Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

Paul’s Story 

Paul 

When I opened my eyes, I found myself in the middle of a grassy plain. 

It was an unremarkable stretch of flat, empty land, but oddly enough, it felt familiar. I tried to determine where I was, and the answer came to mind before too long. I was in the south of the Kingdom of Asura, near a town I’d once spent some time in. It was the place I’d stayed back when I was learning the Water God style…and Lilia’s hometown. 

Naturally, I concluded this had to be some sort of dream. I had no reason to be here, after all. Still, it sure brought back some memories. How many years had I spent in this area? One? Maybe two? All I knew for sure was that I hadn’t stayed that long. 

Most of my memories from that period of my life concerned the training hall, and the senior students I trained with there. They were a pack of arrogant idiots with big mouths and no real skill. I had actual talent, so they were always busy trying to keep me in my “proper place.” I’d always hated being bossed around like that—the whole reason I ran away from home in the first place was to get out from under my old man’s thumb, after all. 

But he’d at least been a genuinely competent and intimidating man, with enough power to justify his ego. The senior students, on the other hand, were just useless trash with swollen heads. By the time I reached the Intermediate rank, they were still lagging in the late stages of their Beginner lessons. It was honestly kind of pathetic. 

Hell, even the master of the training hall had only ever reached the Advanced rank in the Water God style. He was one of those old coots who loved to shout about “guts” and “determination,” despite the fact they’d never gotten him much of anywhere. I wanted to show every last one of them just how good I really was someday. 

Never really got the chance, as it turned out. I eventually lost my patience with their bullshit, slept with Lilia out of spite, and ran away in the night. I’d been looking to get with her for a while…but in that moment, all I wanted was to make a mess of something they all treasured. 

By the next morning, they were all out searching furiously for any trace of me. I fled to a foreign country with a sneer on my face. 

God, I really was a stupid little shit. I didn’t care how much the other students hated me, but taking out my frustration on Lilia like that wasn’t exactly my finest hour. 

“Mm…” 

The wind was picking up. A bit of dust blew into my eye, and I grimaced slightly. A moment later, there was a small tug at my sleeve. 

“Daddy? Where are we…?” 

“Hm?” 

For some reason, I was holding Norn in my arms. She was looking up at me with anxiety in her eyes. 

At this point, I finally realized that I was actually standing in the middle of a field in the clothes I wore at home. I could feel solid ground underneath my feet…and the warmth of my daughter’s body against my chest. 

This wasn’t a dream. 

“What the heck…?” 

I didn’t have the first idea what I was doing here. If I’d been alone, I probably would have gone right on believing it was a dream. But Norn was right there in my arms. 

Yeah. That was little Norn, all right. My adorable three-year-old daughter. 

I didn’t hug her like this very often. I was going for more of a stern, dignified father thing, so I mostly kept the physical expressions of affection to a minimum. What was she doing in my arms, then? 

…Oh, that’s right. Now I remember. 

Just a few moments ago, I’d been chatting with Zenith in our house. 

“You know, girls stop letting their fathers hug them once they grow up a little. You really should get a few squeezes in while you still can.” 

“Nah, I’m working on my paternal dignity this time around. Compared to Rudeus, Norn seems like an ordinary kid, right? If I play my cards right, I bet I can convince her I’m the greatest man in the world.” 

“Wasn’t that your father’s approach, too? I thought you hated him.” 

“…You’ve got a point. All right, let me at her.” 

It was just a silly, casual conversation. Lilia was nearby as well, teaching Aisha something or the other. After realizing that the girl was “gifted,” she’d decided to nurture her talents through constant lessons and lectures. I argued that Aisha would be happier if we let her have a more carefree childhood, but Lilia pushed back so ferociously that I had to back down. 

The kid really was growing up fast, though. She’d started walking at a very early age, and absorbed everything we taught her like a sponge. Lilia was a good teacher, so that was probably part of it, but Aisha was making so much progress that it made me worry there might something wrong with Norn. 

When I brought up to Lilia, she told me “Aisha’s nothing special compared to young master Rudeus. And Miss Norn’s a perfectly normal child.” 

I didn’t really care if Norn was “normal” or not, honestly. But when I pictured her growing up in the shadow of two brilliant siblings, it made me feel a little bad for her. 

I remembered thoughts like those running through my mind… 

And then I was suddenly enveloped in a blinding white light. 

Yeah, I remembered now. There wasn’t some sort of gap in my memory. The fact that I still had Norn in my arms was proof of that. The girl had been walking around on her own for some time now, but I was holding her to my chest. 

Something very strange was going on. That much was immediately obvious. 

“Daddy?” Norn spoke to me again in an uneasy voice. She’d been watching my face this whole time. 

“It’s all right, Norn.” Gently patting her on the head, I looked around the area. Zenith and Lilia were nowhere to be seen. Were they somewhere close nearby? Or was I the only one who’d been brought here? 

In that case, why was Norn still with me? 

One possibility did come to mind. 

I’d once triggered a very nasty trap in the depths of a labyrinth—a hidden teleportation circle. And this felt very similar. At the time, I was lucky enough to be teleported close nearby. But I’d reflexively grabbed Elinalise by the sleeve as the trap went off, which got her dragged along as well. She was pretty pissed off at me. 

If you’re unlucky, a teleport trap is the sort of thing that can be instantly lethal. It wasn’t really my fault I stepped on it, since our monkey of a scout should have spotted the thing beforehand…but that wasn’t important right now. Basically, teleportation magic was capable of instantly moving both you—and anyone you were in physical contact with—to a different location. That would explain why Norn was still with me, but the others weren’t. 

Why had I been teleported, though? There’d been no warning at all. Had somebody done this to me deliberately? 

To be honest, I did have enemies all over the place. It wouldn’t be surprising if someone launched a sneak attack on me, given all the bad stuff I’d done in the past. But teleportation magic? That just didn’t make any sense. For one thing, there was no known incantation for it. To teleport someone, you needed to use either a magic circle or a special magic item. Teleportation items were banned worldwide, and the creation of teleportation circles had been forbidden for so long that the art itself was all but lost. Why would anyone go to such extreme, dangerous lengths just to take revenge on a single man like me? And why would they just dump me in some empty field…? 

Could one of the students from the training hall have been responsible? Maybe they were still nursing a grudge and teleported me away so they could get their hands on Lilia. Maybe they put me here to send a message…and when I made it back to my house, I’d find Zenith and Lilia being despoiled by a gang of vicious thugs. 

Damn. That did sound like something those bastards would think of. 

“Uh, Daddy…” 

“Don’t worry, Norn. It’s okay. We’ll get back home soon enough.” 

Trying to reassure myself as much as Norn, I set off toward the nearby town. Fortunately, I had an Asuran gold coin hidden away in my sword sheath for emergencies. And thanks to old habits from my adventuring days, I always kept my sword on my person, even when I slept. The only time I took it off was when I made love. My Adventurer Card was tucked away inside the holder, too. Just a small precaution against exactly this sort of emergency. 

I made my way to the local Guild and exchanged my gold coin for smaller denominations. The receptionist handed me back nine Asuran silver coins and eight large coppers. They’d apparently hiked their fees at some point, but I had more than I needed anyway. I quickly reviewed the tasks that were available, found one for an emergency delivery, and accepted it on the spot. 

My card had run out of magic years ago, so the lady behind the counter had to recharge it for me first. When the words on it reappeared, she exclaimed in surprise and asked me why a S-ranked adventurer was taking on a job like this. Since it was an emergency request, the normal restrictions didn’t apply, but under normal circumstances it would have been an E-ranked task. 

I didn’t have any real reason to hide my situation, but I didn’t feel like taking the time to explain. I fed her some vague non-explanation, then asked if I could borrow a horse. This was one of the special perks the Guild offered S-ranked adventurers. When you accepted an urgent delivery job, they loaned you a ride free of charge. Of course, you needed to give the horse back once the job was done…but this time, I was planning to ride off in a totally different direction. I did feel bad for the client, but I had an emergency of my own to deal with. 

The horse they brought out for me turned out to be quite an impressive specimen. I’d gotten lucky. That delivery job must have been very urgent indeed. There was a real possibility I’d lose my status as an adventurer for this stunt, but I could live with that. I wasn’t planning to make my living that way ever again. 

I hoisted Norn onto the horse, then hopped up behind her. 

We galloped out of town immediately. 

Halfway through the trip, Norn fell ill. The girl had no experience riding horseback, and I kept us traveling day and night. It was probably just too much for her to handle. 

With the time it took to nurse her back to health, I didn’t make it back to the Fittoa Region for a good two months. It took so long I almost wished we’d just taken a carriage from the start. I’d long since failed the delivery job, of course, but the breach-of-contract fee wasn’t too painful. 

At the moment, though, I was in the depths of despair. We hadn’t reached Buena Village yet, but I’d finally discovered just how grave the situation really was. 

Everything in the Fittoa region had vanished. 

I was bewildered. Totally bewildered. What the hell had happened? Where was Buena Village now? Where were Zenith and Lilia? The Citadel of Roa had disappeared, too. Did that mean even Rudeus was gone? 

This can’t be happening. 

At some point, I’d fallen to my knees in shock and anguish. The words “they were wiped out by a teleport trap” echoed inside my mind. 

It was a phrase I’d heard more than once back in my adventuring days, when I was still exploring labyrinths. Teleportation traps were the one thing you had to watch out for. They split your party up and left you uncertain of your own location. Triggering one was a very, very bad idea. I heard numerous stories of veteran teams that were totally wiped out as a result of those things. Once, I’d seen a stunned man recounting how his whole party had stepped on a teleportation circle. He’d managed to team up with another adventurer and fight his way out of the labyrinth, only to discover that all his friends had perished. 

But why had this happened here? To us? 

“Daddy…aren’t we home yet?” 

Norn’s voice snapped me back to reality. Her small hand was clutching at my sleeve. 

Without saying a word, I hugged her close. 

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” 

That’s right. I’m her dad. 

This girl still didn’t understand what had happened. But she wasn’t worried, because she had me with her. I was her father. I was a father now, damn it! I couldn’t show any weakness. I had to stay calm and confident. Everything was going to be all right. 

Teleportation was a dangerous trap, and I didn’t have any idea why this had happened. But I was alive, wasn’t I? Zenith was a former adventurer in her own right. And although Lilia wasn’t as nimble as she used to be before her poisoning, she still knew how to use a sword. 

Aisha, though… 

Think, damn it. Was Lilia touching her in that moment? 

…I couldn’t remember. But I wasn’t going to give up hope, either. 

For now, I’d just have to believe that Lilia was holding her daughter’s hand when that light hit us. 

*** 

I returned the Guild’s horse at the nearest town and began gathering information. 

It seemed like this magical calamity really had affected the entire Fittoa Region. Philip and Sauros were both missing, so Philip’s older brother was currently serving as the acting lord. However, he was under intense political pressure to take responsibility for the disaster. From the sound of things, he was on the verge of being stripped of his position. All of the man’s energy was currently devoted to protecting himself, so he hadn’t taken any real steps to deal with the calamity itself. Instead of looking out for his people, the selfish bastard was trying to save his own skin. And you wonder why I can’t stand Asuran nobles. 

In the course of my investigations, I met an old man named Alphonse. He introduced himself as a butler who’d been in Philip’s service prior to the disaster. His loyalty to the Boreas Greyrat family was apparently unshaken, despite the current circumstances. He was setting up a refugee camp, paid for out of his own pocket, and he wanted me to help him get it off the ground. 

When I asked why he wanted me, the old man explained that Philip had sometimes mentioned my name. Apparently, he had me pinned as “a man who shows his real worth in a crisis, but also tends to create them through his own short-sightedness.” I wasn’t really asking for a critique, but whatever. 

Alphonse admitted he’d been somewhat hesitant to approach me on the basis of this questionable “endorsement.” Once he took the fact that I was Rudeus’ father into consideration, however, he’d decided it would be wise to seek my help. 

I’d heard a bit about how things were going in Roa through letters, but it was still nice to see my son was thought so highly of by someone he probably hadn’t even interacted with that often. In any case, I accepted Alphonse’s offer gladly and got to work right away. 

After a month, we made plenty of progress. 

Alphonse was a man with many connections. In only a few short weeks, he somehow dealt with all the preparations and gathered enough workers to get the refugee camp up and running. It was a seriously impressive feat. 

For my part, I recruited most of the younger refugees who’d gathered in the area into an organization called the Fittoa Search and Rescue Squad. We traveled all around the country, helping out people who’d been displaced by the calamity. Of course, my primary objective wasn’t to save a bunch of total strangers. First and foremost, I was looking for my family. 

At this point, the power struggle in the royal capital apparently resolved itself, since Alphonse began to receive disaster recovery funds from the government. I left a note behind at the refugee camp for Rudeus and set out with my squad for the Holy Country of Millis, home to the headquarters of the Adventurers’ Guild. Asura and Millis were two of the biggest countries in the world. I figured the information I was looking for had to be in one or the other. It felt like the logical approach. 

Honestly, I thought I’d find everyone soon enough. 

Talk about blind optimism. 

*** 

My first six months in Millis were productive enough. 

As it turned out, a large number of Fittoans had been teleported to this continent, and we went around rescuing every last one of them. Some had already been sold off as slaves, and forcibly liberating someone else’s “property” was against the law in Millis. But the thought of someone selling Zenith or Lilia into slavery made me so furious that I never hesitated to break that law. I stuck stubbornly to a policy of rescuing everyone we found. 

Once I’d decided on that course of action, I turned to Zenith’s family for help. As it happens, my wife came from a noble house with some real power in Millis. They were well-known for producing many famous knights, among other things. With their assistance, I started to lay the groundwork for freeing all the slaves we’d located. 

All in all, our efforts went smoothly. We moved fast and found many of the stranded, penniless Fittoans quickly. Once we extracted them from whatever predicament they’d landed in, we provided those capable of heading back home themselves with traveling funds, recruited any willing volunteers into our squad, and found places for the children and elderly refugees to stay. 

Freeing the slaves took more effort, of course. We paid for their freedom where we could. When that wasn’t an option, we had Zenith’s family put the pressure on. And when that didn’t work, we looked for chances to snatch them from their owners. 

Naturally, forcibly snatching away slaves didn’t endear us to the Millis nobility as a whole. Some of them even sent their personal forces after us. We had a number of fatalities. 

Still, I wasn’t about to stop. I had the moral high ground here. I was saving desperate people who needed help. And for that reason, my squad stuck with me despite the danger. 

I used everything I had—the Greyrat name, my connection to Zenith’s family, and my reputation as a former adventurer—to find ways around the obstacles in our path. But no matter how hard we worked, no matter how thoroughly I searched, I couldn’t seem to find any information about Zenith or Lilia. 

Hell, I hadn’t even heard anything about Rudeus yet. That boy stood out like a sore thumb everywhere he went, but now it felt like he’d fallen off the face of the planet. 

*** 

Before I knew it, an entire year had slipped by. 

By this point, we were hearing about fewer and fewer stranded Fittoans. We’d probably found almost everyone we were going to find in both the Millis Continent and the southern regions of the Central Continent. There were still some smaller villages we hadn’t searched yet, and a number of slaves we hadn’t managed to free, but that was about it. My squad was working systematically to liberate the remaining slaves. Once we got our hands on them, the rest was simple enough. 

I knew it was a violent approach. I knew that every slave we liberated earned me more hatred from the local nobility. I did it anyway. Sometimes that got my people attacked in the street. Sometimes they were badly injured, or even killed. And some members of the squad blamed me for that. 

Maybe they were right. Maybe I could have prevented things from taking such an ugly turn. 

But no matter what anyone said, I wasn’t going to change my approach now. I was too committed to the path I’d chosen. 

We started getting more news about dead Fittoans than live ones. There had been more bad news than good from the start, but the ratio just kept getting worse. 

To be frank, the people we found alive were very much in the minority. The Etos, Chloe, Laws, Bonnie, Lane, Marion, Monty…all of them were gone now. Every single time I learned of another dead acquaintance, my blood ran ice-cold. 

Sometimes members of the squad would break down in tears at the latest piece of awful news. More than once, we arrived just a little too late to save someone, and a friend or family member would take their anger out on me, demanding to know why I’d taken so long to get us to that one town or village. 

There was a risk we’d get ourselves stranded somewhere if we didn’t plan our movements carefully, though, so I didn’t think my strategy was wrong. Under my leadership, we’d managed to save several thousand refugees. 

Of course, if I’d managed to get a hold of the members of my old party, the Black Wolf Fangs, they could have searched the Demon Continent and the Begaritt Continent for us as well. But I’d only managed to get in touch with one of them, and he’d vanished shortly after a few brief conversations. I had no idea what he was doing now. 

I wouldn’t call them heartless or anything. We’d never gotten along that well in the first place, and there’d been one hell of a fight when I left. After the way I said goodbye, it would hardly be surprising if they still resented me. 

Why the hell did I have to leave things on such a sour note, anyway? I was such a stupid kid. 

But there wasn’t much point dwelling on that now. 

*** 

A year and a half had passed since “The Displacement Incident.” 

These days, alcohol was the only thing that kept me going. I started drinking in the morning, and I kept right on going into the night. I was literally never sober. 

I knew I should stop myself. But whenever the booze wore off, the exact same thoughts always popped into my head. 

I’d tell myself that my family was dead. 

I’d think about the ways in which they might have died. I’d wonder what had happened to their corpses. I couldn’t think about anything else. 

Can you really blame me? Even that absurdly talented son of mine had vanished without a trace. I didn’t want to believe it. I really didn’t. But in all probability, he was dead. They had all probably died sometime in the last eighteen months—with tears running down their faces, waiting for me to rescue them. 

Every time I pictured it, I thought I might go crazy. What the hell was I doing here, anyway? Why had I wasted all this time helping a bunch of strangers? I should have headed straight to the most dangerous parts of the world from the very start. I could have managed, somehow, even if I was on my own. 

I made the wrong choice, and now I’d lost my family. The people I cared for most had been stolen from me, and I could never get them back. 

I didn’t want to believe that, of course. 

So I drank. When I was drunk, at least, I could feel something like happiness. 

I wasn’t doing much real work anymore. 

In another six months, we’d be starting an operation to send many of the Fittoans we’d found on the Millis Continent back home. These were old people, women, children, and people so sick they could barely move. Even if we gave them money, there was no guarantee they could endure a long journey. But they all wanted to return to their homeland, and so my squad would be escorting them all the way back to the Kingdom of Asura. 

The planning was moving forward steadily. But despite my role as captain of the squad, I skipped out on the meetings and spent my days drinking. 

I would be remaining in Millis after the operation, along with a few other key members of the Search and Rescue Squad. Once it was complete, however, our activities would be scaled down sharply. In other words, they were going to cut off the search for victims after only two years. It felt much too early…but at the same time, I had to admit that I understood their logic. Continuing to comb the countryside would just be a waste of money at this point. 

In the end, I hadn’t managed to find a single member of my family. 

I was such a failure. 

Now that I was plastered all the time, the other members of the squad had started to keep their distance from me. I could hardly blame them. Nobody wants to waste their time dealing with some drunken moron. 

There were a few exceptions, though, and Norn was one of them. 

“Daddy! Guess what? Guess what happened when I was outside?” 

No matter how drunk I might be, Norn would always chatter happily at me. This sweet little kid was all I had left of my family now. 

Right. There was a good reason I hadn’t gone to the Demon Continent or Begaritt, wasn’t there? I had Norn to take care of. What was I supposed to do, abandon my four-year-old daughter? There was no way I could have left her behind and wandered off somewhere I might easily die. 

“Hm? What’s up, Norn? Did something good happen?” 

“Yeah! I almost fell down in the street outside, but this big bald guy helped me out! And then he gave me this! Look!” 

With a big smile, Norn showed me the bright red apple in her hands. It sure looked fresh and juicy. 

“Oh yeah? Well, lucky you. Did you say ‘thank you’ like a good girl?” 

“Yeah! When I said thanks, the baldy patted me on the head!” 

“No kidding? I guess you ran into a real nice person. But you shouldn’t call him ‘baldy,’ okay? Some guys are kind of sensitive about their hair.” 

Chatting with my daughter was always so fun. Norn was the light of my life. If anyone ever tried to harm her, I’d end them, even if it meant picking a fight with the Pope of the Millis Church. 

“Captain! We’ve got a problem!” 

Just as I was starting to feel a little better, one of my men burst into my room. I can’t say I was pleased to have a conversation with my daughter interrupted like this. I might have tossed the guy out with an angry roar, but Norn was still in the room. Some scrap of petty pride kept my voice calm. “What’s going on?” 

“The guys who went out on that job today just got attacked!” 

“What, seriously?” 

Now who’d go and do a thing like that? 

Dumb question. It was obviously those bastard aristocrats again. We had explained a hundred times that innocent residents of the Kingdom of Asura had been enslaved as the result of a magical calamity, but the scumbags stubbornly refused to hand them over. As I recalled, we’d been planning to rescue a slave from one of them today. 

“All right! Get your gear on, everyone! Let’s go!” I rushed out of my room and called to the squad’s brawlers. None of them were exactly seasoned warriors, but it wasn’t like we’d be going up against a bunch of veteran labyrinth explorers, either. With my people following close behind, I headed for the place where the fight had broken out. 

It wasn’t a long walk. They’d attacked the building right next door—one of the Search and Rescue Squad’s warehouses, a place we used to store clothing and supplies for our personnel. If our enemies had found it, we had a problem on our hands. We might need to change our base of operations. 

“There’s only one of them, but he’s tough. Be careful, Paul.” 

“Is he a swordsman or what?” 

“No, it’s a magician. Looks like a kid, but he has his face hidden.” 

A kid magician? I knew my people were amateurs, but they were adults in decent shape, and he’d taken down a bunch of them. This “kid” was probably a hobbit, if you asked me. They were always taking advantage of their childlike appearance to deceive people. 

A veteran hobbit mage, then…hmm. Could I beat him in this condition? I was confident I could handle a typical thug or three no matter how drunk I was, but… 

Nah, it should be fine. I’ve got plenty of tricks up my sleeve. 

Shaking my head, I stepped into the warehouse.