Heritage (3)

Found it!!

Where my light fell, a cross no longer than a little finger had been carved in shallow relief into the cave floor. It sat precisely at the seam where wall met stone, hidden so cunningly that no one would ever have found it without knowing exactly where to look.

My hands trembling, I drew the bottle of Holy Water from inside my coat and poured it carefully over the cross.

A deep, grinding rumble rolled through the cavern.

The instant the droplets touched the carving, a brilliant light bloomed from the cross. Then the section of floor into which it had been cut surged upward in the shape of a great square.

In the game, this cache had required an infusion of holy power to open. I had gambled that Holy Water, steeped as it was in that same power, might serve as a substitute — and fortunately, my guess had been right.

Beneath the risen slab lay a hollow. I bent to look inside and found two large wooden chests waiting in the dark.

I wrestled my hammering heart into something resembling calm and hauled the chests out into the open. Then, with painstaking care, I lifted the lid of the first.

Inside lay a tunic of purest white, lavishly embroidered in gold thread; a stone staff whose head had been shaped into a cross; and a rosary from which hung a small, finely carved crucifix.

"They're here... they really were here..."

At a glance, they might have passed for an ordinary priest's vestments and the usual tools of the faith. I knew better. I knew exactly what I had found.

These were the sacred relics once wielded by the First Saintess of the First Hero's Party — the woman who, in an age long past, had struck down the Great Demon.

"Haha..."

The moment I confirmed what lay inside the chest, a hollow laugh escaped me.

They had really been here.

Even when I had learned that a mountain called Palana truly existed in the Demon Realm — even when I had found the cave on its slope, even when I had stepped inside and discovered the very traces I remembered from the game — I had still only half believed. But with the proof sitting in front of me like this, there was nothing left to doubt.

Which meant the contents of the other chest would be the items I knew as well. And the odds that every other hidden cache, scattered across every other location, sat in exactly the same place as in the game had just become very, very high.

I turned my gaze back to the chest.

The vestments, the staff, and the rosary each carried a name of their own in the lore — every one of them a precious sacred relic. What had those names been? The vestments were the Angel's Holy Shroud, the staff was the Staff of Purity, and the rosary was... I couldn't remember.

In any case, these relics were never mentioned in the original novel. Like the great majority of such things, they appeared only in the game — tools, if I recalled correctly, for supplying the lore the original work had never bothered to explain.

And the fact that they existed here at all meant I could take it as given: this world was a blend of the novel I knew and the game built from it.

The Angel's Holy Shroud had little to recommend it beyond the title of being a relic of the First Saintess, and the rosary, as I remembered it, hadn't come with any particularly impressive effects either. The Staff of Purity, however, had a purpose that was anything but vague.

If I had this — and if its effect was the same as I remembered — then even if my relations with the demonkin collapsed and the worst possible moment arrived, I would have nothing to fear.

I decided to set the staff aside for a later day, and to put the vestments and the rosary to uses befitting their names.

I eased the first chest carefully to one side and turned my attention to the second. If the items inside were the same as I remembered, this one might actually prove more useful to me than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the first.

The lid came ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠free with a rattle. Inside, a considerable variety of items lay jumbled together — and from the look of them, these too were exactly the ones I knew.

I began lifting them out one by one, sorting as I went.

"This is a Fairy's Elixir. This one too. And this... glasses? This looks like a ring, though I haven't the faintest idea what it's called. Another elixir. What was this one again? Some kind of tome... ah, blue cover — that's the Tome of Amplified Intelligence. Then this red one must be the Tome of Strength. And this... the Secret Arts of Advanced Massage? They even stuffed this in here..."

Of everything in the chest, the Fairy's Elixirs were the most numerous. In the lore, they were a panacea among panaceas, a medicine whose method of manufacture could no longer be found anywhere in the world. In the game, too, there had been no way to obtain even one more bottle beyond the three stored here.

Besides the elixirs, the chest held an assortment of tomes that had been used in the game to raise one's attributes, a few minor weapons such as daggers, two or three items whose purpose I couldn't recall, and a pair of glasses and a ring. I had never expected even the massage manual — something that had always felt like a joke tossed in for flavor — to be sitting here intact.

The truth was, a haul like this was never going to come again. The hidden items scattered across the Western Continent came one to a location as a rule, two at the most. But in the game, most of the Demon Realm beyond the opening stretch had never been implemented, and so every item allocated to it had been dumped in this one place: Palana.

I hadn't given it a second thought at the time. I never imagined it would come to my aid like this. If I had known, I would have memorized the item names a lot more carefully.

I could dredge up the names of the elixirs and a tome or two well enough, but the rest — the glasses, the ring, and whatever else — were a blank. Names and functions alike refused to surface.

I decided to pocket them for now, and to cut down on bulk I would acquire the tomes here and now. I picked one up and opened it to a random page. Light bloomed from the letters, and a moment later the book crumbled, dissolving into dust that vanished on the air.

I worked through the others the same way, one after another. I had my doubts about what earthly use a massage manual would be, but since it had turned up, I might as well learn it. If I never found a use for it, I could always give Father a massage.

And yet, even after absorbing all three tomes from the chest, I couldn't say I felt noticeably better anywhere. The massage manual I could forgive — but after taking in tomes of intelligence and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠strength, something ought to have changed.

Don't tell me they were so weak the difference didn't even register.

Once the tomes were gone, the second chest had shrunk to half its former volume. And at the end of my gaze, one last item waited.

A long glass bottle stood filled with a liquid I couldn't identify, and inside it a pair of eyeballs drifted, suspended. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The long optic nerves still dangled from the backs of them, compounding the grotesquerie. It was an item of thoroughly unpleasant and unidentifiable appearance — but there was one mercy. I still remembered what it was for.

I should use this now too... right?

Those bizarre-looking eyeballs had been an item called the Eye of Rahesia in the game. A handful of minor effects came attached to it — night vision, enhanced dynamic visual acuity, a wider field of view, that sort of thing. But if the item had one effect that towered over the rest, it was this: it was the only object in existence that could artificially awaken the Spirit Eyes, granting the power to make contact with spirits.

In truth, the Eye of Rahesia had not been a particularly useful item in the game. Brighter night vision and sharper dynamic acuity were nothing you could actually feel through a screen, and although the lore claimed you could make contact with spirits, spirits themselves had never been implemented.

Reality, however, was a different story. Even the minor effects would each be a considerable help — and above all, the power to speak directly with spirits was vanishingly rare in this empire.

A child with the aptitude of a spirit mage was born maybe once in several decades, if that. Their very existence was scarce, and because they could borrow the power of spirits to wield magic of multiple elements more powerfully and more quickly, they were treated as treasures wherever they went. Perhaps because that made for such an appealing backdrop, the protagonist's party even included a girl who possessed a spirit mage's gift. She was an Academy student as well. I wondered if she had awakened her power by now.

All right. I'll use it.

After turning it over for a long while, I made up my mind. There wasn't much to agonize over, honestly. The thing was practically an easter egg; my using it wouldn't so much as brush the story. And more than that, the ability to make contact with spirits was an enormous advantage — one that could more than cover for my meager talent.

But the moment I actually resolved to use it, I realized there was a problem I hadn't considered at all.

How did you use this thing, again?

I had never equipped it in the game, and unlike the tomes, it didn't activate just by being held. After wrestling with it for some time, I steeled myself and twisted the round stopper of the glass bottle.

The lid came off with a soft pop. I slipped my fingers into the mouth of the bottle and drew out both eyeballs.

It may have been my imagination, but the eyes resting on my palm seemed to meet my gaze. I held a brief staring contest with them. Then I squeezed my own eyes shut and swallowed both of them whole, one after the other.

"Nothing feels different...? Ha, so that wasn't the way... should I throw them back up while I still—?!"

No matter how long I waited, nothing in my body changed. I was just beginning to wonder if I had chosen the wrong method when, without the slightest warning, an enormous, splitting agony crashed over me.

Ghk—ghk—GAAAAAHHH!!

The pain in my eyes arrived so suddenly I screamed loud enough to shake the mountain and crumpled to the cave floor. It was as if someone were pressing a white-hot iron into my sockets — a hideous agony that could fairly have been called torture.

Ghk, ghhh... ghhhkkk...

I had been moaning like that for some time when something struck the stone with a dull thud, then rolled. All at once my vision inverted into a field of perfect black. There was nothing left for my eyes to hold.

Unable to endure the pain that kept crashing over me, I collapsed. The last thing I faintly felt was the cold of the rock against my cheek — and then I let go of consciousness altogether.