kscans

Chapter 81 - Carrying Regret, Yet Moving Forward

When they returned to the base, the crab-like monster party was already over. Amidst the lingering scent of the festivities and a massive pile of shells, their comrades looked at them with strangely lukewarm eyes.

But the moment Leonhard took out the large quantity of Night Vision Lenses...

(...No progress, huh.)

Their gazes instantly shifted to ones of pity.

"I, it’s fine! Once this is all over, I’m going to properly ask her to start dating me from square one!"

The moment he declared this, the surrounding atmosphere became even more cringeworthy.

(Never mind being his fiancée, he’s starting over from just dating...)

Their cold, unspoken thoughts stabbed at him.

They don’t get it. When it’s a serious romance, being sincere is the best shortcut, isn’t it.

Leonhard cursed inwardly, but beside him, Darius was watching with a smile that was somehow both amused and a little envious.

He told Darius that he wanted to review the Magic Furnace blueprints, and he nodded in agreement.

"Perhaps I should take a look as well?" The three of them shut themselves in the captain’s office and spread out the drawings.

"...Honestly, it’s so difficult I can’t make heads or tails of the details," Mireille grumbled. Leonhard could only agree. The former captain must have been not only powerful in magic but also an incredibly hard worker and a sharp mind.

"It’s supposed to be difficult," Darius said in a low voice.

"Because she didn’t know what ‘normal’ was, she kept up her reckless training and studying with almost no rest, relying on medicine and potions. Once I realized it, I had to force her to make time for sleep, but..."

A memory resurfaced.

The time Ariel tried to offer a sleepy little Mireille an awakening orb.

He had rushed to stop her, telling her, "Children grow by sleeping," only for her to proudly line up some tools that "allow you to function without sleep" instead.

"With this, she won’t need to sleep!"

He had been thrown into a panic that day by her triumphant expression.

In the end, he had made her sleep next to Mireille every night, but Ariel would try to slip away immediately, so Darius ended up having to sleep next to Ariel.

But before he knew it, Darius and little Mireille would be sleeping side by side, and the crucial Ariel would be missing. Often, when he awoke, she would have gone hunting in the Tree Sea and returned covered in blood, which had seriously scared him.

But thinking back now, she was probably finishing her work in the Tree Sea during the time she could entrust Mireille to me. Because she was incapable of asking people for help.

I was the one who wasn't trying to see her efforts.

If a normal woman had come to me saying, "I’ve been poisoned," I would have protected her immediately.

And yet, when it came to Ariel, the most important person to me, even while saying I loved her, in the end, I just brushed it off with, "She’s not normal, so she’ll be fine." And that was after I had spent so much time forcing her to live normally.

Darius gnashed his teeth as he glared at the complex blueprints of the Magic Furnace.

He wanted to punch himself right now for having dismissed it with the thought that Ariel would be fine.

Leonhard, who had been watching Darius, spoke up.

"Darius, don’t dwell on it. I have my own regrets about Kyle, you know. Besides, your judgment wasn’t wrong. I mean, look at me, I fell for Mireille on the second day."

"Eh...!" Mireille turned bright red.

"I was the kind of person who wanted nothing to do with women. And yet, Darius, you made the judgment that ‘this one would be a good match for him’ before we even met, right? So Ariel’s judgment wasn’t wrong either. It’s just... we’re all human, so unexpected things happen. That’s all there is to it, right?"

Perhaps not expecting to be comforted, Darius gave a bitter smile.

"...She had consulted me. She said something was wrong. But I just thought, ‘It’s Ariel, she’ll manage somehow.’ I still think that way now. That she should be able to handle it with force.... But I should have known that she had always been a possession bought by the state and couldn't defy the king. I still find myself thinking, ‘You, who are stronger than any weapon, why didn’t you just go on a rampage?’" He said this and cast his eyes down.

"But... Master is amazing, for sure, but I’ve never seen her use offensive magic in front of me. Even against monsters, she uses alchemical items. Honestly, even now, I find it hard to believe when people say she ‘was a magician.’"

At Mireille’s casually dropped words, Darius’s eyes flew open.

"...That’s right. When did it start? Even in conflict zones, she only used defense. Ariel... when did she stop attacking people? What was I even looking at?"

"I told you not to blame yourself! Save that kind of confession for when you’re in front of her!" Leonhard said, his voice sharp.

"I, I agree! When I see Master next, I want her to teach me how to use the dagger. There are so many things I want to ask her. So, let’s get her back, no matter what!" Mireille also raised her voice desperately.

Just then, a page of the blueprint fluttered down, revealing the section on the insulation material used in the Magic Furnace.

Mireille stared at it, and then nodded firmly.

"...I think, with the Moonshadow Wolf pelts. I can create an effect close to magic suppression."

It was the decisive clue they needed to take control of the Magic Furnace.