Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 2.2 - Chapter 26

Rescue and Reprimand 

It all happened right after I cried for help as loud as I could with my hands in the air to try to stop the bleeding. A beam of blue light shot high into the sky, and then immediately black somethings rained down around me as I heard the sound of flapping wings. 

The ground shook as the things slammed into the ground. I strained to look and saw multiple black arrows piercing the ground by my feet. The trombe wrapped around me calmed, as if its strength had been drained. 

“High Priest!” The familiar arrows encouraged me to look up. I could see a lion with its wings spread wide racing towards me. With his arrows, I should be fine. 

But my relief only lasted a few seconds. The blood dripping from my hand revitalized the trombe in seconds. It resumed moving, stretching from my stomach to my chest. New sprout after new sprout appeared, wrapping around me further and tightening the grip on my feet. 

“Hurry, High Priest...!” The white lion swooped down, and the High Priest jumped from it so quickly it was hard to believe he was wearing a full suit of plate armor. In his hand was a black arrow, blessed by the God of Darkness. He used it to stab and slice at the trombe while rushing this way. 

“Myne, what in the world is going on?!” he shouted. 

“Apprentice, I’m done!” Damuel, having finally gotten the God of Darkness’s divine protection, began swinging his knife and fighting hard to free me. But Damuel’s knife didn’t hold a candle to the High Priest’s black arrows. No matter how much he sliced, the trombe didn’t slow down at all. “The protection isn’t working?!” 

“The protection is working! It’s just that the trombe is recovering immediately, somehow!” 

The trombe would stop moving after being pierced by arrows, but within moments it would regain its power and begin moving again. It was slower than before, but it wasn’t rotting or falling apart at all. The High Priest clicked his tongue as he continued slicing with an arrow. 

“High Priest, my blood... It’s my blood, getting on the trombe...!” 

“Your blood?! No! Of all things!” The High Priest’s voice grew harsher after I told him why the trombe was rejuvenating. Despite his helm blocking most of his face, I could see that his eyebrows had shot up with fury. 

“For what purpose do you think I separated you from the battle and went out of my way to assign guards to you?! What purpose did those guards serve?! Incompetent fools, both of them!” He spat curses at the two knights who had been left behind to guard me. 

Damuel was fighting hard with his black knife, and Shikza was in the middle of trying to get the God of Darkness’s blessing. Given that Shikza had ignored his superior’s order and hurt the one he was meant to protect with a knife, resulting in the current situation, they definitely were incompetent at their jobs. 

And incidentally, judging by the curses the High Priest continued to spit out while fending off the trombe with his arrow, I had excessively high amounts of mana. He murmured that even if half of the entire Knight’s Order attacked the trombe at once, Damuel included, nothing would come from it. 

“No amount of fighting will matter while your wound remains open. Myne, where were you cut?!” 

“Right here.” I reached my left hand as far out as I could. 

The High Priest clicked his tongue at the sight of the gaping wound and murmured “entwaffnung.” His black bow turned into a glowing baton. He then murmured “rott” and swung the baton, leading to a red pillar of light shooting into the sky. That must have been some kind of signal, as the other knights began flying this way. 

“This will hurt, but contain your tears. They are infused with mana just as your blood is,” warned the High Priest before gently tracing his glowing baton against my wound. The moment the light radiating from his baton touched my skin, my entire body jerked. 

“Hyah!” The pain and unsettling feeling of something foreign forcing its way inside of my body hit me so hard that goosebumps formed across my body. Instinctual tears welled in my eyes, so I looked up and took deep breaths so they wouldn’t fall. 

My wound heated up and I could feel the mana inside of me all racing towards my wound to block the entry of the foreign substance. My mana hit the mana the High Priest was pouring into me, and my wound shone with a faint yellow light. When it faded, my wound had completely closed up. 

“The cut...” 

“That was a temporary measure that did nothing more than seal the wound. The mana has sealed it, but not cured it. Using mana right on top of a trombe is tantamount to suicide, but we had no choice,” spoke the High Priest, sounding exhausted. My wound had sealed, but the trombe was even more energized than before. 

“High Priest...” 

“I had to sever my divine protection to heal your wound. I no longer have a weapon capable of combating a trombe. Help should be arriving soon, but...” The High Priest trailed off and glared at the sky, then shouted “Hurry!” at the descending knights. He was normally so calm and rarely showed any emotions outside of the hidden room, so hearing him shout angrily made me jerk within my branch prison. 

“Lord Ferdinand, why did you signal for a— What in the world?!” The knights descended one by one, each widening their eyes with shock upon seeing me imprisoned within a second trombe. 

“Karstedt, the guards you selected are incompetent and brought about this mess. Save Myne immediately. I had to sever my protection and thus will be of no use. The branches are approaching her neck. Hurry.” 

“Sir!” 

The High Priest, lacking any weapons to fight the trombe with, stepped back and let another armored knight charge forward, swinging his black halberd down. It slammed into the ground with a loud crash, sending a dirt cloud and trombe chunks flying. I gagged and coughed on the cloud. 

“Karstedt, do not put a scratch on Myne! That will only feed it further!” 

After instructing Karstedt to swing his blade such that he cut away the branches without harming me, the High Priest walked towards Shikza and the attendants. I could see the wrath radiating off him clear as day and honestly, it was terrifying. 

If worse comes to worst, given our difference in status, it was possible that he would take all of Shikza’s complaints to heart and unleash all his fury onto me. It was even a possibility that I would be charged with some crime or another since it was my blood that had given the trombe life. I just couldn’t deny the possibility. 

As I began to wallow in despair over what the future held for me, a large number of knights crowded around me. They thrust their halberds into the mess of branches and chopped the trombe’s roots apart without pausing for a moment. Meanwhile, Damuel used his black knife to cut the stalks that had started to wrap around my neck bit by bit. 

“...The divine protection’s doing its work,” said Damuel with relief. Since the cut on the back of my hand had been sealed, there was no dripping blood to revitalize the trombe. It stopped growing. 

Just as they had with the giant trombe, weapons with the God of Darkness’s blessing turned the branches black wherever they touched. I let out a sigh of relief once I was free from the fear of being choked by the branches. 

“Ngh, this is hard!” 

“You’re the only one here with a knife. Be careful, Damuel.” It seemed that they couldn’t change the shape of their weapons after they received the blessing. The knights had to use their large weapons meant for cutting down the giant trombe carefully, slicing away the branches bit by bit. 

“Damuel, and you... Myne, I believe? How did this happen? I have never seen Lord Ferdinand that angry before.” Karstedt lowered his voice and asked that as soon as he could while chopping away the branches at my feet with his halberd. 

“Well...” Damuel looked in Shikza’s direction, his armor clanking. But he trailed off, lacking the will to speak up. His weak attitude was both frustrating, and a grim reminder of how harsh this status-based society really was. 

Now that the branches around my throat had been cut down to my chest, it would be pretty simple for me to just state the truth. But I didn’t know if Karstedt would believe me, and I could imagine that it would all come down to status. I had no idea if anyone would listen to or trust a commoner apprentice shrine maiden like me. Karstedt was a noble too, after all. What should I do...?” 

“I want as much information as possible. Say what you know.” Karstedt urged Damuel and me on with clear, teeth-gritting frustration in his voice. Which reminded me that the High Priest had yelled in anger at Karstedt as well, saying that he had selected incompetent fools as guards. Given that Karstedt wanted to know why the High Priest was so mad, he might listen to what I had to say just to protect himself. 

“Lord Karstedt, will you guarantee my safety if I speak what I know?” I asked Karstedt, in part trying to confirm if Shikza’s behavior was normal for a noble. Now was a rare safe opportunity for me to speak, since they probably wouldn’t kill me before I had performed the ritual. “If I tell the truth, will you be so angered that you pull me by the hair and attempt to gouge out my eyes with a knife if you don’t like what I say?” 

“What in the world...? Damuel, did you do that to an apprentice shrine maiden?!” Karstedt removed his helmet with a loud clank. His face was filled with blatant fury and his narrowed eyes cut right through Damuel, who began sputtering in surprise to try and defend himself. 

“It wasn’t me! Shikza took out the knife to threaten the apprentice. I tried to help her, but he told me to know my pla—” 

“You fool! Of course Lord Ferdinand is furious!” Karstedt ripped part of the black, brittle trombe off me using sheer force. The branches creaked as they burst apart in his hands. 

It seemed that Karstedt was just as mad at the guards as the High Priest was. I concluded that I could probably tell the truth without worrying about him going slicing away at me in rage. 

Karstedt directed his rage-filled, light-blue eyes towards me. “Myne, tell me everything. Swear an oath to the gods and speak with honesty.” 

“Understood. Lord Karstedt, I swear to the gods I will not lie to you.” 

“Hold on,” said Damuel as he raised a hand, but Karstedt swatted it away. He intended to hear me out, and I was willing to tell. 

And so I did, telling him everything the two guards had done in detail, while emphasizing that the attendants could serve as reliable witnesses to back me up. 

The trombe was so tightly woven around me in so many layers that it would take some time to untangle me safely. So much time that it wasn’t even done by the time I finished telling Karstedt everything. 

“Are you alright?” 

“...No. Please call my attendant.” 

To be frank, I was a complete mess. My new ceremonial robes were ripped everywhere, and there were holes wherever blood had fallen, as if the trombe had eaten the bloody cloth itself. My body hurt everywhere, and due to fighting back so hard against the trombe I felt so exhausted I could barely move. 

“Where is the apprentice shrine maiden’s attendant?!” Karstedt hefted up my exhausted body. It seemed my droopy self would just get in the way of them chopping the roots up. His metal armor dug into me all over and it hurt, but I didn’t have the strength to complain. 

“Sister Myne!” I looked over to Fran as he came running this way. Karstedt handed me to him and I let myself collapse into Fran’s arms. 

“High Priest, she has a fever!” 

“I would expect as much. Let her rest nearby and give her medicine. She has lost blood and was tangled in a trombe of that size. No doubt she has lost much of her mana.” The High Priest, having finished interrogating Shikza, took only one glance at me before looking away. Now that his helmet was off and I could see his expression clearly, he seemed even more furious than before. 

“Understood.” Fran sat me down in a warm spot where the sun hit, then took a bottle with a light-green liquid inside out of his bag. 

“Please drink this, Sister Myne. It is the High Priest’s potion.” Drinking something I didn’t recognize was intimidating, but he would probably force me to drink it whether I wanted to or not. Having no other choice, I went to take the bottle. But I had kept my arms raised to stop the flow of blood so long that they were like lead. I couldn’t lift either of them. 

“I’m sorry, Fran. It seems I can’t lift my arms.” 

Fran supported my limp back and brought the opened bottle to my mouth for me. The smell of the potion shot into my nose, so strong and similar to Chinese herbal recipes that it made me gag. 

“Fran, is this really okay to drink?” 

“The High Priest drank some himself earlier. It is a rejuvenation potion for exhaustion and mana that he personally prepared.” 

I could hardly refuse a potion that beneficial. And if the High Priest himself had drank some, I could trust that it wasn’t poison. I let it pour down my throat while grimacing at the strong smell. 

“Ngmmh?!” I hurriedly shut my mouth before I could throw it all up. Tears surged out of my eyes and my entire body shook. My tongue went numb and my throat burned like it was on fire. The horrible flavor was so intense and overwhelming it honestly made me think that I wouldn’t be able to taste any food for days after this. It was hard to imagine that this potion was fit for human consumption. 

Fran paled at the sight of me twitching with my mouth shut and ran over to the High Priest. “High Priest, Sister Myne appears to be in great pain....” 

“I sacrificed the taste so that it would take effect immediately,” replied the High Priest without even glancing in my direction. He wasn’t wrong, either, as I could already feel the weight lifting from my body and the fever cooling down. 

“...Wow. I think my fever’s gone.” The potion was so effective I couldn’t believe it. But it tasted so horrible that not even truisms about bad-tasting medicine being good for you could make me feel better about it. I could honestly see myself begging for him to improve the flavor. He probably wouldn’t listen since he had sacrificed it intentionally to improve its effects, but at the very least he could try to make it taste like kale juice. 

The knights finished eradicating the trombe while I was resting. Unlike the giant one, this trombe hadn’t made a crater. One of the knights said it was because it had bloomed from my mana. Naturally occurring trombes buried deep into the ground and sucked up mana from the ground for months, or at worst for years before sprouting. The roots ended up so deep that exterminating them was a Herculean task. 

“Everyone, form up!” The knights lined up in formation at Karstedt’s order. The only ones who didn’t were me and the guards who had been assigned to me. They had both taken off their helmets and were kneeling before the High Priest next to each other, eyes locked to the ground. 

“Myne, come here.” I was there with everyone else since I could move again. After being called by the High Priest, I walked up and stood a half-step behind him. I was so short that I made eye contact with the two guards once they lifted their heads a bit. As I had expected from their voices, they both looked younger than twenty, likely having just reached adulthood. 

Shikza had yellow-green hair that screamed personality, and deep green eyes filled with hate. He had a nice face, but he wore his arrogance on his sleeve and spoiled it all. His eyes made it clear that he considered me responsible for everything. 

Damuel had plain brown hair. His gray eyes were filled with worry, and he wore a deeply apologetic expression. I hadn’t noticed when he had the helmet on, but well, he felt like the kind of guy that was just asking to be bullied. 

“Now then. Shikza, Damuel. If you have anything to say in your defense, now is the time,” said the High Priest. Shikza lifted his head. 

“There is no need for me to defend myself. That girl is a commoner, and that alone is enough.” He spoke with such utter confidence that it was impossible not to realize he fully expected that defense to be enough. 

I pressed a hand onto my chest, overcome by the sheer horror that lurked beneath his words. He didn’t need to defend himself because I was a commoner. In this world, nobles trampling on commoners with impunity wasn’t just commonplace, it was accepted as the proper way of things. 

“You say that despite the fact that I told you not to let any harm come to her?” 

“The commoner hurt herself by standing up without warning. I am not to blame for that.” Shikza shook his head even after the High Priest spoke with dripping rage. 

“I see,” murmured the High Priest. He then looked at Damuel, who twitched in fear at the High Priest’s gaze before looking down and beginning to speak. 

“I was told to know my place and did not have the courage to defy him further. Forgive me.” 

The High Priest looked at Damuel, whose eyes were locked on the ground, and sighed. “Yes. As your defenses suggest, it seems we must each remember our place.” At the High Priest’s words, Shikza looked up with glee written on his face. He shot me a triumphant grin and I couldn’t help but grit my teeth with frustration while fiddling with a hole in my robes. 

The High Priest took a step forward. “Who here has the highest status, Shikza?” 

“You, Lord Ferdinand,” Shikza replied immediately, which told how obvious his answer was. But he didn’t get the intent of the question, and thus tilted his head a bit in confusion. 

“That’s correct. And I gave a clear order. Protect the apprentice shrine maiden. Let no harm come to her. If you knew your place, you would know what to prioritize and what job to fulfill. You are the one who needs to remember their place!” 

Shikza looked up at the High Priest in shock. His expression was baffled, and his eyes were open wide in disbelief. “But she is a commoner. A foolish child that is disturbing the temple’s order...” 

“It seems you do not understand the situation, so I will explain. Myne is an apprentice shrine maiden who has been given blue robes. We of the temple sought her entry due to her great amount of mana, and gave her blue robes with the Archduke’s express permission. Know well that by insulting her, you are insulting the temple and the Archduke himself!” declared the High Priest, and I heard everyone gasp—Shikza, Damuel, and even some of the knights lined up behind me. 

“As you know, our country does not have enough nobles. That means we do not have enough mana wielders to operate the systems of government. You should know that well, as one who returned to noble society from the temple.” 

It seemed that the High Priest and Shikza knew each other because Shikza had been raised in the temple as an apprentice blue priest. That would explain why he felt so much resistance towards a commoner like me wearing blue robes. All the blue-robed priests in the temple had blown up in protest over being treated on the same level as a commoner. 

“The fact is that, out of everyone in the temple, only Myne and I have enough mana to perform this ritual. An apprentice shrine maiden would never be here if we had a blue priest who could perform the ritual. I can express nothing but exasperation at anyone too foolish to realize that. Myne is here as an apprentice blue shrine maiden. She is here to perform the ritual. You did not harm any mere commoner. You harmed an apprentice shrine maiden who has been given blue robes.” 

The High Priest repeatedly emphasized that I was an apprentice blue shrine maiden. Taken another way, that was a sign that he would not be able to punish Shikza if I were indeed “any mere commoner.” I squeezed the blue robes that I wore to protect myself and, although it was far too late for me to be doing so, thanked Benno for wisely advising me to negotiate for blue robes. 

“You ignored orders, abandoned your duty, harmed who you were supposed to protect, allowed a second unnecessary trombe to appear, disturbed the Knight’s Order, and gave everyone more work. Furthermore, the Order’s honor has been tainted now that one of its knights has harmed the one they were assigned to protect. Do not think you will get off lightly. The Archduke will inform you of your punishment before long.” 

The High Priest looked away from the two of them and turned to face the lined up knights. He then coldly looked down at Karstedt, who was kneeling in front of them all. 

“Karstedt. As the captain of the Knight’s Order, you are responsible for selecting these incompetent guards and training new recruits so poorly that they do not even listen to orders. I will inform you of your punishment at a future date.” 

“The failings of the Order are failings of my own. I deeply apologize for the trouble I have given you, Lord Ferdinand.” Karstedt seemed to have been prepared to accept punishment the moment he learned that the High Priest’s anger was justified. He bowed his head before the High Priest calmly without so much as a flinch, and so too did all the kneeling knights behind him.