Chapter 45: The Doll
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 45: The Doll
I finished my daily training and returned to the cabin. For some reason, my teacher, who came out to greet me every day, was nowhere in sight.
I’d told her not to bother when she came to greet me, but now that she wasn't here, it felt empty. The duality of human nature was just this contradictory.
“Teacher?”
Entering the cabin, I quickly washed my face and knocked on my teacher's door. I thought I heard some mumbling from inside, so I opened the door and went in.
The moment I stepped inside, I realized the floor was covered in some kind of unknown, sand-like substance. Looking closer, I saw it wasn't sand, but a pile of ash.
“What is all this…? Did you burn something in your room?”
“Nooo… Yohan, I'm sorry… I think I'll skip breakfast today…”
“What on earth were you doing all night…?”
“Hehe, it's a seeecret-.”
With that, my teacher passed out. As I studied her face for a moment, I noticed the dark circles under her eyes.
I couldn't believe a witch could end up in this state overnight, but I dismissed it as nothing important and went to the storage shed to get a broom and dustpan.
After neatly cleaning up the ash covering the floor, I sprinkled it over the vegetable garden. I remembered hearing on YouTube that spreading ash from something burnt on a field helps crops grow well.
Having dealt with the ash, I skipped breakfast and thought about what to do.
“Alright—Teacher's asleep… and Margaret is probably sleeping too—so maybe I'll go a little farther today.”
I looked toward the area behind the cabin. The place my teacher always insisted was dangerous and that I should never go to—the place where I was first summoned when I fell into this world.
A girl, fiddling with a doll, realized the link connecting her to it had been severed. She immediately began to trace the broken connection back to its source.
The moment she discovered that the owner of the severed line was a vampire—a monster not even a witch could kill easily—the girl's lips curled into a wide, deep smile.
"How did he end up dead? Did he run into a witch with a bad matchup? Maybe he was attacked by a human army!
That's right, Master. That bat-fellow is an idiot, so it's totally possible!
Hey! Eli! What did I say about bad-mouthing your friends? If you keep it up, you'll be in trouble, you know!?
S-sorry, Master…."
The girl let her imagination run wild, talking to the doll on her hand. She was curious about what had happened to the vampire, but there was no need to take the risk of checking in person.
After all, she possessed a magic that made it unnecessary. Whoosh. Tossing aside the polar bear-shaped doll she had just been talking to, the girl confirmed that it had become a polar bear standing on its hind legs, and then gave a simple command.
“Now, go and see what happened there.”
The doll immediately moved according to her will.
High.
High, and far.
Only after I started climbing did I realize just how difficult a mountain was to ascend.
I don't remember it being this hard on the way down—but whatever kind of damn mountain this is, my stamina drains away every time I try to climb it.
‘No, did I catch some kind of sickness…?’
I wondered if I'd gotten something like altitude sickness, but the possibility was extremely low. The mountain was high, but not that high, and I hadn't even been climbing for thirty minutes.
So, it was wise to assume there was another reason why climbing this mountain was so difficult. That there was something on this mountain that absorbed stamina or magic power.
However, considering my teacher hadn't bothered to eliminate that cause, it was safe to assume there was no way for me to find and remove it either.
Just as I was thinking I should stop wasting my energy and head back down, I had the incredibly bad luck of misstepping and falling.
“Ugh-!”
The slope was steeper than I'd thought, so I couldn't react at all as I tumbled down toward the ground.
Instructor Ludwig had never taught any techniques for how to handle tumbling down a mountain, so all I could do was cover my head and try my best to keep it from getting injured.
As I tumbled for what felt like an eternity, a powerful impact on my back forced the air from my lungs.
“Gah!”
Only then did my rolling body come to a stop, and I realized I had slammed into a huge tree.
As I shakily got to my feet, my entire body began to ache, likely from tumbling down the slope.
Yeah, something's broken. I could feel it instinctively.
‘I'm so fucked…’
I was certain I'd get an earful if my teacher found out. After all, if I'd gone to a place she told me not to, without telling her, and came back injured, I'd react the same way.
But it wasn't like I could just not tell her. I let out a frustrated sigh and looked around.
As I tried to head back to the cabin, I finally noticed a problem.
“Where am I?”
Was it because I'd fallen from somewhere around the middle of the mountain? I had no idea where the cabin was.
I could figure out my current location using the Boy Scout survival skills I learned as a kid. If I calculated the position of the sun I saw at the cabin before coming here, the sun's position now, the angle of the sun and the mountain, and so on…….
I was now either to the left of the cabin or to the right.
‘I'm really fucked.’
I didn't think my teacher would be unable to find me. I was wearing the necklace she'd made for me, and it was enchanted with her own magic.
It wouldn't be too difficult for her to find my location by sensing her magic, and she had Margaret, who could use spatial movement, by her side. As soon as they realized I was gone, they could come rescue me in an instant.
Yes, that was the problem.
‘There are at least… four hours until lunch…’
My teacher had fallen asleep, complaining of fatigue for some reason.
She'd asked me not to wake her until lunchtime at the earliest.
I'd left the cabin without telling Margaret where I was going. And there was no way she, under a curse that made her invisible to others, could wake my teacher.
I have to survive in these treacherous mountains for four hours.
In this perilous place, where I have no idea what kind of monsters might be lurking.
“Fuck.”
I'm stranded.
Help me.
Smack-!
After some time had passed, a composed Yohan slapped himself across the face and regained his senses.
In an extreme situation like this, panic was absolutely forbidden. Hadn't the famous Bear Grylls said it himself? Panic and anxiety are emotions that eat away at you.
‘That's right, who am I? An earthling who fell into another world with a cheat. A modern genius who taught a witch atomic theory!!’
After this self-hypnosis, Yohan moved forward confidently, yet cautiously. If he saw any tracks on the ground, like footprints or droppings, he would make a wide detour around them.
Whether it was thanks to his caution or the necklace Evangeline had made for him, he hadn't encountered a single monster yet.
‘Which is all the more reason to be careful…’
Evangeline's necklace was an item that gave off a threatening aura to make monsters avoid it; it wasn't an item that prevented him from meeting them altogether.
In fact, back when Evangeline blew away part of the forest with a nuclear explosion, the monsters, with less food available, had even attacked Yohan.
That's why he had to be even more careful. If a monster approached him despite the necklace, it meant that monster was confident in its abilities—a monster that could tear someone like Yohan to shreds with ease.
‘Please don't let me run into anything, please don't…’
As if to betray his prayers, Yohan heard a rustling sound nearby and cautiously felt for the hilt of the weapon he'd brought.
If he couldn't avoid it, he had to fight. And naturally, a surprise attack the moment it revealed itself would be the most effective.
However, the other party seemed to have realized that Yohan had noticed its presence, as it stopped advancing and began to bide its time.
After a long standoff, the other side made the first move.
“Freeze—!!”
“Huh? Wh-what?”
“Drop your weapon! Surrender! My comrades have you surrounded!”
Yohan was so stunned by the figures who emerged from the bushes that he couldn't move.
He wasn't scared by the bows in their hands. Though it was true he had frozen stiff at their appearance.
‘……Elves?’
Yohan's gaze went to their long ears. Then back to their faces.
Faces so beautiful that the long ears didn't look strange at all. They were the faces of elves, commonly revered as the people of the forest, a race of beauty.
Standing there dumbfounded, Yohan was quickly subdued by the approaching elves. After restraining him, they dragged him to their village.
“Get in!”
Slam-!
Thrown into the prison cell, I rolled across the floor a few times before glaring fiercely at the elf bastard who had tossed me in.
But the elf, as if unafraid of a bound and imprisoned human, simply ignored my gaze and left the cell.
Carefully shifting into a sitting position, I thought back on the elves I had just met.
‘Elves… they were real. But Teacher said they didn't exist…’
In this world, other races like elves or dwarves didn't exist. There were beasts that grew larger and stronger from magic power, and witches who wielded magic. But there were no non-human races.
And just when I was thinking that, I met elves.
‘They weren't fake. There's no way that many elves could all be fake…’
On the way to the prison, I saw a truly countless number of elves. At least several hundred of them.
They couldn't all be fake. If they were, there would have been some sign of it, but there wasn't.
But if they were real, that would make my teacher's claim that other races didn't exist a lie, and I didn't want to doubt my teacher.
‘And it's not like they're a race that just suddenly appeared in the last few hundred years…’
As my questions piled up, the cell door opened again. The same elf who had thrown me in here pulled me to my feet and started dragging me somewhere by the rope.
As I was dragged along like a cow heading to the slaughterhouse, I looked at the elf pulling me.
“Excuse me, where are we going?”
“Be quiet.”
“Hey, if someone asks a question, you should at least answer…”
“Open your mouth one more time without permission, and I'll stab you with this.”
The elf said, lightly raising the spear in his hand. No matter how much I enhanced my body with magic power, getting stabbed by a spear would hurt. It would do more than hurt; I could die.
Following the elf's advice, I kept my mouth shut and walked slowly. After walking for some time, the elf untied my bonds and pushed me into a building.
“Village Chief, I've brought him.”
“Ah, you've arrived?”
Inside sat an elf lady who looked extremely benevolent. She appeared to be in her early thirties, with the unfading beauty characteristic of an elf, and a voluptuous body to match.
She was the type of elf whose looks would have had many people on Earth crying ‘Mommy—’ as they rushed toward her. She gestured for me to sit in the chair in front of her.
“Here, please have a seat.”
“Yes…”
“You may leave us for a moment.”
“Understood, Village Chief. You, if you try anything funny with the Chief… I won't let you get away with it.”
After glancing at the elf as he left with that warning, I turned my gaze to the mommy elf sitting before me.
It was to the point where I thought if I had met this elf first instead of my teacher, I'd probably be in her arms right now, wailing 'Mommy, Mommy'.
“A pleasure to meet you. I am the one in charge of this village, its chief.”
“……I'm Yohan.”
“You're a human, correct?”
“Yes.”
“This is our first time seeing a human, so we're not quite sure how we should treat you.”
The mommy elf stroked her cheek as she spoke about my treatment. It was a relief she didn't just say they were going to execute me.
Just as I was thinking that, the mommy elf extended her hand toward me and spoke lightly.
“So… I'll have to test you.”
“……A test?”
“Yes, I have a special magic—an ability that lets me know whether someone will bring harm to the village.”
“And, how do you know if they'll bring harm or not…?”
“When I hold their hand, I can see into their heart. If they are good, I see nothing, but if there is a problem, the form of a demon appears.”
Hearing that, I nodded lightly and held out my hand. With a magic like that, there was no reason for me to get caught.
And why would I? I had Magic Nullification.
If she saw the form of an angel for a good person, it might be a different story, but she sees nothing? In that case, all I had to do was secretly nullify the magic.
“Here, go ahead and check.”
“……You're very bold.”
“That's because I have no ill intentions.”
The moment she took my outstretched hand with a grin, I activated my magic.
And in that instant, the mommy elf's body went poof-! and exploded, leaving behind a puff of white smoke.
“……Huh?”
Mommy?