Seventh Daughter 1-9 part 1

 

Chapter 1-9 : Elementary Magic Vol.14 [Revised Edition] (part 1)

 

“Someone is coming!”
As soon as she realized that, Chloe acted really quickly.
She hugged Mylia tightly, curled up like a pill bug, and turned her back to the direction of the sound.

（ーー！？）

Mylia held her breath and buried her face into her sister’s chest.
Her mouth stuck to Chloe’s dress, wetting it a little.

（Ahh~ Chloe onee-chan smells so good~…… No, no! This is not the time to enjoy her smell!）

After the sound of a door closing was heard, they heard footsteps coming toward them.
Most likely, they were Aaron’s.

（…..! Please don’t come here…!）

Just when she thought she was done for, the sound of the footsteps went down the stairs and went away.

「Mylia, are you okay?」

「…….I thought my heart would pop out…」

「He probably went down to the bathroom. I better make it quick.」

Chloe released Mylia from her arms and quickly resumed the picklocking.

ーClack.

In less than a few seconds, she successfully unlocked the door.
She then slightly opened the door, entered the room, and beckoned Mylia.

Mylia quickly slipped into the room like a rat returning to its burrow.

After Chloe quietly closed the door, they let out a sigh of relief altogether.

「Infiltration successful!」

「I thought he would find us.」

「Mylia, have you forgotten my hair color?」

「Ah, I see. Black hair is hard to see in the dark.」

「Yup. Let’s hurry. First of all, we should find a spare key for this room.」

「Eh? Didn’t we sneak in here to read books?」

「I have a plan.」

「Okay, understood.」

Relying only on the moonlight, Mylia and Chloe began to look for the spare key.

The room was about six tatami mats large.
There were two bookshelves, a dresser, a large desk, and a large chair.
On the floor was a carpet that was probably made of beast fur.

Mylia quietly opened the dresser.

（Uwaa… It’s so dusty…）

She covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve and pulled out the container.

Inside, there was a wooden casket that looked like a decorated music box.
She opened it and found two keys inside.

（Ah, maybe one of these is the spare key?）

「Chloe onee-chan.」

「Did you find it?」

「Look at this.」

「Ohh, good job. Mylia is really a genius at searching for things!」

「Ehehe~」

Chloe smiled, stroked Mylia’s head gently, and took the keys from the casket.

「There are two keys, huh? One of them should be the one we’re looking for.」

As she muttered like that, she took out a rolled cloth from her pocket different from the one she kept the tools to pick the lock in.

「What is that?」

「Fufu~ Watch this, Mylia.」

Smiling a little proudly, Chloe opened the cloth.

What was inside the cloth was a lump of soil.

（Is it clay?）

Chloe split the rounded clay into two, and pressed the keys against each one of them.

（I see. She will make duplicates of the keys.）

Mylia watched Chloe doing the work with an impressed look on her face.

After that, Chloe wiped the keys carefully with the clean part of the cloth.

Aaron might be suspicious if there’s mud remaining on the key.

「It’s the clay I got from the west village. If you leave it for a while, it will dry quickly.」

「I see. Onee-chan, you’re very clever.」

「It would be troublesome if I had to pick the lock every time, right?」

「Do you intend to come here every night?」

「No. I’ll stop coming after I’ve finished reading all the books I want here.」

Chloe stood up, reached out to Mylia and pulled her up.

「First, we need a book about magic for you.」

Relying on the moonlight, they browsed the bookshelves by looking at the title on the spine of the books.

There were two rooms for storing books in the Atwood Family’s mansion.
One was the reading room where the family members could read books freely, and the other one was the lord’s study.

Because the Atwood Family has existed for a very long time, there were hundreds of books stored in the lord’s study even though Aaron, the current lord himself, couldn’t read.

Chloe has already read all the books in the reading room, but she has never been allowed to borrow the books from the lord’s study even though the books there seemed to be more useful than the ones in the reading room.

「I’ve been keeping an eye on the books here. I’ve been planning to sneak in here for a long time.」

「I see. Is that why you’ve been practicing to pick a lock all this time?」

「Yeah. I usually practiced it on a different door when I had spare time. Sometimes, I had a hard time, but maybe it’s because of Mylia that I was able to do it this time.」

「Me? But I didn’t do anything.」

「No, because you’re here with me, I can do my very best. Maybe this is what so called “Imouto power”.」

「Is that so? Ehehe~」

They smiled at each other once and then went back to browsing the bookshelves.

「Hmm….. “List of Edible Plants”, “Collection of Math Drills”, “How to Write Letters For Beginners”………」(Mylia)

「It looks like Father uses some spaces in these shelves to store excess books from the reading room since the bookshelves there were full…」(Chloe)

Said Chloe as she kept browsing the shelf.

（I can read this world’s language… I didn’t realize it, but I can talk normally without a problem thanks to Mylia’s memories.）

Mylia felt really strange that she was able to read a different world’s language as if she was reading Japanese.
She tried to adapt her brain to the shape of the letters but she couldn’t do it because no matter how she looked at them, her brain would recognize them as Japanese letters.

（Uwaa… this is weird… Well, I don’t care if I feel weird as long as I can read them.）

「Ah, there it is! A spellbook I’ve never read before!」

Chloe pulled a thick book from the shelf.

「Mylia, come here.」

Chloe beckoned Mylia to move to a moonlit place with her.

After they sat down on the carpet, Chloe opened the book, and they both focused on it.

 

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