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Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 2.2 - Chapter 25




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Trombe Extermination 

“That sure was a pointless blessing. What are you, stupid?” One of the knights mocked me with a smug snort once the rest of the Order was well into the air. 

“Shikza, why would you say that?!” 

I couldn’t tell them apart since they both had their helmets on, revealing only part of their eyes and mouths, but it seemed that the smug one was Shikza and the one trying to get him to stop was Damuel. Judging by their voices, they were both fairly young. They had probably just come of age, if they had at all. 

“Am I wrong, though? We’re in a big mana shortage and there she goes wasting some, blessing knights fighting a trombe of all things. Either she’s stupid or nobody is.” Shikza knocked aside Damuel’s hands and pointed at me. 

“It’s true that the Order would never lose to a trombe, blessing or not, but Angriff’s blessing will still be a big help! Especially since we’re so low on numbers now.” 

I listened to their argument with a cold sweat running down my back. I only said what I did because I wanted to pray for their safety when fighting against that giant trombe. I didn’t realize that trying to talk like a noble with references to the gods would make something an actual blessing. When my ring started glowing out of nowhere, I was more surprised than anybody. The prayer never would have happened if the High Priest hadn’t lent me this ring. It was a complete and total accident. 

...I’m sure the High Priest was surprised too. 

Not to mention, he was calling it a waste of mana, but I stopped the flow of mana the second I noticed it. Only a tiny fraction of my mana ended up sucked into the ring. I doubted it would cause any problems with the upcoming ritual. 

“I apologize if I have offended you in any way. I will take greater care in the future.” I kept my protests on the inside and just apologized immediately to prevent things from escalating into something I really wouldn’t want to deal with. Shikza gave me another dismissive snort, but if that ended the conversation I was totally fine with it. 

“You don’t need to worry about what Shikza says,” said Damuel in a consoling tone. “A blessing that boosts mana will be really appreciated right now, since we’re so low on numbers. And... here, take a look. It’s about to start.” He pointed to the sky. 

I followed the direction of his finger, and through the branches I could see glimpses of the knights flying in circles in the sky. I stretched my back a bit and squinted, hoping to see how in the world they planned to beat that monstrous trombe. 

“*****!” I heard a faint shout in the distance. I wasn’t sure who had shouted or what, but at its signal all the knights took glowing black weapons into their hands, each radiating what looked like pure darkness. 

“What are those? Do you know, Fran?” 

“No, this is the first time I am seeing a battle so close.” 

It seemed that attendants rarely accompanied priests answering the summons of the Knight’s Order, since it necessitated one priest fighting alongside the knights to provide magical support while the other stood at the ready with the divine instrument. But since the High Priest was fighting with the Order and I couldn’t stand waiting with a divine instrument twice my size, Fran and Arno had come along to keep an eye on me. 

“Shrine maiden, those are weapons with the divine protection of the God of Darkness bestowed upon them. If you infuse them with your mana and attack, you can take twice the amount of mana from anything you hit and make it yours. They’re vital for exterminating trombes.” 

Having not expected a noble to go out of his way to explain things for me, I looked up at the armor-clad Damuel in surprise. I could only see slivers of his face through the helm, but it didn’t seem like he was looking down on me for being a commoner. 

“Not many people get the chance to see knights fighting like this. I wouldn’t waste this opportunity if I were you.” 

“I thank you ever so much.” 

“We start by wearing it down with arrows. Look, the one with the blue cape is Lord Ferdinand.” Damuel pointed at a knight riding a lion and pulling back the string of a sizable bow. He resembled a nomad shooting a bow on horseback. The cape flowing in the wind behind him was the only blue cape in the midst of all the yellow capes. 

...That’s the High Priest! Wow! Go get him! I couldn’t actually shout my support, so I cheered him on silently. He was too far away for me to see the actual string itself, but I could tell when he shot from the movements of his arm and the arrow flying from the bow. 

The arrow shot through the sky and burst into multiple smaller black arrows which fell upon the giant trombe like rain. Each arrow burst into an explosion of light upon hitting the plant. But the giant trombe just kept swinging its branches, as if not even a storm of arrows meant anything to it. 

“It takes a lot of mana to split an arrow into that many smaller ones. And yet Lord Ferdinand can shoot out tons of arrows like that. Pretty impressive, huh?” Damuel seemed to really admire the High Priest, judging by the fact he was proudly telling me how amazing he was. 

“I wish he would come back to the Order soon...” murmured Damuel in the midst of his praise, which made me blink in surprise. Damuel noticed me looking at him, and after an awkward silence, coughed. 

“...That’s confidential.” 

“Understood. I won’t tell anyone.” 

I had heard that the High Priest wasn’t raised in the temple, and it seemed that he had been in the Knight’s Order of all places. That explained how he knew Karstedt and why they had matching sets of armor. I never would have imagined from his slender build and grumpy, bookish appearance that he served as a knight and not just as a desk jockey, but now that I was seeing him fight, he seemed to be right in his element. 

...To think that he’s a master of both the pen and the sword. Is it just me, or is the High Priest kinda amazing? I wish he would lend me some of that talent, I thought while looking up at him fight. He launched arrow after arrow at the trombe while his blue cape fluttered behind him. 

“Looks like it’s starting to take its toll. Can you see the trombe turning black?” As Damuel said, each spot the High Priest’s rain of arrows hit was now turning black. The tiny black dots looked like stains, and with each arrow another one joined the midst. 

“I can see them. Oh... the branches.” As if those black spots were rotting the trombe from the inside out, one of the branches it had been swinging around snapped at the base and fell to the ground with a thud. The fallen branch shone brightly and vanished. 

The giant trombe stretched out one of its still-healthy branches as far as it could to try and knock down the flying knights, but they were all too nimble to be hit. In contrast, the knights wielded their black halberds—each of which looked like a fusion of an axe, a spear, and a jagged pike—and chopped, sliced, and stabbed at the branches, which turned increasingly black until they fell to the ground. 

The branches fell one after another, and before I knew it the trombe’s crater had stopped growing. With fewer swinging branches dominating the airspace, the knights were able to fly close to the trombe’s trunk and attack it directly. It was an enormous trunk, but it too became covered in black spots. I could easily tell that the trombe was losing strength with each blow it took. 

“Should be over soon,” murmured Damuel, looking a bit more relaxed than earlier. At the start I had no idea how the knights would survive fighting such a dangerous giant, but they were finishing it off much faster than I expected. I sighed in relief too. 

“I didn’t know how anyone could fight with a monster like that, so I’m glad to see nobody ended up getting hurt.” 

“This happens every year. We might be short on members, but we’re not going to lose to a trombe. Especially with Lord Ferdinand helping. As far as I can tell, cutting down those branches was a lot easier thanks to him.” 

It seemed that killing the trombe would have taken a lot longer without the High Priest raining barrages of arrows down onto it. Without many ways to attack the trombe from a distance, they would have to get in close to weaken it, which ended up with multiple knights getting sent flying by branches every year. 

I couldn’t see his face well due to the helmet, but Damuel had a kind and gentle voice. I looked up at him with a smile, then heard a hateful tongue click from behind. 

“Damuel, why are you acting all buddy-buddy with a commoner? Oh, has nobody told you who she is? Allow me to inform you that the girl you’re talking to is a commoner. She’s a fool who doesn’t know her place, wearing a noble’s blue robes despite her dirty blood. I honestly have no idea what Lord Ferdinand was thinking when he gave a lowly commoner blue robes. Surely a shortage of mana is better than this.” 

“Shikza, what are you saying...? Don’t lie like that.” Damuel’s shaken tone made it clear that he hadn’t known that I was a commoner. He must have so kindly explained the situation because he thought I was an apprentice shrine maiden of noble birth. 


I took a step back, distancing myself from both Shikza and Damuel. I had no idea what a noble would do after learning that I was a commoner. Things could get bad if he reacted like the High Bishop had. 

“It’s true. The High Bishop visited my family’s home during the Starbind Ceremony and bemoaned his suffering. ‘A lone commoner girl is destroying order in the temple,’ he said.” 

...So it was you all along, High Bishop! I had driven him into the corner of my memory since I never saw him in the temple and he hadn’t done anything to me, but it seemed that he had been moaning about me endlessly to nobles around the city. 

Thiiis is bad. And it might get a lot worse? Since I was a commoner, all of my protests would fall on deaf ears. They could distort the truth to suit their needs and do whatever they wanted under false pretenses. Hateful gossiping like this would be a dangerous enemy to me while I was traveling with the Knight’s Order, which consisted entirely of nobles. 

“Say something, commoner scum.” So Shikza said, but I didn’t know what he wanted from me. I had no idea what a noble would do to me if I said the wrong thing. But it seemed that keeping my silence angered Shikza more, and his lips curved into a sadistic grin. “What, nothing cocky to say without Lord Ferdinand here to protect you?” 

“Stop it, Shikza! We’re supposed to be protecting her! Her status doesn’t change the job we’ve been given!” yelled Damuel, standing in front of me protectively. But that just poured oil on the flames of Shikza’s anger. 

“Shut it, Damuel! Know your place! Don’t try to order me around ever again!” 

Damuel gritted his teeth and stepped to the side. Now that I could see in front of me, I saw Shikza walking this way. The sight of an armorclad man clanking his way towards me with eyes full of hate was nothing short of terrifying. 

...I’m scared. My legs shook and my teeth chattered. I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t move my legs. Seeing how scared I was, Shikza cackled and rose a clenched, armored fist. 

“Sister Myne!” 

“Out of the way!” Fran leapt between us to protect me, but Shikza pushed him so hard he was sent flying. 

“Fran!” I instinctively raced towards Fran, but Shikza grabbed the back of my hair and stopped me. I could feel several strands ripping out of the back of my head as he pulled me back. 

“Ow!” 

“Sister Myne!” 

“Fran!” yelled Arno as Fran speedily got up and tried to rescue me. “You must not move! Your master is being punished for you acting out of place. You must not make things even worse.” 

Hearing that, Fran bit his lip and froze, which made Shikza grin even harder in amusement as he violently pulled on my hair. 

“Listen up, commoner. At times like these you’re supposed to apologize for your attendant’s rudeness.” 

Fran was biting his lip to hold his anger back, and I had to learn from his example. I had been told countless times not to argue with nobles. My safest bet would be to just apologize. 

“...I apologize for my attendant offending you.” But it seemed that my apology just ticked Shikza off more. He planted a boot on my chest and kicked, sending me flying to the ground. My butt hurt and I could barely breathe, but at least he wasn’t holding my hair anymore. 

“What’s with those smug eyes?! Want me to gouge them out?!” barked Shikza furiously before pressing a hand against the gemstone in his left hand and drawing a faintly glowing baton from it. He spun it around and murmured “messer,” which turned the thin baton into a small knife. Its pointed tip gleamed in the light. 

I swallowed hard at the sight of a knife being thrust in my direction. Cold sweat ran down my back and I could feel my heart beating unnaturally fast. My legs were so shaky I couldn’t even stand up. All I could do was stare at the gleaming blade. 

“Shikza, don’t! We’re supposed to be protecting her! She’s the apprentice shrine maiden we need for the ritual!” Damuel panicked at the sight of the blade and reached out, but Shikza knocked both his warning and hand aside before lifting up the knife. 

“Shut it! She doesn’t need eyes to perform the ritual!” he said with the knife in the air. I curled up like a turtle with my hands on my head to protect myself from it. “That’s right! Commoners like you just need to ball up and show us nobles respect!” 

I shut my eyes tight, and soon heard the sound of flapping wings behind Shikza as he shouted. I looked up into the sky and saw a blue cape fluttering high in the sky behind the upheld knife. 

“High Priest!” Knowing that he could protect me from Shikza, I immediately stood up to cry for help. But I stood up just as Shikza was hurriedly lowering his hand after hearing the words “High Priest,” and it sliced the back of my left hand since I was covering my head with it. 

“Ow!” 

“Why would you stand up, idiot?!” 

I lowered my hand and saw at a glance that the blade had cut fairly deep, aided by gravity. It would take a long time for the bleeding to stop. But I knew complaining to a noble would get me nowhere, so I just hurriedly pulled back my sleeve so my ceremonial robes wouldn’t get dirty. I held my left arm straight forward and held its sleeve up with my right hand. 

“Sister Myne, allow me.” Fran immediately knelt beside me and stuck his hand into his waist pouch. It seemed that he had prepared something in case I got hurt. My attendants really were top of their class. 

“Thank you, Fran.” 

Blood gushed from my gaping wound down to my wrist before dripping to the ground. And the second my blood soaked into the ground, it began to rumble loudly. My blood continued to drip as I looked down, confused. With each drop the ground rumbled harder, and in the blink of an eye trombe sprouts burst out of the ground right beneath me. 

“Bwuh?!” The trombe grew faster than any I had seen before, and its branches were wrapped around my feet before I knew what was happening. 

“Ah! No!” I desperately tried to kick them off my feet, but branch after branch wrapped itself around me. By the time I pulled one branch off several more would replace it, wrapping themselves so tightly around my ankles I couldn’t take a single step. And the whole time my dripping blood was invigorating the trombe further, making it sprout in all directions as it raced up my body. 

“Th-This isn’t my fault! You shouldn’t have stood up like that!” Shikza sliced away at the trombe in a panic with his knife as he stepped back to get away from me. 

“Sister Myne!” Fran, lacking a blade, tried to pull the trombe off me with his bare hands, but the branches had grown large enough that it was nigh impossible to break them with hands alone. 

The trombe reached my knees, then stretched up my thighs. Its green sprouts stretched out and bloomed into white stems, while its stretching trunk browned like the color of a tree. The stems wrapping around me grew thicker bit by bit as they wrapped around me, tightening enough to hurt while new sprouts reached out to me. 

“Apprentice!” Damuel took out a glowing baton from his left gauntlet and turned it into a knife. But even as he did so, the trombe’s branches wrapped around me ten, twenty times. “Hold on, I have to grant myself the God of Darkness’s divine protection. I’ll save you as soon as I can.” 

Damuel began chanting a prayer. It strongly resembled the same prayer I would be giving during the ritual, one that praised the gods and prayed for their divine protection. Or in other words, it was long enough that I had to work hard to memorize it all, and just thinking about how much the trombe would grow while he prayed sent a shudder down my spine. 

...I’m scared! My teeth chattered. Thoughts of the tree falling into the giant trombe’s crater and having the life sucked out of it flashed through my mind. 

So scared! I’m so scared! Tears brimmed in my eyes in terror of being consumed by the trombe. I waved my arms around to knock off the branches, but that just sent blood flying everywhere that made more sprouts pop out of the ground. 

The stalks wrapped around my thighs stretched out to my hips and stomach. I couldn’t even move, and I was so terrified that I screamed as loud as I could for help. 

“Lutz! Lutz! Help me, Lutz!” 



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