The story progresses steadily.
This world seems to be strikingly similar to the “otome game” called “In Love With Silver Wings” – commonly known as “Silver Wings.”
An otome game… I don’t quite understand it, but it seems to be a world of picture-story-like games where the protagonist either gives to or receives from men, while charming many of them.
I don’t believe there are really people that unprincipled, but according to that woman’s “knowledge,” that “protagonist (heroine)” was supposed to be “me.”
Alicia… my name, and the name of the game’s “protagonist (heroine).” In the game, there was a family name, but it must have changed when I was taken in by a noble family.
Apparently, my mother was a noble’s daughter, and according to the “knowledge,” she fell in love with my father, who was a knight-in-training, and eloped.
So, I have noble blood, and since I have noble relatives, I think I could live a more decent life than I do now if I wanted to. If I were the old me, who knew nothing, I would have seen nobles as beings above the clouds, and while I would have been scared, I would have also longed for a princess-like life.
But… from the perspective of the current me, who has gained “knowledge,” I feel more fear than longing for the way nobles are, and I recognize them as more of a nuisance than anything else.
Besides, I have no intention of living a life swayed by the “fate” of that “otome game” that woman was so devoted to.
That woman seemed to completely believe that this world was a “game world,” but from the perspective of the me who gained “knowledge,” I feel that “such a world is realistically impossible.”
I am “me.” Not a character in a game. I am a human being living in this world.
Resisting fate, I will survive on my own. I have also gained the “knowledge” to do so.
Ideally, I should verify the contents of the game to some extent to avoid getting involved with it, but it seems that I can’t obtain information about that part unless I embed the Magic Stone that contains that woman’s knowledge and personality in my heart, and the knowledge related to that woman’s “previous life” was vague.
Perhaps, in trying to reject that woman, I repelled the essential part of her, so I couldn’t obtain knowledge in that area.
But, I shattered that Magic Stone and threw it into the gutter. Even if I hadn’t broken it, I wouldn’t want to touch it again.
Even so, by supplementing the vague knowledge of the game with knowledge from other stories and piecing it together, I could see the general outline of the story.
The bright, kind, and hardworking “Heroine” is actually the child born from the elopement of a noble’s daughter and a knight-in-training. After losing her parents in a Monster Stampede, she lived as an orphan in a church.
Somehow, she is found by that noble, goes to a school attended by nobles’ children, becomes friends with the prince and his entourage, is bullied by the “Villainess,” who is the prince’s fiancée, but obtains Divine Protection in a Dungeon, goes on adventures to defeat the Evil Lord, and somehow has a happy ending. It was a very silly story.
…Really silly. Humans can live without becoming nobles or marrying princes.
I won’t let anyone tell me that I was born for such “silly” things.
＊
For now, I decided to head to the next town, which was in that woman’s “knowledge.”
According to that woman’s “knowledge,” this is the Searth Continent in a world called “Ciel,” and it’s part of a large country called Claydale. The area where I am is the northernmost Barony of Claydale, and that woman didn’t even remember the detailed place names.
The reason I thought about moving to the next town was that the town I had been living in was like a “big village,” so I thought that the next town, where the Baron, the lord of the territory, lived, would have more places to hide, even for someone like me who had taken a life.
Ideally, I would want to leave this Barony before being found by nobles, but I am still a child, so I can’t go on a long journey, and to enter a walled city, I need to pay a Silver Coin as a tax for each entry… In the small town where I lived, things were lax.
Since it costs taxes to leave the Barony and pass through other territories, ordinary commoners don’t travel much.
There are ways to avoid such passage taxes.
If you properly pay taxes commensurate with your annual income to the lord and obtain “citizenship,” you can move anywhere within the territory. You can also buy merchant rights from the Commercial Guild. Merchants get discounts when going to other territories.
And the Adventurer’s Guild – if you register there and become a high rank, you can move freely within the country.
Of course, you can’t suddenly become a high rank, but even the beginner rank, [Rank 1], allows you to freely enter and exit the town where you registered.
The “Adventurer’s Guild” was originally an organization derived from a mercenary guild supported by the Commercial Guild, and “Adventurers” were exploration specialists who investigated ruins and unexplored lands while eliminating Monsters, either alone or in small groups.
But now, they have become mere ruin robbers or miners who supply Magic Stones obtained from Monsters to the city, so-called “jacks-of-all-trades,” but even so, high-ranked Adventurers who can defeat powerful Monsters with a small elite force are treated favorably.
However, to register with the Adventurer’s Guild, you need at least [Rank 1]… a combat Skill at level 1 or higher.
… “Skill”?
I tilt my head at the word that came to my mind so smoothly. I didn’t know what a “Skill” was because I had been an orphan child with no wisdom or knowledge, but I don’t have time to consider it now, so I’ll do it later.
For now, my goal is to raise any combat Skill to 1 and become an Adventurer. But, staying in this town seemed dangerous, and going to the next town as I am also had problems.
First of all, I am just a child, and even if I could enter the town, a mere seven-year-old would end up being deceived and sold or killed by bad adults.
So, until I enter the town, I need at least enough strength to escape from thugs. If possible, it would be good to acquire a combat Skill there, but it’s doubtful whether I can learn a [Skill] with just “knowledge.”
First, I wanted to confirm what I “can do” and “cannot do.” So, first, I decided to hide somewhere on the road connecting that rural town and the next town.
If you go north past the next town for a while, Monsters will appear, but Monsters hardly ever appear around here. If they do, it would be wolves, and even then, soldiers patrol regularly, so you rarely encounter them unless you go deep into the Forest. For me, the patrolling soldiers are more of a nuisance than the rarely appearing wolves.
It seems that it takes a carriage from the next town early in the morning and arrives in the evening. If that’s the case, it would take a little less than two days on foot. For a child’s legs, it would take twice as long.
If they are that far apart, there should be a campsite-like place somewhere along the way. Such a place probably has a Watering Hole nearby, and that will be my first destination.
Gong… Gong… The sound of the bell from the clock tower in the town rings twice, and my consciousness, which had been half-lost, awakens.
That bell is rung every four hours, and since it rings once at midnight, the bell that rang twice now tells me that it is four in the morning.
Those who do farm work wake up with the current bell, and the townspeople start working with the bell at eight in the morning. The orphans in the church start working at four in the morning, but the old woman won’t wake up until eight in the morning, so it should take a little longer for her to notice the death.
Confirming that the sky beyond was getting brighter, I left the Forest near the town where I had been hiding and started walking along the road towards the next town.
I don’t know how far the campsite is, but even a child’s legs should be able to reach it in the middle of the night… I thought, but I underestimated the lack of stamina of a child.
Four hours after starting to walk… I think I did pretty well even so. When the sky brightened and I faintly heard the third bell from afar, I reached my limit and collapsed.
Well, if I think about it calmly, there’s no way a child can walk for hours without proper meals and hardly any sleep.
Feeling dizzy and experiencing a dull headache, I judged that this was bad, and after hitting my legs, which had lost strength and were trembling, I hid in the Forest a few meters from the road.
I put down my luggage and sat down, leaning my back against the trunk of a large tree.
“Haa…”
I let out a light breath, took out a leather water bottle from my luggage, and greedily poured the foul-smelling water down my throat to quench my thirst, but I choked violently because I had mixed fruit wine to prevent the water from spoiling.
“–cough, cough.”
Even so, as I regulated my breathing and sipped the water, my body warmed up and my consciousness became clearer, perhaps because of the fruit wine.
At the same time, I felt a fierce hunger and grabbed a white bread from the food for the old woman that I had brought. It would mold if left for too long, so I should eat it soon. Thinking so, I took a bite and tasted a nostalgic flavor from long ago, when I was with my family.
“…………”
Soft white bread was a luxury item, and even when I was with my family, we only ate it during celebrations, but I, being younger than I am now, always looked forward to it.
My father, who was a soldier, apologized to my mother every day for not being able to eat white bread every day, and I wondered why my mother would laugh and shake her head. But if my mother was a noble, as the woman’s knowledge suggests, then my father’s attitude made sense.
I tore off a piece of bread as if to deceive my slightly lonely feelings, and washed it down with water from my canteen. My stomach swelled, and I was finally able to regain my composure.
“…Ouch.”
Once I calmed down, I noticed the pain in my feet and frowned. All the children at the orphanage were barefoot. So, wearing sandals was a first for me, and I wasn’t used to it. The leather had chafed my skin, and it was bleeding.
It hurts… but I’m not scared. After confirming that the wound wasn’t serious, I found a clean-looking towel from my luggage that had been washed, and I cut it with a knife to make a bandage.
I also treated the wound on my hand that I got yesterday when I fought with the woman. I had treated it simply last night, but I washed it with water mixed with fruit wine from my canteen, and then wrapped the bandage I had made around it.
…According to the “knowledge,” I should be able to do it, but a child’s fingers are surprisingly clumsy, and it took quite a while to finish the treatment.
“…Not much water left.”
I couldn’t bring a lot of water because I had other luggage when I left. I used water for the treatment, so there wasn’t much left.
Perhaps because I was worried about the remaining drinking water, the woman’s “knowledge” came to mind as if summoned.
Small children need to take in a lot of water. I see, if I don’t take in enough water, I’ll end up like I was earlier. If that’s the case, then I should take in sugar and “vitamin” with fruits, she thought.
The woman didn’t really understand what that “vitamin” was, but it must be important. But where can I find fruit in this forest?
Then, more “knowledge” surfaced, and after searching around a bit, I found black berries growing on a shrub about chest-high.
It was a type of berry that could be found anywhere in the southern part of the continent in this country.
“…Sour.”
I picked one, broke the skin with my nail, and licked the juice. It wasn’t very sweet, but it was sour and had a slight astringency. It seems that it’s usually eaten as jam or dried, not raw.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t eat it raw. After confirming that there were no snakes, I picked the black berries, using a large leaf nearby… a Thorsol grass? …as a plate.
Perhaps because my stomach was full, I suddenly felt sleepy. But I still had things to do, so I decided to organize my luggage.
The luggage I brought from the orphanage included some clothes and cloths, food, and some coins.
The poncho I’m wearing now is what commoner children generally wear, and there’s no difference between boys and girls, so it’s a bit big, but I’ll leave it as it is for now.
Why were there children’s clothes in the old woman’s room? Now that I have the “knowledge,” I realized that she was going to dress the orphans in them when she “sold” them, even though they were old clothes made of good fabric.
There’s only one white bread left. After that, there’s dried meat and a lump of dried cheese, so if I divide them little by little, they’ll last for another three days.
Including what the woman had, I had 15 silver coins, 8 small silver coins, and 13 copper coins. A meal at a store or stall costs a few copper coins, and one silver coin can get you a room at an inn for three days, so it’s quite a lot of money.
And then, I checked the contents of the woman’s bag, which was the problem.
The dirty underwear was disgusting, so I threw it around and searched the depths of the bag. I found a bundle of withered grass and two pottery medicine bottles that looked like potions. And then a small book like a notebook came out.
“…Rare.”
Having the “knowledge,” I had that impression when I saw the book.
Books are expensive, but not that rare. According to the “knowledge,” parchment made from animal skin was used in this continent in the old days, but plant paper has been used since 120 years ago, and it is now the mainstream.
The raw material is the Thorsol grass that I used as a plate earlier. This grass has large leaves with short, downy hairs and is very soft, so it has been used after going to the toilet since ancient times.
In fact, I’ve used it before, but it can be said that there was no other use for it. This leaf is soft but has long fibers, and only goats eat it.
The nobles of the past didn’t like wiping with the leaves, so they ground them, boiled them, and had alchemists research them, which is said to be the beginning of plant paper.
When this Thorsol grass is heated, the color fades, and it becomes a slightly yellowish paper. Now that the quality has improved over the decades, books that used to cost more than ten gold coins have become about 10% of that price.
Well, that doesn’t matter, but the reason I said it was “rare” is because this book was made of parchment.
It had been scraped many times, perhaps because it had been rewritten many times, and it was thin, but inside, medicinal herbs, poisonous herbs, mushrooms and minerals that could be used as medicine were written in detail with careful illustrations.
Did that woman have such a side…? I thought, but it seems that she stole it from her magic teacher.
…That woman is hopeless.
But this is helpful. I have the “knowledge” and I can understand the meaning if I look at the letters, but I needed to “learn” to read and write sentences. This will be good teaching material.
One of the other two potions also seemed to have been stolen from her teacher. It was a fairly high-level recovery medicine, and it seems that the woman was going to use it to treat me after implanting the magic stone in my heart.
And the bundle of withered grass was a bundle of “medicinal herbs.” But this wasn’t anything amazing. It was a grass that grew everywhere, like a household medicine that’s used in ordinary homes.
I took one of them and chewed it in my mouth. The strong grassy smell pierced my nose, but I endured it and rubbed it on the injured area, then re-wrapped the bandage.
When I noticed, the sun was quite high in the sky. Feeling that it was almost my limit to stay conscious, I gathered my luggage, put it on my back, and took the knife and cut off the long hair that I had been told to grow out to sell to the old woman.
I greedily chewed the berries I had picked, and like a wounded beast healing its wounds, I hid in the shade of a tree, cautiously surveying my surroundings and quietly closing my eyes.
“………”
Until a little while ago, I was afraid of the “dark.” I was afraid of the “pain.” I was afraid of “hunger” and “loneliness.” But I was afraid of those things because I didn’t know how to survive.
I opened my eyes slightly and swung the knife down on the head of the snake that was approaching my feet. The snake, whose head had been pierced, writhed for a while, and I watched the snake slowly stop moving without any emotion.
I was scared because I didn’t know anything. But I’m not scared anymore. Now I understand with my “knowledge” how far I can go without dying, so there’s no reason to be afraid anymore.
Is it because I gained the woman’s decades of knowledge that I started to think that way?
But that doesn’t matter. I am “me.” I am Alicia, not anyone else.
Thinking about such things, I closed my eyes for a short nap while being wary of my surroundings to heal my body’s fatigue.
I will update every day as I feel like it until the stock runs out.