Unadepts
Satou here. The phrase “lost child” makes me think of the announcements at places like amusement parks and department stores, but there are also situations that lead to search parties combing the mountains and so on. No matter what the case might be, I always hope they’ll get found safe and sound right away.
“What’s going on?”
At the end of our training that day, Arisa sent me an urgent message in Tactical Talk.
“Missing.”
Mia’s voice chimed in quietly.
So Mia’s safe. Thank goodness.
I pressed a hand to my chest in relief. When Arisa called and said, “We’ve got trouble,” I was afraid something had happened to Mia, who was running the magic classes with her.
“Who’s gone missing?”
“Students.”
“Two of the students we’ve been teaching disappeared.”
“Did you tell the other teachers?”
“Yes, but…”
“Ignored.”
“They ignored you?”
“It’s the strangest thing! When we told our fellow teachers, they just said, ‘This happens all the time’ and that was it.”
Were disappearances really that common here?
“Were these the same larvae who learned skills yesterday? I inquire.”
“No,” Arisa answered. “So I don’t think it was an abduction or anything like that.”
“Maybe they ran away because they weren’t getting anywhere with their training?”
“That is possible. They might have fled the classroom on a whim and could very well be lost right now.”
Lulu and Liza might be onto something. They could be sitting scared in an alley right now.
“Tama will find theeem?”
“Pochi will search, too, sir. Pochi is a pro at finding people, sir!”
Tama and Pochi were ready to go.
That was probably fine, since all we had left to do today was sleep.
“Do you know their names?”
“Yes, they’re called Jimuza and Abul.”
I searched the map for the names Arisa gave me. To my surprise, they were nowhere to be found in the Village of Adepts or the surrounding area.
I checked the neighboring maps, too, and still came up with nothing.
“Then does that mean they’re already…?”
“No, there are several Den of Evil entrances around here. I’ll check if they wandered into one of those by mistake.”
There were a lot of small Dens of Evil in this area, like the ones we found during our long-distance run to the tower.
I explained this to Arisa and left the room, where I found Tama and Pochi waiting for me in a saluting pose, already changed from their pajamas into their ninja outfits.
“We’ll go look for them, too.”
“Mm. Worried.”
“Master, I wish to join the search as well, I request.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be any help, but I’ll join, too.”
Arisa, Mia, Nana, and Lulu all signed up for the search.
Liza was already on her way to the ninja classroom.
“All right. We’ll all go together.”
I gave everyone a meeting place and left the ninja house with Tama and Pochi.
“Jimuzaaaa! Abuuul!”
Once we all met up, we went to search near the Dens of Evil.
I was able to tell where most of them were by checking the blank areas on my map. It was harder to tell exactly where the entrances were, though, so I had everyone split up and look for them.
“Got ooone?”
Tama pushed her way through the underbrush, her face and hair getting covered in leaves as she tracked down an entrance.
“Pochi’s nose doesn’t lie, sir! There’s definitely an entrance under here, sir!”
Pochi dug up another one with her natural instincts alone.
“Arisa, over there! A strange breeze is blowing through the gap between those two boulders.”
“Okey-dokey! I’ll go look!”
Expert sniper Lulu found a cave by reading the flow of the wind, and Arisa teleported over to search.
“Search, mini-sylphs.”
FWOOSH!
Mia used Spirit Magic to summon a sylph and split it into countless mini-sylphs, sending them to search the area with strength in numbers.
Liza and Nana, who had less natural searching ability, supported the others instead.
“Liza, monster spotted, I report.”
“It must have been hiding out in the Den of Evil.”
Once in a great while, a monster or creature like a bat would come flying out of a Den of Evil, only to be quickly destroyed by Nana’s Foundation abilities and Liza’s Magic Spear.
Each time one of the girls found an entrance, I hurried over and used the “Search Entire Map” skill to check inside for the missing children.
“They’re not turning up, are they?”
“Well, there are a lot of dens.”
We’d already checked more than thirty spots without any results.
I was even starting to wonder if they’d left the area of my map entirely. There was no way ordinary kids would be able to do that so quickly, though.
“Maybe they really have been kidnapped…”
“Kidnapped?”
Mia caught wind of Arisa’s muttered worry.
“Like by survivors of the Light of Freedom cult or something!”
“It certainly wouldn’t be out of character for such an evil group to plot to revive a demon lord by sacrificing children,” Liza mused.
“Sacrificing larvae is forbidden, I declare.”
“Master…”
Lulu looked at me worriedly.
“We don’t know for sure yet that they’ve been kidnapped.”
While that did sound plausible, I hadn’t seen any members of the demon lord–worshipping cult Light of Freedom since the defeat of the Sandstorm Lord.
Still, this nation had so many Dens of Evil—the ruins of the labyrinth called the “Evil God’s Prison”—that there was still a real possibility that they were hiding out somewhere. I think these countless caves were one of the reasons that the Light of Freedom members were able to have such a large presence here in the religious Parion Province.
“Mew!”
Peering into a chasm on a rocky slope nearby, Tama suddenly raised her head and looked around.
There was a point of light at the edge of my radar. It was the pretty lady from the ninja house. I waited until she emerged from beyond the rocky area.
“May I ask why you left the classroom late at night and came all the way out here?”
I couldn’t see her expression very well since she’d appeared with the help of several flash bombs, but she didn’t seem to be out of breath, as befitting a ninja teacher.
“We’re searching for two children who disappeared from the magic classroom,” I answered honestly.
“I see…,” she murmured, then chided that it was dangerous to go so close to the Dens of Evil, especially at night.
“As for the children, no need to worry,” she went on. “We already have them in our protection.”
She explained that there was a hidden village especially for kids who dropped out. That was reassuring, at least.
“I wonder why our fellow teachers didn’t mention that?”
“Well, we keep the hidden village a secret from the students,” the pretty ninja told Arisa.
“Why is it a secret?”
“Because if they knew about the village, some children might give up instead of giving one last push to try harder.”
She explained that it was better if the students didn’t know there was a place for them to run away to.
“Even so…” Arisa didn’t seem convinced. “Let me see Jimuza and Abul, then. I want to know for sure that they’re safe.”
“You can’t. The location of the hidden village is a secret.”
“But why?! I’m a teacher, not a student, you know.”
“Only a temporary one.”
Arisa and the ninja stared at each other.
Eventually, it was the older woman who relented first.
“…Oh, all right.”
“Then let’s go—”
“No, I’m not taking you to the hidden village. I can’t disobey the sage’s orders.”
After briefly lighting up, Arisa’s face darkened again.
“I’ll have the kids send you a letter. That should do, right?” The ninja looked at Arisa. “If that still isn’t enough for you, then take it to Sir Sage directly.”
“All right. I will.”
Arisa glared at the pretty ninja, who shrugged.
I decided to let her know when the sage returned from the holy city.
“Missing kids?”
“Yeah, that happens, especially with returned kids who come back from the advanced school.”
The next morning, I asked the ninja school students and learned that kids sometimes went missing from here, too.
“Sometimes they were really great before but come back totally average.”
“Master said they had a ‘hubris.’”
The students gave me more rapid-fire answers.
“If you’re done eating breakfast, then get your butts to the training area!”
Before they could tell me any more, the old ninja’s bellow sent the kids racing and tumbling out of the room, and that was that.
Since the sage hadn’t returned yet, the lady ninja was in charge of class again.
“Today we’ll be working with compounds.”
She taught us how to make the blinding powder for the wind-escape jutsu, the bewitching powder for charm jutsu, and so on. We didn’t get into illusion powder, probably because she didn’t want Pochi grabbing her chest again.
Since I already knew all these alchemic techniques, I pretended to follow along as I exchanged information with the others via Tactical Talk.
“There are missing kids from all your classes, too?”
“Yes, Master. I didn’t notice because they’d been gone since before I arrived.”
“Master, there was one dropout from the shield group, too, I report.”
“What about yours, Lulu?”
“No, no dropouts here—oh, although I’m told a few kids have left, saying they were going to start their own food carts.”
I wasn’t sure whether Lulu’s students counted as going missing, but either way, there were kids who had run away from every class in one way or another.
“Oh yeah, Raito said one of his friends disappeared, too.”
“Raito? Why did he come to you about that, Arisa?”
“He didn’t, really. I just happened to see him wandering around during a break period, calling out his friend’s name.”
That kid seemed to have a surprising knack for getting into trouble. I hoped he wouldn’t get mixed up in this situation, too.
Although since evidently the missing kids were being cared for in the “hidden village,” hopefully there was no actual danger in this case.
The letter from the kids to Arisa didn’t arrive that day, and the sage still hadn’t returned even when evening came, so we weren’t able to speak to him directly about it.
“…Gah!”
In the middle of the night, I checked my map in hopes of secretly searching for the hidden village, only to find out that the lady ninja was hiding on the roof of the ninja house.
Given what had happened the night before, she was probably worried that we were going to sneak out to the Dens of Evil again.
I was about to use Return to teleport to the seal slate I’d placed by the tower while we were on our excursion there, when suddenly a marker appeared in the range of my radar.
It was the former Phantom Thief Pippin.
He must have come in using his signature short-range teleportation.
“Hey there, young master.”
“Good evening, Pippin.”
“Ah, so you knew…” Pippin seemed disappointed when I responded calmly to his sudden appearance. He was obviously hoping to catch me off guard.
Tama must have noticed Pippin’s approach, too. Her ears perked up in our direction, although her face was still buried sleepily in the pillow. Pochi was snoozing away in dreamland.
“So, what’s going on? It must be something important if you followed me all the way out here, right?”
“Now, now, what’s the rush?” Pippin said cheerfully. “First, I wanna thank you. Thanks to the funds you provided, I was able to secure some pretty choice locations for the branch stores and warehouses.”
Ooh, that’s good to hear. I’ll have to praise him as Kuro sometime soon.
“I left the company girls in charge of opening the branches.” Pippin lowered his voice to a whisper. “But while I was tying up some loose ends, I overheard a disturbing rumor.”
“A rumor?”
“Yeah, about the Village of Adepts.”
“You mean…here?”
“That’s right.” Pippin nodded seriously. “I saw a guy on the verge of death in a back alley. He said they took away his ‘aptitude’ in an ‘Aptitude Transfer,’ then sent him to work until he died in a mine, so he ran away.”
“What exactly does ‘taking away his aptitude’ mean?”
“Not sure. Some shady figures in black hoods killed him before I could ask him any more questions. Pretty sure they were intelligence agents for this nation. They had some damn good recognition-inhibiting gear, I’ll tell ya.”
Pippin looked frustrated.
“How is that related to the Village of Adepts, though?”
“He was muttering to himself when I first found him. ‘I don’t wanna go back to the village,’ ‘Please forgive me, Holy Woman,’ ‘I can’t face the Holy Woman now that I’m not an Adept’…stuff like that, over and over.”
Pippin must have homed in on key words like village and adept and made the connection to this place.
“So you came all the way here to let me know?”
I thanked Pippin for sharing the information.
He was great at intelligence gathering—how did he even know I was in the ninja house? Pippin might be an even more valuable resource than I realized.
“Well, that’s not all. Don’t you have any suspicions of your own?”
“Hmm? What, you’re gonna stick your nose in even further?”
“I am a gentleman thief, you know. Well, now I’m just Lord Kuro’s lackey, but I still can’t turn a blind eye to people who’re preying on the weak. Not that I can take them all down,” he added, then went on jokingly. “If it’s an ancient treasure that’s moving these ‘aptitudes’ around, I’m sure Lord Kuro would use it to help people. And if it’s the work of a demon, I’ll just take my leave and let you lot handle it.”
“I see… Well, as far as my suspicions, there is one thing I’m a bit concerned about.”
With that, I told Pippin about the “returned” children who went missing and the “hidden village” where they were allegedly being kept safe.
“I didn’t see any kinda settlements around here. If anything, it’d probably be…”
“I know. In a Den of Evil, right?” I interjected.
“Yeah, I knew something was up…”
“What, do you have some idea where it is?”
Pippin nodded. “I heard some folks have been heavily guarding carriages and supply carts going into a part of the wasteland where there’s no towns or villages. On top of that, they said it’s only on nights when there’s no moon.”
“Well, that’s suspicious.”
It’s like they’re advertising that something strange is going on.
“Any idea where they were headed?”
I spread out a map on my bed.
Pippin pointed out the place where the sightings were reported and traced a general idea of the direction where they were headed.
I cross-checked that information against the empty areas on my map. There were three places that could be a match.
“There are Dens of Evil here, here, and here.”
“How the hell do you know that…?”
“When we were helping the hero hunt down the demon lord, I saw a map of all the Dens of Evil locations.”
“And you remember it right down to the little ones in the middle of nowhere?”
Pippin raised his eyebrows and muttered so quietly that I wouldn’t have caught it without my “Keen Hearing” skill: “No wonder even Lord Kuro is impressed with this guy.”
“Thanks,” he went on. “Now I can go investigate.”
“I’ll come with you, then.” When Pippin hesitated, I said, “You’ll need someone to create a diversion, right?” and he reluctantly agreed to go in together.
“All right, here goes. Hang on tight.”
Pippin used his short-range teleportation to move us to the roof of a building nearby.
The lady ninja shouldn’t be able to see us here from the roof of the ninja house.
“Did you mean to bring those kids, too, young master?”
At Pippin’s comment, I looked down to find Tama clinging to my leg, looking up at me and doing a simplified version of her salute pose. Pochi was next to her, still looking half asleep. Tama must have noticed the teleportation and brought Pochi along to follow me.
“Don’t worry. These two can handle themselves.”
Pippin just shrugged and didn’t protest any further. “Well, I can’t teleport us out of the village with this many people. We’ll have to move along the rooftops.”
“Aye-aye, siiir?”
Tama followed close behind Pippin; since Pochi was still rubbing her eyes, I carried her under one arm and trailed behind them.
As we moved, I used the Space Magic spell Telephone to tell Arisa about Pippin’s information, and that we were on our way to investigate a suspicious area.
“Mia and I will come, too, then!”
“We’re just scouting it out for now.”
If we found the kids Arisa mentioned, maybe it would be good to at least rescue them in advance.
“But…”
“If it does turn out that we need to rescue people who’ve been captured, we’ll need you, and Mia’s magic. Can you and the others come if and when that happens?”
“…All right. I’ll give Liza, Nana, and Lulu a heads-up.”
Once I finished my call with Arisa, I saw Pippin hiding in the shadows on a roof.
We crowded in behind him.
“There’s a surveillance network past this point,” Pippin whispered.
“Surveillance…?”
“Yeah, and not just to keep intruders out. Looks like they’re keeping watch for escapees, too.”
I did notice that there were a lot of guards on duty at night, but I assumed it was just because there were Dens of Evil nearby.
Pippin used his short-range teleportation to take us across the wall, landing in a dip in the ground on the other side.
“Master, where are we going, sir?”
“Top secret missiooon?”
“Top secret! Sir!”
Tama’s words wiped the sleepiness from Pochi’s face instantly.
Clearly, the words “top secret mission” had caught her attention. The pair saluted each other, showing their enthusiasm with a series of poses.
“We’re gonna run for a while from here.”
Pippin ran at full tilt, periodically teleporting a short distance ahead, and the three of us easily followed behind him.
Pochi had decent night vision, and Tama’s was excellent, so we didn’t need any light sources. Once your eyes get used to it, you can see decently by the starlight even when there’s a new moon like this one.
“It should be around here…”
Pippin stopped partway up a mountainside that was lush with breezebranch trees and looked around.
According to my map information, there should be an entrance nearby.
“Let’s split up and search.”
Perfect timing. I pretended to look for the entrance as I stashed a Return seal slate in the shadow of a large rock.
“Over there, sir.”
Pochi sniffed the air and pointed at the base of a red boulder.
The entrance was ingeniously disguised, impossible to spot just by looking. Only Pochi’s advanced sense of smell could have located the hidden entrance.
“Great work. You dog-eared folks have noses every bit as good as dogfolk.”
“Tee-hee, sir.”
Pochi puffed up her chest proudly at Pippin’s praise.
Then she started to run toward the entrance, only for Pippin to stop her.
“Not so fast. There’s a trap there.”
“I’ve got thiiis?”
Tama crept over carefully and disarmed the trap.
I already knew from my map that there was no one watching the entrance.
“Damn, the other little one’s got serious skills, too.”
“Nyee-hee-hee.”
Tama beamed shyly.
Pippin and I raised the cover hiding the entrance and let Tama and Pochi go in ahead, following close behind them.
As soon as I stepped inside, I used “Search Entire Map.”
…They’re here.
There were many people inside, including the two children Arisa had mentioned.
Most of them were connected to the Village of Adepts, though there were plenty of Parion Province Temple Knights and priests as well.
Luckily, there were no members of the demon lord–worshipping cult Light of Freedom. Since I hadn’t seen them since the recent defeat of the demon lord, I was worried that there might be remnants hiding out around here, but I guess that concern was misplaced.
There were plenty of monsters, too. The place was crawling with demi-goblins, which I’d never seen in Dens of Evil before, and in an area farther off there were lesser undead like zombies and skeletons made from the bodies of demi-goblins.
The latter had evidently been created by a necromancer with connections to the village.
Well, that was probably enough preliminary investigation.
We’d achieved our main goal. I contacted Arisa with Telephone.
“We found the missing kids. This must be the hidden village.”
“Really? What’s the situation?”
“Looks like they’re with some other kids, doing drills attacking targets with wooden practice spears.”
I told her what I’d seen with Clairvoyance.
“Spears? Those scrawny kids seemed like they’d never lifted something heavier than a book in their lives…”
“It kinda seems like they’re doing it against their will. Maybe the ‘hidden village’ people are forcing them to train.”
“I thought they were being protected there. That is what the Kunoichi said, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Maybe they’re just trying to test if they have other talents…? I don’t know…”
“It’s hard to tell what’s going on exactly. I’ll go talk to them in person.”
“Okay, thanks.”
It was still possible that the kids had requested the training themselves, after all.
“Mew-mew-mew.”
Tama, who was in the lead as our scout, flashed me a few hand signals.
That sequence meant that an unknown person was approaching.
I ended my call with Arisa and turned my attention to overcoming the situation at hand.
I flashed the signal for “hide,” and Tama jumped up to cling to the ceiling. This was a technique we’d just learned from the lady ninja earlier today—she was already putting it to good use.
Pochi tried to follow suit and nearly crashed into the ceiling, so I used my always-active Magic Hand to catch her and hold her in place.
Pippin and I hid in the shadows on either side. At our size, we’d probably be spotted if we clung to the ceiling.
Two Temple Knights with lanterns came into view.
“Looks like the factory is going smoothly.”
“Factory?”
“You know, those things. It’s like a factory for raising levels, right?”
A level-raising factory? Like an experience point factory or something?
Curious about the knights’ conversation, I listened in more closely.
“It’s all thanks to the goblin cultivation project. You gotta take your hat off to the sage’s wisdom and foresight.”
“No kidding. When he first came back with that nasty nilbok vegetable, I thought it was just to make the poor even more miserable. Who knew the goblins would multiply way faster when they eat nilbok?”
We’d seen nilbok before in a Parion Province village.
It apparently boosted demi-goblin reproduction, just like the gabo fruit in Shiga Kingdom.
“And after those goblins get killed, they can even bring ’em back as zombies or skeletons over and over.”
They must be using these demi-goblins and undead for power leveling, then.
Maybe the kids were practicing with spears so they could undergo power leveling safely?
“No wonder necromancers are so widely hated, though. Those monsters don’t even get to rest in peace after they die.”
“…I hear they use the bodies of people who died in accidents or killed themselves, too.”
“That’s just a rumor. You know the Holy Woman and the sage would never do something so inhuman.”
“Yeah… I guess you’re right.”
“’Course I am.”
The Temple Knight who denied the rumors smiled reassuringly, and the one who brought them up put on a smile as well.
Like the people in the village, everyone here seemed to admire the Holy Woman and the sage.
“Now, we better hurry up, or we’re not gonna make it in time. They’re counting on us to get the priests and officers taking part in the ‘Aptitude Transfer’ ceremony, you know.”
That was an important-sounding new key word.
No, I guess Pippin did mention something about it, actually.
“They took away his aptitude in an ‘Aptitude Transfer,’ or something like that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“There’s nothing to worry about. They’re working hard to make an offering to the chosen ones—officers like us who protect the province, or priests and priestesses who guide the masses.”
After that, I couldn’t hear the Temple Knights anymore.
This “aptitude” was probably referring to skills. If what they said was true, it meant these people had some method of making people “offer” their skills up to them.
Once the Temple Knights were some distance away, Pippin whispered in my ear.
“What d’you think, young master?”
“I’m not sure I buy that last part about ‘offerings to the chosen ones,’ but either way, it definitely seems like people who run away from the village are being forced into labor here.”
We proceeded in the direction the Temple Knights had come from. At each crossroads, I used Magic Hand to make sounds, or the “Ventriloquism” skill to fabricate conversations, guiding our leader Pippin toward the right destination.
“This is the experience factory?”
I peered down through an opening in the rocks at the cavern below.
“It just looks like they’re fighting monsters to me,” Pippin commented.
From our vantage point, we could see people standing at a safe distance and using spears to jab at demi-goblins trapped in cages.
“Power leveiliiing?”
Tama tilted her head.
That was indeed what it looked like to me.
“Most of them are obviously being forced, but a few of ’em look like they’re enjoying it.”
I focused on my “Keen Hearing” skill and picked up on comments from a few men and women who were gleefully impaling demi-goblins: “Let’s cultivate those skills!” “I’m gonna make an offering to the Holy Woman!” “I’ll never disappoint the sage again!”
However, the vast majority were just mechanically thrusting their spears with lifeless looks in their eyes.
I learned later that “cultivating skills” referred to the belief that skills that were returned to the earth, so to speak, would grow back again.
“I smell something strange, sir.” Pochi sniffed the air.
“Demi-gobliiins?”
“Not demi-goblins, sir. It smells like a strange chemical, sir.”
Pochi pointed.
I looked and saw a desk with several vials on it. My AR display revealed the true nature of the drug that remained inside them.
Demonic potion.
It granted the user temporary strength enhancement and the ability to level up more easily, though the side effects were so dangerous that it was strictly forbidden in the Shiga Kingdom. If one used it too much, it could transform part or all of the human body into a monster.
If my AR display’s information was true, these particular demonic potions were made in Shiga Kingdom. In fact, the potion’s creator was an alchemist who worked for the corrupt noble Sorkell, who was formerly an acting viceroy in Labyrinth City Celivera. This must be where the contraband potions wound up after being smuggled into the trade city Tartumina.
“Yikes…!”
Pippin used his short-distance teleportation to land next to the desk, grabbed a vial, and popped back.
He aimed for the precise moment when the guards were distracted, of course, but that kind of stress was still bad for my heart.
“Young master, this stuff’s demonic potion, all right,” Pippin told me quietly after analyzing the dregs in the bottle. “I’ve gotta tell Lord Kuro…”
“Do you have a means of contacting him?”
I’d left a simple Space Magic–based communication device at the Echigoya Company headquarters.
“Not on me. But I think the gal who came to set up the branch shop has something.”
“Would you go and let him know, then? I’m sure Lord Kuro would come rescue all the people being forced into labor, don’t you think?”
Roundabout though it might be, I couldn’t very well let Pippin see “Satou” using superhuman powers.
“All right. Let’s head back to the surface for now, then. You lot should return to the village.”
“No, we’re going to look for some friends of ours who’ve been captured first.”
At first, I thought there was no hurry to rescue them if they weren’t being mistreated. Now that I knew this group was using stuff like demonic potions, though, I couldn’t just leave Arisa and Mia’s students in their hands.
“I’ll go with ya, then.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep, trust me. My expert thieving techniques can rescue these friends of yours with a lot less commotion than you breaking them out with brute force,” Pippin replied bluntly.
“Thanks, that would be a big help.”
We followed Pippin’s lead and began searching for the place where the kids were being held captive.
Of course, it goes without saying that I guided him toward the spear practice area with the same methods I used to get us to the experience factory.
“I smell water, sir.”
Pochi sniffed the air again as we crept along.
There must be a water source in the large cavern up ahead.
“Pooond?”
“I’d say it’s big enough to be called an underground lake.”
There were people drawing water from the edge of the lake.
I was surprised to see such a plentiful source of water in Parion Province, which was largely made up of deserts and wasteland.
They could probably resolve the water shortages if they dug some deep wells, but that might create a new problem with the heavy manual labor of drawing water.
“Let’s go, young master.”
At Pippin’s prompting, we continued along the path at the edge of the lake and reached the spear practice area.
Since we took a bit of a detour, the spear practice was wrapping up right as we reached the area.
“…That’s it for today’s training! Back to your quarters!”
A bearded man who was presumably the instructor bellowed, prompting cheers from the students.
We followed the students as they headed back to their quarters. Arisa and Mia’s students, our top priority for rescue, were at the front of the pack, making it hard to make contact while they were on the move.
The students’ “quarters” consisted of a large mixed-residence room.
There was a large pot in the center of the room; some kind of soup was scooped into the bowls that the students brought to the pot, and they began eating. Judging by the smell, it must be nilbok soup.
“Change into this, young master.”
Pippin had somehow procured me a set of raggedy clothes like the ones the students were wearing.
It smelled like they hadn’t been washed in a long time.
“What about Tamaaa?”
“None for Pochi, sir?”
“Only for the young master. You guys would stand out too much.”
Pippin hadn’t grabbed any for himself, either.
“If you wear this, you’ll be able to blend into the group, right?” Pippin winked at me.
Well, I didn’t have much choice. Pinching my nose, I changed into the clothes and slipped in among the students.
Before long, I found Jimuza and Abul.
“Gross…!”
“Just eat it, Abul. Otherwise, you won’t have enough strength when the time comes to run for it.”
“You think we can get away?”
I drew closer as they spoke. “You certainly can.”
“Who’re you?”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
My sudden interjection must have made them suspicious.
“Don’t worry, I’m on your side. Your teachers sent me.”
“Teachers?”
“Mr. Beardy? Or Crazy Old Lady?”
Were those their nicknames for their teachers?
I seriously doubted that either of those referred to Arisa or Mia.
“No, neither.”
“Then that pushy Arisa? Or Ms. Elf?”
That sounded more like it. I nodded.
“Why would they be looking out for us?”
“We weren’t very good students…”
“You were very precious pupils to them, you know.”
“Really…?”
The two boys looked touched, their lips wobbling.
Just as I was about to take them away, there was a commotion at the entrance.
“It’s time for the ceremony! Anyone selected by the priests must participate.”
Several priests and a large number of soldiers pushed into the room.
The priests, who had the “Analyze Character” skill, looked at each student and sorted through them. They were choosing any kids who had more than one skill.
Since my rescue targets Jimuza and Abul also had skills, I changed my displayed information like my levels and skills to match those of the kids around me so that I could go with them.
I was far enough away from Pippin that he hopefully wouldn’t notice my skills and levels suddenly changing.
“You, you…and you.”
Jimuza, Abul, and I were all taken out of the room.
“Wh-what’s going on?”
“You’re participating in the ceremony, that’s what.”
Without further explanation, the priest stomped away to the head of the group.
“Does that mean our aptitude came back?”
“Even though it didn’t come back after all the training we did before?”
“That spear practice musta worked!”
“Huh, I guess they weren’t just picking on us.”
“We were wrong to doubt the sage and the Holy Woman, I’m sure of it.”
The pair whispered to each other urgently as they followed the crowd.
For some reason, they almost seemed excited.
“Do you know what kind of ceremony this is?”
“Yeah, of course. It’s our second time.”
“We’re going to the ‘Aptitude Transfer’ ceremony.”
Abul and Jimuza nodded.
So the “Aptitude Transfer” ceremony was about to take place, then.
I guess that saves me some time investigating?
“You seem awfully happy. You don’t want to run away anymore?”
“I mean, why would we, when our ‘aptitude’ came back?”
“Yeah, the whole reason we ran away from class in the first place is that our ‘aptitude’ wasn’t coming back, no matter how much we trained. We thought the sage and Holy Woman mighta tricked us.”
“Our training here was scary, but it looks like there was a good reason for it.”
They both seemed satisfied.
The pair of them currently had skills related to spears and evasion, not to magic, but it would be difficult for me to explain that without revealing my “Analyze” skill.
I decided to go to the ceremony with them and find a good opportunity to either explain things or get them to run away with me.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login