Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 3.4 - Chapter 13

Illgner’s Brigitte 

Dinner was a massive barbecue alongside the local commoners, prepared on several large metal griddles that each grilled a bunch of food at once. 

“I hope everything suits your taste,” Monika said while serving me a dish. 

“These vegetables are unlike what I am used to, perhaps due to this province having a different climate than Ehrenfest. But the ingredients are all fresh and new to me, so I am sure they will taste more than delicious even just cooked with salt,” I replied, taking a bite of something that was apparently called a rezzuch. It looked similar to a plum, but quite coincidentally tasted just like a zucchini. 

I looked around while I chewed. There were proper seats for nobles, but everyone else was sitting all over the place on solid, knocked-over logs or sizable rocks, which made it hard to find anyone in particular. I had no idea where the gray priests or the Plantin Company were. 

...Ah. 

Eventually, I found the gray priests frozen in place with their plates from the temple in hand, so used to eating based on status and dividing food equally that they had no idea what to do. The worry was clear on their faces as they struggled to determine whether it was okay for them to begin, and if so, how much they were actually permitted to eat. 

“C’mon, load some food onto those plates.” 

“I-Indeed...” 

Some locals seemed to notice their hesitancy and called out words of encouragement, but the priests were much too used to food being distributed equally among them. They had never gotten to dish up their own meals before, so the cautious frowns on their faces didn’t ease in the slightest. 

“Monika, would you kindly call Lutz for me?” 

“But I must continue serving your food, Lady Rozemyne.” 

“I have plenty before me at the moment. You need only hurry.” 

“As you wish.” 

She promptly hurried off and found Lutz, who had planted himself in front of a griddle and was devouring as much meat and as many vegetables as he could. When she came back with him, he looked a little unhappy to have been ripped away from all the food. 

“Lady Rozemyne, you called for me...?” 

“My apologies, but could you teach Gil and the other gray priests how to eat here? They have only ever been served food at the orphanage, and it seems they are struggling to figure things out.” 

“You serious?! Erm, excuse me. Your wish is my command.” 

Lutz had spent his childhood having to constantly fight his brothers for food, so the idea of not just grabbing whatever was in front of you and okay to eat was simply incomprehensible to him. Still, he knew how strange temple culture was, so after an exasperated headshake, he walked over to where the gray priests were still frozen. 

“Come on, the food won’t last forever,” he said to Gil, piling meat and vegetables from the metal griddles onto his plate. “You just gotta grab what you want and eat it. That’s how it works. Lady Rozemyne herself wants you all to participate.” 

Gil looked at his now full plate, then at me, then at everyone around him. Only then did he finally start eating. The gray priests observed this and put the same amount of the same things onto their plates before beginning to eat as well. 

Mm... Will the gray priests really be able to survive here? Now I’m worried that they won’t last until the Harvest Festival. 

That was when I noticed that neither Monika nor Fran, who was serving Damuel, had eaten anything themselves. Since the people here didn’t take turns to eat based on status, they would have no dinner at all unless they joined in. 

“Fran, Monika—I ask that you eat with us as well. I am afraid you will get nothing otherwise; there are no divine gifts here like there are in the temple.” 

“But we must serve your food,” Fran replied. 

I looked around and saw that both Giebe Illgner and his family were taking their plates to the commoners in charge of cooking and getting their food directly from them. 

“I can get my own food, too,” I began. 

“Absolutely not,” Fran and Monika responded in unison, rejecting me on the spot. 

I slumped my shoulders. “Monika... at the very least, ask Hugo to set some food aside for the both of you.” 

“But who will serve you in the meantime?” she asked with a sincere look. 

I was at a loss for words; to her, serving me was genuinely more important than eating. While I found her dedication heartwarming and cute, I wanted her to care about herself, too. 

“I will inform him,” Brigitte said, standing up and walking over to the cooks with her empty plate. She chatted with the locals who called out to her along the way, drank the beer she was offered, and laughed with everyone she came across. She eventually reached Hugo, who was at the griddles cooking load after load of meat and vegetables with the locals, at which point she passed on my instructions. While there, I also saw her pile more food onto her plate. 

“This must be the real Dame Brigitte,” Fran murmured with a stunned expression, having been caught entirely off guard by how differently she was acting. 

“She is with her own family here, after all. I think Brigitte is far more wonderful when she is smiling and so at ease. Though if this were Ehrenfest, she would certainly be called unladylike,” I mused before turning to look at Damuel, who was just as frozen in shock as Fran. “Damuel, you were raised in the Noble’s Quarter of Ehrenfest. What do you think about Brigitte right now? Are you disillusioned with her now that she is acting nothing like a noble?” 

“I’m, ah... surprised to see her acting so unlike her normal self, but, er... um... I think she’s very pretty like this,” he replied quietly, scratching his cheek and averting his eyes. 

“I see. I shall be sure to tell her that.” 

“Please don’t!” 

My goodwill was rejected instantly, but I graciously complied with Damuel’s request. After all, I didn’t enjoy bullying him that much. 

“Very well, then I shall keep it a secret for you.” 

“Thank you,” he replied with a sigh of relief. I couldn’t help but smile, though; he didn’t even notice the fact that I was far from the only one in earshot. 

I don’t have to say anything to Brigitte, because I’m certain her grinning family will take it upon themselves to tell her. 

The next day, the supposedly wisest old man among the locals walked with us to the mountains, more full of energy than one might expect from someone his age. I was in my highbeast, wearing my gathering outfit with my magic knife at hand, fully equipped to harvest whatever I needed. Damuel and Brigitte were wearing light armor, but their gear was lighter than usual to make walking up hills and such easier. 

“It’s been too long since I’ve hiked through the mountains,” Brigitte said with visible excitement. She was off duty again today but had decided to travel with us nonetheless, having apparently hiked up mountains all the time before entering the knight dorms as an apprentice. 

Benno was staying behind at the detached building to do some pressing work, with Damian helping him. Everyone else was accompanying us, with Lutz, Gil, and the gray priests shouldering baskets and wielding knives like they always did when gathering in the forest. 

“Hrm, hrm. Ye be lookin’ for tall trees with thin, soft fibers like volrin wood, then?” 

“That’s right. And the younger the tree is, the better. Does anything come to mind?” 

Brigitte was in the lead as we went up the mountain trail, with Damuel in tow. The old man and I were walking side by side behind them, followed by Lutz and Gil, and finally the gray priests. 

“Ye got yer rinfin, yer schireis... If ye don’t mind feyplants, there’re nansebs and effons ’round these parts, too.” 

“I agree with his assessment,” Brigitte said from the front. “We should spend today cutting down nansebs and effons.” 

The old man went on to tell us all about the trees that didn’t exist back in Ehrenfest. There were a ton of names that I didn’t recognize, but there were apparently four different kinds that immediately came to mind as being particularly young and soft. Lutz and Gil desperately wrote them down and the ways to identify them. 

“Nansebs and effons are feyplants that thrive in this season, so we should encounter several of them today. Even the local commoners can cut them down without much issue if they know how,” Brigitte said with a contented hum, explaining to the gray priests which fruits and mushrooms were edible, which were poisonous, and so on. 

We walked along while gathering edible food, like always, when the old man suddenly stopped in place. He narrowed his eyes, glancing to the side. “There, m’lady. One of them nansebs ye want.” 

“That tree is walking?!” 

The old man was pointing toward a knee-high tree that was literally walking across the ground. Its roots moved like feet to push it steadily forward, slow enough that I could catch up to it myself, but... the fact that it was moving at all was bizarre. If nansebs could walk on their own, wouldn’t that make them animals, not plants? 

“It’s looking for a healthy, nutrition-filled tree. Upon finding one, it will wrap its roots around it and plant its seeds into its base. These parasitic seeds suck out the tree’s nutrition, then peel away its dead bark before walking anew. They’re parasite trees,” Brigitte explained as she firmly grabbed one of the nansebs, chopping its moving roots off with a knife and tossing them into a bag as they continued to wriggle. “Since these roots absorb all the nutrition, be sure to retrieve them when cutting down nansebs,” she told the gray priests, who all nodded in response. 

“M’lady, there’s a big dead tree o’er there. I’m guessin’ there’s a lot more nansebs ’round here. Can ye get ’em for me?” 

“Certainly. You sit and rest,” Brigitte replied with a bright smile before running off with her knife in hand. 

“I’ll join, too! They walk so slowly that even I can cut them. Let’s see who can gather the most wood!” 

“Lady Rozemyne?!” Damuel exclaimed. 

No doubt infected by my enthusiasm, Lutz and Gil ran off with their knives as well. I raced forward in Lessy, Damuel following behind us with a baffled look on his face. 

“There’s one!” 

Despite them being so short, the fact that nansebs walked about meant they easily stood out among the trees. I climbed out of my Pandabus and grabbed one with both hands. Brigitte could manage this with a single hand, but that was too much for me. And to make matters worse, it seemed there was some knack to grabbing them that I didn’t know; the nanseb I had caught was flailing its roots so aggressively that I couldn’t keep it in place at all. 

“Eep! Eep!” I cried, dropping it before I could even grab my knife. 

No sooner had it touched the ground than Damuel quickly grabbed it himself. 

“Damuel, no! I found that one!” I complained, glaring at him as though my prey had been stolen. 

He sighed. “It’s yours. I was intending to hold it still for you while you remove its roots.” 

“Perfect.” 

I poured mana into my magic knife, then cut off the nanseb’s roots and stuck them in my bag. Much like with Brigitte, they continued to squirm about even after being severed. 

“Yay! I did it too, Damuel!” 

“There’s another one over there. Let’s go. Oh, but please use your highbeast to move.” 

With the help of my trusty guard knight, I was able to cut up three nansebs, at which point I heard a weird singsong voice. It wasn’t the beautiful singing of a siren luring a ship to its demise, but rather a throaty screaming reminiscent of extreme rock and roll. Was someone really practicing here of all places? 

“What is that...?” I asked. 

“I’m not sure. Let’s not get close to things we don’t understand, and instead ask our guide what’s going on.” 

But the singing was getting louder and louder. I needed to know what it was. I had to go and find out. And now that it was louder, I could tell that it wasn’t just one singing voice: there were several. 

“Damuel, can’t we just take a little peek?” 

“Absolutely not. Who knows what could happen?” he responded with a glare. 

And so, having no other choice, I returned to where the old man was. At his feet was a small mountain of about ten nansebs that Brigitte had harvested. I told her about the singing we had heard while she chugged water from a flask, after which she instantly nodded in recognition. 

“Those are effons. They’re loud and annoying but pose no real threat.” 

It seemed that they sang fairly quietly when on their own, but when several were within singing distance of one another, they grew louder and louder, as if they were competing. 

What in the world...? 

“Though if you heard that many voices, we must hurry and harvest them as quickly as we can,” Brigitte continued. “They get very loud.” 

We waited in place for the gray priests to gather together so that Brigitte could teach them what to do all at once, but as we did, the singing became more and more audible. The screams were quickly getting louder. 

“Annoying, ain’t it, m’lady?” the old man chortled. 

Together, we all headed toward the source of the noise. I was the only one riding in a highbeast, but I was just glad that I could keep up with people for once without being left behind. 

My Pandabus truly is something else. 

As we continued, the singing was soon accompanied by a rustling from among the trees. But there wasn’t much wind blowing at all. When we eventually arrived, the screams were so deafening that I surely would have been covering my ears had I not been driving. 

“Wow, it sure is enthusiastic...” 

The rustling hadn’t been caused by the wind after all—a singing effon was fervently swinging its branches about in a headbanging motion. Everyone watched the bobbing tree in a daze. 

“Ah! Ah! Ah, AH! AAAAAAAAAAAAH!” 

All of a sudden, it let out a scream so loud that I yelped and covered my ears. I could see the gray priests doing the same out of the corner of my eye. An impossibly loud noise was echoing out of the apparently hollow hole in the tree’s center. I thought it had been singing a song due to how rhythmical it sounded from a distance, but as it turned out, this was purely coincidental; the sound it was making lacked any cadence whatsoever. 

An instant later, another effon reacted to the loud screaming and started bobbing even more intensely. 

“Ooo! Oooooo! OOOOOOOOOH!” 

There must have been a lot of effons growing in the area, as we could hear various cries of, “Wooh! Wooh! Raaaaaah!” all over the place as each one asserted its presence. To describe it as annoying would be an understatement; the sound pollution was so bad that it was actually disruptive to life. Calling effons “harmless” feyplants was absolutely a mistake, if you asked me. 

“Lady Rozemyne, will this one make for good paper?” Brigitte asked, having inched toward me. 

I looked up at the effon, which was even bigger than her, and shook my head. “I think the tall ones have grown too large to be used for paper. The small ones over there might be good, though.” 

“Then we shall aim for the feystones in the larger effons. Damuel, you take care of the ones over there; I can handle these.” 

They both whipped out their schtappes and morphed them into the halberd-like spear-axe things I had seen before, though they weren’t black this time due to not having the God of Darkness’s blessing cast on them. 

“O God of War Angriff, of the God of Fire Leidenschaft’s exalted twelve,” I began, “I pray that you grant Brigitte and Damuel your divine protection.” 

With that, blue light shone out of my ring and flew up into the air, subsequently raining down onto their heads. Damuel tightened his grip on his halberd and glared at the effons while Brigitte scanned the area with her amethyst eyes. 

“Priests, stand back!” 

Very few people were afforded the opportunity to watch knights in action, and the shockwaves of mana were a big reason for this—it was exceedingly dangerous for those without mana to be anywhere near knights engaged in combat. 

“I will protect everyone with a Wind shield. You may fight without worrying about us.” 

“Thank you, Lady Rozemyne.” 

The two of them nodded, at which point I promptly told Gil and Lutz to gather everyone around me. 

“O Goddess of Wind Schutzaria, protector of all. O twelve goddesses who serve by her side. Please hear my prayer and lend me your divine strength. Grant me your shield of Wind, so that I might blow away those who mean to cause harm.” 

A metallic clink resounded, and we were soon enveloped in an amber-colored dome. 

“The heck is this?!” 

“So this is Schutzaria’s shield...?” 

“I had heard about it from Fran, but this is my first time seeing it myself.” 

The old man fell backward onto the ground, incapable of comprehending what had just happened. Lutz looked up in much more contained surprise, while Gil excitedly clenched his fists with sparkling eyes. A few moments later, I noticed a couple of the gray priests helping the old man back to his feet. 

“Damuel, the feystone is located inside the hole making the noise!” Brigitte yelled. 

No doubt due to her previous experience hunting effons, she was the first one to act, letting out a loud cry as she swung her halberd with considerable force. Her attack struck the largest one, and a resounding boom rang out as it promptly exploded, raising a sizable cloud of dust and sending fragments of bark flying every which way. They weren’t able to break through the shield, but everyone let out shrieks and reflexively covered their heads. 

Damuel readied his halberd next, matching Brigitte’s determination as he dashed toward a large effon that continued to sway about and scream. He slammed his weapon against it with an impassioned battle cry of his own, but perhaps due to him having less mana than Brigitte, that wasn’t enough to make it explode. Instead, his attack only left a deep gash in its trunk. 

“Ngh!” he grunted, glaring at the gash with anguish before swinging his halberd again, then again. His third attack seemed to finally expose the feystone, which he quickly stabbed with the tip of his weapon and yanked out in one clean move. The effon continued to scream as it wilted away. 

“Normally, even the large effons are cut down by lumberjacks using normal axes, but it would have taken much too long to gather them today. And with Damuel here, it was faster to simply take them down using mana,” Brigitte said, going on to explain that the lumberjacks would apparently stuff their ears to block out the singing before rushing in. “It should be easy for any of you to cut down the smaller ones. Follow me.” 

At that, she headed off to harvest more effons with Lutz, Gil, and the other gray priests. I stayed behind with the old man, who was now sitting down to let his hips recover, and Damuel, who was serving as my guard. 

“I’m just not getting stronger. My mana capacity is growing by the day, but... I’m just pathetic,” Damuel muttered, looking down at the small feystone he had just harvested. 

I tilted my head. “You want to boost your attack power, Damuel?” 

“Of course I do!” 

“I assumed you were simply holding back to preserve more of your mana. I didn’t realize you weren’t doing it on purpose,” I said. He merely furrowed his brow in confusion, so I went ahead and explained what I meant. “You used as much mana in those attacks as you usually do. More mana won’t make you stronger if you don’t use it, right?” 

“...Wait, what?” 

Damuel blinked in surprise, having apparently not expected that explanation. He really hadn’t noticed what he was doing at all. I placed a hand on my cheek, then gave him a word problem. 

“Consider the following: Damuel has thirty mana. He uses five mana per attack, which allows him to make six attacks in total. Lately, he’s increased his capacity to thirty-five mana, allowing him to now make seven attacks, but he just isn’t getting stronger and doesn’t understand why. Now, what should Damuel do to boost his attack power?” 

Damuel looked at me, his eyes wide in realization, before gazing down at the feystone in his hand. 

“Is it not that you are too used to fighting while conserving your mana? In my eyes, you seem skilled at using only one to five mana at a time, but you don’t know how to use, say, twenty to thirty at all. If you want to boost your attack power, perhaps begin by learning to use more mana at once.” 

Damuel was a laynoble with a pittance of mana, but he always fought alongside people who had far more than him. In practice, he left the powerful foes to them and instead focused on buying time, taking down the small fry, and providing support. He had developed a deeply ingrained habit of minimizing his mana usage so that he could fight for as long as feasibly possible, but by having him focus on using more mana at once, his attack power would surely skyrocket. 

“You have my thanks for the advice,” Damuel said, his mopey expression vanishing as he put the feystone into his bag. His eyes were now brimming with determination, and I was glad to see he had set his sights on a new goal. 

“We got a ton of wood, Lady Rozemyne!” Gil cried out, waving to me as he ran back over. The baskets that the priests were shouldering were indeed filled with wood. 

“These are the degrova leaves that Dame Brigitte was talking about. When you soak them in water, they turn the water sticky, which might be able to replace the edile fruit,” Lutz said while showing me the contents of his bag. There were plenty of other plants that couldn’t be found around Ehrenfest in there, too. 

“I shall be returning to Ehrenfest with Benno tomorrow, but with this many new materials, I believe you can get started as early as tomorrow.” 

“Right!” Gil and the others replied with smiles and nods. 

And so we began our descent down the mountain. Brigitte took the lead alongside the old man, the gray priests following closely behind as they helped him to stay up. Then came Gil and Lutz, with Damuel and me guarding the rear. 

“Good luck,” I whispered to Lutz from inside my highbeast, speaking quietly enough to be drowned out by everyone else’s voices. 

He glanced my way with a grin. “Hey, you’re the one who needs luck here. Your potion ingredients can only be picked once a year, right? I won’t be able to cheer you up like last time if you mess up again.” 

“Ngh. I’ll be fine. As I said, Ferdinand is going to be with us. I’ll do my best so that I can tell you it all went perfectly when I come to get you during the Harvest Festival.” 

“Same. I’ll... I’m gonna work hard so that, when you come back, I’ll have all sorts of new paper waiting for you.” 

That night, we served Hugo’s cooking to Giebe Illgner and his family, then made plans to return to Ehrenfest early the next morning. Joining me on the journey back were Benno, Fran, Monika, Hugo, and my two guard knights. Everyone else was staying behind to work on developing new types of paper. 

Lots of townsfolk gathered to see us off. Giebe Illgner knelt at the front as their representative, and I used this opportunity to speak to him one last time. 

“Illgner has many kinds of trees not present near Ehrenfest. If the wood found here can indeed be made into new paper, then that paper will no doubt become a valuable export for your province. I ask that you provide my workers with your full support.” 

“It will be done.” 

I then turned to look at Brigitte, who was standing behind me wearing her deadpan, serious knight expression. “Brigitte, you may say your farewells. Speaking with one’s family is important, and once we have departed, it will be quite some time before you return.” 

“Brother, Mother... Everyone. I’ll be back.” 

“Stay strong, Brigitte, and serve Lady Rozemyne well.” 

With that, the seven of us climbed into Lessy, all those gathered kneeling and crossing their arms before us as we soared up into the air.