The Uninvited Guest
"Hazel, could you go gather some herbs with Meredith?" the protagonist said, rhythmically pulling out the fangs of a gnoll. Herbs—right, that was the purpose of this dungeon trip. I’d been so busy wrestling with gnolls all day that I’d completely forgotten. When I first heard about it, I’d imagined myself leisurely picking greens while feeling the phytoncides in the heart of nature, but life is never that simple.
I stood up and looked around. Everywhere I turned, there were only desolate piles of rocks. It was only when I tilted my head further up that I caught a glimpse of some greenery. My body was already a wreck; did I really have to go mountain climbing? I wondered if I should just stay by the protagonist’s side and collect monster materials instead. With that thought, I looked at him. He was busy smashing jawbones with the hilt of his dagger and plucking out the wobbly fangs. It was the kind of work you’d expect to do on a skeleton without a shred of flesh left, but the corpses still had their hides perfectly intact. Fine. Gathering herbs probably was the better option.
But wait, Meredith? Had I been calling her by her name from the start? My head felt complicated. A tutor and a guardian... I had some strange thoughts, so I stopped. Does Meredith call the protagonist by his name, too?
"Hazel. What are you doing? Come over here," Meredith beckoned. Well, whatever. I’d been feeling quite uncomfortable because it felt like I’d soured my relationship with Ameryel, so meeting someone new was a good thing. I walked right beside Meredith, trailing just a step behind.
The hill where the gnoll chieftain had been had a slightly different atmosphere than the places we’d passed through so far. Grass and flowers were growing in the crevices of rocks, and small trees that barely reached my knees were growing sturdily. It’s a cliché thing to say, but dungeons really are mysterious places. That was the impression I got.
As I looked around, my eyes met Meredith’s. She stared intently at her own trembling hands, wondering what she was thinking, before looking back at me and saying, "Aren't you going to hold my hand?"
"My hand?"
"You held hands when you were with Jiun. Why, even this morning."
Ah, that? "That was me holding his sleeve."
"Is that so?"
Here, Meredith reached out her hand. Did she want me to take it? But I’m not a child, isn't that a bit...?
My sleeves fluttered in time with my gait. Being a mage, she wore loose-fitting clothes that flapped quite nicely. "Do you hate it?"
"No... I’m just a bit shy."
"Really? You held hands just fine before."
Should I say that was because I had to act like a pure child despite everything I’d been through? I didn’t have a logical rebuttal. "You held hands last time, too."
Last time? Ah, does she mean when we went to eat? It was delicious... It was the best meal I’d had since coming here. Woman's Smile was nice, but the atmosphere back then... well, it wasn’t exactly a mood for enjoying a meal. My tail swayed gently.
"My arm is going to fall off."
I was a bit embarrassed... but I didn’t have a reason to refuse. Besides, it was a hassle. Meredith, once she entered that state, was endless. She wouldn’t let me go until I said the words she wanted to hear—master, mentorship, teachings—but the best was definitely the Academy. Watching her turn into an Academy demon, pushing the school on me, was exhausting. It was impressive how she could weave it into every conversation, and sometimes it was funny when she took an unexpected turn, but honestly, it was burdensome. Lately, it felt like she’d gotten worse, perhaps thinking the end was approaching...
"Oh, finally holding on," Meredith hummed, looking delighted. It was a pleasant tune, but I didn’t know the song. I felt a little melancholy. The sunlight was hot. It had been like that yesterday, and the day before. It was enough to make me think summer would last forever.
***
They say herbs are quite important materials for a mage. Casting a spell requires many conditions, but the most labor-intensive part is the reagents. You can cast without them if you use magically treated staves, crystal balls, or crystals, but since those are expensive, mages who aren’t well-off use reagents. Meredith said herbs were the most important because they were the cheapest. It wasn’t just that they were cheap and good; because they were inexpensive, many people used them, which led to sufficient research, making it advantageous to use herbs in certain cases. Is it like the principle where "entry-level" electronic devices have tons of information available for self-repair or customization?
Meredith stuck close to my side, showing me herbs and explaining them. This is frost-grass, this is star-flame, that curled-up one is illusion-weed... As she went on like that, she stopped in front of a flower. Several white flowers were hanging from a single stem. They weren’t in full bloom; they were round like buds and bloomed facing downward.
"That’s a white bell-flower, isn't it? It really was here."
"Is it rare?"
"If you mean rare in the sense of scarcity, yes, but if you mean valuable, no. It doesn’t grow outside of dungeons, so it’s not easy to get, but its uses are limited."
"What is it used for?"
"It can be used for antidotes or gas masks, but that kind of poison isn’t common. Occasionally, dungeons filled with miasma are generated, and it only appears in the rare ones among those."
Rare, but no demand. Usually, couldn’t something like that be used as a luxury item? The flower was pretty, too. "Are there no people who use it for decoration?"
"Ah... the material you can collect from this flower is here," she said, pointing to the inside of the flower. Only the pistil and stamen remain?
"A bit unique, right?" I nodded in response.
"Still, we’re lucky. I can even show my student something like this." Meredith lightly stroked my hair with one hand. "There was a rumor that white bell-flowers appeared frequently in the dungeons created in this vicinity. There was talk that they might be here when I took the commission."
"The guild was also curious if that was actually the case." Meredith said that and withdrew her hand. "Now, shall we start collecting in earnest?"
I received the sack for the herbs. Since we were working together, we were able to fill the sack in no time.
***
When we returned after finishing the collection, the protagonist was sitting and resting after finishing sorting the materials. Looking closely, I saw he was covered in small scratches. If I were a mage who could pull my own weight, would this not have happened? Probably. Even if I wasn’t as good as Meredith, if I were even half as good as her, the situation would have been better than this. It felt like a fire had been lit somewhere deep inside my body. I will become stronger. At least enough to take care of myself.
The protagonist talked with Meredith for a while. It was mostly about the harvest. When the conversation ended and I met the protagonist’s eyes, he asked, "Was it fun?"
"Yes."
"You did really well today."
I’ll do even better next time. Just as I was making that vow, my ears perked up. The sound of stones and sand being stepped on. Someone was coming here.
"Hazel?"
"Someone... someone is coming here."
The protagonist’s expression hardened at my words. Meredith was the same. Meredith had clearly stated that we had the priority for investigation. That meant there shouldn’t be anyone coming here through the guild. Even though no one was guarding the entrance, she said there were no adventurers who would go out of their way to enter someone else’s workplace while taking on the hassle. Furthermore, this wasn’t even a new dungeon. A stake had been driven into the entrance to indicate that the investigation was complete, so there was no way they could have mistaken it. It was intentional. Whatever intention they harbored, the person coming here now had stepped into this dungeon on purpose.
Tension filled the air. The protagonist put down the bag he had been carrying and stood on guard. Meredith was also glaring at the path, clutching her staff tightly. Before long, a person came into view. It was a jet-black figure. They wore leather gear dyed black, and even the cloak they had draped over themselves was a gloomy color. Even under the hood, where light should have been, there was a black shadow. It seemed to be a magical item.
"Your ears are sharp, little one."
A husky voice that I felt I had heard somewhere echoed. The protagonist’s expression twisted viciously upon hearing the voice. The intruder, who had stopped at a distance where they could be distinguished, slowly pulled back their hood.
The first thing that caught my eye were the reverse-eyes. Where the whites should have been, it was black, and where the irises should have been, it glowed yellow. Her skin was dark, too. If you took a little color out of dark chocolate, would it feel like that? Her dark skin seemed to shimmer slightly as it caught the sun. But there was a presence that overwhelmed all of that. It was the horns that extended long from her temples. They pointed forward at first, then curved back in a graceful arc. The left horn was broken in the middle, and the cross-section was dark as well. Only her hair, tied neatly back, was bright.
"A demon..." Meredith whispered to herself. Either she didn’t hear it, or she didn’t care. The gray-haired woman didn’t take her eyes off the protagonist as she spoke.
"Jiun, it’s been a while."
"...Onyxia."
The woman’s eyes glowed bright yellow at the sound of her name.