8. Curse Plague (3)
8. Curse Plague (3)
The night road leading to the village was dark.
The lights spilling from the buildings in the distance were bright enough, but they draped the trees' shadows heavily across the path.
Wonderstein switched the lantern to his other hand and held it low to light Maya's steps.
His own tissue hardness was at the level of plate armor—a stumble or a knock against something wouldn't leave so much as a scratch on him. She was not so fortunate.
Genius though she was, her frame was lean and more delicate than most girls her age.
Her snow-white skin looked as though a single brush of sand might leave a mark.
In the game, she would stop and pant for breath after moving continuously for too long, or sometimes pitch forward and face-plant. Watching her struggle to keep steady on nothing more than a carriage ride had hardened Wonderstein's bias: Maya equaled frail.
But the game had exaggerated—the knight and the thief both had monstrous physical specs, so her relative weakness had been played up for contrast. She was hardly frail. Her magical training had made her far more durable than she looked. The person standing beside her for comparison was Ella, a hand-to-hand combatant who had almost no equal among her peers. That made Maya appear clumsy.
The lantern he held must have been too bright for her. She winced faintly, then spoke with a chill in her voice.
"I don't need that. Put it away."
A sphere of light drifted up from her hand.
Illusion Magic was the art of manipulating particles of light. Conjuring a substitute for a lantern was as easy for her as breathing.
She summoned a few more of the spheres and strode forward.
Wonderstein stood dumbly in place for a moment, then readjusted the lantern and followed after her.
An awkward silence hung between them.
Inwardly, Maya replayed her own actions.
The frigid tone.
The indifferent expression.
The brusque dismissal.
Had she once again strayed outside the bounds of "normal" and been unspeakably rude?
Had it been anyone else, she wouldn't have worried at all.
She was long accustomed to being stared at as an oddity. Let people chatter—she would simply ignore them and go on her way.
But she didn't want Wonderstein to look at her that way.
If the man who always smiled at her so warmly ever regarded her with disappointment or irritation—
- Genius, is she? Head full of nothing but air.
- Insolent wretch with no respect for her betters.
- I can't stand the sight of her.
Wonderstein's face superimposed itself onto the faces of everyone who had ever sneered at her.
Her heart clenched sharply.
That would be...
That would be very hard to bear.
"I wasn't trying to ignore you, Troupe Leader."
She stopped walking and turned back to face him.
"If I upset you, I'm sorry."
A small smile settled on Wonderstein's lips.
"Did I look angry to you?"
His manner was milder than she had expected. A flicker of relief crossed her face.
"Not exactly, but... whenever I act like that, other people call me every name they can think of behind my back..."
He let out a quiet laugh.
The fact that she was apologizing—that she was hesitating at all—struck him as a complete novelty.
In the game, she had been the very incarnation of going her own way.
She said whatever she wanted regardless of mood or context, and almost never expressed anything of herself. Unless you used the "express emotion" command, you could barely observe any change in her expression.
Ah—there was one exception.
In TT1, once the player defeated Wonderstein, she had worn an expression of immense relief. That was only natural, of course; they'd just felled the final boss after a grueling fight.
But the Wonderstein who had watched all of that unfold couldn't see the girl in front of him as discourteous. If anything, she struck him as almost endearing.
"I'm well aware, Miss Maya, that you struggle with ordinary emotional expression. You don't need to worry on that account."
He offered her a reassuring smile.
Looking at that smile...
Maya knew, with something deeper than instinct.
There wasn't the faintest lie in his words.
He meant it. He truly accepted her.
What a strange person.
How long had he even known her?
What did he actually know about her?
How could he understand her as if he'd been watching her for years?
Every teacher who had ever been dazzled by her talent had eventually grown sick of her personality and left. Even the gentlest among them had ended things with, "I find this too hard to endure."
Yet here he was, brushing off being disrespected as though it were nothing. When the Deputy Leader acted rudely, when the troupe members avoided him—he kept smiling and nodded as if he understood.
Strange person.
Her reason labeled him that.
But another voice, a quiet corner of her heart, told her something else.
She had found a much better teacher than she'd first believed.
When they resumed walking, the conversation between them flowed far more easily than before.
"When I read that article today, I felt relieved."
"Article?"
"The one that called my illusions a mess."
Wonderstein's smile turned a little rueful.
Ella had set the Christian Guide aside so the troupe members wouldn't be hurt by it—but it seemed Maya had already gotten her hands on it.
"Why would you be relieved by that?"
"If I'd declared myself your pupil, it would have damaged your reputation. People would have mocked you for teaching that level of illusion and calling it a new method. The moment I read the article, I was glad we hadn't made it public."
What a conscientious child.
He felt a swell of fondness—and at the same time, a flare of indignation. What had the Silver Screen Circus been doing, neglecting her to the point that she would have turned cold and socially shut-down within two years?
"Don't take that article too much to heart. Miss Ella told you, didn't she—that publication is nothing but a complaint box. And besides, Miss Maya, you channeled over eighty percent of your magic power into printing those sketches, didn't you?"
He did his best to cheer her up.
Her joining the circus had been something of an accident, but to him, she was an incredibly welcome presence.
With the exception of Ella, all of his original troupe members were boss monsters he, in his former life as a player, had personally killed dozens of times. The moment he saw their faces, memories of the massacres they had committed in the game—and of himself hunting them down—surfaced. He couldn't help but feel uneasy. It had made it difficult, early on after taking over this body, to deal with them with an open heart.
Maya, by contrast, was one of the protagonists he had guided through the entire Tril Trillo series. She wasn't as emotionally vivid a character as the knight or the thief, but in a world where everyone else was losing their minds, the protagonists were special.
And most of all, she was the only member of the troupe toward whom he felt no burden of guilt. It was impossible not to feel more at ease around her.
"Can't my sketchbook be fixed?"
"Not yet. But you never know. Some method might present itself someday. Be patient."
Maya studied his face, then spoke with uncharacteristic caution.
"...What price did you pay to obtain that magic tool?"
"Price? It was nothing special."
His dismissive tone made her expression shift into one of "I thought so."
He gave, and gave, and gave again, yet refused to breathe a word about what it had cost him.
Strange person.
She murmured the words inwardly one more time.
Walking on, they emerged from the forest before they knew it.
Terraced paddies and fields spread across the hillside. With no trees left to cast deep shadows, the view ahead was much clearer than before. They followed the path beside the fields and approached the palisade surrounding the village.
From the villagers' perspective, they were strangers arriving after sundown. No one expected a warm welcome. But the atmosphere was even more hostile than they'd anticipated.
Even at night, a palisade gate was usually left open or only loosely barred. Here, the gate was firmly shut, and the faces glimpsed atop the watchtower were rigid with tension. The men wore armor and carried swords—they looked like regular soldiers.
"Halt! Stop where you are!"
At the sentry's command, the two of them came to a stop a short distance from the palisade entrance.
They hadn't waited long before a middle-aged man in an officer's cloak climbed onto the wall. He looked the two of them over with weary eyes.
"I am Knight Ivanenko, temporarily responsible for this village's security. Who are you people?"
"We're a traveling circus passing through. We came to ask if we might stay somewhere near the village for the night."
Ivanenko shook his head firmly at Wonderstein's words.
"I'm sorry, but that's not possible."
"Why not?"
"For your own sake. If you stay here, you'll see things no one should. Sleep in the woods—leave at sunrise."
"What's happening here?"
Ivanenko seemed about to snap at him for asking so many questions, then let out a heavy sigh and spoke in a low voice.
"A plague has spread."
"A plague?"
"Yes. Damn it. They're bringing back ten more bodies to burn right now."
Only then did Wonderstein realize.
The glow he'd taken for village lights, the smoke he'd imagined was from evening cook fires—they were the glow and smoke of burning corpses.
"I've studied a bit of medicine. Might I be of any help?"
Ivanenko snorted.
"Medicine's not going to touch this. This is that abominable Curse Plague."
Wonderstein had been about to ask what the Curse Plague was, but the words caught in his throat. The name itself was spoken with the assumption that any competent person would know it. To ask would be the same as announcing, "I'm a quack who doesn't know a thing."
He chose a different question instead.
"Are you and your men all right?"
"We've been issued Milky Way. We can hold out for a week."
Curse Plague.
Milky Way.
The words felt familiar, as though he'd heard them somewhere before.
Then he remembered something Minova had once said.
- It's because of that medicine the Alchemy Guild developed—'Milky Way.' It was created as a cure for the Curse Plague, but it turned out to suppress tumors too, so they're using it.
The medicine Minova had been forced to use on his daughter, knowing it damaged her body but seeing no other way to suppress her illness—that medicine had originally been developed to treat the Curse Plague.
An illness of unknown nature.
Under ordinary circumstances, the right move was to turn around and leave.
But if he'd been planning to leave, he should have left much sooner.
The moment he heard Ivanenko name the disease, a quest window had activated.
* Sub Quest - Cure the Plague
: A plague has spread through the village. Save the people.
Completion Condition
: Rescue 200 plague-stricken individuals.
Success Reward
: None.
Failure Penalty
: [Devolut -200]
A quest that offered no reward but came loaded with a penalty. What was the point of that? He couldn't guess the system's intentions—but he couldn't back away now.
"Miss Maya, please return to the carriage."
"What about you, Troupe Leader?"
"I'm going to go inside and check on the people. Ah—don't worry. No illness can harm my body."
Maya shook her head firmly.
"I can't leave you here alone. I'll come with you."
"But..."
"It's all right. If I circulate magic power through my body, it produces an effect similar to Milky Way. I can resist Devolut."
He started to nod—then paused.
There was nothing unusual about her words. Her tone was the same brusque, indifferent one as always. But one word she'd used had snagged his attention.