Father Doesn’t Understand His Daughter’s Heart(2)

<The first quest to enter the academy is to obtain 10 horns of hornrabbits. This is completely a beginner NPC quest. This much is easy!>

“Quest? NPC? I’ve never heard these words before. Shati, do you know what they mean?”

“No? It’s my first time hearing them too.”

The unfamiliar words included in Aria’s speech. No, words they had never heard even once in their lives. Arin asked Shati, thinking that perhaps she with her broader knowledge might know, but Shati shook her head.

Certainly, being a magician, she had read easily thousands of books until now, but the words Aria just said were ones Shati was hearing for the first time as well.

Quest. NPC.

They couldn’t even guess what these words might mean, but judging from the flow, while they didn’t know about NPC, quest might be something similar in meaning to a request.

But this was just a guess and not confirmed as truth, so Arin let out a sigh and Shati roughly messed up her hair.

“Is it because it’s Professor Aria’s past…? Somehow everything feels unfamiliar…”

“She usually has a lot of secrets, so I thought we might learn something by seeing her past, but it’s just more of the same.”

At first, Shati had entered out of curiosity about the book, but since she got to see Aria’s past, she had been planning to find out various things.

However, far from finding anything out, seeing Aria speak using unknown words only made Aria’s image more mysterious.

And as Shati was fixing her messed-up hair realizing this fact, suddenly the librarian’s voice, which had been quiet for a while, was heard from the air.

“An order has come from the master of the library. The words ‘quest’ and ‘NPC’ in that conversation just now are not supposed to be carelessly revealed. Therefore, from now on, words like those will all be replaced with ‘this side’s’ language.”

“…Words that shouldn’t be revealed?”

“By the way, what do you mean by master? Weren’t you managing the library, Librarian?”

“The master I just mentioned is, as I said, the master of this library. It’s true that I manage the library, but I am merely the librarian, not the master of the library.”

Words that shouldn’t be revealed. At the librarian’s words that couldn’t be ignored, saying she would replace all such words with ‘this side’s’ language, Arin burst out with a question.

Hearing that they were words that shouldn’t be revealed, she could naturally understand that those words just now were closely related to Aria’s secret.

But to Riana’s question asking about a different part, the librarian answered and then immediately turned the conversation without even giving Arin a chance to voice her doubt.

“I was also nervous as this is my first time with a red letter story. Don’t worry, there won’t be any more immature mistakes like just now. Then let’s continue watching the swordswoman’s actions.”

Then the librarian’s voice disappeared with a snap as if the connection had been cut.

It was obvious she had no intention of telling them, so Arin had no choice but to swallow back the doubt that had risen to the tip of her tongue and bury it inside.

If the librarian wasn’t going to answer, these buried doubts were things she could ask Aria directly when they got out of here.

<I only have two skills I can use yet, but as I gradually increase my proficiency and strength, I’ll be able to use more!>

So Arin just kept her mouth shut and watched Aria running excitedly towards the distant hornrabbits.

Aria of the past was weak.

Wielding only one sword, she swung at the hornrabbits but was so weak that she couldn’t kill them in a single blow and received injuries several times.

But Aria never gave up.

“If Father orders it, this much is easy. Besides, I still have plenty of healing potions!”

The reason was simply because her father ordered it. With a body moving according to compulsion, Aria continued fighting to obtain the hornrabbits’ horns.

Occasionally when her sword missed, the hornrabbit’s counterattack would come flying immediately.

Every time she was stabbed by a horn, red blood flowed from Aria’s arms and legs, but Aria would take out a red potion from an unknown rippling space and drink it, then attack the hornrabbit again.

Attack, get hurt. Attack, get hurt. Attack, get hurt.

A repetition of this process. And how much time had passed as this process repeated?

“Haa… Haa…”

When the sun hanging high in the sky had tilted slightly, after about 30 minutes had passed, Aria’s battle finally ended.

The 10 hornrabbit horns obtained with such difficulty.

Aria put all the hornrabbit horns into the rippling space she had taken the potions from, then headed towards the Phara Kingdom.

Step by step, with tired but energetic footsteps, Aria headed towards the Phara Kingdom, and upon entering the kingdom, Aria handed over all the hornrabbit horns she had obtained to an old man who looked like a magician inside an old building.

The old man who received them nodded his head and then turned away without saying anything more, and Aria also walked out humming a tune.

And after coming outside, Aria looked up at the air once again and shouted with sparkling eyes:

“Next is metal slimes… Oh, am I changing equipment before that? Then I’ll go to the weapons shop!”

As if having heard an order from the person called Father, Aria ran straight to the weapons shop and changed her weapon and armor.

Equipment that was clearly of better quality than what she had been using before. Aria adorned her whole body with equipment that must have cost a considerable amount of money.

Then Aria, wearing the new equipment, immediately ran out of the kingdom and once again engaged in a life-or-death struggle to obtain the cores of metal slimes.

“Ha! Haa!”

She fiercely exchanges attacks and receives injuries. But Aria immediately drinks a red potion to recover from her injuries and continues the battle, and it takes a long time of 1 hour for the battle to end.

On top of that, coming out from the kingdom to the outside again and going even further to search for metal slimes, the sky had long since begun to set, but Aria showed no sign of thinking about finding lodging.

“This request is to clear a demon beast dungeon 10km away! There’s no one to do it with, but I can do it easily by myself! After all, I’m Father’s daughter!”

Aria comes out of the kingdom again, shouting with a still confident voice like that.

But in Aria’s voice, an undeniable fatigue was seeping through.

However, even so, Aria moved her body with steps no different from the beginning, and only when it became dark night did she arrive at the demon beast dungeon located east of the Phara Kingdom, and without any rest, she entered the dungeon and began defeating demon beasts indiscriminately.

Of course, as she killed the demon beasts, injuries on Aria’s body also continued to increase.

Although she was recovering her injuries by drinking red potions, injuries were endlessly etched on Aria’s body to the extent that half of the blood spilled on the floor was Aria’s.

But even so, she continues fighting without giving up.

More accurately, she continues fighting unable to give up.

In this way, it took Aria a full two hours to kill all the demon beasts, and when she came out of the dungeon after completing the order, the outside was already the time when the sun was slowly rising.

But Aria didn’t stop.

After dealing with the dungeon, it was exterminating Grey Bears.

And after that job was finished, it was obtaining firewood from Mountain Trees.

And after that job was finished…

And, and, and, and, and.

When the sun hanging high in the sky had risen and set three times, Aria was back in the initial blue space.

For three days and nights, without any rest, defecation, or sleep, she moves around solely according to the orders of the person called Father.

No matter how much she gets injured in the process, no matter how tired her mind becomes, Aria completes the orders while moving around, and at the end of it all, she is thrown back into the initial unpleasant blue space.

As if saying to rest for a moment now that the current tasks are done, she falls down emptily.

And the five who had watched all of Aria’s process in rapidly flowing time were unable to hide their shock and their expressions froze like stone.

It was a sight that could not possibly be seen as normal to that extent.

Therefore, Arin’s voice, who had escaped from the shock relatively first, rang out in the barrier.

“That’s… too much…”

They don’t know who her father is. He was someone who hadn’t shown even his face, let alone his voice, until now.

But no matter how much Aria loved her father, this was behavior that crossed the line.

Not treating her like a child but like a tool, not giving her even time for a short nap or time to eat something.

What kind of father is it if he doesn’t even see his daughter as a human being?

Parents who don’t know how to think about their children don’t even deserve to be called parents. In the first place, if she had been treated this harshly, Aria should have lost all affection for the person called Father.

Thinking such thoughts, Arin looked at Aria collapsed on the floor, but the words Aria muttered with her mind half-gone from drowsiness completely shattered Arin’s thoughts.

<Father, I can do more… Please stay here just a little longer…>

“Why on earth is Professor Aria going to such lengths…”

“At this point, I’m a bit curious about the face of this person called Father.”

“Miss Shati, be a little more careful with such words…!”

Saying she can do more and asking him to stay a little longer.

Those words asking for more orders despite being so exhausted seemed like nothing but obstinacy.

But as if trying to show that she really could do more, Aria tried to get up from the floor where she had collapsed, but soon succumbed to the overwhelming drowsiness and fell face down.

Then in less than a few seconds, even breathing could be heard coming from Aria.

Aria, who had always maintained her imposing aura without a single gap even when dozing off for a moment in the academy, was now so defenseless in sleep that she wouldn’t know even if someone approached right next to her.

That appearance showed how tired she had been until now, and Arin unconsciously covered her mouth.

“Just what…”

Just what kind of person is this Father to make her push herself so unreasonably?

The fights Aria had been in that Arin had seen were dangerous enough that it wouldn’t have been strange if she had died if she didn’t have hundreds of those suspicious red potions.

And Aria had continued such fights for three days and nights, with the marches in between serving as rest.

Of course, it was an unreasonable… no, an inhuman level of overexertion.

But Aria had done such a thing. All because of one person called Father.

Therefore, Arin bit her lip tightly and kept looking at Aria sleeping face down on the floor, and at that moment, suddenly the words Aria had said to her today at the Kraken flashed through Arin’s mind.

-I… don’t want you to walk the path I’ve walked. The path I’ve walked is terribly horrible. To the extent that it would be fine to see it as just being a doll.

At that time, she had thought it was just a figurative expression. She thought it was expressing how hard her past had been by comparing it to something.

But now, looking at Aria, Arin could realize.

“A doll…”

That Aria of the past was literally.

A doll.