[V4 Interlude 4] Very Piyo-Piyo ( = Feeling Excited)
Translated by Jodas 4: Flying Through the SkyThe night after the boy’s party, Rose, after taking a bath and returning to his room, ran his hand through his fuzzy beard.
He rather liked this beard, but he occasionally thought that it was a pain to dry it. He also had a lot of hair, so it only added to the work he had to do.
Hoping to make it dry a little faster, Rose stuck his hand in his beard and flapped it back and forth.
Oliver, watching him, spoke while running a hand through his own hair.
“Wouldn’t it be easier if you just trimmed that beard?”
“Hm… But I kinda like it, though. Look, doesn’t it look so cool?”
Sending tiny droplets of water flying about the room, Rose jiggled his hand around his beard.
Suddenly, a thought hit Rose.
“Oliver, could you use your magecraft and… make a nice breeze to dry my hair and beard in the blink of an eye?”
“Good idea, but I’m sorry. I can’t use much aside from flight magic.”
Now that he mentioned it, Rose hadn’t ever seen Oliver using any sort of attack magic before.
However, since Oliver was from a Monster-hunting family, he would have received training for the purpose of fighting against monsters, so it made a certain amount of sense.
While it would be easier to deal damage to Monsters by imbuing your weapons with mana, that didn’t mean ordinary weapons wouldn’t get the job done.
In a real battle, rather than wasting your mana trying to make a magic sword work when you’re not accustomed to it, it would be more effective for most people to just swing with an ordinary sword.
Magic battles, where no damage would occur if an attack wasn’t coated in mana, were a highly specialized sort of combat.
And magic battles themselves were a relatively new technology in the first place.
(After spending all this time fighting Monsters with normal weapons, how many people would go out of their way to learn magic swords just to win a magic battle? … Probably not many.)
While the math might be different if we were talking about battling dragons, Oliver was from a family that fought Monsters, not dragons.
When slaying Monsters, there was no obligation for one’s attack options to include magecraft.
“But your brother imbues his spear with mana, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, Brother can coat his spear with a blade of wind, and I think he can also send one flying the normal way as well.”
Wind magic was very fast to activate, but it was on the lower side in effectiveness. Attacks with it were liable to be unable to cut deep enough. Thus, Frederik made use of his spear and flight magic to increase his stopping power.
For the upcoming magic battle, Oliver was busy studying magic sword techniques alongside Sevil. However, it was up in the air whether or not he would make it in time for the magic battle.
Rose considered an issue that came to his mind.
Wind magic had the trait of being easy to activate but difficult to imbue into objects. That meant it was poorly suited for magic swords.
Thinking just in terms of magic swords, it would be harder for him to learn than Sevil, who had an ice affinity.
“Oliver, have you thought of attacking by launching arrows of wind or something like that?”
“…….”
Oliver fell silent. It wasn’t that he was silent because the question was hard to answer; more like he was taking his time formulating the best answer.
Oliver was a generally clear-spoken man, and he always gave his answers as simply and directly as he could.
“Most likely, it would be easier for me, with a wind affinity, to fight by launching bullets or flying blades of wind. However, I want to fight with my spear as my main weapon.”
“Is your spear a source of pride for the Lange Family?”
“Yes.”
Nodding, Oliver glanced at the spear leaning against the wall.
With sharp eyes, and with a hint of pride.
“Our ancestor was a person known as ‘Red Rain Lange.’ He was unbelievably strong, and he flew around with flight magic and was said to slay monsters one after another with his spear.”
His voice slowly intensified and carried a quiet passion. Like a child retelling a heroic story he was once told.
Oliver seemed to take great pride in the fact that this person was his ancestor.
Rose secretly envied him for that.
“Since I was a little kid, I thought I wanted to be like that. I told myself time and again to be like that.”
“That’s why you call yourself the Red Rain Oliver?”
“Yes. Doesn’t it sound strong?”
“Yep. It sounds super strong!”
In response to Rose’s enthusiastic words, the corners of Oliver’s mouth lifted up into a faint smile.
Rose didn’t know much about Monster-hunting families.
However, hearing that Oliver respected his ancestor and wished by his own will to be like that person, Rose wanted to give him his full support.
Rose knew that the reason why Oliver spiked his hair up, called himself the Red Rain, and always acted as he thought a strong man should, was all because he wanted his brother to be at ease.
“Oliver, since you’re from a Monster-hunting family… Have you seen a lot of different kinds of Monsters?”
“The territory that the Lange Family protects isn’t terribly large. So it’s hard for me to say that I’ve seen ‘a lot of different kinds of Monsters.’”
In the first place, it was rare in itself for Monsters to leave the Crystal Territory.
In the area where the Lange Family protects, they’d usually only see about one or two Lesser Monsters that strayed from the herd each month.
“Most of the Monsters I’ve seen have taken the form of beasts or bugs. Every once in a while there’s plant-shaped ones as well.”
“How about birds?”
Rose stopped stroking his beard and repeated his question.
“Have you ever seen any bird Monsters?”
“I’ve seen them from a distance, but I’ve never fought one. Bird monsters aren’t very belligerent. If they notice a Monster hunter, they usually just run away.”
“I see.”
With his hand still stuck in his beard, Rose stood still and fell silent.
In the quiet room, the only sound to be heard was that of Oliver combing his hair. His light brown hair, usually spiked straight up, was now laid flat on his head.
With his hair like that, he looked just like his brother, Frederik. Just about the only difference was their expressions.
Frederik was always smiling, but Oliver made a stern, serious face.
Oliver, who would make a serious face even when nothing was wrong, asked Rose with a caring voice.
“Did something happen with a bird monster?”
“Hmm….”
Rose pulled his hand out of his beard and rubbed his cheeks.
He’d asked so many questions, so he felt it would only be fair if he said a few things about himself.
“I come from a pretty old family…”
“Uh-huh.”
“And there was a treasure in our family that was said to have been stolen by a bird Monster. I’m trying to find it.”
Oliver made no attempt to ask more prying questions into Rose’s family nor the stolen treasure.
However, he stopped combing his hair and fell quiet in thought for a few seconds.
“A bird Monster… There’s a few different kinds, but the most famous have to be the Harpies of Breakneck Gorge.”
“Those Monsters are good at singing, right? Are they like the Lorelei?”
“The Lorelei isn’t a bird. It’s a Greater Monster. If you ran across it, you wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“I see~”
Monsters who could control songs would perform mental interference with those songs. If a Harpy used mental interference on him, he would have to think of some sort of countermeasure.
Even if he covered his ears, a Monster’s song would find a way to slip into the cracks in his heart.
(I wonder if Tia’s songs could counteract a Monster’s songs?)
Remembering his fellow Apprentice’s piyo-piyo singing, he started to get a little excited.
His beard had just about dried by now, so all he had left to do before bed was to write a letter.
(There’s a lot I want to write in this letter.)
He wanted to tell the friend who gifted him the card game that he’d found people to play it with.
About the younger, hard-working kids he’d grown to care for.
About how his roommate was a nice guy and how he taught him new ways to neatly fold and store his clean laundry.
And about how everyone gathered in his room to have a boy’s party.
(Oh, crap. I’ve got to add ‘I’m doing my best in my magecraft training’ too… also, the results of my plant mana imbuement research… I haven’t made any real progress yet, but I’ve gotta send something.)
Imagining the friend who gave him that gift angrily shouting “Do what you have to do!”, Rose hurriedly picked up his feather pen.