First Night on the First Floor
Crack. Crackle-crackle.
Our first night in the Abyss was spent sleeping rough.
Sleeping rough has a grim ring to it, so let's call it camping. Light a campfire, hang a pot from a makeshift stand of branches, and that's camping, right? Granted, our bedding was a single blanket with no tent or sleeping bag in sight — proper wilderness living. But that's no great problem for mages. A mage worth their salt is supposed to turn even a patch of dirt into a decent place to sleep.
I gave the soup a stir. It bubbled away with a sturdy, self-satisfied air, as if determined to advertise how delicious it was becoming.
"I don't get it."
"Don't get what?"
Time to check the seasoning. I ladled a little onto a small plate and took a sip.
Just right.
"All of it. You. Those guys. This whole situation."
What was so strange about it? I'd been moving on perfectly rational, cold-blooded calculation.
"Why'd you let them live?"
"They're valuable. Manpower, for one thing. And nobody here can use Housing magic."
Housing — construction magic that raised a temporary base out of whatever materials happened to be on hand. The difficulty was high enough that it didn't make the five fundamental spells, but it was so useful that a mage who could cast it earned bonus points joining a guild or a party.
Of course, my universal magic still hadn't left the beginner level, so it wasn't a spell I could use. But when you don't have teeth, you use your gums. As long as the thing got built, who cared how? Operating on that principle, I was currently casting Housing magic (Physical).
"Hey. That's crooked. Stand it up properly."
"Ah — y-yes, sir..."
Housing magic (Physical): corrections applied the instant I chanted them. Why would I just throw labor like this away?
"...Haa. Then what about him?"
Mea pointed at the swordsman who'd been the first to get bitten by her wolf, then had his skull cracked along with his helmet by my magic bullet. Left as he was, he would have died on the spot. But for the moment, the swordsman still had a pulse. The shock had been too much for him to come around properly — he was only alive at all because I'd given the cleric permission to use healing magic.
A life-debt, you could call it. Once he woke up, I intended to collect on that debt in full.
"Cross-referencing. He looked like their leader. He might know things the others don't."
"...Is she that important to you?"
I'd told Mea that the half-elf I'd mentioned was a teammate from the training camp. My real team included Ray as well as Leaf, but I hadn't asked separately about any beastmen. Obviously nothing like this would happen to Ray.
Unlike Leaf, who like me was receiving one-on-one field training, Ray was training with the Frontier Guild on Arthur's recommendation. Jumping a rookie who belonged to one of the Five Great Guilds? You'd have to be out of your mind. The guild would put out a wanted notice and a kill order on the spot, then mobilize every connection they had to hunt you down and butcher you.
And it wouldn't just be the rookie-hunters. That slaver who'd been tracking Ray would get himself wrecked if he tried any funny business now. The Five Great Guilds weren't merely powers inside the city. If they felt like it, they had more than enough reach to throw their weight around outside it, too.
She hadn't said as much, but a big part of why Ray accepted Arthur's offer and chose Frontier as her training post was probably for their protection. Ray had already been attacked once. Who was to say it wouldn't happen twice? And once those people realized she'd gotten her license, they'd start making connections on the Res Limen side. For every guild like Frontier that devoted itself purely to exploring the Abyss, there was another that quietly took dirty jobs behind the scenes.
Anyway. Back to Mea's question.
Was she important?
Objectively speaking, two weeks isn't a long time. I don't think anyone would call it long. It's short. But it was more than enough time to form a bond.
"Yes. I think she is."
The first bonds I'd ever formed. Setting aside my slave days, when none of it had been my choice, Leaf and Ray were the first real human relationships I'd made in this other world. There were others after that — Arthur, my roommate; Fiona-sensei, who'd taught me the fundamentals of universal magic and spellcraft; the classmates who'd made it out of the underground floors with me. But firsts are special. That's just how it is.
"Okay... yeah. That, I get."
They were worth enough that I'd pay a price to use demonology for them. Whether she understood that or not, Mea gave a shallow nod.
"But there's still something I don't get."
"What's that?"
"Why do you use it so crudely?"
"...Excuse me?"
"Crude? Inefficient? No technique?"
Each word landed like a dagger. Mea swayed her head like a cat, listing them one by one as if searching for the most precise way to put it.
"You've never properly learned magic, have you."
"Well... that's true enough. I did learn the basics from a pretty sharp teacher, though."
Fiona could pass for a top-tier instructor, couldn't she? The legitimate daughter of the Grand Ducal house that ruled Res Limen. Naturally, she would have learned magic from remarkable people. Mea seemed to agree on that point.
"Yeah. That's fine. Your mana control, the mana formulas you use to construct basic spells — those were clean. The problem is your demonology. It's too rough."
"Ah, that..."
Because I can just use it however I want?
I had no need to conserve my contracted demons' power. So I didn't have to sit around wondering how to improve fuel efficiency, or how to borrow power more efficiently while lowering the price. Inefficient? Then I just threw more at it. Problem solved! That was my demonology.
To Mea, a proper demonologist, my method must have looked like some kind of insane, impossibly wasteful stunt.
"I've got a mountain of things to criticize, but first — why didn't you use that?"
What Mea pointed at was the grimoire dangling from my belt. The Blank Grimoire I'd received from the director. Right now, it was just a decoration.
"This is a Blank Grimoire. It's still an empty book."
"...Haa."
What? I'd given her a perfectly decent explanation, and she still let out a sigh, a hint of exasperation settling over her usual blank expression.
"Don't go around saying that. A Blank Grimoire is worth more than you can imagine."
"Is that so?"
"Even Master-rank explorers can't get their hands on one. From now on, just make something up."
Master-rank explorers. I used to think of them as beings so far removed that it never felt real. Not anymore. Just now, I'd seen how strong Mea was.
Her wolves had flinched at my mana, but if we'd actually fought, they would have shrugged that off and come at me anyway. In fact, they'd been about to — until Mea stopped them. Mea was far stronger than Male-whatever. Even if I went all-out, the odds would definitely favor her.
I did have a last resort — crushing her with the rank of my contracted demons, the way I had with Male-whatever. But that was a gamble, nothing more. If Mea's contracted demon happened to outrank Seir or Leraje — or even match them — that was a one-way ticket to a pointless death.
And a demonologist of Mea's caliber was only Senior.
Setting numbers aside and looking at rank alone, Senior sat right in the middle. Explorer ranks were divided into five tiers: Novice, Regular, Senior, Expert, Master.
Two cases fell outside those five, sitting below and above the pyramid. Below: apprentice explorers with temporary licenses who hadn't even made Novice — people like me, right now. And above: those who had transcended the five ranks entirely, opening new horizons of cognition. The forerunners. The Eight Pioneers.
It also drove home, as a bonus, just how extraordinary a position the guildmaster of Frontier — where Ray had gone to learn — actually occupied.
"I'll be careful."
"Good. That's the grimoire. Another problem is that you don't use price substitution at all."
"...What's that?"
"Figured as much."
Mea said it immediately, as if she'd expected exactly that. Hey, that's a little unfair. It's not like I'd ever needed to look into it...
"It's exactly what it sounds like. Paying the price in a different form."
"So you don't have to pay the price yourself?"
"The efficiency is worse. And it's not like you can substitute just anything."
If the price was one year of your own lifespan, you could substitute it with ten years of someone else's. But "someone else," in this case, meant only a being under your absolute control. A branded demonologist, for example.
"That's the usual method."
"Then could you use someone else's fingers as a price substitution?"
"Fingers?"
"Yes. One finger per spell. I saw a demonologist who used a price like that, once."
Unless the guy was a planarian, they couldn't all have been his own fingers. There was a chance he'd been cutting off his own and regenerating them with healing magic or potions. I'd thought that at first, too.
"It's not impossible. But since it's someone else's body, you'd need to run it through magical processing to make up the difference."
Which meant the real problem was the cost — and with that answer, I had a pretty good idea why that demonologist had been doing dirty work for a slaver. And why the coin purses I'd claimed as rightful spoils hadn't exactly warmed my heart.
"Still, it's a lot better than not using it at all. Wanting to live even one more day is the essence of life. If you want to stretch your own life out even a little longer, make sure you use substitution."
"...Yes. I'll keep that in mind."
That brief hesitation was me scrambling for a reply, because I couldn't exactly tell her I didn't need any of it.
"More importantly, let's eat. It's a bit late, but their supplies were high-quality. It should taste pretty good."
It looked about done, so I ladled out some soup and handed it to Mea. She accepted the spoon and bowl in both of her small hands and took a cautious, skeptical bite.
"...!"
And then her eyes went wide.
"Good, right?"
"...Yeah. It's been a long time since I had something this good."
"I studied cooking pretty seriously. There's plenty, so eat as much as you want."
The food in this world, in my experience, had been abysmal. My slave days went without saying, but even after I'd been freed, most of what I'd eaten made me wonder if it even qualified as food compared to what I'd had back on Earth. In the end, the thirsty dig their own wells. I'd thrown myself into learning how to cook with everything I had. I just hadn't had a chance to show it off until now, what with pinching every coin.
"...? Why him?"
When I set the next bowl down beside the unconscious guy's head instead of eating it myself, Mea asked, puzzled.
"Stimulating him with the smell so he wakes up faster."
"There's no way that would—"
"Nn... something smells good... Bark, was it your turn today? More importantly... some water, first..."
It works, though?
Mea suddenly went quiet and started working her spoon with great dedication, as if she had no intention of watching me interrogate anyone this time. I left her to her meal and snatched the soup bowl up before the swordsman could grab it.
"Sleep well? Nice evening, isn't it?"
"...What the hell is...?"
"Ah. Still half-asleep? In that case."
Crrrk—
"Aaaagh!"
I pressed down, slow and firm, on the back of the hand he'd raised to take the bowl. He screamed like an instrument.
"How's that? You with us now?"