POV – Tobias

The past week has gone by without anything interesting happening.

Each day, I’d slightly hoped that that the translation function would fix itself, but that hasn’t happened.

During the time that Rin’s been here, I’ve learned some (very little) of her language. Definitely not enough to speak it, but I can (slightly) recognize some verbally spoken words now. Although that’s mainly because I’d learned to the writing from her before.

Even so, the past week has mostly been spent resting as Rin’s forced me to rest whenever she’s seen me.

Fortunately, Rin’s been disappearing for large portions of time each day, so I’ve been using that time to move about. Resting all the day simply isn’t in my nature.

On a side-note, after getting injured, my body’s felt strange like it’s no longer mine.

General movements are fine… but when I try to do complicated actions, I’ve had trouble.

To provide an example, when I tried walking while gripping onto God-hunter I initially fell over.

The entire thing is maddening, and extremely frustrating to deal with.

It’s like my brain’s completely forgotten how to control my body, (which I don’t really understand how a heart injury caused).

Still, with I’ve felt stronger everyday and have been gradually regaining control. I can move around normally, but more specific movement still cause problems. Everything just feels wrong.

Anyway, the reason I explaining this today (instead of when I’ve completely recovered) is… someone knocked on the door around twenty seconds ago.

You might be wondering why I haven’t answered it, so let me walk you through my thought process.

There are only around six people who know where our apartment is…

Obviously, there’s me (Tobias)… But considering I’m already inside it, and I didn’t knock on the door, I believe I can safely eliminate myself as an option in this circumstance.

Rin wouldn’t have any reason to knock, she would just open the door.

Sidney and Ivan would knock, but considering our… tense relationship, I cannot imagine either of them purposefully seeking me out.

It could be that scammer of a merchant. That wouldn’t be particularly bad, but I also doubt he would purposefully show his face before me again.

Meaning there’s only other person who it’s likely to be.

The shapeshifting Maniac who almost killed me.

Actually, regardless of who it is, I doubt they’ll speak English meaning I won’t understand them until I’ve fixed the translation problem… Effectively making it pointless to open the door unless their intent was harmful.

You’ve forgotten about Stanley. He also learned our apartment’s location when he help drive off the shapeshifter.

Hmmm… Okay, so there’s also Stanley.

Still not sure it’s worth risking of opening the door, though. That’s around a fifty percent chance the person at the door’s going to kill me. I’m not exactly in a position where I can fight effectively.

So don’t open the door. It’s probably not that important.

Yes. Good pragmatic advice, God-hunter.

Indeed, I couldn’t imagine an important circumstance that I would be able to help with at the moment. My current physical condition was suboptimal and interacting with a potentially hostile person is too risky at the moment.

“Seto keros pokoto.” A female voice yelled in an incomprehensible language whilst slamming on the front door.

Well, unless Stanley has mysteriously turned into a female since the last time I saw him (which I doubt… but somehow I wouldn’t be that surprised)… That’s not Stanley outside.

So… the likelihood of the person at the door trying to kill me has bumped up to around ninety percent. The remaining ten percent dealing with varying unusual circumstances.

With that in mind, I’ll just keep quiet and ignore them.

After a couple minutes of trying to get my attention, they left as I expected (or at least stopped banging on the door).

Hmmm… While I’m not currently in a condition to fight, I’ve recovered enough to walk about normally. If I keep quiet and try not to stand out, nobody should be able to notice me.

I’ll wait a bit longer to ensure those whoever was outside has left, then I want to head out and see if I can remember the guild that has the administrative username and password.

The guild should be storing it on a dusty old shelf in their guild hall.

Although… now that the books are now being translated by the system, they might’ve prematurely looked through them and found the administrative access information.

That might be problematic… The butterfly effect can be extremely annoying at times.

No… Actually, if I didn’t remember the codes correctly in this timeline, I must’ve remembered them incorrectly in the other timeline. Considering I still got my hands on the void flower’s petals, I must’ve gotten the codes at some point in the other timeline.

The book should still be in place (if I didn’t have to go on astoundingly long side-quest to get it last time).

…And I just remembered the name of the guild that had the book, Illuminati’s Eye.

I feel like slapping myself for giving it such an unoriginal and cheesy name. Sigh… whatever it doesn’t matter.

The leader was a secretive illusionist or something if I remember correctly. Going by my normal naming scheme, the leader’s first and last name should begin with the same letter as the guild.

I don’t remember his exact characteristics or name though. I created way too many guilds in the past to remember every single one.

Whatever it doesn’t matter, I’m not going there to burn down the guild. I’m just going to steal a book… Well, actually, I’ll probably be stealing multiple books because I cannot exactly distinguish the correct one at the moment.

I’ll probably have to bring them back and slowly study them.

Just in case Rin comes back early, I’ll leave her a note…

…

The system… the system should still translate English writing for her, shouldn’t it.

Facepalming at my own stupidity, I internally berated myself.

How did I forgotten about that?! I could’ve been using writing to have one-sided communication with Rin.

Her translation system should still be working perfectly, meaning the system that translate writing should still be working perfectly.

I’m a genius and way smarter than this, why did it take me a week to realize this work around?

Actually, can Rin understand me through speech? Hmmm… I’m not sure. That would be dependent on how the specific details of how translation system works… but, judging by her actions I would go with a resounding no.

At the very least, Rin hasn’t displayed anything beyond a shaky understanding of what I’ve said.

Searching around the room, I realized I had nothing to write on or with.

As it turns out, neither of us had bought paper or writing utensils while we were here. I hadn’t even thought about it before, so I suppose that’s my fault.

Grabbing my villainous but slightly damaged cloak from the lobby, I wrapped it around myself.

Perfect, I feel a million times more villainous already.

Fortunately, the villainous black color helps disguise the stains from my stab wounds. Walking around with a massive blood stain on my clock would put a damper on my whole appearance.

We’re off to commit the wondrous crime of petty theft!

Mwahaha…

*Sigh…* Who am I kidding, that really doesn’t sound evil or villainous. Should I try intimidating someone?

…

How exactly am I supposed to intimidate someone without being able to communicate with them?

Feeling my mood beginning to turn depressed at that thought, I tried to chance my perspective.

I’ll be stealing the administrative codes from the guild and preventing their guild's ultimate rise to power whilst ensuring my own. This isn’t mere petty theft, it’s stealing their predestined path to power.

There we go.

Now, that... that sounds evil enough.

When I get chance, I should plot an ambitious and evil goal for the future.

Before completing my evil theft, though, I’ll need to acquire writing supplies.

If Rin finds out I’m missing without a note, she’d probably freak out. I really don’t want to deal with the consequences of that.

Collecting my belongings, I set off toward the Easy Difficulty district (as that’s the area of the Residential Zone with the majority of shops).

It took around fifteen minutes of slowly wandering about to reach a populated area.

Normally, I wouldn’t care to mention it. People simply wandered about without even giving me a glance, despite my rather conspicuous villainous outfit.

A poster on the wall, however, caught my attention. More specifically, a hand-drawn picture of Rin with numbers below it.

If I had to guess, I’d say a denomination of currency. A lot of currency (going by the number of zeros).

It seemed to be bounty request judging sole on the poster’s appearance.

Oh… Rin, what exactly have you done?

Silently looked in either direction, I quietly tore the poster off the wall and stuffed it into my pocket.

As I moved around though, I saw many… many more of those posters. They were basically everywhere in populated areas.

Who on earth did Rin manage to piss off that they put wanted posters of her on every street corner?

Shaking my head in puzzlement, I began my first task. Collecting writing utensils.

Taking out a few coins from my bag, I swiped an empty notebook from a merchant’s stall and left the coins in its place. Then did a similar action to acquire some writing instruments.

I have no idea whether I actually gave the correct amount of money for the goods.

If I underpaid them… well, I’m a villain. What do you expect? It’s already generous to leave behind some coins to recoup their losses instead of directly stealing it.

Anyway, it’s not like I can easily bargain with them at the moment.

With writing utensils acquires and safely stowed away in my bag, I set of toward our small home.  

Returning to the extremely quiet and mostly abandoned Hell Difficulty district, I found my way back to our apartment.

There was no sign of Rin returning yet, but that’s to be expected. Based on her normal schedule, she should be gone for a few more hours.

Tearing a piece of paper out of the notebook I’d acquired, I began writing a note that explained I was heading out and shouldn’t be longer than a few hours.

Double-checking my grammar and ensuring everything made sense, I signed it and relaxed.

At the very least, with this, Rin should understand I’m safe with this. Even if my theory is wrong and Rin is actually unable to read English, she should see the note and avoid panicking because of its existence.

With that done, I headed back out.

Unfortunately, I had no idea where I was heading. Usually I would just ask people to directions to their guild hall, but considering my current linguistic circumstances, I’ll have to search around manually.

Which will probably be about as troublesome as searching for a specific duck in a duck pond filled with other identical looking ducks. To be blunt, it’s a wild goose chase.

Still, it’s something to do instead of staying cooped up in the house all day.

I’ll search around. If I find it great, otherwise… well, that about what I would’ve expected.

Guess I’ll start searching in the Hard Difficulty section. That’s where the majority of guilds are located, if I’m remembering correctly.