Chapter 36
“I finished it!”
Returning to ‘Mutarat's Children’ with my mental state completely fucked, Frang said that. I admired the robe spread out before me with an exhausted look.
“Ooh.... It looks great....”
“Hehehe.”
Though my reply was listless after getting yelled at while bathing at the bathhouse and then finishing the laundry at our inn, Frang seemed satisfied. It was a robe good enough to make Frang proud, after all.
“It looked a little plain to leave it as it was, so I tried embroidering it too! Since the thread is black, no one will notice even if you move around in dark places!”
As Frang had said, the black robe that had looked like a mere bathrobe was divided into a long cloak and the robe beneath it, with stylish pleats and black-thread decorations added here and there.
At a glance, it was simply a stylish robe, but anyone who looked closely could tell how much care had gone into it.
“Thanks, Frang. I really like it.”
“It turned out well because I was making something Nord would wear.”
When I pulled Frang into my arms and kissed her cheek in thanks, she smiled shyly.
“Ah, I also made gloves from the leftover fabric. Try these on too. I hear there are people in the world who can identify someone just from the shape of their hands.”
“Heh heh. Even if I weren't dealing with people like that, I still need to wear gloves because of my skin color.”
I accepted the black gloves Frang gave me and put them on. They fit my hands perfectly.
“Damn, they fit perfectly. How did you know my hand size?”
“What do you mean, how? I even felt your hands a few times.”
No, how could feeling them a few times tell anyone that? I had groped Frang's breasts plenty, but I couldn't even estimate their size.
While I was mentally chalking up another win to the dwarf's cheat ability, Frang looked over my outfit and asked.
“You didn't bring your armor? I made this so you could wear the robe over your armor too, and I wanted to see you try it on.”
“The smell hasn't faded enough. I guess I'll have to buy deodorant or learn magic from now on.”
“Huh? Nord, you're planning to learn magic too?”
“If I can.”
Anyway, I tried on the completed outfit. Frang helped me put it on, but it wasn't difficult to put on by myself either. Once fully dressed, I stood before the mirror.
The thing in Frang's inn room was a metal mirror. It was a common item in this world.
“It suits you, Nord!”
“Heh heh. Of course it does—who made it? By the way, where's the mask?”
“Ah, could you wait a little longer for the mask? It was my first time carving, so it took me a while to get the hang of it.”
“…Isn't that it?”
I pointed at the cloth spread over the bed. The wooden mask lying beside the sawdust and carving knives had already almost fully taken shape.
“Yeah! Now I just need to paint it, let it dry, attach it to the cloth so you can wear it on your head, and add the embroidery, and it'll be done! But drying takes time, so you probably won't be able to try it until tomorrow morning.”
“Wait, when you said it would take a day, did that include drying time?”
“Hehe. I left myself a little extra time. I'd never applied dye to a mask before either. I wasn't sure how long it would take to dry completely.”
Only half a day to mend the robe and make the mask. Frang's skill had become downright astonishing.
“Move around in the robe. Tell me if anything feels uncomfortable.”
“Got it.”
I pulled the robe's hood over my head and checked my reflection from various angles in the bronze mirror. It looked a little like a cosplay outfit at first glance, but the quality was high, so it was actually pretty cool.
“Vector—Speak Solemnly.”
I activated the Earth Hero's secret technique. This was a higher-level skill than Vector—Lowering One's Voice.
With a solemn voice good enough to rival a voice actor's, the dark hero in the mirror radiated overwhelming coolness.
Damn, if I filmed an otherworldly tokusatsu show with this, I could rake in money by the bucketful. Fucking otherworldly telecommunications. Why the fuck was a flying letter their high-speed communication method?
“Hmm. Should I settle on an alias too? ...How about Arthur Wayne?”
“Arthur Wayne?”
Frang, who was applying dye to the mask while wearing work gloves, murmured the alias a few times, then giggled.
“Arthur Wayne. It has a nice ring to it. It suits you, Nord.”
I spent quite a while wondering whether Frang's assessment was a compliment. It was a compliment, right?
“Then Arthur it is? How about the mask?”
Frang said this after attaching a handle to the back of the mask and finishing the paint. The animal mask, painted white, radiated an aura of untouchable charisma.
“Perfect.”
“I'm glad you like it. Then I'll finish it like this?”
“Please do. How much longer will it take?”
“Hmm, I'm not sure? I have to attach the cloth after it dries so the dye won't get on it, so... once I finish painting this and complete the rest tomorrow... it... should....”
Frang's words rapidly dwindled as she explained. The reason was that I had started taking off my clothes while listening.
─Fwoosh.
“I'll wait. Take your time.”
“…I-I'll finish quickly.”
Contrary to her words, Frang's work slowed because she kept sneaking glances at my naked body, but she was able to finish the job that day.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the sex we'd left unfinished that afternoon.
***
The next day, dressed in the complete costume, I came to the Mages' Guild.
“I thought it would be a tower, as the unwritten rule of the genre dictated.”
I deliberately said it out loud to increase my proficiency in Vector—Speak Solemnly.
Just hearing the words Mages' Guild, I had naturally expected a tower with a magical feel. But the Mages' Guild I visited in person turned out to be surprisingly normal-looking.
‘It looks so damn much like a university campus that I feel like my PTSD is about to flare up.’
The guild's front gate was made of iron bars, with guards stationed there, and I could glimpse a green lawn inside. They were using a fairly large area in its entirety as the guild grounds.
Whooosh─.
Just then, the wind blew, sending the cloak of my robe billowing. At the sight of my imposing figure, men dressed like passing adventurers swallowed audibly.
─Hey. See that black guy over there? He looks fucking terrifying.
─You fucking idiot! Keep your voice down! What if he hears you?!
“Why, though.”
I muttered quietly in a solemn voice. No matter how you looked at me, I looked cool. I never expected to give off a frightening impression.
‘Better than looking weak, I guess?’
I decided to think of it that way. A robe could range, depending on its quality, from a puffer jacket to a business suit. A robe made with lots of work and good fabric was a suit, while a poorly made one was a padded jacket.
Put on just any robe, and you could end up looking as shabby as someone who wore a padded jacket to the convenience store in front of their house because they couldn't be bothered to dress properly.
Anyway, as long as I didn't look like a pushover, it was fine. After checking that my brooch was fastened properly, I approached the guards stationed at the guild entrance.
“Excuse me. I am this sort of person—”
It was at the moment I held out my brooch and was about to explain my business.
“You there, thief!! Submit quietly to arrest!! Kiyooooh!!”
“Wut?”
With a battle cry, the guard thrust his spear at me.
Shwish-shwish-shwish!!
A swift triple thrust! Though it had no spearhead, it was a brutal, merciless assault aimed at my neck, solar plexus, and balls!! If I took one of those head-on, I'd become a eunuch bastard with breathing problems!
Since the attack was completely unexpected, I nearly lost my mind, but I responded by exerting to the limit the reflexes honed through repeated real combat.
“Shadow Sky Style: Jade Stream!!!!”
Clang!!
I knocked the spear aside with the sword I had drawn in an instant. Triple thrust, my ass—the spear was still just one spear! Once I smacked it aside, the multiple thrusts meant nothing!
“Ghk! As expected, a strength unlike that of a thief!”
“But can you defeat the three of us!”
“Be grateful we haven't received permission to kill you! Thief!”
When I deflected the attack, the other guards rushed over and leveled their spears at me too. Their behavior left me speechless.
“You knee-crippled bastards, who are you calling a thief!”
I didn't know what these assholes had mistaken me for, but the only thing I had ever stolen in my life was a packet of Jeti brought by my elementary-school desk mate!!
I had been robbed plenty of times, but I had never stolen anything!!
I remembered the Digivice I'd brought to school during a sports day when I was young! The legendary golden Digivice! The miraculous item that transformed an ugly Guilmon into Gallantmon!
The ugly face of my desk mate, the prime suspect among the candidates for whoever stole it, overlapped with their faces!
Feeling as if that old trauma were about to come back to life, I desperately pleaded with them!
“Guards! I am absolutely not a thief!”
“Hmph! Would a thief ever admit to being one!”
“Your information-gathering skills are impressive, to know that our knees are injured!”
“Receive the Sargadis Guards' Secret Technique: Three Men, One Spear!!”
“Fuck.”
There was no room for dialogue. Did they not perform personality tests when recruiting these fucking guards?
“Stop right there, you city guard scumbags!!”
I had no choice but to prepare to activate Beast Regression. No matter how you looked at it, taking on three guards who made their living by the sword, three against one, without magic was tantamount to suicide!
If I fought, I would end up being treated as a real thief, so I should just subdue them enough to count as legitimate self-defense. Fuck, thanks to these shameless bastards, my anaconda was about to become a King Ghidorah!
“《To the Sky God(yáǵeswō)》──”
“Let's stop this.”
The one who stopped the hair-trigger situation was a mage from inside the guild. He was a gray-haired man in a shabby robe, with dark circles all around his eyes.
“Oh, Mage?”
“That gentleman is probably a guest. You are an archaeologist, correct?”
The mage said this after looking at the brooch I was wearing. This brooch was basically like a college varsity jacket, so anyone who didn't recognize it was an idiot. In other words, these guards really were idiots.
“What? A thief?”
“A thief archaeologist... a tomb robber?”
The three idiots displayed a fatal blue screen in their brain cells. They were stuck on how someone could be a thief and an archaeologist at the same time, like an error-ridden line of programming code.
“Thank you for your help. These fellows seem to work hard training their bodies, so I suppose they're a little lacking in the head.”
I used the otherworldly university man's passive skill, ‘Ignoring the Uneducated’. The guards' idiot expressions immediately curdled.
Damn, that worked like a charm. People who worked with their bodies really did seem to have an inferiority complex about their education, whether they knew it or not. I usually didn't treat people like this, but it was fine for those three idiots.
And in this sort of situation, Vector—Speak Solemnly was effective.
“Why are your faces so sour? Does it bother you that much? If you're so upset, go ahead and try me. Come to Carmine. I can knock your teeth out. and also I like settlement money.”
“…Please go inside, Scholar.”
Idiots.
I didn't know why they'd accused an innocent person of being a thief, but since they had immediately started thrusting spears at me, they had no grounds to complain about being treated like idiots.
No, fine, I could overlook the neck and solar plexus as attempts at restraint, but the balls? The balls? Just because their brains were eunuch-grade, they had no right to make a eunuch out of someone else.
“In any case, I will file a formal complaint about this later, so prepare yourselves for a pay cut, at the very least.”
“…Yes.”
“Tsk tsk.”
I clicked my tongue and entered the Mages' Guild grounds.
After my identity was checked and I was admitted, the mage who had helped me went off somewhere. I wanted to at least thank him, so it was a shame.
Alone, I briefly found myself wondering where the hell I was supposed to go, then entered the nearest building. Judging by appearances, it seemed to be the reception office.
“Welcome.”
A bespectacled nerd who looked like the most irritable man alive was sitting behind the counter. He looked like someone who had spent his whole life studying and was working as a teaching assistant because he needed money for tuition.
The reason I was making such vicious judgments about a stranger was that the moment he saw me, he blatantly wore an expression that said, ‘Ah, fuck, I have to work again.’ This fucking bastard was scowling and everything. Huh?
I had no desire to talk for long with people who acted like jerks either. The moment I reached the reception desk, I got straight to the point.
“I am an archaeologist affiliated with Carmine University. I have come to consult the Mages' Guild today.”
“…Carmine University?”
“Is there a problem?”
“No, none at all.”
The bespectacled man slightly straightened up upon hearing my credentials. It wasn't that he had been cowed by the university's prestige; he was simply trying to behave properly so none of it would splash back onto him. Mages really were clever.
“May I see your identification?”
“Here.”
He took the brooch, placed it on something resembling a magical device, and checked it. The bespectacled man cleared his throat and returned the brooch.
“Verified. What brings you here today?”
“I would like to consult you about the history and symptoms of the magic discovered in a ruin. I suspect it may date from Erin, or even an earlier prehistoric era.”
“Understood. I'll call the person in charge.”
I waited briefly in the waiting room. Before long, a mage who appeared to be a guide arrived.
“I'll show you the way. This way, please.”