She Professed Herself The Pupil Of The Wiseman (LN) - Volume 2 - Chapter 20

Chapter 20

AFTER SAYING HER GOODBYES to the others, Mira left the inn and stepped out into the streets of Karanak. The evening had deepened and the stars shone brightly above, though scarcely anyone remained outside to see them. Only the Knight Patrol was afforded that consolation as they went about their duty in the early morning hours.

“Allow me to escort you, Miss Mira,” a familiar voice called out from nearby. For a moment, Mira cringed and thought she’d been collared again by Corporal Ewin.

Looking around, she saw Cyril leaned against a nearby lamppost, casually waving to her. 

“Normally, I’d decline, but there are things I’d like to discuss with you.” Having an escort just to prevent another misunderstanding had a certain appeal.

With a nod and a smile, he abandoned his post and walked along beside her. Many of the lamps had been damaged during the attack, and the street was particularly eerie tonight, but neither Mira nor Cyril noticed. Both seemed happy to have found a kindred spirit seemingly out of nowhere.

“Now, then, I’m sure you’ve already guessed the reason behind my offer to escort you,” Cyril said once they’d walked far enough away from the tavern to avoid eavesdroppers. His tone was joyful, as if finding an old friend in a crowd.

“It seems you’re a former player too,” Mira commented. She wasn’t sure if this was a wise move on her part, but the cat was already out of the bag.

“Yes, exactly! Which is why I felt we must talk.”

When he smiled, Mira couldn’t help but feel that despite his androgynous looks, Cyril might be quite the lady-killer.

“Well, then, let’s talk.”

“Miss Mira, how long have you been in this world?”

Mira pondered her response for a moment, then decided that telling the truth might be the best long-term strategy. 

“Oh, about a week now.”

“I knew it couldn’t have been long,” he murmured to himself. “Not many people—even former players—can defeat a demon count. Fewer still that I don’t know about. You seem quite calm with your new circumstances. Back when I first appeared, I frantically searched for any method to return to our home world.”

Mira narrowed her eyes as thoughts of her past life rose unbidden in her mind. “That doesn’t seem unreasonable, given the circumstances.”

A method to return home—Mira had thought about it, but she’d quickly dismissed the search as soon as she encountered Solomon and Luminaria. Not because she was content to spend the rest of her life with her online friends, but because even those two hadn’t figured a way back in the past thirty years. What was the point in her searching?

“It was thanks to my friends.” They certainly had done her a good turn in getting her acclimated to the new world as quickly as they could. She smiled and casually wondered what they were up to at the moment.

“Friends, eh? I’m assuming you knew them before coming to this world. That must have helped, I’m sure,” Cyril agreed.

“Indeed. Even though they’ve got me running errands for them at the moment.”

“You’re lucky to have found them within a week. It took me about a year and lots of hardship.”

“That long? I was close to the towers on my arrival and already knew where to look.” It was quite lucky, come to think of it. She could have appeared half a continent away and had to make her way to Alcait across potentially hostile borders.

“Towers? Do you mean the Linked Silver Towers? Ah, that’s right, you’re the pupil of Master Danblf. That would help.”

Mira’s face twitched when Cyril mentioned her new title. “That’s the place.”

As a former player himself, Cyril would have known about Danblf. She realized that if she wasn’t careful with her responses, her true identity might be revealed, and any shreds of dignity she had left might be torn away forever.

“I don’t remember hearing that any of the Wise Men, much less Master Danblf, had taken apprentices… Were you two friends in real life or something?” Cyril asked. “There have been imposters over the years, but something about your story rings true. Who else would use a combination of summoning and the immortal arts?”

Mira laughed nervously. “Yep, not many ways to explain it other than that…”

“Ah, or perhaps, Miss Mira…you’re actually Master Danblf.” Cyril’s smile seemed to imply that he said it as a joke, but his tone had an edge to it, and he watched her reaction with interest.

Oh, hell! He’s right on the money! How do I get myself out of this?! No, calm down! He’s just messing around. Should I laugh it off as a joke? Would laughing too much tip him off that I’m trying to make a production of it? Which should I do?!

With the truth dangling there between them, Mira silently pulled out an apple au lait and took a swig as she desperately tried to maintain her composure. Then, after suppressing the urge to throw a tantrum, she thought of what to say.

“No, of course not. We were indeed IRL friends. He would teach me this and that. It’s not too surprising that I wasn’t a big figure in-game, as my job kept me from logging in as much as I would have liked.” She feigned calm in hopes that it would sell the amendment to her backstory.

“I see. That would explain it.”

I…I think he bought it?

She stole a glance at his expression, but there was no obvious sign of contempt. Deciding that she’d escaped the trap, she tried to calm herself back down. Cyril cast a kind look over her, as her agitation was obvious.

Before he could ask any more questions, Mira decided it was best to turn the tables. “So with that said about my situation, what can you tell me about yourself? How does a player live in this world?”

Solomon and Luminaria obviously had unique living situations, and she was curious as to the life of a player who wasn’t a king or a Wise Man.

“Hmm, let’s see. Well, for starters, I appeared just ten days after the First Day.”

“Hrmm, the First Day, you say?”

“You haven’t heard of it yet? The First Day was the day the game became reality: September 14, 2116. It seems that no matter what day a player returns, the last day they remember of the real world is the same.”

“September 14, hmm? That was the same for me.” Mira dug through her memory and recalled that the email informing her to spend the rest of the funds in her account before they expired had been sent on the 13th. 

She’d bought a vanity chest, stayed up all night making a new avatar, and, well…

“Even now, thirty years later, that still holds true. We were all playing on the same day, but we all reappeared at vastly different times. I wonder what causes the difference?”

“I wonder, indeed.” She pondered that riddle but decided that if it hadn’t been answered by anyone in the past three decades, she wasn’t going to solve it on the walk back to her hotel.

“My experience entering this world isn’t particularly unique. Obviously, I was confused at first—suddenly, the air I was breathing felt different, and I could smell things. A few hours later, when I was hurt in battle, the pain was unbearable. Unable to figure out what was going on, I tried to log out, but the option was gone. I panicked.”

Lost in his memories, he narrowed his eyes as if staring off at something in the far distance.

“After that, I fled to a nearby village and was in a daze for a while. Nobody I knew was anywhere near. I was alone, I had no idea what to do, and then this woman just started talking to me. She wasn’t a friend. She wasn’t another player stuck in the same situation. She was one of the NPCs that I’d never paid any attention to before.”

He carried on with his reminiscing.

“I was behaving like a crazy man. Ha! I guess we all used to behave like idiots when death just meant a respawn and none of the NPCs had any emotions beyond what was programmed into them. But I was desperate, and she gave me shelter and nursed me back to health.

“A whole year I stayed with her, helping with chores and driving off monsters that wandered into the village. This world finally started to feel real and not like some sort of fever dream. And if this world was real, and these people were real, then they deserved better than being villagers inhabiting monster-plagued villages.

“I started teaching the young people how to fight, so they could defend their home if anything ever happened to me. They were clumsy at first, but after a time they grew more accomplished. They improved. Can you imagine that—NPCs who improve? Soon, they weren’t just fodder for monsters, but they stood on their own and defended what was theirs. After that, there wasn’t a need for me to hang around. I played AEO as a game, and now I wanted to see what it was like as a world.”

Cyril stopped and stared up at the night sky, smiling to himself for a few moments. Then he grinned at Mira and resumed walking down the street.

“I started that journey for my own self-satisfaction, but it was laughable how quickly I learned how the rest of this world had grown and developed, even without players running the show. The village I had been in was quite rural, but as I crossed the mountains, I found a larger town with an adventurers’ guild. I nearly died of shock when I happened to bump into an old friend. I can’t tell you how much that surprised me.

“My friend filled me in on how things had changed in the cities, and at once, I knew that joining the adventurers’ guild was the right thing to do. So I signed up. Now I travel, and I give back. Along the way, I found friends who shared my feelings. You’ve already met Asval and Emella. For a while, the three of us traveled together, but gradually, others came around to our way of thinking, and our numbers have swelled. There was only one thing to do.”

He smiled happily and pulled a small scarlet bell from his breast pocket while giving it a little jingle.

Mira nodded and smiled in return. “I see. Perhaps it’s not for me to say, as I got lucky with having my friends close at hand, but you seem to have been quite fortunate to have met those who helped you and those who sympathized with you.”

“I suppose so. It hasn’t been easy, but I seem to be blessed with whom I meet.” He looked in her direction and gave a knowing wink.

Mira couldn’t help but smile in return. She was beginning to get a faint idea as to why Cyril was going into so much detail.

“But we could do so much more,” he said. “We can only save that which is within our reach. And no matter how far or how many times we desperately reach out, we find that more slips away. It is frustrating—over and over, I have wished for a hand that can reach farther and wider.”

Staring at the bell in his hand, he gave it another little jingle. Then he turned to her and looked directly into her eyes. “Miss Mira, would you join our guild?”

Hrmm, I thought so. She stopped and stared back at him beneath the glow of a streetlamp. His earnestness was painfully obvious, and his conviction was powerful.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and sincerely, she was. “I have a calling that demands my attention. I can’t join you.”

He was a commendable man, and she wished her situation would allow her the privilege of adventuring with him and his guildmates, but the weight of Alcait was heavy on her shoulders.

“I see… I somehow knew that you would refuse. But I still had to try. I assume those issues you mention have something to do with those dates from earlier?” Still, he smiled.

“Hrmm, indeed. And I may not be joining the guild, but if I hear any cries for help during my journeys, I promise I’ll do what I can. How’s that?”

Cyril smiled broadly and sketched a bow to the diminutive summoner.

As they wandered down the main street reminiscing about their memories of the game, they came to a stop in front of one of the piles of zombie corpses. Even with carts hauling them out of the city all evening, the heap was still massive.

“Your assistance was appreciated today. I was very surprised by the appearance of the Valkyrie sisters,” Cyril said with a tint of envy.

While his adventurers had made a valiant stand against the undead, it took the Seven Sisters to truly turn the tide.

“An easy task for someone with the power of summoning!” Her eyes shone with pride.

“As expected of Master Danblf…or perhaps his pupil, as the case may be.”

“Hrmm, I’ve returned to find the state of the discipline in a dismal state. Well, that’s going to change now that I’m here!” The excitement of revitalizing her beloved school of magic caused Mira to completely miss the meaning of Cyril’s comment.

He smiled to himself, then sighed and gestured to the pile. “But that said, what caused all this today? The bodies were the same, made of earth and plants, but everything else about today’s zombies was different. I’ve followed these cases for about a month now, but I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“I was actually discussing just that with the head of the Mages’ Guild.”

Mira gazed at Cyril for a moment and judged him a trustworthy ally. As they walked on, she brought him up to speed concerning her earlier conversation with Leoneil. The demon, the failure of the dungeon ward, and other anomalous events that were now seemingly connected.

Cyril was still surprised that a demon had returned but admitted that their theory was highly credible.

“You can never be too careful when it comes to a demon’s plans. Perhaps this conclusion has its own hidden meaning.”

As players, they knew that whenever demons were involved, most events ended in tragedy. Victory was almost never a possibility—mitigated disaster was often the best one could hope for. To make matters worse, demonic encounters seldom finished when they appeared to. Just when everyone thought the event was over, a final twist would bring more tragedy.

Perhaps the zombies running rampant that evening had been the final twist. Then again, maybe they were just the next link in a longer chain to something terrible.

With that in mind, Cyril glanced at the pile of corpses with caution. Mira regarded them with disgust.

There are a lot of them. Not even just a thousand or two thousand. It might even be as many as ten thousand.

She’d been counting the piles as they passed, but her eyes suddenly stilled. Turning back around, she looked up at the largest of the heaps.

“The effect of death on the land…” she muttered.

It was the same as her mission almost a week ago. A horde of monsters had invaded, and their corpses were left strewn across the flower gardens. Had these unfortunate creatures been created, then lured here to die for the sake of death itself?

“’The effect of death on the land?’ What do you mean?” Cyril asked interestedly.

“Hrmm. This is confidential, but you should probably be aware.”

Mira began by asking Cyril if he had heard of the monster incursion both in Alcait and beyond. When he responded that he had, she proceeded to explain the theories of Solomon’s court mage, Joachim.

In short, land could be transformed into an undead swamp by spilling the blood of countless lives across the ground. But it couldn’t just be any land—it needed to be a place of hidden power. Take somewhere that was magically special, add a mass of corpses and a mass of deaths, and it would turn into an evil place that would spawn endless waves of the undead.

Mira emphasized the validity of the theory by mentioning that the Lesser Demon who led the incursion into the flower field had cackled madly as it forced monsters to turn on themselves and fight. As a former player, Cyril knew that was a bad sign—the demon’s cackle was a well-known sound that signaled all hope had been lost.

She concluded by proudly stating that the second invasion had been completely thwarted within the borders of Alcait.

“I had heard that Lesser Demons were spotted, but now it seems the situation is more dire than I’d thought.”

Cyril was silent for a moment, before he appeared to make a connection between Mira’s report and other rumors he’d heard.

“That’s right,” he said with a frown. “I think it was about two months ago. A friend was going on about seeing a Lesser Demon at the Symbios Cemetery—a mass grave site. It was unearthing piles and piles of bodies. My friend cut it down on the spot, so its motives remained a mystery. What if all these incidents involving the dead and demons are related?”

Mira’s story, the friend’s story, and the pile in front of them. They all had one thing in common—a lot of corpses. Staring at yet another pile of zombie bodies, Cyril had a puzzled look on his face as he debated whether to consider the events separately or together.

“What fiends these demons are. Vandalizing graves is truly repulsive.”

“Indeed. What was it going to do with all the bodies after digging them up?”

The two fell silent again as they pondered the inexplicable motives of the Lesser Demons. But alas, neither had a satisfactory answer.

“Such senseless destruction,” Mira said, turning her gaze from the pile to the rest of the city. The damage was severe. Even in the gloom of the night, it was apparent that it would require quite a lot of material and time to repair.

“Yes, that’s true. But at least no one was killed, and all injuries seem to be minor.”

“Oho, that is good to hear!”

“But there are some things that still don’t make sense.” Cyril began to tick items of note off on his fingertips. “First, among all these zombies, there were only six humanoids. Second, we ran searches on all six and they all matched local reports of missing persons. Third, despite the zombies running rampant, the humanoid ones didn’t hurt anyone.”

He paused for a moment and looked up at the sky.

“Perhaps they were just cut down before they could attack anyone,” he concluded, but that answer didn’t seem to satisfy him.

“The plot thickens,” Mira grumbled, tracing her chin with a finger. Despite the mayhem, it seemed that the humanoid zombies’ behavior had remained a constant.

“If we don’t know the basis of the issue, we can’t just assume that it was all just the work of the demon. Though perhaps this incident was intended to take advantage of the deaths in the same ways the Lesser Demons have been doing.” Cyril did his best to interpret the information while taking the unknown into account.

“That is definitely a possibility.” Mira nodded. It was logical, in any case.

“But if all this is true—with this many bodies in the city—it seems the demon succeeded in its plans. We should prepare for the worst.” Cyril considered Joachim’s theory, then added, “I suppose the first thing to do would be to clear away these piles before anything else happens.”

“Indeed. You should advise the city to make haste.”

The two looked back at the pile. The corpses were plentiful, but they had only been collected there; they hadn’t truly died within the city. Zombies were reanimated dead—they had died somewhere else and then shambled into town later. Did they count as having lost their lives in the city? Did they even count as corpses? 

Was it even a problem anymore, now that the demon had been defeated? Perhaps nothing more would come to pass.

With these thoughts filtering through her mind, Mira looked up at the sky. It was full of stars shining brightly, oblivious to her problems on the ground. Just then, a meteor flashed across the night sky, appearing and disappearing in the blink of an eye—if she’d blinked, she would never have even known that it existed.

As they neared the hotel, the pair discussed how to easily stay in contact and then returned to talking about their original world. Mira laughed as she recalled how the sign for the umbrella store had reminded her of a certain survival-horror video game. Cyril nostalgically replied that he used to try to beat the game on the hardest difficulty with nothing but a knife.

They both jumped in fright as a set of footsteps approached them from behind.

“Lady Mira.”

Glancing back, she saw that the owner of the footsteps was Garrett. 

And why does he look so pleased?

Confirming it was her, Garrett ran up with one arm waving wildly. His face was brighter than the stars above. It seemed that after they had parted during the commotion, he had gone frolicking around the city to his heart’s content.

“It seems someone is here to collect you. I shall contact you through guild services when I’ve found something regarding your request.”

“Hrmm, thanks for the assist.” She locked eyes with Cyril as she responded before spinning and walking away. “Until next time.”

“Indeed, whenever that may be.” With his eyes slightly downcast, he turned and left the way they had come.

Both minds were focused on the same problem.