| Author: Kashiwagi Masato | Original Source: Syosetu | Word Count: 2581 characters |
| Translator: PunishedLyly | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 1211 words |
| Editor(s): Fire | ||
The next day, we immediately asked the maid to guide us to Ada’s room. As one would expect from a noble’s mansion, while the building itself is large, the amount of rooms is unbelievable. Ada even has her own private space separate from her bedroom. Without a guide, we’d probably get lost on the way.
For that reason, Urania and I split up and had a different maid guide her. Based on what a previous private tutor said, there was a time that she ran away and started a whole game of hide and seek using the whole mansion as a playing field; so to make sure that doesn’t happen again, we decided to have Urania remember the layout of the whole mansion.
「You aren’t… afraid of the young lady, are you?」
「Hm? Why should I be? She’s a bit cheeky, but it’s just cute.」
「I see, you’re strong enough to think that way… And we’ve arrived. Please take care of the young lady.」
The maid guiding me left those suggestive words and knocked on the door.
「Milady, Miss Lily is here.」
No reply. It’s just a door.1 Well, I’m pretty sure she’s only pretending to be away.
「The young lady is inside for sure. However…… Ahh, as I thought, it’s locked.」
It looks like the door is locked. Seems like she’s planning to just turtle up. I can’t say for other tutors, but I’m going to have to teach her that little tricks like these aren’t going to work against me.
「Can I try opening the door?」
「As long as you don’t break it, there should be no issue.」
「Understoo~d. Okay, “Unlock”.」
I quickly used “Unlock”, a magic that can open anything that has a lock. There are other ways I can use to go through the door, but I first decided to teach her that it’s meaningless to lock herself up.
「Wha-, wha-, wha-…」
「Oh, so you really are in. Ada, it’s important to reply you know?」
「Don’t just come inside!」
「Whoop, what? Are we playing brawler first?2」
As I easily unlocked the door and entered inside, Ada suddenly came punching. While I’m just as strong as I look when not in Succubus mode, there’s no way that I’d lose against Ada who’s currently a little girl. She occasionally throws some pretty sharp punches, so I’m sure that she has a talent for this too, but she naturally doesn’t land a clean hit on me as I avoided them all.
「Haah… Haah… Haah…」
「Hm? Are we done now?」
After playing along with her for about 30 minutes, it seems like Ada has reached her limit and is now just glaring at me as her shoulders rise and fall with her heavy breathing. I’m not really into bullying little girls, so I cast “Heal” on her to help her recover stamina.
「You, what’s with you!」
「I’m just a regular D-rank adventurer, though?」
「No! Not that! What do you want!?」
Probably unhappy with my reply, she stamps her feet, points her finger at me, and asks me once again.
「Let’s see. First, I’m here to make you learn that there’s always someone better than you. The request we have said that we should teach you, but honestly there’s nothing much I can teach, you see? So in the meantime, I guess we’ll be playing together.」
Saying so, I flashed her a broad smile. It’s a pretty charming smile if I say so myself, or so I thought, but Ada’s face turned pale, as though she just saw something terrifying. I know it’s too late to say this, but isn’t she just rude?
After that, I toyed non-stop with Ada as she’s raising hell, cast “heal” on her when she runs out of stamina, and played together until she got tired. However, I’m probably the only one here considering this as us playing together, Ada might actually be desperately doing everything to escape from me.
Still, I think it’s fine anyway. After all, I still know nothing about Ada and she doesn’t know anything about me yet either. As we are now, it’s pretty much impossible to compromise and meet up halfway, so even if it’s a bit forceful, I want to start from us getting to know each other.
「Ho, ho, ho. I haven’t seen her have a quiet breakfast like that in these recent times.」
「Haha, maybe I messed around with her a bit too much.」
Having exhausted a lot of her energy this morning, Ada finished her breakfast quickly and shut herself in her bedroom. She’s still 8 years old, having good naps is pretty important during this period. In the meantime, I guess I should only play with her in the morning and let her do as she likes in the afternoon during these three days.
Just to be sure, I already told her that she can visit our room if she feels like playing, or she can just ask the maid to tell me too, but it’ll probably take some time for me to get called in the afternoon.
「Then, how was it?」
「Not sure, I still haven’t seen her magic yet after all. Though, at this rate, I have a hunch that it’ll happen during the third day.」
Even during this morning and yesterday’s dinner, Ada didn’t actually use magic. I’ve been using it pretty frequently, but those weren’t really anything special, everything I did can be replicated by magic tools.
The skirmishes ended with my victory, but we’re still getting started. I’m sure that she’ll have prepared herself against me from tomorrow on.
◆◇◆◇◆
That night, while sucking life essence3 on the bed, we reported to each other what happened today.
「Lily, there’s something a bit bad.」
「What’s wrong?」
「There are people monitoring the mansion.」
Since Urania spent the whole day looking around most of the mansion, she seems to be roughly familiar with the layout of the area. It looks like she observed a few suspicious presences during that time. These presences only appeared for an instant and usually people would probably just think of it as a mere coincidence, but they couldn’t escape Urania’s sense of smell.4 She said that there were about 4-5 people monitoring at all times.
It’s not definite if they’re targeting the Sage of Leo, his parents, or his daughter Ada. It’s probably not us of all people, but the fact that we’re being observed is a bit unpleasant.
If I track their life essence, I should be able to know where they are, but since it seems like there are people taking turns, the other party might be an organization with quite the amount of personnel. We should ask old man Kent’s decision on whether we eliminate them or not, maybe they’re already aware of these people too.
I thought that it would be fine to just focus on Ada, but it seems like this request is smelling a bit fishy now.
