The lord’s study and the church. I see.
I’ll be the one to handle any business with the church. I can leave the lord’s study to the others.
I’ll inform our union and have a nearby party come and help.
“All right, we’ll be heading to the church next. Please allow the next group of outsiders that shows up to look over your documents,” I inform him.
“Of course. I am deeply grateful for all the help you outsiders have offered our town.”
“Well, we’re acting in our own interests too.”
“But we’re the ones who benefit, in the end. For that, we truly are grateful. There needn’t be any more to it than that.”
I see. He cares more about the results than the motives. I suppose that’s only natural for a feudal lord.
“We ended up staying at your home for far too long. Excuse me, you two. Don’t you think you’ve had too much to eat?” I question the twins.
“But the food here’s yummy!” they cry back.
“Ha ha ha! The chef will be thrilled to hear you enjoyed it so much. Isn’t that right?” Lord Fosselle asks one of his servants.
“Absolutely. It’s normal for guests to leave food on their plate, so the chef was very happy to receive an order for seconds,” he replies.
I’m sure most guests at noble houses are there to attend the wives’ tea parties, where they probably don’t eat much at all. On the other hand, the twins are stuffing their cheeks without a care in the world, although I’m the one who has to Enchant all their food first.
It’s finally time to depart the lord’s manor after our long stay. It’s already close to 3 p.m., but I can hardly complain when I spent my morning relaxing—at least, before this new information came in.
As soon as we step outside the manor to head to the church, we find ourselves face-to-face with a bear.
“Howdy, Princess.”
“I see your party has come to help, Mr. Lucebarm. The earl may have a lead on some documents, so please ask him to lead you to them. The rest of us will be heading to the church as planned.”
“Sure thing.”
We bid farewell to the Fosselle family before we’re on our way.
Greetings, church. We meet again.
“Good day, Bishop Beriess.”
“If it isn’t Princess Nemeseia? How can I help you today?”
“I wanted to see if the church could help out with a little something I’m investigating.”
I explain the situation to Bishop Beriess.
“I see. So the suspicious group spotted in town was in possession of documents? They must be incredibly ancient if they detail the outer ones.”
The bishop instructs a nun to lead us to the library while he goes and retrieves the key.
The library in the corner of the church is more like a reference room, from the sound of it. It’s merely a room full of things like picture books for the children and anything the clergy members enjoy reading as a pastime. However, a locked door sits at the very back of the room—our destination today.
“Past here is where we store books that are difficult to handle, as well as anything particularly old,” the nun explains.
I won’t demand she go into more details. Sometimes it’s best not to know.
Bishop Beriess arrives shortly after and takes over for the nun.
“Let’s see. I believe the older materials are over here, and the unreadable ones are this way, if memory serves.”
He must not come to this room very often. Actually, that makes sense—no one would come to look at things they can’t even read. At most, the only visitors here would be the books’ and documents’ caretakers.
“It seems I was correct. If the materials you seek are here, they should be somewhere around this spot.”
“Thank you, Bishop Beriess. We’ll begin our search at once.”
He leaves me with the key and returns to his work. It’s time for our party to start digging through bookshelves. I’ll take the shelf of unreadable books, while the other four can work on the old texts.
My skills don’t seem to be activating. That means nothing’s here, right?
Information has been shared with you.
“Oh, I found something!” Mr. Skelly cries.
“What is it?” Mr. Alf asks.
“‘Black Goddess of the Bountiful Harvest.’ Ugh, I’ll pass!” he responds.
I take the thin book once Mr. Skelly is done flipping through the pages.
“Oh? The text is all garbled.”
“Wait, you can’t read it either, Princess?”
Let me check the item info.
Black Goddess of the Bountiful Harvest
A book detailing the Black Goddess of the Bountiful Harvest.
…The content is mistranslated in parts, so it will probably take some time to decipher.
“So it’s a translated copy of something, but just the parts relating to Shub-Niggurath? The translation seems to be the problem. Are we supposed to speculate what the original text said?” I ponder.
“It’s like a translated grimoire then? Or a mistranslated grimoire, I should say,” Mr. Skelly adds.
“That’s probably what it’s supposed to be. We also don’t know if it’s only a little mistranslated, or if it’s the entire thing,” I reply.
“What do we do?” the twins ask us.
Speculating what the original text said would be a waste of time. In that case…
“We just need to find out how the suspicious group translated the text.”
“Maybe those ‘suspicious group’s notes’ they had on them are the key,” suggests Mr. Skelly.
“Then we’ll need to find every last note they took that details their rules of translation in order to restore the original text. Actually, no, there’s no need to restore it.”
“But won’t you be able to read the original, Princess?” asks Mr. Skelly.
“Yes, but the suspicious group can’t, so is there any point?”
“Huh? Ah, right, our goal is to apprehend the other suspicious group members who are out there hiding, not translate accurate info about outer ones. Even if they got it wrong, this is supposed to be for a summoning!”
“Even if we manage to read the original text and learn its contents, since the suspicious group couldn’t read it, both parties would likely hold very different information. I highly doubt there’s more than one way to correctly carry out a summoning,” I speculate.
“So their summoning will fail if the conditions aren’t met?” the twins ask.
“That goes beyond just ‘not being fun.’ Nothing would happen if we left these guys alone in the first place at that rate! I doubt we’re meant to just ignore this,” Mr. Skelly infers.
“Probably not. Perhaps we’re supposed to translate the original text after all, if possible,” I speculate.
Information has been shared with you.
“Looks like they found something at the lord’s manor,” says Mr. Alf.
“‘Our Lady of Sighs.’ That would be Mater Suspiriorum,” I reply.
“I-I found something. It says ‘Our Lady of Tears,’” he tells us.
“That’s Mater Lachrymarum. That just leaves Mater Tenebrarum.”
Mr. Alf found the book while Mr. Skelly and I were conversing.
After a while, “The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young” is found at the lord’s manor. That would be the name for Shub-Niggurath.
However, that’s the last discovery made.
“I can’t find anything,” says Mr. Skelly.
“Us either,” the twins answer.