Adopting the Male Protagonist Changed the Genre - Chapter 263
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Side Story Episode 6
How could he not know? It was an absurdly wrong answer.
Just as Belinda opened her mouth to interrogate him.
“Brother! How can you say you don’t know at a time like this!”
At the sudden unfamiliar voice, Belinda and Cesar’s heads turned to the left.
There, a black cat in Leo’s arms was pointing its front paw at Chaser accusingly.
The cat, belatedly noticing people’s gazes, jumped down from Leo’s arms and walked awkwardly on all fours.
“Meow.”
It meowed in an awkward voice, as if a person were imitating a cat’s cry.
“…Chaser?”
Pretending not to hear Belinda’s voice, Chaser shouted at the cat turning its head away.
“Chaser! It seems sister has figured it all out!”
“…”
Perhaps intuiting that it was over, at that moment a human voice burst from the cat’s mouth.
“Ugh, that idiot.”
The cat stopped walking on all fours, stood up on two legs, and pressed its front paw to its forehead.
Witnessing the cat standing on two legs like a human and speaking like Chaser, Belinda looked back at Leo, who was fidgeting restlessly.
“Leo?”
“Well, you see, what happened was…”
Leo didn’t yet have the courage to pretend not to see her eyes demanding an explanation.
* * *
The whole incident began with a certain relic that Leo had discovered during the northern subjugation.
“It looks like a magic tool, but there’s no magic stone embedded in it.”
Bringing back an unidentified relic out of curiosity—that was the first mistake.
The reddish glass bell had magic circles that Leo had never seen before intricately engraved into it.
Though Leo possessed 9th rank magic circuits and mana capacity, his magical knowledge was lacking in comparison, so he had no ability to interpret it.
Therefore, he had no choice but to take the relic to Chaser for consultation. After examining the relic for quite a while, Chaser spoke in a strangely subdued voice.
“Well, it is interesting. Sprout, let me borrow this relic for a month.”
“Yes, please be sure to tell me what kind of magic tool it is when you find out.”
Hiding from Leo that the relic was none other than a product of dark magic was the second mistake.
“If I modify the magic circle slightly… I might be able to see brother for a bit longer.”
Carelessly modifying a magic tool that could summon souls who had left this world for a short time was the final mistake.
Just one week, no, three days. Yes, even one day would be fine. If he could have a conversation with Kiss instead of fumbling through the letters he left behind.
Such greed blinded Chaser’s eyes.
Since it was such an ancient relic, even interpreting the magic circles was difficult, but Chaser mobilized all the knowledge he possessed to modify the magic circles so that Kiss’s soul could remain in this world a bit longer.
The relic itself already contained a terrible price. Probably an enormous number of lives had been sacrificed when this was created.
Therefore, all Chaser needed was the desire to summon the soul of someone precious and have the final conversation they couldn’t finish.
There was no time to re-examine the dark magic circles that had been mangled like roughly patched cloth.
Chaser intended to finish all of this perfectly before Leo noticed anything.
The moment Chaser secretly shook the glass bell, he instinctively realized something had gone wrong.
Clang-
At the ringing bell sound, Chaser felt pain as if his internal organs were bursting out of his mouth.
Just as intense light that prevented him from opening his eyes properly covered Chaser’s research lab.
Elder’s cat Cookie running into the research lab while prowling nearby wasn’t a mistake but a very fortunate accident.
Thus Chaser’s dark magic failed.
And as the price.
“Argh! Damn it, my eyes! Which bastard is shooting light magic at my eyes!”
Kiss’s soul, summoned to this world, settled into Chaser’s body.
“Nya, nyaa!”
Chaser’s soul, separated from his body by the shock of the imperfectly activated dark magic, came to permeate the cat’s body.
“This…!”
Belinda, having heard the whole story, opened her mouth to scold him asking if he was in his right mind.
But when she caught sight of Kiss in one corner diligently writing a bucket list, saying it was homework she had given him, she had no choice but to close her mouth.
She couldn’t bring herself to press Chaser. His heart was painfully understandable.
In the end, she swallowed her anger with a sigh and asked the most important thing.
“Alright, fine, I understand. So. Is there a way to return to normal?”
“It’s designed so that shaking the bell once more will send the summoned soul back to the underworld. A dark mage needs to shake the bell, but since brother is also a dark mage, there’s no problem.”
“Then next question. How can you speak human language as a cat?”
“The Elder I kicked out earlier is a huge cat lover. He wanted to know what Cookie was saying, so he made a cat translator…”
“Don’t say translator. I have trauma from that word.”
“He wanted to know what Cookie was saying, so he made a magic tool that analyzes the linguistic and communicative phonetic structural systems of cat language and interprets it into human language.”
“That’s much better.”
“The bell I’m wearing around my neck is that magic tool. That’s how we can communicate.”
Thanks to this, Chaser was able to explain the situation to Leo, who had noticed his abnormality.
After a brief silence, Belinda asked in a more cautious voice than before.
“…How much time is left?”
What she was asking was clear.
The time Kiss could remain in this world.
Originally, the time the relic allowed was only one hour.
However, as a result of Chaser modifying the dark magic circles, quite a lot of time could be gained. No, it wasn’t just that much.
Unless the glass bell was shaken again, Kiss could remain in this world for life. There was nothing more perfect than Chaser’s body to contain Kiss’s soul.
It was a result even Chaser hadn’t expected. However, he hid this fact and naturally met Belinda’s gaze while lying.
“At most about two weeks?”
Then Belinda stared intently at Chaser.
Wondering if she had seen through his lie, literally all the fur on his body stood on end, but before long he could tell that wasn’t the case.
Belinda’s expression as she looked at Chaser sitting with all four paws gathered on the table was somehow strange.
“…Master.”
“Yes.”
“Why are you looking at me with those eyes?”
How should he explain that?
Would a vampire barely restraining the urge to nibble on human skin have such an expression?
Unfortunately, Chaser’s prediction wasn’t far off.
“Because you’re cute.”
Chaser, who had been sipping silver vine tea from a toy teacup the Elder had prepared to hide his nervousness, abruptly stopped moving.
His tail struck the table repeatedly in displeasure.
“…That’s humiliating for a man to hear, so stop it.”
“That’s right. Such words are sufficient when said only to me.”
Cesar, who had been sitting beside Belinda listening to their conversation, suddenly interjected.
‘Did my husband just get jealous of a cat?’
Cute thing next to cute thing—it made her heart ache a little, but Belinda resolutely continued speaking.
“If you’re going to say such things, why don’t you take off that adorable Magic Tower cape first?”
If it had just been a black cat, she wouldn’t have said this.
For a cat to be wearing a cute little knitted Magic Tower cape—this was definitely Chaser’s fault.
“The cape is my last dignity as a human. If I don’t wear this, I feel weird, like I’m walking around naked.”
“Please don’t come any closer to a mage who’s naked except for a cape, Belinda.”
“Hey, Your Excellency. Could you not twist it into something perverted like that?”
“If you want to say such things proudly, put on pants first.”
That must have been quite humiliating, as Chaser’s golden pupils dilated and his ears flattened back.
“Sister! I wrote a bucket list—want to see it?”
Kiss squeezed between the two who were growling at each other like a dog and cat.
Then, as if Cesar and Chaser were invisible, he showed Belinda a piece of paper with a shy face.
Write ten things you want to do.
The answer to that assignment was right there.
At that moment, the dog and cat’s target changed.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————