When my eyes opened again, I found myself in the same coffin I’d fallen asleep in. I’d been asleep for so long that my body ached. As I pushed the lid open, a sudden dull sound grated on my ears. My guess was that it was inevitable for the coffin to have broken due to all the centuries it had lain dormant. If my reincarnation magecraft had worked, then I’d currently be two hundred years in the future. It was only natural that things would have deteriorated.
“Wow...” I let out a sound of surprise as I stepped out into the light and saw my now smaller limbs.
It looked like I’d succeeded. My soul had entered the body that I’d prepared, which, for the record, was based on what I’d looked like as a kid. Maybe I should’ve changed my appearance a little, but I was relatively attached to my looks, so I’d found it hard to throw it all away. But I didn’t expect this to be a problem—anyone able to recognize me should have been long gone by now.
“Hm... Where’s the mirror? I remember it used to be around there...”
I began scanning the area, but didn’t see my standing mirror anywhere. There should’ve been one nearby, but maybe an earthquake or something had knocked it down and broken it. Perhaps the shards were hidden under the rubble. However, my search was cut short as something else caught my attention.
“I sense a demon.”
I focused my ears and caught the sound of footsteps echoing in the cave. From the sound of them, I determined that they belonged to a demon that’d taken the form of a woman. Pretty good disguise. They’d probably be able to fool any normal human, but not me.
This wasn’t a great situation, though. How had she been able to penetrate all the barriers I’d erected? Could they have deteriorated over the years too? If I was still in my previous body, I wouldn’t have been worried at all, but...could I defeat her in this child’s body?
I only had one chance to launch a preemptive attack. I’d have to wait for her to open the doors. As soon as she did, I’d hit her with the strongest spell I could muster at this moment. So long as I was able to strike first, it’d put me in an advantageous position, even in this body.
The heavy doors slowly opened, and I heard a voice. “Master Abel?”
Stunned by her beauty, I was so caught off guard that I completely lost concentration on the spell I was preparing to cast. That’s how beautiful she was.
She had Azure Eyes, indicating an affinity for water. She was slender, with skin as white as a cloud, and long, silky silver hair. She dropped the wicker basket she’d been holding.
“H-How I’ve waited for this day...”
Uh...huh? Excuse me?! I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on. Suddenly, the girl collapsed to the ground, tears pouring out of her eyes.
“My deepest apologies, Master Abel. I-It’s just that I’ve waited so long.”
Waiting for me? I have absolutely no recollection of this beauty. This wasn’t something I was proud of, but I’d always been so engrossed in my research that I’d gone my entire life without any romantic relationships.
✦ ✦ ✦
She was either an incredibly gifted actor...or the tears she was shedding were genuine. Had she really been waiting for me? Who was she? Did I know any demons?
“Oh... Okay... I get it now...”
A strong sense of déjà vu washed over me. I had met her before. Seeing her crying on the ground while peeking up at me jogged my memory. Suddenly, my ex-party members’ words replayed in my head.
“Abel, are you crazy?! She may be a child, but she’s still a demon!”
“I can’t believe this! She’s our enemy—humanity’s enemy!”
I remembered all this like it was yesterday. The day after we defeated the demon king, I saved the life of a demon child on a whim. She’d had the double whammy of bad fortune, where not only had she failed to escape the castle quickly enough, but she was also the daughter of the demon king. Just for that, they’d wanted to kill her.
Her name surfaced in my mind. “Long time no see, Lilith.”
“It’s wonderful to see you in good health, Master Abel.”
Two hundred years later, there was barely any trace left of the little girl she once was...especially in the chest area. She now looked like a woman in her twenties.
“Since you saved my life two hundred years ago, I’ve devoted myself to repaying you! I’d heard that you left the hero’s party and disappeared, so I spent over a century traveling the world, searching for you until I finally came across this place.”
Uh-huh. Maybe I’d been a little too naive if a demon had been able to find my hideaway. The barrier had to have weakened over the years—I must have messed up my calculations. If I had another opportunity to reincarnate myself, I’d have to fine-tune things to prevent these problems from occurring again.
“By the way, Lilith, maybe I’m misremembering, but didn’t we have the same eye color?”
This was one of the things I’d been most curious about since I’d realized it was her. How had she changed the color of her eyes? It was fair to say that the color of one’s eyes corresponded to their Soul Hue, which comprised their very being. Even reincarnating couldn’t change the color of my eyes. In other words, there shouldn’t have been any way for her to have easily accomplished this.
“I have Amber Eyes, just like you do,” she responded. “However, I am currently wearing Color Contacts.”
“Color...what?”
“It may be quicker to show you what I mean rather than explain it.”
“Huh?!”
I practically screamed in surprise as Lilith put her fingers into one of her eyes and peeled something off it.
“This is an item known as a color contact. Once you get used to it, you barely notice it’s there.”
I had no words. So this semitransparent sheet has the function of changing your eye color? This was something that nobody in the age I lived in would’ve ever thought of or been able to produce.
Before I knew it, I found myself chuckling. I’d been right to choose this era to reincarnate into. The advances of humanity were amazing. There’d always been prejudice about the color of one’s eyes. Humans had hated each other and sometimes even waged wars over something as simple as that. So many lives had been lost over something so trivial. It was truly ironic how the origin of all this conflict could be resolved by this semitransparent sheet.
“Master Abel, I have something I’d like to discuss with you. Would it be all right if we speak elsewhere? I live not too far from here.”
“Yeah, sure.”
I was interested in what she had to say to me, but I was even more interested in seeing and experiencing how the world had changed. Lilith picked up her basket and pulled something out from inside. From what I could tell, it was a warm, thin cloth woven with fuzzy strings.
“What is this? Some kind of neckwear?” I asked as Lilith wrapped it around my neck.
A bright smile spread across her face. “It’s a type of garment to aid against the cold—a scarf. Its name has changed in the two hundred years that you’ve been idle.”
She took my hand and began slowly walking with me, out of the room and to the outside world. When we exited, my breath turned white. In fact, the entire world in front of me was coated in white. There weren’t even footsteps in the freshly fallen snow.
“Let us go forth, Master Abel.”
I nodded as we set out across the snow blanketing this new world.