It's Overwhelmingly Convenient That the Female Lead Has Darkened - Chapter 53

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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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It’s overwhelmingly easier when the heroine falls to darkness.
#53
‘The new student who sits at the front every time in basic theology class—the one at the altar of a horse.’
‘You… stay awake during basic theology?’
‘…….’
“I think it’s somewhere around there.”
Daisy glanced down at the scrap of paper she was holding.
On the small crumpled piece were drawn a large oval circle.
Inside it were the words “Abandoned Garden,” and a small X mark appeared in the upper right of the character for “garden.”
‘He’s been doing something lately. You know where the Abandoned Garden is, right?’
‘That garden you reach by going out past the dormitory?’
‘Yeah, that one.’
“Ugh.”
Daisy irritably brushed away the vines tangling around her ankles.
Weeds sprawling rampantly throughout the Abandoned Garden made each step tedious.
‘There’s a small stone statue at the far end of that garden. He says it’s a prayer statue, and apparently he wants to clean up the area around it. Maybe he wants to pray there.’
‘Why go through that trouble? If he wants to pray, can’t he just go to the Affiliated Temple inside the Academy?’
‘Right, but he says it has to be there specifically.’
“Even thinking about it again, I can’t make sense of it.”
Why not just go to the temple?
What possible reason could there be for wanting to pray in some overgrown corner of a pathless garden?
As Daisy turned the thought over, a dim foreboding suddenly crossed her mind, and she furrowed her brow.
Wait, could it be…….
“Is this pervert material, or what?”
Monica Raoli, who would become the future Information Guild Master, had introduced the person, so the background check was surely solid—but one could never be too certain about people.
There was a sickness that every modern person living in society suffered from.
Misanthropy.
Daisy had a particularly severe case.
“…….”
She gripped the object in her hand even tighter.
The warped shovel handle creaked under the pressure.
If this turned out to be a pervert, she was fully prepared to crack his skull with the shovel head.
‘The vice-principal approved letting me clear the garden, but apparently it’s too much for one person.’
‘Why not ask a professor to just sweep it all away with Magic? Seems like it would only take five seconds.’
‘I wish it were that simple, but unfortunately the weeds growing in the Academy are mostly Magic-Resistant Weeds.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Apparently, from always using Magic to eliminate weeds, only the Magic-Resistant ones have survived in the end.’
‘Nature really is remarkable.’
‘Anyway, that’s why he needs someone to pull weeds with him.’
‘But why hasn’t he found anyone until now?’
‘Well…….’
Anyone with enough wealth to enroll at Eldvain Academy wouldn’t exactly be desperate enough to pull weeds…….
“You’re not wrong about that…….”
Recalling Monica’s expression as she gazed at her with pity, Daisy nodded dejectedly.
Such was the life of a countess’s daughter without a copper to her name.
‘Anyway, since it’s just pulling weeds, it shouldn’t be too hard. Want to do it?’
Daisy accepted the commission without hesitation.
She’d have to do far harder tasks than this, so pulling weeds was practically a blessing.
“How did I end up doing work even after possessing a noble lady?”
Daisy muttered while gazing up at the dark sky.
“God, if only it weren’t for that cursed Carriage…….”
「”The Count has sent a Carriage for you.”」
In the original story, the Count had always sent Daisy a Carriage whenever she returned to the estate during breaks.
It was smaller than a relay Carriage—the kind where, once you loaded luggage, you had to sit alongside the driver.
One might have been offended to receive a Carriage that even the servants wouldn’t ride in.
But Daisy, as always, accepted it gracefully.
「”Yes.”」
Even riding in a comfortable motorcar, that journey would have been exhausting.
Making that trek in a small, rigid Carriage, it was natural that she arrived at her home estate aching as though she’d fallen ill.
And each time, watching her condition, the butler would always click his tongue disapprovingly.
“I won’t tell the Count that you collapsed, but you ought to be ashamed of being this weak.”
Then she’d add this in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
“You’re truly useless…….”
It wasn’t hard to notice that the emphasis fell on “useless” rather than “weak.”
After that, Daisy never once got to ride in a spacious, comfortable carriage.
That’s why she needed money.
She had no desire to spend two entire days in that wretched freight wagon traveling to a place where she’d get nothing but trouble and a beating.
“My back’s going to be killing me by the time I pull all of these.”
Give me overtime pay, would you…….
Lost in such thoughts as she pushed through the Magic-Resistant Weeds, Daisy’s vision suddenly caught on something out of place.
A pristine stone statue stood alone on bare earth without a single weed around it, as if someone polished it every day.
The statue, carved from pure white marble, depicted a barefoot woman draped in a tunic, her long hair falling past her shoulders.
One hand held a flower, the other held soil, and the woman’s eyes gazing downward to her right seemed intense rather than tender.
At the edge of the earth, the back of someone crouching came into view.
A male student in uniform.
The broad shoulders beneath a jacket stretched so taut it seemed ready to burst looked nothing like those of a first-year student.
‘But they definitely said he was a freshman…….’
Among the first-year students, was there anyone else this large besides Felix and Straud Burnum?
“Wait.”
In that instant, a flash of realization struck Daisy and she stepped back.
But the male student rose and turned around first.
Bronzed skin.
Short dark blue hair.
Beneath thick brows, features equally sharp and defined.
Handsome enough, yet bearing an impression of such gravity that not a shred of flexibility could be found in his presence.
“You…….”
Why are you coming out of here.
Gael Vendermain, destined to become a rigid Paladin, regarded Daisy with a puzzled expression.
* * *
Gael Vendermain hates Daisy Sableheart.
This was a fact no one could deny.
Not that it was hard to understand.
After all, in the eyes of a righteous Paladin, was there anyone more grating than Daisy?
While at the Academy, she’d done others’ assignments and lied to professors. After graduation, she became a duchess and wielded nonsensical authority, and then finally became a criminal sentenced to death.
Though none of it had been Daisy’s choice to begin with.
Even if Gael Vendermain had known that, it wouldn’t have changed anything.
Because it was Daisy Sableheart who never said “no” to all those unjust deeds.
‘Daisy Sableheart must face judgment.’
As a man’s deep, forceful voice echoed in Daisy’s mind, a face surfaced before her.
She thought that the young man now before her would have exactly that face in about ten years.
He was contorting his face as if unable to bear it.
As if he loathed her.
“Gasp.”
Daisy drew in a sharp breath.
A dull ache throbbed at her temples.
Things she’d read in text were coming vividly alive before her.
It was strange.
As if she’d actually lived through this very moment…….
“Are you alright?”
That was when it happened.
A voice not quite as deep as the one that had echoed in her mind fell softly through the darkened garden.
The concern in that voice nearly made Daisy burst out laughing.
Concern? From Gael Vendermain?
From a man who wouldn’t be out of place condemning her on the spot?
“I’d rather he were a pervert…….”
That rigid Paladin was a nightmare to Daisy, but to everyone else, he was practically a hero.
You could beat a pervert senseless, but you couldn’t cave in a hero’s skull.
“You…….”
Gael opened his mouth.
Before his question was even finished, Daisy spoke first.
“You don’t need to know my name.”
That was what I’d been about to say—since I wasn’t going to do it anyway.
“Daisy Sableheart.”
If only that name hadn’t spilled from Gael Vendermain’s lips.
“Huh?”
Daisy’s head snapped up.
“How do you know my name?”
“I do.”
“How? I haven’t done anything yet, have I?”
I hadn’t helped with anyone’s assignments, had no conflicts with professors, hadn’t done a single thing to draw the Paladin’s attention—
“I heard rumors.”
Right, I was famous. Of course.
Daisy pressed her forehead, remembering the rumors that had circulated through the Academy since the start of the semester.
Why was it so hard to attend school quietly?
When I was Kwon Do-yo, I’d moved through campus like a ghost.
I could even cast Magic with that persona.
“Starting now, I’ll be skipping class, goodbye.” Poof.
I’d gone a whole week without showing up, and no one had noticed.
“I don’t know what you heard, but none of it’s true.”
……
“Not that it matters what I say. You won’t—”
—believe me anyway.
Daisy swallowed the rest and turned away with a sigh.
“I’m leaving, anyway—”
Gael’s voice came from behind her.
“Wait!”
His tone was surprisingly urgent.
“You said you’d help me clean the garden—”
“Sorry, I’m not doing that.”
Now that I knew my co-worker was Gael Vendermain, I had no intention of continuing.
Desperate as I was for money to rent a Carriage, I wouldn’t take a single Gold from him.
In this world, some connections were never meant to be made.
And so—
“One Gold per hour!”
“Should I start from here, boss?”
Thunk!
The moment I drove the shovel into the nearby Magic-Resistant Weeds, I caught Gael staring at me in disbelief.
What, you’ve never seen a countess’s daughter work for money before?

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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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