The Herb Devotee
Yaaawn.
I woke up a little earlier than usual today. Thanks to that, I got to greet the morning in high spirits while gazing at Lucia's sleeping face.
Ordinarily, an extra-large helping of happiness would have washed over me right about now, but another thought beat it to the punch.
Way too much stuff happened.
Yesterday had been eventful, to put it mildly, and the things weighing on my mind were anything but few.
Veronica. And the plaza explosion.
Okay, that's two.
Anyway. After mulling it over last night, I'd decided Veronica probably wasn't worth worrying about.
So I got caught hiding in the dormitory. What of it?
Sneaking into a dorm wasn't exactly a capital offense. Besides, I'd taken down an elite monster on top of it—any punishment would've been a slap on the wrist.
The plaza explosion, on the other hand, gnawed at me a little.
Not that anyone's going to find out.
It wasn't guilt, exactly. It was the fact that I'd set out to make aluminum out of hydrogen, and what actually came out of the process was helium. Turns out you just can't make aluminum from hydrogen in the first place.
I literally just conducted a nuclear experiment. That's it.
If the recipe doesn't work, someone could've told me beforehand. Alchemy magic had decided to fire off on its own, and I'd nearly had a disaster on my hands.
…Hmm.
But come to think of it, wasn't that actually kind of a good thing?
Setting aside the few minutes of prep time, I'd effectively acquired one devastatingly powerful single-shot attack.
I should try it out sometime.
Vaporizing enemies with nuclear fusion—I deserved to be called a true Grand Sorceress for this one.
Just as I was drifting deeper into that delightful fantasy—
"…Master, you were already awake."
Lucia, half-awake, whispered to me.
[Yep. Just woke up.]
Her blue eyes fixed on me and me alone. There was no emotion in them at all, as if her feelings had been deliberately set aside.
Beautiful.
What's more, Lucia fresh out of bed carried a faint undertone of contempt on her face. This was one of the rare chances to experience Lucia ver. Killing Intent up close—something most people never got to see.
What a luxurious life I lead.
Every single day since I'd possessed this body had been a joy.
"…Haaah."
Lucia finally gathered herself and sat up. "I'll go wash up."
She climbed out of bed and headed for the bathroom. While she washed her face and brushed her teeth, I finished writing my mental diary.
An extremely satisfying life.
I wake up and there's Lucia. I ride on her shoulder as she heads to the lecture hall. Once class starts, I get to watch her focused expression. When break comes, I explain whatever she didn't understand as we walk to the next lecture.
After sitting through every class that way, magic training begins.
Your exams are in two weeks, you know.
Lately she'd been practicing until one in the morning. I'd never even studied for exams back on Earth, but here was Lucia—whose practice load was already murderous—pushing it even further. It brought tears to my eyes.
Meanwhile Chloe goes to bed at ten…!
In the original story, unless an event interfered, Chloe would collapse asleep at ten o'clock no matter what. I figured that held true in this world too.
The sheer talent-freak.
"Master. I'm going to change now."
Lost in thought, I looked up to find Lucia out of the bathroom and pulling her uniform from the wardrobe.
[Okay.]
I turned myself toward the wall. The rustle of changing clothes drifted over from behind me, but honestly, I felt nothing.
Lucia is a cultural treasure.
Cultural treasures are meant to be protected. Sure, the occasional dark thought crossed my mind, but that was nothing but a joke. There was no way I'd actually want to watch a seventeen-year-old silver-haired Academy beauty change her clothes.
I mean, obviously not. Right?
…Whoa.
I took a slow breath to steady myself, then—deciding this path led nowhere—cast Clairvoyance. A view of the scenery would do me good.
The first thing that came into focus was a long, reaching tree branch. Pushing further out, I caught people walking along a path.
Huh, it's kind of like a telescope?
The view kept zooming in. Aside from requiring absurd levels of concentration, it was a pretty handy spell.
Let's go farther.
Stretching on and on, I soon found myself looking down at the Central Plaza. The white bricks paving the ground were beautiful—expensive, I'd heard.
So how much was the tile I blew up yesterday?
Hmm. My brain auto-censored that useless line of thought.
Okay, time to wrap this up.
I was just about to release the spell when a girl emerged from the forest. Her uniform was caked with dirt as if she'd been wandering all night, and she was hauling a strange sack along with her.
Had she spent the whole night in the woods?
But something about her looks familiar.
I turned it over in my head, and then it clicked.
The Herb Devotee.
Whether students were being slaughtered, monsters roamed free, or criminal organizations stormed the gates, she was the madwoman who could always be found in the forest, digging up herbs.
And she's a famous elixirist, too.
Apart from the ones hidden across the map, she was the only source of elixirs in the entire game.
You had to grind her affection all the way up just to get a single one.
And even then, her favorability ran on no logic whatsoever. Give her a gift because you liked her? Minus three. Get angry and treat her like garbage? Sometimes plus eight.
It's just pure luck.
She'd been a considerable source of stress in the original story, but none of that concerned me anymore.
Lucia couldn't grind affection routes to save her life anyway. We were abandoning elixirs without ceremony.
"Master. I'm dressed."
As my long musings drew to a close, Lucia spoke right on cue.
[Skipping breakfast again today?]
"Yes. I haven't been hungry lately."
[All right.]
I hopped straight onto Lucia's shoulder. Today, too, would be an ordinary day.
Elixirs are the god of early-game growth. The sooner you drink one, the greater the boost to your development. That's why, in the original story, you'd grind the Herb Devotee's affection first and secure an elixir for the early game.
What kind of affection grind is that.
Spare me the nonsense. Let's just train.
Caw. Caw.
Night in the forest, where the sparrow's natural predator—the crow—let out its roar.
After classes ended, we were training as usual.
[Let's begin.]
Lucia looked toward me from about ten meters away. Grass and trees stood between us, blurring the line of sight.
"…Here I go."
With Lucia's voice, blue mana crackled to life.
BOOM!
The incoming mana bullet slammed into a shield a few centimeters thick and was stopped cold.
BOOM! BOOM!
Roughly six mana bullets per second came flying in from every direction. I threw up a small shield again and blocked them all.
[You can afford to lower the power a bit. Mana bullets are for keeping the enemy at bay.]
Combat between mages is tedious and pedantic. You fire a mana bullet. The opponent fires one back. Both block with defensive magic.
Whichever side fails to block first, loses.
Such an epic battle!
Amazingly, that was the whole fight. Flashy attack magic is something you only get away with in party battles where warriors hold the front line. In a duel or close-quarters combat, a mage is nothing more than a mana-bullet spammer.
[Your attack pattern's gotten pretty monotonous. Keep thinking about where each mana bullet goes.]
BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Between offering feedback and drifting through stray thoughts, I kept blocking—and before I knew it, Lucia was gasping for air.
"Haa… haa…"
[Should we take a break?]
At my question, Lucia hid her exhaustion and shook her head.
"…No. I can keep… going."
She unfolded her mana again.
This was how every evening had gone lately.
It's already eleven.
If she trained until dawn and came straight back, she wouldn't even fall asleep right away. She had assignments to chip away at, too—she probably wasn't getting four hours of sleep a day.
…I suppose she knows how to manage herself.
Stopping her training to make her rest felt like overstepping. Lucia had always been like this, even in the original story, and nothing looked outright wrong to my eyes. All I could do was trust that she'd pace herself.
Just as I was untangling that complicated knot of feelings—
Viiiiiin.
Mana trembled in the distance.
What's that?
I sensed it while deflecting Lucia's mana bullets.
It's coming in a straight line toward us.
Unlike the blonde noble delinquent we'd met before, this one was running directly at us—and fast, at that. Forty kilometers per hour, maybe?
Clairvoyance.
Roughly one kilometer out. We still had time, so I decided to scout from afar. About ten seconds of concentration, and I pierced through the dark—
"KYAAAAAH!"
A golden-haired, red-eyed girl—the Herb Devotee—was being chased by a bear four times her size.
Just another Tuesday, then.
She was always getting chased by wild animals in the original story too, yet she'd never died once. I almost wrote it off as nothing special, but…
[…Lucia, there's a moving target over there. Want to try it out?]
It looked like decent training material.
TATATAT!
Lucia sprinted through the forest at high speed. She hadn't even been running for thirty seconds when she felt the mana and called out.
"I can feel it now too. The distance is… fifty meters?"
"KYAAAAAAAH!"
The screaming, until now a distant thing, grew sharp and clear. Lucia unfolded her mana, and the moment the scream drew right up to them—
KUWOOOONG!
She fired a mana bullet at the brown creature visible beyond the underbrush.
"HURGH!"
The startled Herb Devotee tumbled to the ground, then crawled through the dirt to Lucia's side, filthy from head to toe.
"…"
The giant bear stared at us from a distance. Judging by its eyes alone, it seemed to have no will to fight—but—
[It's coming.]
The beast charged, fast. As if it had been waiting for this, Lucia spread her shield.
The shield blocked the bear's view. A momentary opening.
Lucia fired her mana bullet.
KWAANG!
Whether from the shock or not, the bear's charge faltered. In that gap, Lucia widened the distance and prepared a powerful spell.
A formula unfolded before her, mana gathering to form an enormous azure sphere.
"…Boom."
Along with Lucia's adorable murmur—
KWAAAAAANG!
—the blast struck the bear dead in the head. Lucia kept her distance while preparing a follow-up spell, but—
[It's dead.]
As the sand and dust kicked up by the explosion settled, a headless bear carcass came into view. It had ended more anticlimactically than I'd expected.
So it was weak, huh.
Was it the Clairvoyance? I must have miscalculated its combat strength. I'd assumed it would be similar to the tiger we'd caught before, but this fell far short of that. A flicker of disappointment rose in me—
"Lucia, isn't it? Right?"
The Herb Devotee approached, her red eyes gleaming.
"…"
"Um… thank you for saving me. If it's no trouble, I'd love to treat you to a meal sometime—"
Lucia ignored her entirely and started walking away.
If the girl had been an ordinary person, that would have been the end of it—gone their separate ways. But—
"Ah…!"
Something was off about her. As if her face were… flushing red…
"Ahh, thank you so much…! I've always wanted to be ignored in person like this, and you made my dream come true…!"
The Herb Devotee gushed, thoroughly worked up.
Is she insane?
Lucia must have sensed something wrong too, because she stopped mid-stride.
"I'm Ray. Ernel Ray! And…"
She smiled and clasped Lucia's hand in both of hers.
"I know it's a bit much to say when we've just met, but I've fallen for you…! Could you possibly date me…? No, that would be asking too much, so… could you at least curse at me a little…?"
"?"
"Ah, of course, I'm not just asking out of nowhere…! I-I'm confident in my elixirs, so I'm sure I'd be useful to you, Miss Lucia. So just once—just once—couldn't you say something cruel to me…?"
A brief silence fell.
And then—
"…Disgusting."
Genuine, heartfelt contempt settled across Lucia's face as she murmured the words under her breath.