News Time
The Demon King was already dead? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
The common sense of the game story I knew came apart with an audible crack, and for a moment my head went light. And no wonder. Back when I was playing, the Demon King still hadn't been taken down. Once he fell, the story was effectively over, so the devs had dragged the plot out for ages. Naturally, I'd assumed he was alive and well somewhere.
But he was already dead? Years ago? Did that mean this world was as peaceful as a world could get? No wonder yurkon ore had been so cheap. If the end of the war had gutted research funding, slower development was only the natural next step. With the Demon King dead, who needed new enchants? The villagers being absurdly generous made sense too, once I figured the world was simply at peace. If things had been unstable, someone like me would have gone straight to the stake.
I was still reeling when Rain started staring at me as if I were the strange one.
"You didn't know about this...? Were you in a coma for years or something...?"
"...Well. Something like that."
I brushed it off. What else was I supposed to say? I hadn't even been living here a month. A raw newbie. The whole Demon King business had never felt like my problem to begin with. Granted, back when this world was a game, my build was solid enough that people might have called me a veteran. And it wasn't as if the thought had never crossed my mind—if I ever truly ran out of things to do, I might take a swing at the Demon King the way every ordinary game-isekai protagonist did. I wasn't planning to spend my life ordering around a pack of shoddy summons. Somewhere in my head there was definitely a plan for the day I raised an army of impressive, powerful ones.
And someone else had already killed him? Who was this Hero, anyway? The bastard who'd speedrun the Demon King before I even woke up—I wanted a look at his face sometime.
A moment later, Rain fidgeted and tried again.
"Then, um..."
"Yeah?"
"What should I call you...?"
Right. I still hadn't told her my name. Hmm. First time introducing myself out loud like this.
"Ira Elysia. Call me whatever's easy."
"Elysia! Th-then, may I call you Lady Elysia...?"
"Sure. Whatever."
Elysia. It felt a little like stealing someone else's name, but it was far too late to turn around and claim I was somebody else. This was why you had to get the first button right...
Then Rain suddenly spoke.
"L-Lady Elysia! Then, um... would you let me in on your plan?"
...Huh?
What was this now?
"...What plan do I have?"
I had no idea what she was thinking. And the answer that followed actually struck me speechless.
"I mean—you're planning to take over that village, aren't you?"
"...What?"
Me? That village? Why?
"Why would you think that?"
I asked, dumbfounded, and Rain only lowered herself, voice bright with certainty, as if her guess had just been confirmed.
"I know about the Elysias... They're one of the houses the Church executed for researching black magic."
Hearing the old history of House Elysia come out of Rain's mouth, I couldn't quite hide my surprise. Apparently I was the only one who didn't know the story. Everyone else already did. Rain put on a sly look and went on.
"You bear a grudge against the humans who executed you, and you're going to destroy that village. Isn't that right?"
"I have no such plan."
"Eh...?"
"I just want to live normally with the villagers. I've never once thought about anything like that."
My answer cut her theory off at the root, and Rain stared at me with a blank face. A moment later she started muttering in a fluster, as if denying reality itself.
"B-but you're a necromancer, aren't you? That familiar beside you is a Dark Knight! A necromancer who commands a Dark Knight can't possibly be ordinary!"
What? That's a Dark Knight?
I let out a hollow laugh and glanced at Unit 1. The poor thing had only grabbed a scrap of armor lying around in the warehouse because she was scared of demons, and now she'd been promoted from skeleton to Dark Knight. To be fair, necromancers who could handle a Death Knight weren't all that common, and they were powerful familiars. That much was true. But drawing stripes on a pumpkin doesn't turn it into a watermelon, and a skeleton in a suit of armor doesn't become a Death Knight. More importantly, I wasn't a necromancer. I was a summoner. I still didn't even know why a skeleton had been summoned in the first place. Starting with Unit 1, every last one of my summons was some weird thing like this, so if people mistook me for a gloomy necromancer, I really had nothing to say for myself.
When my reaction still looked unimpressed, Rain rushed on.
"B-but that can't be. I-I can feel it. That enormous amount of wicked mana in your body...! That's an amount you couldn't possibly gather by ordinary means!"
Okay, and what was that supposed to mean? Wicked mana? Well, my race was undead, so of course my mana would differ from the normal kind. I had a passive that treated mana as life energy itself: in ordinary situations I didn't have to micromanage my health as much, but I had to watch my mana more carefully. So here that trait just read as wickedness? Not that I'd asked for a body like this. I didn't know the first thing about mana theory.
Fine. Let's see how far she goes.
After that, Rain stayed glued to the iron bars and kept pouring out increasingly gruesome theories.
"Then why so many poisonous herbs in the kitchen...? Weren't you planning to poison the well and build up a supply of corpses?"
"I just collected those so I could drink them."
How was I supposed to resist cola-flavored poisonous herbs and chicken-flavored poisonous mushrooms? To me, that was life, entertainment, and joy, all in one. Though now and then I could probably go down to the village and even get pizza.
"And staying in the village all this time—that wasn't groundwork for a conquest, or reconnaissance?"
"I just went to enjoy the festival."
"Then that terrifying hunter wasn't under some kind of mind control either..."
"Evelyn's just being nice to me on her own."
"...!"
Having heard the whole of it, Rain sank down as if the shock had taken her legs out and muttered.
"Th-then you really... truly, truly just want to live an ordinary life?"
"That's what I've been saying."
"You really weren't going to poison the village, make corpses, grow a legion, launch a conquest, rise as a candidate for the next Demon King, and lay the foundation for the Demon King's army to rise again...?"
Wow. What a spectacular, tightly plotted chronicle. Honestly, there was probably a picaresque novel somewhere that ran exactly like that. If it had been set in front of me as a book, I might even have enjoyed it. But I wasn't the protagonist of a story like that. I'm the sort of person with such a weak stomach that I once looked up a search term you are absolutely never supposed to search, purely out of curiosity, and couldn't bring myself to touch blood sausage for ages afterward. I couldn't even imagine killing someone, let alone doing it with my own hands. And even if you set the people-dying part aside, it was obviously going to be an enormous pain.
"Well. Think whatever you want."
I didn't have a shred of a plan like that anyway. I lost interest and turned away, and Rain started spilling words as if she were clinging to me.
"I-I'm sorry! Living normally sounds great! I don't really like hurting people either! Please! Please, not the Church, really!"
"Uh, yeah. Sure."
You already recited the whole thing yourself, and now you're walking it back? Not falling for it.
I left the shouting Rain behind and got out of the basement. Then I met Unit 1's eyes and nodded. Unit 1, I think I understand why you avoid demons. These guys think a little differently from us. To have ideas that horrible as the default setting... She'd looked small and weak, so I'd only put cuffs on her for now, but with a mind like that I'd better make the restraints a good deal sturdier. Hmm. If I dug through the underground storeroom a bit more, I might find tougher cuffs, or something else to bind her with.
The Church, though...
So demons really were the Church's department. The problem was, I was a little wary of the Church myself. When Evelyn got back, I'd have to talk this over with her and figure out what to do with the girl.