Fairy Tale Chronicles

Volume 4 Chapter 4.1

Translator: Reflet

Editor: Weasalopes

Hiroshi, who had gone off to Darl, had yet to come back on that day.

「I wonder what they forced Hiroshi-kun to do……?」

「Sensei’s weak to pressure when he’s by himself.」

Hiroshi was probably being forced to do something that took a lot of time and effort. While concerned about all that, the group continued preparations for the dungeon crawl at a brisk pace.

「Well, regardless of what they pushed on him, if this involves Igreos-sama, Her Highness, and Magdarena-sama, then he can’t be dealing with anything too dangerous.」

「I’m not concerned about that, but Hiroshi-kun is like a ticking time bomb wherever he goes……」

「Elle’s supposedly with him, so I’m sure she’ll keep him in check.」

Hiroshi’s gynophobia went very deep, given its origins. This sometimes caused him to relive trauma unexpectedly, and Haruna was especially concerned that he was with the queen of Darl, who had the tendency to tread in that area on purpose. As Tatsuya said, it was a good bonus to have Aearis with him, but the tug of war between Aearis’ spiritual insight and the queen’s mischievous nature would probably actually lead Hiroshi’s symptoms into a worse state, and that made her very scared.

「Worrying about it right now won’t help Hiro’s situation. Let’s do what we set out to do.」

「Exactly. If we get advanced materials and hand them to him, I’m telling you some of that trauma will blow away!」

Knowing very well what Haruna was worried about, and understanding it wasn’t something to be taken so lightly usually, Tatsuya and Makoto said slightly lighthearted things in order to comfort Haruna. The main problem right now was that it was too much for Tatsuya’s group to meet up with Hiroshi time-wise, and even if they were able to, by that point Hiroshi would probably be almost done with everything. They were just far too late for that.

「Anyhow, time to get planning. Makoto, sorry, but I’d like you to be the tank.」

「Yeah, yeah, I got it. But just know that I’m not anywhere at Hiroshi’s level, so I’m going to protect myself a good amount too.」

「Right on.」

Makoto said matter-of-factly, and Tatsuya and the others nodded with serious faces. In the first place, Hiroshi was just abnormal. When attacked from behind, it was almost as if he had eyes on the back of his head that allowed him to capture the target without fail. Usually back attacks or interruptions from patrolling monsters, sudden appearances of monsters in dungeons were difficult situations for tanks to deal with, so it was normal for healers or damage dealers to have some ways of defending themselves. Also, usually the front had at least two people as an established practice so as to guard the healers/dps with lightning speed.

「I do happen to have lanterns and mana lights, but what will we use first?」

「It’s scary dealing with flammable gas, dust explosions, etc, so other than areas that cancel mana, we should stick to mana lights.」

「Okay. I also prepared something for lunch, but how far exactly will we be going?」

「Aqua breath lots at least six hours, right? So probably somewhere around there, I think.」

Makoto and Haruna continued checking basic preparations, including food. This will have been the second time they went head-on into a life-threatening dungeon. The investigation of the dungeon’s specifications the other day was in an area where even normies wouldn’t die from one hit (as long as they had equipment on and weren’t hit in the vitals like the neck area), with essentially weak monsters and that was it. With their equipment, their lives would never have been in danger.

The other dungeon besides Crest Cave and Ortem was Darl’s underground ruins, but said “ruins” were simply an amusement facility, so it was difficult to group it in with the dungeon attacks.

「No other things we missed, right?」

「I don’t think so. Normally I’d say transportation stones, but unlike the game, the dungeons over here just reject special transportation stones or special transportation magic.」

「That part is a drag, isn’t it.」

That was probably the most fatal difference between the game and the world: whether you could teleport or not. In the game, even if it was impossible to teleport inside from outside, you could go from inside to outside. However, in this world, you could not go from outside to inside or from inside to outside. You could only really teleport within the dungeon itself, and unless you were an octogal, there was no guarantee that you could perfectly avoid being “trapped in a rock”, so ti was ba to overuse it, and if you were going to use it, it would most likely be for short distance teleportation to an area in your field of vision.

It was a bit strange when you realized that the enchantment effects of Share Capacity weren’t cancelled, but any sort of teleportation was completely cut off. Still, that sort of specification was set, and they could do nothing about it.

「Do we have a good amount of pome in storage?」

「Lately, we haven’t used it for food or explosive power, so we’re good.」

And as per usual, Haruna made a comment based off her apprehension of using pome for food, while Tatsuya nodded and determined that everything was prepared. After checking luggage once more, Tatsuya announced departure.

「Now that it looks like we have everything we need, guess it’s time to go inspecting.」

Nodding at Tatsuya;s declaration, the group checked to make sure everything was locked before leaving. This was a light dungeon search without a main tank. This easy job, which everyone had slight premonitions about upcoming trouble, began with the usual flow of events.

「C’mon, this is ridiculous……」

Hiroshi grumbled for many reasons as he repaired the temple’s treasure house. Right now, in front of him, was a wrecked stone building. How on earth did it get this way?

「I’m terribly sorry about this.」

「So how’d it even get like this?」

「Maybe it’s because Darl’s feng shui has been greatly cleansed, but yesterday shortly before noon, all of a sudden a fragment wedged into Zanafel began to rampage. And then as we detached it to clean it, the other sealed fragment began to resonate with the first piece and began running amok as well. Since the feng shui cleansing began a ways back, I was careless and fell behind.」

「S’that right……」

Apparently what Hiroshi’s group did wasn’t entirely unrelated to this. Still, no matter the reason, he needed to thoroughly repair the building before anything. As he grumbled about doing all this large-scale repair by himself, Hiroshi’s hands and body had already repaired the most urgent spots before you even realized it in the matter of a few seconds.

Furthermore, as to what Hiroshi and the others had been doing before noon yesterday, it was tending to a young daughter of nobility who had yet to reach one year of age. Magdalena and a few other high-ranking members of society asked him to do this. The treatment itself ended within thirty minutes, but Hiroshi had been forced to stay for a medical follow-up until around 3.

The illness itself was not an uncommon one in Farlane or Forre, transmitted from mother to child at a young age. As long as neither your luck nor the way people tried to heal you were bad, then you would almost never die from it. It only emerged in infants and was one of the types that never manifested again, one of the easier diseases to catch as a child and with common symptoms.

Farlane would likely have dealt with it without calling Hiroshi over. However, as there were hardly any emergences of this sickness in Darl, the doctors at the imperial court didn’t know how to deal with it, and had no medicinal herbs to work on specifically rare diseases like these. As a result, the court had no idea what to do, so they conveniently asked for Hiroshi’s help right when he came by.

As she exhibited symptoms yesterday morning, Hiroshi had arrived before anything worsened, but had he missed the timing, they would have possibly resorted to calling over a doctor from Farlane, and you could imagine how much of an uproar that would cause. Considering how Hiroshi might have walked off before Igreos temple’s evil god fragment went on its rampage, it was perfect timing for everyone other than Hiroshi, who had to deal with all this.To Hiroshi, who had many heavy responsibilities forced on him, this really wasn’t something he took kindly to.

Also, Aearis was currently in Darl Castle. She had gone to check on the young girl’s well-being. Although Aearis herself had not showed symptoms, as priestess princess she had heard plenty of stories about this illness. Among these were cases of people dying without the specific cure, or living with slight impairments, so despite knowing it would be all right, she just had to make sure.

「But for the rampage of an evil god fragment, there weren’t many casualties, huh?」

「Nay, of course I am not so decrepit that I would allow such a large rampage. The reason I fell behind in dealing with it was because of the scale of this problem.」

「I see」

As he continued the repair process, Hiroshi gathered whatever information he could from Igreos. As expected, repairing this without any proper information was not good enough considering how the treasure house was a bit too damaged to overlook.