Chapter 4: Past Me and Present Me

According to Satsuki’s Magic of Omnipotence, this “Demon’s Pot” was in a cave on an island in the Atlantic Ocean with a very long name. Going overseas meant getting luggage ready, getting tickets and passports, and all kinds of other stuff. Chelsea handled all of that for us, but I was pretty sure that the way that she handled it wasn’t legal. Her words were something to the effect of, “Treasure hunting isn’t exactly a nice business, you know.” Satsuki was a little hesitant at first, but in the end, she agreed to it all.

And so we stayed up all night getting ready. We took a plane first thing in the morning, and we landed in a country with a name far too long and complicated for me to even remember. Then it was a long trip on a bus, followed by another bus, then a train, then another bus, then a trolley, and then another train. At that point, I didn’t have the faintest idea where we were, but when I asked Chelsea, she said we were heading to the sea. That much made sense, considering we were supposed to be heading to an island.

We traveled through the night, switching from one method of transportation to the next. When we were finally getting close to the port, we ran into a problem. The driver Chelsea had arranged for wasn’t waiting at the taxi pickup like they were supposed to be. After getting off the phone with the company, Chelsea bowed her head to us and apologized.

“Hahh... I’m sorry. Looks like it’s going to take a while.”

“No, it’s not your fault, Chelsea.”

“We’re just fine.”

“Sorry about this,” Chelsea said, apologizing again before going off in search of somewhere to get us all something to drink.

“...It sure is hot, isn’t it?” Satsuki said as she wiped the sweat off her forehead.

It certainly was hotter here than it was in Japan. Even so, Hibiki silently sat down on her bag and closed her eyes. I was impressed with her ability to avoid expending unnecessary energy at times like these.

Huh...?

I suddenly realized that we were missing someone and began to look around.

“Oh...”

I spotted the silver-haired girl in a long coat sitting down at the edge of the waiting area.

“...”

I walked over to her, but Silver Slayer was staring at something intently... or maybe not? Like usual, her expressionless face was hard to read. I followed her gaze to see what she was looking at only to see a flower growing out of a crack in the asphalt.

“Do you like flowers?” I asked.

“Negative. The emotional concept of ‘like’ is not one I have been loaded with.”

“Then why are you staring at it like that?”

“...I don’t know.”

I raised an eyebrow.

There was something different in her voice just then from when she’d said she “didn’t know” about Rosalind’s past.

“Do you spend a lot of time looking at flowers like this?” I decided to question her from a different angle.

“I did not at the time I was created. Ever since my master created me, I devoted my full efforts to slaying the vampire.”

“Sure.”

“But about a century ago, I suddenly lost the ability to track her. Yesterday, I learned that this was because your ancestor sank her to the bottom of the sea.”

“You couldn’t track her down there?”

“It seems my master did not anticipate her being sent there.”

Well, no, probably not.

“I lost my target and had no means of receiving new orders, so I temporarily froze my existing order. Then I wandered the world to see for myself if the vampire was truly dead,” Silver Slayer said as if it was nothing special.

“But you couldn’t sense her anymore, right?”

“There was always the possibility that she’d learned some method of cloaking herself. Since I hadn’t defeated her myself, it was impossible for me to say whether or not she was dead. But I had no idea where to go.”

That’s right. Weren’t vampires supposed to turn to ash when they died? That would mean that even if she really was dead, there would be no record of it and not even a body to prove it. I had no idea how she thought she’d figure out if someone like that was dead or alive... It would be like trying to find a particular grain of sand in a vast desert.

“I walked a long, long time... Then one day I smelled something sweet.”

“Something sweet?”

“It was the smell of a certain flower. I’d smelled it before in my battles with the vampire. Thinking back, it was probably the scent of perfume.” Silver Slayer closed her eyes for a few seconds, as if remembering the smell. “When I realized it wasn’t coming from the vampire, I went to leave... But then I found myself watching the flower and the bees that were gathering its pollen for several minutes.”

“That’s...”

Was she sure she didn’t like flowers?

“I still don’t know why. But after that, I do sometimes stare at the flowers and insects I see along the roadside. Just like this...”

She went back to looking at the flower growing in the asphalt. It had a single green stalk with tiny white blossoms all up and down it. I’d seen it somewhere in Japan before... What was its name again?

“That’s right. You were looking out at my yard too, weren’t you? Were you looking at the flowers?” I asked.

I was pretty sure the flowers in the yard were carnations. My mom used to take care of them, but now that was Harissa’s job.

“When I’m doing this, it’s like something... something is inside me.” Silver Slayer put her hand up to her chest, as if searching for what that something might be.

Huh...

It had been a hundred years since my ancestor sealed Rosalind away at the bottom of the sea. Even if her body was made of silver, Silver Slayer was capable of feeling the wind or smelling the flowers, and she had the power to think for herself. If she’d gone a whole century without finding the vampire she was made to kill, and if she’d spent that whole time wandering the world, surely it wasn’t all that weird that she’d started to develop emotions of her own. Even if she was a homunculus, not a human... No, perhaps it was especially because of that.

“Hey...”

“What is it?”

I paused for a second, considering my words.

“Why did you try to kill Rosalind without a second thought?”

“Because that is my job.”

“Yeah, you told me. But Silver Slayer... don’t you want to know what that ‘something’ inside you is?”

She looked up at me wordlessly.

“Will you tell me what it is, then?” she finally asked.

“I can guess, but I can’t give you all the details.”

“Unclear. Why is that?”

“Because that ‘something’ is your feelings.”

She fell silent for a moment at my answer.

“As I said before, I am not equipped with emotions.”

“You look at flowers and you feel something. You see insects and you think something. That ‘something’ is what we call emotion.”

“...”

“But even if humans see the same flowers or the same insects, everybody feels something different when they do. Some people get sentimental. Some people think they’re pretty. Some people may even think they’re funny. So I don’t know what it is exactly that you felt, but I know that you felt something.”

“Humans...” she whispered as if lost in thought. Then her silver eyes turned towards me once more. “If... I propose a hypothesis. If I were human, would I know what it is that I feel?”

“You don’t have to be human. I think you’re already starting to experience emotion. If you keep living in this world, keep feeling more of it... Someday you might understand for yourself.”

So please don’t throw your life away.

That’s what I thought to myself. I then watched the white flower with her until Chelsea came back with drinks.

▽

There were no ferries from the port to the island where we were headed, so Chelsea hired a local to take us there and bring us back. There was a single abandoned cottage on the island, or so she’d been told, so we’d be spending the night there.

I stood at the prow of the boat, idly watching the sun dip below the horizon. Part of me was thinking that I was lucky to have this experience. It was like something out of a movie. But mostly my mind was somewhere else.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“...Chelsea?”

Chelsea walked up to me, her boots clopping loudly against the deck, and her hand on her hat to keep the sea wind from blowing it away. It was a hat like you’d see in a foreign country, complete with a feather decoration. Her coat was in a similar style, and it made her look like some kind of modern pirate.

She stood next to me and grinned.

“Oh, I was just inside and happened to see a glum little boy out here all by his lonesome. So I came out to tease you.”

“...I’m not trying to look cool or anything.”

“That’s right. You didn’t look very cool at all, honestly.”

I almost fell right off the boat. I mean, yeah, I know I’m not a Hollywood star or anything...

“So what’s bugging you so badly?” she asked.

“...Do I really look like something’s bugging me?”

“Yup. You look like a young teenager about to ask a girl out on his first date.” She grinned again as she put her elbows on the railing and leaned over it. “Well, I heard about you and Hibiki, so I can guess what it is that’s bothering you. I was just thinking that if you needed to talk to somebody, I’m here for you.”

“You like helping other people, huh?” I whispered in surprise.

She poked my forehead and said, “I’ve got a little brother, you see. I try to look out for little boys like you.”

“I see. You’re a big sister, huh?”

“That’s right!”

She laughed a little, and I sighed and relaxed some.

“I think I’m getting somewhere with Silver Slayer, but I don’t know how to save Rosalind,” I confessed.

“Rosalind’s that vampire girl, right?”

I nodded, but Chelsea frowned.

“You’re a weird kid.”

“Why?”

“Normal people wouldn’t worry about someone who attacked them like that, you know?”

“Didn’t you just say you thought you knew what I was worried about?”

“I was thinking you were worried about the homunculus,” she clarified. “And wait, Rosalind was after you, right? What did you do to piss off a vampire? Did you stuff some garlic in her coffin as a prank or something?”

“Nah. This is just a guess, but I think Rosalind was close to my ancestor. But then my ancestor had to fight her to protect a ‘heroine,’ and in the end, he had to seal her away...”

“Hmm... A tragic love story, huh?”

“Huh? A love story?”

“What? You mean it’s not?”

I wasn’t sure how to handle this unexpected question.

“No, from what Rosalind said, she was trying to suck the blood of this ‘heroine,’ and my ancestor was just trying to protect her...”

“Oh, I see. You don’t really know much about this kind of stuff, do you?” Chelsea nodded, satisfied with her knowledge of the situation. “You might think that a vampire just sucks somebody’s blood for food, but that’s not always how it works.”

I tried my hardest to remember what I could about vampires from manga and books.

“Um... They turn the people whose blood they suck into vampires too, right?”

“That’s right. Blood is a symbol of life. And sucking someone’s blood means stealing their life from them. But a powerful vampire like Rosalind doesn’t just steal somebody’s life. She can control it, too.”

“Control it?”

“Yup. Like a puppet. It would take a while to go into the specifics, and I don’t know how much it really matters... But I guess I can just give you the short version. Since their life is under the vampire’s control, the person whose blood has been sucked can’t do anything. They become the perfect slave.”

“But isn’t that the same as the charm spell?”

“Close, but not quite. The charm spell affects a person’s mind, but controlling someone through their blood means having control of their life itself. It doesn’t matter how strong they are mentally.”

The way she was able to recite all this stuff from memory made me think that Chelsea might’ve been from a family of mages or something.

She continued, “Some lesser vampires aren’t strong enough to survive without stealing life force from other people. Those ones are definitely just sucking blood for food. But someone as powerful as Rosalind doesn’t need to do that to stay alive, so she only sucks someone’s blood when she wants to create a servant. The thing is, though... Rosalind doesn’t seem like the type who goes around creating a bunch of servants, does she?”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

Rosalind had spent at least five days in my town. If she wanted to create servants to tend to her needs, she could’ve done that easily by now. But the only people in that mansion other than her were Iris, Satsuki, Harissa, and Lea. Each of them had only been brainwashed with the charm spell, and that was even after I’d found out who she really was.

“Which means that there must have been some reason she was going after this ‘heroine,’ right? And so what’s important in this situation is the relationship between the three of them,” Chelsea explained.

“The three of them?” I asked.

“Your ancestor, Rosalind, and the heroine.” Chelsea held up her hand and raised a finger for each person she mentioned, three in total. “Your ancestor was close to Rosalind. Rosalind tried to suck the heroine’s blood to turn her into a vampire, but your ancestor protected the heroine. That’s a love triangle, isn’t it?”

She drew a triangle in the air for emphasis.

“A... A love triangle?”

“Yup. That’s why I called it a tragic love story. One involving both the human and the inhuman.”

“But if she could suck blood or use charm magic to control people, why didn’t Rosalind use those powers on my ancestor?”

“Hmm... I can’t say for sure. But people fall in love for different reasons. Someone’s looks, their heart, their money, or any number of other things... Maybe Rosalind fell in love with a part of him that she couldn’t get with her charm magic.”

“His heart...”

What Chelsea said—even if most of it was just a guess—explained a lot of the things I’d been wondering about. Rosalind felt betrayed. The person she’d been in love with took her down in order to protect someone else. That was why she hated him enough to go after his descendant. “I’m going to suck your blood and turn you into a vampire. I’m going to take everything away from you. Even your humanity.” That’s what Rosalind had said to me. And now I knew why.

The only thing left to figure out was how to save her. I could give myself over to her and let her have her revenge... No, that wasn’t a good idea. If I did that, everyone else would kick my butt.

And that aside, there was something else bugging me. If Rosalind wanted to turn me into a vampire, she’d had plenty of chances to do it. When she caught me at the mansion. Our date. When we were eating lunch on the school roof. Even before then, she could’ve used her vampire powers to ambush me any time she wanted.

But instead, she went through all the trouble of using her charm magic to brainwash my friends and get close to me. She’d said it was to find out what I really cared about, but that was still a roundabout way of going about it. Thinking back on it, it seemed like she was trying to hide her real plans. Did Rosalind have some goal other that revenge? It felt like that might be the key I needed to bring her story to a happy ending... Not that I knew what it was yet.

“Hmm...”

“You’re at the age where you have a lot on your mind, huh, Rekka?” Chelsea laughed. “All right, then. I’ll show you a magic trick to cheer you up.”

“A magic trick?”

“That’s right. Close your eyes, would you?”

“Okay...?” I didn’t know what was going on, but decided to do as she asked.

“Tree spirits, place this boy within your hollows...” Chelsea mumbled under her breath. “Okay, you can open your eyes now.”

“Okay... Uwah!”

There was a skirt! Right in front of my face!

I took a step back in surprise and heard laughter from above.

“Oh wow, you’re so cute!” Chelsea, who had suddenly grown to twice her height, patted me on the head.

“Is this your magic trick? This definitely has to be magic! How else could you just suddenly get taller?!”

“Yup, it’s magic. You got that part right. But I didn’t get taller. You got shorter.”

“What?!”

I examined my body, and sure enough, my limbs and torso had gotten smaller. My clothes were the same size as before, so both my pants and shirt were falling off.

“H-How do I go back?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll change you back now. Here.”

She made a finger gun with one hand, pointed it at my forehead, and said, “Bang.” In an instant, I was back to my normal size.

“Wow, that scared me... What was that? A spell to turn somebody into a kid?”

“Nope. It just takes a meter or so off their height.”

That’s.... I didn’t even know what to say...

“That’s kind of useless.”

“Yup. But it’s the only magic I can use.” Chelsea folded her hands behind her head and looked up at the sky. “Because of that, my family of famous mages treated me very coldly. Neither my brother nor I had much talent. On top of that, he was really sick... We figured there was no point in staying in a family like that, so we both ran away from home. And now we travel the world.”

She was talking about it casually, but I knew that two kids running away from home and living on their own wasn’t as easy as she made it sound.

“It wasn’t really hard on you guys?” I asked.

“I guess it was. But it was also a lot of fun. I figured that even if we didn’t have magic, we could still be happy as long as we had money... And, well, one thing led to another and I ended up becoming a treasure hunter. It was a pretty short-sighted choice, if you ask me.” Chelsea laughed and laughed, but the sound of her laughter grew dry as she shook her head. “I guess this is what I get for living without a care for the future. And for dragging my sick little brother all over the world. I didn’t realize that he was forcing himself to smile through the pain, and eventually he got worse...”

I watched as Chelsea sighed. I got the feeling that she was really holding all of this against herself.

“The doctors told me that no matter how much money I paid them, it wouldn’t help. And now that magic and money won’t work, I’m relying on a miracle from the Demon’s Pot. I’ve gone flitting from one thing to another... and now I’m totally out of options. Sometimes I hate myself for being like this.” She was quiet for a minute, and then she smiled as if she wanted to hide how she was really feeling. “But don’t think too much of it. When I heard about your and Hibiki’s family bloodlines, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, things have really gotten that bad for me, huh?’ It’s just got me a little nervous, so thanks for hearing me out. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

People with our lineage got caught up in stories that were heading for a bad ending. In other words, without our help—meaning that if Chelsea tried to solve this on her own—her story would be beyond saving no matter what she did. To someone like her, that must have felt like having her own helplessness shoved in her face.

“Wait!” I shouted.

Without even thinking, I grabbed her hand before she could go back to her cabin. She turned around and her blue eyes met mine.

“What?”

“Um...”

Why had she come out here in the first place? To listen to my problems and watch the sun set? Of course not. You couldn’t even see the ship’s prow from the cabins. She’d come out here looking for me. Wasn’t she really the one who wanted someone to listen to her problems?

“I don’t think you were just flitting from one thing to another.”

“What?”

“You were in a tough spot. You were trying your hardest to figure out what would make both of you happy. You struggled and struggled, and this is how it turned out, right?”

When you hit a wall, the only wrong move is to stop. When she learned she didn’t have any talent for magic. When she learned that she couldn’t buy her brother’s health back. She’d never given up before. She never stopped. She struggled, but she always moved forward.

“Even when you were going from one thing to another, you were never wasting your time. If anybody ever laughs at the way you live, I’ll kick their ass.”

“...I think I’ve heard that line somewhere before.”

“W-Well, sorry! I just don’t have a very good vocabulary.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for.” Chelsea giggled, then grabbed me and held me tight. “What matters is whether you mean it or not. And I can tell that you really do mean it.”

“...!”

No, um... I mean, I-I’m glad you feel that way, but your b-breasts... They’re pressing up against me... and my heart’s beating really fast?!

“Just keep a poker face, Rekka.”

That’s impossible! Not that you would understand, R! This is a really delicate issue for teenage boys! I mean, we might try to pretend it’s not, but it definitely is!

Her soft body, the tickle of her breath on my ears... My endurance was put to the test until we made landfall.

▽

We reached the island on schedule, but the sun had already set. Since we were all tired from our travels, we decided to spend the night in the abandoned cottage and visit the cave where this “Demon’s Pot” supposedly was the next day.

Before we went to sleep, we all gathered on the first floor of the cottage to discuss our plans for tomorrow. Chelsea and Hibiki checked to make sure we had the gear we needed, and Silver Slayer volunteered to lead the party into the cave.

“My body is made of liquid silver, so no matter what kind of traps there are, they won’t kill me,” she said.

Some of the documents that Chelsea had found on the Demon’s Pot suggested that the cave was booby-trapped, so we gladly agreed to her offer and came up with a plan. Silver Slayer would take the lead, Chelsea would disarm any traps we found, Hibiki and I would provide support, and Satsuki would use her magic to gather information on the cave.

I was still concerned about Rosalind, but there’d been no sign of her on the way here. Maybe leaving the country right after we saved Satsuki had paid off. Satsuki told me that Rosalind, Iris, and the others were still in Japan. With her Magic of Omnipotence on our side, we could at least be sure that we wouldn’t have to worry about them here.

And with everything settled, we all did one last check on our equipment and went to bed to get a good night’s sleep for the next day.

▽

But just an hour or so later, we had a problem.

“My brother’s condition has gotten worse?!”

Chelsea got a call from the hospital in Japan, which had evidently gone to a good deal of trouble to track her down. Apparently her brother’s condition was deteriorating. When she hung up, her face was dead pale.

“What... What do I do?” she stammered.

“Calm down, Chelsea,” Hibiki said.

“I can’t calm down... I... I...” Chelsea suddenly seemed to get an idea. She ran over to Silver Slayer and grabbed her by her jacket. “Silver Slayer! You’re a homunculus, right? Made from a philosopher’s stone?”

“Affirmative. My master used a philosopher’s stone to form my core.”

“And did this master of yours ever tell you how to make a philosopher’s stone?”

Philosopher’s stone? Come to think of it, hadn’t Silver Slayer said something about that before?

“Well? Did he?!” Chelsea started to shake Silver Slayer as she shouted.

“Negative. It’s true that my body was made with a philosopher’s stone, but my master did not give me information on how to make it.”

“I see...” The strength drained from Chelsea’s hands. But she still didn’t give up. “Then... Then...! Can you give me some of your philosopher’s stone? Even just a little? Really, just a little would be fine!”

Why was Chelsea suddenly so interested in the philosopher’s stone?

Satsuki must have seen that I was confused, because she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “The philosopher’s stone is one of alchemy’s greatest secrets. It can be used for many things. If the philosopher’s stone used to create Silver Slayer is a real one, it could be used to make panacea, an elixir to cure any illness.”

She continued to explain that if Silver Slayer was a true homunculus who’d been in operation for two centuries, not only did her philosopher’s stone have to be real, it had to be a powerful, highly refined one. It could easily make an elixir to cure Chelsea’s brother. But...

“Unfortunately, that is impossible,” Silver Slayer said mechanically.

“Are you... absolutely sure?” Chelsea asked again.

“The philosopher’s stone is one and yet all. All and yet one. A single philosopher’s stone can serve any function, but it cannot be separated from its purpose. If you were to somehow take the philosopher’s stone out from inside me, I would cease to function.”

“I see...” Chelsea’s hands finally let go of Silver Slayer’s coat, dropping to her sides lifelessly. “I’m sorry... I’m asking for the impossible, aren’t I?”

“Please don’t let it bother you, Lady Margaret. If you’re willing to wait until after I complete my master’s order, I will freely give you the philosopher’s stone,” Silver Slayer said, almost sounding apologetic.

The room filled with a weighty silence.

If I remembered right, Chelsea had told me her brother had three months to live. I—and probably the rest of us—had assumed that meant we had three whole months. Of course diving into some trap-filled cave to find an ancient treasure wasn’t going to be an easy task, but we thought we had three months to do it. At the very least, time had been on our side. But not anymore. The situation had changed.

Chelsea was a woman who’d spent her entire life overcoming tough challenges, and now she was reduced to asking for the impossible. That’s how desperate things were. I had to do something for her.

“Chelsea, let’s go.”

“...Rekka?”

“We don’t have a lot of time, so we can’t waste what precious little time we do have sitting around here being depressed, right?”

Chelsea looked up at me in surprise.

“Let’s go to the cave and find the Demon’s Pot right now.”

Everyone in the room nodded.

▽

According to Chelsea, the Demon’s Pot was a hot topic among treasure hunters. The genie in the lamp, the fairy in the spring... There were all kinds of otherworldly beings in fairy tales who would grant people’s wishes. And so to a normal person, that’s all the Demon’s Pot was. A fairy tale. They probably laughed when they heard treasure hunters tell stories about it.

But since Chelsea was born into a family of mages, she had a certain level of awareness about the supernatural. She was probably able to see the deeper meaning in those funny stories and put the pieces together for herself.

“Maybe it’s a little late to be asking this... But this Demon’s Pot actually belongs to a demon, right? Aren’t they going to ask for something in return? Like your soul or something?” I asked Chelsea as we descended into the cave.

“As far as I can tell, there weren’t any stories about people dying or families getting cursed after the pot was used to grant a wish. There are certain beings like the genie in Aladdin’s lamp that exist for the purpose of granting wishes. I think the demon in the pot is something like that.”

“Huh, you’re right. The genie in Aladdin’s story grants your wish just because you rub his lamp...”

I glanced at Satsuki, who nodded back at me. If the Magic of Omnipotence said it was safe, we probably didn’t have to worry about the demon demanding some terrible price.

“Oh dear.”

Suddenly, Silver Slayer was impaled by a spear that came flying down from the ceiling.

“Nwaaaaah!”

“Sir Namidare, calm down. I’m just fine,” Silver Slayer assured me, despite her current condition.

She removed the spear, and the liquid silver that formed her body closed in on the hole to seal it. She was perfectly healed in an instant.

“Yeah... I mean, I knew this was going to happen, but it’s really scary to actually see it.”

I’d lost track of how many pitfalls, falling rocks, and spear traps we’d encountered. And each time we ran into one, something awful happened to Silver Slayer’s body. She was intentionally walking in front of us to trigger any traps so the rest of us could stay safe, which meant that she had to be the one taking all the hits... Honestly, it wasn’t good for my heart to watch.

Once Silver Slayer regenerated, we’d have her figure out how the trap worked, and then Chelsea, our trap specialist, would tell the rest of us how to cross it safely.

“Question,” Silver Slayer said once we passed another rain of spears. “That trap was set so that the spears would follow automatically when someone passed under them.”

“Yeah, there was no way to dodge it,” I said.

We’d made ourselves a little covering in the corner of the path that could block the spears, and crawled under that to get through.

“That is my question,” Silver Slayer said.

“I thought it was weird too,” Hibiki chimed in.

“Yeah, me too,” said Chelsea, the same as the others.

“It certainly is strange, isn’t it?” added Satsuki.

Huh? I was stumped. Was I the only one who didn’t get it?

“Rekka, you’re pretty dim when things aren’t riding on a razor’s edge, aren’t you?”

Shaddup, R. Spears and rocks go right through you, so you don’t even have to worry about any of this.

“Um... What’s strange?” I choked down my embarrassment and asked.

“There’s no right way through these traps,” Silver Slayer explained.

But I still didn’t get it. What did she mean by “no right way”?

“Explanation: All tools are made for a purpose. Normally, the purpose of traps of this nature would be to keep anyone who isn’t the rightful owner of the pot from acquiring it. But if there’s no safe path, not even the owner would be able to retrieve the treasure.”

“Oh!”

That made sense. The whole reason you would put your treasure in a safe was to keep anyone else from getting to it. But if there was no key to the safe, there would be no real point to it.

We stopped to think about the situation for a moment.

“Bbz.... Bbzzzzzbbzzz... Be... Bzzzbz... Bzzbz... gone from this... Bzz... place...” Suddenly, a strange, staticky voice filled the cave. “...Bzzz... go.... Bzzb... Be gone...”

Be...? Be gone?

“Guys, did you hear that?”

Everyone nodded.

“I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”

“It’s probably magic being used to transmit sound from a distance,” Satsuki said.

“...Be... Bzzzzz... gone...” The mysterious voice kept repeating itself.

It was really creepy...

“Sorry,” I said, unsure if the speaker could even hear me, “but we can’t do that.”

We ignored the echoing voice and proceeded deeper into the cave.

▽

With Satsuki’s help, we were able to map the caves. (We told Chelsea it was just search magic.) We went deeper and deeper until we reached where the Demon’s Pot supposedly lay.

It was a small space compared to Jizu Village, but it was still big enough to hold almost a dozen people. In the back of the room were several tiny paths that seemed to lead still deeper into the cave. But the Demon’s Pot itself was nestled in a tiny hole in the face of a rock wall.

“This pot is... less impressive than I was expecting,” I said.

“Really? It looks like it’s got some elaborate decorations to me.”

“No, I was thinking it would be in a treasure chest or something.”

The hole the pot was in had a flat bottom, but the rest of it was just natural rock.

“I will now remove it,” Silver Slayer said.

She put her hands around it and lifted it up, careful of any last traps.

The Demon’s Pot looked like a piece of pottery an Arabian king might have used to decorate his mansion. The pot was almost spherical. It was emerald in color, with golden handles on either side, and topped with a tiny golden stopper like a wine bottle would have.

“We just have to take the stopper out, right?”

Chelsea gulped. She pulled on the stopper, and there was a popping sound like someone uncorking a bottle.

In that instant, purple smoke began to pour out of the pot. The smoke coalesced in the shape of a human. What looked like a young Arabian dancing girl appeared floating in the air before us out of the smoke. She had purple hair, tied back with a golden hairpiece, and her body was decorated with expensive-looking adornments. She wore a pair of puffy white pants, but above them most of her dark amber skin was exposed.

“...Tch.” She glared at us and clicked her tongue loudly.

It was obvious just from looking at her that she was ticked.

Chelsea was hesitating. She seemed worried about how to address the being she was about to ask for a wish. If she said the wrong thing and made her mad, maybe she wouldn’t grant her wish at all. It made perfect sense that Chelsea would get nervous now.

So I decided to test the waters first.

“...Hey,” I said.

“What the hell do you want?” the girl snapped back.

Yeah. She was definitely about to lose it.

“Um... Wh-What’s your name?”

“Queen Ulaula the Great.”

“‘The Great’?”

“You got a problem with that?”

“Not at all, Queen Ulaula the Great.”

This little girl, or demon, or whatever she was, was seriously scary.

Also, R, please stop making funny poses behind Ulaula. You’re making me want to laugh!

“S-So... Queen Ulaula the Great, can we assume that you’re the demon who grants wishes?”

“That’s right. What do you want from me now? You greedy humans are never satisfied,” she asked, raising a haughty eyebrow.

“Oh, um... You first, Chelsea.”

Arrogant or not, if this girl was who we hoped she was, she could grant Chelsea’s wish. I motioned Chelsea forward and had her stand in front of Ulaula.

“...I want you to cure my sick brother,” she pleaded desperately as she pressed her hands together tightly in front of her chest.

And the wish-granting demon...

“No. No. No. Not a chance in hell.”

...told her no? W-Wait a second!

“Ulaula, you can’t...”

“‘Ulaula’?”

“Queen Ulaula the Great! A-Aren’t you supposed to grant any wish?”

“Yeah, that’s right. My job is to follow the demonic contract and grant you nasty, greedy humans your wishes.”

Now I was just confused.

“Then why won’t you grant Chelsea’s wish?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“But tell me why!”

I scratched my head. We were getting nowhere.

Finally, Satsuki, who’d been listening from behind us, took a step forward.

“But Queen Ulaula the Great, you’ve granted many wishes in the past, haven’t you? The last wish you granted was 172 years ago, to a man named Eli Perry who wanted to become rich,” Satsuki said, her words coming out smooth and unfaltering.

Chelsea looked at her, shocked. “Satsuki... how did you know that?” she asked.

There was nothing that detailed in the documents about the Demon’s Pot that Chelsea had showed us.

“I’m sorry for not telling you sooner. I’m not actually a normal mage. If I told you I was the heir to the Magic of Omnipotence, would you know what I was talking about?”

“The Magic of Omnipotence?!”

The legends of the Great Omnipotent Magic were well known among mages, so a former mage-in-training like Chelsea would certainly know about it. But...

“Satsuki, are you sure about this?”

Satsuki’s family had kept the secret of their magic hidden from the world for generations. The power to access the Akashic Record and view the entire history of the universe was far too dangerous to treat casually.

“It’s all right. She’s not a bad person.”

“I see,” I said.

If Satsuki was okay with this, then so was I. And that left us right back at...

“Now, Queen Ulaula the Great, you’ve granted many wishes in the past. So why do you refuse to grant hers?”

“...Tch.”

“If you’re not willing to tell me, I can just find out for myself...”

“This is why I hate human beings. You’re the most obnoxious creatures imaginable,” Ulaula barked, frowning angrily. “The reason is simple. That woman is a mage.”

“What?”

“I don’t like mages,” Ulaula spat out in answer to my question. “They try to make miracles on their own, without relying on my power. To someone like me whose job it is to grant wishes, you’re basically stealing my work.”

Um... So in other words, she was upset because she felt like her role in life was being taken away from her?

“And a long time ago, a mage did something terrible to me.” Her eyes were twitching, as if she was trying to repress her rage.

“Does that mean that you’re the one who set up those traps with no way through them?” Hibiki asked.

“That’s right.”

“But those would be enough to kill almost anyone who wasn’t a mage. You said you hate mages, but is it really that you hate all of mankind?”

“No. I don’t mind disgusting, nasty humans.”

“Then you’ll grant my wish and Rekka’s, right?” Hibiki continued her line of questioning.

She had a good point. I wasn’t a mage, and neither was she. But the demon of wishes still looked upset.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? I like the disgusting, nasty humans.”

“What do you mean?” Hibiki asked.

“You just said most people would die in those traps, and you were right. But ‘most’ means that a few still survive. When a human sacrifices their comrades to make it through those deadly traps, a madness comes to dwell in their eyes.”

With those words, Ulaula smiled for the first time. It was indeed the smile of a demon, inspiring fear in all who saw it.

“The humans who come to me with that madness in their eyes are possessed by insatiable greed. Any morals or ethics they had are long gone, and all that’s left is pure greed. They’re the worst kind of scum there is.”

Ulaula laughed with a cold smile that suggested a madness of her own.

“And it’s so much fun to watch these fallen creatures. Even a demon like me can’t help falling in love with them. That man whose name you mentioned, Eli Perry? He used his fortune to fulfill for himself every desire a man could ever have, and at the same time drove over ten thousand of his fellow tribesmen mad with despair. Unchecked greed,” she said, “brings unchecked misery.”

After floating in the air all this time, her feet finally touched the ground and she walked over to me. Standing next to me, I could see that she was a lot shorter than I was... but she suddenly grabbed me by the collar and yanked me down to her eye level.

“And so why are your eyes so pure? Both you and the girl. I see a little fear, but none of the greed I want to see in order to grant your wish. I don’t like it one bit.”

She then let go and kicked me hard in the solar plexus.

“Ow!”

She just grit her teeth and sneered.

“And so I’ve got no intention of granting your wish,” she said. “Get out of here.”

There wasn’t even room to negotiate. That much was clear from her attitude.

“But... But wait!”

I tried to come up with something to say, but I couldn’t think of anything that would get her to change her mind quickly. At this rate, she was going to go back into her pot without granting even one wish.

“Wait, please.” It was Satsuki that tried to stop her.

“...Do you need something else?” The demon looked around, aggravated.

It sure didn’t look like anything we said would convince her.

“There’s no point in lying to us.” Satsuki refused to be afraid.

“Lying?”

“Queen Ulaula, you are the Wish-Granting Demon. Just like you said, granting wishes is your job. It’s why you exist. You can’t change that.”

“...”

“You’re trying to scare us so we lose the desire for you to grant us our wish. Because if we lose that desire, you won’t have to do it.”

“...”

“But Satsuki, didn’t Ulaula just refuse to grant Chelsea’s wish?”

“That’s Queen Ulaula to you, stupid human,” a very angry Ulaula snapped.

I ignored her and waited for my childhood friend to answer.

“Yes, you’re right. But unlike a normal demon, Queen Ulaula the Great is a special, wish-granting type. Just like I said, she can’t change who she is... and right now, she’s trying her absolute best to stay in control.”

“In control?”

“Look. Queen Ulaula, why is your face twitching so hard?” Satsuki turned the conversation back to Ulaula.

“...”

She fell silent and stared at Satsuki, but her eyebrows were spasming every few seconds. I realized now why she’d been switching her expressions so dramatically. She’d been going between laughing, sneering, and gritting her teeth. It was to keep us from seeing that she was trying her hardest not to grant Chelsea’s wish, wasn’t it?

“Miss Margaret, don’t let her intimidate you. If she really was free to refuse your request, she could’ve just gone back inside her pot. The fact that she hasn’t done that suggests there’s some reason she can’t. For example... when someone comes to her with a wish, she can’t go back into her pot until she grants it, perhaps?”

“...!”

Life finally returned to Chelsea’s face.

What Satsuki was saying made sense. If she hated us that much, she could just leave. But she hadn’t. Or maybe she couldn’t. And that meant there had to be a reason.

“This is why I hate mages so much...”

Ulaula’s grimace was at least three times steelier than it had been a moment ago. The young girl grabbed her ponytail and twirled it in her hand before continuing.

“Fine. I’ll issue a demonic contract. But!” She held her palm up. In a puff of purple smoke, a sheet of parchment appeared in her hand, which she then threw at me. “I’m adding a restriction and a price to the contract.”

“A restriction... and a price?”

That didn’t sound good.

“You’ve granted all your other wishes for free. Are you allowed to just change the rules like that?”

I decided to pretend like it didn’t scare me as much as it did.

“I can do whatever I want. Until now, I’ve decided that the misery and madness caused by the people whose wishes I granted was a good enough price for me. But I don’t think I’ll be getting any of that from you, so I’ve got the right to demand a fair price for my goods. I am a demon, after all.”

Ulaula must have seen right through me, because her lips curled up into a grin.

“The restriction is that only a normal human can sign the contract. No mages, and that inhuman creature over there can’t sign it either.”

Silver Slayer had no reaction. She had been totally silent so far, and silent she remained.

But if that was Ulaula’s rule, that meant the only ones here who could sign the contract and have their wishes granted were me and Hibiki. But so far so good. There was nothing that said one of us couldn’t just wish for Chelsea’s brother to be cured in her stead. The problem was...

“And as for the price...”

When we were going through the caves, I’d asked Satsuki if the demon might demand something in return. She’d indicated that I didn’t need to worry about it, so I’d put it out of my mind. I was starting to think that was a mistake.

Demons usually only wanted one thing, didn’t they? I gulped audibly. And at last...

“The life of the person who signs the contract.”

It was about as bad as I’d expected. In a sense, it was the highest possible price she could ask for. The cost of the contract was a human life.

“Rekka, I’m sure you understand this, but I’m not going to let you do anything stupid,” Satsuki said.

“Yeah, I know. If I die, I can’t save the other stories. So the same goes for you too, Hibiki.”

“I wasn’t even thinking about it,” Hibiki said angrily. But she looked worried.

There wasn’t time to find another way to cure Chelsea’s brother. Our only real hope now would be to get Ulaula to change her mind and renege on the price for the contract... but I didn’t have the faintest clue how to go about convincing her to do that. Still, I had to keep moving forward.

“Queen Ulaula the Great, there’s only one contract here. Can you give me another one for Hibiki?”

“Flip the page and you’ll find as many as you need.”

I turned the sheet of parchment over, and sure enough, a second identical contract appeared from below. It really was some kind of demonic item.

“Write down your wish in your own blood. Then sign your name, and the contract will be complete. Think carefully about what you write, because once you sign it, there’s no canceling it.”

“Got it,” I said.

Since I didn’t actually need any more contracts, I turned the parchment back over. As I was contemplating what to do, Silver Slayer suddenly gave a start and turned around.

“...What’s wrong?” I asked, unnerved by her sudden movement.

“The vampire approaches. Quickly. She’s headed right for us.” There was the tiniest bit of uncertainty in her expressionless voice.

“She wasn’t tracking us... so how?”

I had no idea how to answer that. The one thing that even a dimwit like me could be sure of in this situation was that things had just gotten worse.