Volume 5 - CH 1.14

I whispered softly into Roxanne’s ear. And then, without giving her any word of warning, I picked her off the ground and lifted her in my arms, holding her shoulders with my left hand around them and her legs just below her knees with my right hand. She was definitely surprised by such a sudden action on my part, but other than that… she was not resisting it at all. Needless to say, there was only one possible destination where we could be heading now that everything has been prepared so perfectly: we were going straight towards the bed in our bedroom. And I hope that it is even more needless to say, but yes…….. I was late to pick Sherry up because of it.

After I left the house in a hurry and made a stop at Quratar’s Adventurer’s Guild to pick up the daily funding tat has been promised to everyone who would be participating in the operation to deliver the relief supplies to the Duchy of Hartz, I then opened the 「Warp」 portal to Imperial City and ran towards the library as fast as I could. When I got out of the portal at the other side, which I set to be the lobby room of the library, I saw that the number op people who were there was far greater than in the morning when I brought Sherry here. And speaking of Sherry, as soon as she saw me, she literally darted out of the reading room and rushed to my side.

「I am sorry for making you wait, Sherry. Were you waiting for long?」

「No, I just got out myself.」

「Oh, well now, talk about a stroke of luck, huh?」

「Yes, definitely. It is a good thing that the library is opened from early morning until sunset, but I cannot help but to wish for it to be opened for longer. Even if I did end up spending an entire day here today, I still feel like it was not enough.」

So judging from Sherry’s words, it would seem like pretty much every visitor of the library was waiting for the very last moment to leave it, and that is what caused such a flood of people to be here right now. But I guess that this time it actually worked to my advantage, because even though I was late to pick Sherry up, she did not actually have to wait for me for God knows how long, so you could say that this was a disaster successfully avoided.

「Hmm, so the library is actually opened until the evening, huh?」

Then I guess it makes it pretty much the same as the libraries in my old world, which is a useful bit of information.

「Heck yeah it is!」

Huh? Excuse me, what was that just now? And this peculiar smell… do not tell me…

「Uhm, Sherry? Have… have you been drinking?」

After we got the money from the deposit back, I could feel that Sherry’s breath smelled like alcohol, and not just a little bit. It was a pretty intense smell.

「Huh? What do you mean, master? Of course I was drinking! Five glasses of water that is!」

Water, huh? Yeah, right, sure. Now forgive me if I doubt that, because there is no way for water to ever have an alcoholic smell like that.

「Yes master, water. To be precise though, it is a weak liquor-type beverage that you drink instead of water, but due to its low percentage of alcohol, Dwarves, who are known to be a race that is particularly good at holding their liquor and resisting the intoxicating effects of alcohol, so Dwarves just call it Water because they see not too much difference between that Water and the ordinary water. And besides, the one that I had is not all that strong anyway, because it has only been distilled three times, or so I heard.」

It has been distilled 「only」three times? But is it not that the amount of alcohol in a beverage goes up every time it is distilled? I cannot say for sure because I have never had much of an interest in alcohol and the process in which it is created, but I can definitely say that despite Sherry claims that what she drank was a 「weak」 liquor, it is probably quite strong because the alcoholic stench that I can feel from her is quite strong, almost to the point where inhaling the fumes of it that are breathed out along with Sherry’s every breath is enough to cause a pinching sensation in the depths of my nostrils.

「Do you like alcohol, Sherry?」

I have no idea that Sherry liked alcohol, or if she has a strong tolerance to it o not, because the only thing close to the legitimate alcohol we have back at home is the wine that we mostly use for the cooking purposes, and I have never seen either Roxanne or Sherry drink it. Could it be that they have been holding back on it because I never drank a drop of it myself? If that really is the case, then I hope they are not going to be holding that against me or feel dissatisfied because of it, because they never even spoke a word about it, and I also never thought about asking them about this particular subject.

「Huh? No, master, I cannot say that I like it, but I guess I do not dislike it either. To me, it is just a substitute for drinking water. Nothing more, nothing less.」

「Oh, I see. So it is not going to be a problem that we do not have any of it back at home?」

「Yes, I can make do without it just fine. As I was saying, I did not drink it because I like it, but because to me it is substitute for water, so as long as we have it back at home, I will have no problems drinking it.」