Chapter 9
The woman began speaking calmly. “Well then. I’ve come here today to tell you the results of your mana assessment.”
Carla Orlando.
Among the heroines of the wildly popular game Last Arcanum—known for short as Lasaka—she was one of the most popular characters.
Her Job was Mage.
She was a character who had trained her magic to the absolute limit. She joined the protagonist’s party fairly late in the story, but in exchange, she was overwhelmingly powerful.
I gazed at her face.
She had quite a distinctive look.
A cool, sharp expression. And, above all, that outfit.
How should I put it? It was something like a Chinese dress...
On top of that, it had a slit up the leg, so her pale leg kept flashing into view.
And to top it all off, the deep cut around her chest made her dangerously distracting.
Let me be blunt.
She was quite the exhibitionist.
A full-fledged pervert.
It was a ridiculously provocative outfit—no wonder so many people cosplayed her at a certain Comiket.
—But,
“Ah, the results of the mana assessment?”
I replied, doing my best to look at her face.
Mana assessment.
It meant examining the mana of children believed to have magical talent and determining which type of magic they were most compatible with.
Would it be elemental magic like Fire or Water, or Support magic that aided allies?
By the way, our protagonist—his name was Sieg-kun—had no results when he underwent a mana assessment as a child. But later on, he got a cheat ability that let his mana grow without limit by allocating experience points and Skill levels.
Yeah.
The protagonist’s plot armor is terrifying.
“Then it would be better if no one else were present. Let’s use another room.”
I called to Liera.
It was normal to send everyone else away, since the results of a mana assessment were fairly private.
“We’re changing rooms?”
Carla-san said, then started walking too.
—But I’d forgotten something.
The reason this woman named Carla was so popular.
Uh-oh.
“Ah, please watch your—” I blurted out.
That’s right.
She wasn’t just strong, or simply a beautiful woman with plenty of skin on display.
The reason she was so popular was—
“Bwegh!!!!”
Before I could finish saying, “Please watch your step,” Carla-san toppled over right in front of me.
Let me repeat: there was nothing there.
No steps, no obstacles—nothing at all.
“C-Carla-san...”
“………………”
“...Um, Instructor Carla...”
Silence.
Carla-san silently got to her feet and acted as if nothing had happened.
“Hm? What is it? You look as if I’ve just done something clumsy.”
“...N-no.”
“I see. Then please show me the way.”
I watched her with a somewhat awkward expression.
Carla Orlando.
She was...
She was... She was...
That’s right.
She was an unbelievably clumsy big-sister type.
A clumsy woman you’d never expect to be so beautiful.
And as you could see, she was the sort of hopeless character who tried to brush off her mistakes as if nothing had happened.
“Huh? Lady Carla, you just fell over with an awful—”
“I-I did not! Now, please tell me the assessment results! All right???”
Before Liera could say anything else, I raised my voice desperately.
Liera, let me tell you something.
...There are some things in this world you just shouldn’t call out.
I showed Carla-san to another room.
As offbeat as she was, she was actually someone I needed to be careful around.
Adventurers like Enrique weren’t all that popular with nobles, surprisingly.
That was because adventurers were generally careless and tended to act on the spur of the moment.
There were a few eccentrics who came from extremely prestigious families but chose to be adventurers, but adventurers weren’t generally trusted.
In the game’s fetch quests, I’d lost count of how many times I’d taken down adventurers who’d done something shady...
But.
Mages were different.
Mages attended proper academies and were respected to a certain degree.
—That’s right.
Even this clumsy woman had some influence among the nobility.
Incidentally, when Kuzutos got what was coming to him, Carla-san played a part in it, too.
Moved by the protagonist’s brave accusation, despite his being a commoner, she decided to lend him her support.
The two of them grow closer, while I lose my title in tears...
Ugh, my stomach’s starting to hurt.
And she was an immensely powerful mage.
There was no way I wanted to make her my enemy.
Do you see what I mean???
In other words, I absolutely couldn’t afford to offend Carla-san here.
Getting her to like me was probably impossible, but I had to somehow get her impression of me up to at least neutral.
But...
I had a strangely bad feeling about this.
The pressure from Carla-san following behind me felt unusually heavy...
And then,
“Hm. You’re quite different from usual today.”
After we moved to another room, Carla-san said that to me.
“What do you mean?”
I replied, but my bad feeling wouldn’t go away.
I remembered.
A mana assessment required a blood sample, and analyzing that blood took about a month.
Which meant...
“The last time we met, you were acting quite high and mighty. Let me make one thing clear: I’m a mage. You’d better not try anything foolish.”
Right, of course...
Yeah, she was extremely wary of me.
Carla-san had completely shed her clumsy-girl air from earlier and was looking very serious.
I knew.
No, I’d figured it out.
...Hey, Kuzutos.
You definitely did something awful again, didn’t you...?
“B-by the way, what was I like the last time we met?”
“Hmph, don’t play dumb. You leered at me while making your attendant maid feed you, saying, ‘Aah.’”
“………………”
The most beautiful character in the story stared at me with a gaze cold enough to freeze everything in its path.
“Ahahaha...”
All I could manage was a dry laugh.
“Haha...”
Aaaaaaah, seriously!!!!!!!!!
I thought to myself.
Kuzutos... You haven’t even gotten to the start of the original story, and you’re already being such a scumbag.
Couldn’t you tone it down a little?