Chapter 13
After finding Linbelle’s mother, Allen planned to deal with the chimera sorcerer.
However—
‘Isn’t it weird to be trying to find someone less than a day after arriving in the city?’
Julius may have been able to deceive the baron in the past by gloating his family’s name. However, Allen didn’t think the same thing would work on the current Baron Bellourne given that he would act the way that Allen thought he would.
Then again, what if he just fell for Julius’s excuse due to his incompetence?
‘It would probably be best to just say that we found her early on into the search by luck.’
Disregarding the thought of just going elsewhere, Allen thought about what they would get out of her tagging along with them.
‘Would she even be useful?’
She would be.
She would be more useful than any soldier since as a sorcerer, her senses would sharpen fivefold every time her rank increased.
Although Allen had a relatively large ring, he could only utilize a three-meter radius to sense around him. Meanwhile, Francisca, as a Rank 4 sorceress, had a domain of 375 meters.
As is, she would be very useful as a tracker.
‘Well, maybe.’
As Allen agonized over her, Francisca approached Linbelle and struck up a conversation.
“Your skin is so clear! Do you do anything special to it?”
“Ah, uhm… I don’t really know.”
“Oh, so it must be genetics. You must’ve gotten it from your parents. What’s your mother like?”
“Yes, th-thank you… My mom is a lot prettier than me. But what’s ‘genetics’…?”
“Hm… Well, genetics are sort of like…”
‘It looks like they’re getting along.’
Allen then gave his reply to Francisca’s suggestion.
“Well then, come with us. I have a lot to do, so let’s get going.”
* * *
Because many soldiers had gone to the villages since the morning, the wall at the west gate was quiet from the small number of soldiers remaining there.
Apart from the guards, there were masses of people moving around. Allen was initially worried about finding Linbelle’s mother in that kind of setting, but…
“Sir Allen, is this the woman you were looking for?”
His worries ceased. There was no need to have brought Francisca with them. The soldiers had already found the woman by the time they’d arrived at the gate.
“Ah! Mom!”
As soon as Linbelle saw the woman the soldiers had brought, she immediately ran to her with tears running down her face.
“Linbelle…?”
She hugged Linbelle, who jumped straight into her arms, bewildered by the situation.
The soldiers left as soon as Allen approached, and the woman turned her attention to him.
She appeared to be in her early thirties. She shared the same waist-length black hair and purple eyes as her daughter, and she had the solid body of a hunter, just as Linbelle had said.
Observing the behavior of the soldiers around her, she carefully asked, “Could you be… a nobleman?”
“I am the eldest son of the Reinhart family, Allen Reinhart.”
He slowly walked towards them. And as he came within three meters of them, the ring around his heart gently vibrated, taking in everything within his range.
‘Why is my heart racing? She’s tensing her legs… Is she looking to escape?’
Her actions piqued his interest.
She raised her daughter alone while working as a hunter, unlike how she lived in his previous life.
However, for some reason, she had been anxious ever since his arrival, unlike Allen who was moderately amused.
The feelings she was harboring weren’t the same feelings that commoners experienced when faced with nobility.
‘I’m curious, but…’
That was all.
He didn’t intend to dig any deeper and expose her secrets that he meant to protect.
“Mom, he helped me find you,” Linbelle said, softly. She had been in her mother’s arms for quite some time now.
“Is that so…?”
“Also, he saved me from some soldiers who tried to… Oh, and also, he let me eat in his fancy house…”
No matter what Linbelle said, however, her mother maintained her stiff expression and tightly shut lips.
Allen slowly approached the nervous woman.
“I suppose it’s no use to tell you to relax.” He smiled, but she didn’t return it.
“What do you want from us?”
“Mom!”
“You stay put.”
Linbelle protested against her mother, but couldn’t manage to win her over. And as her mother spoke, she became quiet again.
“I don’t believe you’ve decided to help us purely out of compassion, sir.”
Her suspicions were reasonable.
Why would the duke’s eldest son personally order soldiers to help a random person? And a totally unrelated village girl, at that?
Her daughter may have been naive, but she was not.
“Sir, I don’t know what you want from us, but we don’t have anything to offer.”
“What could he—”
“If you want our bodies, then take me instead of my daughter…”
“Mom!”
Linbelle, unable to stay silent, spoke out again.
“Sir Allen isn’t like that. He just wanted to help…”
“Quiet, Linbelle. Nothing in this world comes without a price, even if you pretend otherwise.”
Linbelle was visibly upset by her words, yet her mother didn’t look at her.
“How rude!”
A soldier shouted.
“Watch what you say to Sir Allen! Who do you think you’re talking to…”
“That’s enough.”
“But…”
With a wave of a hand from Allen, the soldier quickly shifted his gaze and shut his mouth.
“Yes, you were correct. There’s nothing in this world that comes without a price.”
He nodded at her words. The same held true both now and back then.
There was nothing in this world that came without a price.
Allen thought of the price he may someday have to pay for having been able to return to the past. He just didn’t know when it would be.
‘I hope I can put it off until after I kill “him”…’
He couldn’t conceive the thought that things could possibly just turn in his favor and a price would not have to be paid.
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“But not this time. Well, I suppose you could say otherwise. I did have a reason for helping you.”
She approved of their shared thinking. Linbelle, perhaps shocked, stared blankly.
Fransica had unexpectedly stayed quiet while observing the situation. Possibly because it wasn’t any of her business.
“I was thinking of asking you to—”
“So you really just did want her for her body after all…”
Allen was stunned for a moment.
Francisca covered her mouth to hold back her laughter, but the corners of her mouth continued to twitch out of control until she eventually burst into laughter.
Linbelle took two steps away. Her face then reddened, just as it had the day before, as if she’d only just grasped the situation.
“Ah, well, I… It’s, uhm…”
Her eyes moved back and forth frantically as she stuttered. Allen continued, maintaining his expression with superhuman patience.
“Ahem. Well, as I was going to say, I was thinking of asking you to work as a maid,” Allen replied with consideration to what he had been worrying about since arriving in the city.
“Excuse me?”
“I’d like to ask you both, mother and daughter, to work as maids.”
Despite Allen’s lack of involvement, history had already been rewritten. And despite having had no run-ins with Julius yet, Linbelle had already had a rough go of things. Though he hadn’t been around at that time to interfere, she seemed to have been miserable, even if the outcome was different from the one before his regression.
As such…
‘I’ll take them with me.’
After all, intervening like this would give them the choice between fighting on the battlefield or getting caught in the crossfire.
However, it wasn’t guaranteed that the same thing would happen as it had before his regression. So he figured it best to take them with him.
That was his conclusion.
There were lots of disasters in the future to come. What if they were to die in the midst of one of those disasters? Had he not intervened, who would be to blame? Him? The disaster itself? A God who may or may not even exist?
‘There’s no use in worrying.’
If he’d known that this would happen, he would’ve acted thoughtlessly like Julius.
However, because of his worries, the standard for how he should act in the future had been set.
Time continued to pass regardless of your actions or lack thereof, and the outcome of the choices you made were unknown until they happened.
Could he be sure that there wouldn’t be a better outcome if he didn’t intervene?
‘I can’t.’
After all, he wasn’t any kind of omniscient god. He was just a person who happened to know a little bit about the future.
The black book only contained tales of a future that would no longer line up with the events to come, right?
His eyes sparkled.
At this moment, there’d been no change in his capabilities.
Yet he was convinced that with even just a small amount of knowledge on the future, he could come to achieve new heights.
‘Understanding the future…’
He shook his head. For now, he should just finish their conversation.
“Us…?”
Allen felt the need to think quickly, so he firmly spoke.
“Well then, would you grant me permission to employ Linbelle alone?”
“I…”
The mother’s expression turned dark.
“It’s obvious that you’re concerned about her, so I offered to take the both of you as maids. I don’t have any other ideas.”
“I… I—”
“We’ll do it!”
Linbelle immediately accepted his proposition. However, her mother objected.
“…No!”
“Why not?! Sir Allen really is a good person! Yesterday…”
Linbelle then whispered in her mother’s ear.
Allen waited politely until the mother startledly looked at him and slapped her daughter.
“Ack! Why’d you do that?!”
“I’ll see you later.”
She glared at her daughter and came to stand in front of Allen.
She had known from the time he offered to make them maids that it was a declaration rather than an invitation. She couldn’t refuse an ‘invitation’ from an aristocrat, who would one day become the ruler of the land on which they stood. She could do nothing else but believe him to be truly good-natured from the nature of the request, hoping that all that she heard from her daughter truly reflected his nature.
She thought something through in her head, and then looked up decidedly, having made up her mind.
“I, Inellia, and my daughter, Linbelle, accept your offer to serve as your maids. And…”
She came up to him and whispered, “You may touch me, but please don’t touch my daughter.”
He hadn’t even thought about doing anything of the sort.
Annoyed, Allen replied without trying to correct her misconception.
“Alright. I won’t.”
Not having found a way to save his brother yet, he hadn’t had the time to even think about trying to get with any women. Maybe once it was all over, he might take the time to think about it.
‘But will that day ever come?’
“…Thank you for accepting my request.”
Francisca, who’d been carefully observing the series of events, looked at Allen with a vague expression on her face. It was clear that she heard their whispered exchange.
Allen ignored her gaze and talked to the mother and daughter.
“Inellia, Linbelle, I’ll get you a room so you can unwind for a bit. And regarding your training as maids… we can discuss that once we return to the manor.”
Taking in commoners as maids would’ve been an unimaginable action had it been his past life, but he didn’t care.
With the two under his wing, not only would he obtain the power of the girl who would one day become very powerful, but also, his mother would support him because she wanted anyone to come in to work as maids.
Allen immediately went to approach Francisca to thank her.
“Miss Francisca, thank you for coming along with us.”
“Oh, I barely helped at all.”
“Still, thank you for offering your help.”
Allen gave a small bow and turned around. He needed to organize all of the thoughts that had been rushing through his head.
“By the way, sir…”
“I’m sorry, but I’m quite busy.”
After greeting them again, he sent Inellia and Linbelle to their room in the mansion before heading to a nearby inn himself.
“Come on…!”
“Any single room is fine.”
“Ah, yes. Right this way!”
Once in the room, the innkeeper dropped the key on accident, but Allen didn’t care. He took the key and immediately went to sit down.
With an indecipherable smile, Francisca stared at his back until he disappeared into the inn.
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