By: Portalboat
It's funny how quickly your life can do a complete one-eighty on you.
It'd already happened…
Status: ongoing
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-09-13
Words: 64741
Chapters: 15
Original source: threads/766618
Exported with the assistance of
Chapter 1It's funny how quickly your life can do a complete one-eighty on you.
It'd already happened quite a few times for me, but this one was something else - it all started out with a call for 'Clark' over my walkie-talkie while I was at work. That was the codename for security (because surprise, people didn't respond all that well to having security called on them), and while a call like that wasn't particularly out of place, the voice on the other end sounded a lot more panicked than I'd ever heard her before.
A lot a lot more panicked.
I looked up from my phone and to the door of the back room I was in. It was none of my concern, really, they did their job and I did mine… as there weren't spills happening 24/7, their job was unfortunately a lot bigger than mine, but that was just the way of things. Don't get me wrong, I still did my job whenever it was called for, and I tried to help out wherever I could on top of that. But when your manager says that you don't have the required training to help out, and that it would be a 'waste of time' to give you said training, it kind of kills your enthusiasm to stick your neck out too far. That's why I spent the majority of my shift on my phone and in the back room, only responding to whatever calls I could.
But this one was something new. One by one, more and more voices came over the walkie-talkie, and each one continued to grow in panic. Just as I was about to ask what was going on, a burst of gunshots echoed across the store. Right after, a voice came over the intercom.
"Alright, people, you know what this is! This is a pretty big store, though, so just play nice whenever one of my guys finds ya, and nobody has to get hurt!"
The next thing I heard was the clatter of my radio dropping to the ground. For a few moments, I didn't believe that this could've been real, that there was any way something like this would happen… but at the same time, the gunshots couldnt've been anything but gunshots. And why else would you shoot them off in a grocery store? Now, for all I cared the guy could steal every bit of actual money here. I didn't particularly like this job, and if the store had to shut down or whatever, that just meant I had an excuse to work on my own things. But the people I worked with here were the closest thing I had to physical friends… and I'll admit, like any other red-blooded nerd, I had my fair share of delusions of grandeur.
So what else could I do?
Before I knew it, the door had been creaked open, and I saw that receiving area beyond was empty. If I stayed back there I would've been safe, but it was a straight line across the store to customer service. That was probably were they were all being held up. If I sprinted, as fast as I could, I could get there before any of the announcer's 'guys' spotted me. So imagining myself as some kind of hero, I took off. Thoughts of fancy, choreographed fight scenes and crazy improvisation began to fill my mind, and I started to plot out a course of action as I ran. I'd do some kind of fancy slide avoid the initial shot, then maybe grab the spill absorbent and use it as a smokescreen, or maybe I'd pick some up on the way there and - then suddenly the floor was spinning its way up to meet me.
"… What?"
The crack of a gunshot finally reached my brain moments after, and I could only let out a groan.
… Damnit.
As soon as the gunshot went off the whole thing went surprisingly distant, honestly. I definitely broke my glasses on the floor, probably broke my nose as well, but I didn't really feel anything outside of a burning, needley sensation in my leg and a general fog that had started to creep across my brain.
'Damn, is this what being shot feels like? I'm all over the place… ugh, I wish I could focus.'
Confirmed. [Enhanced Willpower]… successfully acquired.
That voice made me blink and try to look up, but all I got for that was the feeling of something in my leg grating against itself. A haggard gasp came out of my mouth at the feeling, and tears started to burn at the edges of my vision.
"Fuck…" I whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck… damnit, this hurts!"
Confirmed. [Cancel Pain]… successfully acquired.
There it was again. "Who the hell is that voice…?" I muttered, trying to look around, at least as much as I could.
"S-Shit, man! Did you actually shoot him?!"
That was someone else's voice. Different than the one that had been echoing inside of my head just now. Likely one of the guy's friends… ugh. I just wanted to help people, protect them, or something…
Confirmed. [Defender]… successfully acquired.
"D-Don't… don't move! Or you'll end up like him!" Oh. That was where all the staff were, apparently. Probably. Again, I let out a groan, though this time I wasn't sure if it was because of the pain or being called male. I had a chest… I wasn't super curvy, but still. My male name was probably gonna get written on my gravestone… ugh, what I wouldn't give to be a girl right now…
Confirmed. Preference for female sex specified.
… Damnit, who the hell was talking? I tried to get up, but again all I felt was that jolt of pain shooting through my leg. The coppery tang of blood was starting to reach my nose, and I could feel it pooling underneath my thigh.
"Shit, man, the cops're already on their way! What the fuck're we gonna do?!"
"Fuckin'… shoot him again!"
As soon as that line left his mouth, I let out a sigh of defeat. This really was it, then, wasn't it? Ugh. What a sad way to go out… damnit, I hadn't been asking for much. Never asked for much at all. I didn't really even get this job for the money, I just wanted to friggin' help people.
Confirmed. Unique skill [Helping Hand]… successfully acquired.
'Helping Hand?' It was a hell of a time to start going insane. What was this voice going on about? I couldn't even help my 'friends', with how much this… fuck, this hurt!
Confirmed. Combining [Cancel Pain] with [Enhanced Willpower] to create unique skill [Integrity].
I blinked. "What?"
"Dude, fuckin', h-here, gimme the… !"
I started to laugh, despite myself. Maybe I was going crazy. Something something shock, something something blood loss, I didn't know. But that voice seemed to be responding to what I was thinking, so for once in my life, I decided to actually ask for something.
"Hey, voicey?" I grinned, delirious. "Can you make me into, like… a super cute girl?"
Confirmed. Preference for 'super cute girl' set.
I giggled.
"Yeah, yeah, super cute, like… I dunno, lightning girl or somethin'. Oooh, with pink hair!"
Confirmed. Constructing 'super cute lightning girl'… cannot execute. More information required. Substituting with 'female lightning spirit'… cannot execute. Low-level spirits do not possess physical presence. Physical presence required.
"… Then just like, gimme one. Somethin' cool."
Confirmed. Combining [Integrity] with [Defender] to create unique skill [Paladin], then evolving into unique skill [Guardian Angel]. Preference for pink hair set.
"Fuck yeah." I grinned, laying my head back down on the floor. "Lightning spirit, pew pew…."
That stupid smile was still on my face when the next shot rang out, making my world snap to black.
Then just as quickly, my eyes snapped back open.
"W-Wha… What just… I was just shot!" I exclaimed, bolting upright. "I-I was just shot! Twice! What the hell?! Wha… what, just…"
But I trailed off as I saw the scenery around me. It was a forest, completely unlike the grocery store that I had just been in.
"Is this… the afterlife, or whatever? I mean, I… I don't think I was getting out of there with, two…" Then I cut myself off with a sob as I processed what had actually happened. I… had died. Pure and simple. The first shot had been in my leg, but the second… all I had heard was the initial bang, and then everything went dark. With me just lying there, it had to have been pretty damn easy to hit me in the head.
"S-So… I'm dead, then." I whispered, slowly looking around. "W-Well… this isn't too bad of a place to end up, all things considered…" It was almost idyllic, to be honest. Sunlight filtered through the light canopy of the surrounding trees, covering the grass-covered ground with speckled shadows. Whenever I took a breath, the scent of grass and trees and filled my lungs, along with the faintest hint of water, and all I could hear was the faintest of breezes filtering through the leaves. "This… this is nice."
Having just come from the chaos of my workplace, I almost wanted to just sit down and drink it all in, but my curiosity demanded that I continue to look around. This was a completely new world! There had to be something new to see, or to do, or… anything! Or everything! Excited now, I took a few steps forward, only to blink as I realized that my footsteps felt soft. Spongy, almost, like my feet had far more give than they were supposed to. Confused, I paused mid-step to look at them, then stifled a shriek as I saw a bright-white, almost blobby pair of limbs in place of what should have been shoe-covered toes.
"What…?" I muttered, an odd, fascinated grin forming on my face as I tried to move my 'toes'. A corresponding part of the blob responded whenever I did, and I giggled a bit at the strange feeling. But that, in turn, drew my attention to how strange my voice sounded - I definitely had not been able to giggle, before.
"… Um." I said, then giggled again. "Oh, wow. Uh. Hello. Hellooooo, hello hello hello. This is weird."
As much as I was embarrassed to admit it, it sounded like a girl's. Not even a woman's, but a girl's… well, maybe not girl, but definitely not the twenty-three-year-old, male-resonant voice I had before. And I could easily confirm my sex when I looked down and saw the moderate chest underneath the orange-and-gold tanktop I was apparently wearing. I let out another scoff as I drank it all in, then a quiet giggle, then as I burst into laughter and leapt up into the air. All things considered, maybe this wasn't all that bad! Even if I had died, at least now I was some kind of girl, which was fantastic! But that excitement quickly faded as I found myself blinking away an eyeful of leaves. I was above the canopy, suddenly, and the forest floor was dozens of feet underneath me.
"W-Wha…" I blinked, then started to flail as if my newfound life depended on it. "T-Too high, too high!"
But it seemed like I had forgotten how to fall, and all my flailing around just made me spin around like an astronaut fresh off of the shuttle.
"… What?"
Even when I stopped my own movement, I still had to wait for air resistance to slow me down to a stop, and for that whole time gravity never kicked back in. I was just… floating there, frozen. And it wasn't that gravity wasn't there at all; I could still see some falling leaves, the occasional bird swooping and soaring. It was just that for whatever reason, I was immune to it.
"Okay. This is… weird."
There didn't seem to be any kind of mechanism, like wings or whatever, keeping me afloat. So instead I tried a different approach, and simply willed myself to move down - and it actually worked, somehow. I broke out into another fit of giggles as I slowly descended to the ground.
"Okay. Uh, so, status report." I told myself as I landed back on my feet. "Weird-ass glowing feet, cute voice, probably cute body, can float… oh, and kinda… spongy, ground? Well, no, more like spongy feet."
Then I frowned and pushed a bit harder against the ground, and pins and needles erupted across my 'toes' as they went through the otherwise solid dirt. I gasped and immediately pulled back, launching myself a couple of feet into the air in the process. After I descended back down (again), I carefully and slowly tried it again. It felt like moving a numb limb through jello, but sure enough, it went through once more. Then I looked at my hands, saw that they were glowing as well, and giggled a bit as I pushed them through a tree.
Then froze as I realized the implications.
Even though it was as solid-looking as my old one (but smaller and so much more dainty!), pushing my elbow against the tree still gave me that jello-like feeling as it went through. I couldn't make any kind of physical force whatsoever come from any part of my body; my fingers just phased through whatever I tried to pick up. And as terrifying as the idea was, that meant no interaction with the world. At all.
"Well, shit." I muttered, dropping my arms to my side. "Apparently I'm a ghost? Or, half-ghost thing…"
Did I not die completely or something? Was that why I seemed to only half-exist in this world? My thoughts went back to the last moments before my… death, as unpleasant as they were, and to my shock the memories felt strangely distant and detached. Like I had just played them on a hyper-realistic VR machine, rather than experienced them as a part of my life. The only thing that was unchanged was the voice that had been echoing in my head…
"… A spirit!" I suddenly exclaimed. "I'm not a ghost, I'm a spirit. What did it say? It was giving me… skills, or something." I had been so out of it, it was difficult to piece together. "It was like… there were a few simple ones, and then 'Helping Hand', then…'Integrity' combined with like, 'Defender' into 'Guardian Angel'?" I looked down at my hand again. "Well, I don't feel super divine or anything. Then it said something about a lightning spirit? And…"
Then I groaned as I looked down at myself. I had specifically asked for 'super cute girl', and the voice had confirmed it. It had given me what looked like naturally pink hair, in complete defiance of everything I knew about biology. It had given memoderate hints of a figure, the beginnings of a chest coming out from underneath my tanktop. From the scale of the environment around me I had lost a couple of feet, and my voice was a young girl's. Finally, at least in my opinion it was a lot more difficult to be cute at twenty-three than it was at eighteen or younger… disgust began to creep across my mind, but it died down just as quickly, and my lips parted in shock. I wanted to be disgusted, I should have been disgusted - I was twenty-three years old, and I had the body of a kid!
… but I wasn't. I couldn't be. Despite how old I had been before, this body felt right. Something had changed. Something about me, the person that I was at that moment, was different from the person I had been a less than a minute before. Something concrete, something physical. This time the disgust stuck around, and made me wrap my arms around myself in a hug.
"What the hell. What the h-hell."
I felt compromised, violated even. I had always had a strong sense of self, strong enough to know that my previous body hadn't been right, but it was exactly because of that it was so bizarre to be feeling so comfortable in something so alien. Suddenly, the sun was beating down on me, the wind was howling in my ears, and yet… despite it all, panic or fear refused to cloud my mind. I could still think completely clearly. I quickly uncurled myself from the full-body hug I had adopted.
"… Was I really that messed up?" I whispered. "That was… really, really easy."
I spent a few moments floating there, stunned at the new nature of my existence. I was very much female, couldn't have been older than fifteen and was actively not creeped out by that, was a ghost slash spirit thing that couldn't even hold anything besides herself, and while I felt overwhelmed as all hell, it somehow didn't affect my thinking at all. Or at least, I didn't think it was. I seemed pretty clearheaded, but how could I know for sure? There wasn't anyone to talk to to really establish how sane I was. And even if there was, would they even be able to see me? Could-
"-focus!"
I shook my head, clearing away the quickly-growing pile of thoughts. A small part of me marveled at how easy it was. "I can think about all that later. Right now, I…" Then I frowned. "… no, wait. Huh. If I'm all spirity, like this, then do I need to eat? Or drink? Or… sleep, really?"
If I didn't, that cleared up the vast majority of my survival issues right off the bat. I didn't need to set up camp, I didn't have to go foraging or whatever… I guess that meant that all I had left to do was explore? From where the sun was in the sky, it was late afternoon, but if this was a different world, I had no idea how fast or slow it would advance from there. For all I knew, this could be the middle of a month-long day. All I could do was keep track of it, really. Frowning again, I looked around my environment. It looked like a pretty temperate forest, so as long as this area was inhabited, I didn't think it was too naive to assume that a town or village would be too far away. And all of those survival shows I had half-watched always told me to follow towards a source of water - water always led to bigger bodies of water, and bigger bodies of water more than likely meant trade routes and other sources of water. I could still smell a faint hint of water, so I took a few steps towards it… but then I shivered at how immaterial my feet still felt. It didn't feel right to be walking like this; it was far more natural to be floating along a few inches off the ground.
"I guess I really am some kind of ghost…"
Still unsure and a bit confused at my new existence, I picked a direction at random and began to float towards it. The forest was remarkably quiet underneath the afternoon light, and I took the opportunity to test out my newfound abilities a bit more, continuing to giggle both at my giggling and at how odd it felt to not have my motion tied to my legs at all. It was bizarre, and strange, but not impossible to continue moving while completely upside down. And that confirmed that I didn't have a stomach, because it definitely would have felt some kind of nausea from all of the flips and turns that I was doing. But eventually that got boring, and my thoughts drifted to other things instead - things I couldn't help but frown at. I didn't want to, and wasn't, considering the option of being alone, but even if that wasn't the case, I didn't know what I was going to do when or if I did find someone. It would be naïve as hell to assume that they spoke the same language as me, so that was one potential barrier… and there was no way everyone here was like this. Unless they were, but intangibility seemed kind of impractical, and on top of that they may not even be able to see me at all.
I really hoped that that wasn't the case.
The longer I floated, the more I could confirm that food and water probably wouldn't be an issue. I had been moving along like this long enough for the light to visibly dim, and I hadn't felt even the slightest bit thirsty. And while I could feel temperature changes, like any physical object I touched they felt hazy and instinct. So that probably wouldn't bother me, either. All in all, being like this was a serious advantage in a situation like this, but… ugh, I still hoped people could see me. Not being able to talk to anyone would really suck. Thankfully, though, I didn't have to wait much longer. The scent of burning wood and smoking meat soon drifted across my nostrils, and I spared only enough time to let my face light up before I sped towards the source. They became even more defined the closer I got, and my non-existent stomach growled… or at least, that was what it felt like. It didn't seem tied to any kind of actual hunger. Still, cooking food meant a camp, and a camp meant inhabitants, and I continued to speed through the forest before a clearing came into view.
It was quite a small camp, all things considered - two tents, and a couple of felled logs surrounding a fire pit. A young man was sitting on one, strumming on a guitar-like instrument, and a younger woman was tending to the fire and the roasting bird above it. Much to my shock, there was nothing holding the handle for the spit, and yet it was turning anyways. The woman's finger seemed to match it's pace, but it was a half-dozen or so feet away. That couldn't be it, could it…?
"Um… hello?"
The words were out of my mouth before I realized I had even spoke them.
The bird slowly spun to a halt as the woman's hand dropped to her side. Then the young man opened his eyes, and almost dropped his instrument as he adopted the same shocked expression as the woman. In any normal situation, I would have stammered out a response, but here I couldn't do anything but blush (because that was a thing now) and shyly wave towards the party. Slowly, the woman got up and took a few steps towards me, then tilted her head and spoke a phrase in a language that I did not even remotely recognize.
My shoulders dropped.
On one hand, they could definitely see me.
On the other, they definitely did not speak a language I understood.
On the third, they were looking at me like I was some kind of ghost.
"… Son of a bitch."
Chapter 2The two of them took a few more cautious steps towards me. They almost looked scared, and I wished I could reassure them somehow, but the language barrier between us meant that wasn't gonna happen. So instead, I sighed and said the one and only thing I would say to them in English - I did not want to do that whole runaround.
"Look, I don't understand you, and you don't understand me, and I really don't want to do the whole runaround where we try to understand one another, so we need to find some other way to communicate."
The man blinked, just as confused as I was, but the woman only tilted her head and spoke again in that new language. Then as soon they heard each other's words they froze for a moment and shot off a quick back-and-forth. I still had no idea what was going on, so I could only watch as the woman dashed off into a tent then came back with a feather pen and a piece of parchment. I almost laughed at how dated the tools were, but before I could I realized that they kind of matched it - their whole aesthetic and clothing style seemed to be victorian or even medieval, and their camping equipment wasn't exactly made of nylon or kevlar either. If I didn't know better (and believed that ghosts were an actual thing) I'd have sworn I'd just gone back in time instead of traveled to a different world entirely. But the way that woman had been turning her finger… before I could finish the thought, she spoke a few more words that I still failed to understand. Her tone was asking me a question, but all I could do was shake my head and repeat that I didn't speak her language. Then, as if she could understand me, her brow furrowed as she started to scribble something on the paper. Beside her, the man just shook his head, frustrated in the same way I was.
After a few moments, the woman turned it around to show me a stick-figure drawing - four or five people standing around a circle, their arms up in the air with a bunch of lines around them, and someone with long hair lying flat on their back within a circle in the middle of it all. She asked me a question while pointing at the drawing, and because of it I immediately picked up on what she was asking. I couldn't believe that the imagery was the same here as it was back on Earth, though… or that she could somehow understand me.
When I asked her about it she nodded and spoke another question, probably the same thing I just asked her.
"… No, I don't understand you."
She frowned, confused, and then pointed to the image.
"… I wasn't summoned by a ritual circle or anything, if that's what you're asking. I was shot, I assume I friggin' died, and then a split second later I woke up here as a teenage ghost spirit girl thing."
She and her companion blinked, stunned, and I shook my head.
"I know, I know, it's weird as hell."
She replied with something, that I still couldn't understand, and after another exchange with her friend quickly returned to the paper. The man watched her, curious, and after another few moments she showed me an image of three stick figures, one with the same hair as before, a symbol I didn't recognize, and a castle with a bunch of square buildings surrounding it. Nowit was my turn to be confused.
"Uh… you want to take me somewhere? A castle… a castle town?"
She nodded, and pantomimed two talking hands. All things considered, this girl was impressively quick on the draw.
"You're going to take me to a castle, or town, where I can actually talk with someone. You're sure there's someone there that can understand me?"
She shrugged, then opened an invisible book and began to leaf through its pages.
"… They're really well-read there? Fair enough, I guess." At this point, though, I was beginning to feel like I was imposing. "You look pretty set up here, though. I wouldn't be interrupting anything?"
She shook her head and stuck a finger behind her, towards a pile of animals that had been hidden behind a tent. It didn't take me too long to put two and two together, especially with the cooking bird still in front of me - they must have been hunting. Then in an interesting gesture for a world that must not have watches, the woman turned behind her, pointed at the sun, and began to trace a path towards the horizon.
"You've been hunting, and it's getting late." I concluded. At least I could ask for clarification.
She nodded eagerly, then pointed at her drawing again.
I frowned. I didn't even know how to communicate with these two, and they were considering letting me travel along with them? Well, no, from how they were looking at me it wasn't just 'considering'.
"I think you've already decided, so I can't really say no, can I?" I grinned, a bit embarrassed. "I don't want to be a burden, though…"
She just smiled and shook her head, then started to continue on but stopped herself before more than a few words came out. Instead, she frowned and turned to her companion. After a moment of thought, he nodded as well, and inbetween eating bits of the now slightly-burned bird they began to pack up their camp and catches. I could have and would have helped, if I had an actual pair of hands, but without them all I could do was continue to awkwardly float there and watch. Thankfully, though, they were quick workers, and before too long they had their entire camp packed up into two large, frameless backpacks. Their biggest catch had been hogtied onto a trunk that they carried over their shoulders, the rest of the meat went into a bag over the girl's other shoulder. The three things combined must have all been incredibly heavy, but she moved like it didn't weigh anything at all. And considering that, along with the finger-turning… I felt awkward as hell, but as we set off on the trail back to wherever they came from, I couldn't help but ask.
"Um… is magic a thing, here?"
The woman blinked, stopped dead in her tracks, and after a moment, turned towards me with a bemused, questioning smile on her face.
"I mean, I saw the spit turning without anyone touching it, and all that stuff should be pretty heavy but you aren't having any issue with it, so…"
An eyebrow cranked its way up her forehead, and without a word she raised a finger. A pile of rocks off to my left floated their way upwards in perfect time with the gesture.
I was in awe. "O-Okay, that's… pretty cool. Sorry, probably a stupid question, I know, but where I come from there was nothing like that, so seeing it…"
Her next smile felt almost condescending, like how a parent would smile at a child that didn't know any better, so I quickly shut myself up.
The rest of the trip was quiet and rather awkward, made even worse without the ability for small talk. On top of that, the two adventurers couldn't help but continue to peak at how I floated along, and I couldn't help but peak at how archaic they looked and honestly, how archaic the surroundings as a whole looked. The trail we were on was less a trail and more of a path of made of beaten-down grass that bobbed and weaved its way through the forest. I saw absolutely no fenceposts or trailheads or anything like that. It really was like I had gone back in time… but there was magic here as well.
That realization had made me excited at first, but the more I thought about it and everything else the more I fell into a trudge instead. Or at least much as you can trudge when you're floating an inch above the ground. I just couldn't get away from the fact that I truly was in a different world… no computers, no phones, not even any microwaves or refrigerators. I didn't doubt that they had magical replacements for at least some of those things, but overall, all of my precious technology had just gone down the drain. I had wanted to work with prosthetics before life (and death) had happened; I doubted they had even considered the concept here. And while I did have modern knowledge, it was in bits and pieces. Not nearly enough to spark a technological revolution on my own. And that wasn't even considering the fact that I couldn't friggin' grab things, or even really communicate. I may not need anything for homeostasis now, but I was still a living being; I needed to be doing something or else I would go crazy. And in a world like this, what could I do?
In the midst of all that melancholy, it took the woman (trying) to poke me in the shoulder for me to realize that an hour or so had already passed, the forest had given way to plains, and the darkening sky was now blocked by imposingly high watchtowers and an equally tall portcullis. A few muttered words of astonishment came out of my mouth, but the adventurers weren't bothered by it at all. They walked straight up to the (medevially armored) guard and greeted him, then after a brief conversation probably about me, the guard shouted over his shoulder and the gate began to crank its way up.
Behind it was something that looked like straight out of an amusement park - an entire, almost stereotypical medieval town. Walls of tightly packed plaster-and-wood walls lined vaguely-smooth cobblestone roads, and idle conversation and chatter filled the immediate air. I heard the clop of hooves further in, and rushing water was present as well - a closer look at the roads revealed drainage grates and bars built into the side of them.
"This really is a fantasy…" I whispered, almost paralyzed at the sight of everything before me. I knew that towns of this kind of era back home wouldn't be nearly as nice as this, but here… it was like I had stepped into an ideal world. No raw sewage lining the streets, and there was no gas or smog in the air either. Instead, a deep inhale carried the smells of meat and spices and bread coming from my left. My immediate left. I whipped around towards it, then gasped and stopped dead in my tracks again as what must have been a market came into view. It was getting dark. and people were beginning to go home for the day, but colorful tarps still covered richly-dyed fabrics and clothes, shiny jewelry, smoking meat, breads and pies and everything inbetween, and… as foreboding as they were in person, deadly-looking swords and axes and bows, right next to breastplates of leather and scale and metal.
The sight of weapons just hanging freely like that made me anxious and excited and a million other things all at the same time, and my gaze turned back to the duo to see their reaction - but they were making their way to a stall at the edge of the market. I still couldn't help but shake my head at how the woman continued to move, but the longer I watched them, the more a smirk began to grow across my face. There was no way she wasn't using her magic to make their whole load lighter. It was an everyday thing here; if it helped, I couldn't imagine why she wouldn't be using it.
The stall was manned by a man significantly bulkier than the two of them, and he greeted them warmly as they approached. Despite how easily she had been lifting it, the man nearly collapsed under the weight as she passed the trunk off to him. She let him struggle with it for a few moments, a grin across her face all the while, then raised her hand just like before. Like magic, the load was suddenly much lighter. The three of them carried it all into a more permanent-looking building next to the stall, and few moments later, the woman came out counting each individual coin as dropped them into a purse. Her companion asked her something, there was a beat as she finished counting, then she smiled and tossed the bag over to him. Effortlessly, he caught it and put it into his pack, all in a single fluid motion.
I got the feeling that I had just witnessed a frequently rehearsed ritual between the three of them.
Once it was all said and done, the woman turned to me and tilted her head, then pointed up towards the silhouetted keep. For a moment, my gaze turned back towards the weapons and armor, but without being able to touch anything I doubted I would be able to mess around with them - or that I would even be allowed to. So instead I nodded, and they set off at a quick pace through the rest of the market. Soon we were out the other end and deeper into the castle town, and without even pausing to consider their position the duo swerved to their right and continued on. I figured having a sense of direction here was probably easier than it seemed, thanks to the castle overshadowing everything, but I was still left a bit baffled by how quickly they moved. And I didn't want to attract any attention by floating, so my spongy feet were slowing me down as well. Considering all of that, it shouldn't have really come as a surprise that when I rounded a corner, I had completely lost sight of them.
"… Guys?" I asked as I slowed to a halt in the middle of the road. I was in the middle of a major crossroads, enough to justify a wooden sign on the sidewalk, but of course it was written in a language that I couldn't read. None of the roads seemed to point directly towards the castle. My nonexistent heart began to pound in my ears; the edges of my vision blurred as I whipped my head around to try and catch a glimpse of the woman's blonde hair, of the man's cloak… but instead, all I could see was an empty, alien environment. My legs suddenly lost all of their strength and gave out underneath me, and my knees impaled themselves into the cobblestone-disguised jello as I collapsed. For the second time today, my eyes burned as tears began to fall out of them. I was lost, completely and utterly, and I couldn't even ask anyone for help. That woman had understood me, but her companion never had and had to rely on her for a translation. So if it was something special to her, then I couldn't even ask anyone for help. And even if I could, I didn't know if anyone would take me seriously; no doubt I was just presenting the image of a scared little girl to the rest of the world.
I didn't know how long I just laid on the wobbly ground before someone finally noticed me. At first they spoke in the language that I couldn't understand, just like everyone else, and I groaned and shook my head, but then the reply came back with something I had never heard before. It made me look up, if only out of confusion, but the emotion just got worse as I saw the expressionless mask that they was wearing. Somehow, though, I could feel some kind of kindness leaking out from behind it.
"Konbanwa?" she said, almost phrasing it like a question.
It sounded like a different language from what I had been hearing so far, but I still didn't recognize it. "I-I'm sorry, I don't understand you."
She stared at me, then slowly raised her hand. It glowed for a moment, and then a small flame burst into existence. The way it danced and flickered and hovered above her palm, I couldn't help but stare at it, and then-
Confirmed. Skill [Magic Sense] acquired.
-a voice echoed in my head, and some new part of my brain lit up. It was a sense beyond sight or smell or sound, something entirely new that was difficult to put into words. That flame in her hand wasn't just a flame anymore, there was something… beyond it, or maybe within it, that was sustaining it. And there was something different about the girl herself, too; some part of her that extended beyond the space her body took up.
"… Magic?"
Even though it didn't do anything, I squinted as I tried to get a better idea of this new sense. Shaking her head, the woman put her hand on my shoulder, and then spoke. While I heard the same language as ever, that new sixth sense let me pick up on some undercurrent… or overtone, or something, that I couldn't comprehend before.
"Please do not injure yourself, Magic Sense will take time to comprehend fully."
I gasped. It was stilted and awkward and felt a lot like a telepathic version of Engrish, but it was a hell of a lot better than what I had before.
"I-I can understand you!"
Her response carried a smile with it, beyond the mask she was wearing or the tone of voice she used. "This world works differently than home. Magicules in the air let Magic Sense understand my will over my spoken language."
I nodded eagerly, thrilled to be having a conversation with someone. "So magic is a thing, then?"
"Indeed."
I breathed out a sigh of relief. "Oh, you have no idea how nice it is to be having a conversation with someone. Even if it's a bit awkward…"
"It will take time for you to adjust fully to Magic Sense." She said again, then smiled. "What is your name?"
"… E-Emily. My name's Emily." Now I could say that without hesitation, even if the state of my memories meant that that name didn't feel entirely correct anymore.
"I am Shizu." she replied, and stood to offer me a hand up.
"Nice to meet you…" Then I trailed off as I saw the hand. "… um, yeah, about that." I waved my own hand over and through hers, making her gasp and snap back. I gave her a guilty smile as I rose to my feet myself. "Sorry. I kind of can't… I can fly, though!"
The mask stared at me, emotionless. "You… are not human."
"I… suppose I'm not, no. Not anymore. I think I'm technically a spirit? That's what the voice ended up saying to me, anyways."
Suddenly, she was interested. "The World Voice? Have you heard the same one just now?"
"Yeah, it said I had gotten the magic sense skill, or something."
"And when were you told that you became a spirit?"
"… when I was shot." I muttered, then crossed my arms. "Or, well, while I was bleeding out from being shot."
"Shot?" Then her tone, and the expression behind it, softened. "Ah… then you are reincarnated."
I looked down at myself, echoing her words. "Reincarnated… is that why everything from before feels so, distant? And why I feel so comfortable with this?" Another small smile. "I was twenty-three, before."
"And you are fifteen or so, now." She nodded. "I would not know, unfortunately; Guildmaster Heniz would know more.… Or, ex-guildmaster, I suppose." There was a strange hint of wistfulness in her voice, something that definitely didn't match her appearance. Then again, I probably didn't sound like a fifteen-year-old, either. "I was going to see him, regardless, so do you wish to come with me?"
"You were? It's a good thing we ran into eachother, then." I replied, spinning around to start moving, then paused and turned back towards her. "… Oh, wait, I was following a pair of people. They were moving too fast for me and I lost them, they might be worried about me…"
She hummed. "Did they say where they were going?"
"The castle?" I shrugged. "They said that there might be someone that could talk to me, there… well, not said, but y'know. Told me. I couldn't exactly talk with them."
"They are probably moving to the adventurer's guild, there are many knowledgeable people on and around there."
"Adventurer's guild? Like, for real? Slaying monsters and helping people?" My eyes were probably shining at that point.
"It's not quite as glamorous as you may think it to be, but correct." she replied, again with that strange tone of wistfulness. "We can meet them there in the tomorrow. For now, shall we press on?"
Nodding made her pivot on a heel without missing a beat. I stood there for a moment, confused as to why she just turned around, and when the realization hit I quickly sped after her.
"Hey, were you looking for me?"
But she was already too far away to hear me, and I groaned as I had to abandon walking entirely just to keep up with her.
Hey guys!
So just as a warning, this is actually my first fic that I've felt good enough about to post and continue. I'm friggin' excited about it, so I'm not going to be dropping this any time soon (especially considering the maybe-large amount of positive responses). But burnout is definitely a thing that I want to avoid, so I feel the need to warn you guys that I can't guarantee that I'll be able to keep updating as fast as I've been so far. They'll definitely come as fast as I can sustain 'em, though!
Chapter 3Bleh. Kind of a word-vomity chapter that I'm not super proud of, so I just wanted to get it out and over with. Sorry for it continuing to be mopey; the next one'll be better.
It was difficult to see from the ground level, but it seemed like the city was divided into districts - the closer we got to the castle, the more well-constructed the buildings and streets became. Planters filled with sweet-smelling flowers popped up between the sidewalks and actual roads, and I saw a lot less pedestrians and a lot more carriages. It was starting to approach 'stuffy' territory for me, but it was still a heck of a lot nicer than the urban disaster that I came from.
My pace was a bit slower as I twisted and turned to take in all the sights, but being able to move so freely still let me keep up with Shizu. "So, are you part of this adventurer's guild?"
She didn't even look behind her as she replied. "I was, a long while ago."
That made me stop in my tracks and stare as she walked by without offering any elaboration. I really doubted that an actual sixteen-year-old would be saying 'a long while ago', but I bet I didn't sound like a fifteen-year-old, either. The more important thing was how emotionlessly she said it… it didn't sound like she enjoyed her situation at all. Or that she enjoyed much of anything, really.
"… Hey, are you feeling alright?" I asked as I darted back up to her side. "You seem pretty tired."
She paused for a moment, then turned to me, her head tilted in an almost curious pose. "I am fine enough, considering all of the things. Heinz's house is just ahead."
And with that, she spun around again in an almost military-like fashion. Her attitude made me shiver, despite my difficulty feeling temperature - I could tell that she wasn't being intentionally rude, or even rude at all. But it was almost as if she couldn't be anything else. She felt like the cold embers of a long-extinguished fire. If I could've, I would've given her a hug, but I doubted she would enjoy someone just phasing through her. AlI I could do instead was sigh, keep myself a good step behind her, and match her pace forward. She approached the house undaunted, despite how fancy it must have seemed to her and the rest of the natives, and walked up the steps like she was visiting an old friend.
And 'old' was definitely right word choice, as the door opened to reveal an eldery, gaunt-faced man with unstyled, but not unkempt, silver hair reaching down to his shoulders. He stood tall in defiance of his age, but still looked almost livid at having to answer the door. I thought we had the wrong house and was about to anxiously and quickly apologize, but as he saw the masked girl his expression completely inverted.
"Shizu!" he almost shouted as he gave the girl a firm handshake. "Fantastic to see you! It's been a very long time, how are you?"
I winced at the choppy speech. Hopefully, he didn't actually talk like that.
"I've been fine enough." she replied, and gestured to me. "This is Emily; an otherworlder. It seems she had been reincarnated as a spirit. Emily, this is Heniz. He used to manage Blumund's division of the Free Union."
"Now my son does, and I'm stuck in my hut spinnin' yarn to anyone who stops by." he replied with a smile as he stuck a broad hand out for me to shake. I couldn't help but flinch; he seemed almost seven feet tall from my point of view. I knew that it was because I had shrunk a good foot myself, but my own hand barely covered his palm as I phased it through his and gave him a small, nervous smile.
"I'd return it, but I kind of can't. Thanks, though."
"….Wait, you are not possessing a host? That's not…" Then he laughed and shook his head. "Well, I'd say the sort of thing like this shouldn't exist, but Shizu seems like she's showing me the impossible once more." He grinned at the mask she was wearing, but the complete lack of response made him awkwardly chuckle instead. "Ah, come in, come in."
A whistling kettle greeted us as we entered, and the man escorted us into the dining room. Compared to the odds and ends that a more modern home would have, it was pretty bare - a stone fireplace and chimney, with four simply-built chairs and a table all over an unpolished wooden floor. If was earlier, large windows would have lit up the room, but now a single, brightly-glowing candle provided all of the light. It seemed far too bright for a regular candle, and I couldn't feel any heat at all coming off of it when I held my hand in front of it.
"Useful, eh? More light comes from it, and no fires will come from it." the man remarked as he entered from the kitchen with two steaming mugs. He set one in front of Shizu, then gave me a guilty smile. "Youd've gotten one as well, but I doubt much would be done with it."
I smiled again, a bit wider than before. He seemed lively, at least. "No no, it's fine, I appreciate the thought. Thank you."
The guilt left his expression, and he sat down opposite Shizu and I with a groan. "Ah, these legs aren't what they were… that part of you will always give me jealousy, Shizu."
"It seems more beneficial than it is, I'm still not going to live forever." She calmly replied as she raised the mug to her mask. She could drink with it on, someone, and my shock must've been obvious because the man burst into laughter as soon as he saw it.
"Emily, have you not seen magic before?!"
"No, not at all!" I exclaimed, "I just woke up here a few hours ago!"
His laughter quickly sputtered down to coughs, and he sadly nodded his head. "Ah… apologies. I forget that more than likely, magic does not exist where you come from. And you're a bit disoriented, more than likely… considering what 'reincarnated' means, are you feeling alright?"
It took me a moment to put together a reply. How was I feeling? In all honesty, I should have been freaking the hell out. Everything I had ever known had just been totally and completely uprooted, and I had no family, no friends, no income, no anything in this new world. And said world worked completely differently, too; if the change in time period wasn't enough, magic had to be added to the equation as well. But all I felt at the moment was a vague sense of unease. I could let it overwhelm me, if I wanted to, but it was trivally easy to keep it… not suppressed, but more… it was more like I was always in the state of mind I wanted to be.
"… Hooonestly, I'm not feeling not all that bad?" I replied. "It's kinda weird, I was a lot more volatile before."
"Well, you have begun an entirely new life. Do you feel like yourself?"
"In the sense of acting the same? I think so…" I muttered, then shook my head. "Everything from before feels all distant, though. Like I watched it on TV."
"Teevee?"
"It's… ah, nevermind. It feels like I…" Then I grinned. "It feels like it was another life. Which is pretty fitting, I think."
"Perhaps so, perhaps so…" Heinz chuckled. The conversation lulled as he took a slip of his drink, mulling over his thoughts. "An otherworlder as a spirit, without a host… tell me, can you wield spiritual magic?"
"… I have no idea." I hadn't even thought that I myself might have had magic. And now that I was thinking about it, I did ask to be a lightning girl…
"What skills do you possess?"
I blinked. "Uh… well, my job was just cleaning, so there's not a whole lot from that… I know at least a little bit about physics, stuff like-"
"-No, not aptitudes, skills." Heinz interrupted, and sighed. "Apologies, I should've explained. What you're describing is what is described as 'aptitudes' here. General abilities; talent. But skills… they are something innate, an ability you were born with or an aptitude trained and honed to the same level. Whenever it's desired, a skill can be called upon and and your body and mind will repeat it the exact same way every single time. An ability such as that is quite powerful, as I'm sure you can imagine."
I nodded, trying to parse my way through the language barrier. "I dunno if I'm that good at anything…"
"You'd be surprised." Heinz grinned. "Magic Sense, what I assume is being used by you to understand me, is an extremely easy Skill to acquire, even for humans. I'd imagine you'd have much more than that, too, given your status as both an outworlder and a spirit, regardless of how new you are."
It felt like he was looking at me like a museum display, rather than a person… I pulled away a bit, anxious, and he coughed again and calmed himself as soon as I did.
"Ah… please, forgive the old man for eyeing you as if he's far younger than he is. I've encountered a handful of summoned otherworlders, and one or two childs far more mature than they had any right to be in my time. But I have never run across a spirit looking and claiming to have once been human only hours ago, in nearly sixty-five years as an adventurer and guildmaster."
That caught my attention - the girl had asked me if I was summoned. "There's others? From my world, I mean?"
"There are ones that come from worlds different than this one, certainly. Whether or not they come from your world I can't say for sure."
"Is there any place I can like, meet them or something? It would be nice to meet someone in at least a bit of the same situation as me…"
He expression fell, and he shook his head sadly. "Unfortunately, no… the cruel reality is that most otherworlders are summoned here as weapons."
"… Weapons?"
For a second, his gaze flicked to Shizu, who had been calmly drinking her tea throughout the entire conversation. "Yes, weapons. Considering the circumstances I've never wanted to look too far into it, but… yes, weapons. From what I know, to make the transition between worlds is incredibly difficult. The soul requires a will strong enough to hold itself together throughout the transition."
I smirked. "Great willpower, huh. That doesn't exactly sound like me."
"That's exactly what that kind of person normally says." Heinz countered with a grin, and I just scoffed again. "Regardless, the ones called 'otherworlders' are granted a skill unique to them and only them due to that transition. Such skills're called, well, Unique Skills." He rolled his eyes. "They allow the bearer to do things beyond what even magic can do."
I nodded, slowly.
"As a result, individuals seeking to acquire this power for themselves employ complicated rituals to pull others into this world. They aren't exactly given a choice in the matter, unfortunately, and… so the summoner is not immediately killed by the summonee exercising their new power, more often than not a binding curse is placed on the soul as it arrives. The same as slavery, more or less, but considering the potential of an otherworlder our society fails to shun it."
I just stared at him, not quite sure how to comprehend this. Back home, I pretended that situations like this didn't exist… of course I knew they did, but I could never understand how the people involved justified their actions to themselves. It was so much easier on me to just ignore it…
"… W-Why? That's…" I shook my head, at a loss for words.
He sighed again. "I'm sure you saw the walls surrounding the city as you entered. They're not just there for display; if they did not exist, this city would not exist, as it would have been razed to the ground by monsters long ago."
Of course there had to be monsters… one of my favorite shows back home had something similar, but I had never thought too deeply about the pressure that would put on the people who lived there. Why would I? That would take the fun out of it…
"Your expression tells me that there wasn't anything like this back where you came from." Heinz commented, and I nodded. "Unfortunately, that's how it is here… that's why adventurers go out to slay these monsters, but compared to them, humanity as a whole is at a disadvantage."
"W-Why?" I asked, and he just chuckled.
"As a race, humanity is always asking 'why'. 'Why does the sun set', 'why does the moon rise', 'why is the fire hot'. For us, there must always be a reason behind every single event, even if we cannot comprehend them. It's allowed us to come together and achieve all that we've achieved, but at the same time… well, monsters are… simpler, in a way."
I twirled a strand of hair inbetween my finger - a nervous habit that I thought I'd dropped. "T-That's… a good thing, right?"
He shook his head. "You might think so, but it doesn't take much thought to lust after power, and it takes even less for a single body to topple a tower created by a dozen."
I nodded again. Destruction was far easier than creation, after all.
"A monster's instincts come much sharper and refined, because of this. A human has to train for battle; a monster knows it from birth. Because of this, for a human, simply acquiring one Skill at all takes months of study and is a cause for celebration; meanwhile, with focused, dedicated training a monster can acquire one in a week's time. Multiple skills, even, if the technique is solid."
My jaw slowly dropped. I didn't like the picture he was painting.
"That sheer difference in ability is why others feel it's acceptable to summon otherworlders. One life sacrificed to save thousands."
"But there doesn't have to be a sacrifice!" I exclaimed. "What about people like me, who came here on their own?"
He shook his head. "There's not enough, they feel. As I said, in sixty-five years I've only encountered one or two that claim to be reincarnated. And on top of that, they're still human. As powerful as they can be, a unique skill is still only one skill, and a high-level monster can have half a dozen."
I snapped. "Then what about me?! I'm not human!"
But my entire body collapsed as soon as I said the words. It was true… I really wasn't human, anymore.
"… I can't just sit by and watch when I'm told that crap like this is happening." I muttered as I floated back down to my seat, thinking this all over. It wasn't right, absolutely not; there had to be better ways to defend themselves… but on the other hand, though, was it entirely wrong? If the power gap between humans and monsters really was that big, at least in theory I couldn't blame them for taking such drastic measures… but it didn't have to boil down to slavery. He had been clear that there were others like me, at least in terms of where they came from. And if we were… so…
… I froze, blinked, then snapped my head back up to Heniz. "We all know I don't count as human anymore, but I'm pretty obviously not a monster, either. Where does a spirit fall on this whole power scaling?"
"Well, a spirit can't take on any kind of physical presence at all, normally." he replied. "To get one, they make contracts with humans and monsters - through it, the physical being is allowed access to the spirits' elemental powers, and the spirit is granted a physical form. But while I've heard tales of spirits with a strong enough will to evolve into a monster on their own, I've never heard of an independent, human spirit. I have no idea where you would fall, to be honest."
"Then it sounds like we have some experimenting to do." I replied, grinning. "The difference is big enough that it should be pretty obvious, right?"
"I… suppose." Heinz muttered, then sighed. "Emily, what is it that you're trying to do?"
"I don't know anything about this world, but if I'm stuck here, then I want to make sure that nobody else has to be." I started, looking down at my glowing, ectoplasmic hands again. If what he said was true, I actually had the power to make a difference for once. "I can't just sit by and watch if people are being pulled here against their will… and if I'm so damn powerful compared to a regular old human, then I have to do my part, right?"
I took a breath, and matched the guildmaster's gaze.
"Heinz, I want to become an adventurer. And if I can, I want to make sure that nobody else needs to be pulled here ever again."
The man looked at me for a moment, and then his eyebrow cranked up like a drawbridge. "… I appreciate the enthusiasm, Emily, but I feel like you might be putting the cart before the horse. Have you ever even held a weapon, let alone wielded magic?"
I sputtered out a few words of protest, but anything else quickly died in my throat. He was right, of course.
"Then again, you can't even really hold a weapon…"
"T-There was a reason you asked!" I exclaimed, if only to defend myself, then sighed and elaborated. "About the magic, I mean. There was a reason you asked about the magic. You wouldn't have asked if it didn't have any effect at all, right? And… being like this is an advantage, isn't it? I don't think I can get hurt by swords and stuff."
Heinz took a moment to think about it. Then, he chuckled and shook his head. "I'm starting to see how you survived the journey… alright. I don't know if you need to sleep or not, but you can stay in the guest room down the hall for tonight. You can visit the guild tomorrow." He turned to the masked girl. "Before you retire, though, I have some things I want to talk with you about, Shizu."
She hummed in agreement, and wished me goodnight as I hovered down the hallway and found a spare room. Just like the dining room, it was pretty threadbare - it only had a roughly-crafted endtable and dresser, and while the bed looked a bit better off, I still didn't think I would be getting any sleep in it. Instead, I settled next to the window with a sigh, and gazed out at the unfamiliar world beyond. From here, the city looked so peaceful… I wasn't going to back down from this adventurer thing, even if I couldn't hold a sword. Heinz had been pretty adamant about the differences between a monster and a human. And like I told him, if I was so damn powerful now, there was no way I was going to let that go to waste.
With how dim the lights were, the sky was filled with stars. I wasn't exactly an avid practitioner of astronomy before, so I couldn't exactly say that they were familiar or unfamiliar, but I still knew it wasn't the sky I grew up under. Hopefully, though, I could make a difference in the world underneath it.[/hr]
Chapter 4As it turned out, while I may not have been able to feel tired, I was definitely able to fall asleep. The next thing I knew after looking up at the sky and stars was the bizarre feeling of something poking it's way into my shoulder, and I woke up with a shriek, much to Heinz's amusement. He announced a good morning like a radio host, and I could only respond with a glare as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.
"If I had any doubts about your story, that whole show would've shown me otherwise." he grinned. "I've never seen a spirit act quite like that before."
Compared to how it was last night, his speech was already sounding a lot more like fluent english. When Shizu had told me that it would take time, I was expecting something on the scale of weeks… not 'within a day'. Maybe she was talking from a human perspective… since I didn't exactly have a whole lot of getting ready to do, I followed Heinz as he left for the dining room. Shizu was already up and sitting at the table, and as expected, she only gave me a curt nod as I walked in. She was still wearing her mask. I wondered if she ever took that thing off…
"So, Emily, are you still serious about what you said last night?" Heinz asked, distracting me from my thoughts. "Shizu and I have business at the guild today, so if you are, it might not be a bad idea for you to tag along."
"A-Already? Don't I need like, a house or something? At least?"
"I don't mind you staying here until you find your bearings, and I don't anticipate that'll take very long." he replied, then shrugged. "As an adventurer, you'll probably be out in the field more often than you're at home, and if you are serious the sooner we get started on this the better… on that topic, I never got the chance to ask you last night. What are your skills, if you have any?"
"Is there like, an explicit list or something? I have no idea what I have."
"Your skills are a part of you, as implicit as breathing or walking." Shizu continued, speaking for the first time in hours. "If you want to see if you have any, all you need to do is simply ask yourself what they are."
I let out a grumble. That was way too mystical for my liking… how could something I had never done before already be a part of me? Considering my circumstances it was entirely possible that something had been shoved in there, but I really didn't like the implications of that. Then again, my entire life before felt like a very realistic TV show… with an irritated shake of my head, I gave in and I asked myself the question. Then I flinched as the answer came back immediately, alongside another new part of my brain lighting up. Suddenly, I knew the names and descriptions of each one of the five skills I had:
[Magic Sense] - Allows for the perception and interpretation of magicules in the air.
[Lightning Transformation] - Facilitates the direct, one-way conversion of magicules into lightning.
[Control Lightning] - Allows for the manipulation of lightning.
[Helping Hand] - Regardless of personal aptitude level, the user can always successfully assist another with a task.
[Guardian Angel] - Ensures physical and mental integrity, and boosts actions done for the purpose of defending others.
While I didn't have a perfect idea of it all ('control lighting' allows for the control of lightning, c'mon!) suddenly things made a lot more sense. By far, the most important one here was 'Guardian Angel', which looked like it involved both having one and being one. I had no doubt that 'mental integrity' thing was what had let me stay so in control of myself despite my circumstances, and 'physical integrity' might be what allowed me to exist if spirits normally couldn't exist on their own.
"So, uh… including magic sense, I have like, five."
"F-Five?!" Heinz paled.
"Lightning Transformation, Control Lightning, Helping Hand, and Guardian Angel." I said, and Heinz just continued to stammer. "Uh…?"
"I-It's fine, just… five skills… can you describe them?"
I relayed everything I knew about them to him, and he continued to mutter a few things about the amount before he managed to shake it off. "I-I've never heard of Helping Hand or Guardian Angel, but Control Lighting and Lightning Transformation seem obvious enough." He gave me a small grin. "You'll have people lining up to ask you to join their party, with skills like that."
His clear nervousness made me anxious. Was I really all that different? The last two might be powerful, depending on how far they stretched, but the first two were just basic lightning magic, right? I didn't want people to see me as a living weapon… at the same time, though, I did make a promise, and I wasn't about to change that anytime soon.
"We should get on our way, before the guild gets too busy." Heinz continued. Breakfast had already been made, judging by the lingering smell of ham or bacon in kitchen, so he wasted no time in heading straight for the door. Shizu followed silently after him, and stared at me as she held the door open… blinking, I quickly nodded and followed after them. The streets outside were full of people compared to last night, though just like before my glowing extremities or Shizu's mask created any attention for ourselves. In fact, it was Heinz that was apparently a local celebrity, and he waved and greeted quite a few people as we made our way through the streets.
"It's been a long while since I was guildmaster, so I'm not up to date on the current regulations." he explained, once we had gotten past the majority of the crowds. "When I ran things, you could join the guild with nothing but your signature. Doing that would make you an F-rank adventurer, but to leave the city in any official capacity requires an E-rank. Getting up to that level requires a combat trial."
I paled. "C-Combat trial?"
"Defeating a summoned monster under the supervision of a proctor." he said, and smiled. "It won't be an issue for an otherworlder, it's more to make sure that you don't have overeager teenagers biting off more than they can chew."
"… Riiight." Did I count as a teenager?
I was surprised that just anyone could join up. I guess the country was desperate enough that they could accept just about anyone, as long as it wouldn't be completely suicidal. And normally, I would have had to worry about food and water and lodging before I could get started on anything like this, but with how I was now I could get straight to work… if I could pass the test, at least. 'Combat trial' seemed obvious enough. It shocked me that they would jump straight to fighting monsters, but that was what this job was all about, wasn't it? Anxiety began to brew at the bottom of my stomach. I had meant what I said; I did genuinely want to make sure that I was at least doing my part to stop this summoning thing. I guess I just hadn't processed that it would actually involve, well, killing monsters.
As stupid as it made me feel.
We made our way through the cobblestone streets until the manor-like building of the guild hall came into view. Quite a few adventurer-looking types were around the area, too; either leaving with energetic faces and empty backpacks, or arriving with the exact opposite. Most of them seemed fairly average, low 20s, leather armor, some kind of lance or sword as a weapon… some wore the stereotypical garb of a mage, though. Another few looked a fair bit older, and with the gear to match; scalemail, chainmail, or even plate wasn't out of the question for them. Those were the people who had decided to make this kind of thing their career, I figured.
"As we're right next to the Jura Forest, the Blumund division of the Free Union is a fairly active hub." Heinz explained as he saw me looking around. "We get a lot more business than a city our size should get. And there's been a lot of monster activity recently, on top of that…"
Several teller-like windows lined the front wall of the building, all with quite a few people in front of them. It kind of reminded me of the DMV back home… thankfully, instead of having us wait in line, Heinz directed us to a guarded set of double doors off to the side. As soon as the guard saw the ex-guildmaster, he went ramrod straight and stiffly opened the way for us without even a question.
"That's quite the reaction." I noted, once we were inside. Unlike Heinz's house, these walls were made of bleached-white, perfectly cut stone, and the tile floor had a carpet running along the center.
Heinz grinned, almost deviously. "I used to run a pretty tight ship, and my son is no looser. I may seem casual now, but that's off the clock. I took my job seriously. The Union does important work; almost everything of note outside the city walls is routed through it in some way. And it's not just slaying monsters, either, a good chunk of the city's game comes through low-ranking Union adventurers."
I nodded, remembering the people that had brought me in yesterday… and promptly froze in place as they rounded the corner of the hallway. We just stared at one another for a moment, then the woman laughed.
"Why did I get the feeling that you'd be showing up here regardless of what we did?"
"Uh… I-I have no clue?"
That was enough to make her blink. "You just… can you actually understand me now?"
"Oh! Yeah, I can." I nodded towards Shizu. "You can thank her for that."
The woman gave the girl a quick once-over, and raised an eyebrow. "Nice getup, Conqueror."
Before Shizu even got the chance to respond, Heinz flinched slightly and took a step forward. "Were these the people you were talking about, Emily?" he asked me, and then turned to the woman. "Would you mind showing her the training yard? She may have magic that she's unfamiliar with, and Shizu and I have an important meeting to get to."
"… Sure?" The woman replied, and scoffed as Heinz practically dragged Shizu off. "Huh. That wasn't an insult… uh, the Conqueror of Flames was an old hero that was active about sixty, seventy years ago." She explained to me. "She wore a pretty distinctive mask, so a lot of people like to copy it. And from what I've heard, that outfit isn't too off base, either." She grinned. "Given you're an otherworlder and all, I'm gonna have to explain everything, aren't I?"
Her wink made me groan. "Okay, am I really that out of place?"
"Well, it was obvious that you were something." she explained as we started to walk. "Neither of us have ever heard whatever language you were speaking, and you were so out of touch with even magic…"
"I don't have magic back home!"
"I know, that's why it was obvious that you were something." I just groaned again when she winked again. "So your name's Emily?"
"Yeah. Emily… uh, Rose." I was in a fantasy world with magic and monsters that lurked outside of gated cities; why the hell not.
The woman quirked an eyebrow again. "Well, nice to officially meet you, Emily uh Rose. I'm Olivia, the quiet kid next to me is Luke." She frowned slightly. "Even if you can understand me now, I'm afraid he can't, he's… well, he's incapable of magic." She sighed. "Mom always said I got both our shares."
"So now you get to be on the receiving end of the whole thing." the man commented. I opened my mouth to reply, then realized that he was completely right and closed it. He smirked. "Exactly."
"Don't mind him, he just cracks jokes about it way too often. Can't exactly blame him, so I let him get away with it." Olivia replied, elbowing him in the ribs. "Anyways, as soon as we realized that we'd lost you, we went straight to the loremaster to figure out if you like, got snatched back home or something. I told him that you said you weren't summoned, and he had to dig through about a dozen books before he finally found a reference to reincarnation. Which fits with how you said you were shot." She winced. "Sorry about that, by the way."
I just shrugged. "Not your fault. I don't… well, everything from before feels like another life, so… thanks to that I guess I'm not really missing anything." Well, that and Guardian Angel, that is.
She frowned. "… Well, anyways, he mentioned that Magic Sense would've let you understand me, and at that point I figured that it was time to go to bed."
"Yeah, I was thinking about that. I got Magic Sense just by looking at, well, magic; so why didn't it trigger when I saw your stuff?"
"My stuff's not really magic on its own; it's more like throwing my weight around. Or something. That's what the loremaster told me, anyways…" She shrugged, and chuckled again. "Of course we'd run into eachother right as we were going out to search." Then she laughed at my questioning look. "Of course we were going to look for you, silly! We're not heartless enough to just leave you out alone by yourself. I'm really glad you found someone that could give you a roof over your head for the night… even if you don't exactly need one."
"… Thank you." I eventually replied. "I really appreciate that."
"Of course! I may not be a big-time adventurer or anything, but I still like helping where I can." She smiled, and then blinked and turned to another set of double doors. "Ah, wait, these'll work." Opening them revealed an outside courtyard the size of a gym, packed with mage and fighter alike. Just like everything else, it was almost stereotypical - some people were shooting balls of fire and ice at straw-built training dummies, while others spared with one another in designated, rune-inscribed rings that reminded me of the lining outside a certain flying city's crater.
"If you think this is something, wait until you see Ingracia's. They've got like, actual golems as sparring partners. Apparently they adapt to you and everything." Olivia commented as she walked up, grinning at my awestruck expression. She tried to elbow me like how she did with her brother, but stumbled off balance as the limb just phased into me. A shiver ran up and down my spine. "… Ah, sorry, right. Let's get you checked in."
A desk was set up just outside the doors, and the bored-looking man sitting there was reading a book as we walked up to him.
"Hey, Jiggis. I have a guest that wants to use one of the dummies."
"Mmm?"
The clank of something wooden against the cobblestone made me look down, and I flinched as I saw the wooden pole attached to his knee. If he saw me staring, though, he didn't make any note of it as he pushed a sheet of parchment towards me. "Sign your name here, please."
But just like the drawings that Olivia had used, it was covered in text I had no ability to read. Plus I couldn't grab the feather pen that he offered… there was an awkward pause between the two of us as I just stared, trying to figure out what I should do before Olivia hastily took it herself.
"A-Ah, right, you probably… she's kind of special, so I'll just… here…." she muttered as she scribbled on the paper. "Emily… Rose… uh, this is basically a consent that you're not going to sue the guild if you injure yourself or get injured, you understand all of the risks involved with engaging in combat, etc etc. Pretty obvious stuff, really." She explained to me, then practically pushed the paper towards him. "H-Here."
He stayed completely stoic. "You know I can't accept this, Olivia."
She hissed, then whipped to her sides and leaned in for a whisper. "She's an otherworlder, Jiggis, she doesn't know how to read our language. And she probably can't hold the pen, either."
As a demonstration, I stuck my hand into Olivia's side, making her shiver. When she whipped towards me, I just returned the grin she had been giving me.
Jiggis' once placid expression snapped to shock. "An other…?" Then after a moment, he chuckled and shook his head. "Alright. I'll accept it, considering the circumstances. Don't go blowing up the yard, Emily."
Luke had been standing quietly off to the side as the whole situation was going down, and when it was resolved he nodded. "I'm going to head up to the library, Livi, come and get me when you're done." he said, and waved as he went back through the doors.
"Okay! See ya, Luke! C'mon, let's go grab a dummy, Emily." Olivia replied, and then waved for me to follow her. She let out a massive sigh as soon as the two of them were out of earshot. "Sorry, he just… he's a great fighter, but without magic there's only so much you can do. And Jiggs there keeps going off about how I'm apparently holding myself back by wanting to include him when I go out… ugh, it's like he stares right into my soul every time I see him."
I spared a glance over my shoulder. "I don't know if I can blame him, given that he lost a leg and all…"
"Rumor is he got it during an extermination mission, and he's been stuck here ever since. He's like that with everyone. Can't stand just sitting around, I suppose."
Compared to inside, the training yard was almost spartan in appearance. No plants or much of anything besides dirt and stone… I guess having any plants was a risk with the ability to sling around literal fire. That being said, the training dummies, each one at the end of an individual lane like a bowling alley, were the stereotypical straw-scarecrow kind. Nothing seemed to touch them - not even a fireball the size of my head launched a mage in elaborate robes, or a spear-like icicle launched by a younger blonde.
"Is it true what he said?" I asked Chloe as we headed towards an empty one. "That I could blow up the whole yard?"
"I wouldn't have any clue." she muttered. "If you're worried about the dummies, they're protected against nearly everything, but… it's hard to separate fact and fiction with otherworlders. For example, I've heard that the lead paladin of the church is one, and has a skill that lets her just straight up kill anyone. With like, a snap of her fingers."
"The crazy thing is that I wouldn't be surprised if that was true."
"On the other hand, I've also heard that the local bakery is run by one, and all his skill does is let him make really good bread." Then she chuckled. "It is really damn good bread, but still, it's all over the place." Then she hummed. "Do you know what yours are, Emily? Or, well, do you have any?"
"A-A couple." I muttered, not wanting to make her have the same reaction as Heinz. "Some lightning stuff..uh, 'Guardian Angel' and 'Helping Hand'. They seem more defensively oriented than anything, though. "
"Hrmmm… well, either way." she gestured to an open dummy. "Let 'er rip."
I just stared at it. As a part of me as a skill may have been, I had no idea how to activate it. "… Uh, how?"
"I have no idea. Just, uh… think about it?"
"Oh, that's helpful." I muttered, then threw a few weak punches in the direction of the dummy. Nothing happened, of course, and I turned to her again. "Okay, how do you use your magic?"
"Well, it's not a skill, first off. Secondly… like I said, all kinetic magic does is let you throw your weight around. I can't lift anything with it that I can't lift normally."
"… Wait, then how did you lift that deer?"
"You mean the cowdeer?" Then her eyebrow quirked up at my sputtered laugh - that had been a pretty fat deer. "I put the weight into the log itself, so it was doing most of the heavy lifting."
A diagram of the situation formed itself in my mind. "Wait, but, you were… still the one lifting it off the ground? Putting the weight into the log would just…" The downward arrow on the imaginary deer got thicker, but that just made the upward arrow on the person's shoulder get bigger too. "That doesn't… what?!"
The girl just shrugged. "Magic?"
"Ugh, I guess… gonna have to relearn everything about friggin' physics here…"
"Anyways, point is, I'm not lifting something a foot away whenever I lift my hands." she explained. "I have to put some, y'know, oomph into it. Think about what I want to do, and then sorta… push the magic out? It's hard to explain."
I hummed as I turned back to the dummy. Whether or not it was hard to explain, I got the concept behind it. And according to Heinz, skills were implicit enough that I could just… a high-pitched, buzzing squeal suddenly reached my ears, and Olivia gasped. Confused, I looked down and saw a wisp of smoke rising from the center of a small, spiderweb-like char on the ground.
"Did I just…?"
"You did!" Olivia exclaimed. "Lightning, huh? Try shooting it at the dummy!"
For a moment, I hesitated, wondering if I would set it on fire or anything… then again, I had just seen people throwing fireballs at it without an issue. So with a deep breath to steady my shaking body, even only slightly, I pointed my hand out toward the straw mannequin. Then I pushed, and a crack of thunder echoed across the yard as a thick beam of blue plasma shot out of my hand and struck the target dead-center. It happened in a flash, but I saw it arc across the air like a true lightning bolt, even with a few more char marks across the gap thanks to the small feelers that must've branched off of it.
"Holy shit." I breathed, and then did it again with my other hand.
And then again, with my left this time.
Then my right.
Then my left.
Then, giggling, I put both of my palms together and pushed as hard as I could. A bolt as thick as my thigh discharged straight into the dummy's chest, snapping the wooden pole that it had been suspended on and sending the bundle of straw flying into the wall. The dummy itself was fine, but still. The sheer amount of force that must have carried… the 20-foot gap between us was completely charred as well, and I giggled again at the destruction, right before a sudden wave of nausea made me fall against one of the walls dividing the lanes of dummies.
"Careful, I wouldn't want to see what happens when a spirit runs out of magicules." Olivia commented, then pulled her fingers out of her ears. "I think you made the whole damn yard deaf, though, so congrats on that."
"That… was so fuckin' cool…" I muttered, still giggling. "Kinda feel a bit sick, though…"
"I'd help you back up, but I think that would make you feel even more sick. You okay?"
It took me a few moments to reply. "Yeah… yeah, I am, just… woo. That stuff packs a punch. And feels like a punch, too, I feel like I just ran a mile."
"Um, excuse me?" A new voice commented, and both Olivia and I looked up to see the wavey-haired blonde I had spotted before. Behind her were two guys; a stocky brown-haired one and a tricky-looking darker blond. The girl stuck her hand out and flashed me a nervous but elegant smile. "I'm Ellen; this is Gido and Cabal. Would you… can I ask you something?"
I glanced towards Olivia, but she just shrugged. "Sure…?"
"I've never heard that language before…" Ellen muttered, and gave me a once-over. "And clothes like that… you, wouldn't happen to be an otherworlder, would you?"
I groaned. "I really need to get some new clothes… yes, I am."
All three of them flinched as if I slapped them across the face, then straight up bowed. "We're going off into the forest in a few days, and would really appreciate it if you could join us!"
"Um… I-I appreciate the offer, but that was kind of my first time… using any magic at all…"
Then it was Ellen's turn to freeze, and her gaze darted between me and the ruined lane for a few moments. "T-That was your… then imagine what you can do with a little practice! Please, come with us! We need your help!"
The stocky brown-haired one, 'Gido', sighed. "What she's trying to say is that we're about to investigate a very storm-aligned area. Even if you're new, lightning users of the caliber you're clearly at are rare. You'd be a big help, assuming you can defend from lightning just as well as you can use it."
Olivia just shrugged again, and I sighed. Damn, Heinz wasn't kidding when he said that people would be lining up asking me to join, huh?
"… Okay, fine, fine, sure, I'll join you, I guess." I muttered, not at all used to this kind of attention. "But I'm really new to this whole adventuring thing, I… actually need to sign up first. And take the combat test."
"Wow, really? Well, Jiggis is the proctor for those, so we can probably get it done right now!"
Looking behind me, I could see that Jiggis had gotten up from his chair and was leaning against the stone barrier, looking right at me with a small, darkly enthusiastic grin on his face. Suddenly, I understood exactly what Olivia meant when she said 'staring right into my soul'.
Last edited: Jul 17, 2019
Chapter 5"Well, you blew up part of the yard. Quite the show." Jiggis commented as our group approached him. With a grunt, he pushed himself off of the wall and kept his expression completely static as he looked down at me. "Are you checking out, now, or do you want to take the test?"
His damn grin was starting to piss me off.
"Yes, I'm taking the test." I stated firmly, and the man chuckled.
"Emily, as you sure you have the magicules for this?" Olivia asked, trying to put a hand on my shoulder. "You almost fainted…"
"I'm fine. Just a bit winded."
I hadn't exactly had the time to develop a sense for how much mana, or magicules, whatever, I had left. But I felt like I still had a few more bolts in me, and more importantly, I wanted to prove this guy wrong. He was acting like I had no control over my power, like he had seen it all before… I was going to prove it all wrong. I could do this.
"Confident, are you?" He gestured towards one of the empty rings. "Be my guest, then."
While I couldn't see anything with my physical eyes, magic Sense let me 'see' the spherical dome around the ring. Considering that this was actual combat, with fireballs and lightning bolts and stuff it must have been for the protection of the onlookers (and the rest of the yard) rather than an actual barrier. But strangely, it felt as solid as any other surface to me… which is to say, like a wall of jello. Gritting my teeth, I pushed my way through it, and popped out the other end - it felt like a wet shlorp should've followed the motion.
"What was that?" I heard Olivia whisper. "It's like she walked through a wall of pudding."
"That barrier's supposed to only be solid to monsters…" Ellen replied, her eyes going wide.
Jiggis stepped into the ring without any issue at all. "Is the applicant ready?" he asked, suddenly sounding much more official. "As a reminder, if you fail, you'll have to acquire 100 F-rank points before you can test again."
That sounded like some kind of remedial system… a way to make sure I wouldn't immediately try to test again. Hopefully, I wouldn't need them. I was nervous, but Guardian Angel let me speak with confidence.
"I'm ready, Jiggis."
He eyed the rest of my group. "Any attempts to assist the applicant, even verbally, will immediately disqualify her. This is a test of her own knowledge and skill." When they nodded, he continued. "For this test, your opponent will be a lightning slime!"
"That's not a-!" Ellen immediately began to protest, but was cut short by an elbow to the ribs from Olivia.
Jiggis dropped his hand, and a pentagram-like design of runes appeared on the ground. There was a flash of light, then the smell of ozone preceded a yellow, wobbly ball of slime oozing it's way out of the circle. Every so often, an occasional spark branched out, only to curve back into the mass before it got very far.
Wow, that is an actual slime. A literal ball of slime that is up to my chest. That's kind of terrifying. I thought to myself, dropping down into my best approximation of a stance. It's also probably completely immune to lightning. Fuck.
"Begin!"
I expected it to be slow, considering it was a slime and everything, but it wasted no time in charging towards me at least as fast as a quick jog. That may not sound like much, but when you're in a circle the size of a half-court it meant that it could cover the diameter in just a second or two. I left the ground and drifted over to my left as soon as I saw it moving, but the damn thing course corrected and a distinct numbness entered the tips of my fingers as it moved across them.
"Damn!" I exclaimed, immediately pulling them back. The swear was more out of surprise that it could do anything to my transparent self, rather than any actual pain, but still.
A pinkish wall just inside the runic circle faded into existence right before the slime ran into it. It shook itself out to recover from the impact, and then started to charge again. It certainly wasn't the most intelligent of enemies, but then again, it was a slime. This time I didn't go left or right; instead I went up, and the slime slowed to a halt as it saw… or sensed, maybe, me floating up out of it's reach.
"Okay… let's see how you like this." I muttered, and shot a small bolt out of my finger. Based on the numbness, I didn't seem to be immune to electricity despite being a lightning spirit, so maybe it wasn't either? But the attack just sunk into it, and it didn't even flinch. In fact, it even seemed to get a bit more energetic. Then it's own lightning quickened before it shot out a bolt of its own that sunk straight into my chest. Pins and needles erupted across my body, and for a moment my limbs were locked in place.
"Fuck!"
Again, that surprisingly didn't hurt per se, but still didn't feel good. It was kind of scary, really! If I had been back home, that could have paralyzed me! And being able to brush it off so easily was pretty scary too, but I could worry about that later. Right now, I had a job to do. Furrowing my brow, I watched it just sit there as I thought over my options. Unfortunately it didn't seem like I had much. Considering how much more… jigglier it seemed after absorbing my bolt, overloading it might not have been out of the question. But, I didn't know if I had enough bolts in me to get it to that point, plus along the way it might turn into a friggin' plasma slime or something. I didn't want to make the situation worse… grimacing, my attention turned to the rest of the training yard. A lot of people had stopped their practicing to watch my test, but a few were still shooting off fireballs into the training dummies. I started to grind my teeth. This asshole had summoned the one damn enemy that I and only I would have a problem with. If I could fucking hold a sword, then… well, no, maybe it would just electrify that. Metal conducted electricity, after-
-my next breath came out in a hiss as the slime shot another bolt out at me. I dodged it, thankfully, but I was starting to look like an idiot. I could shoot fucking massive lightning bolts out of the palms of my hands, there had to be more I could do with that! I needed ideas… a dark chuckle came out of me at the irony of the situation. I could shoot lightning bolts, but I couldn't light up a metaphorical… light bulb… my gaze snapped to the fireball-wielding mage, again.
'… Son of a bitch, is that even possible?' I thought, looking down at my hands. If my bolts were comparable to real lightning bolts back home, then I had a lot of power to work with. One point twenty-one gigawatts, etc etc. My idea wasn't out of the question, especially with how I could phase through things. So, having no real other option, I shook my head and darted over to the other side of the barrier. Then I sunk my hands into the granite cobblestone, and started to pump a charge out of them.
'I really hope this doesn't have too much resistance… or maybe I do, I don't friggin' know.'
Seeing that I was back on the ground, without even turning around the slime started to charge towards me again… only to stop, for some mysterious reason. A grin started to overtake my face, despite the imaginary sweat that was beginning to drip across my brow.
'Holy shit, is this actually working?'
Sure enough, I could see the stone immediately in front of me beginning to glow red-hot.
'… Holy shit, this is actually working.'
Then my expectations were completely thrown to the wind when the patch of stone suddenly exploded.
"Whoa, what the hell?!"
The crowd reacted with shouting and cheering. Without TV, this was probably high entertainment for them… I quickly pulled my hands out and stood back up with a nervous giggle. I couldn't see the slime through the smoke, but Magic Sense let me see where it was - just like me, it was confused as hell, but it was already starting to inch it's way forwards.
"Okay… I can make shit explode. Good to know."
Curious, I shot a thin stream of lightning out to just in front of the slime, then added on Control Lightning to transform a small sphere of air at the tip. The space promptly exploded, as expected, but the only reason I knew it did was because I could see the shockwave push the dust and slime back. As far as I could tell there wasn't much actual heat involved, and while it may be useful against a fleshier foe, the shockwave probably wouldn't be very effective against a slime.
"I need, like… piercing damage…" I muttered, looking around for anything I could use. The explosion had created a bunch of shrapnel (some of which had passed through me, much to my displeasure), but I didn't want to blow up the yard. And the collateral-
"-Hup!"
Another lightning bolt made me duck, again, and I watched it harmlessly collide against the shield. Curious, I tentatively shot my own bolt at it, and just like the slime's it was completely absorbed. I hadn't considered that it would block projectiles, too… it was probably designed to prevent something going out only when it was fast enough or something. I wished I had the time to test it with actual projectiles, but I was running out of time. That slime seemed to be getting impatient, given that it was continuing to shoot bolts at me.
I let out a grumble as I sunk my hands into the stone again. "Guess I will be blowing up the yard after all…"
So with a small, exasperated groan, I sunk my hands into the stone again, and sent a charge towards the slime. The stone went up like a landmine, but the quick thing hopped to the left just before it went off. Trying again to the right just made it mirror the action.
"Tricky little thing, aren't you. Okay, how about this?"
I shot a charge towards and directly under the slime. As expected, it predicted the explosion and hopped backwards, but that just put it on top of an even bigger bolt that I had branched off. I grinned as the center of the ring erupted, sending enough shrapnel into the air to turn the once invisible shield into a sphere of polka-dots.
Resistance Combustion skill acquired.
"That's enough!" Jiggis announced, and I pulled my hands out of the ground with a gasp of relief. The crowd surrounding me erupted into cheers, and I let myself drink it all in as I collapsed onto the ground.
"Just fuckin' call me Lady Explosion Murder." I muttered with a wide smile across my face. it felt really, really nice to be doing something like this. Like I was beginning to make a place for myself here… then I noticed that there was some weird interaction with how physical versus magical things affected me. My hands were literally smoking thanks to being submerged in what ended up being fucking lava. They didn't hurt at all, though, not even the weird kind of not-hurt I got when I was electrocuted. Instead, I just burst into tired laughter as I fell against and halfway through the shield.
As soon as the dust cleared, Olivia jumped into the circle, hopped over the shattered cobblestones, and nearly skidded to a halt next to me. "Are you okay?!"
" 'm fine…" I muttered again, and somehow managed to stumble to my feet. "Ugh, I feel like I just ran a marathon…"
"Well no shit, you kept that going for like a minute! What the hell we were you doing?!"
"Mmm… I know lightblubs get really friggin' hot, and I know 'lectricity resistance 's a thing, so… was curious, yeah… ended being 'splosions, though…"
"So, does anyone care to explain what the absolute fuck happened here?"
Glancing to my right, I saw a spikey-haired man with a scar across his left eye approaching with Heinz and Shizu in tow. He looked offical; at least enough for the crowd to give him a wide berth as he walked up to the circle. Thankfully, he seemed more pissed off at Jiggis than he was with me… the whole situation was too damn familiar, and I couldn't help but give the raven-haired proctor a drunken grin as I hummed a few notes towards him.
"Hm hmm hm, I'm your bad luck charm… ~"
As it turned out, that whole display plus the bolts from nearly had burned out my magic supply - which was a lot more dangerous than it sounded, because I was made of magic. Nobody knew what would happen if I pushed myself to the point of running out, but thankfully, that didn't have to happen. Instead, the current guildmaster practically ordered me to take a rest in one of the building's rooms. Then when I left, things had gotten pretty heated between, Ellen, and Jiggis. Apparently, he wasn't even supposed to give me a test at all, since I wasn't officially registered with the guild, and on top of that a lightning slime wasn't the E-rank monster I was supposed to have fought. It was something called a 'special-E', given its ability to absorb electricity to empower itself. It would've been nearly as much of a pushover as a regular slime, if you had the right tools, but for me it was pretty much my worst enemy. Jiggis knew this, and he summoned it anyways, and because of all that, the guildmaster himself, Fuze, wanted to meet with me when I woke up in the afternoon.
"Heinz explained your situation to me." he had said when Olivia and I had walked in to his office. Since I wasn't really able to sign anything, or do anything, she had sent her brother home and offered to escort me around for the day. "Considering your circumstances, I'm surprised you'd rush straight to here, but in light of what you displayed I'm comfortable approving you for a D-rank license. That is, if you do want to register with the guild, after all that."
"Totally. That was kinda fun, actually…" I giggled, nodding eagerly. Even though I had slept for the whole morning, I was still pretty woozy.
"Well, I do have congratulate your creativity, but…" He glanced out the window of his office - the first example of glass I had seen since I woke up here - and looked small crowd of masons and mages that were busy repairing all of the damage I caused. Thankfully, with magic in play, they were expected to finish by the end of the day. "… try to be a bit more careful in the future?"
I tried to shake myself awake. "Absolutely. I didn't want to blow all that up, but that was the only option I felt I had."
"Which is why the damages are being deducted from Jiggis' pay, instead of yours." he agreed.
I blinked. I hadn't even considered that I would get paid for this. "Uh… if you don't mind me asking, how does that all work? The pay, I mean."
"It's done on a commission basis." Olivia explains. "Smaller missions are usually just handled with the requester themselves, but with anything more official, the person requesting the help of the guild puts forward half the money as a down payment and then the rest when it's finished. There's no official pricing scale or anything, but if you set it too low nobody's going to take it, obviously."
I nodded. The invisible hand of capitalism, now without robber barons.
"And… you said that this would be taken out of Jiggis' pay?"
"He grossly overstepped his boundaries, so for the time being he's on leave while I think things over. This isn't the first time he's done something like this…" Fuse sighed. "We used to be in an adventuring party together, until he took a pretty serious injury. He didn't have anything else, and he was a pretty accomplished mage, so I pulled some strings at gone him his position here. But he gets antsy when he sees people aren't living up to their potential."
Beside me, Olivia huffed.
"… If that's the case, then I'm not sure he did anything wrong?"
He paused. "What do you mean?"
I had been thinking about this for a while as I had lain in the bed. I was still pissed off at him himself, but with enough time to consider it, I think he had just been a bit too eager to put me through the paces.
"Well, if it was anything else, I would've just blasted it into pieces… with lightning directly, I mean, not with the stone." I explained. "But going up against something completely immune to that made me realize that I can't always just throw bolts around. Sometimes, I'll have to be a bit more creative than that. So if that's what the test was supposed to be for, then he did a great job… as much as I don't like how arrogant he is."
"Hrm… you're not wrong. Maybe he'll only have to pay for half the damages." he smirked. Then he pulled out a key from around his neck, unlocked something underneath his desk, and pulled out a massive binder along with a few other pieces of paper. "Either way, with that over and done with we can move on to official business. You said your name was Emily Rose, correct?"
"C-Correct." I guess it was now. Ugh, if anyone recognized it…
He let out a low hum as he thumbed through the edges of the binder. "Rose, Rose… ah, here." I still couldn't read a lick of this world's language, so I had no idea what was in there, but I did recognize what looked like strangely iridescent thumbprints. "Normally, you would have to fill out a registration sheet and submit it for processing, but since you're an otherworlder and all…"
"I can fill out whatever needs to be filled out." Olivia said, and Fuze handed two pieces of paper to her. "General-purpose membership first… ah, there's not a whole lot to be filled out here, is there?" She explained what she was doing as she wrote. "So, the guild operates both in a general-purpose capacity and a specific adventurer capacity. You can ask the general-purpose division for help for say, carrying something across the town, but that doesn't specifically qualify you as an adventurer. That just means you're willing to help out with a bunch of odd jobs… uh, what do you want me to put down for age?"
I had no clue. I definitely didn't act like a fifteen-year-old, but at the same time… I still didn't feel like a twenty-three-year-old. And as a spirit, would I even age normally? Was I going to be stuck looking like a teen for the rest of my life? And now that I was thinking about it, how long was the rest of my life going to be?
"… I can just leave it blank, if you don't know." Olivia muttered as she watched my expression grow more and more anxious.
"Yes please."
She passed over a blank line. "Okay, so… we can probably ignore birthplace, special skills, mmm… blowing… stuff… the hell-"
"-Don't actually write that down!" I exclaimed. I would've pulled the pen out of her hand if I could, but all I managed to do was jostile her script a bit.
But even that was still a vast improvement.
Both of us blinked, and I looked down at my hand.
"… That's new." Olivia muttered.
"Uh… maybe I'm getting more used to this?" I offered as I slowly sat back down. Come to think of it, it was kind of weird that I didn't just phase through solid ground like I did objects. And the barrier had been a lot harder to get out of than it had been to get in… maybe I was just holding myself back? I did sort of think of myself as a ghost right as I woke up here, but now, well, it was a bit harder to think that way given that I just blew up a good portion of the courtyard.
"… Well, regardless, I was actually writing down 'lightning magic'." Olivia said as she rewrote it. Still suspicious, I gave a glance towards Fuze who was watching the whole display with a small grin, and he nodded in confirmation as Olivia handed the sheet to him. "Okay, that's general registration done…" she said as she took the other piece of paper. "You wanna apply to the extermination division, right?"
"… Yeah." I nodded, after some hesitation. I wasn't exactly someone who enjoyed blowing monsters the hell up, but I could make myself get used to it as long as I kept the cause in mind. And evidently, I had the power for it, which wasn't super common to begin with. So I kind of felt like I had to.
"Okay, extermination, Emily Rose, no age, no birthplace, special skills lightning magic," - she emphasized that last one with a grin - "and all done." She handed the paper to Fuze, who looked it over, nodded, then stamped it and clipped it into the binder.
"One more thing. I wasn't going to ask this, given… what, you are, but apparently things've changed." He took out a much fancier looking inkpad and what looked like a small piece of ceramic. "Can you press your finger onto this?"
That must've been the source of the fingerprints I saw earlier. Focusing, I carefully lowered my finger down onto the pad, and almost whooped in joy as I actually felt the spongy pad underneath it.
"Congrats." Fuze dryly replied. "Now onto the tile, please."
Nodding, I pressed firmly down on it. When I pulled up, what was left behind was the same shimmering, iridescent fingerprint that I had seen on all of the other pages. My specific one shimmered a vibrant mix of yellow and blue that blended into violet at a few points across the print. On top of that, smaller dots of the former color surrounded it all as well.
"Oh wow, that's… really pretty." I whispered, almost wishing I could have a copy for myself. It reminded me of what lapis lazuli was supposed to look like.
"That's magicule-reactive ink." Olivia jumped in, eager to explain. "Apparently, everyone's fingerprint is entirely different, magicules and all! So that makes it a really easy method of identification."
I nodded along. I already knew the first bit, of course, but she seemed pretty excited to share it.
"And the pattern can be copied as many times as needed." Fuze continued as he put the tile and pad away. "Well, with all that done, you're officially an adventurer now. It should take about a day to print out your identification, but then you'll be good to go." He stuck his hand out to shake. "Congratulations, Emily."
I grinned as I practically slapped my hand against his. It still sunk in a little bit more than it should, but I was damn proud I was able to return the gesture, now. "Thank you."
"Don't get in over your head, okay?" he warned as I got up to leave. "You may have killed that slime, but there are far greater dangers out there."
"I can imagine, in a world like this." I agreed as I moved to stand. "Well… see you around!"
He grinned right back at me. "See you around."
Ellen and the rest of her party were waiting right outside of Fuze's office, and they wasted no time in practically jumping on me.
"Did it go well?"
"Are you all registered and everything?"
"What rank did you end up as?"
I kept that grin plastered on my face as I gently pushed them away. "S, for solid, apparently."
The three of them blinked for a moment, then Ellen wrapped her arms around (and into) me. "Oh, that's great!"
"Okay, okay, not super solid, easy!"
She quickly mumbled an apology as she pulled back. "Why, though? That seems kind of sudden."
"I have no clue." I muttered, but sighed happily. "It's really nice, though… maybe it's 'cause I'm finally beginning to feel like I'm actually a part of this world? I sort of thought of myself as a ghost as soon as I woke up, but…" I grinned. "I've made some pretty big impacts for a ghost."
Ellen gave me a small, somewhat awkward smile in response. "Well… maybe it's because you're an otherworlder at all." She sighed. "Given how the barrier reacted to you, I don't think we can say you're human."
"That's not a bad thing, though!" Olivia quickly interrupted. "One of my best friends is an elf!"
I sighed. "I still look human enough, right?"
Ellen could quickly see where this was going. "Emily, I promise you that it doesn't matter what you look like. You're still you."
I just let out a melancholic hum at that, and there were a few seconds of awkward silence before Gido broke it with a cough.
"So, you ended up as a D-rank, right? How long is it gonna take for you to get your ID and stuff? I kinda wanna get this mission over with…"
"Yeah, I did get D. And Fuze told me that it should take about a day or two." I replied, happy to change the subject.
The two guys signed, but after a moment, the two girls ominously turned to look at one another. Some kind of spark jumped between them, suddenly, their expressions turned downright sinister.
"Heeeeey, Emily." Olivia practically whispered as she leaned down to my level. "Are you feeling recovered enough 'n all?"
"Because if you are," Ellen continued, taking a position opposite Olivia. "And if you're actually somewhat solid, and if we have a day or so before we need to leave…"
"… then that means that we have time to get all kinds of gear for you."
For a moment, their attitude confused me, but my mouth quirked up into an awkward, almost terrified smile as I realized what was going on. Was this this world's equivalent of a shopping spree?
"Uh, you really don't have to spend anything on me…"
"Nope." Ellen said, and clamped down on my hand like a vice. "Nope, we are getting you out of those clothes and into something better."
Then Olivia grabbed the other. "It's not every day that someone becomes an official adventurer and all. We gotta celebrate, y'know?"
I swear I could hear them almost cackling as they dragged me out of the building, only giving me a chance to give a meek wave of goodbye to the two guys. I had never really gotten to experience stuff like this back home, and it had always kind of been on my wish list… but damn, why did I feel like I was being dragged off to an interrogation?
Chapter 6"Hey, wait, isn't the marketplace that way?!"
"No, no, that's for the basics, you want quality things you have to go to the upper-class one!"
"Uh, you sure, Elen? There's some pretty expensive stuff there!"
"Nah, don't worry about it! I can afford it!"
"Elen!" I tugged back on her arm as hard as I could, and we slowed to a stop just outside of an elegant plaza square. I could hear the chatter (but not noise) of the people inside, and even a running fountain just underneath it all. "You really don't need to spend anything on me, Elen. Seriously, I'm gonna feel bad if you do…"
But she gave that same delicate smile from before, and put her hand on top of mine. "It's okay, Emily. Really. This kind of stuff is fun, and I make enough as a B-rank to splurge every once and a while." Then her mouth quirked up. "Plus, it's also kind of a safety thing. You really do stand out."
My shoulders slumped. "Gee, thanks…"
"N-Not that badly!" Olivia interrupted. "You're just dressed a little oddly, that's all!"
"Yeah, and we can fix that in a flash." Elen nodded at one of the shops, and gently tugged at my hand. "C'mon. It won't be that bad, I promise."
"Okay…"
Unlike the marketplace at the gate, there weren't any wooden stalls here; all of the stores were dedicated, stone-built buildings. Like the guildmaster's office, some of them even had glass in the form of front displays and windows. I could see (and smell) a bakery, a shoemaker's shop, a smithy… the store in front of us had rolls of soft-looking fabric on display, and a thread and needle sign hung above the door. It was a legit tailor's shop, for custom-designed clothes and everything.
I couldn't help but smile a bit at the sight. "I guess you guys don't exactly have supermarkets here, huh…"
Beside me, Olivia snirked. "Supermarkets?"
"Yeah, they're like….well, really big markets. I…" Then my thoughts slammed together like a car crash, and I stumbled my next step. That felt wrong, more than it had yesterday. 'I' had never worked anywhere before… the person that had worked in the grocery store was Emily. I wasn't…
"Emily?" Elen asked, concerned. "Are you okay?"
I flinched at the name, and tried to keep pace with the rest of the girls. "Y-Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay, I just… sorry, that just…"
"From your old life?" Olivia offered. "It's okay. I can't imagine how this all feels to you."
I couldn't either, to a certain extent. "It's… not as bad as you'd think, but… yeah. Thanks."
"We don't have to do this if you don't want to, Emily." Elen continued, and I just shook my head, wishing that she would stop calling me that.
"No, I'm… I'm fine. Thank you, but I'm fine."
She hummed as she held the door to the shop open for me. "Okay… if you're sure."
"Thanks…" I mumbled as I walked inside. "What I was trying to say was that back on Earth, clothes weren't custom… made…" Then the words died in my throat as I saw the inside. All kinds of jackets and shirts and dresses and skirts were hanging on display or neatly folded onto wooden shelves embedded into the stone walls. Just like everything else here, it felt homely, down-to-earth, and far more personal than anything back home.
Elen stepped in beside me. "Harriet? Hrm. Maybe she's at lunch… well, we can still browse until she gets back!"
Then she looked back at me, but her smile faded as she saw me staring at a mirror at the other end. My reflection was just out of view, but as my body stepped forward she slowly took form: wavy, shoulder-length pink hair framed an elegant face with sky-blue eyes. An orange, spaghetti-strap tanktop only accented the rest of her color scheme, and the pink sash around her waist and legs rounded it all out. Her stance and expression carried a maturity that the rest of her body had yet to fully grow into, and it seemed to only get older and older the more her eyes widened at the sight in front of her.
"T-That's… that's me." I whispered, watching the girl in the mirror bring a pair of wisp-like, glowing-blue hands up to her open mouth. "That's me."
Up until now, I suppose some part of me had thought that this was all a game. That this was some fantasy of mine, that sometime soon I would wake up in bed back home, safe and sound, everything back to the way it had always been. But as I watched the girl in the mirror copy my actions perfectly, I realized that that would never be the case again.
"T-This is real." I whispered again. My hands fell to my sides. "This… I'm not Emily. I'm not who I used to be, I'm not who she was. I'm someone completely different. I-I don't…"
Both girls quickly rushed over to me, but I just continued to talk to the mirror.
"Up until now I had been working off of autopilot; finding a job, helping people, doing the exact same thing she had done back on Earth… or, well, wanted to do. But I'm not… I'm not her. And looking at myself like this… I-I have no idea if I want to keep doing that. I'm not her. I don't know who I am."
"Okay, so you're not her." Elen quickly replied, and with a tone more firm than I'd ever heard her use before. "So then who are you?"
"I don't know!"
"No, that's what I mean." she continued. Her tone made me stop in my tracks, and as I turned to look at her, she wrapped her arms around my neck and leaned her head on my shoulder. I could see her staring back at me on the other side of the mirror. "That's a question that you need to answer for yourself. I mean, it's pretty obvious that you're not who you used to be, but you still have her whole life's experience, right?"
Slowly, I nodded.
"So then from that you get to pick and choose who and what you want to be. And, without any of it weighing you down." Then she giggled. "I'm kind of jealous, honestly."
"I don't know all that, though. That's the thing." I muttered back. "Back home, I was just starting to figure all of that stuff out, and now… I don't even have any family or friends here. I have to start all over from complete zero. "
"You get to start over from complete zero." Elen corrected. "I think that's an advantage, not a disadvantage."
"I-I don't have any money, Elen! You guys are buying all of this crap for me!"
She lifted her head back up, and gently pulled my head towards her again. Her green eyes met mine, and I saw the conviction behind them as she wiped the beginnings of tears from my eyes. "Yes, I am. Because that's what friends do for one another."
My mouth opened for a response, but all that came out was silence. She gave me her widest smile yet, and I just stared at that for a while until I finally found my voice. "… W-Why? I just met you…"
"And that's exactly the reason why I don't want to start off on a bad foot!~" she exclaimed happily, then sighed. "More seriously, I think you're a very sweet girl that's very out of her depth and very scared and very brave." she replied, and hugged me tight. "Emily, you woke up here in a completely different world, in a completely different body, and the first thing you did was say 'I want to help others'." Then she broke the hug, and held me at arm's length. "I think the world needs more of that. Regardless of whatever world it is. So… I guess I want to help with that."
I felt myself blush, and when I turned my head I saw the girl in the mirror doing the exact same. Then as I watched that, her mouth curled upwards into that stupid grin I wore whenever I felt awkward as hell. Then a side quirked up beyond that, and I buried my face in my hands in a fit of giggles before it went any further. "Somehow I feel like how I look and sound is a big part of being a 'very sweet girl'… !"
"Which is why you gotta learn to use it, kiddo." Olivia said as clapped me on the back.
"Which is exactly why we're here!" Elen agreed.
"Y-You guys are too nice to me, I swear, I just met you…"
"Well, Elen probably wants to snatch you up for her party before anyone else gets you." Olivia said, and then it was Elen's turn to blush.
"T-That's not it at all!" she exclaimed, her cheeks bright red. But under Olivia's piercing gaze, she fell into a pout and began to idly curl her hair around her finger. "Not entirely it, anyways…"
Olivia's eyebrow cranked up like a drawbridge.
"O-Okay, it was part of it! I wasn't lying about her, though!"
The blond grinned. "No, I think you were just trying to butter her up."
"Not in the slightest! She already said she wanted to join!"
"Yeah, after you asked her."
A smile of my own made its way into my expression as I watched the two go back and forth for almost the whole time until the tailor returned. Then after she had reacted to my nature, and after an hours-long fashion session of measuring, sewing, debating, and a few instances of raised voices, the four of us eventually decided on my outfit: a shirt a bit tighter and less puffy than Elen's, long enough to reach down to my hips, and cut to make sure that it didn't mess with my movement. I adamantly refused to wear a corset of any kind (because thankfully my existing outfit came with modern friggin' underwear), so instead a vest of similar length, long enough to actually have a bit of a tail on it's back and reach down to my hips as well, would go on top of that. From there we apparently needed to visit two or three other shops in order to finish everything, and when all was said and done, I was standing in the leatherworkers' shop looking like a bona-fide adventurer… of the anime variety, given that it was kind of hard to make pink hair look like anything less.
"I still can't believe you actually understood the concept of tights." I said as I looked at myself in the mirror, still wearing that stupid grin from before.
Both of the girls had insisted on boots of one length or another, both for fashionable reasons as well as practical ones. And I could agree with that - thanks to my newfound solidity, all the walking around we had been doing had been making my feet pretty sore. It was a bit hard to tell, with how they were glowing and all, but apparently I had been walking around barefoot this whole time. So I decided on knee-high boots, with tights underneath. Even if I wasn't technically wearing a skirt or dress, anti-upskirt technology did not exist in this world and I would not be a victim of anything that could happen without it.
"I mean, yeah, of course tights are a thing. How can you expect to look good with baggy pants?" Olivia asked, completely confused.
I grinned as I turned back around. "Because in my world, medieval fashion said that anything showing more than your ankle was basically the equivalent of walking around naked."
Then I burst out laughing at the abject horror that wrote itself across their faces.
"Y-You can't be serious!"
"That's barbaric!"
"I am!" I insisted as we walked over to the counter to pay. I tried to avoid looking at the amount of coins Elen took out of her purse. "From what I know, there, ah… wasn't exactly any running water, either. So seeing flush toilets in this time period is a bit bizarre for me."
I just laughed again as Olivia gave me a look that asked how else a carriage could be pulled, as well as no small amount of disgust at the thought of no toilets. "Time period… so then, you're from the future?"
"Relative future, I guess. This kind of stuff-" I gestured around at stone-and-mortar construction of the buildings surrounding us as we left the shop. "-happened like, five hundred years ago in my world."
She took a moment to process that. "Five hundred years in the future… that's hard to imagine. What was it like?"
"Buildings made of metal that stretched up to the clouds, and carriages powered by explosions fueled by the liquidifed corpses of creatures millions of years dead." Then I grinned again at her awestruck expression.
"That must have been incredible…"
At that, I just shrugged. "I think that's just a matter of perspective. To me, something like this is just as incredible." I sighed happily, and took a deep breath of the fresh, clean air. "I didn't hate that place, but when you're so busy looking at the clouds in the sky it's a bit hard to see the people on the ground."
"That's quite the prose for someone that just cost me so much money…" Elen then mumbled as she limped outside. Compared to how excited she had been a half hour ago, she looked almost dead now.
"Uh… this wasn't all that expensive, was it?"
"It was more than I thought I'd be…"
I about ripped the clothes off of myself. "I-I told you you shouldn't have gotten me anything! I'm fine with the stuff I came in with, really!"
"No, no, it's fine!" she quickly protested. "You old clothes really did make you stand out! I didn't spend all of my money! I'm not an idiot!"
Olivia let us squabble for a little while, then jumped in before it could go any further. "Okay, okay, okay. Elen, you do know how to budget, right?"
"… Yes."
"And you didn't spend all of your money."
"No."
Then she turned to me. "And Emily, you recognize that she did this because she wanted to, yeah?"
"Yes."
"And that she probably did this as a dowry."
"Nooooo!" Elen immediately protested. "Oliviaaaaa!"
She giggled, and dropped her hands off of the two of us. "Okay, okay, you did this to 'properly equip a very high-potential party member.'"
"E-Exactly! It's an investment!"
I let out a sigh through my grin. "Okay, fine. I still feel like I don't deserve it, though…"
Then Olivia scowled, and pushed her finger into my chest. "Okay, how's this: If you don't feel like you deserve it, then work until you feel like you do. Okay?"
That in turn, made me giggle, and I gently pushed her hand away from me. "Okay, okay, I get it."
Elen watched the whole display with a smile. "That did cost me more than I thought it would, but I don't regret it. Okay?"
"Okay. I get it."
She let out an affirmative huff, and then went over a mental checklist in her head. "Let's see… we've got you clothes, bags… do you think you need a weapon?"
"Weapons…"
Ever since I had seen the display in the other market, I had wondered what kind of weaponry they had in this world. I really doubted it would be anything like the fantasy I'd seen back home, but still… just the idea of actually wielding a sword, or channeling magic through a staff, was really, really, really exciting. Images of caped fighters beheading giant monsters and witches and wizards blowing up monsters from afar began to fill my head, until Olivia lightly wapped me across the forehead.
"Calm down, Emily, you're drooling." she muttered, and gave an exasperated sigh. "Honestly, I dunno if anything here could really handle your power, anyways."
I pouted. "I guess so…"
"Once you make it into the big leagues we can think about getting you something." Elen offered. "But for right now, I think she's right, unfortunately. My staff makes things easier to cast, but you don't even really cast in the first place. I don't really know how your type of magic works, in fact… you'd probably need to go to somewhere like Ulgrasia." She hummed. "And you don't need food or anything, so… in that case, I guess we're finished?"
The three of us awkwardly stood there for a moment.
"From how excited you guys were I thought this was going to be an all-day shopping trip…"
"You don't need as much stuff as us humans do!" Elen protested, and then slapped her hands to her mouth. "I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean… !"
"No, no, it's fine, you're right. It's hard to say that I am when I have stuff like glowing hands and feet." I replied, looking down at my gloved hands. Like the boots, clothing apparently covered them up. "And I haven't eaten since I've woken up here…" Then I yawned. Suddenly, it felt like all of the day's events had caught up with me. "I still feel pretty tired, though."
Olivia nodded, slowly. "You threw out a lot of power at the guild. You should probably get some more rest."
"Mmm… okay."
"We're leaving tomorrow, though, so don't get too settled in!" Elen chimed in, which made Olivia shoot her a glare. "Ah… sorry. We'll meet you in front of the guild tomorrow morning?"
"Sounds good."
"Do you need us to walk you back or anything?"
"Nope, I got it." I yawned again. "Sorry, this has just been kind of overwhelming."
"Absolutely." Olivia agreed, as she started to pull Elen away from me. "Well, we'll get you get your rest. Luke and I'll be around to see you off tomorrow morning."
"Yeah." I smiled, giving them a wave as they left. "See you tomorrow, then. Oh, and thanks for the outfit, Elen. I really appreciate it."
"Not a problem! But don't forget, tomorrow morning!" She yelled over her shoulder as Olivia dragged her off.
"I won't!" I yelled back, a bit exasperated, and chuckled as I watched them leave.
By the time I had gotten back to Heinz's house, the sun was beginning to set, and it painted the inside of the house with purples and oranges. Yet again, I sighed at the sight, and started to make my way towards the guest room. Shizu was sitting at the kitchen table, but as usual she seemed like she was ignoring me, so I just frowned and continued on my way before I noticed that her mask was laying next to the book she was reading.
"Ah… you're back, Emily."
She let out a breath, then closed the book and turned around, revealing an asian face with the right side heavily scarred by burns. They ran down her entire left arm, too, all the way up to her shoulder. I flinched as I saw them, but she gave me a small smile and shook her head.
"No, it's fine. These happened a long time ago. The mask just hides them." She put it on to demonstrate, and I watched in awe as they disappeared then reappeared as she took it off. "Did you have a fun time? I see you got some new… clothes…?" Then she blinked, and gave me an awkward smile. "… How, exactly, did you get new clothes?"
"Apparently I'm solid now." I said, and tapped a finger against the table to show her. "See?"
She hummed. "Something to do with your status as an otherworlder?"
"Maybe…" I mumbled as I flopped into the chair opposite her. "Ugh, today was exhausting."
"How so?"
"Elen is… overbearing, and…" Then I blinked, and whipped my head upwards, confusion plastered across my face. Why was I suddenly opening up to her like this?
Shizu giggled. "I'm sorry, I seem to have that effect on people when I talk to them. It comes from being a teacher, I suppose." Then she sighed. "I owe you an apology, Emily. When I first saw you I was reminded of my own mentor… seeing you use your lightning like that didn't help either. She and I didn't part on the best terms, so… I suppose I had been seeing her instead of you up until now."
I just sat there, not sure how to process all that. "… Uhuh."
"I apologize. I don't mean to be dumping all of my own problems onto you. I'm sure you have enough of them to be dealing with yourself…" She muttered, then looked at me with an honest concern. "You didn't really give an answer to Heinz, last night. Are you really feeling alright with your reincarnation?"
"I…" Then I stopped, and really considered her question. "… honestly, I don't know. Elen and Olivia took me to a tailor's shop, and I saw myself in a mirror for the first time… and I realized that this really is real. I'm not going to go back home, and… I'm not the person whose memories I have."
Shizu nodded.
"On one hand, it's exciting, but on the other, it's… really, really scary. I said that I was on autopilot when I rushed to the adventurer's guild, and… I'm scared I make the wrong decision, I guess. That I'm not acting how I want to be, but rather how the person I was wanted to be…" I looked down at my hand, and twitched Lightning Transformation ever so slightly, making an aura of sparks begin to jump around my hand. "Being able to do something like this is a dream come true for her. But, for me… I guess I sort of ignored how everyone was talking slaying monsters and such. It really isn't as fun as she thought it would be, is it?"
Shizu went quiet, and her eyes flicked down to her left. it seemed like this was something that she was really uncomfortable with…
"… I-I'm sorry, I guess I just assumed that you'd fought stuff before." I muttered, and sighed again. "That's exactly what I-"
"-No, you're right." She interrupted. She held her hand up in front of me, and a candle-like flame sprouted up from the center of it. "I have been. For a long, long time. I know I don't look the part, but I'm technically retired, which is why I switched to teaching for a while." Then she closed her palm, extinguishing the flame. "So, to answer your question… I don't know if I'd call it 'fun'. It's exciting, sure, but at the same time it can be absolutely terrifying. There were times when I was truly afraid for my life."
I nodded. I couldn't imagine how that had felt. "But, you're still here today."
"Because I could fight through it." she replied, and then smiled as if recalling a fond memory. "My mentor always told me that when things get like that, when you feel like you can't take another step… you grit your teeth and you take that step anyways. That courage wasn't the absence of fear, or worry, or anxiety, it's choosing to continue on anyways, despite feeling those things. I think she summed it up as 'Keep moving forward, but don't forget that it's a journey, not a destination.' She talked a lot about how important that kind of balance was to her. But at the same time, she said that part of the journey was the destination, and it was important to have a goal in mind with everything you do."
I smiled. "Sounds like you knew her pretty well."
She nodded. "I-"
Then she gasped, and her hand flew to her heart as she nearly doubled over.
"-Shizu?! Hey, are you okay?!"
"I-I'm fine!" she managed to pant out. Her scarred hand clutched at the table, trying to reach for her mask. "Just… the mask, please, I can't…" Then her breathing slowly returned to normal as I quickly gave it to her. "… t-thank you."
"… You sure you're alright?" I asked her as she sat back up. "That looked pretty bad."
But she just nodded. "I'm fine, really. I can't be without my mask for too long, is all."
And that immediately redirected my attention. "I can imagine… is there some kind of healing magic in it? Since it fixes your scars and all?"
She gave me a shallow nod. "Yes. It stabilizes me, but it can't fix everything. Even magic has its limits… as I'm sure you saw with Jiggis."
"Mmm… yeah, that's true. I guess I never thought about that…" I muttered, and then sighed.
"Well, we should both get some rest." she said, and put a hand on my shoulder. "You haven't changed your mind, right?"
I blinked and considered everything she had just told me, and to a certain extent, everything that had happened that day. I had been so unsure, felt like I had lost everything I had ever known… but Elen had swooped in and completely turned it around so fast I wondered if she had gone through something herself. And Shizu, just now, had washed away any remnants of those doubts. I wasn't blind to the fact that this would be scary, but seeing and being a part of friendships like this, so soon after I woke up here… I had never seen such genuine care for my person and identity. And while I didn't doubt that Elen wanting my power was part of it, I knew that it wasn't the whole reason; I wasn't just some pawn to be used up and then tossed away. And that, after working in modern retail… well, that felt really good. Up until now, I had thought that this world was no different than Earth, and back there questioning why things were done a certain way was just seen as resistance. It had gotten me in trouble more than once. So when I heard how the people here still exploited others for their own good, I guess I had just snapped to my usual autopilot defense instead of trying to question it, and I hadn't known what to do when that defense had been broken. But with how Shizu spoke of her mentor, and everything she must have done over the course of her life… maybe I actually had the power to make a change, here. Maybe I didn't have to be afraid of asking why. And I had a lot of things to ask; I had things to ask about myself, about others, about the world as a whole. It would take time to get answers for all of them, but right now, I knew I could get half an answer for one of them:
'What do I want to do?'
I shook my head in the negative and gave Shizu an honest, true smile.
"I haven't changed my mind. I don't like the idea of killing, but… I think I'll take your mentor's advice: my goal is to leave this world a better place than it was when I joined it. Whether that's by dealing with monsters, or some other route that I haven't discovered yet, that'll be what I work towards."
In the end, I guess was the same goal I had back on Earth. But now, in this life, I would actually accomplish it.
Last edited: Jul 23, 2019
Chapter 7I tossed and turned in bed until eventually my exhaustion caught up with me and I passed out, but as soon as I heard the knock at my door I was up and ready to go.
"So eager!" Shizu said, and again Magic Sense let me 'hear' the smile behind her mask and words. "Are you really that excited?"
"I've been wanting something like this since I was a teenager, Shizu." I replied, and gave her that same stupid grin from yesterday. "… or, since… hrm."
She quirked her head to the side as she held the door open for me.
"Sorry, I'm just musing." I muttered as I walked out to the kitchen. "I guess it would be more accurate to say that 'she' had been wanting something like that, but while the memories are detached, it's not like I'd be really much of anything without them… so can I still say 'I'? And I'm technically a teenager now, but I was a teenager and stopped being a teenager a different point in time, too, so…"
"… Are you sure you got enough sleep last night, Emily?"
"I don't need it!" I exclaimed, and added in an eye twitch for good measure. Shizu gave me a nervous chuckle, and in turn I gave her a legitimate giggle. "More seriously, I'm fine. I haven't felt hungry since I woke up here, and I've only really felt tired after I burned myself out yesterday. I just get like that when I'm in a good mood." I tapped a finger against my head. "Means everything's firing on all cylinders, which… is…"
Then I trailed off, and looked down at my gloved hands.
"… Everything is firing on all cylinders. I don't even need glasses anymore. That's…"
After another moment of thought, I snapped back up to Shizu.
"… Well, regardless, I'm ready to go."
She hummed, and lifted the backpack that was on her shoulders. "If you say so. I already bought all of my provisions last night, so I'm ready to go as well."
The sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon as we set out for the guild, and Elen and her party were already waiting for us when we arrived. Olivia was there as well, poking fun at everyone's apparent exhaustion.
"Good morning, you four." Shizu said, and was responded to with a chorus of groans.
"I always forget how early we have to get up…" Elen moaned. "And only after three days off…"
"Three days off?! That's… !" I started to reply, then stopped to think. "… well, no, then again I guess going off on an adventure is a bit more to ask than pushing carts around… still, at my old job, I got split days off more often than not. Three days off was a vacation."
The three of them just glared at me.
"Well, good for you, but that was barely enough time to rest for us." the bulky guy, Gido, replied.
"I'm still sore…"
"We just got back from one mission, and then we're asked to go back to the same area to do basically the same thing. It's a bit annoying." the blond guy, Cabal, finished, then shot the rest of his party members a glare. "Still, you two could be a bit less depressing." Then he sighed, and attempted to straighten himself out. "And we appreciate the two of you coming with us. While we're waiting for the guild to open, we should go over the details with you." The other two members nodded and tried to copy his actions as he pulled a weathered sheet of paper out of a leather case in his pack. Using weights dedicated for the task, he unrolled it onto the ground; on it was a pretty detailed map of what must be the entire continent given the water that was surrounding it.
"One month ago, the Storm Dragon Veldora disappeared from his seal in a cave within the Great Forest of Jura."
"That's right in the middle there, Emily." Olivia whispered to me, and pointed to the poorly-drawn trees that covered a green area as wide as a fourth of the landmass.
"As a result, monster activity within the forest has significantly increased. That has the neighboring kingdoms very concerned, and as the closest member of the Western Nations to the forest, the kingdom of Blumund is obliged to investigate. So that's what the goal of this mission is: a simple search and reconnaissance of the area around the outside of the cave to see if anything suspicious has shown up."
He sounded so official, I almost felt like I should be raising my hand. "Question. When you say 'area outside the cave', what exactly do you mean? If this is a map of the entire continent…"
The three adventurers looked at one another, and after a beat, shrugged.
"We didn't exactly get a whole lot of information…"
"He just kind of called us into his office and said 'go back there and investigate'."
"Honestly, it's a pretty vague mission, all things considered…"
Shizu and Olivia and I all shared a glance at one another, and I didn't even have to be using magic sense to feel the former's exasperation. Instead of voice it, though, she turned her attention to the map. "The edge of the Great Forest of Jura is a few days' travel from here, is it not?"
"And a few more to the cave itself." Cabal agreed, tracing an imaginary path from one outlined shape to another. "With the risk of monsters so high, nobody's sending any wagons into any part of the forest… which means that we'll have to get there on foot. That takes about a week."
"A whole week…?"
The four of them turned towards me, and Elen gave me another one of her signature smiles. "Are you having second thoughts already, Emily?"
"No!… Well, maybe a little. I'm just used to way shorter travel times… but it's not like I have anything better to do, though." I wasn't about to go back on my word so quickly.
"Well, I'm sure the forest'll keep us busy once we're a few days in." Gido commented, but before I could ask him what he meant all five of us heard the hall's window unlock. The curtains were pulled up to reveal a woman ready and waiting with my identification papers, complete with a waterproof case. It didn't really feel like much of an accomplishment since I had no idea if it said 'OFFICIAL ADVENTURER: EMILY ROSE' or anything, but it was still nice to have some kind of proof of my identity in this new world. Then with those acquired, the five of us were off, though not before Olivia gave Elen and I a goodbye hug.
"I'll see you back right here in two weeks!" she exclaimed as she held me at arms' length. Having to actually look up at her was a bit intimidating, really; from my (warped) perspective she was a half foot taller than me. And her build didn't help things, either. "Don't blow up the forest or anything."
"I doubt I could blow up the whole forest…"
"You'd be surprised. Well, make sure you remember this whole thing when you're a bigshot paladin with the Church or something, Emily." she grinned, and then started to turn to Elen before I interrupted her.
"Wait, church? I guess there would be a church here…" I almost rolled my eyes. "And they've probably got crusaders and knights and all kinds of monster-slaying stuff, huh."
"Yeah? They have their own type of magic and everything. It's forbidden to even be written, it has to all be passed down vocally. Their top paladin is an otherworlder just like you, Emily." She frowned. "I don't know what religion you had back where you came from, but here, they do really good work."
"I'm not saying that, I just-" But as her frown began to turn into a scowl, I decided to drop the topic. "-well, nevermind. I'm sure they're a lot different here."
"I'm positive they are." she agreed, then almost snapped back to her previous attitude as she gave Elen a quick hug. "I gotta go get my lazy brother out of bed. Have fun, you guys!"
As I watched her dash off, all I could do was just sigh and shake my head.
"Ugh, what a great way to start this."
Then the five of us turned in the opposite direction, and began to make our way towards the imposing walls that I had gone through only a few days ago. Passing by the smaller market let me smell all of the fresh loaves they had made for the day, and when we left the gates I got to see the sun paint the farmland outside orange, but none of that really brought me out of my grumpy mood. Cabal and Gido set the pace, but even though I was carrying barely anything at all I fell to the back of the group to stew in my thoughts. After a while, Elen joined me.
"Did Olivia say something wrong, Emily? I've never seen you this grumpy before."
"You've only known me for two days." I grumbled back, and then sighed. "She didn't say anything wrong. I just don't like seeing blind faith like that, especially in… well, no. In my world, the church wasn't backed by anything. There was no real proof that any kind of god existed, just a bunch of stuff that people said was passed down by him and blah blah blah blah."
I kicked a stray rock on the side of the path, and watched it roll off into the grass.
"I'll admit that it might be different here, given that she mentioned holy magic and paladins and stuff. And I know back on Earth we owed a lot of progress to them, and I'm positive there were good ones out there. They probably even outnumbered the bad ones, really. But, still… considering how serious she got about it, it's hard not to believe that… well, that they use their power to justify doing horrible things. Just like how a lot of them were back home."
Elen nodded. "Where I'm from, we don't have an official religion. Or, well, we don't follow the official one - the emperor declared himself a child of God, instead. Because of that, we're prevented from joining the Western Alliance, so we're coming on our own if we're attacked. And while I've never been to Ruberios - that's their capital - I've heard that it's a paradise… nobody starves or sleeps without a bed, everyone has a job and all of the children are educated… even my country can't say that, with all of our power."
That caught my interest. That wasn't the case anywhere I knew of, even back on Earth. "Really?"
"Well, it's what I've heard. I don't know if that's actually the truth or not, but considering the power that they wield, it's only natural that people would flock to it and do anything to be protected by it… I still agree with you, though. Their knights have done awful things here, too. Burn entire villages to the ground, hold monsters even as intelligent as orges as slaves… it's hard to justify the two."
"Like, actual slaves? That's…" I gave her a hollow chuckle. "That's monstrous."
"I know! I wonder who the true monsters are, sometimes… but then again, monsters have done things just as bad." Then she shook her head, and smiled. "Sorry, I don't mean to be this depressing. There's a lot of good things here, too."
"No, I'm sure there is. That was the case back home, too; just as many good things as bad things, but everyone just focuses on the bad ones."
"It sounds like humans are humans, no matter where they're from, huh?"
That made me chuckle again,a lot lighter than before. "Nope. Humans are humans…"
That got me wondering about just how interconnected things were between this world and Earth, but before I could get too far Cabal peeked over the edge of a hill.
"Hey, how much longer are you two slowpokes going to take?!" he yelled. "It's lunchtime!"
"Lunchtime?! I'm starving!" Elen suddenly exclaimed, and kicked up a trail of dust behind her as she ran up to the top. I just grinned and continued to walk, not quite as eager as she was, and by the time I made it to the rest of the group she had already dug in to her meal. Shizu was eating as well, though in quite a different manner from the apparently ravenous adventurers, and as I watched her I saw the sheath and sword that were hung around her shoulders.
It was stunning to think that I was in the presence of an actual swordsman. "Hey, Shizu, do you know how to…" I started to ask her, then caught myself. She wouldn't be carrying a sword if she didn't know how to use it. "… ah, sorry. It's just weird for me to see something like that in person."
"My sword? Yes, I do know how to use it." she replied as she flashed me a grin. "Channeling your magic through something is far more efficient than just throwing raw energy around."
"You mean you can make it ignite?!" I about fainted right then and there. "That's so cool…"
She just smiled at me behind her mask. I wondered how she was eating with it on, but apparently the answer to that was magic as well - every piece of food she brought close to her mouth just vanished into thin air.
"So coooool…"
After lunch we got right back on the trail again, and the talk of magic had made me want to experiment with my own. So as we walked, I was poking both Lightning Transformation and Control Lightning, and using them to create all kinds of things - a spray of sparks out of my palm, holding a beam inbetween my palms, and even surrounding my body with a thorn-like 'armor'. Creating it and keeping it from arcing off into my friends was draining, though, and I was a bit out of breath as I turned back to Elen with a gigantic smile on my face.
"So, Elen, what other types of magic are there? There can't just be lightning and fire."
She lit up like a christmas tree. "Of course not! There's five elemental ones; Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Sky. Lightning falls under Sky, but the school also involves things like flight and storm-calling. There's also non-elemental magic like barriers and enhancements, the Holy magic that the Church practices and… the exact opposite, that monsters and demons use."
"Demons?"
"Demons." She nodded. "Nobody knows a whole lot about them, c-considering…"
She stammered, and I quickly cut her off. Talking about the boogyman must be a lot scarier when you lived in a world where orcs and goblins were very real threats.
"Um, you mentioned barriers, right?" I asked, trying to change the subject. "Barriers like..what?"
"I wouldn't really know… defensive magic like that's really more Cabal's thing."
"Hrm." I looked between the thin blond and the much bulkier Gido. "… Cabal's the defense guy?"
"Yep! Even if he doesn't look the part."
"Hm…."
Just as things started to get dark, Cabal called for us to stop for the day and set up camp - while they had technically had enough food for two weeks, it was mostly just fruits, sausage-like meats, and breads, and it was the plan from the beginning to supplement what they had with whatever they could forage along the way. And it was better to do so now, before we got to the Jura forest proper. So while Gido did that, the rest of us unpacked our equipment near one of the clusters of trees that were beginning to pop up out of the ground. The smallest one was skillfully cut down by the blond, Shizu lit the fire by pointing at it, Gido soon returned with an armful of roots and a couple rabbits, I distinctly did not watch him carve them, Elen filled up a small pot with magically-summoned water, and before too long we had a full (if bare) campsite set up. Everyone had done their part… well, except for me. I tried to help where I could, but unfortunately I didn't really know a whole lot that I could do.
I made a few sparks flicker around my hand as the others ate. Lightning was one thing, sure, but the test made me realize that I would need to be doing a lot more than just throwing that around.
"… Hey, Cabal." I asked. "Elen mentioned you knew defensive magic."
The blond looked up from his stew mid-chew. "Uh, yeah, if you can count a single barrier spell as 'defensive magic'. I'm not much of a magic guy, so…"
"Could you teach me? Or, at least show me? I wanna do more than just shoot lightning…"
He smirked, then set his bowl down on the ground and stretched himself out. "Alright, but it's not the easiest spell out there… !" Then with a grunt, he pushed his arm out in front of him like he was raising a shield, and a small array of futuristic-looking holographic hexagons grew out from the center. It was completely solid to my finger, kind of like the one back at the guild, but I didn't need to use magic sense to see it.
"Hrrrrm…"
That being said, the skill was still useful in figuring out how he cast it. The magicules were tight and rigidly organized, while the ones in the surrounding air were loose and free-flowing. It was a bit like looking at water compared to ice… of course, I couldn't exactly condense water with my bare hands, so I looked up at the blond again and asked him how he did it.
"Um, it's the motion, right?" he asked Elen as he kept his pose steady.
"Yes. Chanting magic is casted by repeating specific motions, saying specific things, or really anything that helps you organize your thoughts. Then from that, you align the surrounding magicules into a spell." She raised her staff. "That's why foci like these are so important. Not only do they help with the actual flow of magic, they help you get into the mindset that you need to cast, as well. Just because you recognize them."
"Okay… so it's like, biofeedback, like biotics." I hummed. Both of them just stared at me, but I brushed it off. "So then, if I just repeat the motion…"
Just like Cabal, I snapped my arm up into a defensive stance and kept my thoughts locked on the idea. Focusing like this was shockingly easily, compared to before I reincarnated, but the magicules surrounding my arm still only twitched a little.
"Unfortunately, it's still a bit of a trial-and-error process." Elen tried to explain, as I snapped into position over and over again. "We still don't understand the whole-oh!"
Suddenly, a single hexagon had formed out in front of me. It was a far cry from the several-foot-wide barrier that Cabal had created, and I couldn't keep it up for nearly as long as he did, but hey, it was progress!
"Man, it took me a few days just to get up to that point…" Cabal whined, then shook it off in favor of a smile. "Still, though, good job. It'll be nice to have another person for defense on the team. Keep working at it, alright?"
"Yeah!"
I managed to get up to two hexagons by the end of the day, and things quieted down a bit after that. Shizu was quietly sitting in what looked like meditation, Elen and Gido were playing a board game that reminded me of chess, Cabal was strumming on a lute-like instrument, and I had gone back to practicing my lighting - Control was at front this time, and I was trying to slow it down enough to control each individual branch, and map it to the stars that were above me. Each burst made a high-pitched, synth-like sound that I tried to keep down as well, until suddenly that sound aligned with whatever Cabal was strumming.
"… Hey, wait, play that note again."
The blond paused. "This one?"
"Yeah, yeah." I was no conductor, so I couldn't pin that it was an E flat or whatever, but it wasn't difficult to recognize that the noise my lightning made and the sound that he played were pretty similar.
"Huh… that's interesting." Cabal said, picking up on the same thing I was. He strummed something else a few notes higher, and by 'squeezing' the lightning - putting more power through a smaller amount of magicules - I mimicked that one as well.
"Hey, wait, are you making music?" Both Elen and Gido stopped their game and turned towards me. Shizu perked up as well.
"I-I think I am!" I forced out my attempt at a scale; I'm pretty sure I skipped through a few notes, and threw the rest of them into a blender, but everyone in the camp could recognize it for what it was.
A light paf then came from my right, and I saw a few wisps of smoke in front of Shizu. "It's been a long time since I've done something like this…"
"Well, don't stop now!" Elen exclaimed, and condensed a few icicles of various length. They floated in front of her, and sung like chimes whenever she hit them with her fork. "C'mon, c'mon, keep going!"
Even the normally quiet Gido eventually chimed in, mirroring his friend by 'strumming' various points of the string of his crossbow, creating a deeper bass sound. With all of us together we had a full set of instruments, magical or otherwise, and while it was of course completely dissonant and almost pure chaos, we pushed back the dark with the radiant smiles on our faces. Then Shizu was the first to duck out of our makeshift performance, and Elen's icicles began to droop lower and lower until she went to bed as well. I shifted to more staccato bursts to compensate, but eventually the two guys clocked out and I finished it all out with a jagged, resonant sawtooth burst over the top of my head.
There was silence for a moment, then I sighed and leaned up against the side of one of the trees we were under. I could see an unfamiliar galaxy above me, and without everyone else around me the darkness seemed to press in, but… somehow, even with the threat of monsters lurking in the shadows, the night still felt brighter than the ones back home. I was still finding my place here, and that'd take time, but I'd get there eventually. And if every night would be like this one, then, well… I didn't think it would take very long.
Chapter 8The trees had been steadily growing in both size and amount ever since we had made camp for the first night, and within just a few days we had entered the forest proper. It wasn't like there was a definite boundary or anything, but I could sense that the amount of magicules in the air had gone up quite drastically. Compared to the plains and scrubland right outside the city, this was quite literally a magical place.
"Now all we need is a pina colada." I whispered to myself, then giggled at a reference that nobody else would get.
It hadn't been very difficult for me to at least adapt to my situation thanks to Guardian Angel, but like everything else, going beyond that took time - and thanks to these past few days, I was a lot more comfortable with my new magic, my new life, and even my new party members.
Elen had proven to be quite the herbalist once we had entered the forest; apparently there was a massive garden across the entire capital city of her country. It was quite the national pride, and it was maintained without a single penny of tax money. Because of that, she could point out a number of sweet-smelling flowers and fruits, and even showed us a special breed of magical ivy that wove itself into pictures of the stories that people would tell around it. She had said that it was normally a domestic plant, but it grew so fast that all it took was a single seed and a tree would be covered within a week - so this particular example had probably came from a seed that had fallen out of someone's pocket. And apparently, it was so-well known that it had become a landmark, and through that Gido could tell us that we were only a few days away from our destination.
As stereotypically like his 'class' (because that was a system this world actually used), Gido the rogue was silent for most of the trip. At the same time, though, he had the loudest laugh out of any of us, and more often than not we'd forget that he was even behind us until he burst out laughing at a joke Cabal would tell. Him and Elen seemed pretty fond of one another, in a paternal kind of way, though they insisted that they didn't have any kind of relationship before they started this party. There was still quite the age gap between them, though… regardless, he had the ability to conceal himself to near-invisibility, and it was something that he could extend to us as well. Although most of the serious predators here had Magic Sense, they still came in handy for sneaking past smaller packs of animals.
And the wildlife here, oh man. Olivia had already mentioned a bulldeer slash cowdeer, and seeing those in person felt like something straight out of Avatar - antlers and udders and everything. There were birds colored like they were straight of a tropical island, with feathers that grew off of them in every direction and plumes as long as the rest of their bodies, tiny foxes that looked like Eevees… on the less fuzzy side of things, there were also wolves as long as I was tall, gigantic bears with horns to match; man-sized, dragon-like chickens with necks as long as giraffes'… thankfully, even when Concealing Arts didn't work, they all seemed to keep their distance from us, and we never had any issues with encounters. Despite the warnings and rumors that had been heard before, it had been a pretty peaceful trip.
On the dawn of the morning we would reach the cave, I was practicing with my barrier - I had managed to get it big enough to cover me - when my magic sense flared up. As soon as I felt how big the signature was I instinctively dropped down into a defensive stance, and lightning crackled along my fingers as I probed further to try and figure out what it was… but then just like that, it disappeared like it had never been there to begin with.
"Is there a problem, Emily?"
Shizu's voice made me jump, and I almost zapped her before I realized who she was. "… Ah, no, just… I swear I felt a really strong monster nearby. Almost like it was watching us. Then it disappeared."
She frowned. "We'll have to keep a close eye out… we are getting close, after all."
On my request, she had been showing me some basic swordsmanship over the course of our trip. While she refused to show me any actual magic stuff - it was far more important to get the basics down, according to her - I still got to hold the weapon a couple of times and could at least take a stance that wouldn't result in her sweeping my feet out. Since she normally woke up before everyone else did, she and I ran those drills while the adventurers woke up and prepared breakfast. We would all enjoy the meal together, and then we would be off only an hour or two after the sun had risen. That was the course of action today as well, and a few hours after we left we had arrived at a giant, dirt-covered hill that the two men insisted was the start of the cave.
"We should probably poke our heads inside, just to make sure that nothing's changed in there…" Cabal muttered as he looked around for the entrance. "… Damn, where is it?" It was so easy to find last time…"
"Hey, I think I found it!" Gido then yelled from the other side. We made our way around the giant mound, and saw he definitely had something - there was a story-tall entryway that looked like it had been filled in with fresh, matted dirt, compared to the rest of the hill.
"Damn, someone must've tried to cover it up…" Cabal muttered, and started digging chunks out of the wall. "Well? C'mon, don't just stand there, help me out!"
The remaining four of us looked at one another, then Shizue stepped forward. "Cabal, I don't think that this is-"
Suddenly, the blond's hand burst through - the wall had only been a few inches thick. He blinked, then curiosity overtook him and he poked his head in. There was a beat, and then even from the back we saw his skin drop to a ghostly white.
"Guys. We should be running. Like, right now."
He slowly pulled his head out, turned around, and took a few zombielike steps forward.
"This isn't the cave entrance."
We had just enough time to process that statement before an absolutely enormous ant, at least fifteen feet tall and twice that long, burst through the patched wall. Cabal was launched over to us by the explosion, Elen froze in place and screamed, Gido grabbed her by the collar and began to run, Shizu had the grace to roll her eyes before following the rest of the party, and I just stood there, too terrified and flabbergasted to move.
"… what the actual fuck is that?"
"Force move!"
Then I felt a firm grip lift me up off the ground and practically launch me into Gido's free hand. I was still being dragged along though, and all I could do was just stare at the nightmarish creature that was going to… eat me? Dissolve me? I had no fucking clue.
"This way!" Shizu's voice yelled, and then suddenly my viewpoint turned. The creature vanished for a moment, until it barreled through a curtain of trees and we were right back to before, or… maybe not? There were a bit less trees around here… then suddenly I heard Elen gasp. Gido dropped me onto my back, and I just stared up at the sky for a few moments before I figured I should probably be watching whatever's happening, then sat up and blinked as I saw that the ant that had been chasing me had been reduced to a bit more than a flaming pile of meat and exoskeleton.
To my right, Shizu was currently defying physics and slicing through giant ant carapaces like it was absolutely nothing. Each cut she made was clean, complete, and cauterizing, and they were each followed by their own explosions that further decimated the corpses. One of the ants was a bit stubborn, so to fix that she lept onto it's head and ran her sword straight through it. Three sequential explosions followed, and when she landed on the ground the corpse just didn't have a head anymore. The three adventurers were in awe, but I was just dumbstruck.
"What the fuck just happened?"
But that wasn't the end of the show; for the grand finale, she raised her hand, and like it was a vacuum cleaner all of the flames in the football-field sized clearing were completely sucked into it. Not even an ember was left behind.
She froze in that pose for a moment, then nearly collapsed as she flicked the greenish blood off of her blade and sheathed it. She was halfway through a stumbled turn back to us when one of the ants began to twitch. Elen cried out a warning, and in a flash she had whipped back around with her sword in her hand and ready to strike, but before she could get any further something within her pulsed and she collapsed to the ground. The ant loomed over her, ready to eat slash dissolve slash whatever-
-then it was like I was struck by a bolt of lightning. I sucked in a deep breath as boundless energy surged through me, and in a flash I was on my feet again, ready to strike. It felt like everything was moving in slow motion; Elen's scream stretched out far longer than any human had any right to scream, the giant ant moved about as fast as a regular ant could… Shizu laid on the ground, completely motionless, and seeing that was all it took. My hand whipped upwards, my will flowed out, and then prismatic, flaming electricity materialized along the path from my hand to the ant's head.
Cabal froze. "That's-!"
Then everything snapped back to reality. That sudden rush of power left me, at least partially, and all I could do was watch what had been left behind - sourceless flames burned down the color spectrum as they evaporated along the path of my bolt. The head of the ant had utterly vanished, as if it was vaporized, and the rest of the body just fell onto the ground in front of the collapsed Shizu. Elen cried out again and rushed over to the girl's side; meanwhile, Cabal just shook his head while Gido patted me on the shoulder.
"So when the hell did you learn how to use holy mag-"
Then Shizu wailed, and the three of us snapped back up to see that her back was rigid. Her arms were bending in unnatural ways, and as we watched, her head lolled backwards and the eyeless mask seemed to bore straight into my soul.
"W-What?" I whispered as her body sat there and twitched. Elen had mentioned demons; was this something related to that? That new internal force flared up and prompted me to take a step forward, but when her mask cracked I stopped dead in my tracks. Cabal rushed over to Elen and stood in front of her; together they took a few steps back before orange light shot out, and her body erupted into a pillar of flame that launched itself upward. Clouds began to form out of the point of contact with the sky, and once the whole thing was darkened, Shizu began to float upwards, her arms and legs dangling by her sides as if she was on puppet strings.
"W-What the hell is this?" Gido whispered beside me. His hand was anxiously flipping the single dagger he held; in no way an appropriate tool for the situation.
"Elen! Cabal!" I yelled, again thanks to something else's prompt. The latter turned towards me, I waved him back, and with a bit of hesitation he dragged Elen and himself over to me. Then I flicked my arm in front of me. Just like before, runic hexagons grew out of it, but this time there were enough to cover the entire party. And just like the lightning, the normally blue hologram swirled through every color in the spectrum instead. The three behind me gasped, but before they could tell me why, a sphere of flame surrounded the girl then exploded like a dying star. Though the three cowered, the shield held perfectly against the assault of dust and wind, and when it cleared the pillar of flames had grown into a pyre; flickering and waving against itself like a great bonfire that stretched up into infinity.
"Shizu!"
Cabal flinched as realization hit. "Shizu… as in, Shizu Izawa?!"
Then the other two snapped towards him. "Isn't Shizu Izawa the Conqueror of Flames?!"
"She retired like 50 years ago, right…?"
"Well it looks like now the Conqueror of Flames is about to retire us!" Cabal snapped back, then turned towards me. "Hey, Emily, you still with us, or-?"
"-I'm here." I replied tersely, still fixated on the flaming girl in front of us. "Just focused. I'm not quite sure what's happening."
"You're glowing." Elen replied. "Is this one of your skills?"
As soon as she mentioned skills, it was suddenly like I had known it all along - this was the active effect of Guardian Angel. "… Oh. Yeah, I guess it is."
"Well, whatever the hell it is, even with holy magic you can't take on the Conqueror of Flames by yourself." His hand gripped the hilt of his sword, then pulled it out in front of him.
I almost slapped him upside the head. "Don't be stupid! I know I can't take her on by myself! That's why you three need to fall back and find help!"
"We're in the middle of the forest, Emily, there isn't any help for miles!"
Then all four of us flinched as something clattered to the ground. Shizu's cracked mask rolled to a stop, and we looked up to see a blue and purple fire silhouetted against her black hair. Even the whites of her eyes had turned red. I swear I could see a hint of steam against them.
"Get out of here." I told the group. Prismatic lightning began to crackle around my hands. "Go find help. I'll try to hold her back."
"No! We're not just going to let you die!"
"I've already died once!"
Another explosion made us snap back to the situation - the pillar of flames pulled itself up into an egg, and then shattered to reveal a shirtless, muscle-bound male. He looked like something out of an ancient jungle; tattoo-like flames ran across his skin, a bone-encrusted skirt covered his legs, and a crown with horns as wide as his shoulders covered his flaming hair.
"The flame spirit, Ifrit…" Cabal muttered, and I snapped around to him.
"Spirit? Is he possessing her?"
"People've said that the Conqueror of Flames bent the flame lord Ifrit to her will, and used his power for good instead of evil." Elen explained as she held her staff out in front of her. "Did she lose control…?"
I grinned. A plan, as stupid as it was, was starting to take shape.
Then Ifrit roared.
The shockwave from that alone made my shield buckle, and I gritted my teeth. There was absolutely no way we could even scratch against this guy… if I was going to do anything, it had to be right this second, before the thing had a chance to get his bearings.
"I'm going to do something stupid!" I yelled to the rest of the party. "Stay here!"
That energy within me surged as I dashed out of the side of the shield and began to sprint towards the spirit. An eyebrow went up, and I swear that the arrogant thing was almost grinning as I jumped and sailed above even the trees, headed directly towards him. Searing heat coming off of just his body alone began to lick at my skin, but if my theory was right… my fingers began to phase through his chest the moment I touched it, and then it was my turn to grin.
"See you on the other side."
My hand seemed to reach down into an empty void, and my momentum carried me forward until even the sole of my boot vanished inside of him.
The sound of airplane engines rained down from above. Desperation swirled around me like the smoke and fire that was consuming my village, but as my mother and I ran, a building collapsed between the two of us and kept me from following her.
"Mommy!" I yelled, or… maybe more accurately, my mouth yelled. I didn't ask it to do that. I didn't even speak Japanese. And when was the last time I had said 'mommy'?
"What's… w-what's going on?" My body didn't seem to respond, and it just continued to sit there, staring at the fire that was advancing towards it. "What's happening?!"
Then something tugged at me, asking me if I wanted to live.
"O-Of, of course I want to live!" I exclaimed. My body replied far more meekly that I did, with a voice of a child, but it came out regardless and the Voice echoed its confirmation.
Confirmed. Responding to summoner's request… Successful.
"Summoned…? But I was just…"
Then a flame licked against my arm, interrupting my thoughts. I cried out, and my body tried to huddle against it… it hurt, damnit, it hurt all across my body… but I wanted to live, I wanted to continue on… !
Confirmed. Extra skills "Control Flame" and "Cancel Flame Attack"… successfully acquired.
Then the flames roared, and my body and my vision were consumed.
…
"You liar." my body said, summoning what little strength it had left. "You asked me if I wanted to live."
The words had come out before I even processed that I was still alive. I wouldn't be for long, though, because even the smallest twitch of my arm made me cry out. Fatigue and pain ran up and down my left side; it was covered in what should have been fatal burns… then a presence above me made me snap my head upwards, despite the pain it caused me, and I could only stare at the figure standing above me. Blue eyes, blond hair, wide, slitted eyes like a snake's. Skin pale enough that it looked as ashy gray in the void I was sitting in. I cowered, expecting some kind of reproach for what I just said, but he only grinned and laughed. Flame spun out of his hand, and I accepted my imminent fate, but instead of burning me it resolved itself into a human made of fire beside him.
"Ifrit…" I whispered, but my body still refused to respond.
The demon never acknowledged me. Instead, he just gave the demon an almost casual order over his shoulder as he walked away.
"I'm giving you a body. Use it well."
Then the figure collapsed into flame and flowed into me, scorching my heart just as much as my skin. My limbs began to go numb. It was never mine to begin with, but my body was being snatched away from me.
"I-I don't want to die!" I screamed, terrified for my life. "But I-I can't… I still want to be me!"
Confirmed. Possession by Ifrit… successful. Furthermore, unique skill "Deviant"… successfully acquired.
Then things began to spiral out of my grip again.
…
My body was out of my control.
The demon towered above me, even sitting in his so-called throne… the spirit held control over me, enough so that all I could do was sit and watch what it did with my hands and mouth through eyes that should have been my own. A strange bird-man burst into the room; the demon looked to me, called me something, someone, but no sound came out of his mouth. Then against my will, my body moved, even as the bird-man's hands began to glow. Something about his voice irritated me, and before I knew it, I had lashed out - all of the feathers he used to attack me had been incinerated, and moments later the bird-man himself was gone. Reduced to ash. A deep sense of satisfaction filled my body, and it terrified me… and then the terror was gone, reduced to nothing. The guilt from killing, gone. I should have felt it, could have felt it, but… I was being kept from feeling it. A mercy, perhaps, in the end.
Then the demon lord asked for my name, and I gave it.
"Shizu… e."
He frowned, my own hesitation making the foreign word sounding silted and awkward on his lips - 'Shizu-eh'. No, from now on, he ordered, I would call myself Shizu.
"T-That's… that's not my name, though… I'm not Shizu…"
…
Pirino, the first friend I had ever had, was playing with a baby wind fox, and she smiled as she offered it up for me to hold. But as I touched it, ash to spread out from the point of contact. It flowed down through the fox, into my friend's hand, and across her entire body. Soon, they were floating on the wind, and I was looking down at my flaming hand, despair boiling up inside of me only to be pushed back down again…
"I-I'm not… this isn't me…"
…
Despite everything I had done to serve him, I was no real loss in the demon lord's eyes. I knew that I didn't have a chance of winning against the Hero that was pursuing him, but I wanted to fight her until the very end regardless. It was the least I could do for her, the only price I could pay for being defiant enough to live as what I was. As I fought I should have been afraid for my life; the strikes I had starved to perfect were almost carelessly parried away. But as always, the spirit's rage surpassed my fear, and yet even when his flames enveloped my body she didn't even break a sweat. When both he and I collapsed from exhaustion, she smiled and took my hands in her own. Despite what I was, I couldn't find anything but peace and compassion in the hero's smile.
"It's okay, now." she said as she brushed a lock of pink hair away from her eye; the only 'damage' I had managed to do. "I'm going to help. You don't have to suffer through this anymore."
The hero gifted me the mask that she had worn up until then, and when she put it on me I found that I could move my own body again. The burns that Ifrit had kept stamped onto my body faded, and all of the emotions that had been suppressed up until then came rushing out like a tidal wave. The burning hate I had for this world, the shame of utterly incinerating my first friend; I couldn't even comprehend them all… but she held me until I could compose myself enough to stop shaking.
…
We traveled together, after that.
After so long without them, I didn't understand all of the emotions that had flooded back to me. Happiness, sadness, jealousy… I understood fear, though, and because of it all I was constantly by the hero's side, too terrified of it all to speak to anyone besides her. Then just before she started one of her quests, one of the men asked if it wasn't a good idea for me to stay behind - apparently, this mission would be dangerous. She paused for a moment, and then nodded slightly, and renewed fear rushed through my heart as she did. But then her smile banished it all away like it always did, and I promised her I would do my best to stay strong until she returned.
While she was away, I studied and learned - basic education like arithmetic, the political landscape of the world, and most importantly, magic. Through that I learned how to channel a portion of Ifrit's power as my own, and in time, the hero accepted me as a bona fide partner. I was in tears when she spoke of the idea, so proud of the fact that I had finally managed to repay my debt towards her… that she finally recognized who I was.
We worked together for years after that, but eventually, she told me that her next journey had to be alone. I myself hadn't intended to stay with her forever, but my heart still shattered as she vanished. Some part of me screamed to follow her, to make her accept the fact that I was human, and that I deserved to live just as much as she did, but that kind of selfish nonsense was exactly the reason why I knew I couldn't.
So I turned my back and began to follow my own path, instead. This world was a feral, untamed one, and without a system to encourage cooperation between the 'adventurers' and the actual government, all humanity could do was expand to the places that their knights could physically defend. People who lived within the brick-and-mortar walls prospered, while the ones outside or even along the edges were quickly exploited and abused. Just like the Hero that had saved me, I wanted to protect them, so I worked as hard as I could to accomplish that.
And somewhere along that path, people started calling me a hero, as well.
…
The kingdom of Blumund had declared a national emergency.
A calamity-class creature, a dragon, was on its way to attack one of their outlying towns - and while their armies were capable of turning away any normal calamity, an actual dragon was different. No weapon short of a magisteel blade wielded by a champion could even dent such a creature's scales, and I barely made scratch myself.
My only choice was to draw upon the full extent of Ifrit's power.
When I did, I could walk through even dragonfire without any issue at all. A falling beam was sliced through with barely even a thought, and in moments I was staring at the creature itself. Searing, white-hot chains came out of my left hand, binding the creature in place, and even hotter fire poured out of my right. The creature was incinerated in moments, and when it was gone I willed the fire it had left behind to dispel itself, but the damage had already been done. Every time I defeated a creature like this, all I could see was what it left behind.
I sighed and did what little I could to help the survivors, as I always did.
It was always never enough.
…
The battle against the dragon had ended up leaving me in a coma for a week. I hadn't noticed it until then, but my grip on Ifrit was weakening. He had more than enough magic for me to draw on, enough for me to stay physically sixteen despite being nearly sixty years old at that point, but that was beginning to work against me. Every time I drew on that power, the pipe that I did it through it got a few more cracks. And the second it burst, it would spell catastrophe for everyone around me - despite my physical age, it seemed like I only had so much vitality to draw on.
So I retired from being an adventurer. After speaking to the guildmaster Heinz, I made my way to the kingdom of Inglesia and passed my skills down to the next generation of defenders; Yuuki Kagurazaka, a bright, optimistic young man, and the exact opposite, Hinata Sakaguchi, a woman who seemed to take all of the world's darkness into herself. Both of them learned with frightening speed; within a month Hinata believed that she had learned everything I could teach her and parted ways with me. Yuuki quickly reformed the now-worldwide Society of Adventurers, and under his guidance they organized and standardized every human nation's monster-slaying duties. A few years after that, Hinata had risen to a lead position within the church, and Yuuki's Society - now called the Free Union - had drastically reduced monster-related deaths worldwide. Directly because of the two of them, humanity was safer and more comfortable than ever before. I was out of contact with Hinata at that point, but Yuuki brushed all of his accomplishments off, saying that he was just mimicking something that he had learned from a 'video game'; a visual, auditory storybook. He was an otherworlder like me, and from him I learned that not only had my hometown survived the war, but it had prospered into a land where children could be as carefree as he was. Every time he spoke of these 'video games', his passion couldn't help but make me smile.
Time passed, and this world continued to summon more and more children; in their own right they were all incredibly powerful, but as none of them could become the one Great Hero that would save all of humanity, they were tossed aside as failures. Yuuki's school took them in and I gave them what happiness I could, but we all knew of the ticking bombs in their hearts. I spent hours upon hours trying to find a solution, trying to find some way to save them, until eventually it was too much to bear. I wasn't sure if it was Ifrit or if it was me, but when my red vision returned to normal the library table cleaved into two smoking halves. I was beginning to fray, like a candle burning at both ends. It wasn't safe for me to be around these children anymore; it wasn't even a good idea for me to be around civilization as a whole. If I collapsed in the middle of the street, and the spirit inside of me was released, I would be just as guilty of destruction as the monsters that endlessly clamored at their borders were. I couldn't have been more proud of any of the children I had taught, and it was with a heavy heart that I told Yuuki of my plans and headed out to confront the demon lord that summoned me here; my final wish was for him to at least acknowledge that I had existed.
As I stood on a hill outside of the capital, I wondered if the hero's heart had ever been as heavy as mine was at that moment.
…
But yet, as fate would have it, I wasn't quite done with my teaching just yet - I ran into another otherworlder in the streets of Blumund. I had sensed her aura from a half a block away, and when I saw her on her knees in the middle of the road I almost left before she could notice me. Her hair, her voice, nearly everything about her reminded me of my erstwhile mentor… but yet some part of me couldn't just abandon her. She was extremely new, without even Magic Sense on her skill list, and evidently she wasn't Japanese like Yuuki or Hinata given her reaction to the language. So I directed her attention to a small flame in my hand and let her understand the world around her, then handed her off to Heinz when she heard of the summoners and said she wanted to join the adventurer's guild.
I smirked as I watched her wield magic for the first time. It was always the same with otherworlders, reincarnated or summoned. Through them, I could appreciate it, but for myself… I wished I could be as excited as they were, as excited as she was, but magic had brought too much pain for me to feel the same. And given by the sleepy grin she had plastered across her face when she passed by me after her test, she didn't truly understand what she wielded.
As it turned out, the party that she would be joining was heading the same route I was, and on a whim I decided to travel alongside them for a while. The sheer excitement the girl showed when we began our journey was infectious, and for once I didn't have to force myself to smile as I watched her wonder at the world around her. She couldn't change my mind, not after eighty years of seeing the exact opposite, but… it was nice, seeing someone that wasn't as jaded as I was. Then it all came to a head she was experimenting with her magic and realized that it could be used for something other than deception and destruction - it could be used to make something beautiful.
… Well, perhaps 'beautiful' wasn't exactly the correct word to describe all the noise we all made that night.
But still, across my entire life, I had only ever met one person who had seen magic in the same way, and thinking of her brought enough happiness to make me fail to notice Ifrit stirring inside of me. Then when the fighter had disturbed the nest of ants, and I was forced to intervene… that was it. The pipe had cracked. My vitality was spent; for all intents and purposes that was the end of my life right then and there. Tears dribbled out of my eyes and turned to steam as Ifrit surged. Regardless of how powerful she was, there was no hope that she could withstand the fire demon… yet again, I would be ending the life of a person I was beginning to call a friend…
…
I was clinging to a ball of stars with my entire body, and slowly, I relaxed and let it drift out in front of me.
"I-I see…" I whispered. "I-I'm sorry, Shizue. I never… I just…"
But I stopped myself. There wasn't any excuse I could give, any explanation I could use to justify myself. I had been, was, a child… someone completely blind to the tragedies that happened every day in this world. The fact that magic existed was exciting, beyond exciting, but the fact that it could be used for such horrible things… I-I didn't know what to think about it. I couldn't process it…
…
… but yet, at the same time, it didn't have to be used for that, right?
I wasn't blind anymore; for a few moments, I had been Shizue, and because of that I was perfectly aware of all of the horrors that magic had wrought. But she herself had said how happy my little music improv had made her, and… well, it wasn't hard to keep doing things like that. So maybe things didn't have to be as bad as they had been for her. Not anymore.
I had enough power to do that, at least.
Smiling softly, now, I turned back to the orb that I held in my hands. Shizue had done so much across her entire life… some part of me wished that there was something I could do, something that would give her a chance at a better life, let her start it all over again… and in this world of magic and monsters, it might not be entirely out of the question. But regardless of whether or not it was possible, I knew it wasn't the right thing to do. She had lived a long life, and had an incredible journey. Others had helped her, some quite a bit, but in the end, it was her own will that had made her into the person she became.
And it was with that exact same will that she was telling me to let her go.
If I had went with my plan going into this, it might have extended her life a little bit longer. But with what I had learned, I wasn't about to do that to her. I wasn't about to keep her in the world she hated any longer. I couldn't. Instead, the best thing I could do was just… let her go.
So I let the ball begin to drift away from me. She seemed to hesitate, but I reassured her that everything was okay. That there was nothing she needed to worry about anymore, and that she had done great… and as soon as I said that, motes of light began to shed themselves off of the sphere, and I watched them fade into the distance like lanterns until it was just me floating in whatever void I was in.
I sighed. She hated this world enough that she didn't even want to be buried in it. And while I was sure her life had ended, I didn't know if her soul was just going to reincarnate here like I did, or if it was going to truly pass on, and I didn't know if I would end up taking control of her body or if I would go back to how I was… then before I could think about any answers, my world went topsy-turvy. Water began to rush in from all around me, then it was filling my vision and tossing me to and fro, and then it receded and I was stumbling onto my own two legs again, trying to protect my eyes from the sun.
"Emily!" a voice exclaimed, and then hesitated. "… No, Shizu?… Uh, both?"
When my vision cleared I could see a neck in front of me, though I flinched as soon as I realized that it was Elen's.
"Elen?!" I looked up and down her frame; before I had been eye-level with her, if not a bit taller, but now it looked like she suddenly had a dramatic growth spurt. "Wha… how…"
"It's gonna take a little while to explain." an unfamiliar voice chimed in, sounding like it came all the way from the ground. When I looked down, I scoffed a bit at the blue slime that was sitting there, but that quickly changed to staring as it turned to 'face' me and extended out a noodly appendage.
"Rimuru Tempest. Nice to meet you, Emily."
Last edited: Jul 28, 2019
Chapter 9"U-Uh, Emily Rose." I replied, and nervously returned the tentacle-shake. Despite his blobby, featureless shape, the creature almost seemed to pout.
"I'm not a bad slime, you know."
That line made me blink, then grin. I didn't remember the game myself, but one of the children I had, taught… then Elen caught me as the expression turned into a stumble, and I put a hand to my head as strange memories bubbled to the surface.
"Ugh… what is this…"
The slime titled it's head… or body, really. "Whatever it is, you look like you should get some rest first. Hey, Ranga!"
Then like something out of Naruto, a wolf the size of a horse formed out of his shadow. A very distinct star-shaped pattern of darker fur grew out of his forehead and stretched all the way down to his eyes, and a horn came out from the center of it like he was a unicorn. "Yessir!"
All four of us gasped as we heard him 'talk' - or maybe 'think' was more accurate. It felt the same as using Magic Sense to translate the will behind the words, except he wasn't actually speaking any words.
"I've never seen a direwolf like that…" Gido mumbled, and the wolf turned it's gaze onto him, almost offended.
"That is because I am not a mere direwolf. Lord Rimuru has evolved my pack and I into tempest wolves."
"… A slime evolved a direwolf?" Elen mumbled as she looked between the two.
"He is far more powerful than his form may suggest." the wolf continued, and then turned to the slime. "How may I be of assistance, master?"
"Would you mind giving Emily here a ride? I think this whole thing took a lot out of her."
The wolf turned towards me, and I shivered a bit as he gave me a once-over. Just like with Elen, I had to look up to meet his gaze… did I shrink again, or something…? I couldn't give too much of a protest as I was helped up onto the creature's back, and I practically collapsed into his fur once I was on. It was so soft… but I looked out over the clearing, something made my heart begin to race. I fumbled back up with a hand over my chest, and would've fallen off of the wolf if he didn't correct himself.
"W-Where's… Ifrit, my mask… I can't…"
Then a pseudopod wrapped around the latter rose up from the ground, and I snatched it out of it's grip. I held it close to my chest, then let out a deep sigh as I fell into the direwolf fur again.
"Our village isn't too far from here." the slime continued. "You guys can rest up once we get there."
The three adventurers just nodded and followed as he hopped along. They weren't quite as out of it as I was, but they must've been just as confused as I was… I don't know what it was, but something about him made me trust the slime, and I sighed again and forced myself to close my eyes and relax as we set off. Then when I opened my eyes again, I was laying on a futon-like mattress in the corner of a large tent. A wrought-iron furnace was in the center, and afternoon light came in from a sunroof above me. A few odds and ends were laid around from there, like a nightstand, but there wasn't much. Confused and disoriented, I hoisted myself upwards, and almost immediately had a very concerned Elen in my face.
"Emily! You're awake!"
"Elen… you're okay. I'm so glad…" I mutter back, then wince and clutch my head. It felt like it was being torn in half. "Ugh… what happened? The last thing I remember was jumping into Ifrit…"
She nodded eagerly. "He just froze after you did that. But we still couldn't get close to him, and I didn't want to risk waking him up by attacking him… then this guy showed up." She gestured to the slime that was sitting in her lap. He looked like he was enjoying the position way too much. "He asked what was going on, we explained things, and then he just kind of… walked up and ate him."
"… You, ate him."
"I'm a slime!" he exclaimed. "It's what I do."
"You also talk, which is definitely not what a slime is supposed to…" Then I shook my head. Honestly, talking slimes were one of the least weird things to happen to me this week. "… okay, fine, you ate him. And then what happened?"
"Well, since you were inside him, I separated him off from you and then… spat you back up."
"You spat me back up."
My confusion and bit of disgust must've been obvious, because he quickly shook his head. Or his entire body, rather. "It's more complicated than that, but… yeah. Then we introduced ourselves, I made a joke, you stumbled and then passed out on top of Ranga and woke up here."
Something wasn't adding up. It felt like the whole thing had taken… hours, at the absolute least. A lifetime, if that wasn't too abstract. "How long did this whole thing take? You arriving, you… eating, Ifrit, me being… spat back up…"
"Um, maybe about ten minutes or so?" Elen said with a concerned look.
"… T-Ten minutes?" My jaw dropped, and I almost fell back into the bed. "T-There's… there's no way…"
Throughout the whole conversation, it felt like the slime had been staring straight into my soul. Then he nodded slightly, as if talking to someone, and hopped out of Elen's lap and onto the bed. "I think I know what happened. Can you check your skills for me?"
I nodded. Everything was as it should've been; Control Flame, Lightning Transformation, Cancel Flame Attack, Guardian Angel, Deviant, Explosive… Flame… then I froze. "Deviant was… it was Shizue's skill. What…?"
The slime nodded. "I think the reason why Ifrit froze out here was because it turned into a mental fight - both you and him were fighting over Shizue. Thankfully, your Guardian Angel let you win that, and you were in the process of taking Ifrit's place when the whole thing just stopped."
All of it started to come back to me as he explained. "… It stopped because I realized that she wouldn't want it. Didn't want it." I muttered as much to myself as to the two people in the room. It felt like I had no control over the words coming out of my mouth. "She was… tired, I think. Nearly eighty, despite what her body looked like, and it was her time to go. That's what made her lose control of Ifrit to begin with. I might've been able to extend things, maybe, but… it was just her time to go. She wanted it." Then I sighed. "I wish I could've done something more than just let her pass on. I had no way to know if she was going to reincarnate, or what would happen to… her…"
Then I stopped. Something about my own body had been feeling off ever since I woke up, and as I looked down at myself, concern slowly began to grow across my face.
"Wait, where did my…?"
"I think body mass was split right down the middle." The slime explained. "Some kind of interaction between your Guardian Angel and her Deviant let you include her physical form in the merging process, and part of it was lost when you let her pass on instead. Then it was resolved as you losing a couple of years, rather than outright shrinking. My guess is, you're about twelve or thirteen now."
"Twelve or thirteen?!"
"I-It's not all that bad!" Elen quickly exclaimed. "You look really cute!"
"I don't want to be cute!" I countered, whipping my head over to her. "I was already young enough, I… !" Then I noticed the red, irritated streaks that ran along the my left side. The whole left of my face felt a bit tighter and rougher than it should've, too. "… what?"
"Jumping into a literal fire elemental isn't gonna leave you spotless." the slime explained. "And Shizue had burns as well, right?"
"… She did, but…" I sighed, and dropped my hand to my side. "She's really gone, then."
He nodded. "Yeah. She's really gone."
The tent was filled with awkward silence for a long moment, until Elen finally spoke up. "It sounds like you did a good thing, Emily. If she wanted to pass on, then… she wanted to pass on. Eighty years is a long time. I really can't believe she was the Conqueror of Flames after all…"
I tried to give her a smile. "I just wish I could've done more than let her pass on. S-She… she hated this world. Not the people that endured it, but the world itself… there's no way to guarantee that she isn't just going to reincarnate into it like I did."
The slime turned to me, suddenly interested, then something made him hesitate and look off to the side instead. "… So, how long are you folks going to be staying here?"
"O-Oh! Well, we don't want to impose, you're just setting things up, so…"
"Wait, just setting things up?"
The slime hopped back down onto the ground. "Yeah. We're making kind of a village for ourselves. Do you wanna see? Honestly, I'm pretty proud of what we've gotten so far." It felt like he was trying to distract us, but I couldn't say anything beyond that.
"Sure, I guess." I carefully swung my legs out of the bed, then winced as they hit the ground. Then I blinked, and wiggled the toes that were inside of the oddly-pointy boot. My whole left side felt sore, in a way that I hadn't felt in weeks… I quickly pulled off one of my gloves, and saw that the hand underneath wasn't ghostly blue like before. Instead it was just a completely regular human hand. "Am I…?"
"Oh, yeah, you're a regular human now." The slime said, and then hummed. "Or… well, a spirit possessing a human body. Or something." Then he stared at me again. "… I'm not quite sure."
I nodded, still a bit disconcerted at the staring. "Well, it's nice to be back… though that means I'll have to eat and sleep again."
"We can pick up some extra food for you before we leave, Emily!" Elen assured me as she held the tent flap open, though I didn't get very far beyond that as I stepped out into a massive construction site. All I could do was just look on in awe, all the way down the dusty clearing… or, well, it was more than just a clearing. It had to be at least a mile long or so, and probably a quarter that wide. And across that entire space, hundreds of green-skinned humanoids were digging trenches, carrying dirt and rocks or wood and stone, and even laying what looked like concrete.
I was at a loss for words, really. "This is… incredible." I said to the slime. It was hard to believe that a foot-diameter ball of goo could do something like this. "You organized all of this?"
He nodded. "Well, sort of. The dwarves've done most of the actual work, though."
"Dwarves?!" Well damn, if legit dwarves were involved, no wonder it seemed to be going so steadily.
"Yeah! You wanna meet them?"
"Y-Yeah! I've always wanted to learn at least a bit of blacksmithing…"
I swear he was grinning at my reactions to the whole setup he led us down what was to be the main street. And on top of that, each and every one of the humanoids seemed to stop what they were doing to stare at me as we walked. All of the attention was making me uncomfortable… I wasn't naked or anything (in fact, I seemed to be wearing a fusion of my outfit and Shizue's, even adjusted for my size), then just as I was about to ask what was going on the slime perked up and turned back towards me.
"Oh, right! Emily, can you suppress your aura?"
"… My what?"
"Your…" Then he stopped. "Ah, right. You're still pretty new… you have Magic Sense, right? Focus that on yourself than on your environment."
"Okay…"
Frowning, I tried to focus my attention on the magicules surrounding me. The first thing I noticed was that I could see myself with it, like playing a third-person game; it was disorienting enough that I need to stop moving and close my eyes. If I didn't, I was going to fall flat on my face… and it was actually a pretty cute face, all things considered. The burn scar wasn't gruesome at all, and it was just the right mix of Asian and American. Not exactly Shizue's, but at the same time certainly not the one I had before. Finally, my hair was still entirely pink, of course.
"I really did merge with her, didn't I…" I muttered, then zoomed out a little bit and gasped at the sight - my entire body was covered in an aura of blaring, prismatic light that far exceeded the slime's or even Elen's. It was a bit embarrassing, honestly. "… uh, h-how do I…?"
"Just think about it. Push it back in, tell it to stop."
I tried to imagine turning off some kind of valve, or really doing anything to seal the leak, and… shockingly, that worked. Apparently it really was that easy.
"Thanks." the slime replied as he hopped along. "Sorry, monsters are a lot more sensitive to aura and power levels than humans are. If you walk around like that, you'll all send 'em running."
I just frowned. All of these pretty beefy-looking (and shirtless) elf-or-whatever guys were apparently nervous about a… twelve year old girl, but the literal slime was not? What does this guy have going on? He barely had anything when I used that aura sense at him, but… something about him was off. He seemed way too casual about this.
"Hey, you said your name was… Rimuru, right? What's your… thing?"
"My thing?"
"Why are you so… weird?" Damn, I really wasn't doing a good job at this. "N-Not weird, but, like… you're a talking slime. That's not normal."
"And you're a lightning spirit that can exist without a host. That isn't normal either."
That reveal made me stumble my next step. "How did you…?"
"Trade secret!" he replied, a bit too quickly, and before I could question him we arrived at what looked the smithing area. My thoughts were quickly pulled away as I saw a barrel-shaped man hammering away at a glowing piece of metal. Several of the green humanoids, as well as Cabal, were watching.
"Hey, Elen! And glad to see you up, Emily," the latter called as he saw us approaching, though he only looked up for a split second. "Man, watching the great Kaijin work is something else."
The dwarf threw one last blow at the piece it was working on, and then picked it up with a set of large tongs and dropped it into a vat of water. Once the steam was cleared and he took it out, asked a member of his audience to take it away, then turned back to our group.
"Oy, Rimuru. I've just about got those flashings done… though with how fast these guys are picking things up, I'm gonna be outta a job soon." he said.
"Nah, they aren't going to be reaching your level any time soon."
"Eh, y'never know… they're a quick study." he replied, then gave me a once-over. "Who's the lil' lady?"
"E-Emily." I quickly replied, and the man grinned as he stood and stuck a massive hand out for me to shake. I was a bit stunned by his appearance… he was about my height, despite my apparent age, and had even 'younger' proportions than I did. He was only about four heads tall, compared to a human's seven and a half.
"What's the matter? Never seen a dwarf before?"
"W-Well… no, actually."
"Emily's actually an otherworlder." Elen offered, and the man flinched. It caught the attention of the whole audience, too.
"An otherworlder…" he whispered, and the eagerly clasped my hand in mine. Despite his appearance, his grip didn't really seem all that strong. "I never thought I'd have the honor. How did you escape from your summoner?"
"She wasn't summoned; she was reincarnated." Cabal then corrected, which caused even more shock among the crowd and the dwarf.
"I didn't even think that kind of thing was even possible…" he muttered, and then looked over me again. "Incredible… you're something else, lil' lady."
Then Rimuru loudly cleared his throat before that could go any further. "Um, Kaijin, I wanted to ask whether or not the armor Garm was working on was done."
"Ah, I think so…" He looked over to a similar crowd centered around what looked like a leatherworking area. "Why y'ask?"
"Well, it's human-sized, right?"
The dwarf quickly picked up on what the slime was asking. "Aye. They are. They're just prototypes, though, nothing really to write home about."
"And even a prototype from you'd better than average…" Rimuru muttered, then looked up to Elen and Cabal. "Hey, you two. Would you like some new gear?"
The two cautiously agreed, and before too long both they and Gido were clad were clad in what they could only call masterwork armor - including even full plate for the tank.
"T-This'll be a family heirloom!" he exclaimed as he vigorously shook the dwarf's hand.
"I-It's really nothing! A prototype!"
"I've never felt anything this soft and durable before…" Elen muttered as she tugged at her new robes in disbelief.
"Hey, Emily."
Then Rimuru's voice came from behind me, and I turned around to see a tentacle waving me around to the back of the forge. Curious, I walked around only to see him holding Shizue's sword and mask.
"These are yours, right?"
"D-Definitely not! They're… well, they were Shizue's…" On a certain level, they did feel like they belonged to me, but I wasn't about to take a dead woman's gear without her permission.
Rimuru could see my hesitation, and he nodded. "Alright… they're good quality equipment, though. What do you want me to do with them?"
"… Give them to someone that can use 'em, I guess." At the same time, neither Shizue or I would want to see them go to waste.
"Then I'll hang onto them until they come around." he agreed, then wrapped his body around the equipment. At first I could see their outline inside of him, but that quickly faded until he was back to a normal slime. He really wasn't kidding about eating Ifrit. "What I really wanted to ask you, though, was if you could meet me here tonight. I want to talk to you about something."
I blinked. That definitely came out of left field… why did it feel like this was going to be like a talk with my boss? "Uh… sure?"
He nodded, and started to head back around. "Great. You mentioned wanting to learn smithing, right? Kaijin's a great teacher, if you're feeling up for it."
"… Uh, sure."
So for the rest of the day, I watched the dwarf work the forge, but it was really with my eyes only. The slime's request was hanging over too much of my head for me to really learn anything… everyone seemed to respect him, but he was just a slime, right? I mean, he was obviously charismatic, in a sort of 'common man' kind of way, but there had to be more to it than that. I kept thinking about the walk over to the forge… those workers looked almost scared of me, and yet Rimuru wasn't phased at all. Just what was he…?
It felt like it took forever for the sun to set, and Elen reminded me to make sure to get some sleep before she and the rest of the party went to bed. Then with the coast clear, I carefully made my way around to the back of the forge… and then froze as I saw a younger, blue-haired Shizue standing there, wearing an opposite outfit to mine.
"W-What…?"
She looked up at me, with tears in her eyes, and sighed. "Hey, Emily. So… you were talking about how worried you were on whether or not Shizue would just reincarnate… and I bet you were wondering whether the other half of her body went, too."
"… R-Rimuru?"
She - or he, rather - nodded, and then before my eyes he collapsed back into his slime form. "You were inside my stomach when you released her, so… I just ended up absorbing it all instead. It was enough to give me a human form, at least."
I just stared at him, speechless. "Does… w-what do you mean by 'absorbed'?"
"I mean…" Then he paused for a moment, and sighed. "I mean her soul has been incorporated into me, I guess. My Unique Skill Predator lets me absorb anything I 'eat' into myself."
"So then… she's truly gone, then." Before I knew it, I had fallen to my knees and wrapped my arms around the slime. "If you absorbed her, though… h-how much do you remember?"
"Not as much as you do, I think…" He sighed. "I have all of her desires, though."
I nodded. "Are you… doing okay?" Like my past life's, Shizue's memories were 'sealed off' from my own, but I could still remember them as clear as day. I couldn't imagine what it felt like to take the full brunt of all of the emotions inside of them.
"I'm fine enough." he muttered, and I just wrapped my arms tighter around him. "I might need some help figuring stuff out, though…"
"Of course. Still, though… thank you. I thought she would just reincarnate like I did…"
"… Like us." he replied, after a moment. "Emily, I'm an otherworlder too."
"Y-You are?" There was a beat, and then I quickly broke the hug and leaned against the brick wall of the forge instead. I had no idea who he actually was. "… W-Well, that explains a lot, then. I wondered why you weren't looking at me like all the other guys were…"
"The goblins, you mean."
"Those are goblins? I thought they were like, orcs!"
"Well, technically they're hobgoblins, but yeah. Apparently, giving a name to a monster causes them to evolve into a higher race."
I nodded. That was easy to wrap my head around, at least - you had your generic monsters, and then you had your unique ones with their own names and everything. It really was like we were in a video game, but I didn't want to bring up the topic… for all I knew, he had been like, 40 years old before. So instead, we just sat there for a while, looking up at the alien sky above us, before I finally spoke again.
"… So, how long have you been here? Something like this doesn't happen overnight."
"It's been about… four months, or so? But it kind of did all happen overnight… I was 'born' in a cave, wandered around there for about three of those months, and then immediately ran into a tribe of goblins. They asked me and my incredible magic power to defend them from a bunch of direwolves, and apparently I did that well enough to cow them into joining us, too. Then I headed to the dwarven kingdom to find someone that could make houses and clothes and stuff, got arrested, made a bunch of equipment, met a bunch of elves…"
He 'blinked', then looked at me, then promptly cleared his throat. I didn't even know slimes had throats.
"… ah, met a bunch of elves, got put on trial with Kaijin as an accompance to him punching out a noble… then you four showed up."
I grinned. "Sounds like it's been a hell of a ride so far."
"It really has…" he muttered back. "How long have you been here?"
"Only about a week. I popped into existence in a forest, ran into an adventurer and her brother, they took me to the nearest city, I got lost, I… ran into Shizue, got told about how powerful I was and that others are always looking for that kind of power, joined the adventurer's guild to try and put a stop to that, promptly blew up the training yard, and then headed off with Elen and her party to investigate here. Kinda crazy that we ran into eachother, huh? I didn't think I'd be meeting another…"
Then I froze.
"… holy shit, Shizue was an otherworlder, too. She… s-she was summoned. I-I never…"
Then I felt a pair of arms wrap around me in a hug, and I saw that Rimuru had transformed back into his human form again. "Yeah. I get it. You feel it too, right?"
"… t-to a certain extent."
"Demon Lord Leon…"
I shivered at the name. Blond hair, blue eyes, slitted pupils like a snake's… "D-Damnit. I've never outright hated a person before, but that man… i-if I see him again, I don't know what I'm going to do."
"That makes two of us." Then we fell into silence again, until Rimuru continued. "Well, from what I know, Demon Lords are pretty powerful. We're gonna need to train up if we want to take him on eventually."
"I-I don't know if I want to fight him, I just…"
"Emily. C'mon."
"Yeah, I know. It's not going to be anything else, is it." I wasn't the naive little kid that woke up here, anymore. "… so, in the meantime, what are you going to do with all this?" I gestured to the scaffolds and frames around us.
"I think… well, it'd be pretty cool if we could make a place where monsters and humans could live together. Start cutting down on some of that bias, y'know?"
"And if we did that, that'd probably mean that nobody would need to be summoned here anymore…" I muttered back, then scoffed. "I joined the guild 'cause I wanted to help people. I wanted to make sure nobody had to be summoned here against their will, anymore. I thought the best way to do that was to just kill monsters, but… I think this is a bit better."
"Just a bit?"
"Just a bit." I grinned back, then sighed. "Rimuru - that totally is not your real name, by the way - could I, maybe… join this village? Help out? I don't have a whole lot to offer, but-"
"-Done." he replied, and stuck out a hand for me to shake. "Emily, I was just about to ask you the same thing. Modern knowledge is enough, honestly, and in terms of magical oomph you might just be as powerful as I apparently am. You'd be a real asset."
"… Man, nobody ever told me anything like that back home." I muttered, then returned the handshake with a smile. "Deal."
Chapter 10"So… yeah. That's why I want to stay here."
The next morning, the four of us were having breakfast inside one of the tents that had been provided for us. I had gone to bed right after my conversation with Rimuru, and woke up thanks to the rising sun coming through the hole in the roof… I hadn't been a pure spirit long enough for me forget what feeling tired or hungry felt like, but it was really refreshing to go be able to go through it all again.
"It feels like we just got started, though…" Elen whined as she sipped her tea. "You're sure about this?"
"Yeah, I am. Elen, if monsters are dangerous enough to justify literally enslaving people to fight them, I want to do everything I can to fix that… plus it's going to be nice to actually build something like this. I never really got the opportunity to do that back home…
"You really think that this is going to go somewhere?" Cabal then asked.
"There's another outworlder at the helm, and he seems like he knows what he's doing, so… yeah, I think so."
"So that slime's another outworlder, huh… man, this is getting kind of crazy." he muttered. Then he shook his head and slung his pack over his shoulder as he stood. "Well, if you're sure you're not coming back, we should be heading out soon. I feel like this whole thing definitely satisfies 'look for anything suspicious'."
Elen leaned over and gave me a hug. "We'll be sure to visit whenever we can."
Gido just gave me a firm nod from across the table. For him, that was all that needed to be said, and I replied with a nod of my own.
Despite their cheerfulness, though, I couldn't help but feel a bit melancholic about the whole thing. I had only been alive for a week, and being with these guys had already completely changed my (new) life. It may not be showing much on the surface, but I couldn't doubt that at least some part of who I was was changed thanks to Shizue. And if that was how quickly things changed around here, where was I going to be in a month from now? Or even a year? It was almost scary to think about.
As we left the tent, I could see Rimuru leaving his own, and he smirked as he walked over to us. "Hey, are you guys going to just leave without even thanking me for your new gear?"
Then his grin got even wider as the adventurers sputtered at his human form.
"R-Rimuru?!"
"W-What?!"
"You look like a teeny-tiny Shizu, man!"
I just rolled my eyes and walked over to him. "No, he's just mimicking her… or, well, the part of her that he… oh, wow, that sounds kind of brutal when you put it like that…"
"Long story short, Emily let Shizue pass on, and since she was where she was I ended up absorbing her instead."
Elen blanched. "A-Absorbed, her?!"
"N-No, it's okay! She really hated this world, so she didn't even want to be buried in it! So really, it's for, the… best…"
Then the three adventure's piercing gazes shut me up, and Rimuru quickly stepped in.
"Look, she had a really hard life, okay? She was summoned here when she was just a kid…"
It took a half-hour for Rimuru to explain Shizue's whole story to them, but once he had, they finally seemed to accept what had happened.
"So then… she really is gone, isn't she?" Elen muttered as she looked between me and the slime. I hadn't spoken a word since I tried to justify it myself.
"Yeah. It really is for the best, though. In the end, she finally got the rest she deserved." he sighed.
I quietly nodded. "I very much appreciate all that you've done for me…"
All four of them blinked. "… Emily, did you say something?"
"No? I just nodded."
Rimuru gave me a suspicious look. "… Well, anyways, I never got the chance to ask you guys why you actually came here. Is a country looking to expand its territory or something?"
"I don't think so… we were trying to find evidence of anything suspicious." Elen explained. "Nobody could detect the seal that was holding back a big dragon in there."
"A big dragon, huh? Sounds scary."
"Which is why it's so important we figure out where he went!"
"And why it's so important we don't spread that kind of info around freely." Kabal countered as he shot Elen a glare, then sighed. "Well, he wasn't there last time we went in the cave, and I doubt he was there this time. And a monster village is enough to report on, I think."
"We're not gonna say anything bad, though!" Elen continued. "In fact, we'll put in a good word for you, Rimuru. If you need anything, you should come visit."
"Though it's a bit of a trip, compared to what we had back home." I said to Rimuru.
Then he gave me a nervous glance. "Uh, did you tell them…?"
"That you're an otherworlder? Yeah, she did. Is that a problem?"
"I'd… prefer to keep that a secret, if you don't mind." he muttered, looking visibly anxious. "Can't exactly go spreading that kind of stuff around, right?"
"… I guess not? I don't see the issue, but alright." Kabal shrugged. Then he and the rest of the party started to turn around, before they suddenly stopped. "Ah, right."
They shared a glance between one another, and bowed.
"""Thank you for everything, Shizu!"""
"W-Wait, wha-"
Then Elen rushed in to give the two of us a full-body hug. "I know we weren't together for very long, and that neither of you are her, but we did really enjoy the past week. And I think the Conqueror of Flames at least deserves a thank-you for everything she did."
Kabal clapped me on the back. "Maybe next time we meet up, you'll be able to start calling yourself the Conqueror of Storms, eh, Emily?"
"L-Let's not get that far ahead!"
"Eh, I dunno, she's gonna learn pretty fast living here…"
The absolutely betrayed look that I gave Rimuru that said all that needed to be said, though I did hold the hug with Elen for quite a while. She had been one of my first friends here… I felt awful about leaving her so soon, but I could just feel that this village was the place I was supposed to be. I was happy she didn't object to that.
Eventually, Kabal needed to nearly peel Elen off of me. "Okay, that's enough, that's enough. We're already running late. See you guys around, yeah?"
"Y-Yeah!"
"Thanks for the new gear, Rimuru! And take care of yourself, Emily!" Elen yelled over her shoulder as they started to walk off. "Don't forget to eat and sleep!"
"I wasn't a spirit for that long!" I yelled back. "Make sure that you guys stay out of trouble yourselves! Don't go poking any ant nests!"
She glanced at her two party members. "I can't guarantee that!"
I just smiled and rolled my eyes as they disappeared into the forest. "I really do hope they get home safe, without me or Shizue to protect them…"
"I don't think they would have accepted the mission if they couldn't handle it themselves." RImuru reassured me. "Honestly, I'm more worried about when they get back to town… I really hope they don't spread any rumors around."
"Rumors?"
He sighed. "This isn't Earth. I dunno how it is among the humans here, but with monsters, it's very much survival of the fittest." He nodded towards the goblins and wolves that were beginning to start their day. "If I didn't step in, the wolves would have completely annihilated the goblins. They're working well together now, but that's only because I told them to. And the only reason they follow that is because I'm apparently powerful enough to justify it. And I'm not dumb enough to think I'm anywhere near the top. So if someone overhears that I'm trying to carve out a place for these guys…"
"… then they might try to attack, and take back what they see as theirs, right?" I muttered, and frowned. I really wish I didn't know that.
"Yeah." He nodded. "Well, it can't be helped. Just be more careful in the future, okay?"
"Yeah… sorry, I'm still trying to get used to all this. I'm not a very cutthroat person to begin with, and everything's so different here…" Then I summoned up another field of electricity around my hand. "That's not even counting the magic."
As the sparks crackled with their synthetic whine, Rimuru eyed my hand curiously. "Hrm. Lightning's your whole thing, right? And you've only been here a week…" Then his eyes lit up, to a degree that I really didn't like. "Hey, Emily. Wanna have some fun?"
"… U-Uh, what do you mean?"
"Stay right here for a sec." Then he dashed off to forge, only to nearly shoot by me a few moments later. "Okay, follow me!"
His excitement was infectious, and before I knew it I was running alongside him. "Where?!"
"Somewhere where we won't cause any collateral damage!"
"Collateral damage?! What on earth-"
"-We aren't on Earth anymore!"
After a few moments of an outrun sprint we nearly skidded to a halt in front of the mouth of a large cave. I was barely out of breath. "I think this is where you guys were actually supposed to go." Rimuru said, then just waved me in as he pushed open the rusted, imposingly large doors. "C'mon, it's just inside."
The light quickly faded the further in we went, though, and before too long my arms were held out in front of me while I fumbled around in the dark. I could almost hear Rimuru roll his eyes.
"Y'know, when I woke up in here, I didn't even have eyes. Crawled around in the dark for a month." he said, from somewhere on my left. "You have Magic Sense, don't you?"
"That lets me see in the dark?"
"It should. Focus on what it's telling you, not what anything else is."
With a sigh, I turned all of my attention over to the skill, and my arms dropped as I slowly began to 'see' a fuzzy outline of everything in my environment. It wasn't nearly as good as actual vision, but it was enough for me to at least not be stumbling around. Rimuru, on the other hand, just continued to walk ahead like he owned the place.
"So how much deeper do we need to go?" I muttered as I followed closely behind the magical silhouette that he'd become.
"Not too much father, it's-"
Then he suddenly stopped, and even held an arm out for me to catch myself on. If he hadn't done that, I would have just walked off into a chasm that I couldn't even seen the bottom of.
"… I forgot about this. Hrm…" he muttered, and hummed in thought. After a moment, he nodded, and shot something out of his hand that let him swing across the gap. When he landed on the other side, he turned back to me. "Alright, Emily, here's your first test. See if you can jump across this."
I took a few steps back from the chasm instead. If my new sense wasn't betraying me, it was at least fifty feet wide. I could barely see the other edge. "Test? Y-You're kidding, right? I can't make that."
"I never kid." he replied, completely deadpan. "More seriously, I'll catch you if you don't make it, but I think you can. You're not the person that you were on Earth." Then he snickered. "That's all it is, Emily. A leap of faith."
I was really thankful that Guardian Angel made sure that I wasn't paralyzed by fear. I was just shaking, instead. "You really can't just carry me across?"
He just shrugged. "Are you really asking the 10-year-old to carry the 12-year-old?"
"Neither of us are actually those ages and you know it!"
"Sure, but I'm still a few centimeters shorter than you are."
I just groaned, figuring that this banter wouldn't get me anywhere, and took a few steps back to get a running start. "Y-You'll catch me, right?"
"I'll catch you if you don't make it." That, at least, was entirely sincere.
"… R-Right. Okay." To a certain extent, he was right about the fact that I wasn't who I had been. But I couldn't just forget it all, either. Who would that make me, if I did? Instead of trying to think up an answer, I just ran forward at a dead sprint, then pushed off as hard as I could when the ground vanished underneath my feet,
My first immediate thought was that it was physically impossible for me to have jumped that fast and that high. I was flying through the air, doing a long jump that would put an Olypmian to shame.
My second thought was that it still wasn't enough to carry me across the whole gap. As the opposite ledge rose above my chest I started to scream for my life, then I was wrapped up in thread, Rimuru threw me up onto solid ground, and the thread unwound to leave me on all fours, panting and gasping for breath.
"That was a good three-fourths." he nodded, and patted me on the back. "Nice job, honestly."
"W-What the fuck just happened."
"You're starting to believe." he replied, and then winked as he set off deeper into the cave. After just staring at the chasm I had almost crossed, and almost fell in, I caught back up to the slime, and he just grinned at me like nothing had ever happened as we walked. "So, you know what your skills do, right?"
"U-Uh, kinda?" I was still out of breath from that damn jump.
"Do you need me to give you a rundown?"
Something within me bristled. "How would you know what my skills do better than I do?!"
"Because my unique skill is an analyst kind of thing. It's really useful." he replied, not even blinking at my outburst.
"… Right, okay. Sorry, that was just… that really set me off, for some reason."
He just shrugged. "Your skills are a part of who you are. I guess I just said that I knew a hobby of yours better than you did… sorry. Uh, you don't mind, right?"
"… No, I don't, not really. I'm always looking to learn, I guess."
He nodded, then stared at me the way he had before. "Hrm… okay, so, from what I can tell your Guardian Angel has four parts. One is 'Self-Image Preservation' - that guarantees that your form and ego will at least somewhat respect the person you are. That's why you don't look entirely like Shizue."
The description seemed to fit in a slot in my head, and I nodded.
"Part two is called 'Integrity'. It's kind of the same as Self-Image Preservation, except it's a bit less abstract - it prevents your mental state or physical form from behaving in a way that you don't expect them to… or, it makes them always behave in the way you expect them to?" He hummed. "It's kind of confusing. As an example, you didn't complete that jump not because you weren't physically capable of it, but because you didn't think you could do it… which winds back around to making you not physically capable of it, because magic is a fundamental particle here."
"So what, it just debuffs me?" I wasn't liking the sound of this.
Rimuru shook his head. "No, it should work in the opposite direction too, and there's a pretty tight limit on both sides. You aren't going to collapse just because you're depressed, and you aren't going to be a shonen protagonist either. I don't think it's something you can directly control, it's more of a passive. Something that runs off of your subconscious."
I rolled my eyes. "So my abilities are still temperamental as shit. What else is new?"
"Well, on the bright side, it should mean that you're immune to mental effects? Pain included. Or at least ones you don't know about, or don't want to be affected by. I'm not as sure about ones you've been convinced will work on you…" He just gave me an awkward smile. "Three and four, Paladin and Defender EX, are on the opposite end of the spectrum. The former adds the Light attribute to any attacks or magic used to for the purpose of defending others, and the latter adds a more general boost to the same actions. So, overall, this skill makes you a defensive powerhouse as long as you can keep your head up."
"And you'd think that would be easier because it makes me stick to a good mood, but it also makes me stuck in a bad mood when I feel like I should be or when I want to be in a bad mood. It's literally mind over matter." I grumbled. "No different from how things were back on Earth."
"Then it sounds like you already know how to deal with it. Except now you can shoot lightning out of your hands, too." he replied, and gave me an honest smile, completely disarming me. "Moving on to your second unique, Helping Hand; from what I can tell it doesn't have any subskills, but it's just as powerful as Guardian Angel if I'm not extrapolating too much. Thanks to it, even if you have absolutely no idea about what you're doing, you'll still always be able to 'help' someone complete a task. I don't know how far 'help' or 'complete a task' can be stretched, but if it applies to defensive combat as well then that just makes you even stronger with it. And if it doesn't, you're still a jack-of-all-trades with more mundane things like research and crafting."
That skill I could get behind. Always being able to help, even if I didn't know what I was doing? That sounded fantastic.
"The rest of them… you should already know what they do, right? Including the ones you got from Shizue."
I nodded. Overall, I had inherited five new skills from her. That seemed like a lot, but most of them were passives or relatively useless to me.
[Cancel Flame Attack] - Provides immunity to damage from any flame-based attack.
[Control Flame] - Allows for the manipulation of flame.
[Explosive Flame] - Flame attacks can cause explosions, even without a physical source of fuel.
[Heat Wave] - Transform aura into blistering, physical heat.
The fifth one, Deviant, was where things got interesting. Apparently, it allowed for the direct manipulation of souls, at least in the context of skills and possession.
[Deviant] -
[Synthesize] - Combine two owned concepts or abilities into one owned concept or ability.
[Divide] - Separate one owned concept or ability into two or more owned concepts or abilities.
Just like before, my 'instinctive' description was helpful, but it wasn't exactly a barrel of exposition. Thanks to Shizue's memories, though, I had a pretty good idea of what the skill could and couldn't do - first and foremost, it didn't work on anything in the physical world. I wouldn't be slapping a keyboard and a guitar into a keytar or anything like that. Secondly, it had to be something that I owned; as in was a part of my 'soul' or otherwise in that same sense of possession. I could work with my own skills just fine, but manipulating others' was completely out of my reach. Thirdly, I could only ever have one copy of a skill, so if I merged a skill with something else and it wasn't an upgrade, I'd lose whatever those skills could originally do.
The whole thing got me thinking, though. The skill was what allowed Shizue to at least stay conscious, despite Ifrit trying to merge himself with her, so even though I had ended up doing the exact same thing, I figured it would work in reverse… but what would happen to my physical body if I did? And moreover, what would happen if I tried to possess someone else? Would I be able to manipulate all of their skills, too? And then when you took into account Self-Image Preservation… if it meant that I was 'always who I wanted to be', both physically and mentally, how would that work if I possessed someone and then merged with them? It was a scary thought.
"Ah, we're here." Rimuru then announced, and I looked up from my thoughts to see a massive cavern surrounding us. Glowing crystals provided enough light for me to see normally, and all I had for the sight was a grin.
"Oh, wow…" Yet again, I was reminded that this was a very different place from Earth. "This is amazing…"
Then when I turned back to Rimuru, there were two of him. One was eyeing a very motionless other, and when the former saw me staring at them his grin just got even wider.
"Apparently, Ifrit had a body double skill." he explained. "That clone works exactly like I do, so we can get some pretty good baselines from it." Then he nodded. "Okay. Punch it as hard as you can."
"P-Punch it?" With how emotionless it seemed, I didn't exactly feel guilty doing it, but still! If I could do a fortyish foot long jump now, how much stronger had I gotten over all? I'd never really thrown a serious punch back home… anxiously, I walked up to the clone and put my right foot forward.
"Okay, shift your weight onto the right," I muttered as I drew my arm back. "Wind up your left, throw all of your weight into it, and… punch!"
The blow landed straight in the clone's chest, and it was apparently enough to send it skidding back a foot or two.
"What the shit…" Then I turned around only to see Rimuru in the process of throwing a similar punch. I barely had a moment to exclaim my shock before it landed and knocked the wind out of me, and I skid all the way back to the clone as well.
"About what I expected…" Rimuru muttered, then looked back to me. "Sorry about that, but I wanted to make sure that you didn't tense up or anything. You're still good, right?"
I sputtered out a few coughs, then nodded. I didn't even think I'd gotten a bruise from that. "T-This is kind of crazy."
"So, moral of the story, unless you were a boxing champ you're a lot stronger than you were back on Earth. Even if Integrity is working against you at the moment. And I'm willing to bet that that extends to everything; stamina, reaction time, et cetera." he said. Then like a snake swallowing a mouse, something began to work it's way out of his arm until it was revealed to be a bag of what looked like ball bearings. He plucked one out and flicked it over to me.
"Now, let's move on to magic stuff… since you can use electricity pretty freely, do you think you can make a railgun?"
Chapter 11"A railgun? I guess that isn't impossible…" I muttered, deftly catching the ball bearing out of the air, and surprising myself with my reflexes. "Where did you even get these, anyways?"
"I made them!" he replied proudly.
"You made them."
"Analysis skill." he almost trilled, then took a step out of my firing line. "You know how a railgun works, right?"
"Uh, something something electricity, something something magnetism? I could look it up, back home…"
He paused for a moment, then sounded like he was reading something out of a textbook when he continued. "A railgun is the result of the massive acceleration that a charged particle inside of an electromagnetic field experiences."
"There's no way you actually memorized that. You're getting this from somewhere, aren't you?" But he didn't even flinch under my glare, and I just sighed instead. "Well, whatever. I apparently have a broken skill too, so fair's fair, I guess." Then I turned my attention back to the ball bearing. "I still don't know how to actually make a railgun, though."
"Normally, you'd set up a circuit between the ball bearing, the rails, and a power source. The rails'll produce a magnetic field, and that repels the projectile down their length." he said, then paused. "Wait, no, I can just…"
Suddenly, diagrams and equations were at the forefront of my mind, and I immediately shut them out and looked at the slime with horror written over my expression. "W-What the shit?!"
"Sorry, I should've warned you. That's telepathy, or to be more specific, Thought Communication. It's a pretty useful skill for stuff like this."
Frowning, I tried to push back on the connection with a 'Testing, testing, one two three'. It was even more abstract than Magic Sense's translation ability, enough so that it was genuinely difficult to send the distinct words rather than the concepts themselves, but Rimuru still gave me a thumbs up and I nodded. "Okay… try that again, then."
This time I didn't fight the flow of information. Once I got past the absolutely bizarre feeling of something directly intruding on my mind like that, it was actually pretty useful - even though I could recognize them as something distinct, it was still pretty easy to 'integrate' them into my own thought processes. It wouldn't be hard at all to turn use it in some kind of hivemind situation… I brushed that scary thought aside as I focused back on the railgun. Rimuru had given me even the exact formula for it, and from there it wasn't difficult at all to extrapolate what I needed to do.
"A particle of charge q moving with velocity v in an electric field E and a magnetic field B… electric field at x-prime is the result of the Coulomb force over the point charge q-prime, magnetic field across a wire is the magnetic constant over four pi times the path integral of the current times the differential length of the wire crossed with the displacement vector over…" Then I blinked, and looked back up at Rimuru. For a moment, I had a direct connection with whatever vast library of information he had in his head and was taking it all as my own. My jaw began to drop as I realized that it wasn't just 'not hard' to turn Thought Communication into a hivemind - it was trivially easy. "… what the actual shit. That's fucking terrifying."
He grinned. "But also kind of amazing, right?"
"… Y-Yeah, also kind of amazing." After a certain point it had gotten too overwhelming and too fast for me to keep track of, but if I could've… well, I didn't think I was capable of comprehending the possibilities. "God damn."
Shaking my head again, I turned back to the railgun. That literal infodump had given me everything I needed to make one, and unlike the conventional ones I wouldn't run into any degradation issues if I could just use the air itself as rails. But, that got me thinking even more. I knew that electromagnets were a thing - pieces of metal that became magnets thanks to the current that was running through them. Since I could manipulate said current so freely, couldn't I just induce that whenever and wherever I wanted, without relying on a complicated circuit to create it?
I had to test that out first, before I got ahead of myself.
"Hey, Rimuru, can I see another one of those ball bearings?" I asked him. When he handled it over, with a confused expression, I just held it inbetween my fingers and pushed a charge through it. Then while doing that, I held another one in my other hand and did the same thing with it. Instead of attracting one another, though, the two bearings just heated to red-hot in a flash, and I practically threw them across the cave as they did. Rimuru just let out a chuckle as I flapped my fingers around trying to cool them down.
"What exactly were you trying to do, Emily?"
"I was trying to make an electromagnet…" I muttered as I kicked the steaming bearings into a puddle of water. "It, uh, didn't work."
The slime raised an eyebrow. "You were trying to make an electromagnet by making the ball bearings melt."
"No, I was trying to polarize them by passing enough current through them!"
"That's not now…" he started to say, then his eyes sort of glazed over again, and after a moment he spoke far more confidently. "That's not how electromagnets are made. If you want to make an electromagnet, you need to wind a current around a metal, not through it. Like wrapping a wire around it. It's the magnetic field that polarizes them, not the electricity." He took a handful of ball bearings out of the bag, then sucked them into his hand and spat out two larger cylinders. "Try it on these."
I just stared at him as he dumped them into my hands. "Did you just…?"
"Analysis. Skill."
"That doesn't let you… ! Agh, fine, fine." It was probably better for me to just stop asking him how he did things… shaking my head, I used both Lightning Manipulation and Control Lightning to weave a small current around each cylinder. It made a pretty cool effect of wire-thin streams of blue plasma wrapping around them, and before I knew it they had slapped together inbetween my separated hands and dropped to the rock below. I tried to pull them apart while still maintaining the electricity, but found them too tight for even my new strength to do it.
"Damn… okay, what about this, then?"
Using that same principle, I reached out and created another coil of charge, this time around the air itself a few feet away from me. With Control Lightning, I could keep the bizarre, floating plasma spring up indefinitely, and I took a moment to just stare at it and grin. Then I pumped up the current until the metal began to turn, then slowly creep towards, then outright fly over to and perfectly align their poles to the new coil - one on each end. I giggled, and then lifted up the middle coil up with my mind… and the metal perfectly followed it.
"Oh my god, that is fucking amazing. I'm a friggin' metalbender."
"Eh, not quite yet." Rimuru chided. "You're just working the magnetism… hrm, can you make the coil tighter? Make that lightning as thin as you can?"
"As thin as I can…?" It felt like trying to squeeze pudding through a syringe, but slowly, I made the coil of plasma wind itself thinner and thinner until it had shrunk to just a blue glow in the air inbetween the two floating cylinders. Then the glow itself began to fade as I pushed down into what must've been the atomic level… streams of individual electrons wrapping themselves around and around whatever I wanted them to. Eventually I felt like I hit a brick wall, and as my hands began to shake I turned towards Rimuru, expecting some response, but he just stood there and watched. I held it until I felt like my brain was going to explode, and just before I hit that limit I heard the Voice echo in my head once again.
Confirmed. Extra skill [Control Magnetism] acquired.
The metal clattered to the ground as I collapsed, gasping for a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.
"Figured holding that would get you something." Rimuru said, and with a grin as wide as a dinner plate offered me a hand to pull me up and a shoulder to lean on as I recovered. "Congrats, Misaka."
"W-Who…?"
He stared at me, shocked. "You're American, right? Have you watched any anime?"
"Uh…" Scenes from crap like SAO and Attack on Titan came to mind. "… stuff you'd probably hate me for watching?"
"… I am going to make a television specifically to get you caught up. Actually, no, that gives me an idea. How much Japanese do you know?"
I was about to say none, but for some reason that didn't feel correct. Curious, I tried to swap out from English for my next sentence. "I'm not sure I know anything."
Of course, that was said in perfect Japanese, and Rimuru grinned. "You are completely incorrect, that was perfect."
"Wait, so I do know Japanese? W-When did I…?" Of course, nobody remembers when they first began to talk, but my few years of school came to mind: learning the differences between the kana, and drilling the first few kanji I was expected to learn. Then I froze, stunned. "Damn. That's seamless. Shizue's memories are my own, now, there's not… I-I can't feel a difference between hers and mine." Or more accurately, hers and earth!Emily's… I pushed off of Rimuru's shoulder to shakily stand on my own two feet again. "S-So, uh… railgun, right."
He just gave me an equally unstable smile as I continued.
With Control Magnetism now in my arsenal, I didn't have to manipulate electricity at all to create fields. It made it a lot easier and a lot more efficient to create strong ones, but just as Rimuru had implied, putting one over bare, nonmagnetic metal didn't do a thing. I had to turn it back into an electromagnet to get an effect, and when I did it just floated (or snapped) to the center of the field. I hummed, flipping the slug around in the air as I thought things through. If it was attracted to the center, then couldn't I just move the center? Or better yet, put a crazy strong field some distance away, let the slug shoot towards it, and then cut it off right as it reached the center. That would let it keep its momentum. With a grin, I focused my attention on a spot in the wall on the other end of the cavern. I created a weak field over it, almost like a crosshair, and held the metal in front of it… then I dialed up the field to eleven.
The slug flew out of my grip before I could even react, then impaled itself into the rock opposite the cavern with a crack of shattering stone.
Confirmed. Extra skill [Railgun] acquired.
Rimuru let out a low whistle as he eyed the damage that the impact made. "And that was with a completely unoptimized projectile. Imagine what'll happen when we get you some actual bullets… heck, maybe some magisteel ones'll be able to hold more of a charge."
For my part, I just shuddered as I imagined the damage this would do to living flesh. I didn't need to ask whether or not something like this was necessary, now, but I wished that things would never get to the point where I needed to use it.
After another moment, the slime nodded and continued. "Can you create the strongest field you can around yourself?"
I wasn't sure what that would do, but I just nodded and did so. Then for some reason, I felt quite a bit lighter while it was up, almost like I was walking on the moon.
Rimuru nearly giggled. "How many more can you put up?"
It wasn't difficult to see where he was going with this, and even though the aurora that was beginning to form was making me kind of nervous, I layered a few more fields over the existing one until I got to the point where I myself was floating in the middle of the air. Moving the fields up and down took little effort, and just like the metal cylinder my body moved along with them when I did.
Confirmed. Skill [Diamagnetic Levitation] acquired.
I slowly carried myself upwards until I was at double the height I was before, and grinned down at the slime. "Last I checked I'm not made of metal or anything. So why…" Then I trailed off as I looked at the skill's description. It had to do with all of the water I was made up of, apparently. "… Huh. Was that a thing, back home?"
"I dunno if anyone could create a field big enough and strong enough. But hey, it's not like we've already thrown the laws of physics out the window." Rimuru grinned back. "Let's move on to Shizue's skills, next. You got… three, right? Well, three skills and one resistance. And one unique."
"Control Flame, Explosive Flame, Heat Wave, and Deviant, yeah."
He nodded, slowly, no doubt downloading whatever kind of info he was allowed to access. "Okay… try using Deviant on Control Flame and Control Lightning."
Doing that gave me the new skill [Control Plasma], which sounded cool, but without the corresponding Transform skill I didn't think I was going to be throwing around XCOM-style plasma bolts anytime soon. I'm sure I could think of something that it could uniquely do, but for right now, that was just a nice compression - now I could control both fire and lightning with a single skill.
Next up was Explosive Flame and that old Resistance Combustion skill I got from the guild test. Doing that let me get [Explosive Lightning], which was… basically Shizue's ability to create explosions out of the blue, but now through my lightning rather than her flame. Of course, lightning still had to be involved with the whole thing, and I couldn't just make explosions whenever and wherever I wanted, but again, it was a nice utility to have.
Then we moved on to more temporary arrangements; I wasn't willing to permanently sacrifice skills like Lightning Transformation, but with Deviant, I could always fuse and separate them whenever I wanted. It took a fair amount of concentration to perform, so I wasn't going to be swapping things out in the middle of combat, but if I had a few minutes I could basically swap inbetween a few different loadouts. Since Heat Wave was basically Ifrit's 'surface of the sun' aura, combining that with Lightning Transformation gave me [Lightning Thorns], which caused small, taser-like jolts to lash out at anything in within a short range. As a caster it wouldn't be all that useful, and it couldn't discriminate between targets (thank goodness Rimuru had Resist Lightning), so it wasn't great for group combat. But if I decided to leap into solo combat, it could prove to be a serious advantage.
Deviant could also be used to easily mix together skills and regular magic without expending the skill, so on a whim I casted my Barrier with Railgun alongside it. The end result was a shield that blocked projectiles from one side, and accelerated any projectiles I threw into it from the other. It wasn't as strong as the traditional Railgun, but what it lost in strength it definitely got back in terms of area bombardment. Rimuru mused about a whole corp of archers with magnetically-accelerated projectiles, but that was far in the future, and while he was doing that I was amusing myself by tossing ball bearings into the shield and listening to them ping against the opposite wall.
"Man, it's like I'm Volt and Mag at the same time." I giggled, then blinked. That brought certain ideas to mind, but… again, I really really wasn't sure what would happen if I left this body - I still wasn't clear on how souls and all that stuff worked. Maybe further down the line I could experiment with that, but for now I was completely content with staying as a human… or whatever I was. With nothing else coming to mind, we decided to head back to the village, and disconcertingly floating with my new skill still felt more comfortable and natural than walking, just like it did when I was a pure spirit.
"Rimuru… can your analysis skill tell you what species I am?" I quietly asked him as we walked.
"Human, question mark." he replied after a moment, then shrugged. "I think your Guardian Angel is keeping me from getting a full picture. Just possessing a human body would be one thing, but outright merging with one… well, I don't know if that's ever been done before, but it shouldn't have left you as a pure human."
I frowned. By my own standards, yeah, I was already far greater than a human from back on Earth. I could shoot lightning out of my hands, fly, and control magnetic fields like friggin' Magneto. And that was after only an hour's experimentation, and it wasn't even counting my completely untrained physical capabilities. Here, though…
"-Don't worry about it too much, Emily." Rimuru commented as he saw my expression. Then he collapsed back down into slime form and continued to hop along. "I'm not exactly human either, and neither are any of the hobgobs."
"And that doesn't bother you?"
"… Not really? I mean, in that other world 'I' was a human, but here I'm a slime." he shrugged. "They're two different things for two different lives… though, now that you mention it, I guess the different set of instincts is a bit disconcerting, if I really think about it. I'm entirely comfortable with the thought of killing, I implicitly understand the power structure of monster society… though it's not actually all that different from back on Earth."
That made me chuckle. "God, isn't that right… if you don't mind me asking, what did you do? Back home, I mean."
"Eh, it wasn't all that special. I was just a manager for a general contractor."
I blinked, then my walk slowly ground to a halt. "… A manager? How old were you?"
"Like, thirty-seven?"
"Thirty-seven?!"
He went back into human form, seemingly just to give me a confused look. "Yeah? Is… that a problem?"
"N-No, it's just…" I eyed his body up and down. "You're comfortable with looking like that?"
He looked over himself, then shrugged again. "I guess? It doesn't really bother me. Technically, if we're going by physical age, I wouldn't be able to walk, and you'd probably still be in the hospital. You're not even a month old yet."
"I-I…"
That was a completely fair point, and it completely shut me up. I definitely wasn't human anymore, was I? And with Guardian Angel, it was completely up to me whether or not I wanted to look like that… well, no, it wasn't entirely up to me. It wasn't exactly like the skill granted me any kind of actual shapeshifting ability; I couldn't sprout cat ears or anything like that with a thought. But still, that combined with all of Rimuru's comments about how even he couldn't tell what I really was had me wondering for the entire way back to the village. Just what was I, and… when would I finally accept it?
Chapter 12Since there wasn't much of an organizational structure just yet, Rimuru had given me the rest of the day off… or more specifically, he told me that he had the construction of the village to be overseeing, and when I followed him over to one of the sites the terminology that was being thrown around made me realize that trying to help would probably get in the way more than it would actually help. The green-skinned hobgoblins kept a pretty fast pace, and they didn't have any spare time to teach or tell me anything that I could do. So, with the lack of computers and without much of a social circle, I was passing the time by floating a few hundred feet above the little clearing the village had made.
Even though I had gotten them less than an hour ago, just like any other skill they already felt as natural as using an arm or leg. Feeling the magnetic field supporting my body stopped any actual fear dead in its tracks, even though my stomach still dropped every time I looked down; even if there wasn't any fear, there was no small amount of awe - just being able to go this high under my own power made me feel like I was in some kind of dream. From this vantage point any one worker was the size of my finger, and I could see the entire layout of the village, including the basic farms that were beginning to be set up along the edges. It was a shame that Rimuru didn't seem to be able to fly like I could… then I blinked, and grinned as I opened up a Thought Communication channel just like he had.
"Hey, Rimuru, are you getting this?" Being able to see the whole layout of the village like this could be a serious help.
He replied instantly, though he sounded busy. "Yeah… I'll keep it in mind, Emily, thank you."
I got the impression of something 'downloading' the image, and then the channel was closed without a second thought.
"… Did he just do the magic equivalent of hanging up on me?" I muttered, then grinned and shook my head. It was funny how things translated over here, sometimes.
I couldn't be too upset at him. Just like me, it seemed like he just wanted to help, but despite how much work he was talking on he had made it very clear that he himself didn't know a whole lot about this world on our way out of the cave. While he had worked for a general contractor, and thus had an eye for the differences between quality and shoddy construction, all of the exact specifics of everything were being handled by his analysis skill and the dwarves. Then that would be distributed down to what I guess counted as his 'assistant managers', and from there all of the hobgob workers would each perform their tasks. And while magic, magic-built tools, and the workers' sheer dedication to the cause was making the process go by as quickly as building a modern village, there were also quite a few daily tasks that came from living in such a savage world - patrols, hunting, and things like that.
So all in all, I was really happy that I wasn't in Rimuru's place. Even though his voice sounded like a kid's, the way he talked made it pretty clear that he had experience in this kind of thing, and there was absolutely no way I could've been running things as well as he was… and honestly, just because of the sheer difference between our worlds, I'm not sure anyone here could have been doing this as well as he was.
Then I hummed as I watched the hogoblins work. Now that I was thinking about it, it was also kind of amazing that Shizue had just so happened to run into me in town. And then that Rimuru just so happened to be close enough to save us from Ifrit… reincarnations were rare enough, apparently, but reincarnating as a monster? That was unheard of, according to Elen. Then I reincarnated as a spirit so soon after… all of these coincidences lining up was really making me wonder if there was some greater force in play, here. I wasn't super religious, but while I didn't really care one way or another about 'fate' as a whole, saying that it was specific as 'every action is already decided for you' or that 'God has a plan for everyone' was a good way to get me seeing red. I had enough people telling me what I could and couldn't do back home, and I had been getting really tired of it… !
… thankfully, I stopped myself before I could get too pissed off. There was no point in it, and it would take time to tell if I had been brought here because of a 'great destiny' or similar crap like that. For now, I had all the time in the world to be myself, and said self grinned as she looked at the magic surrounding her. All Diamagnetic Levitation did was instantly create and maintain a magnetic field strong enough to suspend my body; it didn't necessarily give me 'flight' on its own. And while I could move the field with Control Magnetism and my body would follow it, that wasn't really natural enough to be considered flight either. It was more like the difference between a passenger jet pilot and a fighter pilot. It was easy enough to move myself up and down, left and right, forward and back, but anything beyond that would take some serious time to learn. If I practiced it for a couple of months, I probably could've have gotten it to the level of it feeling natural (and thus, skill-worthy)… but with Deviant in my kit, I could just slap the two together, couldn't I?
Doing so got me the extra skill [Magnetic Flight], and using it made me feel like I had had wings for my whole life, just like that.
I cut the field and shrieked in excitement as the ground rushed up to meet me, then hit it again just above the treetops and bolted back to my earlier height. Then I turned myself upside down, then again and again and again, watching the horizon toss and turn over and over and over. Magic Sense kept me from puking at the lack of a reference point, though the adrenaline didn't hurt either, and I'm pretty sure my screams could be heard across the entire village as I swooped and soared and drifted around like a godamn F16.
"Handles like a fuckin' dream!" I yelled, and sent Rimuru a grin. Then another idea occurred to me after a few minutes of flying, though I had to check in with Mr. Analyst to make sure that I wouldn't end up hurting myself.
'H-Hey… hey, Rimuru, what's the highest amount of g-force I can handle now?'
'Confirmed. An otherworlder-type human can withstand approximately ten g's of acceleration when said acceleration is applied instantaneously and parallel with the spine. However, if said acceleration is instead slowly increased to its peak over one-tenth of one second, maximum parallel acceleration increases to over forty g's.'
That wasn't Rimuru. In fact, whoever or whatever was talking sounded just like the Voice. I blinked and checked the connection, but I had sent that to the right person, so I figured that it couldn't be anything else but the analysis skill he was talking about. I had no idea that it amounted to an actual AI in his head….no friggin' wonder he knew so much.
'So… what I'm hearing is that I can handle forty Gs as long as I ramp up to that point, right? What's the acceleration of my railgun?'
'The acceleration experienced by a projectile launched by Emily Rose's [Railgun] is approximately thirty thousand g's.'
I paled. '… So it would be a bad idea to launch myself using that skill.'
'Yes.'
In hindsight, it should've been obvious, but I just didn't consider the sheer acceleration that a railgun shell would experience. I was really, really glad I asked… it still sounded like I could handle quite a bit, though. I made sure to send off a message to Rimuru telling him that I was going off to explore, then I grinned as I prepped a fairly weak field to interact with the one I was using to fly.
"Launch!" I yelled, then shrieked as the acceleration hit. There was no roar of jet engine or even a car engine; I was just stationary one moment then speeding fast enough to turn the ground into a green blur the next. It was exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time; I had absolutely no control over where I was going and didn't really have much of an idea of where I was going, all I knew was that I was definitely getting there fast. I wanted to stick my arms out like friggin' Superman, but at the speed I was going I felt like there was a pretty good chance that they'd just snap off. The feeling was probably the same as speeding down a desert road at a hundred miles an hour, then all of that was suddenly interrupted as a golden dot appeared on the horizon and quickly turned into a smear. Then it was filling my vision, I felt myself smack against something feathery, and with my concentration lost the field that was keeping me free of gravity dropped and all I could think of doing was bracing myself for impact (and screaming) as I fell into and then through the canopy. More than a few thick branches broke against me as I fell, until a trunk finally took the rest of my momentum with a thunk that bounced around in my head for the whole time it took me to slide to the ground.
The whole thing should've been enough to break a few bones on a human, at the very least. For me, though, all it only took a few moments for my vision to clear, and a few more moments for me to lurch back onto my feet and look over myself. There were a few cuts and scrapes along my arms, some of them deep enough to draw blood, and they'd probably be covered in bruises tomorrow morning. But I could still keep my balance, and as far as I could tell I didn't have any kind of concussion or anything.
"Fuckin' incredible…" I muttered, then collapsed back against the trunk of the tree and giggled. "Tough as hell and cute as hell, I can't ask for much more…"
I winced slightly as I thunked my head against the trunk again to stare up at the hole in the canopy I'd made. I felt a bit bad, causing all that destruction, but it'd grow back, right? And it gave me a nice exit point for when I left, after I caught my breath… then right as I said that, the space was promptly filled with a gigantic, golden-yellow bird. It was the size of a small car, and had a tail that reminded me of a dolphin's. Or one of those styrofoam gliders. It glared at me as it held one of its legs a bit higher than the other, like it had been injured somehow.
'Human. What is your name?' They spoke with a feminine, very regal-sounding 'voice', and it was done entirely through Thought Communication.
'Uh… E-Emily.' Did I run into that?
'….I see.' She bowed her owl-like head slightly, almost like she was disappointed somehow. Then she caught me staring at her, and quickly regained her composure. "Have you not seen a thunderbird such as myself before? It's quite rude to stare." she asked, almost offended.
'A-Absolutely not, no… I-I mean, no, I've never seen a thunderbird like you before. I just woke up here a week ago…'
'You woke up here a week ago… and despite your appearance, you carry yourself like an adult…' she muttered. Then she was silent for a few moments. '… Pardon me for asking, but would you happen to be an otherworlder?' When I nodded, she carefully maneuvered her way through the canopy to land next to me, then bowed. Somehow, she still managed to seem regal while doing it. 'My village is in dire need of aid, if one such as yourself would deign to assist them.'
I blinked. There were several things off about that sentence, but the one that caught my attention the most was the first part. 'Your village?'
'I suppose that's not entirely accurate; I have not lived there for decades. But they raised me as a chick, and such I am obliged to assist them whenever needed.' Then she trilled, a beautifully sad sound. 'They are all quite competent warriors, but I fear a threat such as this may be beyond even them."
'Threat?' If this was apparently such an issue, why the heck was she asking me?
'One that could threaten the entire Great Forest if left unchecked.'
'T-Then why are you approaching me about it?!'
'Unlike humanity, we have no government to plead to.' she countered. 'And you are the first being I've encountered that is powerful enough to at least assist… flight at speeds capable of injuring one such as myself is no small feat.'
I winced and tried to avoid looking at her leg. It couldn't be that bad, right? She was standing on it, at least…
'Sorry… I was just experimenting. I guess didn't think anything would be up that high…'
Then I swore her beak curved up into a grin. 'If you would assist me in this manner, then I will consider that debt paid in full.'
I just blinked. Something like that felt more fitting for a raven-like bird to say, or something like that, and it completely stunned me. 'That's… not fair at all.'
She hesitated, then trilled again as all of her boldness evaporated. '… No. It is not. But such fairness is rare to come by in this world.'
All I had in response was silence. I was thinking that this was just some kind of turf war between two groups, and not anything I should get involved with, but… with the way this proud creature's feathers drooped, I could tell that this was a matter of life and death. And not just for any one group, either.
"… This is serious, isn't it." I muttered, then lifted myself up with my flight and rolled a shoulder that probably should've been dislocated from the crash. 'Okay, so what kind of threat are we talking about? Some kind of giant beast or something?' I myself had no combat experience whatsoever, but I did have some to at least draw on. As much as it'd help.
'An army of orcs numbering at least in the several thousand.'
'… A-A few thousand?' All of a sudden my confidence evaporated. Shizue's experience told me she could maybe - maybe - deal with a few hundred herself at her peak. And that was indescribably terrifying in of itself. But a few thousand, and as someone with absolutely none of that experience? 'W-Wha… What do you want me to do about that?
'I would prefer if you exercised your power to eliminate the attackers, but of course you are under no obligation to do.' the bird replied, somehow as calm as ever. 'If you refuse, I will have to find someone else…'
She did not sound happy at the thought of that, and I just shook my head. 'T-Then… okay, but I need to go back to my village, figure this out, get some help… '
'Are your villagers capable of flight, as you are?'
Calling me 'capable' of flight was a stretch. And my villagers? I didn't have any say at all in the matters back there, apparently! 'Well… no, but…'
'Then there is no time. The village is on the other end of the forest, and it will take a day and a half of travel to return there even by wing. On foot would take… at least twice that, if not far longer. And I was dispatched the moment the village fell under siege. I am confident that any ground-bound assistance would arrive to naught but ashes and corpses.' She bowed her head again. 'I am also confident that they would prefer some assistance over none at all.'
I hissed. She was completely right, of course… damnit, this was too much, though! I did want to help, but… !
'Y-You realize that I have absolutely no combat experience whatsoever, right?'
That got her to hesitate. 'I… did not, but… clearly, you're at least somewhat familiar with magic, yes? And even suppressed as it is, I can feel how strong your aura is.'
She just wasn't going to take no for an answer, was she? Damnit… if this was just orcs, I guess I could stay in the air and rain down lightning… but there had to be something more than that going on. No orc would be able to assemble an army of that size on their own. Sighing, I started to lift myself up through the hole in the canopy. I'd figure it out when I got there. 'Fine, let's get going, then. But no blaming me when I can't do shit, okay?'
The bird practically lept up in the sky, far happier than she was even a second ago. I swear she would've given me a hug, if she could've. 'Thank you, Lady Emily!'
'Lady?' I scoffed. 'You don't need to call me something… like that…' Then I stopped dead in my tracks as something else came to mind. '… hey, wait, do you have a name?'
'Alas, despite having lived for over three hundred years I have never been given the honor.'
Three hundred years… that just made my idea even more sound. She probably had tons of experience.
'… Would you mind if I gave you one? That'd power you up and everything, right?'
'I-I would never ask such a thing!' she quickly exclaimed. 'It is a dangerous act, one that can permanently lower your own magicules!'
'Yeah, and from what everyone keeps telling me I have the capacity to spare!' I shot back, then sighed. 'Look… if you've been around for three hundred years, you know how to fight way better than I do. I'm not going to force it on you, but I don't think this is a bad idea. If this is apparently so desperate, then we're going to need all the help we can get.'
Then she bowed her head again, and her voice went quiet. 'I-I would be without words if you chose to bestow me with a name.'
Despite how serious it was, or maybe exactly because of it, I couldn't help but smirk. Was she shaking? I got that being named was an honor, but damn. She was way more emotional than she let on, it would seem, and it felt weird to have this kind of power over someone. Exciting, especially if I was using it to make someone happy, but how would she react if I changed my mind? It was entirely my decision to make. Shaking my head, I started running through the kanji I knew. If a name meant this much, I was damn well going to use the language that actually carried some weight in their names… unfortunately I didn't know a whole lot, but I was still able to settle on something at least a bit fitting. And when I did, I nodded, and met her gaze.
"From this point forward, thunderbird, you will be known as Kousei!"
Then my hand flew to my heart as soon as I said it. The physical feeling of such a large amount of magicules leaving my body was one thing, but the sheer emotional feeling was something else entirely. I could feel her, in a sort of vague, abstract sense, even without using Thought Communication. It wasn't like she was 'a part of me' or anything like that, it was just… even though her body had been surrounded in a golden light, I could somehow tell that she was excited to the point of tears. For whatever reason, she had been waiting for this for a long, long time. And the transformation ended, and I saw that she had gained a long, streamer-like tail and separated her feathers into a body of white and distinct bands of gold around its edges, I couldn't help but feel a bit proud.
I'm too friggin' young to be having a kid, I giggled, before I was suddenly surrounded by feathery down. Kosei actually was trying to hug me, this time, and I nearly suffocated before she apparently satisfied herself and pulled back.
'I thank you, my lady.' she said, and then turned towards the horizon. 'As a Raiju, I am capable of speeds far, far beyond what I could achieve before. If you will allow me to carry you, we shall reach the village in no time at all!'
'Carry me?' I grinned, though I still got the intention carefully lowered myself onto her back, inbetween her main wings and her dolphin-like tail. Despite being associated with thunder, she was no Zapdos; her feathers felt as soft as a cloud. Actually riding her (though saying that felt weird as shit) was something straight out of a fantasy.
'I implore you to hold tight, mistress, as this will be fast.' she sent, grinning, and then before I could even object to being called 'mistress', we shot off into the horizon like a lightning bolt.
What followed was an exhilarating and terrifying flight at a speed that rivaled a passenger jet, only without any kind of pressurized cabin. And I didn't get any kind of look at the landscape, because I had to nearly bury myself into her to keep from getting torn off then hold that for what easily felt like a few hours. Then the stop was just as sudden as the acceleration, and I actually had to catch myself as I doubled over her when we did.
"W-What the hell was… that…" I started to exclaim, but my anger quickly faded as I saw (or rather, felt) her expression at the ground below.
'H-How…' she whispered, and I quickly pivoted around and gasped as I saw what laid below us. She had been completely right - I couldn't see any corpses, but what must've been a proud community had been completely reduced to nothing but smoldering ash. Beside me, Kousei mumbled a few words of breathless astonishment, then her wingbeats grew fainter and fainter until they failed her entirely, making her start to plummet out of the sky.
I just watched her for a priceless second, before something within me sparked and I took action. Magnetic Flight was separated into its components again, I let myself drop to catch up with her, then when I was close enough I built a field around the two of us and slowly guided us down.
'I-I apologize, mistress…' she mumbled as her claws touched the ground and she collapsed. 'I..,may have overestimated my new stamina… and even then, it wasn't enough…'
A simmering anger started to grow inside of me as I looked around the gigantic piles of ash. Within, I could see charred cloth, wooden beams that had been turned into charcoal… turf wars were one thing, but something like this went far beyond even that. Whoever had done this, they wanted nothing less than complete destruction.
'Such devastation… for this to be accomplished by mere orcs is… unthinkable…' Then she turned towards me as we heard an explosion go off in the distance. 'It may be that some survived. I am in no condition to fight, but… please, mistress…'
"… Yeah." I replied, then without a word more dashed into the forest. While I could have flown over there, it was pretty clear that we had no idea what we were dealing with, and I didn't want to be rushing into a slaughter. I wanted to help, but I wasn't about to sacrifice my own life to do it. As I ran, the sounds of metal crashing against metal quickly became clear, and I ducked behind a tree as I reached a small clearing filled with humanoid, hairy pigs in full plate.
'Orcs…' I whispered, then scowled. I had already known that they weren't the green-skinned goblin cousins they were shown as back home, but there was absolutely no reason for them to be wearing actual plate like that. They just weren't smart enough, full stop. From what I could tell with my own sight and Magic Sense, there were twenty smallish auras and one much larger one. Half of the group had their backs turned towards me, trying to fight off a group of moderately-sized auras of a different flavor, but the other half were slowly approaching me… or rather, they were approaching a small group of the same moderately-sized auras. When I swapped over to 'sight', I could see a hulking, gray-skinned and black-haired man with wooden mallet and a slightly smaller brunette protectively standing in front of a pink-haired young woman and and even smaller green-haired boy. The varying amounts of horns coming out of their foreheads made it clear that they weren't human, but they still looked far more intelligent than the pigs… in fact, the brunette seemed to have a ghostly, elf-like woman hovering beside her. I felt a strange kinship with her, like seeing someone from your own country in a sea of foreigners.
"She's a spirit…" I whispered, and from the way the brunette was throwing rocks around I could figure that she was an earth-based spirit.
Despite their apparent magical capacity, though, all of them were focused on the fight and hadn't noticed me yet. I wasn't dumb enough to just rush out into the middle of an ongoing melee combat, and even if I had the ammunition to do it firing off a Railgun in such close quarters could cause some serious collaterial damage. Still, though, it was obvious that neither of the defenders were super experienced, and I wanted to get the orcs off of them and onto me… I could think of one way, but it was stupid as hell and would get more far more than just the immediate ten pigs. But, at the same time, I could tell that there were experienced fighters in the back, and a distraction might just be what they need to get the upper hand… I hissed, wishing that I at least had some kind of weapon, but if I delayed any longer one of the defenders could get seriously injured.
Out of options, I shot out a crackle of lightning towards the orc closest to me. Then I reached out with Explosive Lightning as I followed it, blasting the target into pieces that I distinctly avoided looking at. Then I leapt through the smoke and took advantage of everyone's distraction to skid into place between the two defenders and the encroaching orcs. I didn't have any snappy words for them as I overtook their position; instead, I just flaired my aura up to my full strength. The orcs cowered at the feeling, and I grinned as I let prismatic lightning crackled around my body. I had taken out one of them with my surprise attack, and the fighters in the back had already used the surprise to take out four of their own. That left fifteen of the smaller ones, plus the massive eight-foot-plus one that was in the middle of it all.
'Right. Time to get to work.'
Chapter 13Four pairs of pigish eyes stared into my own as we stood there waiting for the other to make the first move. Flaring my aura like I had made the orcs pause, confused, but when I couldn't raise my hand for any kind of actual strike they had slowly started to regain their confidence.
Then one of them licked his chops. "I'm hungry."
The other three nodded. "She looks tasty."
Ice ran down my spine as they took a few steps forward, with a stare that was nothing short of predatory. What the hell had I been trying to do? Intimidate them? I was just a five-foot at most twelve-year-old girl trying and failing to stare down four six-and-a-half-foot tall pigs. I couldn't do anything but stand there as one of them stepped forward and raised an axe the size of my head, and I just watched as he brought it down on top of me… only a massive clang to echo across the clearing as a rock the size of half my body slammed against the blade and deflected it into the dirt right next to my foot.
Startled, and with my body shaking, I whipped my head around to see the still-exhausted brunette from before. "I-I don't know who you are, but get out of our way if you're just going to stand there!"
Seeing her and the black-haired man practically on their knees, as well as the two children behind them, make me shake my head and whip around back to the orcs. I could have a personal crisis about whatever was happening later; right now it was the survival of the fittest, and I wasn't going to just let nature decide who won and who got wiped out.
I started to charge up a bolt as the orc struggled to pull his axe out of the ground, but his comrades lept in to cover him before I could let it off. Magic Sense let me see even behind me, though, and I had the chance to dodge it all and lift off into the air, out of their reach. From there I took a few precious seconds to catch my breath and realize that I just dodged blows that were supposed to kill me, and then I magnetized the axe to try and toss it aside. To my shock, his entire arm went with the weapon as it flew off into the forest, and I took another second to stare at the trees that the weapon had managed to cleave through with only the equivalent of a head flick from me.
What the hell…
Then when I turned back to the fight, trying to avoid seeing the blood spurting out of the orc's shoulder, I saw the other side of the orc squad and the fighters that were struggling against them. Shizue's knowledge told me that they weren't anywhere near top form; there wasn't any poise in their attacks, and the only reason that they hadn't fallen yet was because their sheer, desperate strength constantly kept the orcs off balance. These people had been fighting for days, and it showed in every action they took… before I knew it, my hands had gone up to the sky, already starting to transform the surrounding magicules. A mindless force like this couldn't accept mercy and wouldn't give it, and if I kept this fight going for any longer it could mean death for any one of the fighters. I would just have to hope that any collateral damage wouldn't hurt them too much, because I could only spare enough time to send a Thought Communication to all of them.
'GET OUT OF THE WAY!'
A red-haired one dressed in muscle-defining, samurai-like armor parried the latest blow against him and glanced up towards me. Then his eyes grew wide, and he quickly waved to the rest of his companions as he dashed off into the forest. The pink-haired girl did the same for everyone on our side, and the second that everyone was clear I let loose with all of my power. The largest one in the middle made an excellent lightning rod, and from there, the electricity chained off to each and every other orc like a prismatic spiderweb. I held it out for as long as I could, making sure that each and every one of them was thoroughly electrified, and I didn't let up until finally the largest one collapsed into a smoldering heap. When he did, I fell to the ground not feeling too much better myself.
"Damnit…" I muttered, wrinkling my nose at the disgusting smell of fried pig. "I really need to work on pacing myself…"
"Look out!"
A panicked cry from my left made me whip around to see the biggest orc on his hands and knees, one of his cleaver-like blades already halfway through a strike that would cut straight through my neck. I screamed, but then a thick wall of earth came up beside me and blocked the weapon, and before I could react to that the orc's head had been separated from his shoulders and rolling on the ground in front of me, and I screamed again.
"Hmph. In command of great power, yet a complete amateur in the realities of war." Suddenly, a white-haired elder was beside me, sheathing his sword with a click. It took me only a second to make the connection, and I flinched as he turned to me. "You are an otherworlder, are you not?" His eyes ran a quick glance over me, and he raised an eyebrow when he was finished. "Perhaps even reincarnated?"
I sighed, and shuddered as I turned away from the still-bleeding head, trying not to see it. "Is… it really that obvious?"
"Well, it's obvious you don't have any experience at all, at least." the brunette replied. I almost felt like calling out to her spirit companion as it faded away, but I stopped when I realized that I was only really eye-level with her shoulders. When that was combined with the horns growing out of her forehead and the fangs coming out of her mouth, I was a bit baffled when she walked over to me and took a knee. "Still, we deeply appreciate your intervention."
"Had you not dealt with those pigs, the ogre race would be half the size it is now." I could also see that the samuari-like man was even more of a giant than the brunette, now that I wasn't in the air, but he did the exact same thing as her.
I took a step back from the quickly-growing group, utterly confused. "H-Hey, you don't… I-I was just trying to help, okay? You don't need to be bowing or anything. Are you…?" Then I noticed that his entire body was shaking, and I nearly slapped myself. I had seen what their village had been turned into; this whole group was probably trying to run away before that squad caught them. Of course they weren't okay.
"Brother!"
Then the pink-haired girl quickly rushed over to the samurai when she saw how weak he was.
"It's fine, princess, nothing you should worry yourself over…" But her hands began to glow anyways, and some of the tension left the samurai's body. He sighed. "… Thank you."
The two made another glance at me, and when I didn't have anything to say the girl helped the samurai up and together they stumbled over to the edge of the clearing. Then samurai collapsed against it with a gigantic sigh. The elder made his own glance at me, then joined the samurai, and the girl turned her attention to the green-haired boy. He wasn't too much older than I looked, and he had been staring off into the distance this entire time… even with all of my 'experience', I could never imagine how these kinds of people felt. The pink-haired girl was trying to comfort him all the same, but he just shook his head in disbelief.
"What're we going to do now…?"
That was a hell of a question. What were they going to do? Their entire village had been burned to the ground, and their entire race had just been slaughtered.
"I… don't know." The girl whispered back, and then flicked her gaze back over to me. Despite all of the help she had been trying to give, her own eyes were almost filled with tears, and I couldn't just turn away from something like that.
"W-We… we should set up some kind of camp." I muttered, more to myself than anything else. Then after a moment, I nodded. "We need to set up some kind of camp for the night. I haven't been here for very long, but I have a friend is building a village on the other side of the forest. You'll be safe there."
"The other side of the forest?" To my right, I could see another group of ogres; a purple-haired woman, a rust-haired one with a kind of airy-looking fox curled up around her, and a jade-haired archer who was inspecting his bow. The rust-haired one was staring at me with a disbelieving smirk. "That's a week's worth of travel. We'd never make it; for all we know the rest of those damn pigs could be just around the corner."
I blinked. "A… week? But I just…"
Then my head whipped towards the direction of the village, only to be interrupted by the thunderous beat of gigantic wings. Everyone in the clearing looked up, some of them more terrified than others, and I heaved a sigh of relief as I saw the thunderbird… or, no, raiju that was floating there.
"Kousei!" I said, only for the ranger to flinch as if I slapped her.
"You…" she started, then looked up to Kousei, then back down to me. "Y-You named the thunderbird?"
"She did indeed, beastmaster," Kousei replied as she fumbled her way back down into the clearing and landed with a whoomp of feathers. Apparently she hadn't fully recovered yet, not that I blamed her. "And her strength was enough to transform me into a raiju."
"A raiju…" The woman took one more glance between me and the bird, and then got down on her hands and knees. "I-I apologize for not recognizing and respecting your power, noble majin."
"I am not a majin!" I instantly shouted back, the mere mention of the word makes me bristle. Then I caught myself just as quickly; that was technically the name for someone like me. Despite the history 'I' had with it. "… Sorry, that just… I don't like being called that." I sighed. "Either way, you don't need to bow to me, please. I didn't do anything to get this."
That just made her look up in confusion. "Then it is your birthright, and still marks you as worthy of great respect."
"That's not… !" I countered, then just sighed as all ten of them seemed to agree. Monsters had a distinctly different way of thinking than humans, and I probably wouldn't ever really get it… and from the way they were looking at me, they seemed to have voluneteered me for the position of some kind of commander. As much as I didn't like it. "… whatever. Power structures aren't important right now; the important thing is setting up a camp and figuring out whether or not the orcs are still a threat."
All ten of them just stared at me for a moment, before a new blue-haired ogre stepped out from the shadows and bowed to me. "The archer and I will scout the surrounding area." Then they both vanished just as quickly, not even giving me enough time to blink.
Counting the literal ninja, there were ten in total, and in combat they all looked like they had their own specialization. It wasn't hard to imagine the others being the same, too, thanks to their whole spectrum of hair colors. "Okay, what about the rest of you? You… probably didn't have enough time to get any camping gear or anything, huh… so we'll need to make some kind of shelter, get a fire going, probably get some food…" I hummed. Before, we had Elen and her ice magic to get water, but it didn't look like anyone here would have something like that. "… I don't suppose anyone has some kind of water supply?" Then I blinked, and sighed as I finally acknowledged the pile of corpses that I had made. "… And I suppose we'll need to… dispose of the bodies, too."
Then the beastmaster made her way off from the tree and nodded. "Our village used a river that is not too far from here. My companion and I will go there and check for orcs, and we will also hunt for food while we're there."
"And with my earth magic, burying everything would be pretty easy." the brunette added, though she looked too exhausted to be doing a whole lot and I warned her not to push herself.
Off to the side, the green-haired boy nodded a few times to himself, then practically jumped off of the tree he had collapsed against. "I-I can look for berries and stuff!"
Their enthusiasm was infectious, and soon everyone was speaking up and trying to help. The black-haired man was apparently more of a smith than a fighter, despite his size, and said that he'd try his best at setting up tents or teepees. The purple-haired woman volunteered to help him with that. The elder and the pink-haired went with the boy to help with the gathering, and to make sure he didn't get ambushed. Despite how much she looked like she hated it, I told brunette to just rest after she had nearly collapsed churning the earth to bury all of the bodies, and before she left the pink-haired girl had urged the samurai to rest as well. Finally, Kousei had fallen asleep, and I make sure not to disturb her as I looked around the clearing and nodded. I was happy that everyone had something to be doing, for both practical reasons as well as something to keep their minds off of things. I had absolutely no idea how to address a literal genocide, and was kind of having a hard time grasping it myself… hopefully a few hours would make it hurt just a tiny bit less. I sighed, and moved to help with the tent construction myself, before a familiar voice spoke up from behind me.
"Man, it hasn't even been a month, and I've already got a competing village…"
After I jumped about ten feet into the air, I whipped around to see yellow eyes practically glowing as they came out from the shadows of the treeline.
"R-Rimuru?! How the hell did you…?!"
"Shadow Motion." he said, though it wasn't with his usual grin. "I haven't really used it before, but I got it from the direwolves' evolution. It's not instant, but it lets me get to anyone I've met before pretty quickly." I had no idea where you ran off to." He sighed, then latched onto me for a hug. "I'm just happy you're okay…"
"I…"
Damn, I really didn't have a good response for this.
"… I told you where I was going?"
"You did?" he asked, and then after a pause, groaned. "… Okay, fine, you did, that part isn't your fault. I just didn't get told about it, apparently."
"I asked you if it would be safe to try and launch myself with my railgun skill, and that AI or whatever you have in your head responded for you." I explained. "It, of course, told me that it wouldn't be safe, but I figured I could make a smaller field and told you I was going off exploring before I launched myself."
He blinked at the AI comment, but shook it off. "And you ended up almost a continent away as a result?… Well, Earth continent, anyways."
"No, that was Kousei." I muttered, and nodded to the raiju. The slime's jaw nearly dropped as he looked at her. "I, uh… smacked into her while I was flying, and she told me that she was looking for someone to help these guys' village. I didn't think I could, and remembered that I could name monsters, so I named her to redistribute the power a bit and thanks to that we could get over here in only a couple hours… but it still wasn't fast enough, apparently. Those five ogres are five of the ten surviving members of an entire race."
Saying that so bluntly made all of the day's events suddenly catch up with me, and I sighed as I collapsed into him. Of course, he didn't even flinch as he took my weight. "Okay, Emily," he muttered as he guided me to a trunk. "You go and get some rest, I'll take things from here."
My eyelids started to flutter as soon as I hit the ground. "But, I…"
"Rest. Now. That's an order."
I just giggled. That authoritative look didn't fit his face at all. "Hai, Rimuru-sama…"
When I opened my eyes again, I was surrounded by golden-yellow feathers, and it took me a moment to realize that Kousei had curled herself up around me as I slept. She was still fast asleep, though, so I carefully ducked under her door-sized wing and saw someone had supplied enough cloth tarp to set up more than a few conventional-looking tents. And the person that was probably responsible was sitting next to a dying fire, idly poking the embers with a stick.
"Ohaiyo, Emily." he said, without looking up.
"Ohaiyo…" I yawned and stretched myself out, then blinked shortly after. "… Man, that really is natural. I just said that without a second thought…" Shaking my head, I made my way over to the fire pit and started to poke the embers around myself with Control Flame. "So, you guys were busy last night."
"I introduced myself, then went back to the village to get some stuff and tell the goblin riders where we are. We'll meet up with them along the way, and then ride back to the village. That should take just a few days, and we can handle these guys more officially when we get there."
"'Just a few days'…" I muttered, and scoffed. "You can't just use whatever you used to get over here? Shadow Motion or whatever?"
"Unless you can hold your breath for thirty minutes, no. And I don't think your new mount wants to do a flight like that again."
I glanced back towards Kousei. "My new… absolutely not, she's her own person!"
"And you don't think she's going to want to stick around, since you named her?"
"I-It was just to help even things out a bit! If I didn't, I wouldn't have gotten here in time…"
Rimuru sighed, and dropped the stick to look up at me. "Look. Emily. I'm not your boss, and you're an…" Then he stopped for a moment, and blinked. "… okay, well, you have all the memories of two adults. I can't tell you what to do, and I'm not going to try, either."
I frowned. It sure felt like he was my boss, or trying to be one.
"But you can't just go rushing off accepting every quest you see, okay? I know this world might feel like a game, with all of the skills and the system it apparently runs on, but it's not. This is real life, as crazy as it is."
"I-I know that! I just… I wanted to help."
"That's fine, but this was way above your level. From what the ogres told me, you almost got killed. Twice."
I opened my mouth, then snapped it right back shut again. He was right; I almost had, and it made me shiver every time I thought about it.
"And this isn't the first time you've done something like this." he continued, and nodded towards my left side and the burns that covered it. "Jumping into Ifrit wasn't the most well-thought-out decision, either. You got really lucky both times, thank goodness, but…" Then he sighed, and looked down at the fire again. "Well, I'd be really lonely without you, okay? I know it's kind of unavoidable in this world, but I'd rather you try to avoid risking your life for a third time. You do have people that care about you, here."
I just sat there for a few moments, stunned. As usual, he was completely right. I kind of had been approaching this all as a game, hadn't I? That's not to say that I had been thinking of Elen and Olivia and everyone else as just NPCs, but… it just was a bit hard to relate to someone that had grown up in this world and didn't know anything different, I guess. None of it felt real, including the fact that I had nearly gotten killed trying to be the damn hero… again, now that I was thinking about it. That was what shunted me over to this world to begin with. Rimuru had just gotten randomly stabbed, but I had deliberately put myself into harm's way and, well, quite literally got killed for it. Why the hell was I continuing to do this?
"Y-You sound like my old boss." I muttered, then sniffled and wrapped him up in a hug. "You're completely right, of course, this is just… I-I just see stupid or unfair shit happening, and whenever I do I just want to jump in and help as much as I can. I don't like seeing people upset or unhappy."
"… Well, I'd be upset and unhappy if you disappeared." he muttered, then quickly ducked out of my arms. "And I get it. I really do, that's why I started this whole village thing to begin with. But I've only gotten this far because I know how to manage people. You just can't go running headfirst into that kind of stuff, especially here."
"It was how I got killed in the first place, yeah…" I replied back, then paled. "… G-God, I just… killed fifteen people. T-They're not coming back."
"No, they're not. But you wouldn't be coming back if you hadn't killed them." he quickly and firmly replied, then sighed. "That's how this world works."
I looked around at the tents. "Y-Yeah… yeah, I guess it is."
There was a pause as we both thought things over. "So… do you understand what I'm trying to say?"
"… Yeah, I do. Sorry for making you worried, Rimuru. I'll try not to do it again." I said, then sighed. "But… I-I'm not just going to stand by and watch, either. Not when I can actually do something about it, now."
He grinned. "I don't expect you to. What I do expect is that you tell me and everyone else, and then we all run into that kind of stuff headfirst."
"O-Of course." I giggled, then dove in for a hug again, and I swear I could see a faint blush as he pulled out again. Then we fell into a bit of an awkward silence, poking and playing with the fire, before the slime spoke up again.
"So… why did you run off, anyways?
"… Honestly, I was kind of bored? I'm used to… having…"
Then I trailed off as he started to give me a downright sinister grin.
"Well, Emily-chan, all you had to do was just tell me you were bored! There's plenty of stuff to do at the village!" Then he giggled at the horrified stare I was giving him. "I'm more than happy to give you something to do, if you're looking for it. I just need you to tell me what you actually want to do."
"I… have no clue, is the thing." I muttered. "I'd always kind of been interested in any kind of crafting stuff; cooking and drawing and writing and even a little bit of blacksmithing, from all of the videos I saw…"
Rimuru nodded as he thought all that over, and after a moment hummed in agreement. "Okay… then I might have an idea." Then he winked. "But let's focus on getting these guys home first, okay?"
He had piqued my curiosity, but I knew I wasn't going to get anything more out of him. "Right. Let's get home, first."
It was only when the slime got up and started to wake them all up that I realized that I did just call that village of monsters home.
Chapter 14On the way back, Rimuru and I got to see the whole rest of the Great Forest, including the massive Lake Sisu and the marshlands that surrounded it. We also got a bit of a history slash anthropology lesson from the ogres - that whole area was apparently controlled by upright, talking lizards (un)creatively known as lizardmen, and there shouldn't be any issues with us passing through their territory… once I processed that just passing through could be an issue, they continued and told us that the more intelligent races of the forest barely interacted with one another. Ever since the Storm Dragon Veldora had been sealed away, the lizardmen had held the marsh in the middle, the orcs had the plains at the northeastern edge of the forest, and the ogres had the space inbetween. Goblins and other 'minor' races ran underfoot, their villages never staying in one location for very long (in the geological sense) thanks to the constant threat of the forests' beasts.
The Storm Dragon's presence alone meant that the western part of the forest had too much magic to comfortably live in, which ended up creating a barrier between the monster races and the humans to the west. The humans to the east had withdrawn thanks to losing an entire city to the very same dragon, and with the lack of humans everything in the forest had been pretty stable. It seemed like monsters didn't have as much of the constant drive to improve that humans did, and they were content with keeping things as they were for nearly three hundred years. But now that the dragon was gone, it could throw everything into chaos… so when we got back to the village, Rimuru wasted no time in gathering me and the ogres inside his tent. It was a bit cramped between us and the ogres, as well as a hulking hobgoblin who was apparently the actual chieftain and his son, the scout leader. The slime assured us that we would have a proper city hall soon.
"I never thought I'd see the lesser races of the forest cooperating so freely…" the beastmaster whispered as we walked in, almost in awe at the sights outside. "And you named them all yourself, slime?"
Before he replied, Rimuru changed into his true form then hopped over to his bed. "Well, they're not exactly the most creative names, but yeah."
She wasted no time in taking a knee to him. "Truly, then, you are merciful for allowing us into your fold."
"I think you're talking to the wrong person." he grinned, then turned over to me. "Emily, get up here. You're the one that started all of this."
I had just been hiding in the back since we had walked in, but as all thirteen faces turned to face me I couldn't do anything but crawl my way up to the front. I tried to stop just at the foot of the bed, but when Rimuru shook his head I sighed and stepped forward, practically collapsing next to him on the mattress. And as soon as we were together each one of the ogres followed the beastmaster in bowing to us.
"As the former prince of the ogre clans, allow me to humbly express our gratitude for saving the lives of the ogre race, Lady Emily." the samurai spoke. "And for allowing us to take shelter in your village while we regain our strength, Lord Rimuru."
As usual I was completely baffled by everyone bowing to me, but RImuru had the poise to reply. "You're welcome! But… with that in mind, what's your guys' next move?"
The samurai blinked. "What… do you mean?"
"You guys don't plan on staying here forever, right? I don't know if you plan on building your own village or what, but you should have some kind of plan for the future."
"Ah. That's easy." he replied, without a beat of hesitation. "We will regain our strength and take them on again!"
Several of the adult orges nodded, while the younger ones looked quite a bit hesitant. Rimuru hummed as he looked around the group. "If that's the case, then do you know where to find them?"
A few stammers came out of the ogre's mouth, but beyond that he didn't have an answer. "… I do not, Lord Rimuru."
"Then it seems like that's kind of an important thing to figure out, huh?"
"It is, Lord Rimuru."
The slime took a moment to grin before continuing. "Well, you all can stay here for as long as you want, but you should take some time to think about what you want to do. I'm not going to tell you what you and the rest of your race should do."
The samurai quietly nodded.
"That being said, though, I do have to ask that you try to make yourselves useful in some way. I don't want to have freeloaders just milling about."
"O-Of course, Lord Rimuru. The ogres pride themselves on being masters of whatever discipline they choose to pursue. I'm sure we can all find somewhere to help."
Rimuru nodded, and then turned to the banada-wearing hobgoblin. He was the chieftain's son, though it was a bit difficult to see the family resemblance between his average frame and the absolutely hulking chief. "Rigur, could you show the ogres around the village? I want to talk to Emily and Rigurd for a moment."
"Yes, sir!" he replied, then turned to the ogres. "Please follow me. I'll show you some places I think we could use some help in."
Rimuru stayed silent as the ogres were escorted out. The samurai was the last to leave, and his shoulders were practically sagging as he left the tent.
"That was a little harsh, wasn't it?" I asked Rimuru as soon as he was out of earshot, and the slime just gave a massive sigh in reply.
"Yeah, but it's important. If they just go charging off into battle again they actually are going to get wiped out." He shook his head. "Well, regardless. Emily, Rigurd, I don't think you've been properly introduced yet."
"I have not had the honor, no, Lord Rimuru."
He nodded. "Emily, this is Rigurd, the chieftain of this village. I guess you could say I'm more of the king, rather than someone who handles the actual day to say stuff." he explained, when he saw my confusion. "Rigurd, this is Emily. She's another outworlder like me, though I expect you to keep that private."
"Of course, Lord Rimuru." he replied, then took a knee to me. "It is an honor to meet a contemporary of our great leader. Will you be joining us in our village?"
Just like a few moments ago, it was still baffling to see someone nearly twice my height and with biceps the size of my head bowing down to me. "W-Well, I did end up already calling this place home, so… I, guess I will, yeah."
"Then I will have our architects prepare a space for you right away!"
"She'd probably prefer a more european-style home, so ask Myrd what he knows about the houses here. We can go over the details later." Rimuru added, without missing a beat. I just groaned. "Anyways, with that out of the way… Emily, Rigurd, both of you agree with me when I say there's something more serious going on, right? In regards to the ogres, I mean."
I nodded. Shizue had spent most of her time in the western human kingdoms, but she had still learned about the power structures of the forest. "There's no way orcs would be able to challenge ogres, let alone completely wipe them out… and them wearing plate just makes things even more suspicious."
"They were wearing full plate?" Rigurd asked, shock clear on his face. "Like humans do?"
"According to the ogres, yeah. A few thousand, all in armor."
"A-A few thousand?" he exclaimed. "Orcs simply do not have the resources or intelligence to outfit themselves like that, let alone keep an army that large supplied… if that truly is the case, then we can't deny the fact that they must have allied with one of the demon lords."
Just the mention of the title made me bristle. Even the general public knew of the four Demon Lords; each ruled their own chunk of territory on the southeastern edge of the continent. Each territory only bordered the Great Forest and the sea, so now that the Storm Dragon was gone it wasn't out of the question that one of them was trying to make a land grab.
Rimuru put a hand on my shoulder. "I don't know if this was an isolated incident or what, but it's possible that whoever's backing the orcs won't be satisfied with just one village." He sighed. "I don't want to spread a bunch of panic, but I want to have at least some kind of fortification as soon as possible."
"I will tell the workers straight away." Rigurd nodded. "And I'm sure there won't be a panic. After all, we have the two of you watching over us!" The two of us blinked, and after an awkward moment of silence the chieftain nodded again and left the room. As soon as the door had closed, Rimuru shifted back into his human form just to collapse backwards onto the bed and let out an exhausted sigh.
"I don't exactly have as much authority over you, Emily," he said to the roof, "but I'd appreciate it if you and Kousei could help the scouts out. You two can cover a lot more ground than they can."
"… Y-Yeah." I nodded, still trying to shake off the… embarrassment? Confusion? Anxiety? Some kind of awkward feeling from the treatment that my 'birthright' was earning me. "Ugh, this is something else."
"It really is…" he muttered. "We haven't even finished the village yet, and we might already have to go to war…"
I followed his collapse on the bed. "No, I mean. I barely did anything, and they're already treating me like some kind of king… o-or queen, I guess."
Rimuru turned towards me. "I think that's kind of the point? Killing all of those orcs definitely wasn't 'barely anything', even if it felt like it to you. That's just the power level we're at, now."
"Don't remind me…" I replied, wishing I could flop even further into the bed. "Ugh. I really, really wish I didn't have to."
"Yeah…" he muttered back, and then sighed again. He didn't have to tell me that that was how things worked here again. "Well… that isn't going to be the last time you fight something."
"No, but it was the first." I muttered back, and groaned. "And I made that really, really obvious."
"Mmmm… actually, that is something I wanted to ask you. You have all of Shizue's experiences, right? Why did you freeze up?" I was quiet for a couple of moments, and he frowned. "Sorry, but it's an important thing to know."
"No, you're right. I'm just trying to figure it out myself. Shizue's first real fight was, like, eighty years ago, and I barely remember it. And I'm still me, and I've never stared down a friggin' ten foot tall or whatever pig in platemail… ugh, I don't know. Maybe I just thought I should be afraid, so I was." Then I ran my hands down my face. "I guess. I really don't like how this damn skill messes with my head."
"If it makes you feel any better, I've got an annoying voice in my head." he grinned, and then a second later winced. "… Ah, sorry, I shouldn't be saying bad things about her. She's been a huge help."
I raised an eyebrow. "'She'? Honestly, I'm kind of jealous that you have something so functional. It feels like all of my 'skills' are just bringing over all of my issues from Earth…"
I could tell he wanted to ask me about them, but thankfully he didn't push it. "Well, if you think that it was your skill, then all we need to do is get you some more experience and you'll be fine." he replied as he got off the bed, and offered me a hand up. "I think we've wasted enough time just laying around, yeah? If we're going to make it through this, then I'm going to need your help, Emily. As high as those guys think of me, I can't do everything." Then he chuckled. "I'd say I'm only human, but…"
"Heh, yeah." I replied. I didn't miss the sudden change in topic, but I didn't want to push him on it. Fair was fair, after all. "Well, Rimuru, I have no idea how to defend a whole village from an army. Shizue always followed someone else's orders in those cases."
"Honestly, I don't want it to come to defending the village outright. Even if we get some walls set up in time I don't know if we could defend against an army of thousands."
It was a bit of a difficult number to comprehend - there were 'only' half a thousand goblins or so in our little village, and it already stretched a mile long. I couldn't even begin to imagine what an army of thousands would look like… Shizue had never encountered something like that, and just that alone was a scary thing to think about.
"Ideally, we'd avoid fighting altogether," Rimuru continued, "but if that doesn't happen I think the best approach would be to cut them off at a chokepoint somewhere. Funnel them into some AoE attacks from you and I…" He hummed. "I'm not sure; I'll talk it over with the dwarves and the scouts… for now, I think you should get more familiar with your abilities." he said, then blinked. "Oh, that reminds me!"
Something pushed its way out of his arm, and then he was holding what looked to be an honest-to-god manga volume. His grin stretched ear to ear as he offered it to me.
"Toaru Kagaku no… Reru… gan…" I whispered, trying to piece together the language. I didn't recognize the last bits of kanji, and the cover wasn't super familiar either - covered in pink and showed two rather stiffly drawn girls. "Uh, sorry, but I don't know the last bit. 'A… Certain, Scientific… something, electric…"
Rimuru sighed. "Right, Shizu wasn't in school for all that long… and that was pre-reform, too. Well, those three ones you don't know are 'super', 'magnet', and 'gun'."
"Super electric magnet… gun…" I repeated, then almost threw the book back into his grinning face. It couldn't be anything but the manga that he was talking about while we were experimenting in the cave. "How the heck did you even get this?"
"I made it!" he exclaimed. "I grabbed some of the drafting paper that the dwarfs used, and then had Sage print it all out. Even though it's been a while since I've read it, it's all still in my head, apparently."
I ran my fingers inbetween the first page. It did feel a bit rougher than glossy printer paper, though it wasn't a whole lot. And at least from what I could read, it seemed like it was a consistent story. "Your 'Sage' is absolutely crazy."
"She kind of is… honestly, I'm a bit scared of what I could do if I had Deviant, too." He muttered, then shrugged. "The point is, I want you to read through this and see if you get any ideas on where to take your lightning. I know it's silly, but like I said we seem to be living in an anime now.… I can also have Sage print out the Kyoiku and Joyo sets, if you need them. Apparently she can do that." When I just stared at him, he continued. "Those are the modern standard lists of kanji; about one thousand characters for the first one, annnnd…"
Thankfully, he cut himself off as my eyes started to glaze over.
"… Y'know, I'll just have Sage translate it all into English." he muttered, and sucked the book out of my hands. A mere moment later, he spat it out again, with all of the text now in perfect English.
"A Certain Scientific Railgun." I read, then scoffed. "Your 'Sage' continues to be BS. Jesus, that's incredible." Leafing through the pages told me that it had all been effortlessly translated. "What the hell."
"She really is something, isn't she?" he agreed, in just as much awe as I was. Looking at him made some kind of jealousy sprout up inside of me, and I took the opportunity to grin.
"'She', huh? Isn't Sage was a boy's name?"
"I-It's not a name, it's a title!" he protested, then sighed. "Okay, the official title of the skill is 'Great Sage', so I just call her 'Sage' whenever I need to ask her something. And I call her 'she', but I don't even know if she's sentient. It's a bit hard to tell…"
"So I got something that represents all of the friggin' brain issues I had, and you got something that gave you an all-knowing AI with perfect crafting skills and who knows what else."
"I got all of that while I was literally bleeding to death, for your information." he replied back. "It's not like I got to really choose."
"… No, I guess you didn't." I muttered. "Sorry… it's just, 37-year-old guy who's apparently super into manga and stuff, and has a girl's voice in his head? I… sorry, I'm just thinking of stereotypes. I'm jealous, honestly."
"Well… it's not like I don't have my own issues." he replied, though it was a lot quieter this time. "I was… quite a bit lonely, back on Earth. If your skills came from your own problems, maybe Sage came from mine." He sighed. "Despite all of them, though, I was still happy."
"Mmm. I wish I could…" Then I stopped, and looked down at myself. Despite all of the life-threatening situations I had gotten into over the past two weeks, I could say that I was happier here than I was back on Earth. I could honestly say that I was happier here, in the middle of this fantastical world that was filled with death, than I was back in my dead-end life. What the hell did that say about me? Was it purely because I had so much power here? I was relatively powerless before, and it wasn't unlikely for me to go off bitching about how unfair stuff was. But here, I hadn't done any complaining at all. Was that because of the power I held, or… was it because of something else?
"Emily?" Rimuru asked, his boyish face twisted into concern. "You okay?"
I flinched at the name. "S-Sorry, I'm just… thinking about stuff. Uh, book, right?"
"… Book." he agreed, with a suspicious smile. "It's in English now, so you should be able to read it, though I'm sure I could teach you modern japanese if you want to."
"Modern japanese…" I muttered. She hadn't known the language, either; I at least knew the jist of it. And I knew a lot of Shizu's swordplay, too…
Then Rimuru snapped his fingers in front of my face. "Hey. C'mon, I'm not that boring, am I?"
"No, it's just, you're not…" I sighed. "…'Rimuru' wasn't your old name, was it?"
"….No, it wasn't. What are you…" Then realization dawned with a sudden blink. "… Oh. You still go by your old name, don't you?"
I nodded. "I'm just… I'm wondering if that fits me anymore. I don't know how much I'm acting like my old self."
"Well, it's not like there weren't multiple Emilys back on Earth. And there's probably multiple Emilys here, too. It's not like you have to change your name, or…" Then he frowned. "… well, huh. You don't have a name in this world, do you?"
That made me blink. "… I-I guess not? Like, not in the sense of Kousei and the goblins…"
"And if you're a spirit, like Ifrit…" he muttered, but then his face drained of color. "… okay, I outright can't give you a name, that would cost more magicules than even I have. Though I wonder…" Then he trailed off, and shook his head. "… well, regardless. You should refine your lightning skills as soon as possible; it'd be nice to have another line of defense. You said one of the ogres used spirit magic, right? Go and see if you can find her. And, meanwhile, I guess I need to talk with Kaijin with making some extra swords and armor for all of us… "
I nodded and started to head out. Before I left, though, I looked back over my shoulder at the kid. It really was weird, seeing such a young face scrunched up in thought like that.
"Hey, Rimuru? If it helps any, I don't think you're doing a bad of a job with running this whole thing. I'm happy to be a part of it, at least."
"Eh, that's just 'cause I did the same thing back on Earth." he quickly replied, then blinked and looked up at me. "… thanks, though, Emily. That means a lot."
I smiled and left the tent, and coughed a bit as I turned to face the dust-covered worksite. Wooden foundations were starting to go up all around me. It was starting to look like a real town, something to be proud of, and I really hoped it wouldn't get all torn down as soon as we set it up.
Chapter 15Hoo, okay, sorry for the extreme delay on this. Life was kind of kicking me in the butt for a while, but I'm happy to finally get this out.
As I was taking in the sight of the up-and-coming village, a large gust of wind from my left told me that Kousei had noticed me coming out. Ever since we had gotten back, Rimuru's direwolf familiar Ranga had been trying to teach her the Shadow Movement skill that he use to hide in the slime's shadow. While she hadn't been taking to it very well, that definitely didn't stop her from trying.
"Picked it up yet?" I asked her, and still scoffed a bit as she reared up to her full height. She was as tall as the tents themselves, and ten feet long as well if you counted her tail. And while Ranga's full size was apparently around there, he had the ability to shrink down to Great Dane size (for some reason), so for obvious reasons he kept himself there for most of the time.
"I am a creature of the sky, and not very well suited to sulking around in the shadows." Kousei replied, making the direwolf snort.
"Perhaps, but if your intention is to follow your young charge everywhere she goes, you will need some form of concealment."
A vision of the gigantic bird following me through city streets like a mother hen crossed my eyes, and I shuddered. "Y-You really don't have to follow me around all the time. I'm sure you have your own stuff to do, right?"
"Before I answered the call to assist the orges my days consisted of securing my territory, hunting my next meal, and sleeping." she bluntly replied. "I am more than happy to accompany you to wherever you wish, my charge."
The emphasis she put on the last word, as well as the way her face quirked as she said it, told me that something was up. Ranga's wagging tail didn't help things, either. "Was that a pun, Kousei."
"I would do no such thing, my charge."
Even through Thought Communication, it sounded like she was trying to hold back laughter, and I just rolled my eyes as I started to walk off. "If you do want to follow me around, then figure out something, okay? I can't have a massive bird walking down the streets with me."
She nodded, and without a word returned to her practice. Sickly purple wisps formed around her body for a few scant moments, only to evaporate before they got very far. She let out an irritated trill, and then without pausing started to try it again.
"And don't burn yourself out!" I yelled over my shoulder. Then I turned back around when she didn't seem to notice. "I'm serious, Kousei."
"… Of course, Lady Emily."
Her gigantic pout felt like a slap in the face, but I couldn't do anything besides sigh and turn back towards the construction. I was serious about her not being able to follow me around; she was already distracting all of the workers by standing near the tents. I couldn't imagine what it would be like if she tried to follow me down the streets.
And… to be entirely honest, I didn't know if I wanted her super close to me right now. Something felt off about how she interacted with me. It wasn't suspicious, per se, but when she did stuff like that… I didn't want to call it disrespectful, because that was a dangerous line of thinking, but it was almost like she was a grown-up child bantering with her parent. And we had just met less than a week ago. There had to be something that she wasn't telling me… or maybe something that I just hadn't asked her about yet. I didn't want to assume the worst.
Still, I tried to push it out of my mind as I dropped Rimuru's gift off in my own tent and headed down the newly completed main street. Since I didn't exactly have modern-day plastic-whatever soles in my shoes, it felt pretty nice to have something other than dirt under my feet for once. The concrete (or 'quicklime', according to Rimuru) was just being poured when I left, and had set during our trip back. In fact, I couldn't help but whistle as I looked around to see what was apparently just a few days' progress. When I had left they were just starting to frame the houses, but now the majority of that had been set up, and now it looked like they were laying down the lines for some kind of plumbing system. It really was fantastic watching the hobgoblins work, and if the dwarves were managing it all then they were fantastic organizers. Back on Earth whole sections of my old university could be blocked off, for semesters at a time, while they were putting up one new building.
"I wonder if there's anything like a college here…" I idly muttered, then winced as a batch of memories hit me upside the head. That was what Shizue had been doing before she left; teaching and looking after a small group of summoned kids over in the human kingdom of Ingracia. Those children had been the end result of countries desperately trying to summon a Hero, and when they failed to develop any kind of unique skill, they had just been tossed in the general direction of the Free Union's academy without a care for what had been done to them.
I didn't know the exact specifics of the process, but I knew that you could either make the summoning super precise and costly, or take a quarter of the time and resources to do the equivalent of a random grab bag. And because of how desperate people were to summon a new hero, It was no surprise that most of them favored the latter, and it was exactly because of that that sometimes ten, eight year old children would be pulled here without anything to their name - not even a unique skill. And what the summoners chose to ignore every damn time was that every summoned child became a ticking time bomb as soon as they arrived. Nobody knew exactly why it happened, but like clockwork within a few years of arriving every summoned child just… keeled over. So it was more than likely that each member of Shizue's class didn't have very long left to live. It had been one of her final wishes to try and find some way to save them, so now I was all mixed up in the clusterfuck as well, but… the kids wouldn't even recognize me now. And I didn't know if I could face them after I more or less abandoned them.
On top of that, I couldn't even get inside that city. They had an absurdly strict border control, like the TSA on steroids, and I was positive I'd trip one magical scanner or another if I stepped within a mile of that place. Looking human and acting human that didn't mean I was a human, especially according to their scanners, and even demi-humans like elves and dwarves were second-class citizens there. An actual monster, or spirit or whatever, trying to enter would be shot on sight. No questions asked. So that whole topic shoved Kousei's oddness out of my head as I wandered to what would be the main plaza, and I jumped as I felt someone's hand on my shoulder.
"Lady Emily, are you alright?"
It was the pink-haired ogre that the other ones called 'princess', and she gave me an awkward smile as I turned around to face her.
"You looked like you were going to smash that fountain to pieces…"
"I did?" Rimuru had wanted to set up a large fountain in the middle of the whole village, even going as far as to use some kind of inscription magic to create water then and there rather than hook it up to whatever was going to be used for a plumbing system around here. I was only a few steps away from the base, which hadn't been there before. "… Oh, I guess I did. S-Sorry, I've… got a lot on my mind."
She nodded. "I can imagine. Do you think talking about it would help?"
"No…" As much as it made my stomach sink, I really didn't think there wasn't a way for me to help them. I desperately wished I could, but… there just wasn't. So instead, I just sighed. "Honestly, I think a distraction would be better. It's not really something that can be fixed. Have you seen, uh…" Then I realized that none of them had names. "… the, spirit-magic ogre?"
"The shaman?" She shook her head. "I was just looking for her myself. She and the beastmaster and the herbalist all went towards your farms when we split up. Shall we look for her together?"
"O-Oh, yeah." The farms were on the other side of the village. It would take a bit of a walk to get over there, and… I couldn't help but stare at her as we did. Green-skin-and-otherwise-human was one thing, but she had literal horns growing out of her forehead, not to mention the red, tear-like marks that ran from her eyelids down her cheeks. They kind of made her look a bit demonic, despite everything else about her being a normal teenage girl.
"They're marks of royalty, if you're wondering."
I flinched. "What… oh, you mean those tear things. Sorry, I didn't mean to be… this is just…" I trailed off, trying to find the right words to describe it. Weird as hell? Bizarre?… Scary? "… all so new to me."
"The elder said that you were reincarnated, right?" she hummed. "Was your old world not like this?"
"Not at all, no. Humans… we had dominated the entire world, really. There was nothing like the Great Forest there; I guess the closest would be like, a jungle called the Amazon, but even that was nothing like this. Magic wasn't a thing, full stop."
The orgess just stared at me as I explained. "A whole world dominated by humans… I can't imagine." she whispered, almost in horror. Then she stopped, took a look at me, and instantly backpedaled. "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything bad by that! It's just, humans are… very different than monsters. Not always in a good way, at least in my opinion."
"No, I absolutely get what you mean." I replied, and sighed. "Everyone here is so cooperative, and they all work together with complaining… there was nothing like this back on Earth. And it doesn't feel like the humans here are much better. Honestly, I'm glad I don't have to be a part of it anymore. I… really prefer it here, at least so far."
Before I had the chance to process what I had just said, she continued. "But, aren't you human yourself?"
I sighed. "I'm not, actually. I was before, but here I'm technically a spirit." She blinked quite a bit at that, but otherwise stayed silent. "I'm just… possessing a human body? So… I still think of myself as human, I guess."
"Why?"
I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at her. "… W-Why?"
"Well, if you're a spirit now, why are you still calling yourself human?"
It was an honest, completely innocent question that I didn't have any kind of answer to. Why was I still calling myself human? I had just outright said I didn't even like them.
"I… have no clue, honestly." I muttered. "I've been human for most of my life, and… I woke up looking human, and I guess I just… I hadn't really thought about it before. 'Monster' always meant 'bad' back home, and… I-I don't know if I can call myself that." Then I blinked. "N-Not that I'm saying that you're bad, or anything!"
"No offense taken." she replied, without missing a beat. "That being said, though… you can't call yourself a monster, but you can call yourself a human?"
Again, I almost stumbled as I listened to her. "W-Well, not every human is bad! I-It's just, the worst ones are more obvious!"
"'Not every monster is bad, it's just the worst ones are more obvious.'" she parroted back, and then actually winked at me. "I don't know what the word really meant in your dialect, and if your world truly only had humans in it then I completely understand what you're feeling." But she looked around the village, and all of the hobgoblins that were constructing it. "But I don't think this place is going to just have hobgoblins forever. You're going to be dealing with a lot of different races soon, and it's important to keep in mind that we're all sapient and individual. Just like humans."
Nothing came out out of my mouth in reply. Of course I hadn't intended anything like what had ended up coming out, but I wasn't about to defend what I had said, either… I really had been a bit racist there, hadn't I? Or 'speciest', or whatever. I could go on and on about whatever to try and defend myself, but in the end there really wasn't an excuse. I was making a hell of a lot of rude-ass assumptions. And she was right; Rimuru (who definitely didn't consider himself human anymore) wanted this village to grow, and he was making every effort for there to be more than just hobogoblins here. If I wanted to stay here, then I'd have to get over that whole part of myself.
So as we walked, I tried my damndest to not stare at the girl that was following alongside me, but the rest of the trip was still done in complete silence. Thankfully, before it got too awkward we had arrived at the outskirts of the village, and the edge of the forest. I could hear the dull thunk of axes working on clearing even more trees for all of the farmland we'd need.
"Oh, there she is!"
The pink-haired ogre waved in the direction of a small, fenced-off plot of land. The 'shaman' and the green-haired kid from before were standing just outside, and the beastmaster and her fox were staring off into the distance somewhere. Without a word, a glyphic circle erupted underneath the shaman's feet, and in a burst of light the elf-like woman from before appeared out of nowhere. Now that I had a chance to actually look at her, she was actually pretty well built despite her apparent race, and I had to catch myself before the pink-haired ogre caught me staring again.
The spirit mimicked the shaman when she raised her hands, and when she snapped them down the grassy earth turned itself over in tiles until the entire plot had been overturned. Then she pushed her hands towards her and all of the roots were all pushed to the front of the plot, then she repeated the motion to the side and the end result was an entire farm plot ready to go, complete with all of the roots and grasses pushed into a large clump at one of the corners. Then the kid wasted no time in jumping over the fence and falling to his knees to scoop out a palm-sized clump of ground, and he started to nod and mutter to himself as he fingers through it.
"Hello, you three!"
The kid froze for a moment, then snapped upwards and quickly wiped the dirt off of his palms. "P-Princess! A-And… Lady Emily!"
The shaman took a breath, and then smiled as she looked down at me. "What brings you all the way down here, Lady Emily? You don't need to worry about this kinda stuff, we have it handled."
"T-That's exactly why I came down here, actually." I really was trying my damndest not to assume anything, but it was hard not to be scared by someone almost a foot taller than you and with horns a fifth of your height. The snaggletooth she had helped a bit, though. "You… know a lot about spirit magic, right?"
"What makes you say that?" she asked as she looked at the freshly tilted plot and grinned. "I know a good bit, but really, all it is now is borrowing her power." She nodded to the ghostlike elf hovering over her.
"Borrowing her power…" The spirit's expression seemed a bit distant, and she tilted her head in curiosity as we made eye contact for a moment. Then I turned back to the shaman. "It can't be that simple, right?"
"Well, the setup wasn't. But like I said, at this point it kinda is." Her brow furrowed, even as she smiled at me. "Why are you asking?"
"I, well..I'm technically a spirit myself, so I was wondering-"
"-wait, wait wait." she stammered, then blinked several times as she processed what I said. "Sorry for interrupting, but… you're a spirit? Uh…"
I sighed. "After I died, I popped into existence here as what I thought was a ghost but was apparently a spirit, and then… well, a bunch of crap happened to give me my own physical body."
The shaman slowly shook her head. "You mean… you popped into existence? By yourself? That's not how it works. A-At least not normally. Normally, a spirit has to be summoned here by someone else…"
"I… may have asked to be a spirit." I muttered, then shook my own head. "Anyways, that's not important. What I wanted to ask was if you help me with my own magic." I summoned up a few sparks around my hand as an example.
Intrigued, the shaman leaned forward and let out a low whistle. "Well, that's definitely spiritual magic, alright. Wow… you're really something, Lady Emily. I've never heard of a spirit being able to act on their own like this." Then she scoffed. "I don't know what you mean by 'helping you', though."
"Well… do you have any examples, I guess? Any like, spells you could teach me?"
Her brow furrowed even harder than before. "Spells…? That's not how… spiritual magic isn't chanting magic, Lady Emily."
"Okay, what's the difference between the two, then."
"Chanting magic uses specific formulae to cast one specific spell with one specific effect." the pink-haired girl jumped in to explain. I had seen her casting a couple things back during the fight, and during the trip back. Like Elen, they had always had made a glyph of some kind. "A 'summon water' spell would summon water, but you couldn't do anything with that water without casting another spell."
"I use chanting magic to call her to me, but after that it's entirely spiritual magic, which is… much more freeform than chanting. The earth moves simply because my spirit tells it to, and nothing more complicated than that." she lifted her hand, making a small cube of earth raise itself into the air as she did. "Moving this bit of dirt is as easy as… say, extracting metal from the ground." Then she frowned as the spirit whispered something in her ear. "… Okay, not as easy. But the point is, you don't have to do two separate things for them. They're both as easy as just willing it to happen." She gave me a slightly uneasy smile. "If I can be honest, I think you might be approaching it wrong if you're asking for help. I dunno if there's anything to 'figure out'."
"The earth moves just because your spirit tells it to…" I repeated. It didn't feel like she was entirely wrong, but I didn't know if I could really comprehend the potential of just being able to tell lightning to do whatever I wanted it to.
"… Well, how much the spirit can actually do is obviously dependent on the amount of magicules they have, but you shouldn't have any issues with that, Lady Emily." the shaman grinned. "Beyond that, though, yeah. It really is just that simple. It's not like there isn't room for improvement, but most of it's on a personal basis. Applications and stuff. I might've been able to help more if you were an earth spirit, but you're not, and even if you were you'd have your own way of interacting with the world."
"Mmmm…"
"Sorry I'm not able to help more, Lady Emily…" she muttered, almost embarrassed.
"No, it's fine." I tonelessly reply, still looking down at my hand. "It sounds like the most important thing is experience, then? Like… just learning how I really work."
She nodded eagerly. "I don't think it'll take long at all before you can dish out some real damage, we just need to get you some practice somewhere…" Then she let out a hum as looked around the border. "Hrm… there should be plenty of stuff around here to fight…"
As she looked for whatever she was looking for, I saw a hobgoblin run out from the village and start eagerly addressing the farmers that were working the only plot that had actually been set up. They just stared at him for a moment and blinked several times, before one of them replied with a shake of her head. Then it looked like they started to yell at one another… not exactly liking seeing them fight, I walked over.
"Hey, what's going on?"
Both of them jumped. "O-Oh! N-Nothing, Lady Emily, I was just informed that Lord Rimuru would like to hold a feast tonight!"
The farmer nodded. "We're all working as hard as we can, of course, but it's simply not possible to get everything we need in time." she gestured the empty plot. "And the scouts are out on patrol, so we can't ask them…"
The kid, who had been completely quiet since we arrived, jumped over the fence again and squatted down to take a look at the single tiny sapling that was beginning to poke out. After a moment, he nodded. "These are almidions, right?" He looked up past the treeline. "There should be plenty in the forest, if you need them."
Then the shaman elbowed me lightly as she walked up. "That sounds like it's a good excuse for a little expedition."
"My companion and I have also identified several large beasts within the forest." The beastmaster added, as she and her fox followed. "It shall not be an expedition, but a hunt!"
"Oh, jeez… well, this is a great opportunity for you to train your magic, Lady Emily."
All four of them turned to stare at me with wide smiles, and I had to take a few steps back from the sheer pressure. "U-Um, hang on a sec." Then I turned on Thought Communication. "R-Rimuru, did you say you wanted to have a feast tonight?"
The reply sounded both surprised and annoyed. "I… may have realized that I can actually taste things now and told Rigur that I was going to eat with everyone else. He went and blew it up, didn't he?"
I glanced behind me. "They're calling it a feast, and the ogres are wanting to go on a hunt…"
"A hunt, huh?" Then he cut off the conversation then and there.
"… Uh, Rimuru?"
I just stood there awkwardly until a great gust of wind came from the other side of the village, and the slime arrived in person on top of his familiar. Less than a minute had passed. "A hunt sounds like fun. I'm in."
Then I let out a quiet groan as Kousei arrived right after. "I shall assist as well!"
The four ogres blinked, and then the beastmaster broke out into a wild grin. "With so many powerful beings with us, we'll be able to catch even the mightiest beasts!"
My next breath came out as an anxious grumble, and Rimuru had the same smile as the rest of the ogres as he clapped me on the back. "Trust me, Emily, this'll be fun. Don't worry so much."[/hr]