The Plum Blossom Swordsman Reincarnated into a Count's Family
We stepped into Randle Village.
The wrongness hit us at once. Not a single sign of life stirred anywhere in the place.
We took our time walking the empty streets. Roughly a hundred and fifty houses, and every one of them looked better built than what ordinary commoners usually lived in. Trade with the elf village must have been treating them well.
"Looks like they all ran," I said flatly.
When I cast my gaze farther out, black smoke was climbing into the sky. The forest was burning, and an army was on the march. Even if the soldiers weren't coming for them specifically, an army on the move was more than enough reason for villagers to flee in terror. Armies had a habit of making themselves a problem.
This world doesn't do civilian protection or any of that nonsense. Civilians getting looted by soldiers, dragged off, and sold as slaves is just Tuesday around here.
If anything, it was the expected outcome. Some people even enlisted specifically for the looting. So for an ordinary village, the mere rumor of an army nearby was often enough to send everyone packing. They either fled to a large, fortified city or dug into the mountains and forests and waited the war out.
Most of them head for the big cities. Not that a big city is actually safe in a war, but still.
I looked over at Elnoa. She had been scanning the village for a while now, her eyes flickering with unease.
"Elnoa. Did you forget why we're here? We need to get to Beliac Village as fast as we can."
"M-Master. Something's wrong. The people of Randle Village that I know would never abandon their homes just because an army was coming."
"Plenty of people who act tough in peacetime freeze up the second real trouble hits. This is probably the same thing."
A hunter village. From the look of it, these were the people who hunted in the Forest of Polemp. The Forest of Polemp was the kind of place where only one in ten walked out alive — but a village that maintained good relations with Beliac would be a different story.
The way Elnoa talks them up, these are professionals who hunt monsters for a living.
Monster hunters. Unlike adventurers or mercenaries, they made their living hunting monsters and nothing else.
Monsters and humans aren't the same. Twelve thousand human soldiers on the march — being a monster hunter doesn't mean much against that. Running was the only real option.
Yuria came over. She had just finished quietly inspecting the house next to us.
"Um… Master. The household goods are all still inside. Things people would have taken with them if they'd evacuated are still sitting there."
"So it wasn't an evacuation," Elena said, sounding thoroughly uninterested. Like me, she didn't particularly care about any of this.
"…Meaning they left everything behind and took off? Must have been in one hell of a hurry."
Elena shook her head.
"I don't think so. There's no sign of a panicked scramble. They moved somewhere as a group. Yuria — from what you saw inside, how long would you say the place has been empty?"
Yuria thought for a moment.
"Judging by the dust… about four days, maybe?"
"Four days…. The Vitrase army started its advance well before that. These villagers moved for some other reason. You said this village trades with Beliac, didn't you? It's possible the people from here are in Beliac Village right now."
"Elnoa. You heard Elena. Let's head to Beliac. Once we're there, we should be able to figure out what happened to this place."
"Yes…."
Elnoa cast one last uneasy look over the village, then turned toward the forest. I followed behind her, turning the situation over in my mind. The village had been abandoned. Household goods left sitting inside.
Should I grab some of it?
All free for the taking. Greed gave my thoughts a little nudge — and then laziness rolled in right behind it.
What am I going to do with junk like that? It's not even dwarven craftsmanship…. It won't sell for anything. My time is worth more than whatever I'd get for it.
I wiped Randle Village from my mind.
Elnoa led the way, stopping and starting as she walked. Every time she halted, she sharpened her eyes and twitched those long ears of hers.
Curiosity got the better of me.
"How exactly are you finding the path through this forest?"
"I use the power of the spirits. If you listen carefully to the whispers of the earth and the trees, you can find the way."
I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I was stuck at square one — the spirits themselves.
In Academy's Savior I was a spirit user too…. But that was because of Spirit Eye (S). In this world, I don't know the first thing about spirits.
I rolled my eyes sideways and met Elena's gaze. She didn't look like she understood Elnoa any better than I did.
"…I think I have a general sense of it. Elnoa, do we need to go that way?"
Yuria pointed to the left. Elnoa's eyes went wide, and she nodded.
"That's right. That way. How did you know? Does the head maid have the power of the spirits as well…?!"
"I'm not sure how to explain it…. The mana in that direction just felt a little different somehow."
"As expected of the head maid! You're amazing!"
Elnoa was impressed. So was I, for that matter. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't see it. Even with Heavenly Eye active, staring straight at the mana with both eyes, I still couldn't tell.
Some kind of instinctive sense only a genius can pick up on….
I tried to recall the feeling from when I'd used Time of the Genius. That sensation of my spiritual capacity swelling to at least ten times normal. If Yuria had been born with that kind of gift, finding a path through this forest wouldn't be impossible for her at all.
"Kreeeeee!"
A bat the size of a meter hung upside down from a thick tree branch. The moment it spotted us, it shrieked. A high-frequency cry rolled through the air around us. I frowned. An ordinary person might have dropped dead or passed out from that pitch, but for us it was just an unpleasant noise.
"Kreeeeee… squawk!"
The dagger Yuria threw buried itself deep in the bat's right eye. It died on the spot.
"Hmm. Here they come," Elena murmured.
Immediately after, the sound of flapping wings rose from every direction. The cry from the bat monster Yuria had just killed had been a call for its pack.
"At least thirty of them. Want me to handle it?"
"No. I've got this."
Even with Complete Recovery available, it was better to conserve Elena's strength as much as possible. The deeper we went into the forest, the more dangerous the monsters would get. Elena was our trump card.
I've practiced this technique a few times…. Let's call it Lightning Orb. I'm planning to fold it into the Yeongcheon-ryu eventually, but that can wait.
Crack. Crackle.
Blue lightning gathered above my palm. The current spun slowly, shaping itself into a sphere. Before the bats could fully close in, I raised the Lightning Orb overhead. Ever since my Lightning attribute hit level 10, remote control of the current had become much easier and far more precise.
Lightning Ball, if you want the English name.
CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACK! CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACK!
Bolts erupted from the orb and started electrocuting every bat that came diving in. In less than ten seconds, it was over. More than thirty bats lay scattered across the ground, cooked to a crisp.
Controlling each bolt one by one burns through concentration like crazy. Is there a better way?
Nothing useful came to mind.
"Impressive. It looked like magic. Your ability has grown since the last time I saw it. …Is that magic, by any chance?"
"It's not magic. I can't use magic in the first place. No talent for it."
"I wonder. That technique just now wouldn't have looked out of place as magic. And you… you're thinking about magic the hard way. Magic is difficult, yes — but there are all kinds of magic. There are ways to use it without going through the hard route."
Elena's words lit a spark of interest.
Magic. Unlike the sword, this was pure talent territory. Even in the real world, people without the gift couldn't so much as look at it. That was exactly why talentless me had never given it a second thought — until Elena said what she just said.
"Okay, now I'm genuinely curious. Give me an example of magic you can use without the hard way."
"Inscription magic is the classic one. You carve the inscription into your skin or clothing and spend mana to activate the spell. The downside is limited power and versatility, but the upside is convenience. Then there's rune magic. Mastering it is difficult, but the basics can be learned through simple rote instruction."
"How many years does rune magic take?"
"I never studied it, so I don't know. From what I've heard, you can pick up the fundamentals in about one or two years."
Talentless as I was, I rounded that up to three years in my head.
Spend three whole years grinding away at a single school of magic? I thought back to middle school and high school. I had been a terrible student. There was one stretch where my parents' allowance scheme actually hooked me into studying for real… and my grades still didn't come out anywhere near what I'd hoped. Ranking from the bottom was faster.
I threw a tantrum demanding allowance money, and when that didn't work I ran away from home — and only then did I finally get paid.
I used that money, under Dad's name, to buy a high-end onahole. It was modeled after a popular AV actress at the time. Ass, clit, labia, even the asshole — top-of-the-line reproduction. And I never even got to use the damn thing.
Dad caught me and beat the hell out of me. As for the onahole… he took it, and I have no idea what happened after that. I don't think he threw it away, though…. Fuck. Thinking about it now pisses me off. Dad NTR'd my onahole?!
My teeth ground together.
NTR should be answered with NTR! Except… to NTR Dad I'd have to fuck Mom…. No matter how I look at it, my dick is not getting hard for my own mother.
So the NTR counterstrike was a wash.
Dad's allowance: confiscated for three months.
Ending an NTR grudge with that. I really was a model son.
"So, have you decided to learn magic?"
Elena's voice pulled me back. I snapped out of it and shook my head.
"Forget it. Spending that time on the sword is the better play. If I need magic, I'll just hire a mage."
"Don't you have more time than you know what to do with…? Well, suit yourself."
Yuria, who had been quietly listening to our conversation, stepped closer.
"Um… is rune magic something like this?"
She extended a finger into the empty air. The tip glowed blue. Characters I couldn't read traced themselves into the space in front of her.
"…Rune script. So this world has runes as well?"
"Yuria. Where did you learn that?"
"There was a book in my shadow…. I tried learning it once."
"A book?"
When I asked again, Yuria answered with action. She pulled the book out of her shadow. I glanced at the title and my mouth fell slightly open.
The title read Fundamentals of Runes. Harmless enough on its own. The problem was that the lettering wasn't from this world at all. It was the script of God's Atlantis.
…Yuria was summoned to the God's Atlantis world once before. She must have stashed this in her shadow and brought it back when she was reverse-summoned.
Nothing else explained how that book ended up in her hands.
"……So she bought that with the reward money from back then. Well, teaching herself runes is impressi— wait. Didn't she lose her memories a few months ago?"
Elena said, startled.
Language hadn't been an issue. Even while her memories were gone, Yuria could still read and write. But any knowledge of rune script should have been wiped clean.
"The last time I had nothing to do… I just read through it once."
"You read through it once? You didn't study it?"
"It was organized so well that the material wasn't difficult."
"……I already knew, but you really are an absurd maid."
Elena shook her head slowly from side to side.
It was almost funny. In my eyes, Elena was a genius too. Her talent for illusion magic alone was on a level that could rival a god. Everything else fell short of Yuria, sure — but still.
If I used Time of the Genius, I could… never mind. What am I going to do with ten seconds?
We kept talking as we followed Elnoa deeper into the forest. Monsters came at us. Most of the time Yuria moved first and cut their lives short; when a large pack showed up, I stepped in.
Around the time the sun was going down, we found a corpse leaning against a tree. The clothes and weapons said hunter. His face was gaunt, his skin pale. Dark blotches mottled his flesh here and there, and the fabric over his chest was stiff with dried blood.
"…Why is the body still intact?"
That was what Yuria said when she looked at it. I was about to ask what she meant — then I remembered where we were. This was the Forest of Polemp. Monsters and beasts swarmed the place. A corpse should have been in some monster's stomach within the hour. That was the normal order of things.
"…This brings back old memories. Yes. Things like this happened. ……This is going to be a headache."
Elena sighed.
"You know what this is?"
"Monsters and beasts have sharp instincts. They know it on a gut level — this meat isn't edible. And looking at those black spots on the skin, doesn't it ring a bell? This is plague."
Elena lifted her gaze upward. A couple of beats later, she spoke again.
"Plague has spread through this forest."