The Rebirth Of The Hero’S Party’S Archmage [EN]: Chapter 21

21.

Several side effects arose after the Magic War. Really annoying side effects.

“Hello, Duke Ludwig. You know me, right? We’re in the same class…”

“I’m in the room right next to the dorm…”

“I met you in my dream…”

It was the same way to school as usual, and I just walked into the classroom as usual, but these things annoyingly clung to me and chattered. Especially the female students.

“Wait, no need to say your names.”

If you expected a sweet line like, ‘I already know all your names…’ you don’t know Rain at all.

“I don’t plan to memorize them, and I don’t plan to get close to you. Above all, I’m bad at memorizing names.”

The students froze with shocked faces, then chuckled, saying that the noble of the family was playing high-class jokes.

“No, I’m not kidding?”

“Oh, Duke, you’re so funny.”

“I’m not kidding.”

Rain’s expression hardened as he looked at the guys laughing even after he said that. *Are these guys collectively crazy…*

“Look at him, the Insulting Duke is being insulting from the morning…”

“To be arrogant from the morning, he certainly has great character…”

And the guys whispered like that and gave him another strange nickname. It doesn’t matter since he doesn’t care much about how others evaluate him.

“Hey, can you move out of the way?”

Then there was a voice that echoed in the classroom like a cold sandstorm. The thorns mixed in the clear tone roughly swept everyone’s backs.

Christa Warden.

Immediately, female and male students alike moved aside or ran back to their seats as if fleeing.

“Hmph.”

Christa snorted as she passed by Rain, as if to make him hear. Gertrude Panton, who was escorting her, smiled playfully and leaned her head towards Rain, whispering.

“Was the Duke’s nickname actually Lewd Duke?”

*Lewd Duke…* Where and why did that nickname come from? It seems like he has more nicknames than Lynn.

And as he sat down, Christa, who was already sitting next to him, turned her head towards the window as if to show off, and didn’t even acknowledge him.

She was motionless, as if she were a stone statue.

“Why do you seem angry?”

“…”

“Hey.”

“…”

“Why are you angry?”

After poking the hornet’s nest for a while, Christa crossed her legs and arrogantly raised her chin.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk to me. I told you back then, right? That I don’t know someone like you.”

“Oh, sorry. I won’t acknowledge you in the future.”

“And I’m not angry; if I had to say, I’d say I’m relieved.”

Suddenly, Christa crossed her arms as if revealing the figure of an arrogant noble. The expression on her face was haughty.

“I was sick of seeing you pretending to be weak when you’re actually very strong. You beat this Christa Warden. Walk around with your shoulders straight.”

*This girl is saying something similar to Aunt Elin. Do nobles have to be strong no matter what?*

“But now I should say that there’s value in properly crushing you? In the past, even if I beat you, I would only hear jeers that I beat a trash duke, but now that you’ve caught Chaihark, the landscape has completely changed.”

“?”

“I’m looking forward to it, Rain Ludwig. The day this Christa Warden flattens you like clay. So don’t lose to anyone until then. I won’t let you get away with it if you do.”

Christa slammed the desk and stood up, looking down at Rain provocatively. A sharp silence formed as Rain did not avoid her gaze.

‘The Insulting Duke versus the top freshman…’ [referring to Christa]

‘What a match-up…’

Then Rain glanced at Christa’s desk and raised his eyebrows.

“Owen’s class is in the first period, aren’t you going to take out your textbook? You’ll get points deducted.”

“Oh, that’s right. I almost messed up.”

However, the silence ended in a really absurd way with the sound of Christa sitting down and rummaging through her textbook.

Gertrude Panton sighed and rubbed her forehead in the front seat.

‘If you’re going to do it, you have to do it right to the end…’

*You practiced that declaration speech all day yesterday.*

* * *

After taking classes at school and studying runes after school, it was already the weekend.

“There’s a problem.”

And on the weekend, he was supposed to meet Karen, the lowest-ranking librarian, at the library. Karen carefully made a voice while looking around.

Listening to the story, it was like this.

Inquiries were made to all five publishing companies in the Empire, but most of the books about Toureina were temporarily out of print.

“Why are they out of print?”

“I don’t know the details. The Inquisition of the Light Dragon Orthodox Church, ‘Children of Gold’, suddenly put all books related to Toureina on the censorship list this year.”

“That’s, huh? Does that mean Toureina’s books have been judged heretical?”

It was a strange thing. Why would they do that unless Toureina was doing heretical acts…

And if you’re going to do an inquisition, you should do it when she’s alive, why suddenly after she’s dead?

“Have you read that book?”

“Of course. That much is required reading for a librarian at the central library. She was a disciple of the great mage Lynn and the fire dragon priestess Friede, and she left great achievements no less than the two of them.”

*That girl?*

He almost laughed.

“Was there anything particularly strange about it? Like explaining the advantages of black magic.”

“A strange part, I didn’t see it. Besides, it’s a biography of a great person, so they would have censored all the strange parts.”

So Toureina didn’t cause an accident by dabbling in black magic?

That’s a relief, but…

If not, then why?

It wasn’t something that would come up with the right answer by racking his brains here, but it was certain that the situation had become quite complicated.

“Then I’ll have to go to the black market.”

“The black market?”

“The black market has everything. From books judged to be heretical to magical tools eroded by the abyss. You’ll be able to find Toureina’s books soon.”

“But the problem is that Toureina’s book is currently under heresy review.”

That’s right. There was no need to explain that the price would have skyrocketed, and decisively, he wouldn’t be able to borrow money from the family.

If he tried to buy the book with the family’s funds and was caught by the Inquisition, ‘Children of Gold’, the problem would become complicated.

Of course, the Ludwig family wouldn’t be burned at the stake for heresy… but it would cause annoying things to happen to his parents for no reason.

‘But if I buy it personally, the story is different.’

If there’s a problem in the process of buying it, he can make excuses like, ‘I really wanted to read that book because of my respect for Toureina.’ Even if things get bigger, it’ll end as a personal problem.

“I feel like things are getting too big… I’m really sorry, Duke. I’ll add as much as I can.”

“How much do you get paid a month?”

“Thirty black tortoise silver coins.”

Generally, a worker receives one silver coin for a day’s work, so it can be said to be a considerable amount. But it’s woefully insufficient to go to the black market.

“I don’t know what the current price is, but you’ll need to bring at least three gold coins.”

“Three gold coins?”

Karen’s eyes trembled.

You had to collect a hundred black tortoise silver coins to exchange for one yellow dragon gold coin. Perhaps she was even calculating that; Karen coughed as if she had choked.

“This is a big problem. You said that you can’t use the family’s money either… My salary is woefully insufficient.”

*Yeah, I have to think about it from here for a moment. I thought I would never have to worry about money for the rest of my life after being reincarnated into this body, but…*

How do I make money?

Should I use magic on the street and sell magic to humans who need it?

That’s rejected. It’s illegal because he doesn’t have a magician’s license (it’s automatically issued when you take the rank test).

‘Do I become a magic instructor…?’

This is also rejected.

He’s called a trash duke in the world. Who would hire such a guy, and even if they did, who would want to learn from him?

And most of those are annual contracts, so it’s not possible. What he needs is quick money.

‘Isn’t there a way to make a lot of money, even if it takes a little time?’

The supreme truth of life: high risk, high return. Risk is the bet… The biggest bet I can make is my life.

Make money by risking your life?

Wait, there was no need to think deeply. Rain finally reached the answer and nodded satisfactorily.

“Don’t worry. There was something else I wanted to do, so I’ll do that while I’m at it.”

“Something you want to do?”

“I was thinking of being an adventurer because I have some magic experiments to do anyway. I’ll make some money while doing that.”

He’s not doing a favor.

He was going to be an adventurer anyway, and there was no particular use for the money he got from it, right? It’s just a coincidence, a coincidence.

“An adventurer? How can a duke of a noble family do such a lowly thing… No, Duke. I’ll be disciplined, and the central library will—”

Rain roughly shook his head to dismiss Karen’s worries and quickly finished what he had to say.

“—I think it’ll take about 2 to 3 weeks to earn money and buy books from the black market; wouldn’t that be much faster?”

“…!”

“Let’s meet here again then.”

Now that the story is over, he should quickly go downtown to register as an adventurer. Weekends were the only time he was allowed to go out.

A problem that seemed trivial but later hatched into a big one broke out the next day, at a time when both of them were absent.

The head librarian, who was gathering the librarians and checking the list of this week’s loan books, frowned.

“What is this? The person who borrowed Toureina’s biography is… Duke Rain Ludwig?”

Everyone knew who the boy was because it was a name that was making the school noisy these days. But the reason the head librarian mentioned this was a more serious reason.

“What is this? How did you borrow it? First-year students can’t borrow books in the first semester. Who approved this loan?”

Then a first-class librarian with deep wrinkles scanned the list and *hmm*, let out a short groan.

“If you check the time, it’s Karen. She’s only been working for about 4 months.”

“Where is she now?”

“Today is a holiday, so…”

“Didn’t she get the message that first-year students can’t borrow books in the first semester?”

“That’s possible, but… it seems like Duke Rain made a reckless request. She’s not the type of child to make this kind of mistake.”

Most librarians knew how smart Karen was. That’s why the second-class librarian, who was wondering about this problem, *ah*, shined his eyes.

“Professor Elin used to come often; maybe she borrowed it and wrote the name wrong?”

“Karen’s handwriting is messy, so it looks like Elin at first glance. She wrote Ra like El.”

“Besides, she’s been so out of it these days because of Rain, Rain, so she might have written Rain.”

That was partly true. Karen was so out of it that she made a mistake.

It wasn’t because of Rain, but because the book she was in charge of had disappeared like a lie, and when she tried to order a new one, it was out of print by the ‘Children of Gold’.

And then the duke of the family said that he would buy it with his own money while working as an adventurer, etc. It was because of a series of unbelievable coincidences that she was out of her mind.

The second-class librarian continued to chuckle.

“Besides, Karen has been enjoying secret dates with Duke Rain these days. When a woman falls in love, she often makes such mistakes.”

It was a ridiculous logic, but most of the female librarians nodded as if they understood. The male librarians tilted their heads.

But that was the most reasonable way to think. There was no way Karen would make such a mistake, and it was also true that Professor Elin had been visiting the library often these days.

If you think about it that way, everything is easily solved. And unlike other first-year students, Rain is a descendant of a noble family, so if a problem arises, the solution is quite simple.

“Really? If that’s the case, there’s no problem. Make sure to properly mark the borrower’s name when the meeting is over. As Professor Elin Ludwig.”