Chapter 27
Chapter 27
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>Translator: Vine
>Chapter: 27
>Chapter Title: An Introduction to My Organs
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>I'll just need to introduce her to my organs.
The fear and terror she'd felt just moments ago seemed like a dream. Pia stared at Rian with a blank expression.
"What's wrong? Did you see something scary? A ghost?"
When she nodded, Rian began spouting nonsense with a serious face. Perhaps because the tension from her fright had suddenly snapped, Pia couldn't control her expression as she usually would.
"Don't forget the horizontal coordinate system and the handstand—"
>"Pfft... kh, st-stop it, you're making me laugh. My stomach hurts..."
When was the last time she'd laughed this hard?
Perhaps because all her pent-up emotions had been released at once, the laughter kept spilling out.
"What are you doing out there? Come on in."
>"Oh, we were having a very important conversation."
>"Pfft..."
Normally, their conversation would have annoyed her, but now it just sounded amusing. Pia was flustered by this side of herself, yet the pleasant feeling made her not want to resist it.
"If you're talking about something fun, come inside and tell me. I want to hear it, too."
Rian and Noah went into the dining hall, and Pia, left alone, tried to swallow her laughter as she moved to follow them.
{ Are you having fun, sister? }
>"...?!"
She would have, had her sister's voice not returned. The smile forming on her lips vanished in an instant, and a chilling fear spread through her entire body.
{ How can you be having fun? You killed me. }
>"No, that's not..."
>{ If you had just tried a little harder, I could have lived. But you left me to die. You abandoned me and ran. So you might as well have killed me. }
A terror like being thrown into a pitch-black pit began to eat away at Pia again. She instinctively grabbed the dining hall's doorknob.
{ Sister? Where are you going? Are you trying to leave me behind again? }
The words sent a surge of fear through her. Pia's mind was filled with only two thoughts: fear and the need to escape.
As she frantically opened the door and stepped inside, the auditory hallucination faded and then disappeared. Pia's gaze fell on Lilly, who seemed to have just started her meal.
'Ah, my sister.'
Pia, half in a daze, took her food and walked over to where Lilly was sitting.
"...Lilly, is it good?"
>"Sister, are you sick?"
>"No?"
How could I dare to be sick? You're the one who must be in pain.
The hallucination had stopped, but the words it whispered remained like a brand, endlessly clawing at Pia.
"This is all because of the ghost."
It was Rian who once again pulled her out of the mire and into the light. The moment Rian, in a serious voice, mentioned his method for exorcising ghosts, the fear that had been gnawing at her mind vanished instantly.
"Oh! Jess is amazing!"
>"Amazing!"
Watching the boisterous scene, she couldn't help but laugh. For the first time since becoming a slave, Pia burst into unrestrained laughter.
But there was someone who wasn't pleased with this situation.
"Damn it...! Why does the magic keep breaking? Did they cast some kind of protection spell?"
It was all because of Rian's Gag Filter, but there was no way for Doban to know that.
"If this is how it's going to be, I'll have to cast an even more vicious spell."
Doban's eyes glinted as he gathered his demonic energy and cast a terrible black magic spell on Pia's bed. His shoulders shook as he let out a nasty laugh, like air escaping a deflating balloon.
Rustle—.
"...!"
The sudden sound made Doban, who had been laughing aloud, flinch like a startled rat. His eyes darted around, quickly scanning his surroundings.
Caw—.
"Tsk..."
A crow was wandering through a pile of trash, letting out its distinctive, long cry. Doban, who had tensed up thinking it was Jiso of the Four Heavenly Kings, clicked his tongue in relief.
'I have to get that slave as soon as possible and leave this place!'
Doban smiled hideously and poured even more demonic energy into Pia's bed. Thanks to his nasty, quiet movements, like a bug crawling through piles of trash, he managed to avoid being detected by Mia.
However, he was spotted by someone else.
"Hmph, I thought you'd be running for your life, but here you are, holed up in this place."
Tanned brown skin, bright hair somewhere between yellow and orange, and slit-like eyes that made it hard to tell if they were open or closed.
Jiso of the Four Heavenly Kings was looking down at Doban from atop a tall building, quite a distance from where Doban was hiding. Behind him, a cat-like beauty in a suit with her hair tied up high spoke in a blunt voice.
"It seems he has another objective."
>"Something more important than his own life? How interesting."
>"Shall I capture him?"
>"No, no. Let's see what kind of treasure he's after."
Jiso gave a lax smile and shrugged.
***
"This is part of their education, so you should leave now."
>"But..."
>"Rian."
>"I understand."
I'd come to the kitchen to wash the dishes, only to be kicked out. The reason was that the children needed to learn how to clean up after themselves.
The sight of children, barely ten years old, washing dishes might have looked like child abuse, but for them, learning was a matter of survival.
Once I left the kitchen, I had nothing to do. In a place without even a radio, all I could do was meditate.
'Sigh... I have things to worry about, anyway. Should I take a walk?'
A worry I had pushed to the back of my mind, one with no solution or clue in sight, suddenly reared its head.
"Hah..."
The first thing that came out was a sigh.
Iris was originally supposed to be sold to Odil's laboratory and become a test subject. But before the slave traders could even get their hands on her, Odil fled, and his lab burned to the ground.
The original story had been completely twisted from the very beginning.
'Ugh... He's not really dead, is he?'
A wave of helplessness washed over me. The original story, which was supposed to be my cheat sheet, was useless now that it had gone so far off track from the start.
'It would be nice if I could at least confirm if he's alive or dead. But I can't leave this place... Should I offer to run an errand for Mia? No, that's not it. Even if she agreed, I'd just get caught by slave traders and sold off again.'
Other ideas popped up, like 'ask Mia to take me along when she goes shopping,' 'sneak out of the mansion to find Iris,' or 'find a dangerous-looking but useful tool in the mansion to track Iris,' but they were all useless.
I ruffled my hair wildly and screamed internally.
'Aaargh! Seriously! I have to go outside to meet Iris, but there's no way!'
As I screamed internally with a grimace, a bold idea suddenly struck me.
"Huh? Can't I just ask Mia for help?"
Mia was a cold-hearted Black Mage, but she had a surprising tendency to grant Rian's requests.
"She has been listening to my requests a lot lately..."
With her mental state shattered recently, Mia had been easily agreeing to even minor requests. I immediately turned toward the lab.
"If I play my cards right, she might help me, right?"
The thought of getting information about Iris sent all sorts of ideas bouncing around in my head. My pace quickened, and my breathing grew ragged.
"Hah, ha!"
Thanks to my sprint, I arrived in front of Mia's lab in no time.
"Hoo..."
I took a deep breath and knocked carefully. Then, I immediately went inside.
"Hm...? What is it?"
Mia was slumped in her chair with a dazed look. She often got like that after frantically organizing her research, wearing a post-burnout expression, so I wasn't surprised and walked in.
"Um, Mia, could you possibly... find someone for me?"
>"Ha..."
Mia let out a dry laugh and looked straight at me. A flicker of anger and annoyance rippled in her eyes.
No matter how well Mia treated me, for a slave like me to treat her like a mercenary and ask for help was, even in my own eyes, crossing a line.
But there was a reason I could make this demand so confidently!
"I'm just so worried about my younger sister, who looks exactly like me."
>"A sister...?"
>"Yes, my sister who shares the same 'bloodline' as me."
>"The same bloodline... a new test subject..."
Mia's crumpled expression instantly turned dreamy. For Mia, who was so interested in my body, it was an irresistible proposition.
'As long as I can get her here, I can handle the rest!'
Mia might perform the same experiments on Iris as she did on me, but I wasn't too worried.
As someone with the Hero's bloodline, Iris's body would have a much greater healing ability than an ordinary person's, but it wouldn't be on my level.
'After all, turning into a skeleton and coming back from it is impossible for her.'
Seeing Iris's relatively normal (?) state, she'd stop the experiments soon enough.
If Mia got angry and threatened to sell Iris, or if she didn't stop experimenting on her, I would just have to show her the even more amazing mysteries of a gag character.
'I'll just need to introduce her to my organs.'
If an organ with lips and eyes were to whistle and say, "Hey there, pretty lady, got a minute?" while handing her a rose from god knows where, I could probably smooth things over.
If that still didn't work, I could just fall back on the excuse I made before being brought here—the 'my body gets weaker when I'm under mental stress' setting—and lie that my healing has slowed down because my sister isn't here.
"What did you say your sister looks like?"
Mia, completely taken in by my words, leaned forward with sparkling eyes. My gaze unknowingly drifted downward before returning to her face.
>I cleared my throat and told her that Iris was a slave, described her appearance, and so on.