2-2 The Orphans
“Why do we have to take care of dogs?”
Oscar sighed, looking at the black puppy running circles around his feet. It wasn’t the first time that devil had made them do incomprehensible things, but this was certainly the pinnacle.
Before bedtime, the six of them gathered in one room to chat. It was their only moment of respite amidst the harsh training.
“It’s just like I said, isn’t it? I think she wants to teach us something by having us raise dogs,”
Louis answered while petting a brown puppy. He had always been fond of dogs and was eager to look after them.
“Teach? What could that demon teach us besides pain and suffering? The only subject left is ‘death,’ right? Every day is full of surprises, and not in a good way,”
Oscar shrugged.
“You’re right. It’s amazing how she comes up with new torments every day,”
Isabel said, cradling a white puppy while gingerly touching the burn mark on her arm. It would fade soon, but she had always been proud of her fair, beautiful skin, so it bothered her.
The burn was from a recent posture training exercise. It involved balancing a metal container filled with boiling water on their heads for thirty minutes without dropping it—a new form of torture disguised as training.
Naturally, if they dropped the container, they had to start over from the beginning.
Every time Isabel and the others dropped the container and winced in pain, Selina would double over with laughter.
“What kind of life must one lead to become such a monster? The Duke is such a kind person,”
The Duke was a gentle man with a perpetual smile, who treated them—orphans—kindly. This was something that high-ranking nobles rarely did. The higher their status, the less likely nobles were to view commoners as equals. In that respect, the Duke was a decent person. It was hard to believe he was Selina’s father.
“I’ve got it. She must be the result of the Duchess having an affair with a demon. That couple doesn’t seem to get along very well,”
Oscar said. He occasionally got information about the household from the female servants. Though still boyish, his handsome features secretly attracted the attention of women. Moreover, his etiquette training had given him an elegant demeanor, making him stand out even more.
“I don’t think Lady Selina is as bad as a demon,”
Louis timidly defended her.
“Wait a minute, Louis. Did you misspeak just now? Not as bad as a demon? You mean ‘worse than a demon,’ right?”
Isabel glared at Louis with her beautiful face contorted in anger. She wouldn’t tolerate any disagreement.
“But you know, all the puppies seemed to like Lady Selina. It’s rare to see someone so loved by dogs. They say people who are liked by dogs can’t be bad people. So, I thought maybe she’s not as bad as we think,”
Louis explained.
“Louis,” Richard, who had been playing with a slightly larger puppy, spoke up.
“If she’s not a bad person, then there would be no evil people left in the world. Prisons would be empty, and guards would be out of jobs. My old man would be released too. Right?”
In Richard’s mind, Selina was undoubtedly the world’s most evil person.
“Richard’s right, Louis. Being liked by dogs makes you a good person? Should we leave trials to dogs then? Acquit anyone a dog takes a liking to? That’s nonsense. Wake up, Louis. You’re being fooled by her appearance. Sure, she might be beautiful, but inside, she’s like jam made from all the world’s filth boiled down,”
Oscar grabbed Louis’s shoulder and shook him. Louis could only manage a wry smile.
“Lady Selina is a very good person.”
An unexpected voice praised Selina.
It was Alice, who had been silently engrossed in reading next to a tall stack of books. A reddish puppy sat quietly beside her.
“She lets me read so many books. There’s no better master than her.”
Alice had already accepted Selina as her master for providing her with such a vast amount of books.
Incidentally, all the books given to her were grimoires written in ancient languages. Alice had mastered these ancient languages in just three days to read the massive collection of grimoires. The teacher who had been instructing Alice in magic was reportedly terrified by her talent, calling her “a monster!”
“You’re telling me that as long as you can read books, all the miserable experiences during the day don’t matter?”
Richard was exasperated.
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Alice wasn’t particularly strong either, so she always struggled with basic training like running drills.
However, her memory was exceptional. When given textbooks, her ability was phenomenal—she had acquired knowledge of etiquette and manners that surpassed even her teachers.
“As long as I’m allowed to read books, those things are not a big deal,”
Alice replied nonchalantly.
“Not a big deal, huh…”
Oscar recalled a training session from a few days ago.
After showing Oscar and the others six gems in her palm, Selina had thrown them down a cliff and ordered each of them to retrieve one gem.
The area at the bottom of the cliff was a forest with some weak monsters.
The six of them had stuck together. Even if someone found one gem, they didn’t return, instead searching for all six gems together. They spent hours in the forest, fighting monsters along the way.
However, no matter how desperately they searched, they couldn’t find the sixth gem.
As dusk fell and the forest became more dangerous, they had no choice but to climb back up the cliff with five gems and beg Selina for forgiveness.
But when Selina opened her palm, there was the sixth gem.
“You’re not paying attention. I only threw five gems from the start. I kept one in my hand,”
she had said with an evil smile that Oscar couldn’t forget.
“Alice, even you were on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion while searching for the gems then, right?”
“But Lady Selina is correct. We need to pay attention to everything.”
“No, that’s just an after-the-fact justification. She just wanted to see us suffer.”
Indeed, since that day, Oscar and the others had become more observant of their surroundings. When they paid attention to people’s actions, they began to notice things they hadn’t before. However, Oscar didn’t want to admit that it was thanks to that training.
“Oh, but I thought it was fun. I got to run around in the forest and climb lots of trees,”
Emma, who had been bustling around the room with a gray dog without joining the conversation, chimed in.
As her energetic face, sun-tanned skin, and lithe body suggested, she seemed to be content as long as she could move around.
“Don’t equate monkeys with humans,”
Isabel said coldly.
“Emma, you’ve had a hard time with etiquette lessons too, right?”
Emma and Alice were polar opposites. Emma excelled at physical training, while Alice was gifted in acquiring knowledge. The two of them averaged out to a good balance.
“I do hate studying, but you know, at the orphanage, every day was the same. Here, there’s always something different happening, and it’s interesting,”
Emma answered while hopping around with the puppy. When they first arrived, Isabel had tried to get Emma to calm down, but now she had given up and gotten used to it.
“Emma must be the only person in the world who can enjoy that ordeal,”
Oscar was dumbfounded.
“But you know, there’s some truth to what Emma’s saying. It means this place is better than the orphanage,”
Richard said with a sardonic smile.
“If we had stayed at the orphanage, I would have ended up in prison. Oscar might have become a con artist, and Isabel a prostitute? Louis might have become a priest, but who knows what would have happened to Alice and Emma?”
The futures of those who left the orphanage at a certain age were often not bright. If they were lucky, they might enter a religious order and become monks or nuns, but even that required an aptitude for healing magic.
Louis had discovered his aptitude for healing magic since coming here.
Richard had been highly praised for his combat skills by Selina’s tutors, and of course, the specialized Alice and Emma, as well as the well-rounded Oscar and Isabel, were all well-regarded by the Duke’s household members other than Selina. Even if they couldn’t become attendants, they probably wouldn’t have trouble finding work in the future.
Perhaps understanding this, Oscar and Isabel made displeased faces.
They didn’t want to think that coming here had been fortunate.
TLNOTE : While waiting, I implore you dear readers to read other masterpiece novels that also written by the same author :
- When the Monster Meat I Ate Led Me to the Throne
- Who killed the Hero?
- The Suspects of Necromancy
- The Exiled Merchant Saves the World with the Power of Gold (translated by my friend meerkat)
Also check out my friend Localizermeerkat for more LN translations!
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