I Have No Intention Of Training The Male Leads - Chapter 2 Part 3

02. Eve Switched Jobs At The Age Of 20 (3)

Translated by: ???????

There were countless labels that followed Callisto Langrada’s name. Top student at the National Hestia Academy, genius mage who opened his own Circle at the age of thirteen, an unprecedented former Elemental Master, blah, blah, blah, blah. Most of them described how outstanding Callisto’s magical achievements were.

‘Well… Since I couldn’t say the word Angel Of Light to that madman’s face, I guess everyone can take a break from the bad nicknames. Anyway, despite the fact that he’s an asshole and a lunatic, In terms of stats, he’s actually the strongest among the Male Lead characters. So once he starts obsessing over Eve, he’s going to be more than a nuisance…….’

As a mage who was talented enough to lead his own faction at a relatively young age, he became intrigued by Eve and didn’t hesitate to use his abilities to stalk her.

She first thought it was just a compulsory event, as part of the game’s story, but it was later revealed that he actually placed various tracking, detection, and eavesdropping spells on Eve.

If she chose the Callisto route, not only will there be no more privacy for her, but there will be no dreaming of escaping at all. That’s because he’ll be popping up from time-to-time using his tracking spells to intervene on Eve’s affairs. He’s even more annoying when you’re playing the game, since he’ll come out of nowhere to attack people if you try to talk to other men.

Eve recalled the starting point of the Callisto route and the detailed settings related to it. It was a route she’d tackled very early on, and she couldn’t remember exactly what it was, so she’d had to rack her brains for quite some time.

Callisto was the nephew of the current Duke of Treves, but he was three years older than the Duke. This was partly because the Duke of Treves was born late, with a difference of nearly twenty years younger than his sister, and also because Callisto’s mother had given birth to him alone, at a tender age of sixteen, without a husband or a fiancé. The surname ‘Langrada‘ was more of an imperial title granted to archmages by the royal family, so technically his name was in fact Callisto Langrada Treves.

His exact age was never mentioned, but at the time of the game it was known that Duke Bastian Treves was roughly in his early 40s, so Callisto should be in his mid-40s.

However, Callisto’s appearance in the game doesn’t look like he’s in his 40s at all. It was part of the game setting that time passes slowly for Sword Masters who deal with auras and Magicians who use manas, but even so, he still looked extremely young.

He stood at over five feet tall, with wispy curls of pale pink lips that looked like cotton candy, and purple eyes that were as clear as amethyst, which made his youthful features seem even more adorable and mysterious.

His young boyish appearance was actually the result of a body-transformation spell he had cast on himself. He always pretended to be a boy by enchanting his appearance to look like he was thirteen or fourteen years old, because he had always had that nasty habit of tricking people into ignoring him when he passed by them as a child, and then harassing them by finding fault with them.

Thanks to the mage’s ability to age slowly, even after the magic was removed, he would still appear as a young man in his mid-twenties, but Callisto would often laugh about it, thinking that people would only look down on him if he looked like a very young boy. He was a very short-tempered man indeed.

It didn’t take much for him to become intrigued by Eve, who saw him in the form of a young boy, and still treated him politely and in a very friendly manner, even though she didn’t know his real identity.

Having grown up in an orphanage with children of all ages, Eve knew how much boys Callisto’s age (Fake, of course) wanted to be treated as an adult. And since she had never met anyone who looked younger than her inside the manor, she treated Callisto as if he were simply a newcomer, taking care of him here and there, and did not treat him carelessly or ignore him.

In the end, Callisto, who gradually felt a crush on Eve, pretended to know her warmly, developed a twisted obsession with her, and the relationship between the two began to spiral out of control.

Callisto is a man who had never cared for anyone in his life. He had a daughter of a duke as his mother, but he was an illegitimate child who did not know his own father, which was considered a fatal flaw in aristocratic society.

His early departure from the social circles to study magic at the National Academy was also motivated by a desire to distance himself from those who would disparage him and his mother. From a very early age, he had grown tired of people looking at him with a veneer of respect and a hint of contempt.

His sensitive and unruly personality, to the point of aggression, must have been perfected during his childhood when he was looked down upon. He grew up to be a person with no room in his heart.

The love of a man whose heart never grew beyond the size of his teenage years was bound to fester in a terrible way. He would meddle with Eve from time-to-time, he would get angry if she didn’t act in a way that pleased him, and the more he felt sorry for her, the more he would act like a child.

Then, whenever Eve was distressed because of Callisto’s cruelty or shed tears, he would act like an abandoned puppy with a wounded heart. The worst part was that he never admitted his fault, even though he could see in Eve’s eyes that she was hurt.

In Callisto’s route, the Eve in the game stood by his side, squeezing her ego and accepting his every whim, which was half her own will and half of the other side. There was even a scene when she suffers from a stomach disease due to extreme stress.

Eve, like the one on the game, had a change of mentality when she became ill, and the thought of caring for this man was as good as ant piss. Moreover, no matter how young he looked, he was still more than twice as old as her.

There was something very unsettling about an older man groveling to a younger woman who was the same age as his daughter (If he ever had one). Especially when she remembered how he’d pretended to be a teenage boy, poking fun at her vulnerability, only to revert to his adult form and act like a grown man when he needed to subdue her with force.

“Anyway, there are no normal men in this game.”

“Huh?”

“Eh. No, never mind. I’m talking to myself.”

Eve decided to put aside her resentment for Callisto’s boyish appearance knowing that what’s inside was in fact an old man. That’s because if she thinks about it she’s the same. Anyways, Callisto was flawed. It was enough to make her shudder at the thought of the seemingly doll-like man’s demanding, dirty temper.

‘A man is supposed to be quiet, discreet, decent, and gentle. Callisto is not a real man. He’s a tsundere in an era when tsundere men were not even a trend. So Pass, pass!’

Eve, who had been drinking her tea out loud without a care in the world, decided that she was going to ruin the original story anyway, and ruin it nicely. If she treats him like a child, bully and tease him, he might quickly reveal his true identity and dismiss her as a b*tch after he’s had enough. It seemed to make sense that way.

However, Eve had always been a hunter. Even in her previous life, she was a hunter who always set several traps to catch her prey. The more thorough the preparation, the better, and the more contingencies she had, the better.

“Who do you think I should talk to, to get back to the capital?”

“What? The capital? On such short notice… What are you doing?”

“Nothing, I’ve been stuck on the estate for too long and I’m bored.”

“Well, if you want to go to the capital, you’ll have to ask the mistress for permission, but it might be dangerous, and I don’t know if she’ll give you permission…”

“No, the streets are well-paved and there are trains, so what’s the danger?”

“A city is a place where all sorts of weird people congregate.”

“It’s okay, I’m only going to the west side of the river, and that’s where the educated aristocracy and gentry live. So there’s no way there’s a problem.”

“But… Even among the gentry, there are people of unclear origins. Are you sure you want to go?”

“Tilda. Is that your opinion or my aunt’s?”

Eve asked with a soft chuckle. She was slightly irritated by the ongoing heckling. As a seasoned maid who had worked at the manor for so many years, Tilda quickly realized that the lady’s expression was quite distorted, and she bowed deeply in apology.

“I’m sorry, my lady.”

“Never mind. You have every right to be worried.”

“Yes…”

“Good, then I’ll have to talk to my aunt first. Tilda, go ask my aunt how she’d like her afternoon tea after dinner.”

At Eve’s command, Tilda hesitated for a moment, but immediately answered yes and left the sunroom. Eve watched her figure leave, and only after she was out of sight did she turn and look down at the deep crimson black tea.

‘I didn’t feel the need to leave before, so I thought I was just going to do that, but it’s a bit strange that you keep stopping me from doing so. I don’t like studying, I don’t like going out, I don’t know if you’re going to keep me locked up in here and raise me like a pig.’

As if she had been tasked with knowing every detail of Eve’s life, Tilda spent most of her time keeping her company, and seemed very reluctant to leave her alone. Strangely enough, the Countess seemed to be very concerned with her every movement, even though it would have been easier for the both of them if they tucked her in the corner of a room and not pay attention to her. There was not enough justification to say that it was done to hide the fact that her inheritance was stolen. The Countess and Tilda acted as if they were trying to prevent Eve from making contact with anyone.

‘Was there anyone who could tip Eve about the inheritance? It seems like they’re trying to block people and information, but I don’t know why. Anyway, I need to do some preparation. I’ll have to start thinking of a way to get rid of Tilda.’

Muttering under her breath that she would take her time with it, Eve pushed the thought of Tilda and Mrs. Adelaide’s surveillance out of her mind, and turned to another thought.

‘Fortunately, I found the book about a forgotten god. I had no idea I would fish out some great books among the books I’ve pulled out that day to avoid suspicion.’

The book ?Thirty Ways to Cook Absinthe? was not the book she was looking for. But among the random books she pulled out, there was a book about a forgotten god, so she didn’t have to waste any more time in the library.

‘But the book… It’s like some kind of an easter egg… There were no books like this in the True Ending or Hidden Ending.’

?Thirty Ways to Cook Absinthe? is a not a very thick book, with only six digits on every page. 520413, 091309, 470716, 622001…

At first glance, it looked like a meaningless list of numbers with no information nor value, but Eve quickly realized that the book was a cipher. Flipping through the numbers, she soon figured out that the six-digit numbers followed a certain pattern.

‘If I’m guessing right, this book alone can’t crack the code. There’s probably one more book that makes it a pair. It was a book of about 80 to 90 chapters in total, with a page of 30 lines and a line of 20 words. This is a complete spy cipher book. Did the setting suddenly changed to an espionage genre?’

Just to be sure, I compared and contrasted it with the most famous book in the empire, the Bible, but alas, it wasn’t the Bible. The Bible was 400 to 500 pages long, so it didn’t even qualify.

‘Maybe the spy I saw that day came into the study looking for this book. A spy and a cipher book that gives orders, that’s a pretty plausible combination.’

I knew Alberic would have plenty of enemies, but I hadn’t expected such blatant evidence of someone planted inside the mansion.

Besides, I don’t remember seeing a cipher book like this in the game. The mysterious book, which had never been described as an item or even in a line of a script, left her wondering what to do with it.

‘It’s kind of bothering me to just put it back to its original location and… I’m afraid I’ll get into trouble if I keep it. Should I just tell Alberic…? No. I’d rather burn the book than trust that pervert…….’

The moment she thought that far, Eve stopped moving, as if something had dawned on her, and her eyes immediately lit up.

‘Oh, fire… That’s okay, those mysterious easter eggs are only useful in games, not in real life. Best to get rid of them as soon as possible.’

Just as she was making up her mind about what to do with the book, the door to the sunroom opened. It was Tilda, who had gone to run an errand for Eve.

“My lady had granted your request and asked you to join her for afternoon tea today.”

“Hmmm……. Very good, very good. Shall we go upstairs then?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Eve rose from her seat with the satisfied smile of a well-fed lioness. As she laughed lazily, her troubles were finally solved. Tilda breathed an inward sigh of relief and thought that the young lady seemed to be in a good mood again, and quickly followed Eve upstairs.

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