Still Here
He was a long way from the [Intelligence] stat.
The guide, who had been standing with his back to the sarcophagus, turned his head in the direction Laward indicated.
Creak.
If a sound could be put to that motion, it would have been something just like that—unnatural, as though a low-frame-rate video were being played back.
He faced the sarcophagus whose lid stood half open.
The instant the guide’s gaze locked onto the coffin, his voice died.
Not a word. Not even a scream.
The other students, aside from Laward, had either not yet entered the memorial chamber or were only half-listening to the guide’s lecture. Even they, sensing that the guide who had left them free to chatter had fallen silent, gradually quieted their own murmuring.
One by one they closed their mouths, feeling that something was wrong.
“Is it normally displayed like this…?”
Laward, the first to notice, spoke up with casual calm—
“No.”
An instantaneous denial.
“No, no, no.”
The guide shook his head violently.
“That’s impossible. It was closed until just yesterday…”
Then, as if something had occurred to him, he summoned the memorial hall staff. Security personnel appeared at once; after a short, intense exchange they decided to lift the sarcophagus lid completely.
They did not need to lift it all the way to know.
They knew before they even began.
The sarcophagus that had been standing open at a slant from the start.
The interior was empty.
The coffin that ought to have held the bones of the war hero and Academy founder contained nothing but dust and a foul stench.
“Who on earth…?”
The security staff stepped back, faces stricken.
“It was fine until yesterday!”
Perhaps to put distance between himself and any blame, one staff member shouted.
“The memorial hall doors were locked tight yesterday. Of course we kept watch properly through the night as well.”
“Are you certain?”
A man among them wearing a cap, who looked to be in charge, asked.
“O-of course! You can check the duty log. I checked carefully and marked every entry. Including this section with the stone sarcophagus, of course.”
“No suspicious persons came near the memorial hall at night either?”
“Didn’t see so much as a hair of a person. Well, this place hardly draws tourists except during field trips… and at night even less…”
“Tch. Hard to swallow.”
The man in charge, clearly dissatisfied with the answer, hurried off somewhere.
Was it really to check the duty log?
After he left, the air settled heavy and thick.
Memorial hall staff and Academy students alike stood blank-faced before a situation none of them had imagined.
“Did you all… miss an intruder in the middle of the night…?”
Except for Ester.
“W-what? Student. We really did our duty properly. Not even a single rat, I tell you.”
“Um… let’s end the field-trip learning here for today. For now we need to resolve the incident…”
“Your words are probably true… because that’s a stone sarcophagus…”
When Ester spoke those meaningful words, every staff member’s gaze snapped to her. Laward beside her turned as well, eyes full of suspicion.
“What about it being a stone sarcophagus…?”
“W-well… it’s heavy.”
“? That’s stating the obvious.”
“A stone sarcophagus that large… even just the lid… is heavy. Closing it would have taken four people at least… after all…”
The staff frowned, failing to follow her muttered reasoning.
“You all… came together yourselves just to open it…”
Ester’s eyes swept across the four staff members.
“Even granting one person… I don’t believe you would have missed four intruders…”
“O-one or four, there was no one, I said!”
“But the student’s right. No handles, and as the founder ordered, no decorations either—so nowhere decent to grip. To open the coffin you’d have to force a gap first and use this…”
One staff member casually raised the iron bar in his hand.
“If there really had been grave robbers, they would have thought the same thing, wouldn’t they…? Too hard to grab as is, far too heavy, so tools would be necessary…”
Ester pushed through the cluster of staff and stepped forward. She examined the lid of the stone sarcophagus, then slowly straightened.
“There are no such traces…”
None.
On the contrary.
“It was opened and closed too cleanly. Far too… clean.”
“How is that possible? Work that needs four grown men plus tools?”
“Some super-strong intruder or something?”
At Laward’s suggestion every staff member wore an exasperated look. It was the best answer Laward—who both in the game and now remained a long way from the [Intelligence] stat—had managed to produce.
“Student, make some sense…”
“Sigh, really…”
“He’s half right.”
Yet Ester immediately backed him.
Only halfway.
It was not solely because she was taken with Laward.
“There’s no reason it couldn’t be. Magic or whatever else… there are ways to produce several times an ordinary person’s strength. Such people exist. Such people existed.”
“But no one came in, I said. Ah… no way!”
One staff member’s eyes lit up as he pressed on.
“Are you trying to say the culprit is an insider?”
“Student, I think you’ve been reading too many novels.”
“Actually, yes. That’s… what I was about to say.”
“Phew… I thought so. Student, as I’ve told you several times, the memorial hall’s work is structured thoroughly. We store treasures as well, so everyone watches everyone else…”
“Not that kind of insider. An insider of this stone sarcophagus, I mean.”
“Huh?”
“In this case… the party concerned, shall we say.”
An insider of the stone sarcophagus.
Inside the sarcophagus.
“Couldn’t it have been opened from the inside?”
The first to flinch at those words was Laward.
“Death God.”
He muttered it low.
“Could it have… become an undead…?”
Ester took up the thought as if continuing for him.
“Puhah.”
She had spoken quite seriously, yet what followed was open ridicule.
“Student. Did you not hear what kind of person the one who was lying here—or rather, the skeleton that was here—used to be? He fought undead a hundred years ago. And that man becomes an undead? Is there anything more humiliating?”
“That is exactly why it is evil. Because it targets precisely that.”
Laward answered at once.
“If the Necromancer has revived, the first things to deal with are those war heroes and their power.”
Just as the frontier baronial house—
just as the Hasgard family had been targeted.
“He can neutralize the most troublesome opponent who once inflicted defeat upon her, and at the same time turn that opponent into a slave.”
Yesterday’s enemy is today’s ally.
Even an enemy from a hundred years ago becomes today’s ally.
“The priority is high.”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
A staff member waved both hands dismissively.
“Even if we concede a hundred times—even if we concede a hundred years and say he became an undead—the weight of the stone sarcophagus still isn’t solved. This thing cannot be lifted.”
“No… I told you. Such a person… ‘existed.’”
If it was a war hero, it was possible.
“……”
The entire staff fell silent.
Even the other students who had kept quiet until now seemed quieter still. Not only their lips—they did not move their bodies at all. Cold sweat simply beaded on one face after another.
“So the founder’s corpse came back to life and walked out? Where did it go?”
“Stop it. There’s no proof that student’s words are right. For now we have no choice but to send the students out and investigate.”
“Th-that’s…”
“Student, you stop now too. I understand your thinking, but you don’t need to interfere any further. Guide, take charge of them.”
“No, th-that’s not it…”
“I said stop. The other students are scared as well. There’s nothing good about talking like that. It’ll only spread strange rumors…”
“That’s not it… You all said earlier, didn’t you…? That you saw no one… that the doors were locked tight.”
“Yes, that’s certain, so…”
“That means…”
Ester swallowed dryly.
“He didn’t walk out…”
Here.
He’s still here.
I hate the type of people who, even while watching a horror movie, say, “There was a suspicious sound over there—let’s go check it out.”
As someone whose life motto is safety first and who prided himself on being a survival expert, it was an action I simply could not understand.
An action that was all but guaranteed to get them killed first.
Even in films those characters usually become the cautionary example.
Because of that temperament, when I played the game I never chose the [Investigate] option.
First year, second semester.
Field-trip learning.
A message appeared that the slightly open sarcophagus looked suspicious, yet without a second thought I selected [Ignore].
The field-trip storyline ended right there.
Continue to the next story.
But now I knew.
That event was bound up with far more than it first appeared.
It foreshadowed the revival of the Death God Cult and the mastermind behind it.
The Laward–Ester route.
The heroes of a hundred years ago rising again one by one.
It was thanks to the Ending Preview—the item I bought after clearing a challenge quest—that I was able to shore up the meager information of someone who had possessed a body and even regressed after seeing only a single ending.
A good spoiler.
Such a contradictory phrase actually existed.
It was a better spoiler than “This part is boring—feel free to go to the bathroom now.”
This episode—that is, the event in which undead first appear—was mentioned in one of Ester’s endings.
Number three.
Ester’s third ending.
The Academy was crowded with events: school trips, sports days, joint athletic meets, the autumn festival that third-years busy with graduation prep usually skipped, the winter rabbit hunt, and so on. There were so many that one had to wonder whether anyone actually studied. Parents would probably not have been thrilled.
In any case, field-trip learning—picnics—were a first-year privilege. So it was virtually predetermined that an event would occur during the outing with Ester, Laward’s only same-year heroine.
Ending number three, according to the preview, unlocked if after choosing [Investigate] you then selected [Challenge], [Challenge], and [Challenge Anyway].
“Investigate, then challenge three times.”
Had I been memorizing a walkthrough, the information would have seemed almost easy this time.
“Choosing Investigate discovers the undead.”
Then challenge.
“First match: defeat.”
Challenge.
“Second match: also defeat.”
Challenge anyway.
“Defeat through the third match as well.”
Laward faces an opponent he cannot defeat.
By the game’s own system he is absolutely forbidden to win.
A match designed from the start so that loss is inevitable.
Yet the story of taking that defeat as fuel to rise again is precisely the theme of ending number three.
The problem is that by challenging three times he impresses Ester even more deeply.
The Laward of the present moves less to protect Ester than to prove he is more useful than she is… yet there remains ample room for her to misunderstand on her own.
Room for her to decide, arbitrarily, that he fought for her sake.
She is a woman who runs back even after being kicked ten times.
Honestly, she seems fully capable of making that same mistake a dozen times over.
“No matter how I look at it, waiting at the Academy would be better for us.”
While we were still heading toward the memorial hall, Blash, following behind, spoke up.
“We might end up interfering with the students’ field-trip learning, no?”
“We’ve almost arrived already. I simply want to show you Ester as soon as possible.”
In truth Ester was one concern, but first and foremost I was hurrying to stop Laward.
Left alone he would fulfill the conditions for ending number three.
Of course Laward would not fight for Ester’s sake.
But I had steadily driven into his head the enemies he must face.
Even if the opponent was one he could never hope to defeat.
Even if he failed no matter how many times he tried.
The Laward of now would surely—
Challenge.
“Here. He’s still here.”
The moment Ester’s words ended—
Shing—!
Laward drew Holiday.