Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 5.8 - Chapter SS5

Follow Your Heart

“I wonder, how long will it be before your mana runs dry?” Detlinde mused aloud. “I do hope I can obtain the Grutrissheit before then...” She shot me one last glance before leaving the room, her shoes clacking on the hard ground as she went.

To that fool, neither the royal decree nor my status as an archducal family member meant anything. I should never have operated under the assumption that she was a noble—not when she only ever followed her own desires. Had I accounted for that, I probably would have had the upper hand right now. I could have taken her to a back room, stripped away her mana-resistant silver clothes, removed her veil that presumably had silver thread woven into it, and incinerated her Veronica-esque face with the hottest fire magic I could produce.

To my frustration, that option was no longer available to me; Letizia had struck me with poison. It must have been especially potent, as despite my antitoxin and the protective circles within Rozemyne’s charms, my body was completely paralyzed.

Detlinde did call it instant-death poison.

I understood that Letizia had been manipulated, but that did not stop me from feeling sincerely disappointed in her. I had said to her that Roswitha’s disappearance was most likely the result of a scheme and that she should stay well away from it, but her ignorance had led her to oppose me anyway. By falling for the enemy’s trap and participating in a murder, she had gone from being someone who deserved an education but needed to be shielded from malice to a fool who ignored orders and acted without rhyme or reason.

This is useless. Completely useless.

Letizia’s young age was no excuse; even as a child, Wilfried had been punished for entering the Ivory Tower without permission and for attempting to rescue a prisoner. The duchy had been caught in a schism at the time, but that did not change the fact he had nearly been disinherited over it.

Letizia was a member of Ahrensbach’s archducal family. To make matters worse, she had come here without parents and stepped straight into the firing line of two powerful enemies eager for her elimination. Her position had been precarious enough already—what punishment would she receive for murdering her tutor by royal decree, an archducal family member from another duchy? Even in the best scenario, she would not be the only one executed.

Never have I seen an archducal family member so tragically unaware.

Just how many retainers would need to be punished alongside Letizia? And what about the nobles of her faction who would be deemed guilty by association? It was impossible to calculate how much damage this whole incident would cause; Detlinde and Georgine would not give up such a great opportunity to wreak havoc.

As for Roswitha, she would most likely be killed to ensure her silence. There was no chance she would ever be freed, and even if she were, she would return to find that her imprisonment had driven Letizia to commit murder and then be punished alongside her. I could not even begin to imagine the depths to which her despair would take her.

In truth, my heart went out not to Letizia but to her retainers—they had been doomed entirely by their lady’s foolish actions.

Were Eckhart and Justus able to escape, I wonder?

Thinking about Letizia’s retainers made me ponder what was happening to my own. If they stayed here in Ahrensbach, chances were they would be swept up in this whole mess. If worse came to worst, they might have Letizia’s crimes forced on them as well. The most I could do now was pray their name stones had reached them and that they would save themselves by undoing the vows. They would probably deduce the circumstances, but they had no hope of reaching me here. And even if they explained my situation to Ehrenfest, it would be impossible to save me. I simply hoped that those who had always been so loyal to me would get to spend the rest of their lives at peace in their home duchy.

Tomorrow at noon, I would say.

That was when my mana would run out. Would Eckhart and Justus make it to Ehrenfest and free Lasfam’s stone before then? That was my main concern.

“I do not fear the danger. Please bring me with you,” Lasfam had said to me, only to be told to stay in my estate and protect my belongings. I had intended to summon him with all of my luggage once I was more secure, but that would no longer be happening. Was he going to resent me for failing to keep our promise?

On second thought, I suppose Eckhart and Justus will return to enact revenge.

My retainers aside, almost everyone would rejoice at the news of my death. There were Detlinde and Georgine, of course, but also the Zent who had ordered my move to Ahrensbach in the first place. The royals and Sovereign nobles would surely be relieved to hear that I could no longer use Rozemyne to search for the Grutrissheit, as they all suspected.

Rozemyne would mourn me, but Erwaermen had ordered her to kill me to finish her Book of Mestionora. She would most likely be relieved to obtain the missing section without having to endure the torture of us fighting each other. That young woman had an unusually low tolerance for death, but the entire country would collapse without my demise. She was a passionate lover of books, so maybe she had pieced together my intentions for the maximal-quality fey paper.

Aah, and warning Sylvester is no longer an option.

It had been Georgine’s idea to manipulate Letizia, meaning she was the reason for my current predicament. No doubt she was already on her way to Ehrenfest under the guise of attending Spring Prayer. That intelligence was missing from the letters Eckhart and Justus were trying to deliver; I wondered whether they would figure out the truth on their own.

“I ask of you, brought to me by the Goddess of Time... protect Sylvester, and protect Ehrenfest.”

I recalled my father’s last words to me. Despite having come to Ahrensbach to keep an eye on Georgine, I was unable to warn Sylvester of the greatest threat she now posed. At once, the voice in my head changed to that of Veronica.

“What use does the archducal family have for a worthless member who produces no results? Raising them sounds like a waste of resources. Their life would not be valuable in the slightest.”

Veronica had been correct, it seemed. I was useless when it mattered most.

Forgive me, Father. I could not protect Ehrenfest and Sylvester as you asked.

One by one, faces came to mind and then faded. My vision blurred, and my consciousness slipped away. Even keeping my eyes open became an insurmountable task. My only option was to stop resisting the pain—and with that, my entire body relaxed.

I had closed my eyes only for a moment, but it felt like an eternity had passed. Stranger still, I noticed that the ceaseless pull of my mana being sucked away had suddenly stopped. No, not just that—I had been enveloped in someone else’s mana.

My name has been stolen?!

Being enveloped in another’s mana was not a new experience for me. Unlike when I gave my name to my father, however, there was no pain during this binding. The mana surrounding me was the same as the mana that had protected me when Letizia’s poison had activated Rozemyne’s charm.

I technically had entrusted my name stone to Rozemyne by hiding it within the false bottom of a bag—but that stone had the name “Quinta” carved into it, not “Ferdinand.” Moreover, she was strongly against taking names and bearing the burden of other people’s lives. She would never have considered stealing the name of someone she did not know.

Before I could recover from my shock, Rozemyne’s voice resounded throughout my mind: “Don’t give up, Ferdinand. I’m coming to save you, and there’s nothing that can stop me. Live.”

The fool. What kind of an order was that?!

I tried to resist on an unconscious level and was immediately overcome with pain—not from the poison but from a strange sensation as if my “master” was choking me with her mana. I grunted out my acknowledgment of her command.

Fine. I will use any means at my disposal to live.

The moment I accepted Rozemyne’s order, the pain disappeared. The feeling of my name being bound was instant, and despite not having seen who had stolen my name, I was already being told what to do. On top of that, my acknowledgment had been accepted without me needing to say anything. A mere grunt had sufficed. The terror of having my name stolen made me want to sigh, but all that came out was a labored breath.

I am to blame for sending her my name stone to begin with... but Justus must have given her a push.

Rozemyne was strongly against taking other people’s names, but Justus always had his ways. He knew she could use her mana to delay my demise and that the girl in question loathed letting others die even more than she did taking their lives into her own hands. It would have been easy to convince her. No doubt she had taken my name with the sole intention of saving me.

Rozemyne would order me to live when the gods want one of us to die?

I suspected she had not even considered that. She could have simply waited, and my wisdom would have become hers. If we both lived, we would eventually need to fight to the death as the gods demanded. Erwaermen must have told her the same thing he had told me, yet she was still prioritizing my life. As always, I could describe her only as a fool who acted according to her emotions.

At the same time, though, I was relieved to know she did not want my death. She still saw me as family—at least to some degree.

Still... She commands me to “live,” does she?

As the shock of my name being taken faded, so, too, did my consciousness. Glimpses of the past started to wander into my mind.

“You will be able to live as you please. You will have the freedom to follow your heart, find a dream, and shape your own life...” said the woman who had given me the name “Ferdinand” in the Adalgisa villa. I had been told she was my mother, but at the time, the very concept had been foreign to me. In my mind, she had also only ever spoken to me on that one occasion.

During that one exchange, my “mother” had told me I would be able to lead my own life. But I had not known what it meant to live freely or to have dreams. My whole existence had been spent preparing to become a feystone, and not once had I considered what I would do if that fate never came.

“Lady Irmhilde, what is a dream?” I had asked upon being moved to Ehrenfest. She was my guardian at the time, and my father’s paternal half-sister. She had passed away before my baptism, but if she had lived, she would have become my father’s second wife and my noble mother.

Lady Irmhilde had touched her pale, loosely bound hair in thought. “It is the desire for things to be a certain way. Is there anything you wish for, Ferdinand?”

“I think I can live freely now, with my own dreams... but what are my dreams?”

“It sounds to me like you do not have any at the moment. You may not know them now, but you will one day. Once you have found the things you desire, live to make them come true and protect them.”

Lady Irmhilde had answered in a kind voice and tried to stroke my cheek as she answered, but her movements were somewhat awkward; she was not used to interacting with children. Smiles had been such a rare sight for me at the time that I recalled staring into her golden-brownish eyes, awestruck.

In the end, what did I desire?

Maybe because I was on the border between life and death, memories that had previously been pushed to the furthest reaches of my mind resurfaced. I had been with Lady Irmhilde only for a short while, so I did not remember much about her. For the most part, I recalled what people had told me about her once she was gone.

“Lady Irmhilde, why am I here?”

“Because someone wished for you to live, Ferdinand. My own wish is for you to keep living, grow up healthy, and one day meet that person.”

I still did not know whom Lady Irmhilde had wanted me to meet, but the memory of our exchange had always been vivid in my mind. It had served as a great source of comfort when Veronica had continuously called me a blight on Ehrenfest. In the Adalgisa villa, I had been nothing more than a feystone.

I suspect I will die without ever seeing this person Lady Irmhilde wanted me to meet.

As my mind continued to wander, I suddenly noticed that the magic circle was draining less of my mana. That was probably because Rozemyne had ordered me to live and was surrounding me with her own mana. As frustrated as I was that my name had been stolen, this certainly would delay my death to some degree.

Though I would not consider that a reason to be hopeful.

It would mean a slightly extended life span but not my survival; the poison had yet to be completely removed from my system, so I was still unable to move. I was more likely to be finished off than saved, especially when the only ones currently capable of entering this place were Letizia, Detlinde, and Georgine—those who wished me nothing but harm.

If only I could move my hands.

Although my schtappe was sealed, I still had magic tools at my disposal. Rozemyne’s charm also had a purification circle. If I could somehow stop the mana flowing out of me and charge my tools, I would actually be able to purify the poison.

I tried to move my hands. They merely trembled, but it must have worked to some degree; the magic circle began draining even less of my mana. It was a decent start, but alas, that was the end of my resistance. My vision grew darker until the world around me had completely disappeared.

I awoke to a sudden flood of water. The merciless waves swallowed me and threw me up into the air, leaving me unable to breathe. It had all happened so suddenly that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what was going on.

Have they at last come to finish me?!

That was my initial thought, but the water lasted only a few moments before it disappeared. I came out the other end dry as a bone, which meant it must have been a waschen—even in my dazed state, I was able to piece together that much. As I coughed and spluttered, I realized the caster had probably been trying to cleanse the room of poison; it was much easier to breathe all of a sudden.

Is that sound...?

I could tell that someone had entered, but I could neither move my head nor open my eyes. My ears must have been damaged as well; I was having to rely solely on the vibrations of what I discerned to be footsteps. The weight of each one made it clear that this was no mere child.

That would mean this is Detlinde or Georgine, I suppose.

Whoever it was, my executioner moved me before pouring some liquid into my mouth. My hand was no longer on the replenishment circle, and at once, mana flowed into my magic tools and charm instead. Any last traces of the old poison were cleansed, and whatever poison had just been administered to me would soon meet the same fate—assuming it was of the normal variety. A tense moment passed as I waited for it all to leave my system, feeling my mana flow through me once again... until another, more intense liquid was poured into my mouth.

Ngh! What is this poison?!

I spat out the vile liquid and, using as much strength as I could muster, moved my wooden body enough to pin down my attacker. Rozemyne had ordered me to live; I needed to eliminate any threats by whatever means necessary.

“Who are you?” I demanded, narrowing my blurry eyes in an attempt to focus them. I could not tell which of my three potential attackers had come to finish the job.

Looking back at me were two wide golden eyes. The word “Rozemyne!” reached my ears, and while it was ever so faint, the voice did sound somewhat similar to hers. The figure before me looked nothing like her, though—and above all else, Rozemyne would never have been granted access to this room in the first place.

“Impossible. Rozemyne is only this tall,” I said, still on guard but trying to relax the chains I had intended to choke her with. My body did not move as I wanted, however; it would be a while yet before the purification process finished, as my still pained gasps made apparent.

“What?! How is it impossible?!” the woman shouted, sitting up so suddenly that she drove the chain into her own neck. “Guh!”

Ah. Yes. That certainly is Rozemyne.

The moment I was convinced of that fact, the tension and suspicion that had driven me disappeared. I flopped onto my side and stared at Rozemyne, who had tears in her eyes and was spluttering to no end. She had changed too much for a basic remark such as “You certainly have grown.” It looked like she had aged four or maybe five years all at once, which was anything but a normal growth spurt. She had also become so beautiful that I struggled to believe my eyes. It was a transformation so abnormal that it could no longer be understood through human reasoning.

So the gods must have intervened.

It was clear as day that Erwaermen favored Rozemyne over me. Something must have happened during her trip to the Garden of Beginnings that would explain this almost artificial beauty she had suddenly acquired. It appeared to me that her features were perfect in the most literal sense, lacking any of the distortion or asymmetry that normally developed over the course of one’s life. I could only sigh that she would sully this literal gift from the gods with her unseemly behavior.

“Have you lost your mind...?” I asked. “You fool.”

Her sudden decision to move straight into the chain stretched across her neck had not been the only issue. From visiting Erwaermen to rescuing me against my will to accessing this room through some means I could not even begin to fathom, her every move exposed her as a fool.

“Bwuh... Look, I already know that I took things a little too far. Please don’t get all sanctimonious about it.”

Even now, she was so oblivious to her own faults that she had described her actions as “a little” too far. Any lingering feelings of aggression faded as I realized she was completely unchanged on the inside.

Still, there can be no doubting her identity.

Rozemyne was so dense that she had yet to realize I had deliberately attempted to choke her. She was also wasting her beauty and stubbornly refusing to give up on anything she cared about. These were all grave flaws for a noblewoman to have, but for some reason, they did not displease me. I wondered why.

“Is it because you can’t move that you feel the need to run your mouth?” she asked.

“I ‘run my mouth’ because of the manner in which you administered the antidote. And if you want me to take your complaints seriously, I would advise wiping that great big smile from your face.”

Despite my warning her time and time again to keep her emotions hidden, Rozemyne was as easy to read as ever. She was slapping her cheeks at the moment, trying to regain some composure, but it was doing very little to help her case.

“I’m glad you’ve recovered enough to grumble,” she said, her golden eyes wrinkled in an ear-to-ear grin. Would I have rejoiced if she had lost that straightforward stare during her growth spurt? “As soon as you’re better, I expect some head pats, your sweetest ‘very good,’ and maybe even some hugs. You can also pinch my cheeks if you want. So please... Get better soon.”

I could not bring myself to critique her unusual display of simultaneously crying and smiling. It seemed that I cared more about her unchanged personality than her beautifully developed appearance.

And this is the person I am expected to kill to complete my Book of Mestionora...?

I recalled Erwaermen’s instructions and returned to my senses; there were some things one simply could not escape from.

“In the first place,” I said, “there was no need for you to come to my rescue. Justus must have given you my message, so why are you here? To what end did you come?” It would have been far more intelligent of her to let me die, thereby saving Yurgenschmidt with as few deaths as possible. That was what Erwaermen desired, and it would have been much easier on Rozemyne than an outright duel to the death.

And yet she had never even considered leaving me to die.

“Hm? I mean, who cares?” she asked, cocking her head at me. “There’s no point in saving Yurgenschmidt if you’re not in it. Isn’t that super obvious?”

I was at a loss for words; she had delivered that outrageous remark as though it were the most natural thing in the world. It had not slipped my mind that she had said I was like family to her and threatened to save me if ever I ended up in danger, yet her declaration that she would prioritize me over the entire country was hard to process.

“The greater duchies, the Sovereignty, the royal family, and even the gods themselves—I would make an enemy of the entire world to save you,” she said.

“I do not believe you said ‘the gods’ before...”

In truth, it was a frivolous detail. Yurgenschmidt was home to her commoner family and her friends—the people she cared about more than anything. I had not fathomed she would prioritize my life over their safety.

Someone who is merely like family should never be placed above one’s true kin. Is that not how it goes?

My father had called me his son but prioritized Veronica, Sylvester, and Bonifatius over me. Sylvester likewise called me his brother but cared more about Florencia and his children. Even after our father’s death, he had determined it best for me to enter the temple, not Veronica.

I had always considered such favoritism the height of normalcy, so it had seemed obvious to me that Rozemyne would treat those who were only like family the same as everyone else did. Yes, I was special to her as a noble, and if something were to happen to me, she would rampage to save me as though we were related. But it had never even crossed my mind that she might continue to care for me when her true family’s safety was on the other end of the scales.

My calculations never accounted for this.

“Oh, is this your first time hearing that part?” Rozemyne asked. “My apologies, but that’s just how it is. Now, let us come up with a way to complete the Book of Mestionora without either one of us having to die.” The fool did not even acknowledge my emotions as she continued to joyfully babble on about Erwaermen. She even came out with the truly ridiculous idea of pouring mana into the country gates to buy ourselves more time.

I doubted Erwaermen had even considered the possibility that we would refuse to kill each other over the Book of Mestionora. He most likely considered it a given that mere humans from Yurgenschmidt would obey his commands.

Still, is Rozemyne not following her desires too carelessly?

I was equal parts exasperated and enthusiastic about seeing the shock on Erwaermen’s face when Rozemyne’s plans came to light. My lips curled into a slight grin, and it was then that I remembered what Lady Irmhilde had told me:

“Once you have found the things you desire, live to make them come true and protect them.”

Hm... Living in accordance with my own desires might not be a bad idea after all.

This time, I interpreted the words differently—perhaps because my strength was returning to me. I attempted to bend my fingers, conscious that the charm and antidote were gradually restoring me. And as I calculated how long I would need to wait before I could move freely again, I started to contemplate the most efficient way to destroy Ahrensbach.