@zz2000 Thanks. Makes sense...if bad news. Still! What's the point of creating Best Boy Auguste when they aren't gonna do romance? That kid is a walking romance novel fantasy.
The novel is fantastic. It's a lot more Harry Potter and a lot less of your typical isekai. There's a fancy magic school eventually...but they actually do magic adventure things with it!
Any possibility for romance totally gets stonewalled by the super dense MC though lol.
As long as you can suspend the disbelief as to how such a culture doesn't know cooking, then this is quite a nice series. There are touches of...humanity? elvenity?...about these Central Asian-esque elf nomads, like how they embraced the MC as part of the clan, or how the bride girl actually had...
That cover page made me thought of BL for a bit lol. It's a nephew though! Safe! Maybe?
But really, poor oji-san, yet another victim of toxic masculinity.
It is a minor but universally true rule in isekai stories that any story with "realist," "pragmatic," or some variation thereof is inevitably quite the opposite.
I have to admit the story started a bit inconsistently, but it steadied the ship with our cute blue puppy in the picture, and it absolutely blossomed with the heroine's full introduction.
That bureaucrat coat and the work hairdo managed to hide such a girly girl! Took me a second at the chapter's start to figure out it was Riina all along.
Endgame is definitely Jade. "Second male lead syndrome" is only a problem if the supposed first male lead actually spends more than...three?...short moments with the heroine in 10 chapters.
Blondie's a smart one. This "I show my trust in you by being pragmatically candid" display is in itself a clever affectation, and one which probably works better for a skittish thing like our dear Marie than a sweet princess act.
Now to see how it will all go down in flames...