Honzuki no Gekokujou – 24

「収穫祭のお留守番」 (Shuukaku-sai no Orushuban)
“Harvest Festivals and Staying Home”

To be honest, I don’t really like villains who seem comically evil for the sake of being evil. The High Priest and his goon seem to be spiteful for no real good reason. While Myne is known to love the library and books, and they wanted to keep her away from the Harvest Festival, surely the area belongs to the Church and shouldn’t be treated so haphazardly? It takes one hell of an impressive perspective to derive a silver lining out of such a disastrous event. But only Myne could see the positives in having her precious library desecrated – viewing it as an opportunity to reorganise the whole place to her personal taste.

In which she discovers the magic books she was excited about are not in the library. At first I’d feared the worst, that the High Priest and his goon stole the magic books. But I was relieved when they revealed that Ferdinand merely kept them in his private collection. Seemed like he wanted to nudge Myne towards attending Noble Academy. And I could see her going down that route if it allows her to read fascinating magic books or learn magics that would expedite her ability to manufacture books. Myne is most certainly capable too. But I also wouldn’t be able to imagine Lutz or her family having the ability to see her during those years.

Of course, Benno wants to capitalise on the book production technique Myne has come up with. However, her Earth sensibilities prevent her from embracing this idea of making a huge buck off education – as she seeks to educate the common folk. Not a bad idea, actually. Eventually one of these kids will go on to become an incredible writer who probably pens a piece of work that Myne would enjoy. So if I was her, promoting literacy rates would be a long term project for that agenda of eventually having a generation of writers who produce swathes of writings for our bookworm to devour. Though I’m not sure if this kind of foresight was what she had in mind here, as opposed to being altruistic.

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「騎士団からの要請」 (Kishi-dan kara no Yousei)
“Knights Orders and Requests”

So apparently Myne can’t stay with her family for the winter because she needs to perform mana ceremonies at the temple. Which is okay I guess, because she has a really understanding family and orphans who are really relying upon her. The trouble come from the obligations she’s required to do – like doing rituals for the Knights when they go for some kind of raid. In the process, we also discover that Ferdinand has knight duties. And I might be a dude, but he does look like a bishie pegasus knight. It’s not quite apparent why the knights assigned to protect Myne behave with such snarkiness, but they don’t seem to think much of the blessing that Myne cast. Perhaps they’ve caught onto the fact that Myne is not of noble birth – since this society is really reminiscent of an intensely hierarchical feudal system, wherein those at the top really look down on those below. I really hope they don’t end up being another bunch of villains who act evil towards Myne for no real good reason. Because I’m getting tired of that repetition. Regardless, it will be interesting to see what further role Myne might play in terms of providing mana – and whether she’ll play an important role in dispatching the trombe, given her personal experience and knowledge with the plant. As well as the fact she could really benefit from the resources that it provides.

So yeah, I’m excited to finally dive deeper into the fantasy side of Honzuki no Gekokujou – since we’ve primarily dabbled with religion and the common folk while barely scraping the surface of nobility and magic. Magic will also present the first instance of a premise so utterly beyond what Myne can anticipate with her previous life experiences on Earth – and I wonder if her knowledge of Science might be applicable in a way that would make her an extremely talented magic user. That would be quite the cool twist.

Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to discuss. Apologies for the delays in this post. Work’s been really busy on my end. And my family pet of ten years is no longer in this world with us, which left me drained of writing energy for a good amount of time. Though I’m feeling better now – as much as I miss him. As always, thanks for waiting it out and reading this post – and see you next week to see how the knights dispatch this troublesome issue as well as how Myne will re-infuse the soil with mana to make up for the quantity that the trombe plundered.

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