Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.3 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue 

There had been some trouble along the way, but now that the negotiations with the temple were finally over, Gunther thought that he would be able to relax and have a peaceful day at work for the first time in a while. Until he saw Otto’s goofy grin, that is. 

“Otto, shape up a little. You think that’s the kinda smile a soldier should have?” he said, leading Otto to slap his cheeks a few times. But it had little effect beyond reddening them a bit. Despite knowing that he was probably grinning due to something nice happening with his beloved wife, there was something about that smile that made Gunther want to give Otto a hard punch to the face. 

Gunther let out a sigh and then heard a gravelly laugh from behind him. He turned to glare at whoever was laughing and saw behind him the gate’s commander, chuckling to the point his shoulders were shaking. 

“Like subordinate like captain, huh? Right now, Otto looks just like you do when something good happens with your family. Give him a listen, would you? Usually it’s the other way around. Should give you some good perspective,” said the commander before patting Gunther’s shoulder and walking away. Gunther was a little self-aware that he had been obnoxious to Otto when, for example, Tuuli’s baptism had overlapped with an important meeting. 

...Oh well. He didn’t want to, but Gunther decided to spend the day with Otto. It was annoying when he started talking for days about his wife, but what’s done was done. Luckily, Gunther didn’t know that basically everyone thought of him the same way and were just glad that their two family-obsessed coworkers were bothering each other instead of them. 

After his shift was over and someone came to take his place at the gate, Gunther went towards the east gate with Otto. The eastern gate connected to the main outside road, which meant there was a constant flow of people through it and plenty of inns and restaurants nearby. The alleys leading off the main street had stores packed together tight and pretty much everyone who lived in the city had their favorite spots. 

It was summer, so each restaurant had their doors thrown wide open and the loud voices of people drinking could be heard everywhere. Gunther and Otto walked through the throng of people on their way to a bar where most gate guards spent their time. 

When Gunther stepped into the bar filled with the smell of alcohol and food, he saw a group of nearly twenty customers monopolizing two long tables pushed together in the middle of the store. There were several round tables for smaller groups, but most were filled. 

“Oof, this place is packed.” Gunther nodded as he passed through the noisy crowd to the back of the store and called out to the store owner, who was pouring beers behind the bar. 

“Heya, Ebb. Two behelles and a decent platter of boiled sausages, please.” Gunther placed the payment for the meal on the counter, a large copper, and Ebb started pouring behelle beer into wooden mugs. They held their beers carefully so as to not spill any while moving to the only empty table they could see, a round one near the back of the store. 

The last customer’s utensils were still there, but a waitress deftly noticed the problem and had the wooden mugs and forks taken away before they could even sit down. The only thing left on the table was the hard bread they used as plates, which was a little softer due to sucking up meat juices. Gunther wiped the table with the bread and dropped it to the floor, whereupon the restaurant’s dog came over with a wagging tail and ate the bread. 

They set their mugs on the table and sat down with a clatter. 

“Cheers to Vantole.” They clinked their cups together, cheering the god of alcohol before chugging their behelles down. Gunther drank most of his in just a few gulps. That was the best way to drink behelle, it gave it the most flavor. He loved the refreshing sensation of behelle going down his parched throat after a day of work. The sharp, bitter taste of behelle spread through his mouth a second after he was done. 

“Mmm, good stuff! So... What happened?” Gunther put his empty mug on the table and urged Otto on after wiping his mouth. Otto took the salted sausages from the waitress and asked for two more behelles. Picking up a sausage off the hard bread plate, Otto grinned and shrugged. 

“Corinna told me not to tell anyone yet, so sorry Captain, I’m gonna have to keep it a secret.” 

“Hey, congrats on having your first kid.” 

“Wh-Wh, how’d you know?!” 

“What else would your wife tell you to keep a secret? Not too hard to guess from that goofy grin of yours, too.” 

Otto scratched his head awkwardly. Gunther knew because he had done the same thing and everyone pointed it out to him, but there was no need to tell that to Otto. 

...Still. Otto, a father? Can a goofy guy like this really raise a kid well? Those thoughts passed through Gunther’s mind. But again, everyone had said the same thing about him. 

...Being happy over a kid being born meant he would be a deeply loving father. He would be fine. Gunther corrected himself after reflecting on his own life and nodded. 

“Here’s your seconds! Enjoy!” The waitress slapped the mugs on the table, causing their contents to stir. Some of the behelle sprayed out, but not a worker or customer in the store cared about something like that. Gunther passed a middle copper to the waitress and he grabbed his mug with Otto. Unlike the first time, they took their time enjoying the multitude of sweet and bitter flavors rather than gulping it down all at once. 

Gunther knew that Effa and Tuuli admired Otto’s wife Corinna for her skill as a seamstress. Tuuli said she wanted to work at Corinna’s workshop once her contract with her current workshop ended. On top of that, Corinna’s older brother Benno was the head of the store that was helping Myne out so much. Gunther himself only knew Otto well, but their families were surprisingly linked overall. 

“Otto. Take good care of your wife and kid. Your kid’s gonna take over that big store, yeah? I remember Myne talking about that.” 

“...That’s part of what I want to talk about, Captain.” 

Otto’s demeanor hardened in an instant. His goofy smile tightened and his eyes wavered as he searched for words. He looked just like Myne did when she was trying to finally talk about issues she had kept pent up inside her. The alcohol flew out of Gunther’s head, despite drinking so much his throat felt dry. He lifted his mug and took a slow sip. 

“...Go ahead. Talk.” 

“Aaah, well, this is kind of a long term thing. It’ll take a few years, I think, but I’m going to quit being a soldier someday soon.” 

Otto had become a soldier in order to marry Corinna. A traveling merchant coincidentally falling in love with the heiress of a large store. Corinna was already being pursued by various merchants in the city after her status and she herself was suspicious of Otto. But he proved his feelings by buying citizenship in the city and quitting his life as a merchant to be a soldier. 

Suffice to say, Gunther was sincerely shocked when that happened. It was about four years ago, back when he was guarding the western gate. A traveling merchant who said he was selling the last of his merchandise and going to the city where his parents lived to start a stable store came back just a few days later, saying he used all his money to buy citizenship and needed help finding a new job. Gunther couldn’t believe his ears even after asking him to repeat himself multiple times with other guards nearby. 

But Gunther had seen Otto passing through the gates with his parents ever since he was a child, and he knew from experience that one could fall in love at first sight with someone so hard that they would change their entire life plans to marry them. 

Otto had learned to read and do math during his life as a merchant, and he wasn’t bad at either of them. Gunther introduced him to his commander under the condition that he would mainly do paperwork. Most of the men who became soldiers tended to lack the skills necessary to do paperwork even if they had the enthusiasm to train. Otto joining the guards made it a lot easier to deal with passing merchants and people with letters of introduction from nobles. 

...And now Otto was quitting his job as a soldier? Had his wife’s family accepted him as a merchant? He knew that Otto was helping the store on the side already. He also knew that he was doing some trade with the traders and merchants that passed through the gate to keep his senses sharp. If Otto’s efforts had finally been rewarded, that’d be something to celebrate, but Otto looked more troubled than anything. 

“Your brother-in law finally approved of you after you made a kid?” 

“...That more or less happened a while ago, so no. This is happening because of Myne.” 

Gunther’s eyes widened at the sudden mention of his daughter and he set his mug down with a thump. In contrast, Otto’s expression lightened a bit and he took a sip from his mug. 

“Captain, the reason I chose to become a soldier over any other profession was to make connections with the people of the city. As I worked as a soldier people would remember who I am, and I would remember who they are. I also knew that a soldier would be in the best position to gather information on merchants and nobles going in and out of the city. In truth, I intended to keep working as a soldier for a long time after this, but the situation has changed. The insane products Myne keeps making like rinsham and hairpins are growing the Gilberta Company in directions we never expected.” 

“Oh? The products Myne’s making?” Gunther was proud and happy as a father to hear his daughter praised, but he couldn’t entirely agree. From his perspective, Tuuli was making the rinsham and Effa made better hairpins than Myne. It was more common for him to see Myne fail out of weakness or make things of questionable quality than anything else. 

“But the Gilberta Company is ultimately a clothing store. The plant paper that Myne and Lutz brought us will be immensely profitable and impact probably the entire world, but that’s not what our store sells. Benno wants to expand the store’s scope. Corinna, though, is only interested in clothes and ornaments. She doesn’t want to expand the store’s scope, so...” 

“Is the stuff Myne’s bringing you causing problems?” Gunther frowned and Otto hurriedly waved his hand side to side and shook his head. 

“No no, this isn’t a problem, it’s just growing pains. The stuff Myne makes is more than any merchant could ask for. Anyone would go after them like Benno is. It’s just that they’re too much for Corinna to handle. So Benno wants to give the Gilberta Company over to Corinna and start his own shop while I help her out. He’s in the process of making a new store so he can spread Myne’s inventions even further.” 

The head of a large store making a new store and expanding his business demographic meant there was an extraordinary amount of money being moved around. Tuuli had gotten excited early and desperately tried to explain to Gunther that Myne was super rich, but he just passed it off as her exaggerating. She had brought up some amount of money, but it was so unrealistic for a kid to have that he ignored it and had already forgotten what it was. 

“...So it’s true that Myne’s making insane amounts of money?” 

“It’s true. But she’s managing her money abnormally well for a kid, almost as if someone taught her finances already. I doubt you taught her with how loose you are with money, so really, I gotta ask. Who taught her?” Gunther glared at Otto, who was raising a teasing eyebrow, and gave a derisive snort. There was only one possibility for who might have taken a liking to his cute daughter and made her abnormally smart with unnecessary mana on top of that. 

“The gods must have taught her. Myne’s a girl loved by the gods.” 

“I thought you’d give a dumb answer, but that’s surprisingly convincing. Almost scarily so.” Otto shrugged with a laugh and bit into a sausage. Gunther did the same. 

“So, when are you quitting? There’s nobody who can do your job for you right now.” 

“I can’t just quit on the spot, so I think it’ll be two or three years from now. I’m thinking about finding a good apprentice and teaching them to do math so they can take my place. Haaah... I didn’t expect Myne to get snatched up by the temple like that. It happened so fast I had no idea what was going on.” 

Gunther remembered that Otto had taught Myne how complicated and difficult human relationships were in order to get her to give up on being a merchant apprentice. Just how nice would it have been if Myne had indeed just worked from home while occasionally going to the gate? Gunther had also never expected that the temple would steal Myne away. 

“Same here. Myne was all about not wanting to deal with nobles, but then she suddenly started talking about being a shrine maiden out of nowhere. I know she wants to read books, but still... Sheesh.” Gunther remember how Myne had talked about becoming an apprentice shrine maiden the moment she got back from her baptism ceremony. He tightened his grip on his cup. Myne was a fool for charging headfirst into a place she didn’t understand just so she could read books. 

“Benno gathered information and did what he could to put her in a good situation. You okay with her going now?” 

“You think I am?” Gunther glared at Otto, who raised his hands in surrender and shook his head. No matter what good conditions they had secured, no parent would be happy about sending their daughter to the temple. 

“Like heck I’m okay with it. They said they’ll treat her like a noble, but nobles have a sense of superiority and they’ll never treat her well.” 

It was all talk. They might give her a blue robe for appearances, but there was no chance that they would actually treat her like a noble. Gunther had no idea how they would treat her. 

“That said, they’re not sending her to the orphanage. As long as she comes home I can keep an eye on her. We’re dealing with nobles here. I just gotta be happy that they didn’t take her away completely.” 

“But still, Myne’s in a dangerous position.” Things ended up fine because Myne went on a mana-fueled rampage and Crushed the High Bishop, but had that not happened he would have executed Gunther and Effa before sending Myne to the orphanage. The temple had really been generous by not killing them and letting Myne stay at home. They couldn’t ask for better conditions than they were given. But regardless, there was no doubt that the High Bishop would resent being Crushed by a commoner. There was no doubt that he would hate Myne and make life hard for her. Gunther was scared just thinking about what would happen once Myne started going to the temple. 

“Captain. This is something Benno told me, but it’s likely that Myne will only have about five years of safety in the temple at best. Those with mana are precious right now due to the lack of nobles, but once the nobles come back she’ll be in danger of being treated as a liability.” 

“Just five years, huh? Still, that’s better than her not going to the temple and dying in half a year.” Gunther’s main goal in letting Myne go to the temple was extending her life. That was the one thing Gunther had absolutely no control over. Magic tools were necessary to keep her alive, but Gunther didn’t have the connections or money to get them himself. He considered himself a failure of a father. 

“But right now, Myne’s valuable. She has mana and she has the power to earn a lot of money. If she can prove her worth before her time’s up, she might earn a better contract than one that just enslaves her.” 

“Myne said she wants to stay with us and not sign a contract with any noble, but... As a father, I want her to live as long as possible.” 

She had lived her whole life up until this point suffering with sickness. Now that she was finally following her dreams, Gunther wanted her to keep living and have the life she wanted. But would she sign a contract to stay alive? If she did, which noble would she sign with, and what terms would the contract have? It all depended on Myne. 

Despite being her father, there was very little Gunther could ultimately do. Benno, by gathering information while lecturing her, and the guildmaster, by selling a magic tool he gathered for his granddaughter, were both helping Myne out far more than he was. 

“...What can I even do? I’ve got no money, no options. No matter how much I love her, I’m just a soldier that can’t even protect his own daughter. What a laugh.” 

Gunther buried himself in the mug and let out grumbles he would never say at home. Despite confidently saying he would protect his family and the town, there wasn’t much a single soldier could do. 

Hearing that, Otto shook his head. “I don’t think so. All things considered, it might be the will of the gods that Myne’s father ended up being a soldier guarding the city gates.” 

“...What’re you talking about?” 

Otto narrowed his eyes, and after glancing around the bustling store, lowered his voice a little. “Thanks to Benno’s hard work, Myne is somewhat protected inside of this city by contract magic. The scariest possibility to Benno right now is Myne getting kidnapped by a noble from another city.” 

“Kidnapped?” Gunther swallowed hard. He had expected that a noble in the temple might try something like that, but he had never considered that nobles from other cities might go after her. 

“A magic contract only has effect in the city it was signed in. If we’re dealing with a noble of this town, the guildmaster or Benno could ask the Archduke to investigate Myne’s whereabouts. But it’s very possible that not even the Archduke will have any power over a noble from another city or region.” 

The reality that the owner of a large store, the guildmaster of the Merchant’s Guild, and even the city’s Archduke all had limited power was so shocking to Gunther that it felt like he had been struck in the head. 

...If the Archduke can’t do something, how could I? How in the world can I fight against nobles from other cities? Gunther rubbed his temples and Otto gave a defiant grin. 

“To stop that from happening, you’ll need to investigate the priests in the temple who don’t like Myne and the nobles they have connections to. Then you’ll have to keep an eye on outsider nobles coming in and make sure there’s no problem with them. Think about it. A guard looking over all the letters of invitation and letters of introduction passing through the gate is in the perfect position to protect Myne, isn’t he?” Gunther blinked and thought about his job. It was true that for a commoner wanting to keep track of nobles, there was no better job than guarding a gate. Nobles didn’t enter foreign towns without letters of introduction or letters of invitation. They always rode on horses or in carriages, so they always went through the gate, then headed directly to the inner wall to enter the nobles’ quarter. High and mighty nobles did not deign to wander around the commoners’ part of town. By keeping an eye on nobles who headed to the temple or stopped their carriage in the town, he could drastically reduce the chances of Myne being kidnapped. 

Even if a noble hired some criminals to conduct the kidnapping for them, Gunther would recognize people not from the city immediately. It was generally easy to tell at a glance whether someone lived off criminal activity. He could ask the residents of the city if they had seen anyone suspicious, he could patrol looking for them himself, he could work together with other guards, and he could be ready to take action the moment anything bad happened. Of course, that was all part of a soldier’s job already. 

“You became a soldier to protect this town and your family, right? You just have to keep guarding the city like you have been.” 

“...Now that I think about it, I gotta say, it’s pretty good luck that I’m being moved to the east gate next spring.” 

Every three years, each platoon of guards would move to a different gate. The goal was to strengthen the bonds between soldiers and prevent any negligence or collusion while standardizing the work everyone did, but that didn’t matter to Gunther. Next summer, his platoon was moving from the south gate to the east gate. Since the east gate was connected to the main outside road, more people passed through it than any other and it was the easiest place to gather information. Given the traffic, it was the gate that needed the most heavy guarding. 

“Keep your guard up and maintain a strong information net. You might want to use your connections with other soldiers to form a communication line where you can move as soon as you sense something dangerous. I’ll help too. Benno’s sticking his neck pretty far into this, so my family’s just as involved in this as you are,” said Otto, clenching his fist and bending his elbow. He was making the gesture soldiers made to wish each other good fortune in battle with a cocky grin on his face. 

“Captain. Let’s protect our families.” Gunther returned the same confident grin, then gulped down the rest of his behelle before putting his mug on the table. He then clenched his fist, bent his elbow, and tapped his fist against Otto’s. 

“Yeah. I’m gonna protect my family and this city.”