The Principle of a Philosopher by Eternal Fool “Asley”

Chapter 101: The Royal Capital Commercial District

Chapter 101: The Royal Capital Commercial District

When we all reached the Adventurers’ Guild, we saw that Fuyu was already waiting for us in front of the building. She wore a primarily black and white set of clothes with emerald green trimming… a uniform, perhaps? And if I had to guess, I would say the uniform of the Magic Guardians. Its size seemed a little too big, but the design fit her looks quite well.

I looked at Fuyu as she stood, and was promptly Betty knocked my side with her elbow. Bah, she sure has a habit of nudging people this way.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Fuyu. Asley was chatting some girl up, so we lost a bit of time, you see~~”

“Hey, stop saying things that can be misinterpreted in THAT way! Besides, you were the one who was late-“

“Now, let us be on our way, everyone!”

Betty shut out my retort and started walking up to Fuyu. She dragged me by my mantle with one hand, lining up the three of us with Fuyu in the center, Betty in the left, and me in the right. And then there’s Pochi making weird noises as she climbed onto me and placed her front paws over my head, demanding a shoulder ride.

“H-hey, you’re kinda heavy, you know. Get off me!”

“Hmph, at least you could let me be the one sitting once in a while, sir!”

“Oh, Pochi… you’re coming with us too?”

Fuyu chuckled as she looked up and saw Pochi on my shoulders.

Oh, for the love of… I fail to understand what’s so delightful about THIS…

“Say, Fuyu, is that the Royal Capital Magic Guardians’ uniform you’re wearing?”

“Yes. How is it? Does it look good on me?”

Perhaps Fuyu had have been looking forward to showing this uniform to us.

“Of course – it’s a uniform anyone would want to wear, you know. There’s no way it doesn’t suit you.”

“Um, well… thank you very much.”

From saying that, Fuyu’s face flushed up faintly as she cast her eyes down. Betty then reached for Fuyu’s head and brushed her hair.

Looking from my perspective, those two sure gave off the impression of being sisters.

Back at our agency, we also had Natsu giving off the impression of being Blazer’s daughter. And Bruce being Bruce, he seemed to have hit it off real good with Lala. Well, whenever they hung out, Tzar would be there as well, so they’d gotten in quite a few quarrels of words – but then again, that could be used as an indicator of friendship in a way, and Tzar himself seemed to be getting used to that as well.

“So… today we’ll be looking for Betty’s new equipment… and what else?”

“Oh, don’t be such a fool, Master. A woman needs no objective when she goes out shopping!”

“Exactly!”

Betty winked in agreement with Pochi, then Fuyu chuckled once again while still keeping her eyes cast down.

“First of all, we’re going to the central district!”

Betty ran off with Fuyu following close behind her.

I, on the other hand, totally missed the timing and ended up chasing after Fuyi instead… and then splendidly faceplanted onto the ground two steps in. Further weighing me down was Pochi on my back… and she had the nerve to shout out her complaints – with that, I decided to deduct a side dish off her dinner tonight.

The central district of Royal Capital Regalia was filled with an outrageous degree of hustle and bustle.

People streaming by, the shops pitching their stuff to customers – all were so loud that I’d thought there was a fight, but THIS was normal. Stuck in such a crowd, I was spooked, shoved around, and pushed to the ground… again. And once again, Pochi on my back had the nerve to shout her complaints – with that, I decided to slightly deduct the amount of food off her main dish tonight.

Once I readjusted my glasses and took a good look, I could see that people here were not at all having it hard with their lives.

I would never have expected this from a Devilkin-worshipping society. Or rather, this could be a showcase of how well Grey and his subordinates had been running things.

According to what I’d heard from Betty and Fuyu, the commercial district encompassed the main street that stretched from the southern section of this central district all the way to the south gate.

Although we still had no destination in particular, we did have a general direction now, that is to go along the street to the south gate, and then go along the wall toward the west gate.

Apparently, just that would be enough to eat up one day’s worth of our time. As for why we planned to head toward the west gate, it was because Fuyu wanted to stop by somewhere around there.

With that place ultimately set as our destination, we headed due south along the commercial district.

…I might’ve stated this before, but the Royal Capital sure is amazing.

Weapon shops lined one side of the main street, with armor shops lining the opposite side – the variety was all-encompassing, with one shop being surrounded by and competing heavily against the others of similar products.

But what surprised me the most was how everyone around greeted Fuyu as they noticed her pass by. It seemed that she had become quite famous within the Royal Capital, perhaps because she had always accompanied Gaston on his work.

Anyways… I just can’t say enough about how much Fuyu has grown. Having entered the Royal Capital Magic Guardians – a position Hornel and many other Magic University students strove for – and having received training under Gaston, one might say that this rate of progression was a given, but when she had started out, she had worked as a general assistant more than anything. It was almost unheard of for one to show this much of an improvement in such a short period of time.

A little before noon, Betty went into a shop, apparently having finally found some armor she might be satisfied with.

I’d thought she would have us help her choose, but in the end, she said she would decide by herself.

While the rest of us sat in the store to wait for Betty, I sparked a conversation to ask Fuyu some things I had been wondering about. One of which concerned Lina’s decision to enter the Royal Capital Magic Guardians.

“Say, Fuyu, how is Jeanne doing nowadays? Last I’ve heard, she’d entered the Magic Guardians after graduating from the Magic University the year before last?”

“Hmm… she was formerly a Vice President of the Magic University Student Council, if I remember correctly?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“If I remember correctly, she completed her troop training recently and was just officially installed as part of the brigade the other day. Other than that… I don’t think there’s anything particularly noteworthy.”

“Jeanne… as an in-training troop. Hmm…”

And with nothing particularly noteworthy, huh… that’s quite a way to show how impressive Gaston’s hand-picked elites are as a whole.

“In-training troops are overseen by the Brigadier, Miss Viola, you see. After their official installation, they would be observed by Sir Gaston as well… But by that point, some may not be able to handle the regular troops’ training, which results in them resigning from the Brigade – because of that, having ‘nothing particularly noteworthy’ could be interpreted as a positive.”

Viola… Gaston’s right-hand officer as the Brigadier of the Magic Guardians. With Gaston as the overall commander, this naturally meant she was the top of the troops. And below her rank, I think there were Majors, Captains, and the like.

“That sounds… scary. Are you an in-training troop as well, Fuyu?”

“I was registered to the brigade under special terms, so all of my training is being overseen by Sir Gaston himself.”

Doesn’t that also sound scary in its own way? Still, I wonder what sort of training had they gone through. For some of them to voluntarily relieve themselves of such a yearned-for profession, it must be quite dreadful…

After a while of me pondering that over, Betty returned to us with her brand new equipment, albeit ones not so different from her previous loadout.

“Hey~~ sorry to have kept you all waiting.”

“You sure about that set, Betty? Wouldn’t something a bit more weighty be a better fit?”

“You remember that my speciality is speed, right? If I reduce that too much, it’ll eat into my overall combat potential.”

“Well, I guess that’s true.”

This just occurred to me – how about I affix a Spell Circle onto the equipment that nullifies its feeling of weight, turning it into an Artifact? Could that be done? Hmm, I ought to go forward with this research some time soon.

(Xemul: Yes, please do! I am dying to see Betty flying around as a butterfly in heavy plate Paladin body armor)

“Asley? C’mon, let’s go~~!”

“Y-yeah! Right behind you!”

It was after we left the shop and got back on the street that a growling – so loud that it would spook even the Devil King – came from Pochi’s stomach.

Considering how much she’d eaten last night, her digestive system must be quite impressive to have done away with all the stuff in just ten hours.

“It’s about time we got something to eat, I say!”

“Oh, yeah… the crowd is getting thinner. Must be lunch time now.”

Is THAT really a reliable indicator of time?

“I’m starting to feel hungry, too.”

Fuyu put her small, delicate hands over her abdomen.

It seemed that I was the only one who wasn’t hungry, so… I suppose I won’t be able to say no.

And so we went on our way, led by Pochi’s nose to a restaurant that she deemed to serve good food. Her nose turned to be right – the ham-and-veggies stir fry dish was so delicious that I proceeded to order another. And Pochi, true to her dislike of veggies, proceeded to pass her vegetables to me while she kept her ham.

Seriously, she would be better off ordering a different dish or something.

I wanted to continue talking with Fuyu, but thanks to my dear Familiar wanting to bask in the sun after the meal, I ended up accompanying the doggo outside instead.

Well, Betty at this time has got some things she would like to talk about with Fuyu too, so I suppose going the other way for now was fine as well.

We ended up sitting down on a nearby bench, with Pochi drumming her belly as we leaned against each other’s backs.

Then, suddenly, a boy appeared before me.

What’s with this kid? He looks rather thin, like his limbs were almost twigs… and his clothes were slightly dirty.

Could he be from a financially-struggling family? While I thought about it, the boy pulled on my mantle and spoke up,

“U-um, could you please buy some of our shop’s weapons?”

You do realize that I’m a mage, right?