First, I went over my newly acquired knowledge.
This was the world of an “otome game” called Silver Wings of Love, commonly shortened to just Silver Love. I wasn’t quite sure what such games entailed exactly, but I grasped that they were like illustrated stories in which the protagonist could seduce various men, giving and receiving gifts and favors. Though I couldn’t imagine someone like that really existed, according to that woman, I was this “protagonist.”
My name, Alicia, was also the name of the game’s heroine. In the story, my last name changed when I was taken in by a noble family. According to my new knowledge, my mother had been a noble lady and had eloped with my father, a knight’s apprentice. This meant I had noble blood and relatives and could probably live a better life. If I were still my old self, not knowing any better, I might’ve been intimidated by nobles, who were so far above me on the food chain, though I would also have longed to live like a princess.
But now that I had all this “knowledge,” I feared aristocrats far more than I longed to be one. I knew they were nothing but trouble. Besides, I had no intention of living a life on the rails of fate, following the plot that woman had been so passionate about. She’d fully believed this world was part of a game, but from my perspective, that notion didn’t match with reality.
I wasn’t some character in a story. I was me, a person living and breathing in this world.
Screw fate. I’d make it on my own. And now I had all the knowledge I needed to do that. Ideally, if I was going to stay away from the game’s story, I needed to know what it was about to an extent. But acquiring that information would’ve required embedding that aethercrystal with the woman’s knowledge and personality into my heart, which I hadn’t done, so what I’d gleaned about her former world was vague at best. Perhaps in my rejection of her, I’d subconsciously blocked that aspect of her nature and thus had been unable to absorb that information. And now the crystal had been smashed to bits and dumped into a ditch, so even if I’d wanted to do something about it, I wouldn’t have been able to. And, honestly, I didn’t want to touch it again either way.
Still, by piecing together the bits I knew about the game with what I knew about other stories, I was beginning to get a rough idea of what it may have been about.
The bright, kindhearted, hardworking heroine was born from the elopement of a noble lady and a knight’s apprentice. She lost both parents to a monster attack and was raised in a church as an orphan. After various twists and turns, she was discovered by her mother’s family, attended an academy for noble children, became friends with a prince and his entourage, and was bullied by his fiancée, the “villainess.” Then, in a dungeon, she received a divine blessing. She went on adventures, and eventually got a happy ending somehow. It was truly a stupid story.
Seriously, how stupid. It wasn’t like humans needed to be nobles or marry princes to live. I didn’t care whether it was the gods themselves who had laid out that path for me—not even they got to tell me I’d been born for that kind of bullshit.
For now, I decided, based on the knowledge I’d gained from that woman, to head to the neighboring town. I’d learned I was in the Claydale Empire, on the continent of Sars, in a world named Ciel. Specifically, I was in the northernmost part of Claydale, in some baron’s territory, whatever the name was. She didn’t seem to have memorized the names of smaller places either.
Regardless, I wanted to go to the neighboring town because the place where I’d lived so far had felt more like a large village, and I figured that going to the town where the baron lived would afford me more places to hide in. Ideally, I would leave this man’s territory altogether before any nobles found me, but as a child, I couldn’t travel far. I’d been able to manage in the town where I’d been living, but entering a larger, walled settlement meant paying a toll of one silver coin. Crossing into other territories also cost money, so ordinarily, commoners didn’t travel.
There were ways around those fees, however. By paying income-appropriate taxes to the lord of a given territory, one could attain citizenship and move freely within those lands. Another option was to buy a merchant’s pass from the Traders’ Guild, which allowed travel to other territories at a discount.
Lastly, there was the Adventurers’ Guild. By signing up and reaching a high enough rank, a member could move freely within the country. Of course, one didn’t simply become high ranked overnight, but even an entry-level Rank 1 adventurer could freely come and go from the town where they’d registered.
“Adventurer?” I asked myself.
What was an adventurer, anyway? I thought about it, and some information surfaced in my mind. The Adventurers’ Guild was an organization originally derived from a mercenary guild supported by the Traders’ Guild, and adventurers were mercenaries who specialized in eliminating monsters while exploring ruins and other untrodden areas, either alone or in small groups.
Nowadays, however, adventurers could more accurately be described as jacks-of-all-trades, doing anything from looting ancient ruins to supplying cities with aethercrystals harvested from monsters. Even so, high-ranking adventurers capable of rallying a small elite force to bring down powerful monsters were still highly valued.
Considering that aethercrystals were used like batteries, as a means to store aether, it was a necessity to have adventurers who could supply them. But in order to register with the Adventurers’ Guild, aspiring candidates needed to at least qualify for Rank 1. That is, they needed to have a combat-related skill at Level 1 or higher.
Skill? Level? I tilted my head at the words floating casually through my mind. Having grown up an orphan with neither wisdom nor knowledge, I wasn’t sure what either of those words meant, but I didn’t have time to try and find out.
My immediate goal was to get a Level 1 skill somehow and become an adventurer. The neighboring town had a Guild as well as some places for me to lie low, but I couldn’t simply head straight there.
The biggest issue was the fact that I was only seven years old. Even if I did manage to get into the town, there was a high chance I’d be tricked and sold by a grown-up with ill intentions. Before I ever ventured in there, I needed, at minimum, the combat prowess to fend off run-of-the-mill thugs. If I could learn a combat skill in the process, even better, but it was questionable whether that was possible with just the knowledge I had.
For now, I needed to ascertain what I could and couldn’t do in my current state, so I thought of hiding somewhere along the road that connected the rural settlement I’d been in to the neighboring town. Apparently it took from dawn ’til dusk to reach my destination by horse-drawn carriage, which meant that on foot, it should take about two days. Considering the distance, there had to be someplace suitable for camping along the way, and there would likely be a source of water nearby. That was my first destination.