The First Request
Right after the praises for me died down following the pincer-jaw ant subjugation, the caravan master handed out what he called expensive liquor as thanks for the impressive magic.
Gerik’s lukewarm reaction suggested it wasn’t actually that pricey.
Still, the way the master made such a big show of it proved he had the makings of a decent merchant.
I thought the drinking would finally let everyone relax, but even while the liquor flowed the compliments kept coming.
“It wasn’t magic. I’m simply amazing.”
Every time, I calmly stressed that it wasn’t magic; I was the amazing one.
What I had accomplished was alchemy, not magic. But I could hardly announce that openly, so I simply redirected the praise onto myself.
With the loudest voice belonging to Kairon, the night of short celebration faded beneath the escort team’s endless flattery.
At last, my personal time had arrived.
Once I confirmed everyone was asleep, I slipped out of the carriage and moved with careful steps.
I didn’t want to disturb Sera, who had been rustling around outside the carriage just moments ago.
Circling behind the wagon and stepping into the bushes, I spotted Sera heading farther away.
“Are you perhaps going to pick flowers?”
“Hyau?!”
Sera straightened up and spun around.
“Y-you, you, youyou… what are you…!”
“I am Lulu.”
“I… I know that!”
“Thank you for remembering.”
Sera’s expression grew identical to Aaron’s.
That gave me hope.
Since I had become close with Aaron quickly, I felt confident I could do the same with Sera.
“You… Lulu, why are you out here?”
“I wanted to speak with you, Sera.”
“Why with me? Talk? Why…? Just why…?”
“I wish to become friends.”
“That’s what I’m asking—why me…?”
“I believe we would understand each other well.”
Sera’s body trembled.
“If you are in a hurry, you may take care of your business first. I will keep watch. If you are afraid, I can accompany you.”
“I-it’s not that!”
Sera’s lips moved before she continued.
“Just go back inside. I’ll finish my business and return. Okay? Understand?”
“Yes. However, Sera, why did you leave silver coins out? They might get stolen.”
“Stolen… ha, haha… anyway, there’s no one in the carriage but you. Are you going to steal them, Lulu?”
“I will not steal. But if I keep seeing them, bad thoughts might arise.”
“B-bad… bad thoughts…?”
“Yes.”
That was how it had been back on Earth before my reincarnation.
When I was extremely hungry and a chicken delivery person walked nearby, the thought of stealing just one piece would come unbidden.
“So please be careful. If they suddenly disappear, it would hurt and invite bad thoughts.”
“…You vicious girl.”
“Pardon?”
“N-nothing.”
Sera shook her head and approached me.
“Weren’t you going to pick flowers?”
“…I already went.”
“Shall I accompany you?”
“No, it’s fine. L-let’s head back…”
“If the urge returns—”
“Please… please, I’m begging you like this.”
When someone was this embarrassed, the correct response was to pretend not to notice.
I stopped pressing the matter and returned to the carriage with Sera.
After that, Sera said nothing and pulled the blanket completely over her head.
“Let us have a proper conversation tomorrow morning.”
There was no reply.
It was a shame, but we had plenty of time ahead, so I closed my eyes, satisfied for now.
*****
“Good morning, Sera. Did you have pleasant dreams? I dreamed of playing tag with you. Do you know tag? If not, shall I teach you? You would be it. The game is that you run and I chase and catch you. Let us play together next time.”
“By the way, how old are you, Sera? I am sixteen. Ah, so you are older than me. No, I find it comfortable to speak politely. We are not yet that close, after all. There is no need to apologize. Why are you crying? Do you feel that sorry? Please do not cry. I am fine.”
“Sera, I would like to learn the bow as well. I am quite strong. I have eaten many good things. Shall I show you? Hnnng… there. Look. I can even bend scrap metal. Why would I bend your waist, Sera? I simply wish to become friends with you.”
“Sera. I hear the dwarven nation of Grimbar has advanced science. They possess communication devices that only work there. Would you not like to try one? I want to create a bulletin board where many people can speak freely and become its owner. The taste of power seems sweet.”
“Sera. This is soup with all-purpose powder. Please try it. I did not add poison. I wish to become friends with you. You seem to have misunderstood the powder earlier. This is the one. All-purpose powder. It is neither a drug nor poison. It hurts when you keep suspecting me. But it is all right. Ah, why are you crying again? I am sorry? I am fine. I will not bend you, Sera.”
A day passed, then two, then three, and eventually ten. I still had not grown close to Sera.
The prickly girl had higher walls than expected, and we encountered quite a few monsters along the way.
Thanks to that, Sera often fell asleep from exhaustion.
The continuous outdoor camping surely played a part as well.
Now that I knew she was delicate despite her prickly nature, I decided to be as considerate of her as possible.
Then, on the evening of the twentieth day, after dinner and during rest time, Sera finally called me over privately.
My heart began to race with excitement.
After following her quite a distance from the rest of the party, she suddenly whirled around and asked sharply.
“You… just what are you doing to me…?”
“I wish to become friends with you, Sera.”
“You’re tormenting me!”
I blinked at Sera’s shriek. Her desperate voice carried raw sincerity.
“Is that how it seemed?”
“Yes! That’s exactly how it felt!”
“If that is how it seemed, I apologize. I only wanted to become friends with you.”
“Then why! Why do you want to be friends with me of all people!”
“Because I believe we would understand each other well.”
“Wow, no, wow. Seriously. Wow! Do you even know how many times you’ve given the exact same answer?!”
“Thirteen times.”
“It’s the fourteenth!”
“You remembered. I thought you were truly asking because you did not know.”
“No, ah. Ack… uuuugh…!”
After twisting her body, Sera slapped her own chest and glared at me with wide eyes.
“You already know everything, don’t you.”
“Know what?”
“My true identity!”
“You are Sera, a Bronze-rank adventurer and archer, correct?”
Sera’s eyes narrowed.
She studied me for a long time.
“Do you really think that?”
“Yes. You shoot the bow very well.”
“Really? Are you serious?”
I nodded and asked.
“Are you perhaps a man?”
“No! And where exactly are you looking when you ask that?! Why are you staring at my chest!”
“Were you a man in your previous life?”
Sera clutched her chest and stepped back, shouting.
“How could that be?!”
“Then you are indeed Sera, Bronze-rank adventurer and archer. I am Lulu.”
When I lifted my gaze from the obvious proof that she was a woman and met her eyes, they were already brimming with tears.
Perhaps it was that time of the month.
It seemed likely.
She had reacted very sensitively last time as well.
Though usually it was once a month, wasn’t it?
The long outdoor camping might have disrupted her cycle.
The question was resolved.
In times like these, one should affirm everything. Having experienced it myself, I now understood those feelings.
“You have done nothing wrong, Sera.”
“R-really…?”
“Yes. Not all dark mages in the world are evil. Even among the Pantheon’s dark mages, there must be good ones.”
“Right…? You think so too…”
Sera’s face, which had been loosening into a smile, turned deathly pale. Her trembling eyes fixed on me.
“…Huh? You, what did you just say…?”
“Are you perhaps a bad dark mage, Sera?”
She shook her head frantically.
“Then it is fine. I believe we can get along well now.”
I picked up a random pebble from the ground and drew up mana. A soft green light bloomed as decomposition, addition, and multiplication were layered on.
“I am an alchemist.”
I handed her the quickly completed petit-Sera statue and said.
“I believe we will understand each other well.”
A dark mage and an alchemist—both hated by the world.
The two of us were bound to understand each other.
“Hic… huk… huwaaaaaang…”
See?
After spending so long alone, she had finally found a friend she could open her heart to. Overcome with joy, Sera was shedding tears of happiness.
“Huwaaaaaaaaaang…!”
Though she was crying rather loudly.
“Please stop crying. Someone irritated by the sound might come to harm us.”
“Hic…”
*****
The next morning after Sera and I had cleared up all the misunderstandings through an honest conversation and finally become friends.
“You two got that close?”
Gerik noticed the change in our relationship.
“Does it appear so? We became friends last night.”
“Hm, then I’m glad. Eat your breakfast.”
“Yes, thank you. I will enjoy it. Here. Sera, you eat too.”
The biggest change was that I no longer added “nim” after Sera’s name.
I had taken a big courageous step, and it was fortunate that Sera accepted it so naturally.
“By the way, the monster we subjugated yesterday seemed strange, so I checked the illustrated guide. Sure enough, there was a problem.”
While we were eating, Gerik held out the guidebook.
I had perfectly memorized it from Aaron’s study long ago, so I did not need to read the contents.
I asked while looking only at the illustration.
“Was the one we subjugated yesterday a stone-skin boar? I thought it looked like a long-jaw boar.”
“No, it was definitely a stone-skin boar.”
I could not tell because it had burned to death from my flames head-on, but the last form I saw had been a long-jaw boar.
The difference was simple.
A stone-skin boar had hide as hard as rock, while a long-jaw boar had a long jaw, as the name suggested.
The boar I saw had a long jaw.
Still, I decided to accept Gerik’s words as fact and continue the conversation.
It was better to consider things from multiple angles than to cling to my own thoughts, and Gerik did not seem the type to speak nonsense.
“What made you think so?”
“Kairon, who punched it yesterday, said his fist felt numb. And when I picked up the remains to check… well, most of it was burned so it was hard to tell, but it seemed closer to hard than merely tough.”
When I turned my head, Kairon was dozing off while chewing bread.
I glanced down at his fist. Sure enough.
His turtle-shell-like fist was slightly swollen.
“That is certainly strange.”
A stone-skin boar’s hide had the strength of rock.
And Kairon’s fists could shatter rocks.
So his fist should not have gone numb.
Yet now it was not only numb but even a little swollen.
“It seems the hide’s strength was increased. Then why was it changed?”
“It must be the work of a Pantheon dark mage.”
“Hup.”
Sera, who had been drinking soup beside me, shuddered.
“Or perhaps the work of an alchemist.”
“Oh…”
Now it was my turn to react.
“It could even be someone who was an alchemist but entered the Pantheon and switched to dark mage because they did not want to die by the third disaster.”
“Hm… going that far into detail… well, it is not entirely wrong. Have you experienced it before?”
“Yes. The dark mage who once bought me for four silver coins was like that.”
Sera finally set down her soup and gulped cold water.
Gerik glanced at her, shrugged, and smiled.
“Looks like you’ve lived quite the hard life too, Lulu.”
“Not at all. Someone helped me, so I ate well and lived well.”
“Then that’s good. In any case, I wanted to say we should be careful whether it’s a dark mage or an alchemist.”
“Does that mean we might encounter them on the road?”
“Probably. If modified monsters are roaming around, it means their owner is staying nearby.”
“You seem to have encountered this several times.”
“My master and Kairon’s master died fighting such a dark mage.”
“Ah.”
Gerik smiled bitterly and pointed at the greatsword hanging on the carriage roof.
“The greatsword I use is my master’s keepsake.”
It was good that I had not absorbed that mana residue.
I swallowed a sigh of relief and said.
“Should I not have asked?”
“Not at all. It is fine now. Anyway, from here on we should proceed more carefully. To modify a monster’s appearance to this degree, the caster must be quite skilled.”
“Yes, that would be best.”
“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea too.”
Sera spoke up for the first time.
She looked as if she desperately hoped for exactly that.
“I will go ask the caravan master if we can change the route a little. Take your time eating.”
Once Gerik left, I asked quietly.
“Do you think they are chasing you, Sera?”
“…I don’t know.”
Sera’s eyes glistened with tears.
Last night I had calmed her down and briefly heard her story.
She had picked up a magic tome by chance and decided to study it, only to discover unexpected talent and progress rapidly.
The magic she learned turned out to be identical to that of the Pantheon’s dark mages.
After being chased relentlessly by the empire until she was exhausted, she had joined the Pantheon, only to realize they were even worse and flee again.
I had asked whether they might not bother chasing her.
She answered that the bow was an artifact she received there.
When I suggested she could simply discard it, she explained that it was a bow that chose its owner, so even if she threw it away, it would be beside her head when she woke up. That was why the Pantheon kept obsessing over it.
I guessed it was a returning bow, perhaps made from a World Tree branch.
She had been shocked that I knew.
It was an extremely valuable item.
Thus Sera was constantly on the run.
But in this vast world, without cell phones or the internet, how could they pinpoint one person?
Moreover, as Pantheon dark mages, they could not exactly post wanted notices everywhere.
The bow could change into any appearance Sera desired, so they could not identify it by sight either.
Therefore the chance of Sera being caught was extremely low, and even if they were tracking her, they would not give up.
They could not part with her until they had researched the World Tree branch bow.
“Do not worry. I will not give up on you, Sera.”
“R-really…?”
“Of course. We are friends.”
“Yeah… friends. Heh, thank you. Really…”
*****
“Sera, unfortunately it seems this is as far as we go.”
“You said you wouldn’t abandon me! You said we’re friends! I trusted you!”
“Take the bow with you. I will research it next time. I still have many years ahead of me.”
“Are you saying I don’t?! No! Don’t abandon me! Don’t abandon me!”
A mid-sized monster legion and Death Knights were a bit much, weren’t they.