Editor 126
by CristaeUrgent Need for Compliance with the Labor Standards Act
First of all, the Crown Prince.
From Clio’s perspective, it would have been easier to deal with him if he were, say, the possessor of the revised version of the book, or the author’s evil twin.
However, Behemoth called Melchior a human. If that’s the case, he simply concluded that Melchior was just a human, merely under the muse’s blessing.
Looking back at the circumstances when Taeseoton, awakened as a reincarnator, fainted, it seemed Melchior also saw an information window similar to Clio’s.
The warning that the message floating around Melchior was leaving the output area of “Clio’s Promise” was thus explained.
If you consider it in relation to the Crown Prince’s unique skill, it seemed to serve the purpose of displaying people’s thoughts and personal information when using the skill.
‘The only ones with unique skills bearing a Muse’s name have been me and that guy so far… Do all people connected to a Muse see messages?’
A Greek god who displays messages on an LED signboard—what a dreadful hybrid… While thinking such things, Clio soon faced a question.
Why was Melchior, not the protagonist Arthur but the villain, under the Muse’s blessing?
‘A god who claims not to wield direct power, then only leaves traces through name and “words”? As a kind of sponsor? For what purpose? Was this even the author’s intention in the first place?’
“Jeongjin” was given the purpose of renewing the world. As someone from outside the work, he received Clio’s name in the form of a “promise” so he could fulfill his role within this world.
If you accept the premise that Melchior was not, like “Jeongjin” himself, someone from outside the work, then the reason he bore Erato’s stigmata became a mystery.
‘…And that life became far too tragic.’
Eight lifetimes lived solely to decorate the protagonist’s final victory, and the vivid memories of the eight lives to bear.
In the manuscript , the account of Melchior’s struggle was completely omitted. The manuscript’s subject for understanding and explanation was Arthur, not Melchior.
Clio felt a faint yet unfathomable pity for the adversary of the world. At the same time, he wanted to blame himself for feeling such illicit sympathy.
‘Who’s worried about whom right now. My own life is a mess.’
Maybe this was an aftereffect of being exposed to the “Fascination” skill.
That night, as the “Promise” alternated between hot and cold, the function of “Separation” might have weakened.
“Erato’s Fascination” was a powerful skill. It made sense, since it was Melchior’s means of survival in a hostile world.
Even if it made sense, it wasn’t pleasant to be swept up by the skill.
Clio finally calmed his anger only after cursing inwardly with about six slang words used only in the region where he served in the military.
‘This feels rotten, damn it. That bastard even tried to test the gods at the last minute by strangling me. He’s not just a villain, he’s become a truly fanatical madman. What a headache.’
Even while his condition hit rock bottom that night, Clio, who had listened intently to Melchior’s dramatic soliloquy, confirmed that Melchior was only interested in the coronation itself, placing little meaning on the country’s future, the well-being of the people, or anything like that.
‘I’m now a third Albion citizen, but I’d definitely refuse a king like him.’
In Clio’s view, Melchior was someone who had gone mad from knowing too much. Even one such person was too many for a single work.
And Arthur.
The orthodox protagonist Arthur, as befits a protagonist, made Clio wish that he would remain ignorant of the world’s wrongly constructed corners until the end.
‘But the aftermath of the new unique skill is like that… What a bolt from the blue.’
Clio meticulously reviewed the warnings that popped up when “In-Narrative Description” was activated.
- Activating “In-Narrative Description” may violate the internal consistency of the work.
- If the manuscript’s internal consistency is seriously undermined, there is a risk of narrative structure collapse.
The meaning of those ambiguous warnings became clear right after using the skill.
Because of Arthur’s muttered words, ‘Right now, I feel like I can do anything, like I can understand anything. That all those questions actually have answers.’
He couldn’t even ask what questions had been resolved, even after the incident ended.
‘Even if I wanted to ask, I’d have to actually see him. How long has it been since he was injured, and yet he’s hiking up mountains with sandbags? There’s a limit to being obsessed with training.’
When Arthur began training with unprecedented seriousness, Mietz, who had remained as a guest knight in the duchy, also caught the spirit of training.
Even though they shared a room, Clio hadn’t seen Arthur’s face in the past four days.
Instead, he only heard news of Arthur, Isiel, and Mietz from servants who brought meals or knights who dropped by.
The people in the duchy shared snippets about how Isiel and Arthur had dug up the training ground for the twelfth time during sparring, or how a patrol found Arthur and Mietz fighting with only sticks after hearing explosions on the mountain.
Since the night of the monster attack, Arthur seemed to be brimming with fierce energy.
In this situation, what was the point of probing an adolescent prince who already seemed suspicious of Clio, when there was nothing to gain?
There were too many things Clio hadn’t told Arthur, and countless secrets would remain classified in the future.
‘Arthur is already seeing visions, so what would happen if he found out about the manuscript, too? Out of the frying pan and into the fire. What the hell is this mess, really.’
The “Editor Authority” he relied on became unresponsive, and just as he struggled to save a protagonist he’d grown fond of, now he was told the work’s internal consistency was being violated. There was nowhere to maneuver comfortably.
There was another reason for his mounting frustration.
The “Editor Authority,” which had spread widely at crucial moments, returned as if it had been waiting for the matter to be resolved. As soon as he woke up, he tried infusing ether and confirmed it was working, emitting a clean blue glow.
At that moment, Clio wanted to throw and smash something. Of course, being a guest in someone else’s castle, he had no choice but to endure.
‘The damn author, won’t listen to my advice but comes up with fancy names. If that’s the case, why even set a skill usage limit? Like the market price tag at a sushi restaurant, they should just write “Available Days: Author’s Whim.” Unbelievable.’
There wasn’t just one or two pressing issues. Clio had to hold himself together.
But as his aching body, still sore from muscle pain and fever, lay on the narrow bed, only one thought came to mind.
‘I want to submit a leave of absence. Just for a month, I want to forget about the manuscript and everything else! Ah! Apply the Labor Standards Act to book possessors, too!’
It took a week for Clio’s fever to completely subside. As soon as his temperature returned to normal, Clio booked a train ticket first.
Arthur’s party, who had refused to leave even when told, were also able to depart for the capital the next day.
If someone had cast a [Relief] spell on Clio, he would have recovered faster, but things just kept going wrong.
The apprentice mage quit after the monster attack. Old Mayer was barely able to treat Taeseoton Tristein alone, so he couldn’t look after Clio as well.
Instead, the castle maids showed kindness. Taking turns, they disinfected Clio’s scratched and torn wounds and applied ointment.
Knights, soldiers, and even their families brought loads of honey, stewed fruits, ginger tea, and similar things for him to eat.
During that time, the children helped restore the castle and devoted themselves to training.
Since the isolated fortress in the mountains had neither fun nor entertainment, it literally became a closed-door training environment.
‘At least the twins and Chell are training… but Arthur, sigh.’
At this moment, Trude visited Clio’s room as he was packing.
“Hey! Is the little mage packing up?”
The knight, holding a basket full of peanuts and walnuts, brought the day’s Arthur news as she had all week.
Arthur’s eccentricities had become so extreme that even the knights were left speechless.
If Mietz, whom everyone trusted, hadn’t supervised him, they would have stopped Arthur from breaking through the waterfall’s ice and climbing it upside down in the mountains.
As Clio’s face crumpled with the meaning of ‘Ah, that Arthur bastard…’, Trude, peeling peanuts, slowly began to defend Arthur.
“Still, thanks to the youngest prince teaming up with Mietz and scouring the whole mountain, we figured out where all the shadow spiders had come from, so that’s a big achievement. He’s quite something.”
That day, thousands of shadow spiders had appeared in the territory.
Since monsters are made with magic stones as their core, it meant a large amount of magic stone fragments was buried somewhere, but for the territory folk who had mined magic stones for a thousand years, it was baffling.
But it was Arthur and Mietz, during their training, who discovered the cause of the previously mysterious shadow spider attacks.
“Who would’ve thought that, of all places, so much black crystal magic stone was buried at the deepest part of the Hook Cliff, where one misstep sends you plummeting into the sea. If only we’d known sooner.”
“It was probably tangled up in a stratum impossible to mine. Magic stones that become monsters are usually like that… I’ve read about it in materials.”
“Right, right, Lysa said so too. Because there was a landslide recently and the rocks split, more monsters came out.”
“Your investigation and research are accurate and quick. Impressive.”
“Lysa’s the smartest among us. But the little mage isn’t ordinary either, nor that prince, and the red-haired knight cadet who’s always with you. Are there only genius monsters at the Capital Defense School?”
“Arthur and Isiel are exceptional. Especially Arthur—among the current students, there’s no one to match his skill.”
“Oh wow. At that age, I was a total wild child, but a prince really is different. Phew, I take back what I said about the little prince reminding me of our duke when he was young. Still, the duke, um… even though he looked blunt, he was kind of awkward and human in his own way.”
After training for the day and coming out fresh from a wash, Chell opened Clio’s door and answered Trude’s question in Clio’s stead.
It was a very natural interruption.
“Trude, are you trying to say Arthur has no heart? Nonsense. He’s always been famous for being a complete troublemaker.”
“Are all the troublemakers dead? At the celebration, he didn’t drink a drop, just ate, then went out and did the same sword form over a thousand times until three in the morning. Is that a troublemaker?”
“Well… people can change if something happens, that’s all.”
At some point, Chell had started dropping honorifics with Trude, the knights’ chatterbox. Young and simple-minded, Trude got along surprisingly well with the boisterous Chell.
While Clio slowly packed, Chell and Trude sat roughly around the bed, cracking walnuts and peanuts, and chatted away.
Listening to their conversation, Clio clicked his tongue inwardly.
‘If you reached level 6, couldn’t you celebrate and rest for a few days? Or does he think the level-up wasn’t entirely his own power or something?’
Arthur seemed like he would indeed think that way.
The fact that no title appeared and just a blank space showed at level 6 was probably because he leveled up tied to Clio’s unique skill.
But what could be done now that it had come to this?
‘That kid, despite not looking like it, gets hung up on trivial things.’
Chell, laughing, answered Trude.
“I can tell what the prince is thinking. If His Grace the duke was injured that badly, the monster Grendel must have been something else, right? He thinks everything went wrong because he wasn’t strong enough, and our sickly mage collapsed too.”
“Why is that the prince’s responsibility?”
As Clio was organizing his suitcase, his movements stopped unnaturally.
Chell, a genius at reading the room, smoothly deflected Trude’s innocent but awkward question.
“Good point? Why would he think that? By the way, Trude, where’d you get these walnuts? They’re delicious.”
“Oh, my uncle has a few walnut trees. Want more?”
“Ooh, thanks. I’ll eat them on the train. If you ever come to the capital, stop by Camellia Hall.”
“Haha, sure! This body will show up in Lundane again come spring!”
After the monster rampage, the children and the knights became incredibly close. Rotan’s words—‘We are comrades, having shared life and death’—were effective.
As a tsundere middle-aged man, Rotan took care of the children more devotedly than anyone, just as Clio had expected.
Such inclusive leadership was needed. The atmosphere in the castle was uneasy.
It wasn’t because of the monster attack.
Tristein’s soldiers repelled the monsters efficiently without a single casualty. It was a great victory.
Rather, the command Melchior left behind caused a bigger stir than the duke’s death or the monster rampage. The situation was clear even to the outsider Clio.
With the aftereffects of skills in this territory [relieved], and favorable public opinion of the Tristein knights secured, the Crown Prince, who reaped tangible benefits, returned to the capital immediately after the duke’s funeral.
Reading the times well, Melchior was able to lift the restrictions on the Tristein knights with little resistance.
The order he left was: ‘Duke Taeseoton Tristein, 23rd of Armorique, is exempted from the obligation to guard the northern territory, and after completing the inheritance procedures, shall proceed to the capital with “necessary personnel.”’
With this migration permit issued for the first time in a thousand years, the mood among the young knights was excited.