I wondered what kind of place the ladies had chosen for the honeymoon.
Falling slowly into thought, I tried to consider each of their preferences.
First of all, Elga. Elga liked wide-open spaces where you could take in the whole view at once, so she’d probably choose a plain or a adow.
Second were the Draco sisters.
The eldest, Mirna, would likely choose a mountain with good water and air for peace of mind. The younger, Nare, might prefer the ocean, where the horizon and the sea line stretched endlessly in parallel.
Professor Stella... would probably say anywhere was fine. She was an adventurer who had been to many places, so she’d probably like wherever.
As for Ayra, she might have picked a city where people live, rather than sowhere natural. She doesn’t seem like it, but Ayra secretly likes people—so maybe she chose a big city full of life.
Bringing all of their preferences together and choosing a destination that satisfied everyone must have taken so pretty intense discussions.
If—
If no firm decision had been made about the honeymoon destination, I wanted to give my opinion too. Of course, it might not have mountains, oceans, or adows like the ones they preferred.
“I’d like to visit my hotown.”
At the very least, I hoped they’d respond favorably to my words. Elga was the first to react.
“Teo, your hotown? Where was it again?”
Mirna also added a comnt.
“Co to think of it, I don’t recall ever hearing about Lord Teo’s hotown. I believe you said you were raised in a monastery run by the Church...”
They seed interested in hearing about where I ca from. As if she knew sothing, Stella lightly brushed her palm over my head.
“If it’s your hotown, then is it that forest beyond the barrier? The one where the giant centipedes ca out?”
Stella must have thought I was raised in the witches’ forest beyond the barrier.
It made sense. My mother, the nymph Beatrice, lived beyond the barrier, and at that ti, Isaiah also resided in that dark forest. So she assud as much.
Nare gasped in shock.
“You lived beyond the barrier, Teo? No way. How could anyone live there?”
Her reaction was perfectly natural.
Beyond the barrier was crawling with monsters and filled with abandoned traps from warti. A place where even a grown man would struggle to survive, let alone a soft half-fairy like .
Mirna asked,
“There’s no way a Church monastery could exist beyond the barrier... Lord Teo, was it a lie that you were raised in a Church facility?”
Along with curiosity, there was a hint of disappointnt in Mirna’s voice. Perhaps it hurt her to think I might’ve lied to her.
I needed to clear this up.
“It’s true that I wasn’t raised in an official Church facility. But it was a religious orphanage. Whether you’d say it was beyond the barrier or not...”
The explanation was complicated.
How was I supposed to explain to them that there was another world entirely—one without magic or sorcery—where I grew up and beca an adult?
Shff.
At that mont, Ayra spoke.
“Teo, I think this is the first ti you’ve talked about your past. I didn’t even know your hotown was beyond the barrier. It’s an intriguing thing.”
She humd softly and then nodded, as if sothing had clicked for her.
“Co to think of it, it’s not uncommon for criminals or those who committed heinous acts to cross the wall to escape punishnt. Maybe Teo grew up in one of those places.”
“In one of those places? Ayra, do you know sothing?”
At Elga’s question, Ayra t my eyes.
“I’ve only heard the rumors, but they say people who fled beyond the barrier gathered together and created a village sowhere. I’ve heard such a place exists.”
A village of fugitives. As if she knew sothing about that, Elga shrugged her shoulders.
“I’ve heard that too. But isn’t it just an urban legend? Like a duck-raccoon thing. Sounds plausible, but it’s just a cryptid.”
Sothing felt off, so I asked,
“Duck-raccoons don’t exist?”
“What? What kind of question is that...”
At that, the ladies’ faces all lit up with bizarre expressions.
I’d seen this kind of look before. It was the sa look teachers gave when little kids asked them, “Is Santa Claus real?”
Elga said,
“Duck-raccoons are imaginary creatures. How would a duck and a raccoon even rge together? Teo, you’re kind of weird sotis, you know that?”
“......”
There are chipmunks, and wolf-spiders... why wouldn’t there be a duck-raccoon? This is a world where dragons and wyverns and unicorns all exist.
It really drove ho the fact that their common sense and mine were completely different. So I boldly told the ladies,
“In the place I lived, they existed. Duck-raccoons. If you co with to my hotown, I might even be able to show you so.”
Elga furrowed her brow hard.
“What kind of absurd lie is that? You didn’t need to say stuff like that. If you’d just bowed your head and asked nicely, we were all ready to go with you to your hotown.”
I suddenly imagined myself taking all of my wives to a 21st-century zoo.
It felt like such a fun and joyful image that I couldn’t help but smile.
***
I kept thinking I could sll wet earth, and sure enough, it began to rain in the afternoon.
It was a sudden downpour—completely unannounced—so we were nearly soaked. Even Basago’s forecast magic hadn’t ntioned rain.
If not for the sensitive senses of a fairy, the brand-new dresses we’d bought would’ve all gotten drenched. While we waited under the overhang of a nearby store, Stella said,
“If it weren’t for Teo, we’d all be soaked. It’s actually raining—pouring, even. What kind of autumn rain is this?”
Angmar’s four seasons were quite distinct. Compared to where I ca from, the climate was similar. If I had to na a ti of year where this kind of heavy rain might happen, I’d say sumr—monsoon season or a typhoon.
So a sudden downpour like this, right in the middle of autumn, was understandably strange—just as Stella had said.
It didn’t seem like it was going to be a short shower, either.
Shff. That’s when Nare reached her hand out past the eaves.
“Looks like it’s magic rain!”
Magic rain? Even after living in this world for over two years, there was still so much I didn’t know. When I asked, “What’s magic rain?” Nare explained easily.
“When it rains like this, all of a sudden, we call it magic rain. It ans soone summoned the rain with magic. There’s no other explanation, right?”
She had a point.
Maybe soone was summoning the rain. And if they could create rainfall over such a wide area, they’d need to be pretty powerful.
Ayra shook her head.
“It’s not magic. This is just rain.”
Nare, sounding disappointed, muttered, “Not magic rain? My childhood wonder’s broken...”
But Ayra simply opened her palm and caught a few raindrops in it, speaking softly,
“It’s not magic, but that’s what makes it even more romantic. Because it’s unpredictable, life becos full of richer colors.”
“Huh... When you put it like that, I guess I kind of get it!”
Nare and Ayra were surprisingly sensitive to such things. anwhile, Elga furrowed her brow and muttered like all this poetic talk was a waste of ti.
“So what now? How are we getting back? Sharing an umbrella like this is just awkward. Shouldn’t we call soone? Or a carriage?”
Elga had a point. How were we all going to get back? We could call a carriage easily enough, but would the horses be able to run in this kind of downpour?
Mirna asked,
“Don’t we have mana shields? Couldn’t we just cast a barrier around us and keep the rain off?”
That was a good idea. But Ayra shook her head.
“Relying on magic for everything isn’t good. When the ti cos that you can’t use magic, you’ll be lost.”
A fair point. I was honestly surprised Ayra had such philosophical thoughts.
Co to think of it—back when we were in the Ark, there was that ti a huge rainstorm hit and Ayra stayed with in an old hut overnight.
She could’ve used magic to get us back to the dorm, but she hadn’t. I hadn’t understood why at the ti, but now I realized it was part of her philosophy.
“Let’s head inside. The carriage will arrive soon enough.”
Just as everyone began filing back into the store at Ayra’s suggestion—
“Then, would you like to try this instead?”
It was the perfect mont.
I reached into my inventory, 《Squirrel Storage》, and pulled out a rug. You could describe it as a rolled-up carpet.
“What’s that?”
Naturally, curious Nare was the first to take interest. I spread the carpet out on the store floor in front of her.
“A magic circle?”
Whose question was that? Stella? If it was Stella, I’d give her five points for observation.
I explained.
“This is a carpet magic circle that the imps worked hard to weave. What this circle does is—it opens a passage to another place where an identical magic circle exists.”
Shff.
Ayra knelt down on one knee and ran her palm gently across the carpet.
“A more portable, practical version of the dinsional gates installed in the palace or the Ark. Impressive. I don’t think I could make sothing like this myself.”
That Ayra would praise soone else was so rare that Elga asked,
“You an you can’t make sothing like that?”
“I’m a combat mage. But Teo is more specialized in manipulation than in direct battle. I’m like a greatsword, and Teo is like a pair of scissors. We have different specialties.”
Ayra’s analogy was quite accurate. In combat, she honestly outclassed . That was her talent—her aptitude.
But I’d beaten Ayra’s greatsword with my scissors. Looking back, I couldn’t believe how reckless I’d been.
Shff.
Ayra kept running her hand across the carpet.
“Teo, your spatial manipulation has already reached an unmatched level. But this... it still feels incomplete. This is an unfinished spell.”
Different specialty or not, as a highly skilled mage, Ayra had instantly recognized that this magic circle was unfinished. Elga frowned deeply.
“You want to step onto an unfinished space magic? No thanks. Don’t you know how many horror stories there are about that? People ending up with just their upper or lower half teleported? It’s insane.”
I knew those stories well. That’s why I was terrified ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) the first ti I stepped onto Solomon’s magic circle. But there was sothing I had to clarify.
“Lady Elga, please don’t compare to those kinds of mages. This magic circle is called ‘unfinished’ only because it uses a wormhole-type system that relies on coordinates to—”
“I don’t get a single word of that.”
“...Basically, it’s safe. The only reason it’s incomplete is because it still requires a fixed ‘hole’ as a dium. One day, my goal is—”
Actually, there was no point explaining all this.
I stepped onto the carpet and said,
“Everyone, get on. We’ll go straight to my office at the palace. It’ll feel different from the old magic circles.”
The noble ladies hesitated a bit, then stepped onto the carpet. Only Elga remained. She still seed wary of this unfinished magic.
“I’ll just walk.”
“You can, but you’ll get drenched. You might catch a cold.”
“......”
Elga hesitated.
Then, finally, she placed the tips of her toes on the carpet.
With that, I clapped once.
“Open, gate of dinsions.”
And at last, with a strange sensation of being lifted from below, light flashed beneath us.
“......”
When I opened my eyes, the space before wasn’t my office... nor the multicolored hair of the noble ladies.
It was a strange place.
A large and unfamiliar room. Or—looking closer—sothing oddly familiar.
Where was this?
Had the magic failed?
I slowly raised myself and looked around. There was a desk, chairs, a wardrobe, beds. But what caught my attention the most—
Was the window.
“The window...”
One step.
Two steps.
As if drawn by sothing, I approached the window.
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