Table of Contents

Color Inserts

Table of Contents Page

Title Page

Copyrights and Credits

Prologue

Act 1: The Research Institute of Medicinal Flora

Act 2: Potions

Act 3: Cooking

Behind the Scenes I

Act 4: Skincare Products

Act 5: The Royal Capital

Act 6: Enchantments

Behind the Scenes II

Act 7: Magic

Afterword

Newsletter

Prologue

 

ONE DAY, I was unexpectedly summoned to another world by the Saint Summoning Ritual.

The hour was late. I had just returned home from work and was slipping off my shoes in the foyer when it happened: an incandescent white light suddenly spilled out around my feet. It was so blindingly bright that my eyes shut tight on instinct.

When I dared to open them again, I was no longer in my familiar apartment kitchen but a vast room built of stone.

“It worked!”

“Ooooooooh!”

A crowd of people burst into cheers. I had no idea what to make of them and tried instead to understand my surroundings.

In front of me stood two types of people: some dressed in surcoats who looked like knights and others who wore long robes that brushed their ankles.

The knights were in an uproar; they clapped one another on the back with a celebratory air. Meanwhile, the people in robes remained seated on the ground, though they were all smiling faintly as if they had just seen some kind of difficult task through to its end.

I turned my attention to the floor. It was as black as the stone walls, but when I peered closely, I noticed that someone had drawn strange dark lines directly beneath where I sat. The lines connected to each other in a way that reminded me of a magic circle.

To my right was one of those massive stone walls. To my left, however, was a girl. She was the only other person in this room dressed anything like me. Granted, I wore a full suit while she was wearing a more casual knitted top and a skirt. Nevertheless, we definitely looked like we came from the same modern era.

Everyone else, though…with all that armor and all those robes, I almost wanted to ask if we had tripped into some kind of video game.

Act 1:
The Research Institute of Medicinal Flora

 

IT HAD BEEN A MONTH since my summoning. The warmth of spring was close at hand, and I was sowing herbs in the royal palace’s garden.

Why was this my responsibility? Because I now worked at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora, which was located right next to this garden. In fact, I slept there, too.

Yup, that’s right. I no longer resided in the royal palace. I lived in a research institute.

 

***

 

The day I, Sei Takanashi, was summoned to another world by the “Saint Summoning Ritual,” I learned it had been passed down since antiquity here in the Kingdom of Salutania.

I also learned that something called “miasma” was manifesting all across the kingdom. It always appeared relatively close to where people lived and had a detrimental effect on humans. Furthermore, though the reasons were yet unclear, when the miasma reached a certain density, it churned out monsters. The more concentrated the miasma, the stronger the monsters. In turn, defeating monsters dissipated the miasma. As such, it was necessary to hunt and kill the unholy beasts to stop their source from gaining strength.

However, every few generations, the growing density of the miasma far exceeded the speed at which the monsters could be slain. Fortunately, during these eras, a maiden who would become the Saint always appeared in the kingdom.

The Saint’s magic was so powerful, she could annihilate the miasma’s monsters in the blink of an eye. In so doing, her magic instantly balanced the rate at which monsters were slain versus the rate at which the miasma condensed.

According to one theory, once the Saint had appeared, the miasma could no longer condense at all, at least in her divine presence.

Incredible, right?

The Saint was generally supposed to manifest all on her own, but at one point in ages past, despite the rapid growth of miasma, she had failed to appear. The sages of that time desperately experimented with all types of magic until they devised a ritual for summoning the maiden who would become the Saint from a faraway land.

And so, most annoyingly, the sages of the present era summoned me.

The ritual itself had only been performed that one time long ago; the current sages hadn’t known whether it would work until they actually tried it. Luckily for them, those sages of the past were as clever and powerful as they seemed, because the ritual did indeed manage to summon the Saint—two of them, in fact.

Up until now, there had only ever been one Saint at a time. “How did we wind up summoning two of them?” the sages asked. “Maybe it’s because the present state of the miasma is so exceptionally dire, we require another Saint to drive it back?”

The mystery remains…unsolved.

Anyway, that was all anyone had told me in the month since I had been brought by the Saint Summoning Ritual.

As for how I wound up living at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora, well…

After the ceremony, that red-haired lordling who swept into the room was unmistakably the crown prince of the kingdom. He didn’t spare even a glance for me; his sole focus was the other girl, Aira Misono. It wasn’t long before he swept out again, this time with Aira.

Honestly, I wasn’t too surprised. I was in my twenties, while dear Aira was in her late teens—she was obviously closer in age to the prince than I was. Not to mention, she had fluffy brown hair, perfect skin, rosy cheeks, doe eyes, and a certain soft sweetness that just made you want to protect her.

Whereas I, who had just come off of multiple rounds of late-night overtime, had my hair up in a messy ponytail, unhealthy skin, thick glasses, and permanent dark circles under my eyes. Compared to Aira, I looked ridiculous.

So, you know, I couldn’t say I didn’t understand why the prince only had eyes for Aira. But it was still pretty rude of him to summon someone without their permission and then just completely ignore their entire existence!

On the other hand, the other people in the room were equally taken aback by how the prince blithely dismissed me. They were even more alarmed when they realized I was going to be left behind. They had no idea what to do with me.

Really, I was even more bewildered, but it was pointless to just sit there. So, I smiled at one of the robed guys—then I grabbed him by the collar and began to interrogate him. “I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Wh-what would you like to know?” he croaked.

Since I was taller than him, his wary grimace and panicked look made me feel like I was actually bullying him. Normally, I would have felt bad, but considering the situation, I couldn’t be bothered with shame.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“This is the royal palace of the Kingdom of Salutania.”

“Kingdom of Salutania?” I had never heard of such a place. Given how many countries there are, it could have slipped through the cracks of my education, but a part of me knew that such rationalizations were just attempts to escape my unnerving new reality. “I see. So, why am I here?”

“Well… Um…” The robed guy hesitated, but a stern look from me squeezed a frantic answer out of him. “W-we called you here using the Saint Summoning Ritual!”

“The Saint Summoning what?”

That was when they told me about this Saint Summoning Ritual, which I previously described.

“So…this is actually a different world…from the one I was in before,” I murmured.

“Yes, I believe that’s likely the case…”

Stuff like miasma and monsters simply weren’t a thing in the world I came from. Although, perhaps they actually were in my world, and I just never found out about them? A small part of me hoped that was true. But the robed fellow quickly dispelled those hopes; he talked about these horrors as if they were a common, inescapable fact of reality here in the Kingdom of Salutania.

No matter how much I didn’t want to admit it, I had definitely been summoned to another world.

“Okay.” I breathed in and out. “I get that I was brought here by this Saint Summoning Ritual, but how do I get back to my world?”

My thinking was, if the Saint appeared in order to balance the density of the miasma, maybe once everything was back to normal, the Saint would no longer be needed. Then I could go home.

But in a small, regretful voice, the man in robes simply said, “You cannot.”

With that, my hopes were extinguished.

He explained that this was only the second time the Saint had been summoned from another world and that the previous Saint lived out the rest of her days in the kingdom. As of this moment, no one knew a way to return the Saint to the world she came from.

I could never go home. That realization shocked me to my core. As if scrabbling for a distraction, my mind fixed on the red-haired prince’s utterly tactless behavior. I decided then and there that I knew all I needed to know about this Saint-summoning and miasma-monster business, and that I was going to get the heck out of this kingdom.

First, I’d get out of this room—then the palace, then the capital, and then I’d make my way to whatever country was neighboring this one!

Thinking back on it, I realize this plan was rather boneheaded, but at that moment, I couldn’t stand to be with these people a second longer. I released the robed man and marched out of the room. Everyone—from the robed guys to the knights—came chasing after me in a panic.

“Lady Saint! Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving.”

“You mustn’t! Please, wait!”

For some reason, I thought I’d be able to just see my way out, but I quickly realized I was in a true palace. The hallways seemed endless, and I had absolutely no idea which way to go. I was pretty worked up at this point, so I just kept bulling down the halls, no matter where they led. Eventually, though, a knight caught up to me and blocked my path.

I glared at him, immediately peeved that someone was trying to stop me. The knight grimaced in the same way the robed man had when I menaced him. He said, “Please, wait a moment.”

“I’m pretty sure I already spent plenty of moments in that room, especially if you factor in the moments I wasted talking with one of your robed guys.”

“I realize that, but please. Just one moment more.”

The knight was crouching and using his massive body as a wall, as if trying to keep me in the palace no matter what it cost him. For some reason, his desperation made me calm down a bit. I nodded reluctantly. The knight melted in relief.

“This way, please.” To my chagrin, he led me away, back into the depths of the palace. Then he left me in a room somewhere in that labyrinth, but not before saying, “Someone will be with you shortly.”

Once he was gone, a maid entered, pushing a tea cart complete with a tea set. Despite my misgivings, the warm tea she poured soothed my irritation. For one, it was absolutely delicious, as I supposed you would expect from a place like this. With my newly clear head, I tried once more to process everything I had been through.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite concentrate. After the maid poured my tea, she didn’t really talk to me or anything; she just stood close to the wall, though it seemed she was standing at the ready to attend my needs. Maybe she assumed she was doing me a favor by leaving me to my thoughts. However, with nothing to do but spin my mental wheels, I wound up feeling wildly uncomfortable.

Just like that, an hour went by. Back home in Japan, leaving an angry client stewing on their own for a whole hour would absolutely lead to a severed contract.

Right as I was starting to fume again, someone finally knocked on the door.

“Come in,” I replied.

At my invitation, the official-looking blue-haired man I had seen with the prince entered.

While the tea was still quite good, and I was thankful to have had the time to compose my thoughts, the hour-long wait had pushed me right back to my limits. So, of course, I wound up glaring at him without even thinking.

The guy flinched in surprise and wiped sweat from his brow, but he nevertheless dedicated himself to telling me even more about the kingdom and the circumstances I had found myself in.

According to the blue-haired man, the capital was surrounded by grasslands through which monsters freely roamed. Furthermore, it took no less than a week by coach to reach the neighboring kingdom, and there was a good chance of being assaulted by bandits along the way. For someone like me, who knew nothing about this world, it would be pretty much like trying to beat an impossibly difficult video game.

Given all that, I was suddenly grateful for the knight who stopped me from leaving.

“I have heard that you expressed the desire to depart, but you cannot, realistically, live outside the royal palace.”

After everything this milquetoast official described, I was forced to agree.

While I was pretty sure that I could eke out some kind of living in the royal capital, I doubted I’d ever recover the same sense of security that I had back in modern Japan. At the very least, so long as I was in the kingdom, I needed to maintain the same kind of vigilance I relied on when traveling abroad.

If I’m going to be stuck in this world, I suppose I’ll live in the royal palace for now. I’ll get my bearings here first, and then, when I’m ready, I’ll get out! I thought as I relented. I would follow this official’s advice and live in the palace. For now.

 

***

 

After the official took his leave, the maid who had served me tea brought me to the chambers where I was to stay from now on.

My new home was far bigger than my one-bedroom apartment back in Japan—it was more like a suite in a hotel, since it had a living room connected to two bedrooms. The interior design was done up in an extravagant Rococo style. It reminded me of those outlandishly expensive hotels in Europe that advertise themselves all over the internet.

I collapsed on the sofa in the living room, thoroughly exhausted. The yellow light streaming through the window told me it was afternoon, but when I was summoned from Japan, it had been the dead of night. Not to mention, I had only just gotten home from work. I supposed there was a time difference between the Kingdom of Salutania and Japan.

Seeing as I was running on empty from all those days in a row of killer overtime, not to mention the abrupt change in my entire world, I don’t remember what happened after I collapsed. I assume that I fell asleep.

When I woke, I found myself on a luxurious bed. Someone must have carried me to it. By then, it was the following morning. I had also been stripped of my coat and business suit, and stuffed into a white dressing gown.

Eep! Who the heck changed my clothes?

I assumed (hoped) the culprit was the maid who brought me to this room, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit, you know, alarmed.

I thought about putting on something else, but I was unsure if I had license to hunt around for more clothes without permission. I figured there might be someone in the living room, so I made my way there.

When I opened the door, I found the same maid from yesterday waiting for me. Tentatively, I told her I wanted to put some more substantial clothes on. She guided me right back into the bedroom, where various kinds of dresses hung in a closet. They were all way too gaudy for me, though. Not to mention, they looked incredibly expensive—the type of clothes I’d be afraid to move in because I’d definitely get them dirty.

Because I had no plans for going anywhere or doing anything, I asked for something modest and comfortable. The maid could only find one dress that matched my description, though you could probably still call it fancy.

While I was changing, I nervously asked the maid if she’d been the one to change me out of my clothes the night before. She confirmed, so I thanked her sincerely. She responded, “It was my pleasure, milady.”

Honestly, I felt like she was being overly attentive. But I suspected pointing it out would only make her offer more profusely humble protestations, so I tried to stop worrying about it so much. I had already put up with quite enough of that fluff.

 

And then, somehow, two weeks had gone by. All in all, I had way too much time on my hands.

The first three days weren’t so bad, since I was still freaking out about this whole summoned-to-a-new-world thing. But the lack of anything productive to do quickly started getting to me. I had all the necessities of life, such as food, clothing, and shelter, but otherwise, I was largely ignored.

I saw neither hide nor hair of that blue-haired official after the first time he came to see me, even though I kept waiting for him to contact me. Whenever the maid was with me, we chatted a bit, but it was hard to keep a constant conversation going, and she seemed to have other duties to attend to, so she didn’t stay with me all day. Whenever she left, it was just me all alone in the room, and without a TV or a smartphone to keep me preoccupied, I was bored out of my mind.

But it’s not good to stay cooped up in your room all day! Unable to take it any longer, I made up my mind to go for a walk. I told the maid as much, and she insisted that she would accompany me. However, I would have felt bad making her come with me when I knew she had other responsibilities. Ultimately, I forced my way out on my own, saying that I was just going to wander about in the garden directly in front of my chambers. She was still pretty reluctant to let me go.

I started with nosing around the aforementioned garden, but gradually, day by day, I expanded the scope of my explorations. During my wanderings, I came across an herb garden.

Back in Japan, I had been really into herbs and aromatherapy as a way to burn stress from work, so I was instantly intrigued by the garden. Some of the herbs looked similar to those that could be grown back home, which gave me hope that perhaps the plants weren’t all that different in this world.

That was when I heard a voice. I turned to find a handsome young man with an amiable smile. He had piercing emerald eyes and forest-green hair to match. He introduced himself as one of the researchers at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora located next to the garden.

“Do you have some business at the institute today?” he asked me.

“Oh, not in particular. I was just taking a walk when this garden caught my eye. I thought it looked interesting, so I came over.”

Upon hearing that, he seemed to take interest in me in turn, and he proceeded to tell me about the herbs they were growing. Lavender, rosemary, angelica—the names were all the same as in Japan, and when I pressed further, I learned they had more or less the same effects as well.

“We use these herbs to make HP potions,” he explained.

“Did you just say HP potions?!” I was shocked to hear him say the name of a game-type item like it was a real thing.

“These herbs have their own individual effects when dried and made into salves, or when boiled and drunk, but they’re even more effective when used in potions.”

“Huh. Is that so?”

At his research institute, they studied medicinal herbs, but it seemed his main focus was making potions, as he proved to be a veritable expert. While I listened to his descriptions of different kinds of potions, I found an intriguing parallel: the same herbs used in salves a long time ago in my world were being used as the ingredients for HP potions in this one. What’s more, the effectiveness of potions was linked to the effects of the herbs used as ingredients.

As I listened to this researcher’s explanations, time passed without my noticing. Suddenly, it was almost evening, and I knew I had to return to the palace.

“Thank you very much,” I said. “I truly enjoyed learning with you today.”

“Thank you for being a great listener. I do hope you’ll stop by again sometime.”

Act 2:
Potions

 

HE WHO DOES NOT WORK, neither shall he eat.

Before I knew it, I was an official employee of the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora. At first it felt a bit presumptuous making my hobby into a job, but thinking back on it, I definitely made the right choice.

It seemed my recruitment had been a bit hush-hush, because on my first day, Johan, the head researcher, gathered everyone around to inform them that I had been hired.

At Johan’s urging, I greeted my new coworkers. “My name is Sei, and starting today, I’ll be working here with you all. I look forward to our collaboration.”

For some reason, everyone looked flabbergasted. Even though I was acquainted with most of the researchers already, the news seemed to hit them like a bolt from the blue. As a result, my greeting fell kind of flat. There was an audible pause before a wave of murmurs broke out through the room.

“I suppose, in the meantime, we’ll put…Jude in charge of you,” Johan said in a slightly raised voice that suppressed the whispers.

“Huh? Me?” Jude asked in surprise.

I was honestly relieved that the person I was most closely acquainted with would be the one in charge of my training. Back in Japan, there were plenty of times when I had to work with someone I didn’t know all that well, so if I had to, I was sure I’d be able to stick it out here, too—but it’s so much better to get to work with someone you already know, especially one you get along with well. I bet Johan took that into consideration when he assigned Jude to me.

“I’m looking forward to collaborating with you.” I gave my formal greeting to Jude again.

“Me too.” Jude might have been surprised, but his smile seemed genuine when he said that.

Act 3:
Cooking

 

FOUR MONTHS after my summoning, I heard that as a result of saving all those knights from the Third Order, the research institute was to receive a special reward from the palace. We were also presented with a gift of gratitude from the family of the knight commander of the Knights of the Third Order, since he happened to be the beloved third son of a noble in the borderlands. Additionally, the Third Order bought all those extra potions I made that we couldn’t sell on the market.

Thanks to all that, our institute had a plentiful budget.

“So, is there anything you’d like?” Johan asked me one day when I came into his office to bring him some tea.

I was taken aback, and it took me a moment to think it over. “Hmm… A bath and a kitchen.”

“A bath I can understand. But why a kitchen?”

“Uh, because I like to cook.” This was true, but there was a little more to it.

Basically, the cooking in this world was abysmal. It was like most of the meals relied on the flavors of the ingredients to do all the work, and there was hardly any seasoning. They used salt and vinegar in some meals, but that just didn’t do anything for me. I ate at the dining hall for people employed at the royal palace just like everyone else, but it was uniformly awful. Like, “I went on a diet without even meaning to” levels of bad.

I never thought of myself as a picky eater before, but after being summoned to the kingdom, I became keenly aware that I was a Japanese person who was particular about her food.

So while cooking had never been my forte—even though I loved food—I figured anything I made had to taste better than the slop they served here. But to do anything about this problem, I needed a kitchen first.

“You can cook?” Johan asked.

“Well enough.”

Johan tilted his head in what seemed like actual surprise. I didn’t think this was some kind of revelation.

Do I just not look like someone who can cook?

I gave him a questioning look and he gathered himself to explain. It turned out the nobles and wealthy merchants of this kingdom employed their own personal chefs, so noble women never cooked. Of course, the wives from commoner families did.

“Well, I’m a commoner,” I said.

“Ah, that’s right.” He smiled wryly, seemingly having forgotten this fact.

As the head researcher at the institute, Johan knew I had been summoned to the kingdom. He had learned it from that blue-haired official when my employment at the institute was arranged. Very occasionally, Johan liked to ask me about my life back in Japan, such as what my position had been and what kind of life I had lived. I always told him that I was a run-of-the-mill commoner who worked at a run-of-the-mill company.

“You don’t seem like a commoner, if you ask me.”

“I think I come off exactly like one, though.”

“That couldn’t be further from the truth. Few commoners in the kingdom have such a sophisticated education.”

According to Johan, commoners didn’t go to school. The Royal Academy Jude had attended was for the children of nobility. The only exceptions were children from commoner families who possessed skills in Magic; they were allowed to attend on a scholarship basis.

Johan didn’t know what to make of the compulsory education I described in Japan—a system where even commoners received a thorough schooling.

Once I had answered his questions on the topic, we went our separate ways. However, two days later, a craftsman came to the institute.

At the time Johan asked me what I wanted, I answered honestly, but I was kind of half joking. It never occurred to me he would actually have a room with a bath and a kitchen constructed. I was a bit naive, truth be told.

Construction proceeded at such frightening speed that I had to wonder if there had already been plans underway when he initially asked me. It seemed the bath and the kitchen were completed in no time at all. It might not even have been finished faster back home in Japan.

With that, the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora expanded.

The kitchen was substantial, and next to it was a dining hall large enough for all the researchers to eat in at once. We even employed a chef to go along with it. Everyone was pleased to have these new facilities for the research institute, since they meant we would no longer have to trudge all the way to the royal palace employee dining hall. My shut-in colleagues were especially happy.

 

“What are you going to make today?” Johan asked from behind me.

“Herb-roasted chicken and salad,” I said as I chopped lettuce into tiny shreds in a corner of our new kitchen.

We may have had a chef, but I liked to come in and cook in my free time. I mean, the reason I asked for a kitchen in the first place was because I couldn’t stand the kingdom’s cuisine, after all.

I was afraid the specially appointed chef would be put out when I asked to cook my own meals, but thankfully, she amiably offered me a corner of the kitchen to work in. Though, she watched me like a hawk whenever I came in. I suspected she was an ambitious sort of person.

The first time she asked for a bite of my cooking, she was left stunned for a moment, then wound up eating a whole portion in total silence. After, she asked me to teach her the recipe. Ever since, I had let her follow along every time I made something new.

It was a good thing I did, because soon the food at the research institute dining hall became so delicious that no one even considered going to the dining hall in the palace. With the quality of the cooking now so high, I didn’t often feel the need to make anything for myself either. The chef kept begging me for new recipes, though, so at this point I was cooking once a week just to treat her.

“Something the matter?” I asked Johan as I prepared the chicken.

Both he and the chef had been loitering around, studying my actions, since I started cooking.

Keep staring and you’re going to burn a hole through the chicken yourselves, I thought.

Come to think of it, Johan always came to watch me cook if he was at the institute when I started.

“I was just thinking how delicious that looked,” he said.

“Ah, thank you.”

“What flavors are you using this time?”

“For seasoning, just salt and pepper. I’m leaving the rest to the herbs.”

“I see.”

I glanced over and found him solely focused on the chicken. Just like I thought. “Do you want some?” I asked. “Oh… Though I think I saw you having lunch already.”

“Hm… That’s true, I did, but…”

I glanced again; he wore a slightly awkward look on his face. Despite that, he didn’t move to leave, so he must have really wanted a taste.

Was it the smell of the herbs? I sprinkled freshly picked basil and rosemary from the garden on the chicken to finish, so it did smell amazing. I even used the herbs in the salad.

I plated the roasted chicken with a salad and homemade dressing to the side. Originally, I had pulled out two plates—one for me and one for the chef—but I grabbed a small third to dish out another portion. The chef cheerfully carried the plates to the dining hall and set them on the table nearest to the kitchen. I followed after her with a basket of bread.

“There’s some for you too, if you’d like,” I pointed out the seat with the smaller dish to Johan, who had trailed behind me.

He happily took his seat. “Your cooking is delicious as always.” He smiled warmly, enhancing his already fine features.

I was just glad he liked it. He had already eaten lunch, so I didn’t give him that big of a portion, but it seemed like he would have happily taken more. He ate it all, even soaking up the leftover juices and herbs with a piece of bread.

“I’m still surprised that herbs can be used like this in cooking,” Johan said.

“Really? Where I come from, we use them all the time.”

While in my world, basil, rosemary, and other herbs were frequently employed as seasonings, here, herbs were mainly prescribed for medicinal use and rarely if ever showed up in food.

“They’re also supposed to help prevent food poisoning and aid digestion,” I added.

“Is that so?”

“Oh, yes. There’s even a traditional type of medicinal cooking meant to prevent sickness.” That cuisine was actually from China, but I talked about it like it came from my country so the chef wouldn’t figure out I was talking about another world entirely. Though for all I knew, the chef had already figured out I wasn’t born here. But just in case.

Johan was extremely interested in hearing more about the relationship between food and herbs, so he kept asking questions. Normally, he stayed cooped up in his office handling administrative stuff, but at times like these I realized he really was a researcher at heart.

He did occasionally ask me about things I didn’t know the answer to, but then I would hypothesize and he could describe his own observations as well. It was nice and all to talk this way, but since it mostly came down to herbs, I felt a bit bad because the chef wound up being left out.

 

***

 

“Sei.” Jude approached me one day while I was making sandwiches for my latest new recipe demonstration for the chef.

“What’s up?”

“Johan sent a message—he needs you to deliver this document to him at the barracks of the Knights of the Third Order.”

“I’m kind of busy right now. Can you do it?”

“No, for some reason he asked for you specifically.”

“Huh, I wonder why. Does he need me right now, or can it wait? I’m almost done.”

“I think you have time to finish.”

“Okay, I’ll go after. The barracks of the Third Order, right?”

“Right. He wants you to bring it to the knight commander’s office.”

“Will do!”

When I arrived at the knight commander’s office, the guard posted outside the door let me in right away. Johan must have told him to expect me. Inside, the room was furnished with a full lounge suite and an elegant desk. I found Johan and another man, who I assumed was the knight commander, seated in ornate chairs.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” I said.

“It’s quite all right. Thank you for bringing this,” Johan smiled as I handed over the document.

“Well, I’ll get back to the institute, then.” I was hoping that was all he needed, so I turned to go.

However, Johan stopped me. “Wait.”

I looked at him quizzically. He urged me to sit next to him. But why? I glanced at the knight commander, and he encouraged me to do the same.

Having no other recourse, I sat next to Johan as he began to speak.

“This is the girl I was talking about,” Johan said.

“I see, so you’re the one,” said the man. “My name is Albert Hawke. I’m the knight commander of the Knights of the Third Order.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Sei.” I didn’t give him my family name, since only nobles had those in this world. I learned that the first time I introduced myself to Johan. “Takanashi” was an unfamiliar surname to the residents of this kingdom and would undoubtedly cause headaches if people started asking questions about where it came from, so I generally opted not to tell people.

The knight commander sat diagonally from me as I took him in. He had slightly wavy blond hair, and his blue-gray eyes had a cold, steely cast.

He seemed to be about the same age as Johan, though he was more well built, as you’d expect of a knight. Though…Johan was pretty tall, too, and he also seemed sturdy. But it was something like, the thickness of their muscles was different?

The point is, this knight commander was probably the most beautiful man I’d met since my arrival.

Behind the Scenes I

 

NOW LET’S REWIND the story a bit—and perhaps take a different point of view.

Eight grim-faced people sat at the council table in the palace of the Kingdom of Salutania. Together, they shouldered a heavy burden.

“Let’s hear your reports,” Prime Minister Dominic Goltz said, looking grave.

The eight members of the council included ministers, such as the minister of Military Services and the minister of Home Affairs, as well as the commanders of each knightly order and the grand magus of the Royal Magi Assembly. Seated at the farthest end of the table was the king.

Josef Hawke, the minister of Military Services, spoke next. In a low, strained voice, he said, “The situation is yet…disappointing. We send our knights in rotation to slay the monsters, and thus far they have managed to endure, but at this rate, in the near future the monsters will escape the bounds of the forests.”

The miasma was condensing by the day, and the monsters born from it grew ever stronger. Although the miasma always manifested relatively close to civilization, no one had any solid theory as to why exactly it did so, or what even caused it to take form. It accumulated most quickly and easily in places where humans didn’t immediately live, such as forests and caverns, but because these sites were always near villages and towns, monsters born from the miasma would inevitably invade homesteads, leaving human casualties in their wake.

Usually, routine dispatches of knights were sufficient to prevent the monsters from swarming these vulnerable settlements. However, every few generations, the miasma condensed at a rate that exceeded the one at which monsters could be slain.

Just as was happening now.

So far, the council had dealt with the rise in monster attacks by sending the knights out more frequently, but as the years wore on with no sign of relief, the number of expeditions needed to beat back the miasma only increased. The minister of Military Services and the knight commanders of the knights were in agreement: they would only be able to hold out for another year or two. Once the knights succumbed, the remaining monsters would flood out of the miasma and lay waste to every human settlement in their path.

Alphonse Hummel, the minister of Home Affairs, spoke next. “We have received reports from nobles across the kingdom. They face many of the same difficulties and cannot sustain the fight.”

While the royal knights protected the forests surrounding the capital, the kingdom’s nobles were expected to slay monsters that emerged in their own domains. However, it was hired mercenaries, not farmers, who faced these beasts. The mercenaries worked together in guilds, and the lord of a region paid them in return for exterminating monsters and keeping the peace.

But with the number of monsters now on the rise, the lords’ coffers were unable to keep up with the mercenaries’ demands. Those fighters’ lives were on the line, and they wouldn’t deploy without respectable compensation, even if it was in defense of the land where they lived.

Normally, if mercenaries refused to deploy, or if there simply weren’t enough of them to face the threat at hand, the palace sent knights to bolster a noble’s forces. Unfortunately, the knights were already at their limit dealing with monstrous incursions around the capital. The court was in no condition to sacrifice troops to any other regions in the kingdom.

The prime minister’s frown lines grew deeper at hearing the two reports. He turned to Michael Hoover, the commander of Special Services. “Any updates on the search for the Saint?”

Michael’s tone was somber. “Unfortunately, we still haven’t found her.”

In times when the miasma grew too dense, the maiden called the Saint was meant to appear somewhere in the kingdom. Her miasma-cleansing magic was unbelievably powerful and could instantaneously eliminate monsters. The appearance of the Saint would quell the miasma and shepherd in a new era.

In every instance of recorded history, the Saint was found somewhere in the kingdom, and thus Special Services was searching for her. They assumed at first that it wouldn’t take long to find her, but three years had come and gone with no sign of the Saint. They continued to scour every corner of the kingdom, knowing that an age of ruin nipped at their heels. Every time their hunt turned up nothing, they thought, perhaps, that the Saint simply hadn’t been born yet, and returned to places they had already searched in hopes that she would make herself known.

And yet the Saint still hadn’t been found.

A heavy silence fell over the room.

The grand magus of the Royal Magi Assembly, Yuri Drewes, broke the silence with a whisper. “Is it time we turned to legend?”

Everyone at the table looked at him.

Yuri gazed at them each in turn before producing a document for them all to see. “There is a rite known as the ‘Saint Summoning Ritual.’”

“Everyone’s heard of that. Isn’t it just a fairy tale?”

“No. It was truly performed. I have the steps of the ritual written right here.”

“How did you find it?”

“It was written in a grimoire I found in the Forbidden Depository.”

“Can we trust the contents of this book…?”

“I cannot say. The instructions for the ritual are recorded, but the steps seem quite complicated. We will require a number of mages to perform the spell as well. Our odds of success are, by my guess, fifty-fifty.”

“Such low odds…”

“But it seems to me our chances are better with this than they are if we do nothing and wait for the monsters to invade.”

The Saint Summoning Ritual was ancient, created during a time when the Saint had failed to appear, no matter the density of the miasma. The sages of that legendary era pooled their knowledge to devise it and were, in the end, able to summon the Saint from a faraway land.

However, this ritual that seemed increasingly vital had only been performed once, in the era of the sages who had composed it. Therefore, it was impossible to tell if the ritual would actually work or if the sages of the present era could even perform it correctly. Furthermore, the ritual required a number of mages and arcane tools, and it would incur a tremendous cost. In a more peaceful time, the kingdom would never have considered it, but all the expense was a trifle in a world nearing the end of its mortal coil.

The king had been silent up until this point. Now, he commanded: “Perform the ritual. The Royal Magi Assembly will begin preparations immediately. All others, continue with your appointed duties.”

And so, the Kingdom of Salutania decided to perform the Saint Summoning Ritual for the first time since the era of legend.

 

Against all odds, the ritual was a success; they summoned a maiden from another world. However, there was a minor problem: they summoned two maidens.

As far as anyone knew, there had only ever been one Saint at a time, whether she appeared by natural means or by summoning. Was only one of the maidens the Saint? Were both of them Saints? Or was neither of them the Saint they had been looking for? The only one who might have determined that was the grand magus himself—unfortunately, he fainted as soon as the ritual was completed. Even now, he remained in a deep sleep.

That wasn’t the only problem. It was only the day after the ritual that the leaders of the kingdom learned two potential Saints had been summoned. The day of, the crown prince, who supervised the ritual of his own volition, informed the king that it was an unequivocal success. That was the sum of his report—he said nothing of how many people were summoned.

Following the crown prince’s initial report, the leaders of the kingdom briefly hoped that the world would finally find some peace. However, on the following day, they found themselves bewildered when they learned that, for some reason, the crown prince had only spoken to one of the Saints and had seen fit to leave the other one behind. On top of that, the other Saint had immediately tried to vacate the palace in her anger at being treated in such a manner. Thankfully, a knight managed to change her mind about leaving, but it was frightfully easy to imagine that she now had a dreadful impression of the kingdom.

Upon hearing this, the king said wearily, “What the hell was he thinking?”

 

***

 

One night, a month after the Saint Summoning Ritual, the sun had set and all was concealed in darkness. Two men relaxed over a bottle of wine at Count Valdec’s villa in the capital. One of them was the second son of the Valdec family and the owner of the estate, Johan Valdec, who was also the head researcher of the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora. The other was Johan’s best friend since childhood, the third son of the Hawke family and knight commander of the palace’s Knights of the Third Order, Albert Hawke.

The two often joined each other at the Valdec estate to drink, though they hadn’t had much time for it recently, as Albert was so often on the hunt for monsters. The last time they were able to enjoy a night together had been well over a month ago.

“I heard you recently brought on someone new at your institute,” Albert said while they were updating each other on the past month’s exploits.

“Hm? Oh, yes, we did.” Johan grinned.

Albert had tried to bring up the topic casually, but Johan suspected this was the true reason Albert had gone out of his way to make time to meet up at the Valdec estate.

“What is she like?” Albert asked.

“Extremely normal.”

“Normal?”

“She’s no different from the other researchers.”

Though Johan answered in a roundabout way, Albert was too curious to let the topic drop. Johan always dodged Albert’s questions like this, even when he knew the answers. It was his way of teasing his overly earnest friend. Albert knew what Johan was up to, so he was amused rather than annoyed, though he gave Johan an exasperated look to prompt him to continue.

Satisfied by the expression, Johan finally gave his friend the answer he sought. “For now, she hasn’t voiced any complaints about the palace, and she takes her work quite seriously.”

“I see… I heard she was infuriated by her summoning and that she gave a mage a look so menacing he nearly wet himself.”

“I heard something similar. Those fellows always try to put on airs, but now they’re bowing and scraping to get back into her good graces.”

“You think so?”

“Of course.”

The day the Saint Summoning Ritual was performed, Albert was on another monster-slaying expedition, so he only knew bits and pieces of the story from hearsay. Among those bits, he heard one of the Saints was now employed at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora where Johan was the head researcher. He figured asking Johan directly about her would yield answers more quickly, so he searched out his old friend.

Johan readily told Albert the story of how Sei the potential Saint came to the institute. How first, about two weeks ago, a woman with black hair and black eyes began visiting every day. The first person she spoke to was Jude, but the other researchers—who were all male—soon took interest in this woman who was equally invested in herbs.

Early on, Johan felt apprehensive at the sight of Sei, what with her unusually colored hair and eyes. A few days before, he had run into his older brother in the palace corridors and learned that not one but two Saints were summoned. One was a girl with brown hair and black eyes, and the other was a woman who had black hair and black eyes. Given that, Johan immediately contacted his brother after his first meeting with Sei.

On hearing that a black-haired, black-eyed woman was frequenting the institute, Johan’s brother promptly called him to the palace. Johan was directed to a room where he found himself facing not only his brother, but an official with a high-ranking title.

As they sat across from one another on gilded sofas, Johan’s brother confirmed that the woman visiting the institute was one of the women who had been summoned. Then he politely pleaded with Johan to take her in at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora.

Why is this being asked of me? Johan wondered. Although this woman was still only one of the potential Saints, the true Saint was equal in rank to the king. In truth, she might be even more invaluable than the king, considering the fate of the world rested on her shoulders. Why, oh why would they want to leave someone so critically important in a tiny research institute sitting in the far corner of the palace grounds?

When Johan asked as much, the official took out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow and gave an answer through gritted teeth: as a result of the crown prince’s behavior, Sei had an absolutely awful impression of their country. In fact, after the crown prince left her behind, she tried to leave, too—not just the room but the kingdom itself. Though they had managed to somehow stop her from exiting the palace, and the official persuaded her to remain in the kingdom, the state of affairs was still messy, to say the least.

There was no precedent for two Saints appearing simultaneously, let alone two being summoned by a ritual. At present, those in the palace were of the opinion that only one of them was likely to be the Saint. However, because they were traveling through uncharted waters, it could yet be that both maidens were Saints, and therefore it would be dangerous to let either of them go. For now, they were determined to keep both women.

Luckily, Sei was proving interested in the palace’s herb garden and had taken to going there every day. The official hoped that by establishing a deeper friendship with the other researchers, she might develop better feelings toward the kingdom.

“In other words, you’re ordering me to clean up Prince Kyle’s mess,” Johan said.

“Our original plan was to give her a tutor that would teach her about the kingdom. That’s more or less what has become of the other potential Saint, who Prince Kyle has sent to the Royal Academy,” the official replied.

“So, since you’ve already lost her goodwill, you’re planning to let her do whatever she wants in order to curry her favor.”

“That’s correct. Though we’re in no state to take things slow… Still, knowing you, you’ve already sent a list of demands to Home Affairs.”

“Ah, you do know me.” Johan grinned and raised his glass to the official.

It seemed that the official’s assumption was that, as a noble, Johan understood the palace’s position and wouldn’t have any problems taking Sei into his care. However, Johan didn’t care for the official’s attitude or the carelessness that had led to him trying to heap new burdens on Johan and his researchers. So he put on a troubled expression, pretended to think, and then began to list a book’s worth of reasons for why he would have to decline.

Wouldn’t it be hard for Sei to travel all that way from the palace to the research institute every day? There were some people who lived at the institute for that same reason, and what would they do if she said she wanted to do the same? Even if she did concede to living in such conditions, wouldn’t it be problematic to force her to reside in the filth of a working institute? They could remodel one of the floors, perhaps, but the institute simply didn’t have room in its meager budget to afford something like that.

Johan came up with problem after problem and at length got the official to give him every concession he desired.

As Johan’s brother watched him casually force the official to agree to remodeling the entire research institute “for the Saint’s sake,” his expression stiffened. Johan ignored him.

Once negotiations were complete, rebuilding Sei’s future living quarters became top priority, and they were completed at the unheard of speed of a single week. Fortunately, the rooms were completed before she moved in.

“But it’s odd. If they were so desperate to improve her mood, why did all those officials abandon her to her chambers?” Johan mused.

“What do you mean they abandoned her?” Albert asked.

“She complained about it to the other researchers. Though she was given her own chambers in the palace, they left her completely alone, so she was bored.”

“What do you mean? That’s not what I heard at all.”

Johan raised an eyebrow at Albert’s protest.

According to Albert, the rumors were that after the potential Saints were summoned, one maiden felt unwell and took to bed. Though Sei had indeed been exhausted after the summoning, the real reason was the time difference between Japan and the Kingdom of Salutania. At the time of the summoning, it had been morning in Salutania but the middle of the night in Japan. Consequently, after being taken to her chambers, Sei immediately collapsed on the sofa and fell deep asleep.

On finding Sei passed out on the sofa in what seemed like a coma, the lady-in-waiting quickly ushered in an official. Given the difference between Sei’s unconscious state and her fury of just a few hours before, they only became more convinced that Sei’s condition was taking a turn for the worse. Her sickly pale skin from the endless days of exhausting work and the dark circles under her eyes from years of sleep deprivation just made her look more frail.

The official summoned the court physician and had him examine Sei, but thankfully the doctor’s diagnosis was that she was just exhausted. There were no signs she was afflicted with some kind of disease. Therefore, the official arranged for Sei to get some proper rest, which included a moratorium on visitors.

This series of events had contributed to the king’s late discovery of the two potential Saints. Although, Albert still suspected some infighting and panic might have been involved in the officials’ reluctance to give the king a complete report.

“I see. Now that you mention it, her complexion was pretty dreadful when she first started coming to the institute.”

“How is she now?”

“Now? Hmm… Far better, I would say.”

Thinking on it, Johan realized Sei’s early appearance could easily have been interpreted as that of someone prone to poor physical health. Some time had passed since, and her skin was still pale—likely a result of being cooped up in the institute all day—but the circles under her eyes were lighter, and she looked far sturdier.

“I see… Is she eating well?”

“What kind of question is that? What are you, her father?”

“Sh-shut up. I just heard that the woman Prince Kyle is looking after hasn’t been eating very much lately and it’s become a problem.”

“Is that so?”

“The head chef has tried everything they can think of, but she barely touches her food. His Highness is growing worried that she might faint from malnourishment.”

“Now that you mention it, Sei doesn’t eat much either.”

“Maybe a spare diet is normal where they come from?”

“Good question. Maybe I’ll ask her.”

As Sei and Aira had been summoned from Japan, both women found the flavor of the Salutanian cuisine rather lacking. The paltry seasonings meant most flavors came directly from a dish’s ingredients, which neither of them particularly cared for. It was for that reason that neither of them had much interest in food, but the crown prince was issuing orders left and right out of his concern for Aira, the other potential Saint. They had yet to yield any results.

“Prince Kyle sure is enthusiastic about this,” Johan mused.

“Well, you know how it is…” Albert trailed off, but Johan knew what he meant.

There were presently three princes in the Kingdom of Salutania. For generations, the eldest prince had always become king, so the firstborn prince was treated as the crown prince. However, the present second-born prince was an exceptionally talented young man who had attracted the support of a number of factions—ones who would rather see him crowned king.

In truth, the second prince hoped for nothing of the sort and the king denied any intent to buck tradition, so it had yet to become much of a problem. However, the crown prince had long been aware that he was in many ways his brother’s inferior, and he couldn’t help worrying about the existence of interests plotting against him.

Johan was aware that Prince Kyle had requested to be the one to supervise the Saint Summoning Ritual because he hoped to garner the favor of other nobles. Unfortunately for him, by angering Sei, he managed to do the complete opposite, and now he was feeling even more pressure than usual.

“Is His Highness still handling affairs related to both Saints?”

“Yes. His Majesty is concerned by his son’s blunder, but he’s decided to watch how His Highness handles things, especially since having someone else take over now might lead to future conflict. It was lucky for them both that you’ve managed to ease the mind of the other potential Saint. He must be hoping that His Highness can still recover.”

“Especially since a struggle for succession could plunge the kingdom into chaos.” Johan sighed; he predicted such chaos was inevitable if any royal infighting broke out on top of the problems they already suffered from the miasma.

Prince Kyle was tragically apt to give off an unseemly impression and could be a bit impulsive and straightforward, but many thought well of him for his compassion. Plus, he had the support of the second prince and his close aides, so there were no real problems facing his ascension. The king no doubt thought that losing a few points in popularity among the nobles was nothing to losing one of the potential Saints, so if Prince Kyle could win Sei’s favor, there was hope yet.

“It’s still strange that there were two of them… I mean, was the ritual actually successful? We’ve never had more than one Saint at a time before,” Johan wondered aloud.

“It was undeniably a success,” said Albert.

“Where’s your proof?”

“The number of monsters has begun to decrease.”

Ever since the ritual, the knights had seen the effect on their regular monster-slaying expeditions. The monsters already in existence hadn’t vanished, but the rate at which new ones spawned had slowed, and therefore there were fewer overall. As a result, the knights believed the ritual was a success and that the Saint must surely be in the palace. They reported as much to their leaders.

They still had no idea which of the women was the Saint—or whether both of them were—since the grand magus of the Royal Magi Assembly, the only person who could ascertain the Saint’s identity, was still unconscious, but the feeling of oncoming tragedy that had saturated the palace was at last dispelled.

“I see. It would be good to see things start easing up on your end, too,” said Johan.

“Yes…” said Albert. “My knights are exhausted, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“Is your next hunt going to be in the western forest?”

“No, first we have a round in the east. Once we’re finished with the west, I plan to take a long break—longer than usual, in any case. The western forest may be more dangerous than the eastern and southern ones, but the way things are going, I don’t expect we should have any problems.”

“Well, I doubt anything will ever happen to you, but be careful.”

“I will.”

They had no way of knowing that, in a video game, they had basically triggered a certain ominous flag with that conversation.

Act 4:
Skincare Products

 

IN THE FIFTH MONTH after my summoning, Jude found me in the middle of distilling an essential oil from lavender I had harvested in the garden.

“What are you up to over there?” he asked. “Is that for a potion?”

“No, no. It’s for a facial moisturizer.” That day, I was after the floral water that was a by-product of making essential oils.

Since my arrival in this world, I had been forced to engineer my own skincare products. I had a prior interest in homemade cosmetics, but now I was driven by necessity. It wasn’t that this world lacked any concept of skincare, just that such lotions were exclusively luxury items targeted at the nobility. Lucky for me, I worked at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora. I had all the tools and facilities I needed to concoct my own skincare routine, not to mention access to any ingredient I could imagine.

“Huh, so you can put herbs in those, too?”

“And flowers! Like roses and so forth.”

I should note, while this world had the concept of skincare, the products were…let’s say, unlike potions, most of the recipes were questionable, as in they contained ingredients that I had zero intention of putting on my face in any form whatsoever.

I actually tried using potions at first, but I quickly realized that I was on the wrong track. Potions were only meant to cure wounds; they didn’t have any moisturizing or brightening effects like I needed my lotions to do.

“Weren’t you making some earlier, too?” Jude asked. “Did you use lavender then as well?”

“I did, but it wasn’t for a moisturizer.”

“Aha. Was it something with a different effect?”

“I suppose you could put it like that, though generally the outcome is pretty similar.”

“Is that so. Well, whatever you make, I’m sure it’ll be incredibly effective.”

I smiled wryly at Jude’s comment.

The skincare products I made were indeed potent. Once, on a whim, I imbued one of my lotions with magic while stirring, and it came out exceptionally well. The difference in effectiveness between the cosmetics I made with and without magic was like night and day. It seemed my Pharmaceuticals skill and that fifty-percent-bonus curse were to blame.

When I realized that my Pharmaceuticals skill could impact cosmetics, I asked one of the other researchers to try making the same kind of lotion. Just as I expected, his lotion came out quite a bit differently. I had made an inadvertent discovery; the researchers hadn’t seen the link between cosmetics and Pharmaceuticals skill before, and they were pretty surprised.

They probably never noticed because, for one, only a limited number of wealthy people actually used skincare products in this world, and two, the researchers were all men who didn’t really have any interest in cosmetics in the first place.

When I reported this to Johan, along with the persistent interference of my fifty-percent-bonus curse, he laughed about how this was like me with cooking all over again. Though, his laugh sounded somewhat weary to me.

“Did you start making your skincare products after you came to the research institute?” Jude asked.

“Yup.”

“I knew it.”

He did? I looked at him with a puzzled expression.

Jude smiled sheepishly. “Since you arrived, you’ve only gotten prettier.”

“Huh?” Where’d that come from?! I gaped openly, every thought ejected from my brain. I knew I understood him though, because I could feel my cheeks begin to glow. No man had ever said that to me before. I was unexpectedly shy. “Wh-why would you say something like that?”

“Hmm? It’s the truth though.” Jude laughed in a totally matter-of-fact way, even though he had to see my cheeks were burning.

I supposed that between the absence of late-night overtime in this world and my ability to live a well-regulated life, my appearance was changing. The dark circles that had been a universal constant under my eyes for so many years were now vanished, and my hair and skin were supple and shiny. What’s more, my eye cream had somehow improved my eyesight, and I didn’t even need glasses anymore.

Back in Japan, my late-night every-night schedule meant beauty routines and dressing up were way outside my energy quota, so men never really paid any attention to me. But thanks to the changes in my appearance brought by my new life, I had kinda started looking forward to seeing myself in the mirror.

Still, an unpopular woman is unpopular for a reason. I might have changed on the outside, but inside, I was the same mousy old Sei. On that count, I was completely flustered by this sort of situation.

I wound up saying something sharp like, “Oh, stop making fun of me.”

But for some reason that just made Jude smile even more, though he did seem a little abashed.

 

***

 

All that said, my morning routine didn’t differ hugely from how it was back in Japan. I woke up, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and applied my skincare products. The effect was startling, granted. My homemade products were clearly doing their job; I looked much healthier in general. I smiled gleefully as I examined myself in the small compact mirror I had brought with me in my purse when I was summoned.

However, I still didn’t have time for makeup—in part because I didn’t have any. I knew how to put together basic skincare products, but I didn’t know the first thing about producing makeup, so it was out of reach. I didn’t mind so much. I never really liked wearing it anyway.

Once I was satisfied with my appearance, I got dressed.

Today was my day off, so I got my wild start by lounging around and doing absolutely nothing at all! But that could only last so long.

“Stats,” I chanted to check my current condition.

 

Sei Takanashi – Level 55/Saint

HP: 4,867/4,867

MP: 6,067/6,067

Battle Skills

Holy Magic: Level ∞

Production Skills

Pharmaceuticals: Level 30
Cooking: Level 8

 

Hmm. Both my Pharmaceuticals and Cooking skills had increased. A little more food prep and my Cooking level was bound to continue growing, but lately it had become harder to bump up my Pharmaceuticals skill, even when I made high-grade HP potions.

Could there be a potion more valuable than the high-grade ones I already knew how to make? The herb and medicine books in the research institute didn’t describe any such thing, but maybe in the palace’s library I could find a book with stronger recipes?

You’re going to start a new project on your day off? You workaholic! I thought to myself, but alas, there was nothing else I really wanted to do.

I supposed I could have gone shopping in the capital, but I’d never been off the palace grounds before and honestly felt a bit nervous about it. It would probably be different if there were someone to go with me, but…

Whatever! I’ll spend the day in the library and read books.

Jude spotted me as I descended the stairs from my room on the third floor to the first floor. “Oh? Are you going out, Sei?”

He was carrying a box in both arms, and it was overflowing with herbs. Unlike me, he was on duty today and was bringing supplies from the storehouse into the institute.

“Yup, I’m headed for the palace library,” I told him.

“I see. Today’s your off day, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.”

“See you later then.”

“Bye!”

I stepped out of the institute and set off toward the palace. It took a familiar thirty long minutes to get there, though I supposed it was good exercise. I didn’t get enough of that nowadays, seeing as I spent all my time cooped up in the institute fiddling with potions, so I probably needed to get out and move around more often.

Though admittedly, it was a pain…

At length, I made it to the palace. I had been to the library several times for work, so I knew my way around. Along the way, I took in the vases and paintings that decorated the halls. As you would expect from a palace, each and every one was exquisite. Delicate patterns graced the ceramic vases, and the elegant paintings depicted lush scenery. I enjoyed just getting to see them; I guess it was the same feeling I got from a museum art exhibit featuring pieces that originally came from castles.

Before I knew it, I reached my destination. When I opened the library door, I was met by the sight of dust motes wafting through the sunlight trickling in from a high window. The opening door must have stirred them up.

There weren’t many windows in here in order to protect the books, so the lighting was faint. In that dim, I began hunting through the books on the shelves. I picked out a number, settled in a nearby chair, and began to read.

Interestingly enough, the contents of the books weren’t written in Japanese, but I could understand them. Maybe insta-translation was an effect of the summoning. I think I read them in Japanese in my head, though. It gave me a funny brain feeling.

I don’t know how long I was there all by myself, but just as I was making my umpteenth trip back to my chair from the bookshelf, I heard the door open with a creak. This wasn’t odd in itself, since anyone who worked in the palace had free access to the library. I glanced at the door, assuming it would be one of the usual officials, but to my surprise I found a lovely girl in an extravagant dress. Her neatly curled blonde hair hung in a partial updo and her blue eyes were keen.

She’s gotta be some noble’s daughter. A high-ranking one at that.

People like her were everywhere in the palace, but it was the first time I had ever seen a highborn lady in the library. I must have been staring because she noticed me as well. She positively beamed; I bowed my head reflexively.

I was pretty sure it would be rude to gawk at her any more than I already had, so I took that as the signal to return to my reading. But a few moments later, a book was placed in front of the chair opposite mine.

When I looked up, I found the young noblewoman had started to read. There were plenty of other seats available. I wondered why she chose the seat so close to mine, but I decided not to fixate on it and once more buried myself in words.

Just as I finished going through the last of the books I had picked out, I heard the afternoon bell chime three times. I realized I had been in the library for quite a bit longer than I meant to be and decided it was high time to get back to the research institute.

Right when I stood, the lady spoke to me. “I beg your pardon.”

“Ah—yes?”

“May I see that book?”

I guessed I had grabbed a book she was interested in, and she hoped to read it before I put it away. I was finished with it, so I gladly handed it over. Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw how many other books I still had in my hands.

“What an arcane collection you have there. Are you from the research institute?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“I suspected as much. I noticed everything you were reading was written in Classical Salutanian! I always have such trouble getting through it.”

Huh. My magical insta-translation meant I didn’t even notice when I was reading something written in thick classical language. I chuckled awkwardly in an attempt to cover up the fact that I hadn’t felt the books were hard to read at all.

“Does my lady possess an interest in herbs as well?” I asked her, trying but probably failing to imitate the noble way people like her spoke.

“Yes, that is correct.” She smiled awkwardly, too.

Was it my question? Or my terrible attempt at imitating her speech? I wasn’t sure which faux pas had made her uncomfortable, so I figured I should just see myself out as quickly as possible—before I caused her any further distress.

“If it would please my lady, come visit the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora someday,” I managed. “Every herb in these books can be found in our garden. Oh, and, um, my name is Sei, and I work there.”

“My thanks, Sei. I apologize for not introducing myself sooner. My name is Elizabeth Ashley.”

“If you would excuse me, I should be getting back to the institute.”

“Good day.”

I shoved the books back onto the shelves and scurried away.

The second I stepped outside, I was assaulted by a wave of heat. Summer was definitely here. I hadn’t noticed in the library, as it was typically cooler in there than in the palace corridors. They must have engineered some way to control the temperature for the books.

I fanned myself as I made my way back down the road to the institute. On the way, I heard hoofbeats approaching from behind. When I looked over my shoulder, I was met with a whole herd of horses. The people astride them looked like knights, and I had a feeling I knew the person leading from the front.

“Sei!” the leader called to me. It was Knight Commander Albert of the Knights of the Third Order.

“Oh! Hello.” I waved tentatively.

As the knights drew closer, I realized I recognized some of them. They must have been the rest of his squadron.

“Are you on your way back to the institute?” Albert asked.

“That’s right.”

“Climb on and I’ll give you a ride there if you like.”

An odd, wavering feeling stirred in my stomach. There was a long way to go before I reached the institute, and I was grateful for Albert’s concern, but, well… “Thank you for the offer, but I’ve never ridden a horse before.”

Albert held out his hand. “Grab hold.”

I hesitantly took his hand and, easy as anything, he pulled me right up onto the horse’s back so I was seated in front of him. I knew I didn’t weigh much, but what strength he must have to just heave a woman up like that—and with only one hand! Were all knights so able?

“Let’s go.” Albert took the reins while I was still reeling and spurred the horse forward.

I clutched the saddle horn. It was a bit unnerving being high up on a horse like this. A low chuckle came from behind me as Albert wrapped an arm around my waist.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” he said.

“Th-thank you.”

Did we have to be so close? It was the first time I’d ever felt someone else’s body pressed fully against my back. For a woman like me who had never had any admirers before, let alone a boyfriend, this degree of intimacy was a bit, um, difficult?

It almost feels like he’s hugging me from behind. When that thought crossed my mind, my ears began to burn.

“Why were you at the palace today?” Albert asked.

“Oh, it was my off day, so I decided to go read in the library.”

“Is that so. What kind of books did you find?”

“You know, ones about herbs. There was something I wanted to look into.”

Every time he spoke, his voice vibrated through my back. Although my heart was pounding like crazy, I was gradually able to find my center while we talked.

“You went to study on your day off? That sounds more like work to me.” He sounded genuinely surprised.

“Hmm, well, I think of it more as a hobby,” I declared.

“Do you have any other hobbies?”

“Good question…” I was at a loss for an answer. I mean, I spent so much of my time working—here, but especially in Japan—that I didn’t really have much time to find any more hobbies.

As we continued chatting, we approached the fork in the road. One branch led to the research institute, the other to the barracks. Knight Commander Albert told his knights he intended to take me all the way back to the institute and broke off from the rest of the group. I assured him I didn’t mind being let down so he could stick with his knights, but he insisted that it wasn’t that far out of his way, and he wanted to be sure I made it the rest of the way home.

And so, he did.

 

***

 

“Sei, I find this sentence somewhat difficult. Might I request that you tell me what it says?”

“Hmm, let me see…”

I had run into Lady Elizabeth—Liz for short—in the library again, and we were talking books. However, it seemed like I was always on an errand whenever we ran into each other, so we never got to chat for very long.

Every time we met, Liz would ask me about the contents of books written either in Classical Salutanian or in a foreign language that she didn’t understand. It seemed like she was conducting some kind of study, and she always wanted to discuss parts that were especially difficult to decipher.

At first, she asked me about the grammatical structures, too, but unfortunately, I couldn’t explain anything about those. I was limited to digging into the content of any given book.

“I see. So that is what it means. My thanks,” Liz said.

“No prob. Glad I could help.”

“I apologize for always being such a bother while you’re working.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s a nice break.”

Compared to before, I had adopted a much more casual way of speaking to her. Also, after the third or fourth time we ran into each other, she told me to call her “Liz” instead of “Lady Elizabeth” and urged me to address her like I would any of my other friends. How could I deny such a pretty lady’s request?

“You have such lovely skin,” Liz remarked suddenly.

Our heads were pretty close at the moment, due to poring over the same book while we were talking, so I guess she was close enough to notice. I was still taken by surprise by this compliment from such a striking girl. Liz’s skin was perfect, like a porcelain doll’s—even nose to nose, I couldn’t see her pores.

Also, well, I really wasn’t used to compliments and wasn’t sure how to respond. The best I could come up with was, “You think so?”

She smiled—gorgeous!—and insisted. “It is so very easy to tan in odd places in this season, no matter how much care one takes. Did you not tell me before that you work in the herb gardens at your institute? Yet you haven’t taken on any color at all. The tone of your skin is flawlessly even.”

“Really? You don’t look at all tanned to me either.”

“Oh, of course, I ensure I take proper precautions against the sun every day. However, I cannot help but wonder what kind of lotions and ointments you use.”

Given everything we had talked about, I wasn’t surprised that Liz was interested in skincare, though she was more passionate about it than I would have guessed. Maybe it was because she was a noble; most adults in Japan didn’t share her depth of knowledge on the topic, let alone regular junior high school students. When I was her age, the most I did was slather on sunscreen.

Was she what you would call a girly girl?

“I make my skincare products myself,” I admitted.

“Truly?” Liz’s eyes sparkled.

The very idea of making your own cosmetics had to sound ludicrous to a noble like her. However, Liz was a student of herbology, and she unleashed a flood of questions, such as what ingredients I used and what effects they had. I rapidly got the feeling she was more interested in this than the books she was always asking me about.

At length, Liz trailed off. Then out of nowhere, she took me by surprise yet again. “But I’m sure that skincare isn’t the only reason you’re so pretty.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You fell in love recently, didn’t you?”

What?! My jaw fell open, and I couldn’t remember how to close it.

Liz giggled, hiding her lips behind her folding fan.

Why in the world would she think something like that? Fell in love? Me? No way, never in a thousand years! When would I even have the time?

Liz’s eyes sparkled over her fan. “The other day, I happened to overhear a rumor that Knight Commander Hawke has taken to spending much of his time with a certain lady.”

I frowned at her, even more bewildered. “Who’s Knight Commander Hawke?”

Liz snapped her fan shut and peered. “You do not know Lord Hawke?”

The only commander I could think of was Knight Commander Albert. Was his last name Hawke? I really couldn’t remember. Not to mention, Johan was always just calling him “Al.”

Tentatively, I offered, “By Knight Commander Hawke, do you mean the knight commander of the Knights of the Third Order?”

“So you do know him.”

“Yes, he’s friends with the head researcher at the institute.”

Okay, we were talking about the same guy. But I wasn’t about to assume I was the only woman Albert spent time with.

“Well,” said Liz. “Someone said they saw a woman riding on horseback with him the other day.”

Erk. Okay, the rumor was definitely about me. Ever since Albert and I ran into each other on my way home from the library that first day, he had taken to ferrying me back to the institute every time I went to the palace. On horseback no less, just as the eyewitness had seen.

I still felt unbearably self-conscious riding like that with him, so I often tried to say no, but then Albert would get such a sad look on his face that I wound up saying yes anyway. On top of that, the first few times he took me straight to the institute, but recently he’d started taking detours to show me around the palace grounds. That was probably when someone saw us.

“Ah…that probably is me,” I admitted.

“I knew it.” For some reason Liz looked relieved, which left me confused and a little concerned.

“Why did you say it like that?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“You just seem kind of, I don’t know, like you have one less thing to worry about. Would there have been a problem if it were someone else?”

Liz’s lovely countenance twisted into one that seemed to say “Oh, I wish she hadn’t asked that!”

I hurried to tell her that she didn’t have to divulge anything to me if she didn’t want to when she sighed and shook her head. “No, no. You see, for my part I was sure that it must have been you. However, there are rumors at the academy I attend that the woman was someone else.”

“Really?”

“I’m afraid so.”

According to Liz, the other woman was rumored to be one of Liz’s classmates. That meant this other person was about fifteen years old as, if I remembered correctly, the oldest students at the academy were fifteen.

A fifteen-year-old and the knight commander? Oof, I could see how that would be suspicious.

“Lord Hawke’s a lot older than girls your age though. Wouldn’t that be a problem?” I asked.

“Oh, not at all. It would be a little unusual, but I wouldn’t call it problematic.”

Different worlds, I guess… But then what was the problem? As I pondered this, Liz wrinkled her nose and finally explained herself with some reluctance. “You see, it’s more of an issue for the girl herself.”

“How so?”

“Unfortunately, she has been the cause of quite a bit of trouble…since she’s grown unusually close with a number of boys who already have fiancées.”

Fiancées?! Of course I knew the word, but practically speaking, the concept was pretty foreign to me. Nevertheless, I could see how it would be a problem for this girl’s fiancé to hear a rumor that she had gone riding with a knight.

As I understood it, the noble children attending the academy were often engaged by around that early age. In this kingdom, you were free to marry once you were an adult, and adulthood was the ripe old age of fifteen. So, maybe it wasn’t “that early” after all.

In any case, I was curious to hear more. “Say, does Lord Hawke have a fiancée?”

“I do not believe so.”

“Ah. From how you described the situation, I thought he must.”

A spark of mischief had returned to Liz’s eye. “If he did have a fiancée, then it would be a problem for him to go riding with any woman at all.”

“Oh, hm. That’s true.”

“Hee hee. Lord Hawke is a gentleman who minds his manners, so I believe you have nothing to worry about.”

For a moment there, I was concerned that I might have accidentally crossed some lines, but now my fears were assuaged. No matter what world you were in, it was no good to be involved in rumor-worthy activities with someone who was already engaged. Honestly, I had a feeling it would be an issue for Knight Commander Albert if people thought he was in a relationship with someone like me even if he didn’t have a fiancée.

Unlike me, he could take his time picking and choosing his romantic partner. If only I could make people understand that he was always bringing me to the institute because he was just such a thoughtful person. I felt awful that he might lose his chance at love because of this rumor.

“At any rate, there’s nothing interesting going on between Lord Hawke and me,” I told Liz firmly.

“Oh? Really?”

“Yes! A-anyway, tell me more about what this rumor is doing to your school.”

“Oh, yes. Well, because the rumor is that she courted the attention of the Ice Knight—”

“Wait, who’s the Ice Knight?”

Liz blinked. “Lord Hawke.”

According to Liz, Albert was known as the Ice Knight first for his expertise in wielding Ice Magic and second because he so rarely made any show of emotion.

Wait, what? He’s always smiling at me…

“Since Lord Hawke is so well-liked, they were saying things such as ‘She’s collecting again,’” Liz continued.

“Which I’m assuming means that the guys she’s friends with at school are also popular?”

“That’s right.” Liz put a hand to her cheek and sighed gloomily.

So, to summarize, a classmate of hers at the academy had all of the popular guys waiting on her hand and foot. Someone mistakenly assumed she had also gotten involved with Albert, who was popular outside the academy, and now everyone was complaining about it.

But why did Liz seem so crestfallen?

“You seem pretty upset. But I’m not sure how this impacts you… Does it?”

“I’m afraid it does. The fiancées of the lords that girl keeps around have asked me to help.”

“Shouldn’t they be asking their fiancés to stop hanging around her instead of bothering you about it?”

“They say they have already made their frustrations clear, and yet the situation has not improved.”

“I know this might sound rude, but aren’t you powerless to help this situation, too?”

“Indeed…”

Liz sighed again and cast down her eyes, the picture of depression. It made me want to help her, if nothing else. But as someone who had close to zero experience in affairs of the heart, I had no advice to give.

“The other day, one of those girls stopped coming to school,” Liz confessed.

According to Liz, the young lady’s fiancé was one of the problematic classmate’s admirers, but there was another issue.

Being fifteen, the girl was dealing with a mild case of acne and had been anxious about her appearance for quite some time. She kept trying to clear up her face, but nothing worked. As a result, she was unable to make herself look as pretty as she thought she should and felt plain compared to the other students.

One day, the young lady overheard her fiancé compliment their classmate to some guy friends of his. Liz had been with the girl at the time, so she heard his exact words. He had said that their classmate’s skin was so smooth that he wanted to touch it and that she always dressed so prettily. At any rate, it all boiled down to praising her appearance.

In that moment, Liz and the girl left quietly before the boys realized they had been overheard.

The young lady was devastated. Her fiancé had never once complimented her in such a way, and she feared he was unhappy with her appearance. Already depressed about her persistent pimples, this revelation made her so anxious that she was now unable to leave her bed.

“If only she could do something about those blemishes, then I am sure she would feel just a little bit better,” Liz said.

“That’s true.” I was mulling the situation. I couldn’t give any advice when it came to love…but I might just be able to help in my own way. “I might have a way to get rid of those pimples.”

“Really?!” Liz’s lovely face brightened immeasurably.

I nodded with a smile and proceeded to spend the next hour explaining in as much detail as I could everything I knew about how to tackle blemishes from my days in Japan.

Once Liz and I went our separate ways and I finished my work for the day at the institute, I sat down with materials to get cracking on more skincare products. I wanted to do everything in my power to help this young lady with her problems, even if it was only the acne.

Just as I was prepping the ingredients, Jude walked by. “Skincare again?” He could tell what I was up to just from looking at the ingredients on my desk.

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m helping someone out.”

While I was hard at work on my new project, Liz got her friend to tell her what skincare and treatments she had already tried. Sure enough, Liz reported to me that the girl used products with terrible ingredients and dubious treatments that sounded more like some kind of sorcery.

For all I knew, one of those methods actually was the best way to banish pimples in this world, but for now, I got Liz to make her friend promise not to use any other kinds of cosmetics or treatments while she was trying out the one I made for her. We had to be scientific, or I wouldn’t know what kind of effects my lotions had. Liz conveyed everything to the girl, including how to wash her face, what food could affect her skin, and that she absolutely needed to get a proper amount of sleep.

The skincare lotion I made was a sort of insurance in case the routine changes weren’t enough. After I combined the ingredients—all of which I had heard could help with acne—into a glass container, I stirred them with a thin glass rod while imbuing it with magic. While I did so, I found myself wishing sincerely for the zits to heal and the girl’s skin to clear up.

I didn’t normally do such a thing when making these for myself, but this time was special.

As I rolled the wish over in my mind, the contents of the glass began to glow white. Nothing like that had ever happened before, so I was a little startled. I scooped some out and rubbed it on the back of my hand just to test it, but I didn’t feel any concerning prickling or anything. In fact, I couldn’t discern anything odd at all in the finished product.

I guess I’ll do a patch test just in case. I’ll give it to Liz once I’m sure it’s okay, I thought to myself as I moved on to brewing the next lotion.

 

Two weeks after I delivered my homemade skincare products to Liz, I found her waiting for me in the library, brimming with excitement.

“Sei! Those skincare products you made were incredible!”

We were in the library, but she could barely keep her voice down as she excitedly came over to me.

Liz had passed the lotions and ointments I made to her friend the same day I gave them to her, as well as making sure to repeat my instructions for pimple care. The young lady had despaired of ever ridding her face of what plagued it, so at first she didn’t seem very enthusiastic, but she went ahead and followed the instructions anyway. Amazingly, she began to see results the very next day, and everyone in her family was hugely encouraging about it.

One week later, she returned to the academy. The other ladies were in an uproar over the dramatic change in the girl’s appearance.

“Though now I’m afraid we have another problem,” Liz told me, though she didn’t seem all that concerned.

“What’s that?” I asked with a head tilt.

Once I heard the answer, I kind of regretted it. She wasn’t kidding about it being a problem.

“Now everyone wants the same kind of skincare products that you made for her.”

Not only had the young lady’s pimples vanished, she now had flawless skin. The change had stoked the other young ladies’ desires to improve their skincare as well. They demanded to know what products she was using, and since the girl told them that she got them from Liz, they were pestering her instead. Liz refused to say anything other than that they had been made specifically for her friend, but the other girls were still giving her the third degree.

“I doubted you would be able to fulfill all their requests,” Liz explained.

“You’ve got that right.”

It wasn’t just a problem of getting lotions to every interested girl but the fact that I’d have to keep making more and more in order to satisfy the needs of continuous use.

I told Liz to let me think it over a bit and returned to the institute. However, I couldn’t come up with any solutions on my own. At times like these, the best thing to do is ask others for advice, so I brought my predicament to Johan.

“So, do you have any ideas?” I asked him.

“You’ve gone and done it again.”

Despite his amusement as he laughed at me, Johan was a good person. We thought it over together and ultimately decided to give my skincare lotion recipes to a shop Johan had good relations with, which would then sell them for us. The products the shop made weren’t as effective as mine, but they definitely still worked.

When I told Liz about our plan, word of the miraculous skincare products rapidly traveled from the lips of the young ladies to the ears of their families, and soon enough those lotions were such a popular product that the shop sold out on the very first day.

Naturally, Johan had sold the recipes in return for a percentage of the profits, and it went without saying that the research institute received a very nice return.

Act 5:
The Royal Capital

 

IN THE SIXTH MONTH after my summoning, I knocked on Johan’s office door. “May I come in?”

I entered once I received permission, bringing with me a tea cart complete with tea, sandwiches, and sweets. Johan and Knight Commander Albert were seated across from each other on the facing sofas, waiting for me.

“That looks delicious,” Johan said as I cheerfully set the table.

Both men were fixated on the plates I had brought. I wasn’t scheduled to work that day, but when I heard that Albert was coming to the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora for some reason, I decided to make some things for them to snack on, like a sort of afternoon tea set. We didn’t have a three-tiered tray, so I just arranged the food on regular plates. Liz did tell me that they used plates with legs for tea parties at the palace.

I poured the tea into cups and placed them in front of Johan and Albert. Finally, I poured myself a cup of tea and sat next to Johan.

I felt like Albert looked a bit distraught, but I tried not to overthink it. I mean, the prospect of sitting next to him made me feel way too nervous.

“Thank you for putting this together even though it’s your day off,” Albert said apologetically.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I really do enjoy cooking, so I didn’t mind at all.”

It might have been my day off, but on those days I usually wound up doing the same sort of things I always did. Plus, since Albert brought the sweets, I was happy to turn his offering into a real tea party.

Albert’s sweets were all sorts of colors and so delicate. I think they must have been made out of fruit. Sugar was sprinkled on their tops, and they looked extremely sweet—and I’d hardly had anything that would count as dessert since I got to the kingdom, so I was kind of looking forward to this.

Johan and Albert were finished talking about whatever Albert had come to discuss, so the three of us got to chat while we dug into the food.

“Still, you do seem to work quite a bit,” Albert said.

“You think so?” I asked.

“It’s your free day, yet here you are at the institute when you could be anywhere else.”

“Well, I do live here. And I like to get a bunch of chores done when I have the time.”

I did exactly the same thing on my days off even back in Japan. I would get a lot of practical life stuff done, like the laundry and cleaning my apartment. However, here, I had finished all that in the morning, and luckily there was also a servant who took care of the laundry for me, which would have taken the most time.

As it turned out, the majority of the researchers who lived at the institute were from noble backgrounds and had never done their own laundry before, so they employed someone to do housework for them. However, I didn’t like the idea of someone going into my room, so I cleaned it myself. I was pretty sure my colleagues had servants doing that for them, though. If they didn’t, the research institute would have been a toxic jungle.

“Besides chores, don’t you usually do more research or go to the library? That’s nearly the same as work,” Albert continued.

“But I really am working less than I did back when I lived in Japan.”

Because of their positions at court, both Johan and Albert knew I had been brought here by the Saint Summoning Ritual. I didn’t know if it was because they didn’t want to make me miss it or anything, but they tended not to ask all that much about my life back in my old world. Occasionally I would bring it up myself, though, and because of that, they knew I used to live in a country called “Japan.”

“I used to work every day from the third bell of the morning until the midnight bell,” I told them.

“What?” Johan’s eyes opened wide with shock as he raised his voice. I don’t think I’d ever seen him look like that.

Albert didn’t say anything, but the teacup he brought to his lips remained undrunk, and his eyes were wide as well.

Of course they were shocked. The third bell of the morning referred to 9 a.m., while the midnight bell was midnight, just like the name implied. Calculating in the time it took to get dressed and commute, I had to wake up at 6 a.m. every day and got home at 2 a.m. every night. We were supposed to have weekends off, but I went in on Saturdays anyway. I stayed home on Sundays so I could get my apartment back in order. Not to mention, I’d probably start having some serious health problems if I didn’t.

In this world, on the other hand, people typically lived by the rising and the setting of the sun. It differed depending on your occupation, but our working hours at the research institute reflected that lifestyle as well. I’d been working from around 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. pretty much every day. That was it. Not to mention, during breaks I got to sit down and enjoy tea with my colleagues in the institute or with the Knights of the Third Order, and no one got mad.

Maybe other people’s lives were different, but my life now was way more relaxed. I really got to take it easy.

From Johan and Albert’s perspective, I supposed it sounded like I used to work far too much.

“By work, do you mean as in…you were required to attend parties in the evening or something as such?” Albert asked.

“Nope. I was a commoner, you know.”

I knew attending parties was a requirement for nobles like them sometimes. Maybe some people back in Japan had that kind of responsibility, but I imagined it was the sort of thing only celebrities and the like had to worry about.

“A commoner who sounds nearly as busy as our prime minister,” Johan mused.

“Oh, everyone I knew lived the same way.”

“It really sounds like you worked yourself like one of our officials.”

“It does?”

The government officials were run pretty ragged in this world. However, the majority of them were nobility.

“Oh, now it all makes sense,” Johan said as if in understanding. He stretched a hand to my face.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“I was just thinking how much prettier you’ve gotten since you came to our world.”

“Huh? Why are you saying something like that?”

“The condition of your face when you first came to the research institute looked exactly like one of those officials when they’re especially preoccupied.” Johan touched his fingers to my cheek and then ran his thumb along the skin beneath my eye. “But now even those dark circles are long gone.”

It was the first time someone other than my family had touched my face like that. My heart began beating wildly in my chest. I was sure I was blushing, too.

Johan seemed quite amused by my reaction. His expression didn’t change, but I caught a delighted glint in his eye. He had noticed I was unaccustomed to being touched by others and lately had taken to teasing me like this.

Act 6:
Enchantments

 

ONE EARLY AFTERNOON, Jude said something that took me entirely by surprise.

“It’s enchanted?” I asked.

“You mean you didn’t notice?”

He was talking about my hairclip. Of course I hadn’t noticed! We didn’t have anything remotely like “enchantment” back in Japan. “Can you tell what it does?” I asked.

“No, I can just see that it’s definitely got one. It’s reacting to your magic power.”

“It is? And you can tell that, too?”

“Yeah, though you have to train to do it.”

“Huh, is that so…”

It seemed Appraisal Magic was needed to discern an enchantment’s type. Only a few people were capable of casting such magic, and they were, for the most part, employed by large companies in the capital, though a few court mages could cast it, too. What’s more, Appraisal Magic could assess people of sufficiently high level. However, the magic slid off an unwilling subject, and it simply didn’t work on people whose level was too high.

As for enchantments themselves, they could be applied to weapons, armor, accessories, and even tools. The enchantment was always fixed to a focus, such as a jewel embedded in the hilt of a sword. Notably, the focus could be imbued with magic before it was placed into a given object.

To manifest their effects, enchanted objects drew from a person’s magical power, and everyone had magical power, even if they didn’t have enough to actually use Magic skills. That interaction was how those trained to sense magical activity could tell if an enchantment was present. Jude had studied Appraisal at the Royal Academy and was still honing his skills in order to lend them to his family business. What a diligent guy…

“That’s actually pretty interesting,” I mused.

“What is?” Jude asked.

“Enchantments.”

“Huh? Don’t tell me you want to give them a try.” Jude gave me a troubled look.

“Is it that obvious?” I grinned back at him.

What’s with that face? Of course I want to play around with it—it’s not like I could’ve done it in Japan.

“Enchanting isn’t that easy,” Jude said.

“Ah, really?”

“First off, the material components are pretty expensive.”

According to him, technically a ton of focus types could be used, but most enchantment-ready gems, ores, and crystals were both rare and quite costly, even when they were tiny. Plus, only a few people could actually perform enchantments, since it required skilled Magic. Therefore, the price difference between enchanted and non-enchanted objects was…substantial.

Yup. Huuuuge price difference. And the hairclip Albert gave me—with all those little jewels—was enchanted. Ahhh…

“What are you two chattering on about?” Johan asked as he passed by our station.

“Enchantments,” I said.

“Why’s that?”

“It seems my hairclip has some, and the practice piqued my interest.”

“I see.” Johan acted all casual, but he must have already realized what was up with my hairclip. I definitely noticed a slight waver in his eyes when I said the word.

Neither Johan nor Liz had mentioned anything about cost. Maybe this clip just didn’t seem that extravagant to nobles like them? For all I knew, the one I saw in the shop had been enchanted, too, though I doubted it—it hadn’t been that much more expensive than the other accessories. As I mulled it over, I became increasingly daunted by the thought of how much my new hairclip must have cost. I began racking my brain, frantically wondering how I could ever repay Albert for such a lavish gift.

Johan’s next words surprised me. “Want to give it a try?”

“Eh?”

“Enchanting. You just said you were interested, didn’t you?”

Jude and I were shocked at the suggestion.

Huh? Is it that simple to just give it a go? I looked at Jude for confirmation. He seemed to guess what I was thinking, because he shook his head back and forth.

But Johan persisted. “I can make it happen. So? Do you want to?”

“Yes!”

I accepted without hesitation, I think because Johan was the one who offered. Besides, I was pretty intrigued.

 

Johan brought me to the barracks of the Royal Magi Assembly. It was quite far away—even further than the barracks for the Knights of the Third Order—so we traveled by carriage. I was glad we didn’t try to trudge the whole way, though I didn’t quite understand why we were going there. What did we need from them for enchanting? Some kind of magic tool?

Jude stayed behind on Johan’s orders. He was told to focus on his work, which just made me wonder whether it was really okay for me to skip out on my own responsibilities. I didn’t really get the standards for who had to do what.

Once we got there, Johan and I kind of stood out among a sea of people swathed in robes. I couldn’t help thinking they were dressed just like you’d expect a group called a “Magi Assembly” to be. I remembered suddenly that the people who summoned me had worn those exact same robes. Were these the people who had performed that ritual?

“Sei, over here.” Johan beckoned me further inside from where I stood by the door, drinking in my new surroundings.

“Coming.”

There were worktables aplenty, similar to our setup in the research institute. Johan came to a stop in front of one in the center of the room. On the other side of the table stood one of the robed mages, looking a bit nervous.

“I look forward to learning from you today.” I bowed my head to him. He quickly bowed his head in return.

Eh? Is it just me, or does he seem scared?

“I shall now explain how enchanting works,” the mage began with a bit of a forced smile.

What’s up with him? Well…whatever, I guess.

The mage retrieved a partitioned box from the side of the table and set it in front of me. Inside, gems and ores were tidily separated out by type. According to the mage, to perform an enchantment I would first select one of these small foci, and then I would call to mind the effect I wished to bestow.

Effects differed according to the given enchanter’s elemental affinity. For example, those aligned with Fire Magic could imbue an enchantment that called forth flame, while those aligned with Water Magic could instill a similar enchantment that summoned water. Holy Magic like mine bestowed what were known as support enchantments, which enhanced offensive or defensive abilities. Finally, some materials were more compatible with specific kinds of magical effects.

“For support enchantments, I recommend these.” The mage pointed to a collection of gems. “What manner of effect would you like to instill?”

“Good question…” I murmured, thinking it over. What could I do? Support enchantments, support enchantments… Suddenly, I remembered the salamander—that fire-breathing lizard in the western forest. Could I make something to protect people against its terrible flame? “Is it possible to nullify a type of magic?”

“Nullify?” The mage thought it over for a moment. “You may not be able to negate a type completely, but you could possibly lessen its power.”

Hm. Maybe I could try thinking of a way to reduce magical damage instead. “Okay, I’ll try that lessening thing.”

“Then I think this type of stone might be best.”

The mage handed me his recommended focus and I pressed it between my hands. The focus was only about three millimeters in diameter, so I completely enveloped it by doing so. I carefully imagined the type of effect I wanted to bestow and called on my magic.

If possible, it would be better to have general resistance to all kinds of magic, not just fire, right? I thought as I channeled my power into the stone. Yeah, something like that.

And with that, I felt a small jolt against my palms.

D-did I break it?! Ohhhhh yep. I did. I totally broke it.

Timidly, I peeked into my hands. Just as I thought, the focus had broken in two. Panic flared.

“Did it work?” the mage asked.

“Uh, um, well, i-it looks like I broke it,” I reluctantly admitted. I couldn’t stay silent—they’d find out sooner or later.

When I nervously showed the mage, shock washed over his face. “What in the…?!”

Other mages rushed over to see what the ruckus was about.

What’s going on? This is kind of scary. Don’t all stare at me!

But everyone around me remained frozen, including Johan.

“It really is broken,” my instructor muttered, stupefied, and also rooted to the spot.

Please, somebody, do something about this awkward situation!

An ethereal voice cut through the dumbfounded silence. “Did you try enchanting it with a resistance to a type of elemental magic?”

A man approached; he had silky silver hair and, behind a pair of glasses, blue-gray eyes that were somehow familiar. He exuded this cool, intelligent, lordly air, and in this moment, he was like an angel from heaven come to my rescue.

Lord Smarty-Glasses paid no attention to my gawping and took the stone from my palm to examine it. “And truly, all you tried to do was enchant it with a resistance to a single type of elemental magic?”

“Um, no…” I naturally straightened my posture under his cold gaze. I felt like a student being scolded by her teacher.

“Then what kind of enchantment did you attempt?”

“Um, uh… I thought it might be better to increase resistance to all elements, and uh…”

“This focus is inadequate for that degree of enchantment.”

Lord Smarty-Glasses put my cracked focus aside and chose another from the box. It was a black stone about five-to-six millimeters in diameter. Quite a bit bigger than the last one. Was it really okay for me to use? It had to cost a ton.

I glanced at the mage who was supposed to be guiding me and found that he also looked surprised, as did Johan.

“Is it really okay for me to use this?” I asked, looking from Lord Smarty-Glasses to the focus.

Lord Smarty-Glasses nodded and held the stone out to me. I gingerly took it and held it delicately between my hands, just like before. And, like before, I prayed for an enchantment that would resist all forms of magic as I imbued my own power into it.

For a moment, the stone flared hot in my palms—but then immediately the heat died away.

Did I do it?

I didn’t feel any sustained change, so I had my doubts. As I opened my hands to get a look, the smart-looking mage plucked the focus from my palm.

“Appraise,” he quietly commanded.

Ah, so he was one of the few court mages who could perform Appraisal Magic. I couldn’t really say I was surprised. I watched him closely as he worked. His face was impossible to read, a perfect deadpan, and then the corners of his lips curved up the slightest bit. Like the stone’s heat, the tiny smile was there for but a moment before it vanished.

“You succeeded,” he said.

Behind the Scenes II

 

“THIS IS THE ONE, Your Majesty.”

Deep within the palace lay the king’s office. Erhart Hawke, the magus of the Royal Magi Assembly, presented a tray draped in black velvet to the king. Upon the tray lay a large diamond. It was the one Sei had enchanted to nullify all status ailments, increase physical defense, and increase magical resistance.

The prime minister, who stood beside the king, was an impassive, unreadable man, skilled at political trickery, yet at the sight of this enchanted stone he audibly gulped. None could blame him.

The enchanted gem Sei had created was by all rights something that should have been unobtainable, except as a prize from a monster-slaying expedition or from an archaeological excavation in the deepest part of an

ancient ruin. During a monster-slaying expedition, there was a rare chance that upon slaying a monster, it might drop an enchanted tool. The quality of these items depended on the strength of the beast. The stone Sei had produced was as potent as the kind of item dropped by a demon that required every single knight in an Order to defeat. It was the stuff of legends—a legendary-class item.

There were, in fact, a few objects with similar properties kept safe in the royal treasury. However, those had been painstakingly collected over the course of centuries, and the kingdom possessed only a small number of them. This was the first time the king or prime minister had ever seen such a rarity outside of the scrupulously guarded treasury.

“I understand now why you requested we speak in private,” the king said with a deep sigh.

Erhart had communicated discreetly with Johan, the head researcher of the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora, in order to arrange this sequestered meeting. Aside from the king and prime minister, Erhart and Johan were the only other people in the room. As Sei had already freely performed enchantments in plain view of the Royal Magi Assembly, they ordered the mages to silence, but they couldn’t dismiss the possibility that her skills would leak, and so were limiting any further disclosures as much as possible.

As Erhart and Johan described Sei’s legendary feat, these two people, who kept order in the kingdom, were dumbfounded. They also began to grasp the necessity of keeping the truth concealed. As the word implied, the legendary item Sei had enchanted would be exceedingly useful to military operations. If sold on the market, it would go for an astronomical sum. The woman who could create such objects was a golden goose.

If word of her ability got out, there was no doubt people would devise nefarious plots to use Sei for their own ends.

Erhart told the king in detail of the events leading to the creation of the enchanted gem. When Johan had contacted him and spoken of Sei’s interest in magic, Erhart decided to use the opportunity to investigate her abilities. Since the only person who could Appraise Stats was the grand magus, and he was still in a coma following the ritual, they had yet to determine whether Sei or Aira was the Saint. However, half a year had passed since the summoning, and there was no telling when the grand magus would awaken, so the ministers had begun discussing how to test Sei and Aira’s magical gifts.

As Aira was attending the Royal Academy, they had been able to examine her powers from multiple angles. Meanwhile, Sei had been placed in the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora. There, she performed the same tasks as any other researcher, and as a consequence, tests of her skills were progressing more slowly. The officials had been reluctant to press her due to the unfortunate events following her summoning, so her request to experiment with enchantments had been a true lifesaver. At the time, the king had accepted Erhart’s report, and it was decided they would study Sei’s magical power through enchantments a few days later at the Royal Magi Assembly.

The ensuing investigation made plain that Sei possessed astonishing magical ability.

At the Royal Magi Assembly, Sei’s tests were planned in advance. The effect of an enchantment depended on the enchanter’s elemental affinity, level, and reservoir of magical power. More powerful effects cost greater amounts of magical power and required a higher level of Magic skill. Therefore, to an extent, the relative power of an effect could reveal the enchanter’s ability.

First, they would use enchantments to determine Sei’s elemental affinity, and then they would attempt to gauge her level by gradually increasing the difficulty of the type of enchantments she cast. If possible, they would also have her perform enchantments until she exhausted her magical power, then estimate her maximum MP based on how many MP potions she drank after.

Since Sei had been summoned to be the Saint, there was a high likelihood that she possessed Holy Magic, so they began her test with support-type enchantments. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, Erhart was compelled to take over her testing, though thankfully he was able to see their plan through to completion. He led Sei step-by-step through enchantments for damage reduction, resistance, and finally nullifying effects, gradually increasing the difficulty of his orders.

The maximum skill level for Magic was typically thought to be ten, though only one or two people in history had managed to achieve it. Most of the mages in the Royal Magi Assembly were only Level 3. Damage reduction was an effect anyone could enchant so long as they possessed the minimum level of Holy Magic. Resistance enchantments required Level 3, and nullifying enchantments demanded at least Level 5.

That was why, when Sei suggested a nullifying enchantment for her first try, the mage overseeing her recommended she begin with the easiest type, reduction, instead. However, she mentally changed her enchantment right before she performed it, so the attempt failed and the gem broke. Nevertheless, her second attempt to enchant a focus with increased magical resistance was successful. From this, they were able to deduce that her level was likely higher than Level 3.

Notably, after half a year, Aira was currently at Level 4 in Holy Magic, though she was at Level 1 when she first began attending the Royal Academy. It was easy to imagine the surprise of the mages when they realized that, despite never having taken a lesson on magic, Sei was at least Level 3.

In order to test her further, Erhart began ordering Sei to perform numerous different kinds of enchantments. He gave his orders in an incredibly businesslike manner, so everyone was on edge while they watched, wondering when Sei would lose her temper with his demands. Thankfully, she performed all of the enchantments as instructed without incident.

While a base reduction effect required at least Level 1, some effects required a higher level to produce. For example, Level 1 was sufficient to cast a poison-reduction enchantment, but paralysis reduction could only be cast once one reached Level 2. Erhart gradually and meticulously increased the difficulty and variety of effects he asked from Sei, and eventually she proved able to cast nullifying enchantments as well—an effect available only to those higher than Level 5.

It was at this point that the researcher in Erhart got the better of him. The next thing he ordered was one focus with two effects—a feat that had never been successfully achieved, even in historical record. He knew it was likely impossible, but he wanted to see her try. He instructed Sei to enchant a focus with two of the simplest types of reductions…and Sei was able to do it just as she had the rest.

By then, the whole Assembly was extremely curious to test the limits of Sei’s magic. Up to that moment, the other mages had been watching surreptitiously, but at that point it was evident they were all focused on her.

As they were about to take a break, Erhart gave one final order just to see how far Sei’s magic could go: nullify status ailments, nullify magical attacks, and nullify physical attacks. It was a definitively impossible request. Two simultaneous enchantments had been infeasible enough, let alone three of such a powerful type. Yet Erhart asked it of her all the same.

Sure enough, Sei was unable to perform that final test exactly to order…but in its stead, she enchanted a stone that could nullify status ailments, increase magical resistance, and increase physical defense—a legendary object in every respect. Consequently, Erhart determined that Sei’s Holy Magic skill must be the maximum at Level 10.

The truth was that this wasn’t her level at all, but this wouldn’t become clear until much later.

“I believe that her Holy Magic must be Level 10 and her base level exceeds Level 40,” Erhart said in a hushed tone.

The king and prime minister went wide-eyed at his words.

A person’s Stats included a base level in addition to their Battle skills, Production skills, and the like. Base level affected fundamental stats such as HP, MP, physical attack, and magical attack powers. The base level of an ordinary person was usually between Levels 5 and 10. A graduate of the Royal Academy might be between Levels 15 and 20. Knights and mages employed by the palace were around Levels 30 to 35. Only the commanders of the Orders and the grand magus were above Level 40.

Given the amount of MP potions Sei drank during her enchanting, Erhart estimated Sei’s maximum MP to be around 5,000. Only the grand magus himself had that much MP, and his base level was Level 45. Erhart had estimated Sei’s own base level by working back from there.

“That’s quite high,” the prime minister let slip.

As for Aira, the crown prince regularly had her check on and report her levels. According to her, her base and Magic skill levels when she first started at the Royal Academy were both Level 1, but over the course of the past half-year, she had reached Level 16. Considering that other students reached anywhere from Levels 15 to 20 during their three years at the Academy, the ministers determined that Aira was able to level up with unbelievable speed. It wasn’t just her base level either; her Magic skills increased from mere consistent use. With potion brewing, she was able to proactively level up, and now, at Level 4, her Holy Magic rivaled that of any mage in the Royal Magi Assembly.

However, these levels still fell far short of Sei’s.

“If her level is so high, can we not confirm she’s the Saint?”

“It’s too early to say. My mages have been combing through our archives for the specific Stats of the Saint, but we have yet to find anything that describes them in detail.”

“If only we had just a few more records…”

“Perhaps the important thing to identify is not her Stats but whether she is able to purify the miasma and wipe out demons. We have found a number of books describing those aspects of her abilities.”

The royal library was brimming with stories of the Saint’s monster-vanquishing feats, as well as romances between past Saints and historical royalty or knights, but nothing was written about their daily lives, such as Sei’s success in making potions and casting enchantments.

Of course, there was a reason why the books were more focused on certain aspects of the Saint. Previous Saints had indeed been able to perform enchantments like Sei. None produced legendary-class enchanted gems like she had, but they were still able to produce magical items beyond the strength of common people.

The king and his advisors were ignorant of this fact because of the wisdom of prior generations. Those past leaders had realized that if the Saint’s true skill set became known, some people would inevitably try to manipulate her to ends outside her most critical purpose. As such, they prohibited the chronicling of anything other than her ability to eliminate monsters.

The current king was likely thinking along similar lines. Since the beginning of the secret meeting, Erhart had watched the king’s expression gradually grow darker and darker.

The mere existence of the Saint was categorically a marvelous thing, and regardless of whether Sei actually was the Saint, her talents would greatly influence the nation’s strategies. However, if her abilities became public knowledge, in all likelihood, people from both inside and outside of the kingdom would make attempts to possess her for themselves, and the kingdom would fall into chaos.

The king had a duty to consider how to protect Sei from such people. He couldn’t allow himself to be simply happy they had found the Saint when he thought of what was to come.

“We must strengthen her guard,” he said.

They all understood what the king meant. Recently, though more people had been coming into contact with Sei, few actually visited the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora where she worked, seeing as it was so far removed from the palace. Guards had quietly been installed to watch over her since she moved to the institute, but because of its location, it was easy to spot any suspicious people. Furthermore, Sei usually kept to the institute, so they didn’t need to post as many guards. But given that the results of her tests had been leaked, the current guard was insufficient.

They would increase her protection immediately. However, this need for increase brought to light yet another problem. Johan had made clear that Sei desired a normal life. Therefore, they couldn’t have guards dogging her footsteps like they did Aira. They had to maintain a small enough squad to ensure that Sei remained ignorant to their presence.

In the end, they decided to have the new guards pose as chefs in the research institute dining hall and as additional researchers in the institute so that there would always be several protectors near her at any given time.

Act 7:
Magic

 

IN THE SEVENTH MONTH after my summoning, the sun’s rays were as strong as ever, but the tyrannical daystar itself felt like it was gradually starting to set earlier and earlier. I continued to water the herbs as part of my daily morning routine, but as the sunrise also began to grow later, I could sense fall approaching.

“Morning, Sei.”

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Jude moseyed over to me as I was sprinkling water over the roots with my watering can.

Obviously, there was no way I could water the whole garden by myself. The garden had been expanded, too, so the only part I took care of was the corner for my personal use. Many of the researchers had their own plots, so we each took care of our own, and we employed a handful of gardeners to tend the rest.

“If you’d told me you were out here, I could’ve helped.” Jude frowned at my watering can.

When he found out I watered my herbs daily, he offered to assist me with his Water Magic, with which he was able to water a wide swath of plants all at once. However, I would have felt bad begging for help every single day, so I only asked for his assistance if I bumped into him when I was headed out to do the chore.

“Thanks, but the sentiment alone is enough for me.” I smiled at him.

He smiled back as if to say “I tried!”

I was finished anyway, so we headed back to the institute together. Jude didn’t have his own plot; he usually just came outside to help me out. On our way, I confirmed the day’s schedule.

“Are we getting the herb delivery from the store this morning?”

“Yup. And it’s a lot more than usual, so Johan said we need to help move them all into the storehouse.”

We were planning to brew a whole bunch of potions for the Knights of the Third Order, but we would’ve exhausted our garden for want of ingredients, so we had to procure some from elsewhere. The store happened to be the one run by Jude’s family, so Johan was pleased that we were able to obtain the extra supplies with a friends and family discount.

According to Jude, his family’s store in the capital was rather large and dealt in a variety of products. I had also learned that they supplied the ingredients we ordered for the dining hall. I felt a bit bad about that though, since I thoughtlessly requested so many ingredients for the sweets I made before.

“What time will they deliver?” I asked.

“Probably around the third morning bell.”

“Then we should head over to the storehouse right when it goes off.”

There were clocks in this world, but they were extraordinarily expensive, so only a few people actually owned them. Consequently, commoners used the bells rung by the churches to tell time. These same bells rang at the palace as well. The third morning bell was about 9 a.m. in the morning. Because the storehouse was next to the institute, we’d be there in time so long as we headed over there the moment the bell started ringing.

We went as planned, but in the end, I didn’t get to do anything. All the other researchers and servants unloaded the vast quantity of boxes containing the herbs from the cart without me. I would be the one using most of the herbs, so I wanted to help, and I tried, but for some reason everyone firmly turned me down.

Well, to be honest, it was nice to see my colleagues showing off their strength, which they rarely did, but I felt a little guilty just watching. Ultimately, I gave up and decided that I’d be the one to deliver the potions to the Third Order instead. The potions would be ferried by a cart and donkey, so no one could consider that objectionable heavy labor. However, the servants still did all the loading for me.

That’s right, I had learned how to drive a cart all on my own. At first I was worried about not being able to guide the donkey, but it was surprisingly easy. That was probably because the donkey was such a very good donkey, yes he was. He quietly and earnestly obeyed all of my directions. It occurred to me that this was yet another thing I never would’ve learned how to do back in Japan, just like making potions.

“Huh? Sei?”

As the servants were unloading the potions at the side entrance to the Third Order’s barracks, I ran into some knights who had just finished training. Because they were in practice mode, they weren’t in their usual uniforms but rather clothes that were a bit more casual. After joining them on that expedition, having them test the effects of food with me, and other stuff like that, I was on pretty good terms with all of the knights. At least, good enough that they would come talk to me whenever we saw each other.

“Ah, did you bring us potions?” one of the knights asked.

“Yup.”

“Fantastic. The potions your research institute makes are unbelievably effective. They’re bona fide lifesavers on our expeditions.”

“I’m happy to help.”

With training finished across the board, I soon found myself surrounded by a ring of knights. They were all taller than me, and many were rather well built. It kind of felt like I was surrounded by a literal wall of flesh.

“We always order a ton, but it must be tough, huh? And they’re going to ask for double this amount next time, right?” the knight continued.

“Huh? Really?”

“No one told you?”

I hadn’t heard anything of the sort from Johan. To tell the truth, I could make three times the amount of the current order with magical power to spare, so I didn’t think it would be a problem if they ordered double next time.

According to the knight, both the Second and the Third Orders were due to go out on an expedition together. Therefore, they wanted enough potions from the research institute to cover the larger force. There would be a ton of problems if only one of the Orders had my especially effective potions, so Johan and the knight commanders concluded they would need to double the typical inventory.

No wonder we got more herbs than usual.

“If you’re deploying so many knights at once, is it because you expect to face powerful monsters?” I asked.

“Not necessarily. But we’re headed to the Ghoshe Forest next, so it’s more that both Orders are going just in case.”

“I see.”

Ghoshe Forest was where that salamander appeared. They had managed to slay that fiend, but a large-scale mission would hopefully protect them from suffering as many injuries.

“Is the First Order going?”

Second Order, Third Order—I figured a First Order must exist as well. Hadn’t Lord Smarty-Glasses mentioned it? But my casual question was met with a round of bitter looks between the knights.

I tilted my head in confusion, wondering if I had said something I shouldn’t have.

“The First Order has to protect His Highness,” one of the knights answered reluctantly.

“The prince?”

“Well, Prince Kyle and his men are heading to the eastern forest to level up. The First Order is under orders to escort him, so they won’t be joining us this time.”

Kyle, Kyle…? Oh, yes, that redheaded prince. It took me a moment to put the name to the face.

“The crown prince is already at Level 15, though. I doubt he’ll be able to level up much in the eastern forest at this point,” one knight said.

“Yeah. The southern forest would make more sense,” another agreed.

“Especially if he has guards,” said another.

According to the knights, the eastern forest was for novices. There, Academy students could easily increase their base level to Level 12. As such, since the crown prince and most of his company had already reached Level 15, they had little to gain from the excursion. The southern forest had stronger monsters, so it was preferable for leveling up from Levels 12 to 20. Furthermore, the crown prince had apparently been to the southern forest before, so it was strange to see him going back to the eastern one.

“But isn’t it because the Lady Saint is with him?” one knight said.

“Ah, yeah, probably.”

“Lady Saint?” I inquired without thinking.

“That’s what the crown prince and his company call the girl he’s been taking care of.”

I had guessed as much—who but Aira was under care of the crown prince and called the Saint?—but the knights proceeded to tell me everything they knew about the situation. To summarize, Aira was attending the Royal Academy, where the crown prince and his close companions were always by her side to watch over her. As the crown prince called her the Lady Saint, these kids were motivated to level her up as fast as possible for the sake of the kingdom.

Since Aira entered the Academy later than her classmates, and since the crown prince was of a higher level than she was, he was taking her to the forest to increase her level at a faster speed. Of course, the prince and his companions were all royalty, or the scions of noble families, and the Knights of the First Order were escorting them to ensure their safety. In other words, the prince was planning to power level Aira, but he chose the eastern forest over the southern one because he thought the latter would be too dangerous.

“He sure takes good care of her.” I was a bit relieved to hear that nothing bad had happened to Aira. I hadn’t heard much of anything about her after our summoning, but she was younger than me, so I was a bit worried for her.

For some reason though, the knights were sharing odd looks with each other.

Huh? Is there something on my face?

“If you ask us, you’re more Saint-like than she is,” one said.

“The prince has gotta be blind,” another said.

“If you ever need anything, feel free to let us know. We’ll gladly help you out.”

It kind of felt like they were pitying me as they offered me words of comfort, but I was fine. They didn’t need to try to console me. I was living a peaceful life doing what I wanted to do, after all.

“Ha ha ha. Thanks, guys. I’ll be sure to come straight to you next time I’m in trouble.”

They called me “Saint-like”…and to tell you the truth, it troubled me. But only because my Stats suggested that I was, in fact, the Saint. However, I didn’t have any intention of declaring with certainty that I was—or telling anyone anything about my suspicions either.

Though, I also had no intention of denying it if someone finally figured it out. I was still a little wound up about what happened the day I was summoned and wasn’t ready to meekly accept all that rude treatment yet. Therefore, I intended to live a carefree, normal life until someone figured out who I really was.

 

***

 

Ugh, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I learned at the barracks of the Third Order. More specifically, I couldn’t stop thinking about her—the other girl who had been summoned with me.

She, who the prince had whisked away, was attending the Royal Academy. I had no problem with that, given she was probably still of school age. What bothered me was the fact that her base level was apparently lower than that of her classmates when she started.

After I left the knights and got back to the institute, I asked Jude, and he told me that first years at the Academy were usually about Level 7 or 8. According to the knights, most third years were around Level 12 to 16, like the crown prince was. Talented students usually passed Level 15. If Aira had caught up to her classmates, that meant she was about Level 15 at most.

That was when I remembered my own base level. I checked again and it hadn’t increased at all since my summoning. I was still Level 55.

You heard me. Level 55.

Aira was Level 15 and I was Level 55… Even if she was higher than Level 15, she was still probably at a lower level than me. I asked out of curiosity, and Jude was Level 20. I also asked the knights, and a lot of them were above Level 30. I couldn’t imagine Aira’s level being higher than theirs. Why in the world was there such a disparity in our levels?

I felt like I knew the reason, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. It probably wasn’t the difference in our ages. Ahhh, I really didn’t like the idea that I was the Saint…and Aira wasn’t.

If I were the only Saint, then I wouldn’t be able to keep living a peaceful, everyday kind of life anymore. And I was sure Aira wouldn’t be happy to learn she had been summoned and turned out to not be the Saint after all.

“Whoa. You’re really going all out today, huh?” I turned toward the speaker to find Johan wearing a stunned expression.

Being so absorbed in my thoughts, I had accidentally made way more potions than necessary.

Because the Third Order asked for such a huge batch, I had optimized the process to be able to make several at once. Next to the pot I was currently stirring were half again as many potions as a regular medic would be able to brew in a single day.

“My apologies. I had something on my mind, and it seems this got away from me.”

“You look like you’re able to keep going. Think you can make double this amount today alone?” Johan asked with a dry smile.

“Yes, I believe I do have enough magical power for that.”

His smile stiffened when I said as much. When I first started working at the institute, they used to get worried about me draining my MP with all those low-grade HP potions, but recently they were more worried about their rapidly dwindling herb reserves. We had the ingredients for high-grade HP potions now, but I was prohibited from using them because they didn’t want me to deplete their stock any further.

My Pharmaceuticals skill didn’t seem likely to increase any further than it already had, so recently, when I procured the herbs for high-grade HP potions from a store, it was only to make potions for the Third Order. As those kinds of potions were both conspicuously over-effective and pricy to boot, and most expeditions went to the safer regions of the eastern and southern forests, the majority of my high-grade potions would likely go unused and we’d only end up stockpiling them.

But if the Third Order was headed to the western forest, I thought it might be best if we had high-grade HP potions on hand just in case, so I had decided to make a few.

If I wanted to pose as an ordinary person, the most I could do publicly to help the Third Order was make potions, but I had gotten too enthusiastic about it, and by Johan’s expression, I could tell I definitely made too many.

With that, I had accidentally reached the quota that was supposed to take me all day by the early morning, so I decided to go to the palace library. I wanted to research herbs that might make high-grade HP potions even more effective. I had been reading up on herbs for some time now, but I had yet to find anything on this topic. I asked Liz about it once, and she told me that there might be something in the Forbidden Depository, but, of course, not just anyone could waltz into a section with that kind of name.

I had no choice but to keep working through the available herbology collection. I still had a ton of books to get to. However, on that day I was just looking for any book that looked like it was related to herbs as a means to kill time, so I ended up grabbing a completely different kind of book that suddenly caught my interest.

The title included the words “Holy Magic.”

My weird base level aside, the weirdest stat of all was the one for my Holy Magic. What the heck was ∞? “Level Infinity”? That made no sense, but maybe it had something to do with being the Saint?

I had learned about base levels from recent conversations, but I hadn’t heard anything about levels in Holy Magic, so I had no idea what the average level was. Even though I was curious, I was afraid to ask anyone in case they started prying about my own level. I was even a bit nervous asking everyone for their base levels, but thankfully no one had asked mine in turn.

Anyway, as for my Holy Magic level, I highly doubted it was going to increase any time soon—or ever—but it wasn’t like I had particularly studied it before or anything, either. I don’t know if I would’ve minded studying…increasing my levels in Pharmaceuticals and Cooking was pretty fun, after all.

However, I’d been wondering about my levels more since I heard about Aira’s situation. We were both summoned at the same time, yet her base level was far lower than mine. From that, I figured it was likely that her Holy Magic skill level was lower than mine, too. I really, really hoped not. I wanted to live a carefree life, and I could only do that if Aira’s Holy Magic was on the same level as mine.

And also, I mean, if I were to be labeled the sole Saint, I’d probably have to spend more time with that crown prince, and that was something I wanted to avoid with a burning passion.

But I digress. After hearing about Aira’s studies and the knights’ expedition into the western forest, the very same one where that salamander appeared, I started wanting to study magic, too. I had heard from the knights that the number of monsters was decreasing, but I still worried for them. What if they got badly injured and needed magic—not potions—to save them?

That one high-grade potion hadn’t been enough to completely heal Albert, and I faintly remembered that, at the moment, someone wished someone could use healing magic. If such a thing could be the lynchpin of someone’s survival then I wanted to study it, even just a little bit, before attempting to use it. That was why I was so immediately intrigued by this book about Holy Magic.

“Are you interested in magic?” I suddenly heard someone say.

I was surprised to find a man standing directly behind me. The contents of the book in my hands were actually terribly difficult to parse. I was prone to getting especially absorbed in complex reading, so I hadn’t even noticed him until he spoke.

“Though I believe that book may be on the denser side of the subject,” he said.

“Ah, yes, you’re right. I was just thinking I’d like to find something a bit easier to read.”

“Perhaps this one would suit your needs.”

He picked a book from the shelf and handed it to me. As I flipped through it, I saw that it was way, way easier to understand. It looked like something even a beginner like me could grasp.

“Thank you very much,” I said.

“Don’t mention it.”

That was all he said. He looked at me closely, though.

Yep, I was definitely getting weird vibes from this guy. Why, you ask? Because he looked a whole lot like him.

This man seemed older than me, but that guy would probably look just like this man when he was older. Meanwhile, this fellow was much taller than me, if not taller than Albert. His hair was a brilliant copper color, and the gentle way his eyes closed while he smiled made for exquisitely well-balanced features. He really did look like him, if not quite the same. You’d probably say that he was blessed in the looks department as well.

Overall, because of his age, this man was way more able to bowl me over than he ever could be. His sex appeal was on a completely different level.

I must have been visibly perplexed, because at last he spoke. “Forgive me for not introducing myself sooner. My name is Siegfried Salutania.” His smile turned serious as he gave a graceful bow. That elegant manner and his name had to mean he was a member of the royal family. “Your name is Sei, I believe?”

“Um, uh, yes.”

Crap. In my surprise, I forgot to introduce myself in turn. He had already confirmed my name, but I figured it would be better late than never to actually go through the motions.

“My name is Sei,” I said politely as I held a corner of my skirt like a noble lady, and—what is it called—curtsied? Yes! A curtsy. Since he was most likely royalty, it only seemed proper. When in Rome, do as the Romans do! In that moment, I was thankful Liz had taught me some manners. I never knew who I’d run into when I came to the palace.

Lord Siegfried quickly put a hand on my arm, forcing me to straighten. “No need to be so formal. If anything, I owe you my most sincere apologies.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. I gave him a questioning look, and he put that sober expression back on his face as he bowed his head.

“I heard my son was terribly rude to you. Please, allow me to apologize for his appalling behavior.”

“Your son?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Wait, do you mean Kyle…the crown prince?”

“That is correct.”

Wait, Kyle was his son? Which meant that Lord Siegfried…was the king?!

“Pl-please don’t bow like that!” I exclaimed.

“But…”

“I’m not bothered at all!”

That was a lie, but seeing a king bow to me of all people nearly gave me a heart attack.

But he was insistent. “I should have apologized to you sooner, and in a more proper setting. Please forgive the location.”

“That’s quite all right! Please don’t worry. I—I prefer this kind of setting!”

The king persisted in explaining himself, telling me that his formal apology had been postponed due to some political issues. However, he still felt it was problematic that he hadn’t yet said anything directly to me, and when he heard that I frequently came to the library by myself, he started dropping by to try to meet me in person. We had just never run into each other until now.

Formal or not, though, I didn’t want such a grand apology.

“Furthermore, you have performed numerous meritorious deeds since your arrival. I was thinking you deserve a reward. Is there anything you desire? Land, perhaps, or a title in court?”

“No, no, that’s all right,” I insisted.

“Is that so? Then how about your own estate in the capital?”

“No, thank you, not that either. I wouldn’t be able to manage it myself.”

“I could employ some servants to assist you?”

“Servants?!”

I turned down every single one of his ideas. He even got into dresses and accessories, which I have to admit I was more genuinely interested in, but I just didn’t have the space, so I politely declined that offer as well.

At length, the king smiled sardonically. “Johan was right about you.”

Apparently, the king had tried to offer me rewards before, but Johan had stopped him on account of how I’d probably refuse them. And he was right. Good job, Johan!

“Very well, I shall acquiesce—for the moment. I beg you to think it over, though. I shall grant you anything you wish so long as it is in my power.”

He still had that seductive smile on his face, but then he excused himself, stating he had another appointment, and my abrupt audience with the king was at an end.

The whole thing was bad for my heart in more ways than one.

 

***

 

“Ow!”

Today wasn’t my usual day for home ec with the chefs, but I felt like cooking, so I was helping out anyway. The lunch menu had already been decided, so I was cutting vegetables when I accidentally cut myself. It wasn’t deep, but a trickle of blood oozed from the injury.

I surreptitiously glanced about. The other chefs were busy with their own preparations, and no one was looking at me.

“Heal.” In my smallest indoor voice, I cast Healing Magic on myself. The cut vanished like it had never been.

Magic sure is something else.

I was studying how to use magic from that book I had borrowed from the palace library. But classroom learning alone won’t carry you in a crisis, so I was using it every chance I got. It was practice, so to speak.

And it was a good thing I was putting in the work, since at first I wasn’t able to cast magic that well. Book in hand, I tried again and again until I finally managed to invoke it, so I thought I was at least okay now. When the knights returned from the Ghoshe Forest, I would be able to call on my Magic skills to help them, if necessary.

After we delivered the rest of the potions to the Second and Third Orders, they set off to the forest as planned. We didn’t have much time to prepare, but I bulldozed through all of my magical power and somehow got the whole order finished in time. After that, I could only pray for their safe return.

Before I knew it, their expedition was over and both the Second and Third Orders were back. The Ghoshe Forest in the west was a bit further from the capital than the eastern and southern ones, so it was almost two whole weeks before we saw them again.

About a week into the expedition, I was relieved to hear the potions were helping as we’d hoped, and there hadn’t been any casualties. However, there were still some injured, and they were taken to a place kind of like a hospital to be treated.

Albert told me he would be swamped with expeditionary reports on their return, so I waited a few days before going to the hospital to check on the knights who were under care. I was well acquainted with the Third Order fellows, and I’d heard some of them were among the injured.

I also decided to bake my usual cookies as a “get well soon” gift and brought those along.

“Hello!” I called out as I arrived.

“Oh, hey, is that Sei?” said one of the knights.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Doing great, thanks.”

Another knight snorted. “Yeah, right. You were half-dead when we got here.”

“Shut up!”

The building the knights were in really did feel like a hospital. They were set up in rooms large enough to fit ten beds apiece. The room I first entered was filled with knights who had deep lacerations and stab wounds that had yet to heal.

The knights explained that as it had been so long since the last expedition, a large quantity of monsters had amassed in the western forest, so the injury rate was high. Things were rough, seeing as they only had so many potions, but they managed to make the most of each so that, in the end, they made it out with everyone still alive.

As a result, everyone in the room had drunk potions to stop their bleeding and returned to the palace. Most of them expected to be doing better within a week or so, but to tell the truth, all of them could have used more rest.

For the time being, with so many hospitalized, no more expeditions were planned, but the patients had been instructed to return to their Orders the moment they could move properly. The more practical training they missed, the more time it would take for them to fully recover their strength.

I couldn’t criticize, given my own habits, but I got the feeling the knights were also workaholics.

“It must have been really tough going out there,” I said.

“I’m just glad I made it,” the knight replied.

“Yeah, we’re still here because of your potions,” said another.

I blushed a little at the praise. “Thank goodness they helped.”

I was even more relieved there weren’t any casualties.

I would’ve liked to talk to them about other stuff, too, but I heard there were more knights from the Third Order in other rooms, so I said my goodbyes and went to visit them as well. I was showered with thanks in all of the rooms I came to. It made me grateful that I worked so hard to brew all those potions. My heart lightened as I moved from room to room until I spotted a knight who left me speechless.

“Oh, coming to see how we’re all doing?” He smiled as if nothing was out of the ordinary, but the fact was that he was missing his left arm.

I somehow managed to nod. He seemed a bit troubled by my odd behavior and scratched his cheek with his right hand.

Sure, something that was usually there now simply wasn’t, but I’d never thought I’d be so shocked to see…nothing. I was at a loss for words. “Your arm…”

“Ah, yeah, I got clumsy.”

The knight laughed as he told me how a monster took off with his limb. When I asked if potions would be able to heal him, he explained that while high-grade potions could regrow a missing fingertip, a whole arm was out of the question.

That meant the knight commander got really lucky with that salamander.

“Well, if potions don’t work, do you need Healing Magic?” I had heard it was more effective.

“Yeah, supposedly,” the knight said. He wore an awkward expression and spoke hesitantly.

“Is there some kind of problem?”

“Well, you see, it’s difficult to recover missing limbs even with Healing Magic.”

According to him, the caster needed to be at least Level 8. The problem was that currently, there wasn’t anyone in the palace with Holy Magic above Level 6.

“Really?”

“There have never been that many mages who can use Holy Magic.”

There weren’t many mages in the first place, and even among them, their elemental affinities varied, and most types didn’t include Healing Magic. And of those, only mages with an affinity for Holy Magic could use Healing Magic powerful enough to regrow missing limbs. If elemental affinity varied that much, there really were only a small number of people who could help him.

“I’m just glad I was able to use a potion to stop the bleeding. If it weren’t for that, they would’ve had to cauterize it.”

It hurt just to imagine.

“Thanks for stopping by today. I’m glad I got to see you one last time,” he added.

“Huh? What do you mean last?”

“Once I can walk again, I’m quitting the Order and heading back home. There’s no way I can continue being a knight with a missing arm.”

It made sense, I guess, but I didn’t want to accept such a grim thing as truth. I stared at his arm, which had been cut off above his elbow. Thanks to the potion, the severed flesh had cleanly knit back together, and I couldn’t see any bone.

It was missing. Gone. And because of that one missing thing, I’d never be able to see him again.

If I remembered correctly, he was a commoner who had joined the Order after graduating from the Royal Academy. Once he left the Order, he’d go back to that distant life outside the palace and never again return. When I thought of that, my heart sank.

I gently touched his shoulder. He started in surprise.

“If…if you could have your arm back, would you want it?” I asked.

“Well, I…” His smile disappeared as his face scrunched up. Of course it did. No one would choose to lose an arm.

The regrowth of a missing limb required Level 8 Holy Magic. That meant I was more than able to do it.

But if I heal him, it’ll be hard to insist that I’m an ordinary person, I thought. If I didn’t know him personally, I might’ve just pretended I didn’t see anything and walked away. No…I’d probably end up healing anyone I saw who was in need, no matter who they were.

I had a feeling that even if I initially walked away, I’d end up going back to help them anyway.

My heart churned with an uneasy melancholy. I was such a coward.

I focused my magic into the palm of my hand that was touching his arm. I could adjust the degree of healing based on the amount of magic I gathered. Since I was regrowing an arm, I called up more than usual.

I prayed for him as I cast the spell. “Heal.”

As I spoke, the knight’s body was enveloped in a thin layer of pale light. A thick white mist gathered at the site of his missing limb and gradually took on the shape of an arm. The white of the mist slowly became one with the light enveloping his body, until color was the only difference between flesh and haze. Golden particles that reminded me of the glint of lamé shimmered out of the white, and for a few seconds the knight himself glowed. When the light receded, his left arm was once more whole.

For a moment, the knight gaped at his arm. Tentatively, he opened and closed the palm of his restored hand.

“Does anything feel weird?” I asked him, a bit worried because of how he just kept opening and closing his palm.

“No,” he said after a long moment.

I did it. Thank goodness. I smiled, happy that I was able to help him.

He stopped with the flexing and just kept staring at his hand. “Sei,” he said in a quiet voice.

“Yes?” I looked at him curiously.

He took me by surprise then, seizing both of my hands, which I had since settled on my lap. I let out a yelp, but he didn’t let go.

“Thank you.” The knight’s usual bright demeanor had gone oddly fragile; his brow was scrunched up, and he looked like he was about to cry as he thanked me.

“Uh, you’re welcome?” I felt a bit self-conscious and my voice went up by accident.

His shoulders sank, and he was back to his normal self. “Why are you asking that like it’s a question?”

“Um, I don’t know.”

Afterword

 

HELLO, it’s nice to meet you. My name is Yuka Tachibana.

Thank you so much for purchasing this book. I would like to use the afterword to make some special thank yous.

This book was published thanks to the following:

First, the website Let’s Be Novelists, where I published this novel. Without this site, I never would have been able to post my work publicly. A family member introduced me to it, and after reading all sorts of different stories, I was inspired to write as well, and one day, I began this novel.

Second, the readers of Let’s Be Novelists. I initially posted this story wondering if anyone would even bother to read it. I was so grateful that there were people who read it from the very first day it went up and that my novel even entered the top daily ranking at the end of a long break. All of your comments and ratings were incredibly encouraging. Thank you so much.

And then, approximately one month later, as I was slowly adding to the story, I got a message from an administrator at Let’s Be Novelists. It was titled: “Inquiry About Publishing Your Novel.” I had to do a double take because I thought I had read it wrong. I was on my way home from work at the time and wound up refreshing the browser on my phone three times to make sure it was real.

The message was sent by the third person I would like to thank: Editor W from Kadokawa Books. Editor W was incredibly helpful every step of the way to getting the book published. I am incredibly grateful to them. So much so, that I don’t have enough words in this afterword to thank them. Thank you so, so much.

The fourth person I would like to thank is Yasuyuki Syuri, the illustrator for the book. Thank you so much for the incredibly beautiful illustrations for my book. I adored the character designs and the cover artwork you came up with. I nearly skipped on the train home from work as I looked them over on my smartphone.

And last, I would like to thank all of you who purchased this book. Thank you so much for reading up until this point. I wrote this book hoping to heal the hearts of those who read it. I hope I managed to bring a little bit of warmth and joy into your daily lives.

There were many others who did an incredible amount of work to help get my novel published. I am so deeply grateful to you all. Thank you so much.