Enter the Mimic's House

"Pardon me for a moment."

Ever since I took down the ice mage Frost, the duels had gone from easy to downright effortless. One lopsided match after another.

Not that they were bad players, of course. Their gear was solid and their skill was above average, but at the end of the day they were still leagues below the top-100 and top-1000 rankers. No matter how well someone plays, they simply can't outplay a ranker.

And so I went on a seven-win streak in Diamond, then swept three straight matches in the best-of-five promotion series — ten matches, ten wins, and a promotion straight into Master.

"My ranking? One moment."

I checked the Hall of Fame stele at the very center of the duel arena, the one cradled between three angel statues. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠A blue window floated up before me.

"Around 5000th, it looks like."

Considering how many people played DeoEn and the concurrent player counts, that put me fairly high up the ladder. Still a long way to go, though.

"I'll end the duel broadcast here for today. If I do too much of it, well..."

"Yep."

After all, I happened to have a chore I'd been putting off.

"I'm going to go deal with some noise complaints from the neighbors downstairs."

"Lily! Over here!"

Dumdumdumdum—!

From far down the road, a cute little girl with gleaming amber eyes came bounding toward me like an excited puppy. At a glance she looked like a noble's daughter who'd never known a day of conflict in her life, but...

"Hehehe... I missed you..."

"It's been a while, Marquess Leo."

...in reality, she was someone capable of going toe-to-toe with an entire nation's army single-handedly.

Leo nodded along with an mm-hm! of her head. I asked how long she'd been waiting to end up looking like this, and she began folding down her short little fingers, counting — one... two... — until her eyes suddenly lit up and her head snapped back up.

"Nine hours!"

"...Pardon me for a moment."

"Huh? Eek!"

Sqeeeetch. Leo's soft, squishy cheeks stretched between my fingers. Wow, they really do stretch.

A smile crept across my lips.

"Uuuooogh... Liwinyiiiim..."

"Sorry about that. Just bear with me a second."

How is anyone supposed to resist this?

"A-ahem! That's quite enough!!"

Flail! Leo shook her head back and forth, wrenching herself free of my hand. So she hasn't been completely corrupted yet, I see.

'What a shame.'

Leo, still vigorously shaking her head, held out a map to me.

"Ahem! Anyway, I've made all the preparations so you can work smoothly, so there shouldn't be any problems!"

"Understood. I'll be back before you know it."

Setting my disappointment aside, I set off for the mine.

I gave the quest another look. Honestly, the rewards weren't exactly a jackpot by my standards. To commission a ranker inside the top 100, you'd need a price beyond imagination, and for the handful of rankers who'd crack any top-ten list, the going rate jumps by factors of tens or hundreds.

And this was something even Leo — called the strongest of them all — had been unable to deal with. For resolving that, a mere 100,000 EXP and 300 gold was astonishingly cheap.

But I accepted the quest anyway. For one thing, keeping the mana stones flowing smoothly came first, and for another, Leo had already done plenty for me.

A little downstairs noise? That much I could handle.

"This way, please."

A knight Leo had attached from the marquess's household guided me into the depths of the mine. Mage-lit flames burned along the walls at intervals, and every so often there were rest areas of surprisingly high quality, stocked with all manner of food.

Far too nice an environment for a mine where laborers were supposed to be working. The knight must have read the look on my face, because he spoke up.

"Marquess Leo cherishes every soul in the Empire. She comes to the places where workers labor personally, and has dictated welfare provisions one by one with her own mouth."

"I see."

"Yes. Thanks to her, the mine's efficiency has improved, and so has her reputation."

It was true. Compared to the countless nobles I'd dealt with over the years, Leo really could be called a good liege lord.

'Maybe it's just because I've seen so much garbage?'

"I take it the miners have all cleared out for now?"

"Mining has been temporarily suspended. The workers heard the strange sound and became unable to continue their tasks, so the Marquess ordered a halt out of concern for how serious the situation might be."

"Have there been any changes since?"

"Changes, well... they say the sound keeps lingering in their heads. It comes and goes without warning, so there's simply no way to keep working."

"Hmm..."

Lingering in their heads, is it.

A curse? Or some kind of spiritual prank?

"......"

Step. Step.

The further down we descended, the fewer the lights in the mine became. The tunnels grew more disorderly the deeper we went, and a gloomy, mournful air began to seep in. I crouched slightly and picked up a few shards of broken dishware. They bore the look of having been hurled in anger.

"This looks... rather human."

"Precisely. At first we assumed it was a quarrel between miners, but that wasn't it either."

I set the shards back down. All around us were other traces, every one of them looking like the work of human hands. Or, more precisely...

'Traces made by something pretending to be human.'

Whoosh.

The flames on the mine wall went dark.

"—! Oh dear, one moment please. I'll relight the—"

"It's fine."

I let a thread of mana slip loose. It flowed like water along the wall and brushed against the mana torches there. The flames roared back to life in an instant.

The knight walked on with an awkward, sheepish expression.

"...You're a mage, then?"

"I'm a mage among other things."

There wasn't much I couldn't do — whether magic, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠weapon arts, or anything else under the sun. I simply preferred to lean on my spear and hammer.

How long had we been walking? At last, we reached the end of the mine.

"Here it is. This is where the miners first heard the sound."

"So this is..."

Leaving the knight where he stood, I approached the wall slowly. It looked like a perfectly ordinary wall. The moment my hand touched it, I felt something subtly off about the sensation.

And then —

Heeheeheeheehee...

"...!"

"So that's the sound..."

"One moment."

Heeheeheehee... Heeeeeek!!!

Something was in there. The wall was packed solid, to all appearances — and yet there was something inside it.

I started to draw out my hammer, then glanced back at the knight. Whether the sound had frayed his nerves or not, he stood in a stance that looked ready to draw his blade at any moment.

"Would it be all right if I smashed it?"

"As long as the mine itself doesn't come down, you may."

"Hmm."

Then the hammer was out of the question. I'd been planning to simply flatten the thing with brute force.

'In that case.'

I concentrated mana into my hand. Blue mana ran along my mana channels and slowly gathered toward a single point. Before long, an invisible ripple spread out and blanketed the whole area.

The knight swallowed hard and waited for what came next, but the mine's interior stayed silent.

...

"What did you do—"

Heeheehee... HEEEIIIICK!!!!

The thing went berserk. Flailing and thrashing, it darted this way and that, ricocheting through the wall — until at last it left behind a small door and vanished without a trace.

A door barely ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠big enough for a small puppy to slip through.

"...What did you do, exactly?"

"I warped the flow of mana. Spiritual beings of that sort are extremely sensitive to it."

Which was why exorcists there had always needed to handle mana with real finesse.

"And that, I'd wager... is the thing's home."