“Heya! My name’s Ann!”
“I’m Mary. Um, Ann, do you mind if I pet you?”
“Oh, um, go ahead.”
“So fluffy...”
Ann and I paid a visit to Mary at the mayor’s house. A wave of bliss crossed Mary’s face as she stroked Ann’s soft fur. It would seem she had a soft spot for fluffy things. At least the two of them were off to a good start.
“Mary, this is the girl I told you about. Ann is part of my family. You two would be seeing each other every day if you came to work at the labyrinth, so do you think the two of you can get along?”
“D-Do you mean to say I could pet her like this every day?”
I was worried that, being a human, she would have some aversion to Daemons, but given she’d been content to stay at the mayor’s this whole time, maybe I was overthinking the problem. Still, I decided to ask.
“You won’t mind living with a Daemon?”
“Oh, so that’s what you’re concerned about. My house was close to the border. Moreover, we had Daemon servants since I was a young girl, so I hardly think of them as anything out of the ordinary. Though I admit, most humans do not share my views.”
Servants? I’d heard the humans turned captured Daemons into slaves, but to think Mary’s family had done that... It was small consolation that they were putting them through forced labor, rather than trying to drive them to extinction.
“At any rate, the other day we talked about you coming to work for me. I’d like to hire you for half a year. Would you be willing to do chores and to serve as my labyrinth guardian for that time?”
“What tasks does a guardian perform? Stand guard over the treasure at the heart of the labyrinth?”
She didn’t know about the goal to attract people to the labyrinth, of course, but she did at least have a good handle on what a guardian’s job was.
“Yeah, that’s more or less the idea.”
“Chores aside, are you sure you want to entrust the labyrinth to me? Perhaps I shouldn’t be the one to point this out, but it wasn’t long ago that I was attacking this village.”
“Well, first of all, you seem like the kind of person who keeps her word. And second, it turns out I really need your help.”
“I’m pleased you think so highly of me, but I would like to understand why you require my aid specifically.”
Mary tilted her head and listened as I explained about the labyrinth’s upcoming performance evaluation and the expectations placed upon it. How we owed twenty years’ worth of intruders and only had six months to get them all. I even told her about the plan to attract hunters to try to rack up enough points in six months to meet our quota.
“A dire situation indeed.”
Mary stroked Ann’s fur through the whole story. She was like one of those kids who wouldn’t stop pestering the poor, tired worker stuffed inside an amusement park mascot costume. I had complicated feelings about it. I could understand why she wasn’t in any hurry to agree to the proposal. If I’d been one of this world’s humans, I’d have been pretty alarmed to hear that those horrible Daemons were building labyrinths teeming with traps, and were counting up the number of deaths they inflicted.
“If my role shall be to fight, rather than merely to do chores, then I would ask a favor.”
Mary raised her head and met my eyes.
“Let’s hear it first.”
“I don’t mind if you wish to train beforehand, but I would like to challenge you to a duel of swords. Or of any weapon, I suppose, as long as it’s a duel. I’m aware you’re a civilian, not a soldier, and I’ll admit I find you an agreeable enough man, but I must test your mettle to determine if I can respect you as my superior. You can learn more about a man by spending a minute crossing blades with him than you can by speaking with him for an hour.”
I hadn’t seen that coming. In a game, this would be a branching point, and the story would change depending on whether I won or lost. But it was clear that if I wanted to win Mary’s approval, I’d have to at least take her on.
“Very well, I accept your challenge. I would like to use sheathed swords, rather than wooden swords.”
You really ought to use wooden swords for this kind of thing, but I had no sword training at all, so I couldn’t even fight unless I depended on the cursed sword. That was why it had to be real swords. It sure would’ve been nice if I had a game I could practice with. Maybe some up-and-coming VR game developer would make a game where a cursed sword took over your body. I sure wished they would hurry up and get on that.