left alone in a cage when she was captured at the auction house.
It seemed she had used a similar method back then.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ raises the question of how she was attacked even while using it!]
“That's the key. It's possible their detection skills were simply superior to my concealment, but what found me was the shadow serpent. In other words, the compass's detection ability chews through and spits out most concealment magic.”
The corners of Dorothea’s mouth curled up.
“In that case, wouldn't the reverse also be true?”
“But that would require the opponent to have one of the treasures... Ah.”
Adel, who had been tilting her head in confusion, gasped as if she had realized something.
The opponent was a rival who also possessed a compass.
Just as Dorothea had already secured one of the eight treasures, there was no rule saying her opponent hadn't done the same.
“Coincidentally, we have an emblem that guided us to this area. We've been running north this whole time, but what about now?”
When Dorothea channeled mana into the emblem, it shimmered, and a purple mole popped out.
The gazes of all three focused on the mole.
If there was no particular change in the mole's movement, they would need to come up with a new plan.
The mole, after looking around, began to sneak forward.
Not to the north, but turning its body to the west.
Dorothea spoke.
“Let's go pay them back for what they did.”