Arisa

“More specifically,” Arisa continued, “I’m a former Japanese person who was reincarnated in the Kuvork Kingdom without losing my memories of being Arisa Tachibana. Are you also a reincarnation? No, judging by that black hair of yours, I’ll bet you were summoned here as a hero. Am I wrong, Mr. Satou?”

Her AR information didn’t display her Japanese name or status as a “former Japanese person.”

I guess that made sense, since my status didn’t show my real name, “Ichirou Suzuki,” or my real nationality, either.

“What’s the matter? You’re quiet all of a sudden. Did you know you’re the second Japanese person I’ve met here?”

My eyes went immediately to the sleeping Lulu.

“No, not Lulu. I never met her great-grandfather, but apparently he was Japanese as well. One’s genes can be a terrible thing, you know. If she were born in Japan, she could’ve easily become a famous idol with those looks.”

“What do you mean? I thought she was just speaking poorly of herself out of desperation. She must be popular here in the Shiga Kingdom, too, right?”

“I’m not surprised you would think that. But you heard what Nidoren said, didn’t you? To the people in this world, that girl isn’t beautiful at all.”

“Are you just using Psychic Magic to—?”

“Not at all.”

I thought perhaps Arisa was using her Psychic Magic to disguise Lulu’s beauty in order to protect her, but she stopped me before I could even finish asking.

“By the standards of beauty here, she just has a flat, expressionless face; thin lips; skin that isn’t pale enough; and a small bottom. It’s as if she were designed to have every unattractive feature. Although it’s prevented anyone from buying her as a slave, at least.”

What? Wait, if a Japanese face failed to meet the criteria for good looks, didn’t that mean they’d consider me ugly, too?

As if my thoughts had shown clearly on my face, Arisa went on to clarify.

“You won’t exactly be considered handsome, but it seems like they just see you as a normal foreigner. But Lulu isn’t just ordinarily unappealing—she’s an object of sheer disgust. It’s uncanny how everything about her is slightly off.”

They say the standards of beauty change depending on the place and time period, but this seemed especially unlucky—no, I guess in her circumstances, it might have been better this way.

It was hard for me to accept it, but I’d have to keep in mind that the people here saw Lulu as an unattractive young woman.

Apparently finished with Lulu’s story, Arisa changed the subject.

“So, Mr. Satou, are you a transmigration or a transference?”

“Stop calling me that, please.”

“As you wish, master.”

Normally I’d be fine with “Satou,” but she kept emphasizing the Japanese pronunciation so much that I was afraid I’d forget my real name was Suzuki. (The natives here pronounced it more like “Sa-two.”) Not that it mattered much, but still.

“But back to the question at hand. Which are you, master?”

“What’s the difference?”

I answered Arisa’s question with a question of my own. Both terms were unfamiliar to me, so I had no idea how to answer her.

“A transmigration is a soul that died early in an accident or the like in the real world and was reincarnated in this one. A transference is abducted into this world against their will by summoning magic. Heroes, for example.”

Abducted…

The word was loaded with negative connotations, so I wasn’t sure which category applied to me.

“Do transmigrations always start as babies?”

“According to legends, it can happen to adults, too, but in this world it only happens with babies.”

She seemed awfully sure of herself. When I asked her how she knew this…

“That’s what the god told me when I was reincarnated here.”

…was her answer.

She met a god?

If someone said a thing like that in Japan, everyone around them would definitely start to question their sanity or pretend not to know them.

“So a transference is summoned in their original form? Like their clothes, their possessions, their appearance…?”

“Yes, I’ve heard their clothes are the same ones they were wearing at the time they were summoned. Appearance, too, of course.”

Sure, my clothes had stayed the same, but why had I gotten younger?

“Is this just hearsay?”

“I heard this directly from a hero of the Saga Empire, so I don’t doubt that it’s true. The Saga Empire is the only country that can summon a hero from a different world.”

I wondered if I could figure out a way home if I went to the Saga Empire, then. I guess I should head there next once I was done sightseeing in the Shiga Kingdom.

And the other Japanese person Arisa had mentioned before must be this “hero.”

Now, what should I tell her? Should I tell her the truth about my situation or keep it a secret?

Well, she could manipulate people’s hearts and minds with that Psychic Magic of hers, but she was still the best lead I’d gotten so far.

“I see… Then I might not be either of those. I was taking a nap at my workplace, and when I woke up I was standing in a big wasteland.”

“You didn’t meet a god?”

“No such luck.”

Arisa folded her arms in thought. I really had to get her to put on some clothes.

“So you came out in the middle of a summoning circle when you got here, then, right?”

“Nope, I was all by myself.”

“Then did you start at a high level? Have infinite magic? Or tons of skills?”

“No, I started at level one, and I only had ten magic points. No skills, either.”

…Well, I guess I did have the limited-use Meteor Shower icons.

“Really? That seems incredibly unfair, don’t you think?”

Crap. Now I’m the one getting sympathy and being asked questions.

“All right, enough about me. Tell me about the skills you have. Your gifts and special abilities, too. Just to remind you, that’s an order.”

“I’d still answer even if you didn’t order me to, you know. Firstly, my ‘Psychic Magic’ skill is level five. Pretty high, isn’t it? I’ve put all the skill points I’ve gotten since birth into it.”

…All of them?

Arisa was level 11. If it worked the same for her as for me, she should have 110 skill points. Wouldn’t ten points be enough to max out just one skill like “Psychic Magic”?

“Arisa, I have a question.”

“Ask me whatever you’d like! My bust size is—”

Pressing a pillow over Arisa’s mouth to block this superfluous information, I continued my inquiry.

“How many skill points do you get when you level up? And how many points does it take to level up your ‘Psychic Magic’ skill?”

“Goodness, so violent. Every time I level up, the skill points I get are generally 2d6. That is to say, one six-sided die rolled two times. So between two and twelve, with an average of seven. And the number of points needed to level up my ‘Psychic Magic’ skill is different for each skill level. More specifically…”

I took note of Arisa’s information in the memo section of the networking menu.

What did this mean?

There was a huge difference between the skill points we got when we leveled up and the number needed to level up a skill.

Was my case unique, or was there some kind of system to it?

“Is something the matter?” Arisa asked, looking anxious.

“No, it’s fine.”

She seemed concerned, but I evaded the question.

If what Arisa said was true, then my ability to learn skills was several times—maybe even dozens of times—more efficient than that of the average person. In a way, it was just as big of a unique advantage as the “Meteor Shower” and “Search Entire Map” skills.

It would probably be best to make sure that I could trust Arisa completely before I told her about all this. Until then, I’d just keep it a secret.

“Arisa, what happens when you learn a new skill?”

“I just choose one from the list to learn, of course.”

So that part was the same… No, wait. I felt like I might be misunderstanding something here.

“So what causes new skills to appear on the list?”

“When my skill points increase. If you satisfy certain requirements, like the number of skill points or a related lower skill, the new skill shows up. They appear when you have half the required points, which is convenient—you can decide whether to spend the points now or save them for a better skill.”

Hmm, so that’s different, too.

In my case, I learned skills just by performing a related action. Although they didn’t learn them quite as absurdly easily as I did, the beastfolk girls seemed to acquire them in a similar fashion.

Without mentioning my own situation, I commented experimentally that the way the beastfolk girls acquired skills seemed to be different from Arisa’s method, but she simply responded that there were special systems for transferences and transmigrations.

Although we’d gotten a bit off topic, I listened to the rest of Arisa’s explanation.

“‘Self-Status Check’ is just what it sounds like: a skill that lets me review my own status. It gives much more information than a Yamato stone. Most importantly, it lets me manage my stats, like STR and INT, and choose how to allocate skill points.”

Apparently, it was this skill that allowed her to select what skill to learn from a list when she leveled up.

But she could choose how her attribute values were allotted, too? My menu didn’t have that feature.

I got the feeling that my menu was like a subset of what Arisa had described.

“‘Hide Skills’ allows me to conceal information about the skills I have. Once it’s been used, my skills will appear as ‘none,’ even to Yamato stones and ‘Analyze,’ until I deactivate it.”

Did the fact that her skills appeared as “Unknown” in my menu mean I had a different kind of analyzing skill?

“‘Status Check’ lets me view the status of others. To be honest, ‘Analyze’ would’ve been better, but I didn’t have enough transmigration bonus points.”

To test it out, I let her try to read my status, but she got only the information from my networking profile, just like a Yamato stone.

Arisa explained that “Analyze” was an analysis-type skill like “Status Check” but more comprehensive, though for looking at statuses, it wasn’t much stronger than “Status Check.”

Incidentally, a god gave Arisa’s “Hide Skills” to her, so even people with any analysis-type skills couldn’t see through it, she said.

I guess that was why it showed up as “Unknown” even in my display, too.

Normally, once “Hide Skills” was learned, the other person just had to have a “Status Check” skill level higher than the level of the “Hide Skills” being used.

But my networking menu, where I could edit the profile that others saw, was even more flexible than Arisa’s “Hide Skills.”

“‘Item Box’ is just as the name implies. It’s an item-storing system like the kind in a lot of games. Unlike the unlimited inventory that’s standard for heroes, it has a limited amount of space, but it doesn’t get bulky or heavy, so it’s still very useful.”

When I asked about the limitations, she explained that she could carry up to one hundred different kinds of items, with the same kind of item stackable up to one hundred units each. A very gamelike system.

For amorphous items, like water, one unit was apparently equal to about one liter.

Arisa proudly noted that she’d discovered a loophole where she could pack a lot of small items into a bag before storing them to get the same effect, counting by volume rather than amount.

My Storage system was more like the unlimited inventory that she mentioned.

I didn’t know if there was any difference other than the name, but it was useful either way, so I didn’t think it mattered.

“I’m getting thirsty from all this talking.”

Since Arisa was coughing a bit and holding her throat, I started to get up to bring her some water, but she stopped me with her free hand.

Instead, she suggested a demonstration of her Item Box, so I told her to go ahead.

“Item Box, open.”

Arisa chanted in a whisper and waved her hand theatrically, and a flat black hole opened up in front of her.

Is that the Item Box?

I didn’t get any black holes or fancy effects when I moved things into or out of Storage.

Arisa put her hands inside the black hole and promptly pulled out a jug of water. She brought it to her lips and drank straight from the container; her face in profile looked very proud.

Some water spilled over her lips and onto her bare chest. Even the way she drank water was too risqué for a girl her age.

How old was she on the inside, really?

“At least use a cup,” I said, wishing she would mind her manners, but she informed me that she tried to keep her usage of the box to a minimum, since each item taken out or put away cost her some MP.

She needed magic just for storing stuff? That was different from Storage, too.

Arisa finished drinking and started to put away the water jug, so I asked her to let me try doing it. It was sort of like putting something into a black case in which I could faintly see the outlines of other items.

I didn’t really need a skill that was just an inferior version of Storage, but all right…

More importantly, I was curious whether one of her remaining abilities, Never Give Up or Over Boost, had allowed her Psychic Magic to affect me despite our three-hundred-level difference in power.

Arisa chuckled. “Well. You got a good deal, didn’t you? Not many people can say they have a slave with a skill like that!”

“What else’ve you got?”

“Urgh…”

Arisa grumbled something about my greed, making a show of being reluctant before dramatically throwing up her hands in an “I give up” pose like foreigners do.

It was a little much, so I dealt her a light chop to the top of her head.

Of course, I made sure to go easy on her so that I wouldn’t hurt her by mistake.

“How rude! I happen to have two Unique Skills, thank you very much!”

Now she was striking a triumphant “Aren’t I amazing?” pose, so I ruffled her hair a little more roughly than necessary. She seemed pleased about that, despite her protests that I would mess up her hair.

But why did she refer to them as “Unique Skills” and not abilities, like her status screen had said?

Cutting off this line of thought, Arisa began her explanation.

“Even Lulu doesn’t know about these. The first one is called Over Boost. It uses up all my magic and stamina to increase the effect of a single skill or spell many times over! Isn’t that incredible? A skill befitting a heroine!”

Actually, it sounded more like a one-shot cannon.

“The other one is called Never Give Up. It’s a power that lets me carry on no matter how strong the opponent! Specifically, no matter how much higher the enemy’s defense or level might be, it gives my magic and attacks at least a ten percent chance of affecting them! Amazing, isn’t it?”

That one was amazing, I had to admit. This must have been how she was able to break through my magic resistance before. There were a lot of lines in my log that said —magic resisted, so there was no other explanation.

“However, I can only use it up to three times. I do recover one use per month, though. Since my magic wasn’t working very well on you, master, I ended up blowing through all three uses earlier.”

What a bothersome skill. I guess I was lucky I wasn’t her enemy.

Later, she explained to me that even when the skill was activated, it was no use against an enemy that had a complete resistance to something. For example, there would be no point in trying to use “Flamethrower” against a firedrake that wasn’t affected by fire attacks.

“By the way, master, how many Unique Skills do you have?”

“You just want to know how many? Not what they are?”

“That’s right. Honestly, Unique Skills are our trump cards, so it’s best not to tell anyone what yours are.”

I was sure she was going to come at me with all kinds of questions, but surprisingly, she warned me firmly not to talk about it.

However, either way, I didn’t even have anything called a Unique Skill in the first place.

Maybe the menu itself or the Meteor Shower spell I started with could be considered Unique Skills, but how would I find that out?

Looking at each tab of the menu, I noticed an inconspicuous option labeled Abilities in the Settings tab.

When I selected it, four names appeared.

“I have four.”

“Oh my, that’s remarkable. According to the god I met, the more skills a person has, the greater the caliber of their soul.”

Caliber? I doubted a middle-class commoner like me had a particularly impressive soul.

Incidentally, my four abilities turned out to be Menu, Unit Creation, Unit Deployment, and Immortality.

So this menu of mine is an ability, huh? It did seem to follow a similar framework to Arisa’s Unique Skills, so I guess I might as well think of it as that instead to keep things from getting too complicated.

The fact that my Storage, radar, map, and so on weren’t displayed in my Unique Skills must have meant they were all part of my “Menu” skill.

When I first got here, I might have thought that was pretty lame, but I definitely didn’t feel that way after experiencing the usefulness of the menu firsthand in the labyrinth.

The two unit-related skills sounded like something out of a strategy game, but they were grayed out and couldn’t be selected. “Immortality” was, too, so I had to assume that some kind of condition needed to be met for them to be activated.

My best guess was that Immortality was the ability to revive in a church or something after being killed, like in a game. Did that mean the release condition for that skill was dying? I’d rather not test that out, so if that was the case, I’d imagine it wouldn’t be activated for a long time.

At any rate, there was no point in wasting precious brainpower on something I couldn’t figure out the answer to with logic alone, so I put that thought aside.

“There are a few things I want to know more about.”

“Go right ahead.”

“How are you able to use Psychic Magic without a chant?”

She had definitely used it in front of the inn before, but I didn’t see her chant anything.

“Well…it’s kind of a hidden feature of Self-Status Check. Once I’ve learned a spell, I only have to think of the final command word in my head to use it.”

I got my hopes up for a second, but apparently, you did have to use the chant once to learn a spell.

I guess the only way around learning a difficult chant was by using a magic scroll.

Well, I had plenty of funds, so I could ask Zena or someone where to find a magic shop where I could buy more scrolls.

“Does that mean you can’t use magic, master?”

“I have a hard time with the chants…”

That wasn’t a lie. There were three spells that I could use, but those were special cases.

“Oh, of course. I almost gave up on it myself when I first heard someone else chanting a spell, too. It ended up taking me about a year to learn.”

“That’s fair. I only tried for about two days…or I guess two hours, really.”

“What? That’s no time at all! If it was that easy to learn, there would be a lot more sorcerers here.”

I didn’t have a comeback for that.

Taking advantage of my momentary silence, Arisa complained that she was getting cold and started to cling to me. Peeling her off lightly, I picked up her clothes and blanket from next to the bed and pushed them onto her.

“Next—tell me what you have inside your Item Box. I don’t want you pulling out a knife or poison or something and killing me in my sleep.”

Judging by our interactions so far, she didn’t seem to have any malicious intent toward me, but her “love at first sight” story was pretty ridiculous, so I figured it was better not to let my guard down for now.

“Let’s see…I have five magic books, mostly about Psychic Magic.”

Arisa piled some heavy-looking leather-bound books on top of the bed. The faint scent of ancient pages from bygone eras filled the air.

According to my “Estimation” skill, these books were worth far more than what I’d paid for Arisa and Lulu.

“If you sold these, couldn’t you buy your own freedom?”

“If a slave has such belongings, people will simply take them away, not buy them. And if someone with purple hair like mine was to pull out a book on a detested subject like Psychic Magic…there’s no telling what would happen to me.”

I guess with a name like “Psychic Magic,” people were bound to be afraid of brainwashing and mind control and such.

“Then shouldn’t you have studied a different kind of magic that you wouldn’t be persecuted for knowing?”

“This is all I could get my hands on. I wanted to learn magic, so I taught myself with these.”

Well, I definitely understood the feeling of wanting to use magic.

More importantly…

“Is purple hair a bad omen?”

“It’s considered an ill omen as both a hair color and an eye color. Few people know the reason why that is, but whenever something bad happens, it’s always blamed on my hair color.”

Come to think of it, the slave merchant Nidoren had said something along those lines, too.

“That’s too bad. It’s the kind of color a stylish grandma would dye her hair.”

“Wh-why would you choose to compare me to that of all things…?”

Looking tired and crestfallen, Arisa leaned back on the bed, her lovely violet hair shifting. It was a shame that such a pretty color was seen as abhorrent for no apparent reason.

Whoops, we got off topic again. Let me get back to the main point.

“Is that all you have in the Item Box?”

“There’s also the water jug I had before and a few changes of clothes. Should I take them out?”

“Yeah, please do. You can leave the water jug in there.”

Looking at the clothes Arisa took out made my head start to hurt. A yukata, a sailor suit, a half-finished maid outfit… All of them seemed to be handmade. Arisa didn’t have the “Sewing” skill, but she’d apparently been good at it before she was reincarnated.

I made a note of the titles of the magic books, too, then had her return everything to the Item Box.

“You’re not going to take them away?”

Arisa had tilted her head anxiously, so I made my response clear.

“I’ll probably have you show me the books sometime, but no, I don’t see why I would take them.”

People would think I was some kind of pervert if I was carrying around child-size sailor suits and maid outfits, anyway.

“Oh, I know. Put this in the Item Box, too.”

I pulled out a small pouch from Storage under cover of the pillow, then handed it to Arisa.

“It’s heavy. May I look inside?”

“Sure, go ahead. There should be ten gold coins in all. Don’t hesitate to use them if there’s an emergency.”

Aside from Shigan currency, I had put in some coins from the Saga Kingdom as well.

This was a dangerous world, where just going on a date in the city could get you dragged into riots and dungeons that appeared beneath your feet. I thought it would be best to give her a bit of money, just in case anything happened.

“You’re giving gold to a slave…? Master, are you very rich?”

“I just happened to have a bit of a windfall, that’s all.”

Arisa’s eyes widened when she saw the contents of the purse.

I had intended for it to be a small amount, but I found out later that a commoner’s monthly wages amounted to less than one gold coin. The cost of living was clearly different here, so I couldn’t say for sure, but my impression was that one gold coin was comparable to somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand yen… That didn’t seem like much to live on.

“I’m sure you know this, but don’t use it unless it’s an emergency, all right?”

“Of course!”

There was an ambiguity in Arisa’s answer that I didn’t like, but there was no one else I could entrust the money to, so I pretended not to notice.

I did have the “Sewing” skill, so maybe I could make amulets for the other kids with a gold coin sewn inside.

“Arisa, I have one last question.”

“Okay, let ’er rip!”

Arisa’s jovial reply made her sound like a baseball player.

“May I ask how you became a slave? This one isn’t an order. It’s all right if you don’t want to talk about it.”

Arisa was hesitant for a moment, then slowly started to speak.

“I tried to use my knowledge from my previous life to make my hometown prosper…but I failed. I was a princess then, you know,” she added lightly. “It went well at first, but then I met with failure so unnatural that the kingdom fell to civil war, and in the end a neighboring country captured me.”

“What did you do?”

“Just normal agrarian reform. As the basis of my reign, I showed them how to use humus, fertilizer, four-field crop rotation, and other basic hacks.”

I’d never heard the term hacks applied to domestic policy before. I assumed that meant she’d used her advanced knowledge to improve the agriculture of the kingdom.

“But how could that have failed so badly that the whole kingdom fell apart?”

“That’s why I called it an ‘unnatural’ failure. All the crops we planted in the humus-rich topsoil failed. The fertilizer that was in the decomposing process was suddenly infested with bug-type monsters, and the fallow fields that were recovering their fertility with clovers and turnips failed and became barren… That sort of thing.”

That certainly sounded like the kind of phenomenon you’d find in a fantasy world, but since she’d appended the word unnatural…

“Did somebody cause all that?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that until much later. At the time, I felt terrible, convinced it was because of differences between the soil in this world and the one we came from. They started calling me names like ‘Witch of the Lost Kingdom’ and ‘Mad Princess.’”

So that was where those titles had come from.

I’m sorry, Arisa. I assumed you used Psychic Magic to manipulate the kingdom and create a harem of handsome young men or something.

“Still, if the perpetrator wanted to take over the kingdom, what would be the profit in destroying it? That doesn’t make much sense to me.”

“They didn’t care about the state of some impoverished kingdom. They just wanted the ‘Withered Labyrinth’ that was under the castle.” Arisa gnawed on the ends of her curled fingers in frustration. “Once they took over the country, they appeased the angry citizens by holding a public execution of the king, the queen, and the crown prince.”

Regret darkening her face, Arisa’s eyes filled with tears.

“Then they gathered the remaining princes and princesses and said, ‘This kingdom was destroyed because of your stupidity. You are not fit to be royalty.’ On their orders, the royal sorcerers used a gift called “Geis” on the children, starting with me. It curses the victim to be a slave until the day they die. Believing that the kingdom had been ruined all because of my actions, I accepted the curse and became a slave.”

I reached under the pillow to use Storage again and produced a handkerchief to wipe away her tears.

“Why would they make you become a slave?”

“In order to carry out a ritual to revive the Withered Labyrinth I mentioned before. Slaves can’t fight back or run away, and unlike a contract, there was only one person in the whole kingdom who could undo a Geis…”

Arisa grasped the handkerchief tightly in one hand and my own hand in the other as she continued.

“Every month, on the night of the full moon, one of us would be sent into the labyrinth as sacrifices for that terrible ritual…”

Her grip on my hand slackened.

“After a year, the labyrinth had been resurrected. The only two sacrifices who survived were Lulu, my father’s illegitimate child, and me, with my violet hair. We were taken from the tower we’d been imprisoned in to a nearby villa. I don’t know why they didn’t dispose of us on the spot… Maybe they were keeping us as backups in case the labyrinth needed to be revived again.”

If Lulu was the illegitimate child of a king, that must have made her technically royalty by blood.

Since they seemed to be of very different races, I had mostly assumed that Arisa and Lulu were stepsisters, but I guess they were related by blood after all.

“Then, on the night of the next full moon, a tragedy occurred. A hell demon appeared out of nowhere, destroying the castle and its surrounding town. The villa that we were in burned as well, and Lulu fled with me into the mountains.”

Arisa had received an order not to leave the villa, but she was freed from this when the castle was destroyed and the retainer who’d been registered as her master was killed.

“I thought for sure that I would burn to death there, but since I noticed that Lulu’s title had changed to Masterless, we were able to escape in the nick of time. If I had been alone, I would surely have died there.”

Arisa sat on my lap now, her hand entwined in mine. Her hand still trembled, though, so I let her stay there.

“After that, we wandered in the mountains until the slave trader Nidoren found us, when we were on the brink of death. Slaves without masters can’t simply walk into a town, after all. I did my best to put up just enough of a fuss to avoid being sold to some perverted noble or something. I thought a hole would open up in my stomach from the stress alone.”

She was leaning her small head on my arm, so I couldn’t see her face.

“Couldn’t you have manipulated Nidoren with Psychic Magic to treat you as his daughters or something like that?”

“You’re right. But I was so desperate to behave that it didn’t occur to me until after we had gone through with the contract to become Nidoren’s slaves.”

“You still could have used magic to manipulate him after that…”

“If I did, it would have been a violation of the contract. My collar would have tightened around my neck—I could’ve even died.”

Hmm? Wait a minute.

I turned Arisa’s head to face me.

“Didn’t you just use magic on me earlier? How is that not a violation of our contract?”

Looking up at me, she grinned a little. “That was part of my service as a slave. I made an oath during the contract ceremony, remember?”

—At all times, day or night, I will always serve my master with all my power.

“See? I was just using my magic to ‘energetically’ serve you! So, if you’d just give in and embrace my body, I can…”

She started to come at me again with grabby hands, but I put a stop to that with another karate chop to her forehead.

“By the way, what was that hell demon’s goal?”

“I have no idea. Knowing demons, it was probably just looking for a labyrinth where they could raise a demon lord, no?”

Did that mean they were brood parasites, then? Like cuckoos?

“Do labyrinths exist to foster demon lords?”

“There are scholars who claim as much, but the gods have neither confirmed nor denied it. Still, just about every demon lord that’s emerged so far was first sighted near a labyrinth.”

Then did Mr. Eyeball create the labyrinth in Seiryuu City in order to summon a demon lord here?

Come to think of it, I think the landlady at the Gatefront Inn said something similar before.

“Oh, right… Can I ask you a question, too, master?”

“What is it?”

“Before we came into the inn, you said you ‘wouldn’t have made it out of the labyrinth alive’ without Liza and the other two, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“Have you been to the Labyrinth City Celivera?”

“No, I haven’t.”

That was the city where there was less discrimination against demi-humans, right?

I didn’t know if the streets there formed a labyrinth or if there were entrances to a labyrinth on the outskirts of the city, but I wanted to see it for myself sometime.

“Then was it a labyrinth in another kingdom?”

“No, no. I meant the one that was formed right here in Seiryuu City.”

“What?!” cried Arisa, dumbfounded for a moment. “So the disturbance Nidoren got caught up in was a labyrinth?!” Once she recovered, she practically shouted the question at me.

Your face is too close. Pushing her back, I explained the riot we’d happened upon and how the demon had created a labyrinth.

I omitted the part where I had put on a silver mask and defeated a greater hell demon.

“So you’re saying this hell demon created a new labyrinth?”

I nodded in response to Arisa’s astonishment.

Was that really so surprising?

“Well, there are only six living labyrinths in this entire continent. The newest one was created more than a hundred years ago. I read in a book that it sprang from the corpse of a demon lord.”

“Since a lesser hell demon created it, I assumed that labyrinths were commonplace around here.”

“As if it could be so easy! It’s supposed to be impossible to create a labyrinth without a legendary artifact. What could it have been trying to do…?”

“Mass-produce more demons and fight heroes, maybe?”

Paying no attention to my arbitrary response, Arisa pondered the matter with a serious expression.

Putting your hands on my shoulders while you do that is fine, but please stop trying to wrap your legs around my waist.

“If that was all, an old labyrinth like in Celivera would work just fine. The older the labyrinth, the larger the scale, so I don’t know why it would go out of its way to make a new one.”

“Then maybe it was just a diversion or part of some strategy for the future?”

Like to grab the attention of the hero, or something like that.

“That could be the case.”

Arisa didn’t look convinced. I patted her head gently.

There was way too little information to figure out what the demon was thinking. At the very least, there were no demons in the county or inside the labyrinth, and it didn’t seem like there were any hiding with mimicry like the eyeball demon had before.

Maybe one could be summoned, like the big guy I beat before, but there was no point in worrying about it before it happened.

If I let that kind of stuff weigh on me all the time, I’d probably just go bald.

“Perhaps I could enter the Seiryuu City labyrinth, too?”

Arisa looked up at me seriously as she spoke. Okay, but why are you pushing out your flat chest like that?

“I don’t think so. From what I heard from someone of authority, the entrance is under quarantine right now.”

“I see…”

Well, Zena hadn’t exactly said so in as many words, but that was the sense I got from what she had told me back at the castle.

“Why do you want to enter the labyrinth, anyway? What could you do in such a dangerous place full of monsters?”

“I want to enter because of the monsters.”

“Oh? Do you have a grudge against them or something?”

“Nothing like that. I just want to level up.”

Level up…? This isn’t a game…but I guess the fact that it’s reality is all the more reason to want to raise your level.

When the beastfolk girls’ levels had gone up, for instance, their base stats increased, and so did their chances for survival. In this dangerous world, having a high level was definitely important.

Still, the citizens here had pretty low levels despite all that. Even the soldiers were only around levels five to seven.

“If you want to go in that badly, I can ask my friend for you.” Arisa had seemed so deep in worried thought, I’d blurted the words without thinking.

“Really?!”

“Sure, but I don’t know if they’ll actually agree, so don’t get your hopes up too much.”

“Okay! Thank you!”

Arisa’s face shone with self-serving adoration, so I promptly removed her and finally managed to pull a shirt down over her head.

“Are there no other methods to level up besides defeating monsters, though?”

“Of course there are. But this is the most effective.”

This system reminded me of an MMORPG.

When I used to play, I would always set out to hunt the monsters that gave the most EXP.

“Apparently, killing monsters yields many times more experience than killing people or animals. This is only what I gathered from listening in on the soldiers and knights at the castle, though, so I don’t know the details behind it.”

That was probably for the best. If they all yielded the same experience, I could easily imagine nobles slaughtering slaves and peasants to gain levels or raising livestock to kill and not to eat.

“Did you raise your level by defeating monsters, too, Arisa?”

“It would have been much faster if I had. But no, I did it by reading books. Did you know? When you acquire new knowledge, you gain a certain amount of experience. Thanks to that, I was able to level up while I was still confined in the castle.”

Oh, I get it. Since this wasn’t really a game, I guess it wouldn’t make much sense if combat was the only way you could level up.

For the rest of the evening, Arisa and I discussed the systems of this world until she fell asleep.