Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 568

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 20.
The Princess and the Detective (20)
They all shared one distinctive characteristic: they were freshmen.
By the third year (distinct from third-year students), those once-extraordinary dreams vanished beyond the horizon, and students became like desperate gamblers and drug dealers, spending their days chewing on the notoriously intense “Lindiz Pickle Shop” delicacies and “Roglantang Pie”—products known to be loved only by those from Nenyaple—as they approached the twilight of their academic lives.
“Listen, if I slip just two more points, I’m expelled, right? Hey you, don’t be stingy—give me some notebooks, assorted types. In exchange, I’ll have pickles and pie delivered to you, assorted flavors too. Which taste do you prefer? The new bomb flavor?”
“Why are you whining about your first expulsion like that? I still have five points left before my second one. But I have a feeling Professor D will give me another D in ‘Advanced Incantation Training.'”
“Really? Then when I leave, can I take that armchair from your villa?”
“What? The one you’ll flip over backward with its hind legs?”
Despite these dark undertones, Nenyaple remained the finest academy on the Continent. Looking at the brighter side, when students revealed they studied at Nenyaple, the typical reaction was this:
“Wow, you study at Nenyaple? Isn’t that the school where only geniuses attend?”
These exemplary students of the light world received good grades quietly, graduated, and through research and teaching assistant positions, secured genuinely respectable positions. Court mages with nothing to do but fireworks at year’s end, magical advisors to Nobility who solved everything with swords, professorships at schools where teaching multiplication was unnecessary—all such cushy positions belonged to them. Moreover, during their school years, they lent notebooks and received snacks, created study guides and earned pocket money. They were the true protagonists of this academy, spending their four years as intended. If one viewed Nenyaple in a simple sense.
However, looking beneath the surface revealed a different story. Those destined to save the world, become legends, or hoard so much gold they stashed it under chair legs were not scheduled to appear in the distant future. Such beings existed nearby, in their immediate surroundings.
These individuals ordinarily dozed through classes avoiding the professor’s gaze, humanly forgot assignments and received C grades, occasionally failed courses, and sometimes exhibited slightly unhinged behavior—like retrieving gold coins they’d hidden under chair legs to purchase a hundred Roglantang Pies and meticulously redecorate someone else’s villa.
Because of this, their true identities were not easily revealed. Only a few friends, a few enemies, and the tenured professors called “Masters” knew. Even in these seemingly peaceful times, several incidents that nearly destroyed the Continent had occurred, and many were connected to them.
Finally, there was someone at Nenyaple who, knowing these secrets better than anyone, chose to keep quiet. This person possessed the talent to loaf about comfortably under any harsh circumstances, yet for some reason, the world would not leave him alone. After spending exhausting years and inadvertently entering Nenyaple, he had no desire to become entangled in such matters again.
His name was Maximian Lipkne.
Self-proclaimed rural pauper, publicly called the “Nenyaple elite upper class.”
“Ah, Maximian Lipkne? Nenyaple’s greatest failure king in history?”
“The senior who eats two lunch portions on the day test scores are released is the only one.”
“I can’t emulate it, but I respect his magnanimity. To transcend money, grades, and even the professors’ disapproving glances.”
“Actually, I don’t understand it well. If he’s getting C’s and D’s in every subject, why did he even enter the academy? Our school fees aren’t child’s play.”
“He won’t graduate anyway. But I’m curious about his true identity. He doesn’t seem particularly stupid.”
“Why are you curious about his identity? Look at the friends surrounding him. They’re all shining stars, aren’t they? Maximian probably just came here to leisurely play with his friends. He probably has no money worries.”
“Hey, regardless of his friends, does Maximian look like he has money? He said it himself last time. That he’s a rural pauper.”
“Do you believe that? How does a rural pauper befriend the heir to the Duke’s House?”
Regardless of what other students gossiped about, Maximian paid no attention. Not out of disdain, but simply because it was bothersome. Thus, he remained indifferent to the contradictory nicknames of “rural pauper” and “Nenyaple elite.”
Some students even wagered on Maximian’s true identity. A rare prize—three years’ worth of fourth-year graduation exam study guides—was offered to whoever could prove the rumor that the Lipkne Family possessed a treasure island somewhere in the South Sea (likely created by someone who had taken the graduation exam three times). Apparently, there was even a countdown graffiti on a rocky outcrop in the Campus, tallying the remaining points before Maximian’s expulsion. In this manner, he gradually became the academy’s greatest mystery, yet Maximian maintained his original determination to live the most leisurely life at Nenyaple.
This wish was not merely a dream. He possessed the appropriate condition: a wealthy and indifferent patron. This benevolent patron, though sharing not a drop of blood with Maximian, paid his astronomical tuition in full and possessed the refinement to never demand transcripts.
Unfortunately, Maximian also possessed an inappropriate condition. No matter how much he struggled to live carelessly and feign ignorance of suspicious signs, he ultimately possessed exceptional intuition and a brilliant mind that would inevitably discern the truth.
Damn it! Why did such useless gifts have to come attached!
Thus, Maximian supposedly used it only to find the most comfortable position to sprawl across a sofa with cushions sunken in two places.
Late afternoon at the end of November, just after Nenyaple’s year-end advancement exams concluded.
Heimachi Village near the academy bustled with students who had come to purchase snacks. After several sleepless nights, students gripped by extreme reward psychology craved intense flavors: sweets so rich they’d turn one’s brain to marron cream, salt so intense it would turn one’s tongue to jerky, or spice levels that would break the casualty record of last year’s limited edition “Ten Times Chili Pepper Pickle,” such intensely flavored snacks.
The Lindiz Pickle Shop, especially popular on stressful days, was so packed with students there was barely room to stand.
“Excuse me, two bottles of sweet apricot pickle, please!”
“I’ll take olive and lime. The sour, salty, and spicy one!”
“Me too! Three bottles of each!”
The “three-flavor Lindiz Pickle” contained three mysteries. The first was the inexplicable fact that pickle bottles carefully purchased to be savored arrived at the academy gates completely empty. The three flavors—sweet, sour and salty, and sour salty and spicy—were an extraordinary combination, yet whichever one purchased, the effect was identical.
On exam-ending days, the shop nearly fell apart. The sight of students in line anxiously worrying their desired pickles would sell out resembled some auction house. Yet the second mystery was that upon bringing them home, everyone spat them out cursing the moment they tasted them. The third mystery was that even those who purchased them often forgot to open the jars at home, allowing them to become moldy lumps. Of course, when these students returned to school after their break, by the afternoon of the next day they’d rush to Lindiz like madmen, joining the crowd shouting “Three bottles of sour, salty, and spicy flavor!”
More moderate students squandered their allowance on almond nougat, raspberry pâté, and chocolate chestnut confections. Regardless of what they ate, all students’ conversations centered on sighs, complaints, and ominous predictions about exam results. Screams occasionally erupted as they compared answers, but by this time such occurrences were routine, so shop owners pretended not to hear.
Yet one person stood apart—Maximian, who strolled leisurely through the Crossroads with his usual disheveled appearance. His brown hair looked questionable whether it had ever seen a brush, his wrinkled shirt hung half-untucked from his waistband, and he shuffled along in shoes with worn heels as if they were slippers. Instead of his academy jacket, he wore a shabby brown coat, and today he’d added a hat with a crumpled brim to complete the look. Despite appearing adequately worn down, his face alone suggested a rather sharp intellect—all the more so because he wore premium-grade spectacles.
Every student at Nenyaple recognized him. Soon, his juniors called out loudly in greeting.
“Senior Maximian! Hello! How was the exam? Terrible, right? Right?”
“Oh, Senior. Will we see you next year? If not, you should return that umbrella of mine you took last month.”
“And don’t forget the twenty Elso you borrowed at the start of the semester!”
Somehow, everyone seemed convinced Maximian wouldn’t be at school next year. Promotion exam results were divided into five grades—a grade five meant expulsion, while grades three or four meant repeating the year. Maximian had received a grade four his first year and returned to first year. If he received a grade four again this time, he could repeat first year once more, but a grade five meant immediate expulsion.
Such remarks from juniors would normally irritate him, but Maximian responded without concern.
“The whole world is terrible, the umbrella departed in search of its lost self, and ask second-year Valentine about the twenty Elso. He borrowed eighteen Elso from me.”
“Then what about this Elso?”
“If the umbrella can depart, why can’t this Elso?”
“Well, of course….”
Junior Shon, momentarily at a loss for words, suddenly exclaimed.
“What are you talking about! This Elso is four bottles of Lindiz Pickle!”
“Ah, so that’s where it went.”
Maximian pointed to the pickle jar in Shon’s hand and continued walking. Shon looked down at the jar, scratched his head, then glanced at his friend Bella standing beside him.
“What was that supposed to mean?”
“I have no idea what he’s talking about….”
Then an unfamiliar voice spoke from beside them.
“It means you should go to Lindiz Pickle Shop, mention that senior’s name, and ask for four bottles of pickles.”
“Huh?”
The three students—Shon, Bella, and Patrisha—turned simultaneously to see a boy wearing a dark green checkered half-cape and carrying a black saddle bag. With a round black hat, matching short hair, and large, clear eyes, the boy looked exactly like the description “cute junior.” Yet they had no juniors. They were first-years themselves.
“Who is that?”
“We don’t know them.”
“That’s a fresh name I’ve never heard before. But why are you calling them senior?”
The boy smiled brightly.
“I’m a new student.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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