Chapter 27:
The Forest and the Old Tale

It was way too soon.

Damn it, what did I do to deserve this? I said, pressing my hand to my lower back. Naturally, I hadn't forgotten about this unpleasant phenomenon at all. I had already had to deal with it in my previous life–but it was in the very back of my mind, being overshadowed by all of the things in this new life.

I had taken for granted the comforts of the modern world. Sure, it didn't have magic or anything like that, but what it did have was proper toiletries. And now, I was forced to make do with the little I had.
Muttering to myself, I grabbed a white washcloth. I grimaced at the thought of having to dye it red to clean myself.


Thanks to my unfortunate predicament, I was out of business for the next three days. I was lucky that it only lasted that long, but that didn't make it any less uncomfortable. I was mostly bedridden for the duration of it, only getting up to use the bathroom or to scarf down food.

It did cause some issues other than just me. We had agreed on going on the quest three days after picking it up, but I was in no condition to be fighting monsters. Ares was pretty insistent on having me come with them, but after I told him I'd just rather stay behind, he reluctantly settled on postponing it.

Occasionally, Alek would teach me a bit of Demon God, but for the most part, Ares was the one looking over me while I was bedridden. I spent most of the day conversing with him about rather random things. I told him all about my life in Buena Village, to which he unexpectedly paid attention.

He would ask me about small things, like about my time with Roxas. He was surprised I could still remember things from such a young age, as he couldn't remember what he did when he was three at all. That could've been because Ares was two years older than me, but it did make me question some things about my memory.

Of course, he never went into his past at all. I was curious about why he didn't want to talk about it, but I figured that it probably wasn't anything good. Back in my old life, I hated secrets. When I went to high school, I was one of the most nosy people in the school. I'd constantly pester people about what they were hiding, which led me to befriend unpleasant people.

In hindsight, I should've seen something wrong with my friend group always talking down on other people. Instead of trying to get them to stop, I just joined in on the harsh gossip. I never actually said words to people's faces, but I did spread rumors a few times. Frankly, I still believe some of those people did deserve it.

That said, even though I was dying to know what Ares's past was like, I didn't pry. Of course, I could've forced him to do it, seeing as he was my quote-on-quote slave, but I didn't want to ruin our relationship like that. He'd probably look at me with resentment in his eyes if I ever did something like that.

I wouldn't call Ares and I the best of friends. Despite that, we were in for a long journey together, and I wanted to be on better terms if I could help it. He was easy enough to get along with, so I didn't mind him. However, I did catch him trying to peek at me while I was changing a few times, which always ended with a rock bullet to his forehead. I think he was trying to hold back in the beginning, but now he was a full-fledged pervert whenever we weren't conversing and going out to buy things.

To think that I would be calling someone else a pervert. Well, I haven't been getting up to much funny business lately, so maybe it wouldn't be right to call me a pervert as I am now. Actually… I might like that slave thing a bit too much–

Nah, I haven't sunk that low. I think.


The location of our next quest–The Petrified Forest, was an entire day away from Rikarisu. It was a sparse clearing of large, crooked trees with sprawling branches–all of which were a pale bone white. It was a dark and dreary place, with dew-tipped spiderwebs draping trees with their sheer size. Scuttering could be heard if you listened hard enough. There was a moderate fog obscuring the ground, but I could make out a skull lying next to a rusted sword.

"While you were out, a group of two parties entered the forest at the same time," Alek began, breaking the eerie silence. Dammit. Did they beat us to it?

"They were reported missing after having been gone for three days. There's still no sign of them. I imagine that you can infer what happened here," Alek said grimly.

I knew that being an adventurer was a tough job, but Alek's words put into perspective

what could happen if a party weren't lucky enough to be blessed with a strong fighter. Our party was undeniably being carried by Alek, but I wasn't complaining about it. I was just going to have to get strong enough to not rely on Alek's help.

Of course, that was easier said than done. I still hadn't made any progress on my Curse Magic since the day after I was teleported here. This quest could have a few opportunities for me to try it out on a live target. I just needed to find that chance and take it.

I heard shuffling coming from my right, so I gripped my staff. I peered towards the direction that the sound was coming from, expecting some sort of monster. What I wasn't expecting were two young-looking adventurers who looked like they had no place in a forest like this.

I loosened my hold on my staff as the two adventurers drew closer to us. They called out, saying a few words.

"Party…two…join…?" were the only words I could make out.

Alek pressed a hand to his forehead and shut his eyes, which meant he was thinking. He always had the habit of doing it whenever he was making a decision.

"Alek, what do they need?" Ares asked, poking him in the arm.

"They're asking if they could join up with us for a quest they need to do," Alek explained. Join up with us? I mean, I don't blame them. They look about as young as first-year high schoolers, which is certainly not the age to be doing this stuff. Well… it's not like I'm one to talk.

"Hah? Didn't they sign up for this themselves?" Ares asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It's a little strange, yeah. I don't want to sound heartless, but they knew what they were coming into, right?" I said.

Of course, I did sympathize with them. Seeing them here kind of made me conflicted, but I wasn't sure I would want them to join the party either. It probably wouldn't be much of an issue relatively speaking, but it might make things a bit awkward when we're in a battle. These kids don't look to be particularly good fighters, either.

I shook my head. "Maybe they could go back and try this task when they're more capable?" I asked.

"I see. I'll tell them that, then," Alek said with an uncertain look on his face. Huh? Was he conflicted too? It was the first time I had seen Alek express something like that. Alek was slowly growing more humanlike with his emotions and conversations, but he was still the killing machine I knew well. It was nice to see.

The pair looked at each other hesitantly and skulked off. Good luck, I thought in my head.

After a bit of time spent walking in silence, I noticed something. The scuttling–now almost sounding like a wet crawl, grew ever so slightly louder. It drew Alek's attention, causing him to stop and peer upwards. "Ares, Lumina. You two should handle this."

Ares raised an eyebrow. "Handle what–"

An ear-splitting screech cut off his words. A massive, car-sized arachnid crashed onto the ground in front of us, prying open its maws and thrashing around its dark purple tongue. Ares and I recoiled in surprise, being caught off-guard by the creature.

Ares gripped his sword, tearing it out of its sheath. Before Ares could land an attack on the large arachnid, it lurched towards me, snapping its jaw at me. Mere seconds before my top half was chomped off, I managed to summon an earth pillar to dissect the creature. It made a sickly cry as the lance punched a hole through its dark purple body.

"Man, that one was supposed to be mine," Ares muttered. It's not a competition! And I nearly got turned into a pair of legs!

I sighed and wiped off some of the monster's blood that had gotten on my robe. I was worried that the dark blood against the pure white robe would stain it badly, but the blood dribbled off of the cloth like water on a tabletop. I had no idea how that worked, but it was certainly convenient.

I noticed that Alek was still on guard–as if that monster wasn't the only one he anticipated would attack. Sure enough, a guttural roar came from my right. I snapped my head in the direction to find the source of the sound, but I couldn't find anything. The fog was obscuring my view heavily, which put Ares and I at a serious disadvantage.

"An Executioner!" Ares cried out. I glanced in his direction, my eyes meeting with a lumbering undead hulk wearing cobbled-together scraps of thick plate armor. In one hand, it was holding a sizable worn-down sword. Ares leaped forward, slamming his sword onto the executioner's armor with a sharp clang.

The executioner, unfazed, attempted to cut down Ares with a slash of its blade. Ares parried the swing, but it was clear that it took a sizable amount of strength to do so. Ares grunted in exhaustion as the executioner continued to try to hack at Ares.

"Lumina! Back me up!" Ares shouted at me, still focused on the executioner.

I fired a stronger version of my rock bullets–a stone cannon–at the executioner. I usually only used rock bullets to ward off Ares, but I knew that they had a ton of potential for serious fights. I had to channel much more mana, but it was more or less the same spell, just refined.

My attack struck home, with enough force and energy to blow someone's head clean off. Despite that, it crumbled against the armor, only creating a small dent in it. That thing's armor is crazy! My mind tripped over itself trying to find a possible attack that could penetrate the armor without getting in range of its massive sword.

Maybe… Curse Magic? Curse Magic could presumably ignore armor, as it was a purely internal attack. But I had never used it in a battle before. That thought put me off like it had during the first quest. What if having never practiced before gets Ares hurt?

While I was in my indecisiveness, Ares continued to evade the Executioner's attack, striking it whenever he had the chance. But it was clear that he was having a hard time, his movements growing more sluggish the longer I took to think.

I shook my head. If I wasn't going to take this chance, I might as well have never even tried making it to begin with. The whole purpose of Curse Magic was to be my hidden trump card. What sort of trump card isn't even reliable?

"Here goes…" I muttered, extending my staff towards the executioner's head. Attempting to recall the same effect that I had made when I paralyzed that Treant back in the Migurd village, I magnified the mana I used back then by several volumes. This executioner in particular was a tough opponent, and I didn't want to half-ass it. Especially not when Ares was now panting heavily, sweat streaking down his forehead as he barely managed to get out of the way of an attack.

I could feel my mana being chipped away as I shot out the invisible spell towards the executioner. In an instant, it froze. Ares, who had been parrying and dodging its attack, stumbled backward at its abrupt stop.

"...Just how did you do that?!" Ares cried out, his eyes widened. He stood up and approached the now-paralyzed undead creature. It worked! I knew that it could work on monsters too!

I strode over to him, with a smug smirk on my face. A wave of pride washed over me. No need to thank me, Ares! I pictured him bowing before me in awe of my anything, I deserved some good old-fashioned praise right about now–

The executioner–as if unthawing from ice, broke out of the spell, snapping me out of my reverie. It lunged forward, swinging its sword at us. The sword whipped past my forehead, only missing because Ares grabbed me and pulled me out of the way.

"N-No way!" I stammered out.

"Shit! Lumina, move out of the way!" Ares said, readying his blade. He settled into a stance as the executioner wielded its sword, preparing to cut through the both of us. "I think I got it now. Do me a favor and try to slow it down!" Ares said, his face hardening as he seemingly thought of a plan. I nodded at him, and he faced towards the executioner.

I positioned myself a few steps backward and fired off a volley of ice at the monster. While it was busy fending off my attacks, Ares bounded around the executioner while striking at the gaps in the rusting armor. After a few attacks, one managed to land. It made a groan as Ares pierced right through it, dropping its sword to the ground. Ares exhaled loudly and ripped his sword out of the executioner's body. With a thump, it flopped to the now-blood-soaked ground.

Ares swung his sword at empty air, throwing off any blood still left on it. He turned toward me, sheathing his sword in the process.

"You… did have something to do with what just happened, right? Why did the executioner just stop in its tracks?" Ares asked me, a bewildered look on his face.

If I was going to explain this, it would most likely take a while to do. We really couldn't just set up a picnic table here in this nightmarish forest and just have a casual conversation about it. He probably wouldn't let up if I told him "I'll tell you later," either. It wouldn't hurt to tell him a little.

"...That's a bit of a tough question to answer. In short, I guess it's a sort of magic I discovered." I responded sheepishly.

Ares shook his head. "No, no, no. You what?" Ares said, even more flustered than before. He had a look in his eyes that said both "You're insane." and "Really? Tell me more!" at the same time.

"In all honesty, I'm not actually sure whether or not I invented it, but I just haven't heard of it anywhere before," I explained. It was true that I did manage to reverse engineer a spell from scratch, but maybe the spell–or an alternate version of it, was already widespread. The world was huge from what I had seen on maps, so it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

"I'm never going to get used to you, seriously…" Ares muttered. I chuckled at his words, being reminded of how people used to react in Buena Village.

Alek strode over to us, a proud look on his face. "You two did well," he said, patting both of us on the head. Ares deadpanned at him, but I let him pet me for a while. After that, we continued looking for the monster.


As we ventured further into the forest, my thoughts began to wander. They settled on Alek, the man whom I trusted my safety with. I didn't know much about him, but that was to be expected. I'd only just met the guy two weeks ago, after all.

But he was interesting. I'd never met or heard of anyone remotely like him before–he was just that strange. He aspired to 'surpass a great hero', but hadn't been acting like much of anything other than a bodyguard for the most part. He exuded confidence and zealousness, part of what made him so unique. He wanted to be recognized, to have his title be more famous than it already was.

Was surpassing this great hero truly going to do all of that for him? I found myself wondering just who this hero was. There was a good chance that I had never heard of him before, seeing as how Alek presumably had already lived decades and decades.

"Alek," I began, drawing his attention. "Do you remember when you told me about the hero you wanted to become greater than?"

"Hmm? Of course," He responded.

"Would you mind telling me a bit more about them?" I asked.

Ares perked up. "Hero? Could you tell me as well?"

Alek considered it for a moment and then spoke up. "I don't see why not. Don't let your guard down, though. We're still in the bowels of this monster-infested forest," Alek said, turning away from us.

The faint scuttling ceased as Alek began recounting the tale of his idol. Alek's hero, nicknamed Al, was once another boy wishing to be renowned for his greatness–a gentleman, someone who would never pass by someone in peril. Al's father, a legend in his own right, had a mighty enemy–one that even he couldn't defeat. Plagued by the ridicule his father had received for dying to his enemy, Al set out on a journey, becoming a heroic wannabe. His objective was to kill his father's enemy, the Emperor Dragon King Kajakuto.

Kajakuto? That's the name of Alek's sword, isn't it? I thought as he continued to tell us about the hero.

On his path, he partied up with three warrior women, all of whom he saved from near death due to his obligations to become a hero. After one of them saved Al from a fatal attack from the Emperor Dragon King himself, he slayed Kajakuto. Tales of Al's deeds resonated all over the world, drawing the attention of a master swordsmith once acquainted with the hero's father. Yulian, the master swordsman, gifted Al a massive sword forged from the remains of the Emperor Dragon King, giving it the title of King Dragon Sword Kajakuto.

Al's story was only truly discovered in full decades later after an adventurer found a journal written from an outside perspective in the depths of a labyrinth.

Alek wrapped up his story neatly, leaving me with more than a few unanswered questions. Such as: If Al was the one who once held the King Dragon Sword, how did Alek have it now? And, if Al's story was only found from an exterior point of view, how did Alek know so much about the story itself?

Before I could ask any of them, Ares beat me to the punch.

"Could the hero in your story be… Kalmann the Second?" Ares asked, recalling something in his head.

"You are correct, Ares," Alek replied, almost somberly.

The only Kalmann I knew was Alek himself. Seeing as he was the Third, it was obvious that two previous people held that title. But how did Alek come to succeed the title?

"I knew I read something about him in a history textbook. He was the previous North God, succeeding the title after he felled his opponent in battle. But then how…" Ares trailed off. He seemingly came to the same question as I did–How were Alek and Alex related?

"As I am now the current North God, I imagine you two are confused as to what happened to Alex. In short, I, as his son and first disciple, succeeded the title of North God. He retired, opting to teach a group of new disciples a branch of the swordsmanship that I would never call the North God style," Alek explained, a stony expression on his face.

Ah… That answered all of my questions. The thought of Alek aiming to surpass his father reminded me of several stories similar to it back in my previous life. Alek didn't go into detail much, but I could probably fill in the gaps. It seemed that Alek was not fond of the fact that his father retired, leading him to crave acknowledgment from others.

Dumbing it down a little, he was just a stubborn man who wanted to be better than his father. It kind of humanized him, honestly. I hadn't been thinking about Alek as a fully-fledged person up until now. I had used his tendency to be overkill as an excuse to regard him as some game NPC who guided me along my path.

But this wasn't a game at all. In retrospect, I had only ever regarded my parents and Sylphie as living, real people. Even with these Adventurer's Guild tasks, I thought of them as nothing more than "quests" given to the party for us to clear.

With that in mind, I decided to change my mindset for the better.

Ares, having considered it for some time, spoke up once again. "I see. Back during the first day after you two freed me, you told me that Auber's style was a mere imitation of the North God Style. Is this what you were referring to with your father having taken on disciples?"

"Yes. Auber was among his disciples," Alek responded.
Ares nodded silently, now satisfied with his answers. "You tell very interesting stories, Alek."

"I do? In that case, would you like to hear more?" Alek offered.

"Of course," Ares responded, grinning at him.

I chuckled softly as their conversation droned on, filling the silence of the dark forest.


Author's Note:

Thank you for reading this chapter, and for being patient. Finally bringing Alek into the spotlight again, I hope you liked this chapter. FYI: I posted a rewrite of the Ares side story, so if you want to learn a little more about that girl's circumstances, you should check that out. (In case you haven't read it yet, I also posted a rewrite of the Volume 2 Extra Chapter as of September 28.)

I wish I could upload faster, but my personal obligations don't let me do so. As always, Expect the next chapter, Chapter 28, to be released by next week-Before October 11th

I'd also appreciate it if you checked out the Ao3 version, as when the chapters eventually have more mature content, I will only be able to post the full uncensored chapters there. Additionally, they have better grammar and retouched events. Thank you again!

Next Chapter: Departure from Rikarisu