Fairy Tale Chronicles

Volume 5 Chapter 3.4

Translator: Reflet

Nora was confident not just because she could say with full assurance that they weren’t involved with anything shady but also because they didn’t have a need to go to school. While aware that the instructors were annoyed by how frequent questions and arguments were thrown at them, this was kind of the position they signed up for. Besides, arguing and thoroughly questioning was something in which both sides were encouraged to remain calm unless you wanted a proviso.

And even if Nora and the others coming here conflicted with the law in some way, the responsibility lay on the king and the headmaster, since they orchestrated all this.

「Tch. I’ll rip that facade off you eventually, just watch!」

The situation turning unfavorable and his face reddened, the man spit that sentence out before going off elsewhere. The classmates stared at him with cold gazes. To put it out there, not a single person allied themselves with him, but this was of course completely his fault, as the thing Lorren residents despised the most was attacking an individual based purely off of speculation, prejudice, or hearsay.

「Lime, we need to get our seats soon. And Hiyohiyo can be behind us so as to not cause trouble.」

「Kay.」

「Tweet-」

Sensing that the lecture was to begin soon, Nora spoke to Lime and Hiyohiyo about it. Responding meekly to Nora’s callout, Lime and Hiyohiyo began moving to their seats. Gasps could be heard throughout the classroom at this spectacle. Nora, who noticed this, made sure to give their classmates a warning.

「I’m going to warn you right here that even though Hiyohiyo looks how he does, he still is a divine beast. If you touch him with any evil intentions, you will be punished regardless of whether he wants you to be hurt or not. I hear it’s super hot.」

The classmates froze when they heard this announcement, and then slowly, jaggedly, almost like you could hear the rust in their movements, turned their attention to Hiyohiyo. Now in the limelight, Hiyohiyo simply groomed himself as if it had nothing to do with him.

「……You talk a big talk, but I won’t be fooled by those lies of yours!!」

Ignoring Nora’s thoughtful warning, the same classmate who had picked a fight with them earlier charged at Hiyohiyo. And the aftermath……

「Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!」

「I did warn you……」

Burned with white flame, the student was now a well-done color with a precise afro, and with no bruises to match the pain. Hiyohiyo looked down at this man in a quizzical manner.

「Well, as you can see, you need to be careful around Hiyohiyo. We don’t currently know the criterion.」

Nora explained the most crucial matter to their classmates, who were completely frozen. The class would not end up thawing out until the lecturer entered the room.

「Honestly, this is all just so tiring……」

Tatsuya muttered while catching a book that flew straight for him after being launched from a bookshelf. Once again, today the special section of the library’s archives stood in the way of Tatsuya’s search.

「Can’t something be done to make this easier?」

「No, I don’t know either……」

The librarian on shift for today (24 years old, male, single) replied to Tatsuya’s carefree complaints in a very troubled tone.

「I sort of get that none of the librarians are targeted in attacks, but is there any reason as to why everyone else using the library gets attacked so much?」

「Well, we librarians have many things we still do not know regarding the special archives……」

「So basically you’re saying I need to ask Daljan-sama……」

「I am very sorry……」

Tatsuya asked as he took his distance from the bookshelf that had shaken itself violently, and the librarian profusely apologized as he replied with how powerless he was. No one besides Daljan even knew when the special section had morphed into a dungeon. There was also no way to figure out why all intruders other than the librarians were forcibly eliminated.

「At any rate, I’m grateful to know two things: that once activated, a trap will not attack the same person again, and that the books collected in the shelves don’t swap out with one another. Especially that second one, as we’d be at a total loss if the books’ positions shifted every time.」

「Very true. At that point, even us librarians would not be able to manage that section.」

Tatsuya and the librarian remarked to one another as they checked the bookshelves on the map. Regardless, having such an archive large enough to take up a whole division of land guaranteed they needed to keep those books in place.

「Oh yeah, I was wondering if there wasn’t some sort of magic or something you librarians had that could search up the location of the books in question or call them over?」

「Unfortunately, while we can indeed narrow it down to this area, we cannot pinpoint anything. It would be convenient if we could, but the world just doesn’t go quite the way we want it to……」

「I see, sounds like you’re struggling in your own way. Oops, this book looks like a dud. Gotta put it back.」

Tatsuya asked, wondering if things couldn’t go a bit more smoothly, and the man simply told him with an indifferent expression that the world was a difficult place. Then again, even though he had asked, Tatsuya himself was only slightly expectant but not dependent on the librarian’s answer, so he didn’t show many signs of being all that let-down and continued to check the contents of the books that flew at him without batting an eye.

「Actually, thinking about it more carefully, even if such a convenient magic existed, I doubt it would help you very much in this case.」

「Well yeah, you’re not wrong. The requirements are way too ambiguous, so there’d be no way to narrow it down further other than to say it’s in this area.」

Fully prepared to take the straightforward route, Tatsuya continued monitoring the bookshelves with all their books packed in.

「……Hm. Three hundred years ago concerning the guests at Markto……Do you at least know the basic section where the documents to back this one up are?」

Scanning via speed reading for about five minutes, Tatsuya copied all the important-looking sections with the copy machine he had borrowed from Makoto before then asking the librarian.

「Right. Please wait a moment……Third to the east, fourth to the north, or perhaps somewhere in that vicinity.」

「Okay. I’ll be done with the copying pretty soon, so I guess I’ll go over that area next.」

「Understood.」

The librarian nodded at Tatsuya’s next goal. Searching up their current location’s bookshelf with the map close at hand, he made sure to put the correct mark over the area of investigation and waited for Tatsuya’s copying to finish.

「But it’s still not anywhere close to being over, huh……」

「Well yes, this is only ten percent of the entire place. But in actuality, while this is only a block of the special archives, I think it’s amazing that you managed to even finish ten percent of the search in such a short amount of time.」

「Well yeah, you’d think so.」

And as they chatted about this, the two of them continued this tedious movement down the endless-looking array of books on bookshelves. Tatsuya’s battle had only just begun.