I Don’t Want To Be the Main Character

116. With great power comes great responsibility (3)

1.

“……ah.”

I dozed off for a bit.

Elena opened her eyes quietly and muttered.

She must have fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position without realizing it, but her back was creaking the most, but the first thing she saw with her half-closed eyes was the desk she usually used for work. That meant that the place where she dozed off was her office.

Elena was just about to get up, thinking that she had just fallen asleep because she was tired recently, when she sensed something strange.

“huh……?”

Why did she fall asleep in such an uncomfortable position, with her body forced into a chair, instead of lying face down on the desk?

And obviously her chair is big enough to comfortably seat two people, so it could be called a sofa rather than a chair, but it feels so narrow.

And crucially, why is her head covered in something soft?

Even Elena, who had just woken up, thought there were more than one or two things that seemed strange.

Elena, who couldn’t even muster the courage to look up, quickly turned her head and went back to the situation before she fell asleep.

“…Appointment ceremony. Yes, there was Ludrick’s appointment ceremony.”

There was a ceremony to appoint Ludrick’s court magician.

She was so upset that she didn’t say a word and just sat there, filling the seat, and as soon as the dinner was over, she returned to her office. Yes, definitely, and after that…

“…….”

Elena quickly shut her mouth.

And then, with the courage of a lifetime, I carefully raised my head and turned it.

The thing she had been sleeping soundly on until just now was a person’s lap.

According to her memory, Elena covered her face with her mouth shut, because she could tell without even looking at the face who the owner of the knee she had been cutting was.

I wanted to say something, but I was afraid to say it.

Elena, who had gathered her courage a second time, glanced up, wondering if Ludrick was awake. Fortunately, Ludrick was still asleep, nodding his head just like she had been just a moment ago.

Elena thought that it was fortunate and carefully got up.

“……Ah, I dozed off for a bit too.”

Ludrick, who had been nodding off just a moment ago, opened his eyes sleepily.

And then, my eyes met with Elena’s as she sat up in an awkward position.

“…….”

“…….”

A heavy silence fell.

Ludrick, who had just woken up from his sleep and was still unable to grasp the situation, and Elena, who had made eye contact with him in this state, simultaneously fell silent.

Elena opened her mouth with an awkward smile, having no idea what to say.

“……did you sleep well?”

2.

“I slept well. I slept so comfortably that I didn’t even notice that someone was carrying me on their lap.”

“…….”

“I was sleeping while snoring, and I was so shocked that I just fell asleep too.”

“Really?”

“That’s a lie.”

“……profit!”

Elena’s clenched fists trembled, but she couldn’t refute the words because they were true.

“Oh, who made my knees tremble?”

As I watched Ludrick rubbing his knees, saying that they were all sore, I felt like hitting him with a hammer, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so.

Elena, who had sinned anyway, muttered weakly.

“I really didn’t know I could fall asleep like this. When I opened my eyes, I was already asleep.”

“Who said what? If someone saw me, they’d think I was scolding them.”

Ludrick snickered as he responded naturally.

Surprisingly, I thought Elena had a cute side. She kept her promise to just talk comfortably when they were alone, and she also gave too much meaning to the fact that I gave her a lap pillow and she fell asleep on it.

“You gave it to me… and you said something about me sleeping on your lap…”

Elena, who had been grumbling, straightened her disheveled clothes while she was sleeping. Finally, after elegantly pushing her hair back with a hand gesture, Elena, who had returned to her dignified appearance befitting her position as a princess, got up.

“Then I guess I should get ready now.”

“What are you preparing for?”

“Ludrick, it’s getting late, so you should go back to your room. I still have work to do in the office.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Wedding preparations.”

Elena responded as if it was no big deal.

As she had thought, it would probably be a scandal that would remain in the history books until the empire fell. If Elena were to make preparations and announce it right now, it wouldn’t be strange if it were the wedding of the century and the entire continent would pay attention to it.

It wouldn’t be surprising if a wedding of one man and five women attracted that much attention.

In fact, I still had no intention of giving in, but Elena’s actions, which completely took over with just one lap pillow, were unstoppable.

“This quickly?”

“You told me. There’s a proverb that says you should pull out a bull’s horn in one go.”

“That’s true, but… well, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“It’s not that it doesn’t matter. But it’s not something that can be put off forever, right?”

Elena, who was busily walking around the office while answering, added while putting on the glasses she uses for work, hugging a bundle of related documents, and placing them on the desk.

“Then it’s time for the good boy to go to bed, so Ludrick, you should go back now.”

“What about Elena?”

“I’ve had enough sleep, so now I have to prepare for the wedding. It won’t be over in a day or two.”

It is practically a ban on guests.

Ludrick, who was looking at Elena with an expression filled with strange enthusiasm, tilted his head and left the office.

“……Well, if the person involved says it’s good, it’s hard to stop them.”

“I’m sorry,” Ludrick muttered as he closed the door to his office and left.

I didn’t know things would develop so suddenly, but I couldn’t keep putting it off like Elena said. Elena said she would take care of the preparations herself, but it seemed strange to try to stop her, so I decided to just leave it as it was.

wedding ceremony.

It was different from other words I’ve heard so far, from the sound to the weight.

In fact, it was something that had been planned since he had said that he would choose all five, but especially for Ludrick, who had been planning to secretly run away to the capital in the middle of the night once the family had decided on a marriage partner just a year ago.

But a lot has happened in the meantime.

In terms of time, it wasn’t that long; rather, it could be said to be a short time.

At first, he was just rolling around in the corner of the room like he usually did, when he suddenly got a message for the first time in twenty years. Looking back on what had happened so far, Ludrick blurted out.

“……You really have come a long way.”

As his mother, Countess Alin, had said at the dinner table, Ludrick was no longer the youngest son of the Weiss County’s aspiring magician who just played around and ate.

Now, he is Ludrick Weiss, the court wizard of the Esgelant Empire.

If you were a Marquis of the Empire, you would receive the appropriate treatment no matter where you went on the continent. If you were not just a noble, but a court magician, your abilities alone would be on par with those of the Tower Lord, so that was especially true.

Even if I wanted to go back to the past, I couldn’t.

It was already a situation where he was on the tiger’s back, and Ludrick had made his own determination, so now all that was left was to accept it.

“I have to accept it sweetly, you know.”

I walked towards the lab that was now Ludrick’s and my mind was racing.

If it were before, he might have felt resentful, thinking that he had to receive the karma that Ludrick had accumulated before his regression, even though he didn’t know his face.

But now, it would be a bit awkward to say that I have given up, and it would be more correct to say that I have become enlightened. Still, I have achieved a certain level of mental growth.

“Elena said she would take care of the preparations… So I should tell you in advance, but since I’ve become a court magician, I have to do that kind of work.”

A mutter that escaped my lips as I opened the door to the lab and entered.

Normally, when a teacher died, the disciple would continue the research that the teacher had been doing.

In particular, the golden tower that Lorenzo Tonali built as a magician was something that later comers could not even dare to look up to, and the research he had done up to that point could be called the discovery of the century.

However, continuing to research the ‘truth’ that was the direct cause of Lorenzo’s death was bound to be burdensome.

“……I saw it happen right before my eyes, and I can’t continue doing it.”

Ludrick shuddered.

According to what I asked Sylphia later, the research itself was successful. Even Sylphia was secretly quite surprised, as she had not thought humans would reach that level.

However, it was not the kind of bright and hopeful vision that Lorenzo had in mind, of a world beyond truth and of a mastery of the truth of the world.

The otherworldly creatures that took Lorenzo’s life and were eating away at the ‘door’ were said to be waiting for an opportunity to cross over, and if they open the door to them, it would be nothing more than opening the gate to the invaders.

At the moment when Ludrick, recalling Sylphia’s warning, was contemplating on a research topic.

‘Why is there no topic?’

A little light bulb went on in Ludrick’s head.

The method that Arwen taught me, which is too embarrassing to even mention, is only a temporary measure. It is like draining water from a dam that is about to collapse due to water leaks. It is not a method that can repair the cracks that are the root cause.

“Aha, there it was.”

Ludrick clapped his hands together.

It’s weird to have s*x every night just to survive, so you should just keep doing the research you’ve been doing to fix your constitution.

Ludrick sat down at his desk, giggling.