Get-Rich-Quick Schemes Are Scary (2)
I had fallen into a trap in the ruins, but by some stroke of luck, I survived. Not that everything was fine—far from it—but at least I was alive.
There was the not-so-minor problem of having become a woman, but the golems and gargoyles that had been chasing me were gone, and that was enough to keep me breathing.
I checked every part of my body again, still unable to believe what had happened.
"This can't be real, right?"
I had no choice but to accept it. I had fallen into that damned trap, kept my life, and come out a woman.
"Son of a biiitch!!!"
The curse tore out of me on its own. If I hadn't gone chasing easy money—if I had never come to these ruins—? It was already done, but the regret came flooding in all the same.
"Shit. Shit…."
I sank to the ground, swearing under my breath as I took stock of myself again.
Looking properly now, my arms had shortened. So had my legs. I had lost height, and hair that never used to reach past my neck now fell to my shoulders.
I sat there in a daze, hollowed out, when the light from the crystal orb on the altar began to dim further. Watching it flicker as if it might go out any second set a fresh unease crawling through me.
On top of that, a chill was starting to wrap itself around my skin.
"I—I don't have time to sit here."
I needed to get out of these ruins. Fast.
First I checked the gear that had slipped loose on a body it no longer fit. Whether I could call it luck or not, tightening the straps let me get most of it back on.
I took up the only weapon I had left—my spear—and scanned the surroundings, every sense on edge. Was it the shorter limbs, the reduced height? Every movement felt alien. Walking was manageable somehow, but in a real fight the disconnect would be brutal.
"Damn it."
And all that muscle I had built through endless training—where had it gone? What a waste. How had I ended up with a body this soft?
All of it was that damned trap's fault. The more I took inventory of myself, the harder it became to hold back the rage rising in me.
Right. All of it—every last bit of it—was the trap's fault. I strode up to the altar.
If this thing had never existed—! I poured every scrap of fury into a spear strike against the crystal orb.
Contrary to every expectation, the orb shattered under the blow with pathetic ease.
"Hahaha! Serves you right!"
The light that had filled the plaza vanished with the orb, and the anger that had been boiling up drained away with it. Emptiness took its place. I stared blankly into the dark for a moment, then pulled myself together and looked around.
Having smashed the only light source in the clearing, I was left in near-total blackness. Still, once my eyes adjusted, I could make out shapes well enough.
On the far side of the chamber from the entrance I had come through, a stretch of stone wall had an odd look to it. Running my hands over it, I found a passage. It was the only way forward, so I advanced carefully—and the path simply continued, without a single trap.
"An emergency route, maybe?"
The layout looked similar to the way I had come, but there were no gargoyles or golems lining the walls.
Once I was sure it was safe, I kept moving down the corridor.
There had never been another option. Turn back the way I came? And if those vanished golems and gargoyles came pouring down on me again? Pressing forward, where at least there were no sentries, was the safer bet.
As I trudged on through the monotony, old memories surfaced.
Was it the changed body? Or the fact that I still couldn't accept what had happened?
Memories of the past….
The old days… well, only twelve years ago, if I was being honest….
I had been reborn into this world. I had been an ordinary university student, and I still had no idea why I had reincarnated into a fantasy world. I couldn't remember how I died.
Probably some kind of accident….
I realized I had been reborn when I was three. It just… surfaced, all at once. A strange feeling, that….
By the time the memories returned, I was already growing up as the child of a small village's headman.
At first I thought I really was the headman's child. It took a long while before I understood that wasn't true….
I had been abandoned. A child of unknown origin, left by someone, somewhere—and apparently there had been no small debate over whether the village should take me in at all.
Raising one more mouth was harder than people realized in a place that small, and everyone had fretted over it until the headman and his wife—my adoptive parents—stepped forward. As luck would have it, they had just had a child of their own, so they raised me alongside her. The headman's couple, my adoptive parents, were so kind that I always felt I only survived because of them.
When my past life's memories came flooding back, I thought for a while that I had become the protagonist of some novel or comic. I never met a god or anything, but reincarnation still counted as special, didn't it? In the stories from my previous life, protagonists were always getting possessed or reborn.
I figured out that was pure self-importance when I was five.
The memories of someone who had lived to twenty-five had suddenly slammed into a child's brain. Ethics, common sense—everything was scrambled. My development lagged behind the headman's own child, the one I had grown up with. Language, especially, came slowly.
A blank slate absorbs things fast. Foreign memories only muddied the water, and learning to speak took far longer than it should have. The other village kids called me a dullard for it….
Every time, my older sister—my adoptive parents' real daughter—stepped in to help.
"Even now, thinking about those days makes me cringe."
Because the headman was the one looking after me, I grew up relatively well-off. It was only a small slash-and-burn farming village, but he was still the headman….
There was a small holy icon in the house, and I prayed before it every day. Thanking the gods for letting me be born into this world… it was still part of my daily routine even now.
"Come to think of it, maybe surviving this is thanks to all those prayers."
Dwelling on dark thoughts only made things darker. I decided to look on the bright side and lift my mood. Maybe a miracle had come down because I had prayed so diligently all these years.
The icon my adoptive father had given me was back at the inn, so I couldn't offer a proper prayer—but I sent up my gratitude in my heart.
I walked for a long time, lost in the past, and still there was no exit in sight.
"How much farther do I have to go?"
I had no sense of time, no idea how much distance remained, but I kept walking.
I only managed to master the language at seven. Once that barrier was gone, I ran completely wild. I was still convinced I was the hero of some story, and I acted like it.
I played near the forest the adults told us to stay away from. I grabbed sticks of a decent size and swung them around like swords… and I got into fights with my friends.
"Ugh. Still embarrassing to think about."
Back then I was sure I had talent—that someday I would grow strong, just like the protagonists in those stories. Like them, my gift simply hadn't awakened yet. I trained with the sword, certain some special ability was waiting for me.
That belief shattered when I was ten.
There was a border garrison near the village, and a knight stationed there fell for a local girl and decided to settle down.
The border was a long way from any real city, so knights and soldiers would sometimes come to our relatively nearby village for recreation. That was how the two of them met.
Once the knight grew older and retired, he married the village woman and put down roots with us. He joined the self-defense force, and while he was at it, he took on the village children as disciples—partly to train his successors.
A real knight who used mana. A chance to learn from one.
And within a single month, I learned I had no talent at all. I thought I had worked harder than anyone, but I was ordinary. No—a little worse than ordinary, if I was honest. My sister, who had started learning the sword alongside me, was beating me in under a month….
Convinced I had no gift for the blade, I switched to the spear, which was supposed to be quicker to pick up. Same result. No talent there either.
My sister, by comparison, had talent to spare. In six months she had awakened her mana and earned The Instructor's judgment that she was ready to graduate….
I didn't want to quit, so I kept training. The Instructor encouraged me, saying steady practice would still get me somewhere—and that only made it harder to walk away.
"I should have given up early…."
Back then I still believed my talent simply hadn't shown itself yet, and I spent more than five years drilling with sword and spear…. I did grow stronger, in my own way—but only to the level of a low-rank adventurer or a common soldier.
Compared to my sister, who had awakened her mana and risen to Knight Class, it was pitiful.
"Maybe my sister was the reincarnator all along."
The gap in talent was so wide I half-wondered if she was the real protagonist, not me.
"Hah. Where is this exit?"
At least the path was a single corridor. That much was a mercy.
In this world the kingdoms and the churches set the age of adulthood at eighteen, but commoners lived by different rules. At fifteen you were treated as an adult, expected to pull your own weight.
When I turned fifteen, I chose to become an adventurer. Even then, I still hadn't let go of the idea that I was the hero of the story….
My adoptive father, the headman, had cheered on that foolish dream of mine. In a village that mostly ran on barter, he had pressed what little coin they had into my hands, outfitted me with weapons, and told me to go try.
So I left the village that had raised me and set out for a city ruled by nobles—and ran straight into a wall.
"It was a real shock."
My village had maybe a hundred and fifty people. The city was something else entirely. I had thought this world sat at a medieval level of living; realizing it was closer to the early modern era was the moment I understood I had been a frog in a well.
Everything The Instructor had ever said was true. None of it had been exaggeration.
I settled in the city and became an adventurer, but recognition did not come easily.
The jobs available to the lowest-rank adventurers were limited, and I scraped by on work that barely rose above odd jobs.
Living expenses ate into whatever I earned, so the money never really accumulated….
The romance I had dreamed of when a traveling merchant first told our village about the glamorous life of an adventurer shattered within days.
Low-rank and bottom-rank adventurers were little more than errand runners and odd-jobbers. Monster subjugation? Dungeon exploration? Those jobs existed, sure—but they went to adventurers with real skill and a name, and the competition was fierce.
Still, I had learned enough that I managed to scrape by as an adventurer….
"Hah. I really should have quit sooner."
A full year as an adventurer, and I had almost nothing to show for it. Whatever I earned went straight into new gear or living costs.
Of course, I had seen people among the adventurers who blossomed and made it big.
"Just not me…."
So when I heard about the ruins at the Adventurers' Guild, maybe that was why I went after a windfall. Going home empty-handed would have been too humiliating….
I had wanted to bring something back—anything—and walk into the village with my head high.
"Not that I can do that now…."
Going home as a woman? I'd be lucky if they only laughed.
"What's that?"
I had no idea how long I had been walking, but light was seeping through the cracks of a door. Beyond it lay a small room, and inside that room, a small chest.
"C-could it be?"
Treasure from the ruins? Hope flared—and I started forward, then stopped.
"Careful."
There might be another trap. I checked the surroundings thoroughly. This place… looked like someone had lived here long ago, and I couldn't find any traps.
"All right. Chest opening time!"
Creak. The old hinges groaned, and the lid came up. Inside were a worn book and some accessories.
"Nice!"
There was also what seemed to be a light-casting magic tool, so old its glow was faint and hard to see by—but I could make out gemstones set into the accessories.
I carefully slipped the jewelry into my pouch.
"And this book?"
I settled into the dim light and opened it.
"See? Learning to read was worth it."
Unlike the other kids in the village, I had been the headman's child, so I had been made to learn my letters. Once I had them, I found no end of uses for them.
"Let's see…."
The pages weren't paper—they felt like leather. I turned them carefully, taking in the contents. The book was a diary. The diary of a mage who, long ago, had pursued immortality….
A man who congratulated himself as an exceptional mage had dreamed of eternal life, and in the course of his research had crossed a forbidden line. The truth had come out, he had fled, and he had built a dungeon beneath a noble's villa estate to hide—that was the story the pages told.
"Ah… so the villa and the dungeon were separate."
That half-ruined manor—noble property, off-limits to casual investigation—and he had been hiding underneath it.
Even so. Why build the traps?
The diary recorded that he had succeeded in designing a rejuvenation spell. But he lacked the mana to cast it, so he had drawn a magic circle and planned to draw on the earth's own mana instead.
"Don't tell me that clearing was…."
There were also notes about selling off most of his considerable fortune to buy the materials he needed. Looking around again, I could see what might once have been a laboratory—no wonder it looked so bare. The final entry closed with the admission that he still needed years more to gather enough mana, and that he would have to go into the city for supplies.
He had probably gone to a village, run into some trouble, and never made it back.
"So that was a rejuvenation spell?"
Left alone for so long, enough mana had finally gathered. And then I had shown up at just the wrong moment, touched the core of the circle, and set it off?
Then why the hell did I become a woman?!