Translator: P411

Editor: Lilia

Read at Watashi wa Sugoi Desu!

Chapter 173 – We Were Seen…

Two weeks until winter break.

During these two weeks, I went to school, exchanged information with Yuuta as usual, and took the test again. Looking at my report card, my hope and despair fluctuated wildly. I also logged into the game and worked hard to raise both my job levels, and I also occasionally went to the gate for a short break. Finally, winter break starts tomorrow.

Both my jobs went up to one level each. I opened Sara-san’s alchemy recipe for the first time in a while and quite a lot of materials in the list appeared, so I had a fun time with alchemy. 

I was a little excited to find out that I could use Taruar grass’s panacean property for alchemy. But I couldn’t work on alchemy at the moment as I hadn’t collected most of the materials, and the later pages were mostly empty. What a pity! Most of the materials needed were not collected and the pages at the back were mostly empty. Some of the herbs listed were [ Panacea ], [ Bugweed: Madness ], and [ Bugweed: Vigor ]. I could only think that something amazing could be made. 

There were also [ Holy Water ] and [ Snowforest Bark ] down the list, and I couldn’t imagine what kind of amazing alchemical materials would have been in the empty lists and what could be made from them.

I guessed that, unless I went to the elf’s village, the collections wouldn’t be filled up. And there were still all the unknown materials beyond Sette. Should I just change my main job to alchemist for a while and collect alchemy material drops from enemies?

I casually opened the book cover and looked down at the first page. The ‘Rook’ Sara-san’s message referred to was probably a metaphor for Sage-san. 

‘I leave this behind to help Rook’ – I realized that these words carried a deep meaning. It carried a warning message to not use alchemy in the wrong way, but it might also be Sara-san’s wish to use alchemy correctly to help Sage-san.

I closed the cover and quickly put it away in my inventory.

Yuuta also told me that he was raising levels to fight with the demon king, didn’t he?

He’s amazing. When Sage-san went to save Sara-san, Yuuta would likely go with him. I was a bit jealous. But since I couldn’t fight, I would work on my support role. I’ll do my best in alchemy. But to do that, I needed to go to the elf village and collect materials, but then again, I still had to raise my levels… Ah, that also meant I needed to improve my skills. I had my priorities wrong… also, I wanted someone to teach me some kind of attack-type summoning magic. I was in dire need of one.

My schedule for tomorrow was to go to Vil-san’s in the morning to do my maintenance part-time job and make meals, then go home, log in, and discuss the planned trip in the evening. After sorting out the schedule in my head, I logged out.

“Good morning.”

When I went to Vil-san’s office at 9 in the morning, Vil-san and Sakuma-san were already working with their gears on. When Vil-san noticed my presence, he raised one hand and turned to me with his gear still on.

“Good morning, Kengo. I know you just arrived, but could you log in and go to the stone statue? Higurashi should be preparing fire liquor and sending them to your place.”

“Ah, yes. I mean, Higurashi-san is capable enough to go to the frontier region.”

“He is half-invested in this, so he’s free to move around inside on his days off. That’s why it’s easy for me to ask him to do things here and there.”

I see.

I set up the cot but suddenly remembered. Come to think of it, I hadn’t gone to the Adventurer’s Guild to pick up the fire liquor that Yuuta sent me. How long had it been?

“Vil-san, will fire liquor from Higurashi-san be delivered to the adventurer’s guild?”

“Yeah. He told me. I’m sorry, but could you also drop by the guild?”

“Sure,” I answered. I planned to finish my own business while I was at it. It had been a while since I had been to the adventurer’s guild. I planned to entrust Emily-san with the recipe for the dispel high potion, but she seemed so busy that I hadn’t caught sight of her. Since I had already entrusted it to Crash, I wondered if he could pass it on to Emily-san too.

I entered my ID into Vil-san’s gear, put it on, and lay down on the cot.

“Ah, that’s right! Please don’t mind me if I happen to use a strange magic spell.”

When I’d advised ahead of time that I would use transfer magic to head there, Vil-san turned to me and grinned.

“That would be quite interesting. By all means, please use it. You seem to have a few tricks up your sleeves, so it’s quite fun to watch.  Are you taking my brother with you too?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, seemingly in a rather good mood, and returned to his gaze to the monitor. I guessed he wanted to see Vidello-san, as he was a big brother.

This time, I logged in and got up in my usual back room. I sorted out my inventory and looked at Vil-san’s avatar, which was lying behind the screen. 

“What are you going to do with this avatar? Haven’t you logged in since then?”

I asked while looking at his avatar, and then a message arrived.

“I tried logging in once the other day, but I had to log out right away.”

“Eh? Did something happen?”

“No, no, I just saw you and my brother go into the bedroom, so I panicked, knowing it was bad timing to log in. But you still have age restrictions on you here, right? Once you’re over 18, the restriction will be lifted, so be patient until then. This should also be a test for my brother’s patience, hahahaha.”

A groan escaped the moment I received those messages.

Eh, that, at that time, Vil-san was logged in?!

I only checked at the screen so I didn’t notice at all…!

I felt that even the expressionless avatar of Vil-san was laughing at me. I was so embarrassed to the point that I fled frantically to a corner so he couldn’t see me.

This situation might look amusing in his eyes. He was having a good laugh knowing that his brother would not be able to have a fun time with me for half a year… A big brother was indeed scary.

I left my workshop wearing my robe, and as I was putting on the hood, the bird flew in out of nowhere.

It perched on my shoulder and chirped.

“Next time I log in, I’ll send you a message beforehand.”

“If you could, that would be very helpful,” I answered, strongly emphasizing every word. If someone knocked on the door while we were in the middle of it… Yeah, let’s not think about it.

I cleared my mind and headed to the Adventurers’ Guild.

I felt like the guild was quite crowded today. It might be because of a group of high schoolers on winter break logging in at the same time. When I quickly checked my active friend list, Yuuta and the others were already on it.

I pushed my way through the crowd to the back counter. It was quite a relief that the reception desk for accepting quests was different from the one for deliveries. Quite some time had passed while queuing.

“Welcome.”

I asked the smiling staff member if there were any packages addressed to me. He replied, “Please wait a bit,” and disappeared into the back room.

A while later, he returned with a large package in his hand. Wow, that looked heavy.

He put the wooden crate on the counter and told me that there was another one so please wait a bit, and went back.

Erm, this must be the fire liquor. Just how many bottles were in it? Were these from Yuuta? Or from Akakatabami-san?

As I waited, the staff member brought another identical crate and placed it next to the first one.

“This crate is from Takahashi-sama and this one is from Akakatabami-sama. Can you carry them?”

“Ah, it’s okay.”

It’s probably impossible for me to lift them, so I used my inventory. The moment I touched the crate, it was sucked into the bag, and the inventory showed 20 bottles of fire liquor. Another crate was touched the same way and now a total of 40 bottles were in my inventory.

“And Mac-sama, there’s a message for you. If you have a moment, please come to the private office.” 

It was an unexpected invite from Emily-san. Oh, but today’s schedule was Jhal Gar-san’s cave.

“Whenever Kengo has time, I don’t mind adjusting my schedule a bit.”

I received kind words of understanding from her.

But my actions were currently being monitored.

“I’m sorry, but I’ll come back again later, so can I ask you to guide me to the room next time? I’d like to finish what I had planned for today first.”

“I see… But she will be away for a bit in the afternoon, so the next available time will be two days later.”

“Two days later…? That, I can’t come at that time.”

“If that’s the case, now would be the best time, so by all means. We’re strictly told that if you happen to stop by, we have to reach out to you, so please.”

“…Okay.”

If we passed by each other here, we wouldn’t know when we’ll meet again. Without making a sound, I typed a message to Vil-san.

“I’m going to go to the hero’s place for a bit now. I’m sorry to do this while I’m working for you, but could you cut off the monitoring video and audio?”

It would be a bit risky to have my conversation with Emily-san heard even if the person was Vil-san, but when I made the request, a message immediately came.

“Understood. I’ll turn them both off. The messaging function is still on, so send me a message when you’re done. When the bird closes its eyes, it means that monitoring is turned off, so you can start the conversation.”

“Thank you and sorry for the trouble.”

When I thanked him, the staff member in front of me replied that he didn’t mind it. Oh, did I say that out loud?

I was directed to the back door and proceeded to a room I had been in before. When I looked at the bird on my shoulder, it had closed its eyes already in a sleeping position which looked round and cute.

When I reached the front of Emily-san’s room, I knocked on the door. I heard a voice telling me to come in, so I gently opened the door and entered. “Mac!” Emily-san called out to me with a bright smile and stood up from her seat.

The people around her quickly left the room. Just as the last person closed the door, a magic circle appeared on the door and then suddenly disappeared. This might be some kind of soundproof magic. I could only read about half of the text before it disappeared.

“I’m sorry that I called you so quickly. I was a little anxious because you rarely show your face around here. I have to visit all the guild buildings this afternoon.”

“No, I’m also sorry that I didn’t show up here at all. I’ve been holed up in my workshop.”

“Come on in. I’ll make you some tea.”

Emily-san was about to head to the back to brew some tea, so I stopped her in a hurry.

It would indeed be a disaster if another bitter tea was served again, but I could never say it out loud.

“I happened to have some interesting tea, so would you like to have it together with me?”

“Oh, an interesting tea? I’d like to have a cup of it.”

Showing a bright smile similar to Crash, Emily-san sat back down. I also sat down in front of her and took out [ Holy Water (Rare) ] Moonlight Herb version from my inventory. I poured this hot tea into the cup. If I wasn’t careful enough, it might spill.

“It’s a holy water tea. I brewed it with water made from magic and applied [ Prayer ] to it. Please try it.” 

After hearing my explanation, Emily-san was frozen still. A surprised expression on her face told me that such a thing didn’t exist in this world. I knew it.