Rising Smoke
The next day.
Shiron came down to the first floor of the annex with lemonade instead of coffee.
His steps on the stairs were careful and light.
Yet the soft tread had nothing to do with consideration for anyone still asleep. From this moment on he needed to carry out a rather secret task, and because using the game’s systems always demanded caution, he had chosen a time when everyone else was still lost in sleep.
“Let’s see…”
Shiron laid the items he had won at auction the day before neatly across the table.
◈ Holy Power +5 upon equip
◈ Fire Resistance +20
Both were sacred relics—one rare, one unique. The Rosary of the Corrupt Priest raised Holy Power by five the instant it was worn; the Pearl Necklace of the Mistress Better Left Unknown raised fire resistance by twenty. Yet for all their useful resistances, the pieces themselves looked every bit the antiques they were. As ornaments they ought to have caught the soft moonlight with a metallic gleam, but they were so old that any sparkle seemed a distant memory.
In the game they definitely shone like new…
“Hah…”
Anticipating the labor ahead, Shiron exhaled a long sigh and rolled up his sleeves. He dabbed detergent onto a toothbrush and began scrubbing the relics.
He was not cleaning them simply so he could wear them. This tedious process was entirely for the sake of dismantling and absorbing the sacred relics. Even the Storage ability he relied on so heavily had required the same treatment. In short, if he planned to put something in his mouth and swallow it, the least he could do was ensure a minimum of hygiene.
“…Ugh.”
Wrestling with centuries of grime made for a thoroughly pitiful sight. Still, it was a necessary step to assimilate the relics into his own body.
“Ugh, why won’t this come off?”
The oxide film that had built up from long exposure to air refused to yield to toothbrush bristles. Only yesterday he had cut a luxurious figure escorting the noble young lady Siriel; the Shiron struggling for survival now looked, frankly, rather pathetic.
And there was a woman watching that pathetic boy from afar.
“Hmm…”
Seira observed the boy scraping the tarnish from antiques with the leisure of a voyeur. The distance from the main house to the annex was considerable on foot, yet the magic she wove brought the scene right before her eyes. That was not all. The various anti-eavesdropping wards laid throughout the annex where Shiron stayed proved useless against Seira, who prided herself as the greatest mage of any age. She bypassed the barriers as easily as eating cake, nodded a few times with the eyes of a detached observer, and thought:
So he really does like antiques.
A faint spark of interest kindled inside her. A noble young master who poured vast sums into collecting antiques—now that was entertaining to watch. Most boys his age preferred a sharp-edged sword or a splendid uniform… yet Shiron had not even glanced at the weapons displayed at the auction. And the objects he was now painstakingly brushing, piece by piece, in the hands of a boy of about ten, were the kind of unsellable dead stock the auction house itself regarded as headaches. Magic equipment or not, who would bother using relics like these just to escape a little heat? Warriors and mages alike, once they reached a certain level, neither sweated in midsummer nor felt the cold of deepest winter. Mages could even warm or cool the air around them to regulate body temperature. The whole thing was almost laughable. With that much capital at his disposal he could simply train his mana and reach those heights in no time.
What an eccentric hobby… wait?
Seira’s eyelids fluttered. The boy who had been polishing the antiques until they shone suddenly began smashing them to pieces.
…No. If he was going to break them, why go to all that trouble cleaning them first?
Curiosity and confusion surged through her at once. In her mind the young master with the merely eccentric hobby was instantly elevated to a very special sort of human being.
“Hmm…”
Seira let out a soft murmur of admiration. She had seen plenty of people waste money in spectacular ways… but a little brat doing it like this was a first even in her seven-hundred-plus years of life.
And that was not the end of it. The boy took the broken fragments, put them in his mouth, and swallowed them.
“…Is he an idiot?”
The crude curse slipped out as she frowned. There was something… very wrong with that boy. Among dragons there were odd ones who put gold and jewels in their mouths just to savor the texture, but the boy was an ordinary human, nothing special. Simply putting something inedible into his mouth was not enough to startle Seira, however. The problem was that his actions ran completely counter to the side of himself he had shown the day before.
The older brother carefully looking after his little sister. The greedy face that flushed with bloodshot eyes when he wanted something. Those were the very images of humanity Seira had observed for so long.
“…This is no time to sit and watch.”
She dismissed the Observer’s Eye and layered her amusement shell over her true body. Ash-silver hair shifted to deep crimson; her pointed ears rounded.
“…Mm. Perfect.”
Seira gazed into the mirror with unfocused black eyes. Flawless magic, as always.
“…Done.”
In the kitchen where flames were rising, Shiron wore a thoroughly satisfied smile. Even though the fierce heat pressed against his skin, he felt neither hot nor sweaty. The sacred relics he had ingested at dawn had fully assimilated into his body. With this, ordinary heat was no longer a problem.
“…Was it that much fun?”
Perhaps because he had been smiling the whole time, Lucia was the first to speak, her expression puzzled.
“What was?”
“Don’t play dumb… You went out alone with Siriel yesterday.”
Lucia’s tone was blunt. The memory of becoming the demon maids’ plaything the day before had left her a little sharp. It was absolutely not because she had been left behind while everyone else went out to play. Whether he knew that or not, Shiron shook his head and then fixed his eyes on her.
“I’m not sure I should even say this, but… honestly, it wasn’t fun at all.”
“…What are you talking about?”
Lucia narrowed her eyes and asked again. Shiron was the type who would invent stories just to comfort her for having stayed home watching the house. Yet his face carried none of the usual traces of mischief.
“Because of some slave, my workload just went up.”
Shiron heaved a deep sigh and shoveled food into his stomach. From today onward he planned to spend most of his free time keeping an eye on Elysee.
And so time passed until spring arrived, and Shiron had gained nothing at all.
He had devoted considerable effort to watching Elysee for a long stretch, yet she never did anything out of the ordinary. She simply fulfilled the duties of a servant to the letter. Even now she was sweeping the manor courtyard like the apprentice maid she was supposed to be. The other servants who lived with her had nothing but praise; her work was impeccable.
“Seriously… what kind of situation is this?”
Shiron shrugged with a disappointed look.
“If she had some purpose she’d show a suspicious sign or two. She isn’t doing a single thing.”
“…”
“Encia. What do you think?”
He turned a sharp glare to his right.
“Well… I can’t sense anything from this woman. She really does feel exactly like a human. Maybe Young Master is just imagining things?”
“Hey—”
“What human’s eyes flash with light, then? Are you saying I was seeing things?”
When Shiron protested in indignation, Ophelia, standing beside him, came to Encia’s support.
“Young Master. From what I can see as well, this Elysee woman gives off no aura whatsoever. The pressure one should feel from a powerful being… and if she were a demon, the demonic energy that ought to be present… nothing.”
“Ophelia thinks so too?”
“…Um. What exactly are you doing right now?”
Elysee looked a little troubled as she regarded the three of them. Shiron and the two maids who had followed him. They were bad-mouthing her right under her nose. Even if they had whispered behind her back it would have been one thing; instead they openly appraised her to her face. The sheer departure from common sense was enough to rattle even Seira, who was playing the part of a docile slave.
“Don’t mind us. It’s not as if I’m saying anything I shouldn’t.”
Shiron shrugged and gave a short laugh.
“Keep doing your work.”
“Th-then… could you please return the dustpan in your hand? I can’t clean without it…”
“So you can’t clean without a dustpan. I’ve learned something new.”
Clicking his tongue, Shiron reluctantly held the dustpan out to Elysee. She hesitated a moment before accepting it politely with both hands.
Yet the awkward situation showed no sign of ending. The maid with the swaying golden hair—Encia, was it?—covered her mouth with one hand and began to giggle.
“Heh-heh. What an insolent slave.”
“…Pardon?”
What nonsense was this now? Elysee’s eyes widened as she stared at Encia.
“…If it would not be too bold, might I request instruction? I will correct myself at once.”
Barely managing to keep her expression from collapsing, Elysee immediately offered a bright smile and fixed her gaze on the demon who was so poorly suited to the role of maid.
“My. Don’t tell me you don’t know? Right now, as a mere slave, you are trying to teach your master something.”
“T-teach? I have done no such thing…”
Feeling stifled, Elysee raised a faintly protesting voice. But that hope bounced right off Encia without leaving a mark. Encia snorted and sneered at her.
“Nothing, you say? You’re forcibly injecting Young Master with the common knowledge that a dustpan is required for cleaning.”
“…”
Elysee was left speechless. It was pure sophistry. The most shameless sophistry imaginable. It was already absurd enough that demons were living so amicably with a human child; the childish, ridiculous harassment they were dishing out was even more flustering. Elysee—Seira—had lived for hundreds of years, yet she still had no idea how she was supposed to take this kind of bullying.