After trading a few quips, the two found themselves standing at the entrance to the house. The door before them was thick and solid. He took out the key to the house, pushed it into the lock, and twisted. The lock opened with a heavy clank, and the door slowly creaked open. Once they walked through the doorway, neither of them were surprised to find the inside shrouded in darkness. There were no lamps, and the dim evening glow barely even lit the windows it passed through. A vast and unsettling emptiness stretched out before them. Shion couldn’t help but lean in and pull on Renya’s shoulder.
“It’s… pretty dark.”
“Well, yeah. Because there are no lights. Hold on a second.”
He gave the hand on his shoulder a few reassuring pats before stepping into that emptiness. Then, he raised his right hand and gave it a quick flick.
“Illuminate.”
Orbs of mana flickered to life in the murky darkness, glowing with an intense, but heatless white light. There were a total of sixteen, and they bathed the area in their radiance, revealing it to be an entrance hall.
“I set their duration to twelve hours. It’s probably fine for the entrance to stay bright until tomorrow morning.”
“Hm, right.”
Shion agreed with a nod. It seemed perfectly reasonable, but that was only because she had no knowledge of magecraft. Otherwise, she should have been gaping at the ridiculously unusual sight before her.
The amount of mana expended by magecraft correlated with the spell’s strength and duration of action, and it was possible to calculate through simple multiplication. Orbs generated by Illuminate only lasted for about ten minutes. He had queued up twelve hours’ worth. Moreover, he had sixteen instances of this going at the same time. Six times twelve times sixteen equals one thousand one hundred and fifty-two. In other words, with a flick of his hand, he just burned through enough mana to cast a normal Illuminate 1152 times.
The sheer mana consumption would have easily knocked a regular mage out cold. Were Azu or Caryl present, the sight would have blown their minds. Unfortunately, its significance was lost on Shion, who knew less than nothing about such things. The extent of her appreciation for his extraordinary feat was “Well, I’m glad it’s bright now.” Renya did not feel like it was anything to boast about either, so the specifics ultimately went unexplained.
Ample illumination revealed the entrance hall to be built in a wellhole style that joined the first and second floors, and the staircase to the second was directly in front of them. A number of rooms surrounded them on the first floor, and they turned out to be a guest room, a dining room with kitchen attached, a storehouse, another storehouse, and a workshop. The section that faced the street was the storefront. Apparently, the storefront and workshop each claimed one of the storehouses for themselves.
Up on the second floor, there were three bedrooms, a large bathroom, a study, a living room, and a children’s bedroom. The third floor was the attic, and it seemed to have been used as a glorified closet.
Renya proceeded to spam twelve-hour Illuminates throughout the house, putting orbs up in every room he entered. Only the bedrooms were spared. In the end, almost every corner of the building was aglow and the whole place was bright as day. Each orb he created cost 72 times more mana than usual, and he was throwing them out like they were chump change. At this point, even the magecraft-challenged Shion started noticing that something seemed strange.
“Hey, Renya, how come you’re putting up light orbs everywhere?”
“Hm? Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you.” He scratched his head and grimaced a little, figuring he probably should have explained beforehand. “Apparently, this house is haunted. Like, people see ghosts around here.”
“…Huh?”
“There’s some story about how the merchant who used to own this place turned out to be a serial killer. And it’s said that ghosts show up here. Speaking of which, I forgot to ask what kind of ghosts they are… Those of the murdered? Or is it the ghost of that merchant who was beheaded in the yard? I mean, I don’t really care either way, but will they still come out if it’s this bright?”
“Gho… Ghosts?”
“Yeah. What about them?”
A glance at Shion revealed that she was slowly drawing in a breath. He had a pretty good idea what she was going to do next, so he stuck his fingers in his ears and grit his teeth.
For the briefest of moments, there was nothing. Then, it came.
The world itself seemed to tremble amidst the piercing scream. It emanated from Shion, passed through the walls, and echoed throughout the entire property before fading into the night sky.
“Nope! Nope nope nope nope nope! No way! Come on, Renya, can we leave? Please…”
She clutched at his right shoulder with both hands and looked up at him with wide, desperate eyes. With all the pitifulness of a lost child, she clung onto him, her hands trembling and her eyes moist. It was a sight that would have tugged at the heartstrings of anyone who called himself male, but Renya was too distracted trying to pry off the iron grip of her hand that was currently threatening to crush his shoulder and therefore took little notice.
“Please, can we go already? Why are we staying the night in a place where ghosts show up…”
“That’s the whole point. I said we’re here to check this place out, didn’t I? Being ghosts, they probably only come out at night, so how else are we supposed to see them? We have to be here when it’s night. If you want to leave, you can just go back to the inn by yourself.”
“How am I supposed walk alone at night after hearing a story like that, you monster!” she exclaimed in a fit of desperate, dread-fueled rage.
Immediately, he started regretting bringing her along. With that said, though, he was partly to blame for not explaining the situation to her beforehand, so he couldn’t scold her outright. He was also surprised by how poorly Shion handled things like ghosts and tales of the paranormal. They had, after all, ventured into a dungeon and stared down zombies whose flesh was literally melting off their bodies. Those seemed many times scarier in both appearance and potential threat compared to ghosts, which might or might not exist — they weren’t even sure yet. When he brought up the issue with her, her reply was swift and firm.
“Because you can’t stab a ghost with a sword, obviously!”
In his mind, Renya opened the file where he kept his opinions of the people he knew, flipped to Shion’s page, and under the entry that read, “A few cards short of a full deck,” added another line: “Failed physics.” Then, he proceeded to explore the rest of the house with an unwilling Shion in tow, who pulled on his sleeve like her very life depended on it and loudly pleaded with him to leave.
The entrance to the first floor was opposite the storefront, which faced the street. One of the two storehouses could only be entered from the side of the store, and access to the other was similarly restricted to the adjoining workshop. The layout of the guest room remained the same as when it was last inhabited, but below the thick layer of dust and grime that had accumulated over the years, its furnishings lay decayed and worm-eaten. Though it might be cheaper to clean and restore them to their original state, he decided that it was simply easier to dispose of everything and start over with newly-purchased furniture. The same could be said of the dining room and the assortment of cookware that had been left behind; he wasn’t keen on reusing hand-me-downs from a convicted serial killer. As for the kitchen, it was equipped with a number of contraptions, each of which was rigged with a dizzying assortment of mana crafts that were sure to fetch a handsome price on the market. According to Shion, with a sufficient supply of manastones, they would allow him to produce both water and fire with the flick of a finger, even going so far as to control their intensity at will. It elicited an impressed nod from Renya, who noted that this world was conveniently high-tech in the strangest of places sometimes.
He stepped into the workshop and discovered that it was no slouch either. A furnace that ran on mana stones could be used for smithery, and the surrounding cupboards and cabinets provided plenty of storage space for medicines and materials. Heavy-duty work counters rounded off the setup, and the whole place was, barring some cleaning that had to be done, in perfect working condition.
“You think… somebody was killed on this work counter?” asked Shion, her voice tinged with dread. The counter was indeed wide enough for a person to lie down on it, but he shook his head.
“That seems unlikely. If the guy actually did something like that, I’ll be sure to give his ghost a good scolding when it shows up.”
The work counter was a hallowed place; it was where a craftsman went about his craft. Those who would desecrate such a space with unseemly acts would receive no mercy from him.
“…Can you even scold a ghost?”
“No idea. It’s not like I’ve tried before.”
Up on the second floor, there were three bedrooms. They were used by the merchant and his wife, their children, and any potential guests, respectively. The furniture and beds in these rooms were likewise untouched, but he didn’t want to keep stuff that had been used by other people. They were pretty dirty too, so he flagged everything as garbage.
An expansive bathroom held a luxurious bathtub made of marble. As expected, it employed a water-delivery system that was powered by mana stones, and it even had a shower attached. Despite the long period of neglect, the system remained in very good condition.
“It’s nice that the bathtub is big. We can all get in together,” said Shion as she peeked out from behind him.
“Yeah. Except we’re not going to do that.”