By Ageha Sakura and TCB. Released in Japan as “Tensei Saki ga Kiyowa Sugiru Hakushaku Fujin datta” by Overlap Novels f. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Bérénice Vourdon.
In this volume, we get a flashback to Aurora’s childhood. She grew up in a village that was terrified of her massive magical power and her insatiable curiosity to use it. Her parents wanted nothing to do with her. The mayor essentially sold her to an elf as a research subject. Fortunately, that went well… till her master just up and left one day, leaving Aurora to handle all the magic requests on her own, taking in three disciples. We meet the third of these disciples in this book, Lance, and he too is a former research subject who was rescued, this time by Aurora. Even now that she’s reincarnated, she had a terrible childhood where she was abused by everyone, and even after getting her memories back struggles with any overtures of affection. The main problem with Aurora *and* her proteges is that they still have the emotional capacity of children a great deal of the time. They don’t know how to ask for help, or forgive.
Things continue to go downhill for Char and Lam. They do manage to escape from her first protege, mostly as he gets into a petty battle with her second protege. Unfortunately, the kingdom wants to pile on more work, reasoning that working mages to death is what people are supposed to do. Oh yes, and the church is still being a thorn in everyone’s side… especially when it turns out that her THIRD protege, Lance, is the head of the church. He couldn’t reincarnate himself with the magic he had, so he simply made a deal to learn how to live for over 500 years. All of them want to show Lam that they’re the best and she should stay with them (though Lance, at least, will allow Char to be first husband). That said, there’s a Big Bad behind all of this, and he turns out to be… wait for it… another protege! Not Aurora’s this time, though.
This was better than the second book, mostly as I was able to see better the reason that everyone in the cast is, to a greater or lesser extent, a whiny manbaby. Char discovering that Aurora is actually Lam went much better than both the reader and Lam herself expected, and he is finally – finally! – able to convey to her by the end of the book that the reason he keeps hugging, kissing, and saying he’s fond of her is he loves her. The second half of the book is less “let’s have a big magic battle” and more “let’s try not to have Lam kill herself the exact same way that Aurora did five hundred years ago”, which relies on convincing her that it’s OK to rely on others and that sometimes they can protect themselves. When you’re used to doing it all, realizing someone else can do it to can be very hard.
The webnovel ended here, but apparently there’s more of this coming. I still prefer the Lady Bumpkin series by the same author, but this was a decent new volume.
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