Death March kara Hajimaru Isekai Kyusoukyoku (LN) - Volume 21 - Chapter 6

Aptitude Transfer

Satou here. I once heard a friend of mine mutter, “I wish I had that guy’s raw talent” while we were watching a professional sports match. Maybe his envy got the better of him even though he knew there was more to it than just natural raw talent.

“Silence! Silence, I say!”

We were taken to a large room that was full of a jostling crowd.

There were raised areas around the edges of the room, almost like spectator seating, lined with priests and priestesses in gaudy ceremonial clothing and Temple Knights in formal armor.

Right up front, the giant bronze statue of a woman in priestess clothing was labeled Holy Woman Statue in my AR display.

Tama, Pochi, and the former Phantom Thief Pippin were peering down through an air vent above the statue. Tama and Pochi waved at me excitedly, so I flashed them the hand signal for “hide.”

“The ‘Aptitude Transfer’ ceremony shall commence shortly.”

A man in an outfit similar to the sage’s stood at the podium.

The sage himself didn’t seem to be here.

“While we await the sage’s arrival, I shall explain the proceedings of the ceremony.”

I was surprised there was going to be an explanation in advance. I’d assumed they were just going to jump right in.

“Each of your ‘aptitudes’ shall be offered up to the divine by way of the Holy Woman.”

So they really did have a means of transferring skills.

The people who were undergoing the ceremony for the first time began to murmur among themselves. I could hear nearby people who had done it before reassuring them.

“Once you offer up your aptitude, your skills will temporarily disappear, but fear not. If you devote yourself to practice, those skills will return to you in due time.”

Well, yeah. Even if your skills got erased, you could relearn them by building up experience.

“I am sure some of you who have never participated in the ceremony before will be wondering what the point of all of this might be.”

There was a scattering of nods.

I’m guessing the kids who put on superior grins when they saw this must be the ones who’d done it before.

“There are some things that you can only grasp when you have lost your aptitude—your skills.”

There was a loud bang, and everyone’s attention turned back to the front. The speaker must have stomped his foot.

This was a pretty elaborate performance. No wonder he had skills like “Public Speaking,” “Synchronize,” and “Acting.”

“When you regain your ‘aptitude,’ you will surely unlock the ability to find even more impressive talents within yourself than before.”

Epic music began to play in the background, nearly drawing me into the speech.

There must have been an orchestra waiting behind the curtain.

Now, then.

That was a bit of a long speech, but if they really did have the ability to take skills from other people, then I guess maybe he wasn’t lying.

You can obviously learn skills by training, and attempting something that you previously had a skill for would probably lead you to gain a deeper understanding of how to do it on your own until you earned the skill back. Maybe I could test this out by deactivating a skill sometime.

Whoops, wait a minute.

That wasn’t the important part. The problem was where these “offerings” were going.

It would be one thing if they were just deactivating the skills like I could do, but if they were stealing those skills instead…

They all had a fair amount of skills, and not a wasted one among them. They must have trained under very strict guidelines.

A memory arose in the back of my mind.

That was something I noticed when we met some Temple Knights on our way to the holy city.

Both back then and when I searched again in the present, I still didn’t find a single Temple Knight with any wasted skills—nothing that would be unnecessary to their job as a knight.

Thinking about it now, it was definitely odd.

Unless they were very low level, almost all the Temple Knights in Shiga Kingdom had incidental, unnecessary skills of some kind.

Now I suspected that these knights were sacrificing unnecessary skills to the Holy Woman and receiving useful skills in exchange.

My thoughts were interrupted by sudden clamors and cries.

“It’s the Holy Woman!”

“The Holy Woman is here!”

Apparently, the moment had arrived.

“It’s time. Begin the chant.”

“Got it. I’ll take that damned witch down.”

My “Keen Hearing” skill picked up on some ominous-sounding whispers.

“Guards! Over there! They’re trying to use magic!”

One of the knights in the spectator seats pointed at the people I’d heard whispering.

He must have used the “Magic Perception” skill to notice the surge of power when the mage began the chant.

“Kill the witch!”

A group of armed men broke into a run, and the mage continued the chant. It sounded like the wide-range attack magic spell Fire Storm.

Well, I can’t just let that happen. I reached for the mage with my Magic Hand.

“Protect the Holy Woman!”

The rest of the crowd swarmed around the mage and dragged him down. They even managed to grab and stop the men with weapons through sheer force of numbers, despite a few bloody injuries.

It was as if they didn’t care about their own safety when it came to protecting the goddess.

It occurred to me that the “Magic Perception” user in the audience didn’t notice me even though I was manipulating my Magic Hand. Maybe it was because I didn’t give off excessive magic power in the process?

Once the would-be interlopers were dragged away and the injured were healed with Holy Magic, the ceremony resumed.

“Holy Womaaan!”

The figure who emerged gracefully from behind the curtain was a young woman, not the old lady I’d met at the Holy Woman’s shrine in the Holy City of Parion.

“So that’s the Holy Woman…?”

Her name was shown in my AR display as Shizuka. While that was clearly a Japanese name, she didn’t have the usual skills or Unique Skills that a reincarnation would have. Her hair was long and glossy black.

She wore a veil dotted with flowers, and blue Holy Woman’s robes over a gorgeous layer of white. I couldn’t see her face beneath the veil. She was about as tall as Nana, an average weight that was neither chubby nor overly skinny.

She was level 50, yet her only skill was “Holy Magic: Parion Faith.” That was far too few skills for such a relatively high level.

Had she “offered” her unnecessary skills to other people through the “Aptitude Transfer” ceremony as well?

Hmm?

A faint reaction from my “Sense Danger” skill prompted me to catch something that was flying my way.

I looked down to find a piece of paper wrapped around a rock in my hand. Judging by the direction it had come from, it must have been from Pippin.

I wish he’d folded it into a paper throwing star or something instead.

Since it seemed to be a letter, I unwrapped it and read the message.

Kitty-kid started freaking out when she saw the Holy Woman, it said.

I looked up and saw Tama flailing frantically, her hand signals forgotten.

I glanced at the Holy Woman again but didn’t see anything strange about her. Still, I couldn’t discount Tama’s sharp instincts. Since my “Sense Danger” skill wasn’t reacting, either, maybe that meant something was going to happen soon?

I would’ve liked to talk to her directly with the Space Magic spell Telephone, but then the “Magic Perception” user might notice.

As a backup plan, I spread my already activated Magic Hand all over the hall in case of trouble. I also readied some smoke bombs and tear gas bombs in a temporary folder in Storage.

I should probably prepare a few pieces of paper in case I needed to signal Pippin, too.

“You who would offer up your aptitude, line up in front of the Holy Woman one at a time.”

The people clamoring to get to the front of the line were scolded by the priests and guards.

Did they really understand that by “offering up their aptitude,” they were actually transferring their skills to her?

The man at the front of the line knelt in front of the Holy Woman.

As he did so, magic circles appeared on top of the stage and glowed brightly.

“Such wonderful aptitude. You’ve worked so hard. I am proud of you for your training.”

The soft-spoken Holy Woman placed her hand on the man’s head.

I watched as his skills vanished.

They weren’t transferred to the Holy Woman, though.

I looked around. The skills had transferred to a priest standing behind the Holy Woman.

Now there was no doubt that this “Aptitude Transfer” ceremony transferred skills to other people.

The problem was how they were doing it. The Holy Woman’s only skill was “Holy Magic,” and it didn’t look like she was chanting a spell or using one that she’d already stored up.

Although I couldn’t see it very well from here, there was a good chance that the magic circles in the ceremony hall were making the transfer.

Another stone came flying from Pippin.

The message read, Shouldn’t we stop the ceremony?

That was originally the plan. However, from what I could see, the people around me were willingly giving up their skills, not having them forcefully taken away.

They seemed a little overzealous, but there were no signs that they were being controlled.

My map search didn’t turn up any Psychic Magic users in the province. The only one when we arrived was a member of the Light of Freedom cult who had since been executed.

Considering that the sage who was either supporting or even organizing this ceremony was a staunch enemy of the Light of Freedom cult, it was highly unlikely that anyone here was being brainwashed with Psychic Magic.

After quickly thinking all this through, I pretended to throw a rock back at Pippin and instead dropped it next to him with a letter attached using my Magic Hand. I had written Let’s watch and wait for now. While Pippin looked less than pleased, it didn’t seem like he was going to leave Pochi and Tama to act on his own, or anything like that.

“You lot line up, too.”

The priest who was in charge of the line prompted us to stand at the back.

I stood in front of Jimuza and Abul in case of an emergency.

“Huh? Mr. Noble?”

“…Raito?”

For some reason, young Raito was in front of me in line, not back in the Village of Adepts, like I thought.

“What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Sage sent for me.”

“And did you see the s—…? Mr. Sage?”

“Nah, not yet. I’mma join in the ceremony ’cause a bigwig told me to, but I still don’t really get what’s goin’ on with all this.”

I traded places with Raito as we spoke.

His rare “Intuition” skill probably couldn’t be regained with practice. I wasn’t going to let it get taken away from him against his will if he didn’t understand what was happening.

“Master, we’ve got a problem!” Arisa contacted me with Telephone. “I just checked and saw that Raito is missing. And one of the students told me that someone sent for us—Liza and Lulu and the others, too, not just Mia and me. Apparently, the sage is the one who sent for us. Something might be going on there, too.”

…Whoops.

I forgot to tell her about the “Aptitude Transfer” ceremony.

I looked around quickly. Luckily, the “Magic Perception” user didn’t seem to have noticed, so it was probably safe to reply.

Still keeping an eye out, I told Arisa about the ceremony and that I’d found Raito.

“Come on! You should’ve reported in right away!”

“I know, sorry. I’ll let you know if anything happens at the ceremony.”

“An undercover investigation is way too dangerous—”

“You’re next.”

My turn came up while I was still on the call. I told Arisa as much and stepped up to the stage.

Now I could see the magic circles that were out of view before. They were complex and multilayered, using carved stone slabs that were arranged around the podium as well as shapes made out of Light Magic.

I tried to decipher them as I approached the Holy Woman.

It seemed to be some kind of summoning circle, though I couldn’t tell for what. How could these magic circles be stealing skills from people?

“You who would offer up your aptitude, come forth,” the Holy Woman said evenly.

Up close, I could see her face through the veil. She had pretty and understated features, if not an overwhelming beauty. It was impossible to see her eye color through the veil when she was looking downward.

“This is your first time, isn’t it?”

It seemed like she was confirming what she already knew, not asking.

Did she remember every single person who’d offered up their skills?

“Level three. That’s not quite high enough to offer up your experience yet.”

“Then I’ll just offer my ‘aptitude.’”

A priest with the “Analyze” skill whispered something in her ear.

“Do you consent to serve me as my ‘familiar’? If so, please answer ‘yes.’”

As she finished speaking, an AR window popped up in front of me.

> Become familiar of Demon Lord “Shizuka”? [yes/no]

Demon Lord?!

She didn’t have the demon lord title.

And she wasn’t wearing a Brace of Stolen Divinity that could fool my analysis.

When I checked her equipment and possessions in my map details, I found a suspicious item called an “Evil God’s Imprint.” I would have to add that to my search list along with the brace.

“Whatever is the matter?”

The Holy Woman looked puzzled.

It was hard to believe she was a demon lord when looking into those violet eyes.

But unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to question it.

I went into action.

“Arisa, I ran into a demon lord. I’ll have Pippin collect the kids while I take care of it.”

I sent Pippin a rock-letter telling him to escape with Raito, Jimuza, and Abul.

Then I sent Tama instructions as well, and she and Pochi began pulling out smoke bombs and tossing them.

In the moment that their smoke bombs exploded, I produced some more that I had in Storage and set them off with my Magic Hand in all parts of the room.

The stage, and the entire ceremony hall, was full of smoke in an instant.

“What’s going on here?!”

“Get the Holy Woman to safety!”

Before the guards could come running, I took the Holy Woman—no, demon lord—by the arm and used Return to teleport away.

“…Where are we?”

Demon Lord Shizuka looked around calmly.

We were in an empty rocky area some distance away from the Den of Evil where the ceremony hall was located.

“I take it you’ve abducted me, masked man?”

I had transformed into my Nanashi the Hero disguise.

Unlike the Sandstorm Lord we’d recently defeated, Shizuka seemed as sane and rational as the Ancient Dogheaded King. Maybe we could settle things without trying to kill each other.

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

“And you are?”

“I’m Nanashi.”

“Nanashi, as in ‘nameless’? Like Captain Nemo?”

As the demon lord addressed me, I used my Magic Hand to remove the Evil God’s Imprint from her person.

Immediately, I could see her real stats.

This item must have been disguising them, just as I thought.

“What…?”

The demon lord raised the hem of her skirt and looked at her ankle.

She must have noticed that the Evil God’s Imprint had disappeared.

“But I thought it could never be removed…”

I ignored her surprise and focused on gathering information.

Her gender was indeed female, and her original race was “long-eared tribe.” She was only twenty-four years old.

She was still level 50, with five titles: “Holy Woman,” “Demon Lord,” “False Holy Woman,” “Devoted,” and “Shut-In.”

Her only normal skill was “Holy Magic.” She had no gifts. Her Unique Skills were Adopt Familiar and Transfer Element.

These Unique Skills must be how she performed the “Aptitude Transfer.”

She had no battle-related skills at all, and while her Unique Skills might be well-suited to making soldiers, they weren’t meant for direct combat at all.

To be honest, she was probably the weakest demon lord I’d met thus far.

I was a little concerned about her status conditions “Illness: Depression” and “Illness: Stomach Ulcer,” but now wasn’t the time to worry about that.

“Demon Lord Shizuka.”

“How did you…? Ah, yes. You must be a hero.”

The demon lord sensed the reason partway through her question and lowered her gaze.

She hesitated for a moment, looking down and biting her lip. Then she removed her veil and wig and stood up slowly.

Her long violet hair fluttered in the night wind.

“…All right. I’m ready.”

Demon Lord Shizuka spread her arms wide.

“You’re here to finally kill me, right?”

She smiled bleakly and slowly closed her eyes.

“So kill me… If possible, I’d appreciate it if you made it relatively painless, please.”

Hang on, does she have a death wish?

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“Aren’t you a hero?”

“That doesn’t mean I have to go around killing demon lords.”

“I see…,” Shizuka murmured, then paused for a moment. “But it’d be for the best if I died.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m an evil demon lord who steals skills and experience points from my followers. I can never atone for that sin, even if it is because I’m being ordered to do it and can’t refuse.”

“You’re being commanded? By who?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you.”

“You must care for them a lot, then.”

Shizuka’s reaction to that was immediate and intense. “No! I don’t care for him at all!”

Her eyes went bloodshot, and her breathing was heavy.

It was a stark contrast to her fragile state from just a moment ago.

“He pretended to be kind to get close to me, then bound me with a Geist!”

She said the “Geist” part in English.

“As in the ‘Geist’ skill that forces you to do things?”

“Yes, that must be it. I heard him use the word once when he was talking to someone else.”

Trying to calm her down, I produced a table set from Storage via the Item Box, offering her some blue-green tea and baked goods.

“That was almost like a magic trick,” Demon Lord Shizuka murmured, sounding slightly amused. “…This is delicious. It’s been so long since anything tasted good to me.”

Don’t make comments that sound like something I would say after a death march. You’ll just make me feel more sympathetic toward you, darn it.

“Master, are you fighting the demon lord already?”

Arisa contacted me via Tactical Talk.

“No, I think we should be able to resolve things by talking it out peacefully.”

“Ooh, okay then. Glad to hear it, although I guess that means there was no need for us to all come running from the village.”

Since Tactical Talk didn’t have as far a range as Telephone, that must mean Arisa and the others were relatively close by.

“Emergencyyy?”

“Lots of people chasing us, sir.”

Tama and Pochi called for assistance on their mission to evacuate the three kids from the ceremony hall.

“That doesn’t sound good. Master, we’ll go help Tama and Pochi for now.”

“Be careful. Pippin’s with them, too.”

“Okey-dokey, I gotchu!”

Arisa ended the call.

“This reminds me of my past life, when I would stay up late working on my hobbies with coffee and cookies for company.”

The demon lord Shizuka sipped from her mug and spoke quietly.

“Well, if coffee from the Saga Empire would do…”

“There’s coffee in this world?”

Her eyes widened in surprise as she accepted it.

“It tastes like the instant coffee I used to drink a long time ago. How relaxing.”

The scent and taste of coffee must have opened her heart. She started telling me about herself in bits and pieces.

As she’d mentioned earlier, she was being controlled by a mastermind with the “Geist” skill, forced to use her Unique Skill Adopt Familiar to make people gathered from the Village of Adepts into her familiars, then collect their experience points and skills and distribute them to the mastermind and his lackeys with her other Unique Skill Transfer Element.

“It really was awful. Stealing skills and experience from innocent people who look at me with such trust and handing those over to idiots with nothing going for them but their bloodline or family name… Really, what I’ve been doing is helping him exploit people.”

She chewed her lip so hard that it bled. I pressed a handkerchief to the wound and healed it with magic.

“The worst part was stealing Unique Skills from my fellow reincarnations. The ones who received their skills seemed fine, but the people who lost their Unique Skills were weakened to the verge of death. Little Daigo and Chinatsu even became so unbalanced that they’re recuperating in a monastery…”

She clenched her fist until her nails pierced the skin, staining her pale hand with blood. Demon Lord Shizuka seemed to have a slight habit of self-injury.

“Because of all the stress, between stomach pain and becoming a demon lord, I’ve wanted to die countless times. If my Geist didn’t forbid me from committing suicide, I probably would have hung myself by now.”

Why would you list “stomach pain” and “becoming a demon lord” in the same breath…?

But from what she told me, I suspected that the immediate cause of her demon lord transformation was overuse of her Unique Skill damaging her soul vessel, not the stress. It would make sense if she was made to use her Unique Skills on that many people every time. Although I guess the stress could be what pushed her over the edge.

Whoops, I got so caught up in Shizuka’s situation that I forgot to confirm some details.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions. Is that all right?”

“Yes, anything. If I’m able to answer, I will.”

Demon Lord Shizuka took a sip of her now lukewarm coffee.

“What kind of Geist are you under?”

“There are a lot of rules, because he bound me with several different Geists.”

She went on to tell me about all the Geists she could remember. “I cannot reveal his identity, I must obey any orders he gives me, I cannot leave the Holy Woman’s Chamber without permission, I cannot leave the province, and a few others related to my Unique Skills and the ‘Aptitude Transfer.’”

“That certainly is a lot.”

“He’s very thorough, the bastard.”

Shizuka scowled. She clearly despised the mastermind from the bottom of her heart.

I waited for her to calm down, then moved on to the next question. “You said you can transfer Unique Skills? Who did you transfer them from, and to whom?”

“From reincarnations that he found. Yuusaku, Daigo, and Chinatsu. I can’t say who I transferred their Unique Skills to—it’s forbidden by my Geist.”

I searched the map and learned that Mr. Yuusaku was in the Den of Evil where the ceremony took place, though Daigo and Chinatsu were nowhere to be found. Since she said they were recuperating in a monastery, they were probably in some city of Parion Province that I hadn’t checked yet.

An elixir could probably cure those two kids. Once this was all over, I figured I’d track them down and heal them, as a favor to my fellow Japanese natives.

“Can you tell me about the Unique Skills they had? If you can’t get into the details, even just the number would be fine.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t say how many Unique Skills they had.”

“Are you the one who gave Pontiff Zarzaris his Unique Skill, too?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t say who I’ve transferred Unique Skills to.”

I was afraid of that…

Since there were three reincarnations, that meant there were at least three Unique Skills in play. Even if Pontiff Zarzaris and Cardinal Hozzunas got their skills from those reincarnations, there would still be one more left.

Maybe I should change my questioning approach.

“Did you ever make the Sandstorm Lord into your familiar, or use Transfer Element on him?”

“No, neither. He did tell me once to make the Sandstorm Lord my familiar, but it was rejected, so it didn’t succeed.”

That meant she didn’t transfer a Unique Skill to the Sandstorm Lord, then.

In other words, someone in Parion Province secretly had a Unique Skill.

I put my brain cells into overdrive, searching for the questions that would give me the answer I needed.

“Can you tell me what you know about Sorijeyro the Sage?”

Demon Lord Shizuka raised her head sharply and stared at me.

She must have caught on to my intentions.

Shizuka looked into my eyes and answered intently. “I’m sorry, I can’t answer that.”

“Thank you. That was a big help.”

Sorijeyro the Sage was the mastermind behind it all.