The elven shopkeeper told me to give up on my dreams of visiting the elves’ great forest, but I wonder if there isn’t a way for me to go nonetheless...
As I was racking my brain trying to come up with a way to secure an invitation to the elves’ forest, the guild’s receptionist called out for Teto and me.
“Miss Chise, Miss Teto, we have received a special request for you two.”
“A request for us?” Teto and I repeated in perfect sync.
I tilted my head to the side, trying to think of how that happened.
It wasn’t that uncommon for clients to request specific adventurers to carry out a job for them based on their previous achievements or their overall reputation. It cost more than simply posting a regular quest—you’d have to pay intermediation fees to the guild, plus some extra to the adventurers themselves—but you’d have the peace of mind that the job would be taken care of properly.
“I can’t think of why anyone would hire us; I mean, we’re just a C-rank party,” I said.
“This is actually a request that the commerce guild has posted and withdrawn before, since no one would take it on, but after hearing about you two, they decided to make it a special request,” the receptionist explained.
It seemed that the fact that we took care of all of the leftover quests had reached the ears of the commerce guild, and it prompted them to hire us for the job.
“What kind of job is it?” Teto asked.
“They want you to demolish a mansion of theirs,” the receptionist explained.
“Oooh, I get it now. They must’ve learned about the old warehouses we tore down last time, and that’s why they chose us for the job,” I said, thinking back on one of the quests we had cleared some time ago.
As a trading town, Liefe had its fair share of land allocated for row after row after row of storage depots. Some of them had started deteriorating, and the town had planned on breaking them down and rebuilding them somewhere else as they expanded the town. With all of the civil engineers and constructors busy building new storage and working on the new district, they decided to leave the demolition work to the adventurer’s guild. However, due to the strenuous nature of disassembling all those huge buildings, most adventurers shied away from taking on the task, and so Teto and I ended up being the ones to accept the job.
I’d put up a large barrier around the row of warehouses and used Dark Magic to break down the roof little by little, while Teto took care of the walls with her Earth Magic. We then put all of the scrap materials into our magic bag and dumped them in the disposal area, and the job was over.
The commerce guild must’ve wanted a repeat performance.
“And so, where’s that mansion?” I asked.
“Teto and Lady Witch won’t leave a single scrap of wood behind!” Teto said enthusiastically.
The receptionist averted her eyes.
“It’s, um... It’s in the middle of the forest,” she muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“A long time ago, an eccentric magician lived in this country, and he decided to build his home away from civilization, in the forest. Ever since his death, the property rights to his mansion have passed through many hands, but every owner has given up on it eventually. They said it’s haunted.”
“Haunted?” Teto and I repeated, once again in perfect sync.
The receptionist looked around and lowered her voice so that no one could overhear our conversation.
“Yes. Eventually the property rights fell into the hands of the commerce guild. They want it gone for good.”
I nodded. The mansion already had enough of a bad reputation due to the ghost issue; they probably wanted to repurpose the land for something else as soon as possible. Apparently, they had already hired people to demolish the mansion before, but...
“The previous contractors kept hitting snag after snag, and the job got put on hold indefinitely. In the end, they gave up on the project. Rumors spread, and no one wanted to pick up where the last guys left off, so the commerce guild ended up contacting us to take care of it.”
“So, it’s still...” I said, gulping audibly.
The receptionist nodded, a grave look on her face. “Clergymen have performed countless exorcisms and purification rites on the mansion, but every adventurer who attempted to demolish the mansion all ran into the same complications as the contractors. The commerce guild withdrew their quest, and the mansion has remained abandoned until now.”
“How long ago was that?” Teto asked.
“The commerce guild withdrew their request before I was even born. Apparently, that mansion had been built well over three hundred years ago.”
“Three hundred?!” I echoed in shock. “I’m impressed it’s still standing—especially with no one to look after it.”
“It seems that the original owner has cast some sort of preservation spell onto the building.”
“I see...”
Even with a preservation spell, it didn’t make sense that the mansion would still be standing after so long. Something told me that there might have been more to this job than anyone was telling me...
“We’ll do it,” I said.
“Lady Witch and Teto will wipe the floor with that ghost!” Teto piped up.
“Thanks, you two. I’m leaving it in your competent hands.”
Even if this mansion really was haunted, I could make any ghost or curse disappear with Purification. And if our enemy wasn’t either of those things, Teto and I would most likely be able to deal with them without too much trouble.
The receptionist then told us the reward we could expect for the job: three large gold, or three million yen. It was quite low for a teardown gig—especially for a mansion—but the commerce guild’s reasoning was that we weren’t actual demolition workers. Besides, they had already paid for countless exorcisms and purification rites, so they couldn’t afford to spend a single copper coin more. In exchange, though, we were allowed to keep anything that we found during the demolition process, and in the eventuality that we failed and gave up on the mission, we wouldn’t have to pay any sort of penalty. All in all, this made up for the less-than-impressive reward—although, if anything, we were the ones doing the commerce guild a favor by keeping the stuff we found in the mansion to ourselves. I could hardly imagine them wanting to deal with things that had been locked inside a haunted house for so long.
“Well then, we’re off. It should take us a few days to get it done and dusted.”
“We’re going to clean it all up!” Teto chirped.
The two of us headed back to our caravan and started making our way to that supposedly haunted mansion. From what the receptionist had told us, it was located in a forest around an hour out from Liefe. Staff members of the commerce guild went to check on it a couple of times a year, but other than that, no one ever went to that mansion, so the path that led to it had almost completely disappeared. I used a few Wind Cutter spells to cut some of the overgrown vegetation and we finally reached our destination.
“So that’s the infamous haunted mansion.”
“Teto is so excited to start exploring it!”
The two of us climbed down from our carriage and looked up at the mansion. It was a two-story building surrounded by a tall fence; as soon as I saw it, I could confirm that it was under some sort of preservation spell. The place was a little scuffed around the edges, but otherwise in a pretty good state. This impression was further reinforced by the piles of leaves on the ground in front of it—which must’ve accumulated over the years—and the wild ivy growing on the outer walls.
“Let’s go inside, shall we?”
I used the keys the receptionist had given me to open the gate and entered the front yard. With a couple of quick spells, I cleared a spot for us to park our caravan and horse golem, and we started heading towards the front door. But then Teto stopped in her tracks, her eyes fixed on the window.
“Teto? What’s wrong?”
She hummed. “Teto feels like something is watching us.”
“Well, apparently there’s a ghost in this mansion...” I said, eyeing the building. “Just to be safe, I’m going to purify the whole place before we go in. Purification!”
I made sure to cover every single corner of the mansion, but unlike when I dispelled miasma and evil spirits, I felt absolutely no response to the spell.
“I don’t think that did anything,” I said, puzzled.
“Then the ghost probably isn’t a bad guy!”
Would a “good ghost” really spend centuries haunting people, though? I thought to myself.
“There’s something else I don’t really understand,” I mumbled.
“What is it, Lady Witch?”
“The receptionist of the guild told us that the contractors and adventurers all face ‘trouble’ when trying to demolish the mansion, but not a single one of them has died during the process.”
Almost as if whatever lived inside that mansion was trying to give them a warning, to drive them away.
“Well, first things first, we need to identify who that ‘ghost’ is.”
With these words, I pushed open the front door, and Teto and I entered the mansion.