Maydare Volume 2 Chapter 5 - The Clown Incident (Part 1)

 This sort of cuts off in the wrong spot, sorry

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The next day was also cool and comfortable.

I woke up early and went for a run, then did some light muscle training at our usual atelier.

The breakfast I ate by myself afterward was the potato salad with shrimp we had made yesterday, sandwiched between two pieces of bread with cheese. The crispy new potatoes went well with the tender shrimp, and the homemade salted lemon mayonnaise we used for seasoning was rich, sweet and sour.

Also, a strong hot coffee went well with a potato salad sandwich. Lately, I’ve been able to drink it little by little even if it wasn’t full of milk and honey.

Ah, I must not forget to take a picture with the magic camera the school gave us…

“All right! That was delicious!”

After quickly finishing the fortifying meal, I fired myself up.

It was a holiday, and the group members had their own business to attend to, so we all ate at different times.

I was also planning on seeing the Savior Airi today, who I haven’t seen in a long time.

On the table, there were salt apples, a specialty of Deliafield.

I once told Airi about the Salt Forest and the salt apples that grew there. She seemed very interested in them at the time, so I decided to make something and bring it to her.

Salt apples could be eaten raw, but they were a bit salty and better used in sweets and cooking. Since the best way to enjoy them was to use them in sweets…

“I should just make a salt apple cake, then.”

Apple cake had been a popular countryside snack in the Kingdom of Ruschia since ancient times. In my family, it was a standard snack made with salt apples.

The Scarlet Witch also used to make it, and her recipe was listed first in the section on salt apple recipes. Come to think of it, I haven’t tried making the salt apple cake since I found out there was a diary hidden in this parchment recipe book.

So that was why I immediately started baking the salt apple cake in the kitchen of the atelier.

I peeled the salt apples, cored them and sliced them into thin pieces, then soaked them in lemon juice. 

I sifted the flour and put it aside. In a separate bowl, I whisked together the eggs and sugar. I then relentlessly and generously added melted butter.

”It’s times like these that my constitution comes in handy.”

Yes. I was blessed by【Fire】. Just by holding my hand over the butter on another plate and wishing for it to melt, melt, melt, it became melted butter. I added the melted butter, milk, and vanilla essence to the egg mixture, and then mixed them. I added the sifted flour and mixed further.

Baking powder and baking soda, which were added to make the dough fluffy, could be found here in the Kingdom of Ruschia, but the recipe I was attempting was five hundred years old.

The Scarlet Witch didn’t use them, she just used “magic.”

“Myr vis makia——Swell. Like cotton, like clouds.”

After casting the spell, I sprinkled cinnamon on it. I sprinkled a lot.

Cinnamon has been used by magic since ancient times as a spice to enhance the effects of magic. It was also well-known to go well with apples. After mixing the flour batter with the lemon juice and apple slices, all that was left was to bake it in a rectangular mold.

There was a magic oven in the atelier, so I was baking it slowly for a while.

In the meantime, I was working on something else.

Actually, Professor Medite gave me a lot of sunflower seeds. He was in charge of the school’s sunflower gardens, so he abused his authority to sneak some for me.

I was pressing out sunflower oil from them. Because the genius Nero developed a magic oil press in one night.

Sunflower oil could be used for cooking. We were cooking just about every day for the “Potato Report,” and we could save money by not having to buy oil. And more than anything, sunflower seeds had high magical matter content.

Thin, shiny sunflower oil dripped into the glass bottle of the oil press…

“Ah, the salt apple cake!”

Before I knew it, there was a sweet and savory smell wafting through the atelier.

The oven had just finished baking the salt apple cake.

I took out the cake, and the smell of vanilla that came up from the cake made me go “Mmm.”

Tut tut. Whenever Mother baked a salt apple cake, the whole manor smelled like this and I started to get restless, so Thor would spontaneously start to prepare tea.

So, a cut-off piece of freshly baked salt apple cake would be my dessert.

The salt apple cake was still slightly warm, and the well-baked salt apples were melting out of the cross section, and at a glance it looked comparable to the ones we made at home.

“Let’s ea...oh, that’s right. I have to open the recipe book and eat this.”

The rule of the Scarlet Witch’s recipe book.

When you open the book to the page where the recipe of the dish or pastry you made was written and eat what you’ve made, the Scarlet Witch’s diary might appear there.

I opened the recipe book and took a bite of the cake. I might have sweetened it a little too much, but it was still delicious. I would have liked a strong cup of tea.

“Oh, there’s a diary!”

The recipe for salt apple cake seemed to have hidden a page of the Scarlet Witch’s diary. The letters danced, collided, and converged on the parchment to reveal her past diary.

Dear Diary.

I will never forget this day. I have never been humiliated like this before.

That man said my prized salt apple cake was poisoned and dropped it into the ravine.

It has been a long time since I have been this sad. My chest hurts.

But no one, not even that man, would think that I would be sad or cry.

I am an evil witch. Evil witches do not get sad.

How I wish that were the case.

P.S. The people who were after the demon king’s castle were sneaking around, so I turned them into salt stones.

Right when I was just discharging tears.

This is the incantation.

Maki rie luci ah——Crown of salt, crushing night. None shall see my tears.

“...”

I also discovered another spell since that time I found the first one with the salt apple juice recipe. But more than that, just reading the diary filled my heart with sadness for some reason… 

Before I knew it, there were tears spilling from my eyes. I clutched my chest tightly.

Hot, painful tears. They dropped onto the parchment recipe book, and I hurriedly wiped them away.

“W-What’s wrong with me?”

I scrubbed my hand hard over my tear-filled eyes.

I wondered if the sorrow of my ancestor that remained in the diary had been conveyed to me.

But, I felt like I saw this “scene” somewhere before.

I don’t know. When was it? In the back of my eyes that were being scrubbed, I saw a snowscape that I shouldn’t have known.

What...exactly was this?

“Lady Airi is busy today, so you will not be able to see her.”

I, holding a basket with the salt apple cake, was told this by the head maid, Clarissa, on the top floor of the North Palace where Airi was staying in the royal palace.

It seemed that it was unlikely for me to see Airi today.

“Um, is Airi...Lady Airi doing well?”

“Yes. There is no problem with her physical condition. The knights are guarding her in shifts.”

“...I...see.”

Why isn’t Airi seeing me anymore?

Before I could ask that question, Miss Clarissa said, “Well, I shall be taking my leave,” and turned to leave.

“Um, excuse me! I made this for Lady Airi.”

I hurriedly held out the basket, Miss Clarissa turned her gaze to it and spoke to me in a slightly stern tone.

“The only food that Lady Airi will eat is the food made in a kitchen under our supervision. She has been exposed to the danger of being poisoned many times before.”

“Is that...so. I am very sorry.”

Thinking about it now, it was insolent of me to bring food.

I probably wasn’t trusted. I wonder if this person also thought I was the culprit behind the mist blade. 

“Please pardon me.”

I bowed my head and left. I still had the Guardian’s crest on my chest, but I was still being excluded.

I didn’t even know what the Savior and the other Guardians were doing.

It might also be because I was a student. However, the cold gazes of the people around me were still the same, and I still seemed to be hated.

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Carrying the basket with the box of salt apple cake, I trudged out of the palace and walked along the main street of the capital, looking for shade.

What should I do with the cake I baked? Should I eat it with my team like usual?

I’m sure Frey would say, “Salt apples again!?” Also…

“Am I...being followed?”

Earlier, I had felt a strange gaze of someone following behind me.

It was a main street, so it wasn’t surprising that there would be people walking in the same direction as me, but I could feel a very obvious hostility coming from behind me, and the magical power of that person made the skin on my back crawl.

They were probably deliberately emitting something to make me notice them.

I stopped in my tracks, gulped, and then turned around as fast as I could. Then,

“...Huh?”

There was someone there. A wicked-looking man in a sleeveless hooded jacket and tight pants.

From the inside of his hood, I could see glimpses of short gray hair and mismatched green and blue eyes, which were glaring at me.

The man smirked, making no attempt to hide. He bared his teeth, which were jagged like a beast aiming for its prey. In addition, he was twirling a gleaming knife in his hand.

It was generally accepted that bad guys who were blatantly giving off bloodlust like this were weak, but…

The man walked up to me so brazenly that I ran into a narrow alley right next to me.

For some reason, there were balloons falling here and there on the brick-paved alley. I ran anyway while kicking them aside.

The man from earlier looked like a hired assassin.

Why was he following me? Could he be the one who targeted Airi at the palace?

The magic I could sense from him was surprisingly refined, and I had a hunch that he was quite a good user of it.

In this case, running away was better than facing him. I ran and ran, keeping my guard up behind me, and just when I turned the corner…

I gasped and widened my eyes.

“...!”

Balloons.

There was a blue clown standing there, holding balloons.

A chill ran through my body. In addition, my shock and fear caused my guard to slip, and an advanced “binding spell” was cast on me. I was unable to move.

I was done for… The man from earlier must have meant to drive me on to here, where the real enemy was waiting.

Enemies behind me. Enemies in front of me. My body was completely immobilized by the binding spell.

“W-What...is your goal!?”

“...”

I managed to get words out and ask him, but the blue clown didn’t answer.

His face was hidden by a white-painted mask with smiling eyes. His jester’s hat, split into several sections like a crown, emphasized his odd dress.

The blue clown quietly let go of all of his balloons and reached out his gloved hands to me.

I gritted my teeth and glared at my oncoming opponent while I calmly tried to break the binding spell and concentrated my magic power in my right hand.

The enemy was reaching for my neck with both hands. Was he going to kill me by strangling me?

But, almost...I’m almost done breaking the spell!

Just as the blue clown’s hands were about to touch my neck, I heard the sound of balloons bursting somewhere.

At the same time, the binding spell was broken. I quickly moved my right hand and grabbed the clown’s bare wrist.

This was how I always disciplined evildoers. I was planning to use my heat constitution as someone blessed by【Fire】to burn the enemy, but…

“...?” 

Huh? My heat wasn’t working…?

The clown’s other hand came towards me, but I managed to dodge it just in time. I pulled my hand away from the clown and backed away. Then, I plucked out a strand of my hair and chanted,

“Myr vis makia——Arrows of flame, pierce through!”

I jabbed a finger at the clown and shot a single and thin, “flame arrow.”

The flame arrow, which used my own hair as a medium, was thin and sharp, and it pierced through the blue clown’s shoulder and spread the flames from there.

The clown didn’t even scream, but it seemed that regular magic was working on him.

This was a spell that I created after I studied the 〈Scarlet Witch’s〉spell that I used at the summer ball, so that I could handle it in my own way.

I couldn’t use the same magic as I did back then, but when I used my hair as a medium for fire-type magic, it was much more powerful than usual.

“If you don’t want to become a ball of flames or a fire clown, then jump right into that canal!”

After that parting remark, I gallantly ran away. Escaping was victory. Run away, Makia.

Earlier, in order to break the binding spell, I had been concentrating my magic power in my right hand the entire time.

When I was little, Thor taught me a “secret trick” to get out of this binding spell.

Thor devised a method of breaking the spell by concentrating magic power in one part of the body and creating a state of magic overload where no more magic power could accumulate, much like breaking a membrane from the inside.

There were originally special incantations to counter binding spells, but the enemy would be wary of them, so the “secret technique” of breaking it without chanting an incantation was sometimes more useful. That was the pattern this time, too.

“Nnn?”

But my relief was short-lived.

I felt a chill run down my back and turned around to see the clown running after me while on fire.

In addition, he deployed water magic without an incantation, instantly extinguishing the fire that had surrounded him and shot a huge ball of water at me at the same time.

“Gyah!”

I screamed without thinking. The ball of water completely covered and trapped me.

Immediately, my entire body was filled with the fear of “malice-filled water.”

This feeling… It was the same fear I had when I was attacked by the “mist blade” that targeted Airi at the palace.

It was painful. I hated water. I was scared of water. It was all over for me.

“Saga rham thor——Freeze.”

That was when it happened. Extraordinarily cold air rushed in from right beside me, and the ball of water that was trapping me froze in an instant, then shattered into pieces right after.

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