The World After Rescue
After the rescue, the slime daughter who had clung to me and wept soon reshaped her entire body into its original form. Cold, semi-solid slime enveloped me, dissolving the cocoon that had bound my body. It was hard to believe that something so rigid could melt away so effortlessly.
The moment Rin freed me, she released my body and returned to the form of a young girl. She wore clothes clearly different from the last time we parted—rather, she mimicked the shape of different clothes. They resembled Naixon’s attire, likely some kind of alchemist’s lab coat.
I stared blankly as I moved my now-free hands. I watched my fingers flex, my elbows bend without resistance. My body… moved. I faced a reality that should have been ordinary, yet it felt like a dream that could never exist. I couldn’t believe it.
My entire body was soaked by the endless rain falling beneath the storm. Only then did I notice the smells I hadn’t registered while trapped inside the cocoon, clinging to what little sanity I had left. The scent of rain-soaked earth and grass, the stench of sweat and waste that had rotted on my body for who knows how long, flooded my nostrils. There was also the rot from the corpses the death priests commanded, but the smell of decaying deer dung and my own secretions was far worse. It would have even masked that cursed bread smell.
Overwhelmed by the flood of returned sensations, I sat dazed on the moss- and fern-covered forest floor for a long while. Then, suddenly, I lifted my head and asked,
“Why……”
Rin came into view. The slime daughter waited for me to speak, her expression faintly anxious. She looked almost human.
“Why did you save me? Why…… I was fine in there. I could forget everything, not have to think about anything, just stay comfortable……”
I buried my face in my palms and wept endlessly. I couldn’t tell whether the moisture on my body was tears or rain. Another clap of thunder rolled across the sky. I drew a sharp breath, forgot even my crying, and trembled.
I opened my eyes in a room with a bright purple canopy I had never seen even in the saintess’s chambers. Beside me sat Rin, her eyes shadowed with exhaustion and bloodshot from staying up all night nursing me.
How can she even imitate something like this……
I hadn’t simply fainted in the forest and woken up here. Though my mind had been broken and moving or thinking clearly had been nearly impossible, the skeletal servants the priests commanded had supported me, even carried me when I collapsed, so I had managed to return safely. The smell of bone had been terrible, though.
Once, Rin had even transformed into a bizarre donkey-like creature to carry me.
The cave where I had been held was several hundred meters from the narrow path where I first encountered the infected deer and the parasitic wasps—an underground hollow beneath a low hill deep in the forest. A remote, uninhabited place where no one would hear me no matter how loudly I screamed.
Karik had already sent an undead messenger with a letter informing the lord of my impending arrival, so the fact that I had gone missing was known. But since no one knew where, how, or by what I had disappeared, no search party had come looking.
The reason I was rescued was, paradoxically, because of the very creatures that had captured and devoured me to create the next generation of prey—my children… or rather, the parasitic wasps. I wasn’t sure what to call them, but they were the reason.
After I was abducted by the first-generation mother wasp, the number of wasps attacking nearby villages had exploded. Even though they were man-eating monsters, like any carnivorous animal they didn’t always succeed in their hunts. People traveled in groups, after all. Other animals weren’t completely helpless against the wasps either.
But when their numbers grew too large, the damage naturally became severe. Even without being abducted, being poisoned into a coma or having one’s mind broken was harm enough.
The priests of the God of Death who oversaw each village treated the incident as a serious matter. They concluded there must be some trigger causing the wasps’ population to surge and decided to call that trigger “the Mother of the Insects.”
Thinking about it, it made sense. There was no need for dangerous hunts to reproduce; they only had to return to the cave where they were born, where an endless supply of willing, helpless meat waited in cocoons, eager to be eaten.
Any individual that attempted to breed with me would have succeeded, and their numbers would have multiplied rapidly.
It’s not like Sehrimnir’s meat…… How pathetic. Even I think so.
But as I had once told Rin, drugs and poisons couldn’t be overcome by willpower alone. Rin, the suffering villagers, and the death priests would all understand.
That was the story Rin told me after I woke.
“……I understand the story.”
The notion of treating the wasp larvae as my babies and the horrific poison that turned every agony into pleasure had both vanished. While I slept, Rin must have entered my brain and corrected the twisted perceptions.
When I realized that, I stared quietly at Rin’s face—the face that resembled mine, or rather, exactly like mine when I was young.
Is thinking of this child as my daughter just another twisted perception……
Shaking off the thought, I asked her,
“But why are you here?”
Rin, still child-sized despite wearing scholar-like finery, looked deeply hurt as she answered.
“What do you mean, Mother? We agreed to meet, didn’t we? The day we parted on that ship.”
Ah…… That’s right.
The day Pirel and I were to travel alone, Rin had said she would leave my side for a while—to consult Naixon and recover her lost split body. She had suggested we meet in the holy city of Poscotia.
“But you said you wouldn’t come back because of the mass production of the contraceptive pill.”
Rin smiled faintly. It was a smile that mimicked a human’s, but hadn’t yet learned to mimic a human heart.
“I solved it by eating every last rat, fly, and ant and increasing the workforce.”
“Really? Well done, our Rin. Thanks to you incidentally wiping out all the pests, the people of the capital probably don’t have to worry about epidemics as much.”
We both chuckled at the same time. How long had it been since I last joked with someone… or rather, with an intelligent being that possessed something like a human mind? How long had it been since I last laughed?
How long…… I hesitated, then asked the question I had been avoiding.
“Hey, Rin…… I know you’re deliberately holding back. How long was I missing?”
Rin’s face paled slightly. Perhaps from tension, the alchemist’s elegant robe flickered and turned slightly transparent. She had clearly been worried about me. That must be why she was shaken.
After letting out a long sigh, Rin spoke slowly.
“One year…… and about one more season.”
So I had spent that time inside the cave, soaked in poison no different from a drug. While everyone else was living their lives, I had been wasting away, treating insects as my children and dripping fluids, saliva, and tears.
I forced down the bitter shock and answered calmly.
“I see.”
If that much time had passed…… that child must have changed a little too. I asked quietly,
“Have you met Pirel by any chance?”
“Ah…… Yes. I saw her briefly when I greeted the saintess. She was complaining a lot about how hard combat priest training was. But that was already about a year ago, so the Pirel I met probably doesn’t look much different from the one you remember.”
“Right. She’s doing fine without me. That’s a relief.”
I looked up again and met Rin’s eyes directly. Perhaps sensing my unease, the soft, fluffy, sticky, squelching daughter tilted her head slightly, her pupils trembling.
“Were you here the whole year?”
“Yes. The bishop who also serves as lord…… promised to help search for you.”
That would be the woman who had been with Karik and Rin, commanding skeletons, when I was rescued from the burrow. Back then my mind hadn’t been working properly, so I couldn’t remember her face or voice clearly.
“If she’s both bishop and lord, then she’s a priest serving the God of Death as well.”
“Yes. Just as you heard in Inis Madun, she is also Priest Karik’s spiritual mother in faith.”
Rin took my hand firmly and continued.
“At first I crossed the river to meet Priest Karik. When I asked if he had seen you, he said he had—and looked rather embarrassed. From that expression,”
Rin twisted her head at an angle no human should be able to manage, like an owl, and pressed me with quiet intensity.
“……you spent the night with Priest Karik too, didn’t you? Legs spread wide.”
My cheeks flushed red as I tried to look away, but I still answered properly.
“……Yeah……”
Rin let out a helpless sigh—“Phew”—and went on.
“After receiving a promise to compile and publish Riaska’s traditions, history, and local products for the Empire, he let me go. But afterward there was no contact, and when I checked whether you had arrived at your destination—Cashel Groa—they said no such person had come. He was quite worried when he heard that. So I set out for Cashel Groa myself.”
Rin grinned and winked with one eye.
“Unlike you, I wasn’t attacked. Even if I had been ambushed by bugs while traveling normally by land—since I can turn into a swarm and fly—I would have just eaten them instead.”
“Yeah. Good for you……”
“And when I arrived and met the lord in person to explain, she already knew. She had heard that the mage who departed from Inis Madun had lost contact. When I asked if she could help search for you while you were missing somewhere around here, and also let me study the distillation techniques famous in the land of death as the court alchemist, she agreed right away.”
I frowned slightly.
“You look like a ten-year-old child no matter how you dress. She allowed that……?”
“Well, I showed her my true form. Once I introduced myself as the creation and personal disciple of the great Creator Naixon, who can produce wondrous beings like me, no lord could easily refuse.”
Then Rin extended her hand toward me.
“I’ve mostly removed the parts of your brain that were altered by the poison and tangled up your common sense while you were sleeping. You shouldn’t have any trouble moving now. Come on, let’s go together. To meet the lord…… Bishop Lumina.”