Chapter 3
3
“…!”
Doloris’s startled eyes met mine.
I had no choice but to dodge it; getting stabbed looked like it would hurt.
- Kirik-kirik.
Look at that. Even now, the scorpion tail is twisting around angrily.
It was just then, when I naturally expected her to get angry or scold me.
- Smile.
Was she smiling?
The corners of her mouth… seemed to be curling upward in a peculiar way.
Why was she smiling? Maybe she was so angry that she was sneering.
Just as I was analyzing her expression and wondering about it.
“How dare this insolent wretch…!”
The instructor who had been standing with his head bowed beside Doloris charged at me first.
“How dare you act so rudely in front of the Duke!”
The instant he approached me, he raised his hand.
A smashing strike from above to below, diagonally downward, aimed precisely at my left cheek.
The trajectory is perfect. I’m definitely getting hit.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
However.
- Thump.
That hand never reached my cheek.
“You must have been startled. I’m sorry….”
Doloris held the instructor’s arm before he could strike and smiled at me elegantly.
It seemed she had saved me once. I hurriedly lowered my head.
Eric’s expression behind me was unusual. He looked like he had seen a ghost.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s an unfamiliar place, so it can’t be helped. You must have been startled.”
After reassuring me, Doloris looked at the instructor.
The instructor whose hand was being held went pale and lowered his head.
“Huh… Your Grace….”
“It looks like the child was startled. It’s his first time experiencing something like this, isn’t it? Please don’t scold him.”
“Ah… but still…!”
“…Please don’t?”
Doloris smiled with her eyes once more and asked in a gentle voice.
“Yes…! As you command….”
The instructor immediately lowered his head.
Doloris took another step toward me, bent her knees, and met my eyes.
Was she going to pet me again? I hadn’t disliked it.
“I’m only asking because I’m curious, child.”
She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder and whispered.
“…Now I’m even more curious.”
- Grrrk. Grrk.
This time, the tail began slowly—very slowly—approaching the spot behind my right ear.
I had already dodged it once.
I subtly pulled my head to the left.
- Whoosh. Grrrk….
The tail instantly turned back in the opposite direction.
I slowly nudged my head to the right again.
- Whoosh.
The tail came back to the right as well.
“……”
Was she perhaps playing with me?
Doloris watched the entire process without saying a word.
The hand on my shoulder remained where it was.
Her expression was still meaningful.
No, actually, it seemed a little deeper than before.
Okay.
…So this won’t end unless I stay still.
Fine. Let’s just think of it as getting poked once.
In the end, I gave up, squeezed both eyes shut, and slowly extended the back of my neck toward the direction of the spine-chilling sound.
“Mm, I understand.”
Doloris murmured quietly, sounding satisfied.
- Swish.
The sensation tickling the back of my neck disappeared.
Doloris slowly withdrew her hand and stood up.
“Magic.”
Then she turned her head so everyone could hear.
“Lionel, you have a talent for magic.”
She added clearly.
“Quite a lot of it, too.”
It seemed I had a talent for magic.
2.
All the children from the other groups returned to the livestock shed.
Except me.
The expression Eric had shown just before he was dragged away kept circling in my mind.
He had looked a little depressed. Had he grown attached to me already?
Or was it simply because he hadn’t eaten?
‘Hahaha! You’re the first person the Duke has singled out personally like this!’
The instructor, who had glared at me as if he wanted to kill me while I turned my head this way and that to avoid the tail, now spoke with a bright smile as if none of that had happened.
‘I have something to discuss with you, so would you wash him?’
But I had already washed.
Apparently, my smell hadn’t been particularly pleasant to Doloris’s nose.
Thanks to that, I entered the adults’ shower room alone.
- Splash….
“…Ah.”
As I poured a basin of water over my head, I thought.
I have no idea.
I definitely hadn’t been stabbed by the tail.
And yet she said I had a talent for magic.
All the children in front of me had been stabbed before receiving their evaluations.
If placing a hand on them was an aptitude test, it should have ended with the first attempt from the start.
And now, there was one thing that made me extremely anxious.
“Did I stand out?”
If my ten years as a web-novel reader had taught me anything, it was this.
Standing out early to a powerful person who obviously looked strong almost never ended well.
That might be different if I were the protagonist. But I don’t even know if I am one.
It might be different if I had some outstanding ability, but I wasn’t sure that I did.
[Hey, your heart is beating way too fast. It’s up 23% from normal.]
[You’re not getting flustered because she’s pretty, are you?]
“Shut up.”
[Aaaah!! He’s not answering!? You really are flustered!!!]
“Be quiet and go find some information.”
- Whooosh….
I picked up the basin again.
Let’s wash first. I’ll think afterward.
When I stepped outside the bathhouse, a completely different set of clothes from the ones I had been wearing earlier was neatly folded there.
I thought they might even apply perfume or something, but they hadn’t gone that far.
“You just need to go into that cabin over there.”
The instructor pointed to a pretty-looking building.
“Just say yes, yes, got it? You must never offend the Duke.”
“Yes.”
He kept urging me repeatedly.
His face was full of worry.
I didn’t know whether it was for my sake or his own.
“But there’s something I’m curious about. Do all the children in the magic group go to cabins like this?”
I wondered if I was making too much of a fuss.
The instructor hesitated for a moment, then said.
“…I’ve never seen anyone have a private audience before.”
“Oh.”
I nodded appropriately and walked toward the annex.
So it was a first.
This is driving me crazy.
- Creak.
When I opened the pretty door and went inside, the first thing to envelop my nose was a pleasant fragrance.
Since the smells I had been exposed to until just now had been somewhat unpleasant, perhaps the contrast made it seem even better.
It was enough to make my head a little hazy.
The inside was fairly spacious.
It looked just like a rich family’s vacation home.
Except it was medieval-themed.
There were three teacups on the table in the middle.
And across from it.
“You’re here.”
Doloris was sitting there.
Beside her stood the short-haired child who had been sticking close to her since earlier.
“Hello.”
I bowed my head politely.
“Why don’t you sit?”
I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down without complaint. Doloris set down her teacup, looked at me, and smiled.
“What did the instructor say?”
“…He said it was a good opportunity.”
“Mm. What else?”
“He said he had never seen anyone have a private audience before….”
“Mm, and what else?”
Oh, what now? There was only one thing left.
Just say yes, yes, and don’t offend her.
I had tried to gloss over it.
But Doloris’s expression as she rested her chin on her hand and looked at me was unusual.
You know how it is, right? When someone already knows the answer asks you on purpose.
If I said there was nothing else, it felt like things would become troublesome.
Let’s just be honest.
“He just told me to say, yes, yes.”
“Are you going to do that?”
“Of course not. I’ll make sure my answers contain only the truth.”
“Pfft. That’s not a very childlike answer.”
She had hit the nail on the head.
Doloris covered the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand and laughed softly.
“Don’t lie to me from now on. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“You told me the truth. Good job.”
Doloris held out a piece of candy wrapped in silver paper.
So she really had known everything and was testing me.
I accepted the candy with relief, but the little girl standing at an angle beside her opened her eyes wide and reached out her hand.
“……”
My candy was confiscated.
She gobbled it down in one bite.
“……Sorry. That was the last one.”
Doloris slightly furrowed her brow as she looked at the child.
“There are lots at home.”
The little girl did not answer. She abruptly turned her head away and began crunching.
I didn’t think much of it. That was how kids that age were.
Crazy about candy. And a little bratty.
- Clap.
“Then shall we get to the point?”
Doloris brought her hands together and looked at me.
“I told you earlier that you had a talent for magic. Why do you think I said that?”
“……”
If she was asking me that.
“I’m not sure.”
“It didn’t touch you, did it?”
“…No.”
I hadn’t been stabbed.
At those words, Doloris smiled brightly.
“That’s why.”
“Pardon?”
“An ordinary person.”
She slowly continued.
“Can’t know. Because they don’t know.”
“……”
“They can’t know anything about whether it touched them or not. They can’t see it.”
I went back over the meaning of her words.
So.
The reason the children standing in front of me hadn’t even flinched when they were stabbed wasn’t because they weren’t afraid.
It meant they hadn’t been able to see anything from the beginning?
And she had been surprised because I dodged it repeatedly as if I could see it?
“…You can’t see it?”
That fearsome tail.
“Yes.”
Doloris nodded and picked up her teacup.
- Whirrr!
At the same time, a scorpion tail shot out from her left hand.
I reflexively pushed my chair backward.
The tail twisted around in midair before stopping right in front of my nose.
“……You’re afraid. Why is that?”
“It looks scary.”
“…Does it? What does it look like?”
“Uh… a scorpion tail.”
“…!”
At my answer, the face of the short-haired child, who had remained expressionless all this time, twisted.
“Oh my.”
Doloris hid her mouth and shot the child a sidelong glance.
“Ruby, he says it’s a scorpion tail.”
Doloris teased the child as if she found it amusing.
“Looks like he can see exactly what it looks like, too.”
She called the little girl Ruby.
“Our Ruby still can’t~”
- Gnash, gnash.
Ruby bit her lip as if she were terribly angry about something.
- Stomp stomp stomp.
Without saying a word, she stamped her feet hard and approached Doloris.
“Is that really true? It’s a tail?”
Her voice had risen slightly.
“It is.”
Doloris answered calmly with a smile.
Ruby’s face instantly turned bright red.
- Thud thud thud!
She stomped her feet hard and stormed outside.
The door slammed shut.
“……”
I watched her go, then.
“…Ah, I’m sorry. I think I must have done something wrong.”
I apologized.
“No, not at all.”
Doloris calmly said as she picked up her teacup.
“Pardon?”
“Ruby didn’t know what it looked like.”
Doloris continued explaining with a smile.
“She can see its shape, but she doesn’t know exactly what it looks like. She was trying to see it… but you saw it first, so I suppose she got angry.”
Ah.
So she was upset because I had seen something she couldn’t, something she was still trying to see.
Apparently, it wasn’t easy to see the tail’s exact form.
Then what was I?
Judging by the circumstances, that child must have been exceptionally gifted in magic. Doloris personally kept her at her side, after all.
But it made sense that she would be upset when some filthy little dung boy claimed to see something she couldn’t.
Honestly, I had no idea what was going on.
“Come to think of it, that’s strange. How did you know what a scorpion looked like? This is a pastoral region… You’d have to visit a desert to see a scorpion….”
This was bad.
Apparently, the appearance of a scorpion wasn’t common knowledge.
“I think I saw one in a book.”
“……”
When Doloris heard my answer, she gently lifted the corners of her mouth.
She didn’t look particularly convinced.
“Well… that isn’t important.”
After a brief silence.
“…What happens to me now?”
…Actually, this was what I was most curious about.
“You….”
Doloris set down her teacup and looked at me.
“…What would you like to do?”
3
“What an eccentric hobby.”
I was on my way back to the barracks from the cabin. I went over the conversation we had just had.
‘I don’t lock up children who truly have talent. I let them do what they want.’
‘What about the children in the magic group?’
‘…Not everyone can climb the Tower.’
After hesitating for a moment, she had continued.
‘However, the territory needs workers. Children who will first learn the control system and receive basic training.’
In other words, the magic group had never been created with the intention of raising mages from the start.
It was a place that gathered children capable of working in the territory and taught them a basic system of discipline.
If talent happened to emerge in the process, that was good. If not, well…
It didn’t seem like a bad system. It was better than becoming useless.
Just like me.
‘So, what would you like to do?’
My answer was to return to the barracks.
Except.
‘Could I… not have to clean up the dung?’
‘……Are you serious?’
I was frightened for a moment, but in the end, it meant I didn’t have to do it.
It seemed she had never intended to make me do it in the first place.
There were two reasons I hadn’t gone to the magic group.
First, as Doloris had said, there was no value in it.
Second, the way they had looked at me earlier had been unusual.
I didn’t want to join in and do something so ridiculous.
In the end, I was able to rest, if only for a while.
- Tap tap tap!
“Good work!”
The instructor patted me on the back and encouraged me.
He had briefly gone into the building to see Doloris, and he was in a remarkably good mood when he came back out.
“Did you say next week? Rest up until then! No… don’t rest too much. Keep up with whatever needs doing!”
I was guided to a room completely different from the livestock shed that morning.
“Tell me if you need anything! The Duke told me to make you comfortable.”
The instructor patted my back a couple more times, then left.
Before opening the door to my room.
I remembered what Doloris had told me.
“……”
‘What I want from you is nothing else.’
‘Show me something interesting next week. Try everything you want. That’s what magic is.’
‘We’ll be staying in the annex for a week.’
She hadn’t given me a single hint.
I wondered if this was how she raised talent, but whatever.
If I really had talent, I’d figure something out somehow….
In any case, I had become unemployed for a week.
Not having to work was… extremely welcome.
I opened the door to the barracks.
A private room.
What a moving experience. I had never even had one in the army.
The other lodgings I had glimpsed in passing looked tougher than an obstacle-course training ground.
The bed was a wooden one, but.
I was simply grateful.
“……”
I sat on the bed and looked out the window.
The night breeze came in, carrying the unwelcome smell of cow dung.
Ugh.
“Wow…….”
It was sinking in.
I really had come to another world.
The body I had possessed was that of a little kid.
I had no idea what this so-called talent I had been given was.
All I had in my hands was a crazy little sister AI… no, could I even say I had anything in my hands?
Oh, right.
“Hey, are you there?”
I called out into the air.
Then.
[Crawling complete.]
“What?”
I shot to my feet.
There were only two situations in which that girl corrected her speech and spoke normally.
When I ordered her to do something.
Or when I had actually accomplished something.
“Uh, so… I mean.”
I asked her.
“Show me everything right now.”
As if she had been waiting for me, she immediately began explaining one thing after another.
[First, I successfully analyzed the nearest network node.]
[Crawling target: Inner Tower Community message board.]
[I forcibly created an account to log in. Don’t ask how.]
“…The Inner Tower board?”
Something came to mind at once.
The voice I had heard on the training field earlier.
‘The absolute ruler of Floor 5! His Grace the Duke…!’
Floor 5. Tower.
A tower?
Could this be a world where people climbed towers?
An AI that crawled a typical online community would possess an ocean of information.
Besides, the site it had analyzed was clearly from this world as well.
If so.
“…What kind of place is this?”
[Before I explain, there were a lot of parts that were impossible to understand from a common-sense perspective, you know?]
[So I decided to cleanly skip those parts!]
My $200 little sister could think after all!!
In other words, she had erased things she couldn’t understand, like the whole business of being transported to another world.
That was much better than grabbing her head and screaming because she couldn’t understand.
[Summary of the basic structure of the current world follows.]
[Focusing on data analysis of the current situation.]
[This is a fantasy world built around climbing a Tower.]
“……”
The Tower. Climbing.
[There is the Inner Tower Community, which can be joined by those qualified to climb the Tower, and the Outer Tower Community for ordinary people.]
[The Inner Tower Community was judged to have overwhelmingly higher-quality data, including its wiki.]
[All analysis, including the wiki, has been completed based on that site.]
“A wiki?!”
I stood up from my seat.
Wiki. She had just said wiki.
If it was the wiki I knew… no way….
[At present, I’m able to provide almost all the information you want, big bro….]
She paused for a moment.
[That’s the situation I’m in, hehe.]
[😏]
She had returned to the irritatingly capable form I knew.
[Tell me what you’re curious about first.]
[Doloris? Pretty big sis?]
[No, that won’t do. I’ll just recommend something myself.]
[1. Basic Tower structure and overview by floor. ]
[2. Principles of mana manipulation.]
[3. Doloris’s wiki information.]
[Pick quickly!]
This one.
“…Doloris first.”
I thought it looked more manageable than I had expected.
I smiled.
[Aww, I knew you’d pick that….]
[Aww, I knew you’d pick that….]
[Aww, I knew you’d pick that….]