Absolutely Do Not Touch Eldmia Egga

Chapter 16: Lagnis Lien da Levien

14 years.

Looking back, it was a life that never really had properly enjoyed the thing called a rest.

It was like that even before my 8th birthday, and enough had been said about after that. I’d merely exchanged spending time with dreams and expectations in my heart with spending time with anger and spite in my chest, after all.

Put nicely, I’d spent it fully and fruitfully, and put badly, I’d overworked myself close to child abuse. As much as I had driven myself to a point of wondering myself as well if I’d developed a type of obsessive compulsion, I resolved myself to simply rest fully at this opportunity.

“It’s a tour!”

Having finished a simple chore at the adventurer’s guild, I one-sidedly declared to Lagnis.

“Why did we come to the adventurer’s guild?”

“For nothing much. I just asked if unfamiliar adventurers have recently increased or not.”

After all, so long as they were planning for kidnapping, the people in the industry they could use were limited. Even if they had overseers for the job, it was either mercenaries or adventurers. Bandits were a risk even just in coming into the town and, in the case they get caught halfway through, could sell out their employers before they could even twitch their hands. Those that require expensive costs to hire left behind trails, and made the cleanup later on difficult.

It was a world where expensive experts could pluck their employers’ heads in reverse should their employers betray them at an end of a job. They shouldn’t be able to easily use someone like that. 

Those that got lots of things to hide tended to want tails they could easily cut off, after all.

Submitting cutesy acts and snacks as bribes to the receptionist sis and checking the intelligence each and every day was the first step of the daily work I had to do going forwards. The intelligence I heard today was ‘there wasn’t particularly a new face’. Having expected that much, I coolly decided to enjoy the tour without reservation.

And the Ogwen tour that started like that was fantastically fun beyond what I had imagined.

Even if they were places I didn’t usually go, or places I didn’t need to go, I moved my feet first so long as there were a lot of people. Stores that catered to adventurers were a bit pricey, but there were many things from foods one normally wouldn’t see to equipment, and sightseeing them was quite a fun experience for the both of us.

“Have you come often to these kinds of places?”

“No. Not at all.”

When I led ahead absolutely unhesitatingly, steel-hearted Lagnis, who was enjoying this walk while giving no mind to the situation she was in, asked.

“Eh? You didn’t know where we were going?”

“To be exact, I only knew they were there. It’s not like I got any reason to come here, you know.”

In the first place, Asileye taught me the things like essential tools and information that could be called superb tips of adventurers, and I, who was still in my growing age, had no reason to buy equipment like armors and protectors. As for other miscellaneous things besides that, even if I were to buy them later on, right now they were at most meaningless things. Truthfully speaking, I intentionally wouldn’t even have come here before my 16th birthday if there wasn’t a chance like this.

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But even if I did say that we would walk around like lovers, there was just no way that there would be a dating course or a tourist attraction in a town that just now was developing into a fortress city, right? It might’ve been different had there been one from the start, but there wasn’t something like that in Ogwen, and as much as this was a wartime now, there wasn’t something like spare resources to build something like that in a border city. Well, it might change if the adventurers’ guild expanded and the traffic increased later on, but that moment wasn’t now just yet.

In the end, there wasn’t much to do except searching around for anything new and enjoying window shopping.

   But even then, because we could buy and eat chocolate and other sugary treats that normally were difficult to eat at the stores that professionally catered to adventurers, this area, which was essentially a type of an adventurers’ district, was unexpectedly perfect for a dating course.

“Anyway, I didn’t know that they sold something like this to adventurers. As expected, did adventurers earn a lot?”

“What, chocolate?”

Looking at a candy store right in front of our eyes advertising chocolate on a door-sized standing billboard, Lagnis nodded her head.

“Yeah. And really sweet candies too.”

“It’s ‘cause sugary foods help when using your head a lot. They also don’t rot easily from having lots of sugar, and things like chocolate even have a lot of energy, so they’re not bad for an emergency ration, either. Rather than adventurers earning a lot, wouldn’t those be something more of an emergency supply to them?”

Potions did exist in this world but, as expected, were expensive. From low quality to high quality, they were just all expensive. They were absolutely diverse from insane effects like instantly healing a wound as if one were a troll to effects similar to those of nutritional supplements one drank before bed, but they were expensive.

Regardless of whichever case there might be, unless one was an adventurer that had climbed to a certain level, in the end one had to endure with foods, herbs, and home remedies and medical knowledge just like in my last life.

Asileye, too, zealously taught me about the herbs and poisonous plants found in forests. From folk remedies of elves to home remedies popular with adventurers, she taught me really thoroughly. Though, I did have to take the adventurers’ home remedies with a grain of salt due to few of them being a bit closer to superstition.

“That’s unexpectedly really systematic. But isn’t chocolate expensive? They use that as an emergency supply?”

“Gotcha. Sis! Give us two of this chocolate!”

“Sis? Hoho. Give me just 9 copper coins.

“Copper?!”

“As expected, pretty sis always has a kind heart. Thank you!”

I took two chocolates that barely looked like half a candy bar from the madam in her 40s, and then passed one to Lagnis and munched on mine. Hmm. It roughly tasted like between 85% to 99% cacao.

“Eh? Copper coins? 9?”

“It’s normally 10. The answer’s in the taste, so try eating it, little miss.”

I could tell what she was wondering. Most likely the chocolate she originally knew should be something that one could only eat by giving up silver or gold coins. But even if she did understand that the quality was different from the chocolate she knew, from a commoner’s perspective she probably couldn’t accept easily that this tiny thing cost 5 copper coins. It was a price one could get two meals a day, a room for a night, and even a bath, after all.

But unless a completely novice adventurer, it wasn’t even that expensive a price for adventurers, whose activities were harsh enough to need something like this. And that was how they could be sold to adventurers.

Lagnis contemplated for a moment like that, then resolutely chomped the chocolate she held and immediately twisted her face.

“Eugh.”

“Chocolate’s pure ingredient doesn’t have a sweet taste. And this one is sweet, too. The chocolate you ate before were… well, it’s a food made incredibly sweet through a process we don’t know.”

Well, the taste wasn’t different from my last life either, and it actually was like that too. Lagnis might have immediately spat it out if this was back when she was a noble, but Lagnis of now couldn’t spit out the food worth a whopping 5 copper coins and was munching it the best she could and savoring the taste. Was this why people gave cacao to kids to try? The entertainment value of watching her reaction was delectable.

“Hm… it tasted just bitter at first, but it unexpectedly tastes good too. It not being very sweet… may actually be addicting?”

Unlike my long awaited anticipation for whines and complaints, Lagnis, who brightened up her face faster than expected, very enthusiastically ate up the chocolate the moment she got used to the taste. Wow.

But since she seemed to be enjoying herself while forgetting her rather serious situation, I took satisfaction in that and moved on.

🔷

After that, we wandered around like that for four days. There weren’t many new things. There ultimately was a limit to outings in a border town, after all.

Even so, as we went around eating this, sightseeing that, and so on, even Lagnis, who at first was simply stiff, began naturally jumping into my arms and doing a pretty good lover act, and everything was going well since the time was flowing fast like always. It was that moment when we were spending the day like before and I was wondering what other strange thing to make Lagnis taste again today.

– tud.

“Ah.”

Someone passing by hit my shoulder. To be exact, we merely brushed each other while passing by. I didn’t have a hobby of shoulder bumping people, after all. But the following croak wasn’t normal.

No, couldn’t be. Something that corny and obvious…

“Ouh fuck, my shoulder’s completely numb.”

And a muttering that followed. Muttering? No, it should simply be called the prelude to raise his voice.

It was ‘that’ line clear enough for even the passing adventurers to immediately react to. Clear enough for quick-eyed adventurers to widely open their eyes and excitedly anticipate the dirty mess that would unfold next.

Yes… precisely put, this was the glove thrown by nobles for a duel.

The line that acted the same role as the glove in the world of hooligans…

Lagnis was smiling and walking on while not even imagining for a second that it was something said to us, and since we didn’t particularly have any obligation to stop, I also continued walking while firing up my head.

Hooligans? Not likely. Those guys didn’t have the guts to try acting like thugs in an area swarming with adventurers. A completely unrelated pure dumbass? It was possible, but even those guys didn’t carelessly touch the town’s people. What reason could there be to pick out and do acts that would needlessly get them dragged away by the guards?

“What fucking bastard is this? Oi you piece of shit! Did ya trade in your eyeballs for that sword or something?! My friend says you broke his shoulder!!”

Having thought to that point, I abruptly opened my eyes at the realization that I didn’t need to think about it.

Wait? I could just beat them over if they’re hooligans, and I could also just beat them up if they’re adventurers picking this petty of a fight, and couldn’t I also just beat them up if they’re someone hired by the noble faction?

Simultaneously with the sudden realization, it felt as if Bad Eldmia and Even Badder Eldima were wiping their noses and smiling before my eyes.

They were wicked smiles as if snickering at me mulling over a moronic thought.

– huhu, idiot.

– huhu, dumbass.

Haha… thinking of just what I’d been mulling over, even I couldn’t help but hollowly laugh. At the same time, I could tell that footsteps filled with anger were stomping and approaching behind us.

– tkk!

“Is your ear fucked with shit or…”

And the instant a hand climbed onto my shoulder like that.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!”

“Eh? Eeh?”

“E, Elmdia?!”

Apologizing silently in my heart to Lagnis who was jumping in shock and surprise, I moved to action.

“It fuuuckiing!!! Huuurtssss!!!”

“Eh? W, wha, what fucking…”

And with only the pure, tempered strength of my body, I flaunted the men’s dream to the face that showed the moment I turned my body.

Lowering the waist, twisting the body and gathering all the strength into a single fist, and the true, real men’s punch swung with even rage and passion all clawed together.

And its name! Galactica Phantom!

“The fuck are you you son of a biiitchhhh!!!!!”

Telephone punch or whatnot, didn’t matter if I hit faster than they react!

– Boom!

The nameless man, with a fist planted straight into his face, fell before he could even scream at the abrupt impact and then began spasming a moment later.

“Gh, ggeaagh!!”

“You should’ve apologized to my broken shoulder before squealing like a swine, you hooligan shiiiit!!”

You gotta do it like this if picking a fight.

TL note: Ch.17 coming up soon (within at least next 24 hours)… sorry about being late.