Chapter 47 of “I, A Commoner, Was Actually Reincarnated Part 2”
This is Cross Island. Mandrake, who is the caretaker of the Mandragora plantation, brought me here with Selvado-san. I’m spending a few days of vacation here on the Cross Island after finishing my work with the Magic Division at the Count of Chevali.
I was able to come here together with Zak on his vacation. Whenever I return to Shion Castle after the work is over, I always jump like a child and say ‘I’m home’ to Zak, so this time I was going to be more ladylike, but I still jumped like a woman. I wanted to make him feel like I was more grown up, but I couldn’t.
Today, Zak said he had something to do on the Cross Island, so he is working separately from me. I had a lot of things to discuss with him before I came here, so we talked about them when we both had some time to spare after the work of the Magic Division was over.
Maybe that’s why I was able to do the work that needed to be done by Zak at the Cross Island. I’m sorry, it’s a day off…
***
“What is it? What’s going on? What? You can’t hold your head up! Ah, miss, miss, please help me!”
Mandrake was flapping his arms and legs as Selvado-san grabbed him by the leaves of his head and lifted him up.
I was with him, and didn’t know what he was going to do to Mandrake, so I watched the situation in silence without speaking to Mandrake, though I was sorry for him. He came at me so desperately for help that I couldn’t help but look away.
Mandrake has a certain cuteness that makes me want to play with him, doesn’t he?
But it couldn’t be helped. I was asking Selvado-san for a favor about a certain case, and he told me that he had found out something about it, and when I went to see him on Akaino, he brought me to Mandrake’s place. It probably had something to do with Mandrake.
I was carried by Akaino and since he was a black dragon, Selvado-san flew in himself. He was a dragon man with strong magical powers and could take on the form of a person or a huge, beautiful, black dragon. I had seen that dragon body many times already, so I was pretty familiar with it, but the first time I saw it, I could only stare wordlessly at its size and its shimmering, stunning black scales.
When a fire-eating dragon becomes its dragon body, it becomes a majestic and beautiful giant with magnificent red scales, completely different from the chubby cuteness of the red bird. The black dragon was even larger than that, and there was something wild and awe-inspiring about his appearance.
I don’t know what kind of magic he uses when he turns from a man to a dragon, or from a dragon to a man, but the clothes he was wearing were automatically put on by automatic storage. It’s a mystery. But it makes sense because I wouldn’t want my clothes to be ruined every time I turned into a dragon, or to be completely naked when I turned back into a person.
Besides, it is said that Selvado-san is not from this world. I heard that he crossed over from another world.
“Well, you asked me to look into it, so I have. I don’t know why the date palm is the only one you’ve taken care of, but it seems to enhance the magical power of people who eat it for a while. What did you do to it? Do you remember doing anything?”
The mandrake he lifted is zipped up, and Selvado-san is gazing at him with his face close to it.
“Ah, please stop! Selvado-san, my precious leaves are hurting! Don’t do it, you can’t!”
“That’s why I’m asking. What did you do? Did you do something different from everyone else?”
“I didn’t do anything! I’m not doing anything, I’m not doing it! Just like on the Mandragora farm, we just gave them plenty of nutrition!”
“Nutrition???”
“It’s just nutrition, sir. I haven’t done anything unusual!”
I had taken dates with me when I was working with the Magic Division the other day, and the five of us who ate them (myself included) all had our magic power amplified after we ate them.
In order to confirm the reason for the amplification, the next day, the five of us ate the dates again and tried out our magic in that cleared area of the Chevali estate, and we concluded that the magic power was still increasing.
Food that increases magic power when you eat is is like a dream in Elementia, where magic power is available. I had never heard of something like this before.
The cleared area we were practicing in was still surrounded by a barrier, so there was no concern that anyone would see it.
As for the dates, the other four have all kept quiet about it. They all knew that the Duke of Valmonter was my fiancé, and since they were grown in his territory, the Cross Island, they made it a priority for me to consult with him to find out for now.
Normally this would be a matter of great excitement, but since the Duke of Valmonter was the general commander of the magical division, Wilt-san said it would be better to keep it quiet for now.
I even heard him say that if we were worried about leaking the contents, he didn’t mind signing a magic contract with us, so I asked him to let me contact him again at a later date. I didn’t know what was going on either.
So I asked Selvado-san to help find out how and what happened with those dates. The reason I asked Selvado-san to do this was because Zak recommended that I ask him, and he had helped me.
By the way, it doesn’t seem to matter if non-humans eat these dates. It seems that anyone receives the effect as long the person eating them has magic power..
I still don’t know what happens if a person who doesn’t have magic power eats them, but if it can make them use magic power for a certain amount of time, there will be a huge commotion. Although, that didn’t necessarily mean that those who ate it and had their magic power amplified wouldn’t have side effects. I was worried about that as well.
The dates I brought with me on that expedition were trial dates for the newly arrived portion from the Cross Island, so it seemed that I soon found out which fields the dates were grown in. It was the dates from the field that Mandrake was in charge of.
Mandrake had panicked because of the grabbing of his leaf head and was flailing around trying to get away. But to Selvado-san, it looked like nothing more than a bug buzzing around.
In the meantime, Selvado’s friends began to gather around him. They all looked very interested.
“Yeah, you guys are fine, just go play somewhere. Interrogation, you know? I have to do it.”
Hearing this, the dragons in their red bird forms hurriedly brought an old wooden chair and a rope from somewhere. They looked like they were having fun.
“““Gyupi, gyupi, gyupi”””
“What? Hmm, we can use it? You’re very clever.”
Selvado-san, who chuckled, flippantly tied the mandrake to the chair for now.
“Please stop, don’t be so violent, you mustn’t.”
“Hmmm, I need some catnip grass.”
I got a red catnip plant from an old friend of mine. The catnip plant on the island looks like a normal catnip, but it’s surrounded by a red fuzz and is around two to five times as big, depending on how it is grown.
The island’s “non-humans” seem to play with them by attaching it to their hips like a tail, or cutting it into small pieces and attaching it to their heads like ears, so I tried playing with it myself.
I chose a big piece of catnip grass and hung it on the back of my skirt at the core of my belt like a tail, and on my head I stuck it in a loop made of stems like a hanging rabbit’s ear and wore it well.
Then I got carried away and showed it to Zak, and he said with a blank expression, “Yeah…well, it looks like an animal.” I felt like my ears turned red. It was so strange that maybe he was holding back a laugh…I was reflecting.
The catnip is actually a weed called Enochoron grass in Elementia, which is a member of the rice family. It was very similar to the ones in my previous life. I had always liked the subtle similarity of the name. (***T/N: It’s not noticeable ini english, but the word ‘enochoron’ sounds kind of similar to the word for the catnip plant in japanese)
The sight of Akaino adding the catnip grass to his beak and handing it to Selvado-san was also very cute.
“Oh, thanks, now then, get to it!”
Selvado-san crawled over the mandrake’s head lobe with the catnip grass.
Before I knew it, the red birds began to tickle the mandrake in unison with the catnip grass they each had in their mouths. They seemed to be having so much fun that I wanted to do it too.
“Kukaaa, keke, kekeke, kekekeee!”
Then Mandrake began to make strange noises as he laughed.
“What are you laughing at??? Weird laughter…”
Selvado-san tilted his head to look at the funny looking mandrake.
But the voice seemed to be unpleasant to the fire-eating dragons, and the red birds took off in unison.
Suddenly, even the Akaino, who had my clothes in its beak, left me dangling, perched in a tree away from it, watching Selvado-san and Mandrake carefully. They were all squealing and shouting something from their mouths. Apparently, they were complaining.
Come to think of it, legend says that anyone who hears the scream a mandragora makes when it’s pulled out will die, but I think it’s a lie or something like that. Still, there might be some truth to it…
That weird mandrake voice didn’t make me feel anything, but the red ring stone on my finger flashed for some reason.
“It’s shining…”
Didn’t this ring react to poison? What a harrowing thought. Thanks to Akaino’s magical power, it didn’t feel painful even though I was dangling on a tree with my neck collar in my mouth, as if I was floating. I didn’t mind high places.
Soon after that, a blue magic circle suddenly appeared on the ground right near me, and a panicked-looking Zak appeared.
“Fii! What’s the matter, what’s going on?”
Zak appeared suddenly, looked up at me on the tree and extended his hand. Then Akaino deftly dropped me into his hands, just as I fit into his. Zak took me as I was and hugged me with a worried look on his face. I could feel his magic passing through my body. My face was pressed against Zak’s clothes and I squirmed.
“You know, I think Mandrake probably just…screamed.
As I looked up at his face and said this, Zak looked back at me gently, then looked at Selvado-san and Mandrake a little further away, who I now noticed for the first time.
“What were you guys doing?”
“What do you…is this an interrogation? It’s terrible that you didn’t have me and Mandrake in your eyes at all.”
Selvado thought for a moment and said as such ludicrously.
“My lord! Selvado-sama is terrible. He yanked me around!
This time Mandrake complained very sadly.
“Because there’s something wrong with the dates this guy made, I’ve been listening to him.”
“Mandrake’s screams are forbidden. Fii is a frail human, and it’s not good for her body. The fire-eating dragons hate it too.”
“Oh, my lord, that’s not nice!”
Mandrake, still strapped to the chair, flapped his limbs and protested.
“I’m not going to pull out your tongue. I’m just going to magically tie you up. It’s not an inconvenience to you. This time, though, I had Fii wearing protective magic tools and other items, so it wasn’t important.”
“That’s good, Mandrake. If anything had happened to her, you would have been torn to pieces. By the way, what’s this “nutrition” you’ve been talking about?”
“Eh?”
When Selvado-san asked him that, Mandrake suddenly began to mope.
“Answer me quickly, or you’ll be shocked.”
“N-No, I don’t want that! Well, that’s the fire-eating dragon’s…dung.”
“Dung…”
Selvado-san and Zak both closed their eyes and were silent.
“…You’re the one who shouldn’t be doing that, of course…”
Fire-eating dragon poop contains a lot of magical power. It’s a very good fertilizer for growing mandragora. Mandragora is a good material for making alchemy and magic tools, but I use it as a fertilizer because I know that it will increase the quality of the material mandragora. Using it for food for people to eat was an unknown field.
“Mandrake only needs to grow mandragoras. Just grow mandragoras, no more date palm plantations.”
After Zak said that, Mandrake began to wince and cry.
“My lord~ I will no longer use fire-eating dragon poop to fertilize the date palms, so please, please, cancel the ban. I want to work with everyone else too.”
Mandrake seemed to like busy places.
“…It can’t be helped, so I’ll have the fire-eating dragons keep an eye on you to make sure you don’t misbehave. If you misbehave, you’ll be sentenced to catnip grass.”
“Yes, I won’t do it anymore. Thank you, my lord!”
In a change that could only be described as a miracle, Mandrake, suddenly energized, danced happily back to the field as he was untied from his rope. Indeed, there was no such thing as ill will in Mandrake.
“Thank you, Selvado-san, for looking for the cause of the date palm. It’s a relief to find out why.”
“No, it’s not a big deal. But it would be a great discovery for people.”
“Yes. I think so too. Hey, do you think so too, Zak?”
“Yes, it’s quite the idea. We’d better think this through and come up with an answer.”
“Yeah. And I’m sorry I made you worry about me again. I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean? It’s only natural to worry about Fii…”
He said so gently as he brushed my bangs back.
“What’s with you guys? I can’t watch. I hate being the watchdog! I think we should go home. Come on, Akaino, let’s go home and have a cup of tea.”
“Gyupi—”
But Akaino came to my side and shook his head, and then took out a black banana from under his arm and placed it at Selvado-san’s feet.
“Akaino said to have some with tea…”
“Oh, gosh, I get it.”
As I said this, Selvado-san scratched his head, then put the black banana in his pocket and flew away, turning into a black dragon a short distance away. The wind kicked up, but it kept Zak from being hit. The black banana was very tasty and apparently located in Akaino’s secret place.
“What a funny guy. That’s right, there’s a beautiful place on the island that I haven’t taken Fii to yet, do you want to go there?”
“Yeah, I want to go and see!”
“You can come, too, to the waterfall in the middle of the north spire.” Zak said to Akaino.
Akaino responded by shuffling back and forth, then popped up a little farther, spun around, and flew away as a fire-eating dragon. It seems to have figured out the location immediately.
“Come on.”
With that said, I snuggled up to Zak and closed my eyes, and after a sense of floating, I was standing in a place where I could see a waterfall with a rainbow of splashing water.
The water was falling in three steps, one after the other, from a far higher and more glaring location, and the rainbow created by the spray was like a dream, with glittering grains of light falling down from the waterfall.
Zak and I were standing on a rock with a good sight of the spectacular view.
“Wow, that’s amazing!”
Even the happily gliding Akaino was shining in the sunshine.
For a long time after that, Me and Zak were standing there together.
***
“You see, today Zak took me to a very beautiful waterfall.”
When I got back to Shion Castle on Cross Island, I got dressed and was telling Silk, who was preparing tea for me in my room, that I had gone to the waterfall.
“That’s the ‘Radiant Waterfall.’ There is an old legend there. If two people who love each other stand there and look at the waterfall with a rainbow over it, they will surely be together and stay together forever. That’s why we don’t get to see rainbows so often.”
“Um, uh…yeah. That’s right. Ehehe.”
Silk looked at me loosely as I behaved suspiciously.
“Have a good evening, my lady.”
“…Yes.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T/N: Hope everyone is doing well as we head into August! I haven’t updated this story as much, but I want to get back to updating it more frequently. Next chapter will be a side story in the perspective of Fii’s brother (biological).
Also, for now, I am thinking of keeping Akaino’s name as ‘Akaino’ for consistency’s sake from the last 40 or so chapters (it’s how I was pronouncing it in the japanese, hahaha). But in the manga, he is now called Redwin in case people were confused about it. I’m a bit too lazy right now to go back and change his name in all of my past chapters. What do you guys think? Is Akaino okay?
|♡| Previous |♡| Table of Contents |♡| Support me! |♡| Next |♡|
KizunaTLs 