Risou no Himo Seikatsu Vol 3 Chapter 1

Chapter 01: The Incident on the Salt Road

“What? The salt is not being delivered?”

After hearing the complaint at the morning meeting, Aura raised one eyebrow and inquired again in a serious tone while remaining seated on her throne.

The only window of the room, through which the sunrays shone in, was positioned far higher up than a person’s height and barred, so the interior was wrapped in dimness, It regularly hosted important discussions, which decided the Kingdom’s future.

As the Queen, Aura naturally sat at the short head of the table. Secretary Fabio stood at attention behind her and was merely allowed to be present, but not to sit down, much less to speak up.
The only people, who were allowed to speak up in this place, were these with the title of either a “minister” or “general”.

“Elaborate, Marquis Guzzle.”

Addressed by Aura, the man sitting little short of the opposite of the table, stood up with the short exclamation “very well”.

Vigorous despite his age, the experienced soldier reported with a low voice that complied with his corpulent physique, which had a close resemblance to a rugby player.

And if I may add, I agree with him.”

The March of Guzzle was a domain that bordered on another country. As the domain had no coasts, nor underground rock salt deposits, the essential salt had to be imported from elsewhere. The ‘Salt Road’ referred to a “state road”, which a previous King had decreed some generations before, so that the enormous amount of required salt could be transported trouble-free to all the domains within the Kingdom.

“I object. Of course it’s a serious matter that the salt isn’t delivered to your domain and I have no objections to send soldiers out to ensure the safety on the road. However, that’s not a responsibility for your army, but rather for the royal army.”

Amongst the assembled people here, General Puyol was the youngest member after Queen Aura as he was in his early thirties, but even though the Marquis could be his father age-wise, he wasn’t the least bit daunted and openly stated his own opinion.

The “Salt Road” was a state road, so sending out troops to maintain its security basically fell within the scope of the royal army.

“Yes, you’re right, General Puyol. I, too, acknowledge that the ‘Salt Road’ belongs to the Kingdom. But taking prior incidents into account, I would say it’s quite likely that the cause for the delay in the salt transport is the increase in numbers of the ‘Meat Dragons’ appearing alongside the road.

Reasoning with this theory of his, he took on the young general’s gaze head-on.

“…..”

(How troublesome. Although it is nothing new that the feudal landowners are reluctant about letting the royal army into their domains and neither is it surprising that Puyol Guillèn wants to march out with the army for some achievements…)

His eldest son, a candidate for succeeding him, and his second son, who had made a name for himself on the battlefield, had fallen in battle.

Considering that, it made sense that the Marquis insisted upon settling this case with his own army.

When the failed delivery of the salt was indeed caused by “Meat Dragons” on the road, like the Marquis assumed, then their subjugation wasn’t all that difficult.

It was pretty unlikely that the army of the Marquis would be defeated by wild dragons, even if it was led by his third son, who had nearly no combat experience.

As a matter of course, it was all based on their assumed premise that the average meat dragon was the cause for the non-delivery of the salt, but the circumstantial evidences pointed to it, too.

The merit and demerit from leaving this case to the army of the Marquis. And the merit and demerit from dispatching the royal army for it.

“Alright, Marquis Guzzle.”

Upon the Queen’s words, the veteran officer immediately took his eyes off General Puyol to look at Aura and lowered his head respectfully.

“I shall accept your proposal. Solve this incident under your jurisdiction. Once you do so commendable, I shall reward you appropriately for your service.”

“Yes, as you command! I will not fail you.”

“Good. Ah, one more thing, I personally will bestow the reward to your son for his achievement. He will have to come to the capital, so bear that in mind.”

On the other hand, Marquis Guzzle couldn’t keep his composure after being told that. He trembled his body with a shiver and reflexively wrinkled the space between his thick eyebrows.

The Queen’s intention was obvious. The “reward” wasn’t a symbolic medal or the like. It also involved the subsequent payment of all the accumulated expenses for resources used during the subjugation and wages for the soldiers. It would normally take a few months of negotiations to arrive at an agreement for this enormous amount of “reward” money, if not more than half a year.

Aura’s aim must have been to cultivate his sense of belonging to the Kingdom by inviting him to the capital while he was still young, seeing as the nobles from remote regions had a strong sense of independence.

The problem was the right dosage. Not too close to be swallowed by the royal family, but not too distant to be alienated by the royal family. That a boy still in his teens would have such a delicate sensibility was inconceivable, even to the biased eyes of a father.

Besides, it lowered the chances of Aura grudging them the reward payment, when she tried to influence his son. And since the domain was still recovering from the previous war, that was rather welcome.

“…Understood. There surely is a lot my son can learn in the capital. Thank you very much for your thoughtfulness.”
In the end, he replied like that and lowered his head respectfully.

While Queen Aura was making important decisions at the morning meeting, Zenjirou, left alone in the inner palace, was typing on his keyboard of his computer in the corner of the living room while the fan blew around a cold breeze.

Sitting on the chair, he put his hands together and stretched his arms over his head to relax his body.

A stack of dragon skin parchment he had gotten from Aura laid untidy on the left side of the keyboard. It was the table for the “tax yield of this year“.

All that was left now was to reread the whole thing at least three time in search for any mistakes, but it was a good point to pause for now.

“That’s a lot of red though…”

Of course some cases were simple cases of miscalculations, but the majority was a deliberate adulteration.

Looking at the screen, he implemented an idea that he had suddenly thought of.

The task was done in no time. He wrote a simple function into one cell and then clicked the right bottom corner of the cell with the mouse and dragged it down to the very bottom of the spreadsheet, whereupon the function was copied to all the cells in the vertical row.

“Uwah, still so many ▲, even though I narrowed it down. Fudging more than ten percent can‘t be shrugged off as a simple miscalculation or careless mistake anymore.“

Last year, Aura had cracked down on it once to some degree, but apparently it hadn’t been enough to decrease the tax evasion, which had already become a routine.

Zenjirou reminded himself.

Even if Aura had gotten back on the stage after safely giving birth, Zenjirou had difficulties to resume his complete shut-in lifestyle at this point.

To begin with, Zenjirou had spent an average life, normally attending school up to university and not causing any serious problems later in his job, either. He never really had an “aptitude to shut himself away”.

However, it had only been appealing to him because he had been mentally worn out at that time from the continued, knee-deep morass called overtime hell.

The physical exhaustion completely went away after three days of rest and the mental exhaustion also naturally healed after a month away from work.

There had been various major events such as transferring into a different world, marrying a beautiful woman perfect to his liking and even making a baby with her, so time had passed in the blink of an eye.

Without pretending, he had genuinely perceived the “leisure days of just sleeping, eating, watching DVD and playing games” as “fulfilling” at first.
The problem was that his values didn’t let him perceive this situation as “fulfilling” forever.

“Guess it’s about time I ask for more work. My magic studies take up a lot of my time right now, but once that’s over, I’ll have too much spare time.”

Still sitting in front of the computer, Zenjirou spoke out his state of mind.

The exhaustion had completely faded from his body and soul.

To be frank, he had started to feel quite out of place.

He wasn’t a workaholic, whose job was his reason d’être and whose calling was to be a working gear of society, but nevertheless, he wasn’t so obtuse, either, that he could unconditionally put up with the current situation, where his necessities of life were provided without having to work.

At present, Zenjirou was making an effort towards the refinement of “hard liquors”.

It used a hotplate as the heat source and automatically regulated the temperature, so even a layman could hardly fail at it.

The Carpa Kingdom had no culture of distilled beverage, but there was a number of people, who liked alcohol. Even the flat distillate made by a layman had a definite worth just due to its overwhelming concentration and intensity.

The boiling point of water was approximately hundred degree. On the other hand, the boiling point of ethanol was weaker: at around eighty degree.

Afterwards, the vaporized ethanol had to be gathered without letting it escape and liquefied again. The result was a liquid with an extremely high concentration of ethanol— a hard liquor.

Zenjirou himself had claimed that “the current goal was to enhance it to a burnable level”, but he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was gradually drifting away from the original objective.

Nevertheless, a highly concentrated alcohol had a great utility value, so a working refinement method would undoubtedly contribute to the Kingdom’s development.

Deep in thought, Zenjirou was sitting in front of the computer, crossed his arms and groaned.

However, despite knowing this, Zenjirou had made an exception for consumable bath utensils, bringing as much as possible of them.

The solid soap posed no problem. He had brought a large amount of it to begin with and since he always made sure to take the soap along when he left the bathroom after using it, so that it didn’t dissolve naturally, the stock would still last for quite a while.

Zenjirou kept his hair rather short, even for a man, so his estimation had been rather naive in regards to how much shampoo and rinse his beloved wife would need to cleanly wash her proud, long hair that reached down to her waist.

He had no experience of making soap, much less shampoo.

He also had a recipe for a more primitive method, which used ash and oil, but judging by the overall nuance of it, the production seemed more difficult compared to using “sodium hydroxide”.

There was also no insignificant amount of confirmed cases of a layman making soap with half-baked knowledge, where the detergence was too strong and dried out the skin or unforeseen components got mixed in and caused pain or itching.

“I’ll use the first attempt to clean my hands and see how it turns out. And I’ll test the shampoo on some animals first… wait, that’s no good. The livestock here are all reptiles and don’t have any fur…”
While mumbling troubled to himself, his voice got tinged with a serious tone, which was pretty much never heard from him.

Aura still had more work to do after the morning meeting.

“…Fuh.”

She held the belief that as a Queen, she was used to negotiations and coordinations with higher nobles, but she still felt a bit drained in body and soul when she was making important decisions, which involved “dispatching an army” like this time.

“Fabio, draw up a paper.”

“Yes. Please give me a moment.”

“…..”

“There you are, Your Highness. Please sign it after verifying it.”

The contents written on the dragonskin parchment pertained to “the approval of the military operation in the domain for the army of Marquis Guzzle, the order to investigate the incident on the salt road as well as the order to eliminate its cause.”

“…Looks good.”

The crest of the Carpa Royal Family (an opened door + a hourglass, where the sand was flowing upwards) was branded onto the parchment from the start, so Aura just had to sign there with her own hand-writing to make it an official document.

“Well then, Your Highness, shall I deliver the document to Marquis Guzzle now?”

“No, that would take too much time. An incident on the Salt Road is a serious matter for our Kingdom. I personally will ‘send off’ the document along with the messenger. Tell Marquis Guzzle that he shall select a messenger from his subordinates.”

Being able to do that was one of the fortes of the Carpa Kingdom. A different country would have had to circumvent the blocked Salt Road by transporting the document through a relay of raptorial dragons or in the worst case, break through the blocked road with a sufficient escort (definitely can’t use a “small flying dragon” for an official document).

Likewise, if the incident this time had happened in a different country, then the usual pattern was that Marquis Guzzle would have dispatched his army at his own discretion and reported only the results to the central government at a later time after informally taking care of it.

Going by that, it should be understandable why it was seen as problematic that Queen Aura was currently the only practitioner of the “Space-Time Magic”. In the same way it was only natural that concubine offers were persistently brought up to Zenjirou, who had a latent potential for the said power.

Bowing briefly, Secretary Fabio asked somewhat suggestive while he tucked the parchment into a wooden cylinder after ascertaining, if all the ink on the paper had dried.

The usual, huh?

The middle-aged secretary frankly phrased his words without so much as reacting to the sharp glance of the Queen.

The statement from the secretary was exactly what Aura had expected.

Of course he wasn’t stating it because he thought that his opinion was correct from the bottom of his heart.

He was a useful man. That was out of the question. He certainly was, but…

(He is irritating after all.)

Aura replied while she harboured this impression from which she no longer knew how often she had it up to this day.

“But when the royal army solves an incident in the outlands, it will add to their track record. If all goes well, would it not present a good opportunity to position our troops in the outlands from then on?”

In that sense, Secretary Fabio was right. It was no bad call to make the deployment of the royal army for incidents in the outland “self-evident” by sending out the troops for a chances like this.

“No. The problem is that once we start to reinforce the royal army and position a division at the border, we will have to see it through all at once. The more time it takes, the longer we will expose ourselves to other countries. The time is still not ripe for it yet.”

“I do not mind. Being greedy will only lead to the worst. Managing a country is no gamble.”

There was no doubt that Aura boldly wanted to replace the outland lords’ armies with the royal army for the defence of the borders, so that threats from beyond could be dealt with more swiftly.

If she were to send the royal army high-handed into the outlands before the armies of the feudal landowners were downsized, it could lead to a rebellion.

Pressing the matter would either enrage the lords of the outlands or tempt the ambitions of other countries. In that case, it was far better to maintain the current situation. To begin with, the Carpa Kingdom was a major power. As a major power they couldn’t just sit on their hands, but neither was there any need to assume full risk.

“Besides, the only troops we can deploy to the March of Guzzle right now are stationed right next to the capital. It would waste unnecessary time when we send them off from the capital. Since the salt stocks in the domain do not last forever, we simply have to deal with it through a faster method.”

“Is that really necessary? I cannot imagine that General Puyol Guillén would stand on the sidelines in such a situation. I am sure that he would march the army at once if the army of the Marquis were to fail their mission.”

For the first time today, Aura hesitated to give an immediate answer to the decisively phrased advice of Secretary Fabio.

“…You have a point there. Fine. Issue a ‘long term manoeuvre in the countryside’ before General Puyol can make his move. The general may pick all the personal by himself.”

“As you command. The provisions must be adequate for a possible ’roundtrip to the Salt Road’ after the manoeuvre. Lastly, shall I inform Marquis Guzzle about the manoeuvre?”

“No need. We have no reason to hide it, but neither a reason to tell him in particular. Just leave it be. I am sure it will reach his ears sooner or later. I would not want to him to feel needless pressure through a misunderstand if we were to tell him about it on purpose.”

As he seemed to have said everything he wanted to say now, the middle-aged secretary bowed in such a perfect manner that he appeared inhuman.

As the Queen, Aura’s days were busy and hectic.

There was so much work that she would have to cut back on her sleeping time and bring a LED floor lamp into her office, if she wanted to finish all of it to perfection. At least, Zenjirou would undoubtedly have done that in her position.

In the long run, it was much more agreeable to do the daily work imperfectly instead of having the Queen collapse from burdening herself to the limit.
Thus Aura suspended her duties for today’s afternoon and enjoyed some recreation with her beloved husband in the inner palace.

At noontide the sun assailed with aggressive sunrays.

“Come on, right!”

It originated from the wooden sticks in Aura and Zenjirou’s hands. Both sticks were about one metre and fifty centimetre long.

“Next, left!”

“Once again right!”

With a desperate expression, he somehow parried the attack with the “basic defence stance”, which he had learned from Aura.

“Aw!? Buh!”

The soft lawn they practiced on prevented any injuries, but the fall hurt nevertheless. However, Zenjirou hadn’t even the time to squirm with pain right now.

Saying so, Aura swung her stick down a few times next to his head.

Zenjirou, still looking desperate, rolled to the side and quickly stood up with all his might. A spray of water was cast off his entire body as he rolled over, pretty much like when a dog shook after coming out of the water.

The two of them were exercising exactly downwind.

The maximum temperature during this time of the day exceeded forty degree, so it was too hot for a normal person to move around dashingly for a long time, unless it was under special circumstances like this.

“Kuuh!”

“No good. Now your flank is exposed.”

“Uwah!?”
Lifted up, Zenjirou fell flat onto the lawn once again.

Obviously there was a good reason to why they were wasting their quality time together by doing a slightly violent exercise amidst the heat like this.

She had given birth to the first prince without problems, but even after the child had left her stomach, her figure or weight hadn’t changed back to what they had been before the pregnancy.

In modern Japan, doctors and nutritionists would have made it possible that Aura was on a “diet that provided the necessary nourishment for her and the chid without making her fat”, but this world had no such thing as nutritional science, so going on a thoughtless diet would result in malnutrition and just endanger the child in her stomach.

Gaining weight after childbirth wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the viewpoint of a mother aside, Aura couldn’t stand for the current situation as a woman.

The “glass mirror” showed her silhouette unadulterated, contrary to the vague reflections in the small silver or water mirrors.

Fortunately, there were no signs of a “marital crisis”, where her husband distanced himself from her, for now, but she couldn’t presume on his sympathy, either.

“Okay, last one. Here I go, a downward swing!”

She was holding back so much that she could stop the attack at any time, if necessary, but even so, Zenjirou could barely react to it.

BAM! The two wooden sticks clashed and made a shrill sound pretty much like metal.

“…..”

“…Puah!”
His wife exchanged her serious expression with a smile and announce the end of the session, whereat Zenjirou flopped onto the lawn with a big sigh that released all of the air from his lungs.

“Fuh…”

A bit out of breath, Aura sat down on the edge of the fountain and pleased by the spray of water from behind, she narrowed her eyes to slits. Meanwhile, Zenjirou was stretching all his limbs on the lawn and breathing roughly.

As she had completely recovered before him, she took the PET bottle filled with drinking water out of the fountain and put it next to his head as he was putting his feet up.

Zenjirou somehow sat up and gulped down the substance from the PET bottle in one go without sparing the time to thank Aura for it.

“Fuh… I’m back to life…!”

His whole body started to ooze sweat due to the sudden intake of water. The bruises from being lightly hit by Aura coupled with his body being on fire from the exercise, made him want to jump straight into the water fountain.

Hearing Aura ask that, Zenjirou felt up his still powerless body.

The tip of their training sticks technically had been amply wrapped with a soft cloth, but the stick was essentially one and a half metre long and made out of hard wood, so it wouldn’t have been strange if he had fractured a bone or two, much less snapped a muscle or vein.

“I’m all good, it seems. My left side and right thigh sting a bit, but that’s all. See.”

He was staggering like a newborn fawn, as his legs still hadn’t recovered yet, but no part of his body hurt when he strained it.

His exhausted body would fall backwards into the water fountain if he wasn’t careful, but it wouldn’t matter if that were to happen. The basin of the fountain wasn’t deep enough, so that anyone could drown in it.

Tempted to do so, he glanced behind him at the water fountain. At that moment.

Aura approached him and asked that, then said down on the rim of the fountain right next to him. Zenjirou was only around two finger lengths taller than Aura when they were standing, but when they sat next to each other like this, the difference almost doubled.

“Well, I knew it would be hard and didn’t even once thought it would be a cakewalk, but it was even worse. I’m dead beat. Reminds me of how my soccer club in high school once had a practice match against a junior youth team.”

The later part of his sentence had terms like high school, soccer club and junior youth team, where the “soul of words” didn’t work, but Aura apparently could understand what he wanted to say just from the former part.

Not overestimating her own strength, Aura replied with a smile.

As a man, Zenjirou wasn’t gifted with a particular good physique or athletic abilities, but he wasn’t an absolute weakling, either.

Zenjirou understood that Aura was saying the truth, but at the same time, he perceived the hidden meaning that “it was too late to start now”, too, so he couldn’t help but intensify his wry smile.

“A wise decision. Of course I will not stop you, if you seriously want to make an effort for it, but otherwise there is not really a reason to overexert yourself.”

Considering that Zenjirou was one of the very few royalty in the Carpa Kingdom, it certainly was unthinkable that he would get into a situation, where he had to use his superficial martial art skills.

“Yeah, I don’t intend to take it that serious. To begin with, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to handle it single-handed with my strength…”

Right now, he was still at the basic of basics, so he had only learned to wield it with both hands, but in reality, one often was supposed to hold the short spear in one hand and a wooden shield in the other at war.

“Indeed. You kind of lack the strength to wield a spear as a soldier.”

“Uwah, now you’ve said it… But you’re right. Your blows were really heavy and it seemed like my stick would get sent flying.”

“I, I see. That ‘heavy’, huh.”

“Yeah, super heavy. Each strike carried such a weight that I thought I would get blown away. I can hardly believe that you’re only on par with an ordinary knight. Well, my weakness plays a part, too.”

“Agh…”

Not good. At this rate, they would have their first marital strife after getting married.

You have heard about the ‘Salt Road’ from Lady Octavia in your lessons, right? Now, …”
As she wished for a harmonious married life, Aura forcefully attempted a topic change with an obvious quicker manner of speaking than usual.

At night of the same day.

In the afternoon, Zenjirou have had spear practice with Aura in the courtyard, so the windows in the living room had been left open to air the room, but the smell was still lingering persistently.

(I better do it in the courtyard next time?)

His self-distilled beverage had a high alcohol level from being distilled over and over again and a slight amber colour, but was mainly colourless and transparent.

Saying so, he showed a bitter smile and held out the red glass to his wife sitting on the couch.

Therefore he had the waiting maids, who were off duty, drink it in advance and confirmed that there was nothing wrong with them, allowing him to serve it now.

And unfortunately, Aura, too, shared that opinion.

After one sip, Aura declared plainly and frowned a bit.

Even while dropping his shoulders disappointed, Zenjirou had no choice but to acknowledge it, since he had been aware of it already.

Aura sampled the liquid once more and comforted the depressed maker in front of her.

Zenjirou clapped his hands upon hearing her words.

Saying so, he drunk from his blue Kiriko glass, too. Back in Japan, he had only ever drunk low-malt beer or cheap whiskey, but even so, he recognized the value of this alcohol, which was irrevocably “nothing but high-proof without taste“, and cheered up a bit.

Scouring his vague memories, Zenjirou mumbled that. Aura, emptying her glass before him, put the empty glass onto the table and opened her mouth to reply to him.

Zenjirou tilted his head a bit musing and frowned while answering the curious question of his wife.

“Is that so? Controlling the heat, huh? How hot would these seventy to hundred degree roughly be?”

“Ehm… What would be a good indication? Oh, I know. You should be familiar with these: Water vaporizes at around hundred degree and our usual bath temperature should be forty degree more or less. So it’s ‘exactly the medium between these two’.”

She leaned a bit forward on the opposite couch and replied after a firm nod.

“Well, duh, you would burn yourself.”

In reality it might be possible to get in contact with seventy degree for an instant without getting burned, but it didn’t change the fact that measuring the temperature with the “hand” was unfeasible.

Aura suggested that, where at Zenjirou approved, too.

The history of distilled beverages dated back to ancient times. Its production process was principally simple, too. Even without an electronic device to control the temperature, it should be more than feasible to replicate it with the skills and judgement of a craftsman.

Compared to that, it shouldn’t be all that difficult to measure the right temperature for distilling alcohol with the eye or skin, either.

Although the Carpa Kingdom was a major power, its treasury was still devoted to repair the war damages and definitely had nothing to spare.

For now, Aura decided to treat the “distilled beverage” matter as nothing more than a hobby of her husband, and changed the topic to a more interesting subject.

There was not much budget, so the team consists not even of a dozen of people. But they are all either retired blacksmiths or experienced blacksmiths apprentices, so they are used to working with fire.”

“Retired ones and apprentices, huh. I guess ‘active’ blacksmiths were out of the question?”

“Yeah, the blacksmiths are essential to our country after all. The retired blacksmiths are one thing, but it was quite the ordeal to rope just the apprentices in for it.”

The active blacksmiths were irreplaceable professionals. In a way, they were even more important than a skilled knight or excellent civil official.

Of course it was quite unlikely that the appointment of just one or two blacksmiths would result in such a conspicuous damage, but it would undoubtedly give all the blacksmiths an unfavourable impression of the royal family at least.

Therefore it was better to avoid getting on their bad side, if possible.

Also, an own waterwheel at the facility would be of advantage, too. In the DVD you showed me, it looked like they often used a stone mortar for grinding broken bricks into powder or sand into even finer sand.

“Oh right, you actually have waterwheels.”

Waterwheels had existed in his original world even before Christ. It wasn’t really strange that the Carpa Kingdom was commonly using them, too.

“Yes, we have a lot of rivers throughout the country after all. In the farming areas, they are effectively used for mills. It is just that the craft originally comes from the Northern Continent. Compared to their waterwheels, ours are far more short-lived. For some reason, the cogged wheels soon start to make loud noises and break easily.”

“Mh? Short-lived? Doesn’t it just mean that the numbers of teeth on the meshing cogs aren‘t ‘coprime’?”

It happened when Zenjirou reasoned like that while vaguely recalling the excursion from his math teacher in middle school.

Aura’s utterance was drown out by a knocking on the door and the familiar voice of a waiting maid asking “excuse me?” from beyond the door.

“Yes, come in.”

The blonde maid, standing in the middle as their representative, bowed to the two royalty sitting on the couch, then proffered their concern.

“Oh, right. It still is a bit dangerous. Okay, sure. Take it.”

Even if he had a five-door refrigerator, the space for making ice in the freezer was limited. If the ice portion for tonight was taken away, Zenjirou and Aura had to settle for just the water tub and the ventilator in front of it to make it through this sultry night. But they could endure that if it was for their cute little child.

The electric cable didn’t reach the room, where Carlos was resting with the wet nurse, so they couldn’t set up the ventilator there, but instead, the room, narrowed with partitions, was replete with cold air from the ice.

The waiting maids lowered their heads respectfully while saying “thank you very much”, and headed for the refrigerator.

With her back to the waiting maids, who were opening the fridge, Aura mumbled with still lingering feelings.

As the father, Zenjirou completely agreed with his wife at heart, but he pushed away that thought and explained with a wry smile.

Even if the waiting maids took care of feeding him and changing the diapers, Aura would still wake up every time when he cried if they were sleeping in the same room.

Aura understood that in the head and never intended to push her own selfishness through.

The reason she couldn’t help but complain about it regardless, surely was the deep affection for her child.

“It’s still all very well for you. I on the other hand will have to stop talking to Zenkichi altogether soon.”

“Now that is something inevitable. After all, you do not speak in our local language, but in the one of your world. In his current blank slate, it would definitely not be a positive influence on Carlos.”

A grumbler and a comforter. At some point, their positions had suddenly switched.

Zenjirou heaved a sigh once more.

The only time, when the power of the “soul of words” couldn’t be borrowed, was when a baby without any prior knowledge started to learn its first words.

After all, a child couldn’t intentionally repress the magic flow to deactivate the “soul of words” yet.
To serve as an example: Zenjirou teaches him the word “papa” with the meaning of “father”. Father = Papa. Once he memor

Chapter end