Chapter 88

Chapter 88

88: The Hunt The first thing I did upon arriving in Karaldin was withdraw money from the bank, and the second was get El settled in an inn. Emily and I were sharing a double room, so she naturally had to take a single, which meant El had no choice but to borrow money from me. “Thanks, I’ll definitely pay you back later.” “Yeah, preferably with your body.” “….Ah, hahaha, you’re joking, right?” “….” “Hey, why aren’t you saying anything!? You’re joking, right? Right!?” Of course, I was joking, but if El asked, I’d be willing. Not that such a thing would ever happen. I was thinking of teasing her a bit more, but Emily glared at me from the side, so I had no choice but to brush off her words lightly. “Of course, I’m joking.” “….” Emily’s gaze held a hint of suspicion. ….Could this be jealousy? I doubted it, but just in case, I might have to give up on my dreams of a reverse harem. Not that it was a very important dream in the first place, so it didn’t matter. “Haa….” After registering El’s room and washing up in the inn’s bathhouse, I finally returned to my room, and only then did it feel like I was coming home. It wasn’t actually home, but the atmosphere was similar. In any case, it was much better than the shabby room at Lakers’. I guess the nice interior really made it feel like home. I wanted to just lie down on the bed and fall asleep, but I had something to do before that. I left Emily, who was already lying in bed, and headed to another room in the inn. -Knock knock. “Come in.” I knocked, wondering if she was still there, and a familiar voice answered. I opened the door and was greeted by a familiar face. “Oh, Lyla…?” “It’s been a while, Mien.” Mien looked the same as ever. She was looking over some notes in the room, and tilted her head at me as if surprised. But only for a moment, before narrowing her eyes and asking me a question. “Lyla. Why are you so late?” The adventurers who had been escorting the Karabut Trading Company had returned a while ago, but we were five days late. Even though they had asked us, they had reason to worry if we were this late. Mien’s worried question was reasonable. …But, she is worried, right? I wanted to tell her the truth, but I couldn’t tell her everything about El. After a moment of thought, I decided to tell her half-truths. “Well, I met a friend in Mesatria, so I was a little late.” “…A friend?” “Yes, I’ll introduce you later.” “Lyla’s friend… I have a feeling they’re not ordinary.” She was right, so I had no choice but to nod. Was this the insight of a mage? I thought Emily was pretty ordinary. After that, I talked with Mien about my impressions of the escort request, and then returned to my room. “Ah, and since I’m back after a while, I should start studying again, right?” ….And I received a seemingly large amount of homework as a bonus. I felt this last time too, but to be studying again in this world. It’s so thrilling… or rather, it feels kind of nice. Anyway, it wasn’t a bad feeling. // The day after registering at the inn in Karaldin, El suddenly came to our room, occupied the bed, and declared, “Nice to meet you. I am now Elysium Nosferatu.” Because of the accident in Mesatria, she couldn’t use the name Erzebet Vladimir as it was. So, she had to change her name, half willingly, half forced. Of course, there was no need to go to the government office to apply for a name change. No matter how detailed the Kilkerd Kingdom’s administrative organization was, it wasn’t that thorough. It was enough to just give her name when registering as an adventurer. Adventurers often accepted people without asking about their identity, as it was a dangerous job, so it was the perfect identity for a fugitive like her to disguise herself. Still, she seemed to like the nickname El, so she chose a name that could make the most of her nickname. ….Even if the meaning was roughly put aside. But, did she like the vampire concept that much? “….What does that mean?” Emily, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed, tilted her head as she looked at El. At her question, El chuckled and shook her head, answering. “Hehe, it doesn’t mean anything.” Her tone, enjoying herself like a child with her own secret, bothered me, so I stopped transcribing the magic circle and answered Emily’s question. “I think it means ‘Vampire of Paradise’. Not bad. I approve. It goes well with your nickname, ‘Eternal Maiden’.” “Hiiiak!? You, how did you know that…? More than that, I don’t have a nickname like that!?” Did she think I wouldn’t know? Of course, I could have pretended not to know, but when she made it so obvious that there was something, I wanted to tell her. I smiled at El and turned my gaze back to the notebook on the desk. “Don’t ignore me! No, please don’t ignore me…” The magic I was transcribing now was the magic of body strengthening, which was the basis of the magic of increasing the elasticity of the body that I had seen in the underground plaza before. It was a magic that required an understanding of the cell tissue and internal organs of the human body, and Mien said it was the magic of the Necromancer school she belonged to. The knights’ enhancement sigils were also a type of body strengthening, but the difference was that they used the magic power of monsters to cast magic, while the former used the vitality of the body. The former seemed to be much more versatile, but there must be a reason why such magic was not officially registered with the academy. In fact, most knights used body strengthening that used vitality. “Hee, Vampire of Paradise… I think it’s cool.” “R, right? It’s cool, right? It’s not too cheesy, is it?” “Then if you combine the two, does it become ‘Vampire of Paradise Eternal Maiden’?” “….I was wrong. Please stop talking about that.” As an aside, I first heard that Mien was from the Necromancer school when I asked her about that magic. When I asked her if there was magic that could transform the body, she thought for a moment and told me about her school, along with an assignment on body strengthening magic. According to her, the Necromancer school was currently disbanded, but in the past, it had students and was doing well. Judging from her slightly wistful expression, there seemed to be a story if I dug deeper, but she wouldn’t tell me right away. “It’s okay, Elly. It’s not bad to be a maiden….” “Yeah, you guys are the bad ones. Just you wait, let’s see how long you can tease me! Someday I’ll live a life of luxury with eight concubines!” “….Are you going to do it with eight people at once? That’s going to be really hard, you know?” “W, w, who said anything about doing it at once!? Why are your thoughts so shameless!?” “Oh? A, aren’t you?” Still, since it was a school related to my master, I was curious about its origins. All I could guess now was that the Necromancer school studied magic related to the human body. Looking at Mien, who used body strengthening magic and looked younger than her age, I felt like I had a sense of what kind of magic she used. Still, I didn’t have much information about the Necromancer school, so there was no basis for judgment. Even if I had heard a lot from here and there, it was just a prostitute picking up stories that travelers had dropped. What I knew about this world was extremely limited. I definitely felt a lack of knowledge about the Necromancer school, as well as magic and other common sense. I guess I should visit the library next time. I couldn’t enter the lord’s castle, so a library run by the Magic Guild would be appropriate. I thought about asking Mien about the school’s affairs, but that seemed like it would touch on the past, so it was a bit uncomfortable. It would be better to investigate on my own and then ask. “….Emily. I didn’t think you were like that. You’re surprisingly lewd.” “No, that’s not it. I just thought you would definitely do it all at once….” “Crazy, I haven’t fallen that far yet!? I like fluffy love comedies, but I don’t like intense humiliation! Ah, it’s good if I’m watching it. I don’t want to experience it myself. Of course, if I actually did it, I could theoretically do up to five at once…..” “I, I see. But why five? We only have three holes, right?” “…I’m sometimes amazed by those words of yours. You don’t seem like you’d throw out that kind of sex joke at all from your usual appearance. Is this what they call gap moe?” I smiled wryly and shook my head slightly at the sound coming from behind me. It was good to have a conversation without hesitation, but I wondered why the content was like that. I didn’t dislike that kind of conversation, but if I heard it while studying, I wanted to join in, so I’d rather they talk about martial arts. …But it’s also my responsibility that I corrupted Emily like that, so I have to put up with this much. I thought so and continued to transcribe and analyze the spellcraft blueprint of the body strengthening magic. “The reason why it’s five is….” Let’s ignore the obscene jokes in the background for a while. // Elysium Nosferatu, El, who had changed her name to a rather bizarre one, easily passed the test at the Karaldin Adventurers Guild and received her adventurer’s license. Her main strength was her hands, which had been tempered like steel by the Bloodfiend Demonic Art, but she couldn’t show that as it was, so she showed off her swordsmanship appropriately. “That was really easy. That person was weaker than I thought.” -Gurgle. She was lying on the bed in the room where Emily and I were staying, playing with Arum. Of course, Arum wasn’t a cat but a slime, so it was more like she was hugging and playing with it as she pleased rather than playing with it. It was fluffy because it was a slime, and even cute because it was pink, so she seemed to like it very much. Of course, she seemed to have forgotten that it came from my womb. And I was still doing the assignment that Mien had given me. It was a task of deciphering the diagram of body strengthening magic and doing spellcraft directly on paper, but Mien had asked me to do spellcraft with a different kind of magic power than what I had transcribed two days ago, saying it was an applied problem, so it was a problem that I had to think about quite a bit. Still, I thought it wouldn’t be bad to talk sometimes when I was stuck, so I put down the fountain pen in my hand and looked at El and answered. “We’ve learned martial arts, so it’s hard for ordinary people.” Instructor Lacas’s skills weren’t that bad. It was easy for me and El because we had gathered internal energy with the Blood Shadow Demonic Art or the Yinfiend Demonic Art and trained in Qigong. In the first place, our physical specs themselves were quite strong compared to ordinary people, so we could fight appropriately with weapons that were relatively less skilled. “I guess so. But what about Emily? Does she have an adventurer’s license?” “When you say that, it sounds like you’re talking about specs…. Anyway, she does.” Emily wasn’t here right now. She was caught by Merrill, a ranger belonging to the Adventurers Guild, and was working. Even if it was a part-time job, it seemed like delaying the request period for a few more days was a bit much. It didn’t seem like she was scolded, but she wouldn’t be able to participate in requests for the time being because she had to fill her quota. “Adventure… sounds fun.” El hugged Arum with both arms and muttered with an expression as if she was imagining something. Her appearance was like a child who didn’t know the ways of the world, so I wanted to shatter her fantasies, but unfortunately, I had almost no experience entering the Mesin Great Forest either. All I had experienced since coming to Karaldin was the underground waterway, the underground plaza, and the work in the goblin lair.

…and thanks to all three of us having experienced some pretty wild sexual stuff, telling Elle the truth would probably shock her. I was already debating whether to tell her everything honestly since Emily had been probing about my relationship with Muren, and I really didn’t want to complicate things further. Is this why having a wild past is so inconvenient? “Have you ever been to the Great Forest?” “…Just the outskirts, maybe a little?” “Just the outskirts…that’s vague. I’m really curious about what it’s like. The Great Forest was really famous even in my country.” Come to think of it, her homeland, the Nekar Confederation, was quite far from the Great Forest. With the Astaltine Empire to the north, desert regions to the south, the Kilkard Kingdom to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea and the Setuia City Alliance to the east, it was a region where it was hard to even see monsters, so it made sense that she’d be interested in the Mesheen Great Forest. Monsters, especially magical creatures with cores, were particularly important resources. It wasn’t for nothing that the Kilkard Kingdom boasted such great power. Elle thought for a moment, then her eyes sparkled as she asked me a question. “Anyway, monster hunting sounds kind of fun, don’t you think?” “…Does it?” “What’s with that reaction? It’s monsters, for crying out loud! Mysterious animals that didn’t exist in our world! The unknown is calling to you! Doesn’t it make you feel all fired up or excited?” I paused for a moment to recall my memories. From the goblins of the Great Forest to the slimes in the underground waterways, and even the Kwaidon in the underground plaza. As I retraced all those memories, I realized I had to agree with her. “You’re right. It does feel kind of exciting.” “See? So, when you take on the next request, you have to take me with you!” Well, that wouldn’t be difficult.