Chapter 20

It was so warm. Yuuma felt as if he was being immersed in a gently flowing stream of warm, pristine water. He wished he could soak here forever. Eyes closed, body slack, blissfully asleep and unaware… “Yu… Wake up, Yu.” Yuuma felt someone shake him. “Just a couple more minutes…,” he mumbled, eyes still closed. “Yuuma, I said wake up!” This time, whoever was speaking pinched Yuuma’s cheek hard. He forced his heavy eyelids open. Everything was blurry. Two human shapes faded into view. Yuuma blinked several times, allowing his eyes to gradually focus. To the right he could see a girl with long pigtails and black-rimmed glasses. She stared into his face with concern. It was the student librarian, Tomori Shimizu. The girl to the left, meanwhile—the one who was currently pinching Yuuma’s cheek—had a bob and was dressed in a black windbreaker. She was his twin sister, Sawa Ashihara. “Are you up now?” Sawa asked. Yuuma nodded slightly. Sawa finally released his cheek. “What…” …happened to me? he had begun to ask, but the words didn’t come out. It felt like the back of his throat was on fire. Tomori held an open plastic bottle to his lips. Yuuma gulped slowly as the water trickled into his mouth. It wasn’t cold, but it was satisfying as his body started to rehydrate. Yuuma finally began to feel like himself again. He sighed deeply. “Thank you, Shimizu,” he said, his voice dry and raspy. As Yuuma tried to sit up, he realized his school uniform jacket had been removed and was now spread underneath him like a blanket. He ran his fingers over his clothes, but none of them were wet. So then why did it feel like he was in warm water earlier? More importantly, what was he doing lying on the floor in a corner of the walkway…? Yuuma started to push himself up into a sitting position, but the bones in both arms throbbed faintly. The pain was like a switch that triggered a flood of images. The adults—so many of them—sitting against a wall with their knees up in Playroom 02. The way they fused together to create that gigantic monster. Yuuma’s best friend, Kenji Kondou, sailing through the air like a ragdoll after being punched by the massive creature. And then, finally…Sawa. Sawa, transformed. Sawa, incinerating the monster with earth-shattering flame magic. “Sawa…” Yuuma used his core strength to sit up and then stared closely into his sister’s face. The hood of her windbreaker was up, leaving Sawa’s face half hidden in shadow. Her eyes, however, were once again their usual reddish brown. The inhuman golden glow from when she was transformed was gone, and there were no signs of the larger horns or wings, either. For a brief moment he wondered…had that been a dream? But his arms still throbbed in pain from where the monster had kicked him, and the air in the room left a singed smell in the back of his nose. If he’d dreamed all that, then the rest of this experience had to have been a dream, too: everything that had happened since getting trapped inside the large-scale amusement complex Althea. Sawa remained silent. Yuuma tore his gaze away from her and glanced toward the upper-left-hand corner of his vision. He could see something floating there, something that shouldn’t appear in the real world—his HP bar. He should have been at less than half health, due to the damage from the monster’s kick, but had already recovered to around 80 percent. He probably had Tomori’s healing magic to thank for that, since she had chosen the Priest class. He had also jumped from level 9 all the way to level 11, although he didn’t feel much like celebrating at the moment. Yuuma took a look around the room. The words Playroom 02 had been painted on the wall to his left, and a row of half-demolished Caliculus capsules stretched out to his right. There was a large craterlike pit in the floor a short distance away, in which a small, flickering fire remained. Finally, Yuuma glanced behind him. He spotted Kenk, who was lying on his back with his jacket off, just like Yuuma had been a moment earlier. “Kenk…” Yuuma scooted over to his side. That gigantic monster—the Conehead Demolisher—had punched Kenk so hard that it had tossed him across the room, seriously injuring him and deleting more than half of his health. Kenk’s eyes were still closed. Yuuma grabbed his shoulder to ask if he was all right, but he soon realized Kenk wasn’t bleeding. In fact, he didn’t even look pale. Remembering that the HP bars of other party members were visible as well, Yuuma glanced up and to the left again. Kenk’s HP bar, which was displayed underneath his own, was now about 70 percent full. The girls, meanwhile, were almost entirely uninjured. Yuuma had been holding his breath. He finally exhaled and turned back toward Tomori, who was still holding the open water bottle. He bowed his head. “Thanks for healing us.” Yuuma then looked over at Sawa. “Thank you, too, Sawa. If you hadn’t defeated that giant monster for us, me and Kenk would’ve both died.” It was embarrassing thanking his own twin sister like that, but that was how Yuuma segued into asking. “……Um, Sawa…what was that transformation earlier? How were you able to use such powerful magic…?” “Well…” Sawa blinked a few times, searching for the right words, then cocked her head to the side as if listening closely to something they couldn’t see. Yuuma strained his ears, but all he heard was the hollow echo of the empty room. “Fine…,” Sawa whispered before lifting her head. “She says she wants to explain herself.” “Sh-she…?” Yuuma briefly made eye contact with Tomori, but she seemed to be as much in the dark as he was. “Who are you talking about? There’s no one here but us…” Without answering Yuuma, Sawa pushed back the hood of her windbreaker and closed her eyes. She was silent for a moment, her face downcast. Suddenly, she lifted her head again, and her eyes flew open. “…!” Yuuma sucked in his breath sharply. Sawa’s eyes were a completely different color now—a reddish gold. They didn’t glow this time, but Yuuma was pretty sure there was no one on the face of this earth with irises that were naturally this hue. He instinctively glanced toward her temples, but her horns were the same two plant-like buds peeking out from the thicket of her hair. They were no bigger than before. “Sawa…?” Yuuma said fearfully. As Yuuma stared at her, Sawa’s lips twisted into a faint smile. In the eleven years and eight months of their lives together as twins, Yuuma had never before seen an expression like that on his sister’s face. It was a detached smirk, full of both pity and amusement. The voice that came from her lips was like a whisper. “We meet at last…brother.” That isn’t Sawa. Yuuma was sure of it. Yes, the voice faintly resembled his sister’s, but the inflection and pitch were completely different from how Sawa usually spoke. Yuuma was about to ask her who she was when he remembered what he had witnessed just minutes earlier. Before transforming, Sawa had lifted her right hand into the air and called a name. Or something that had sounded like a name, at least. “Are you…Valac?” The moment Yuuma spoke that name, the smile of whoever it was standing before him deepened. She nodded. “That’s correct. I am Valac… I am what you humans refer to as a demon.” “A…a demon?!” gasped Tomori, who had been silent up until now. She flinched and leaned back slightly, but then quickly recovered, leaning forward again in order to ask a question of her own. “When you say ‘demon’…does that mean you’re a monster from Actual Magic? You escaped from the game world to possess Sawa?” “Hmm…” The smile on Sawa’s—no, Valac’s—face relaxed. She tilted her head slightly and then nodded. “I don’t particularly care for being called a monster, but I suppose what you’ve described is more or less accurate. I usually remain half-asleep inside Sawa’s heart and mind, but I can take over when she calls for me, and I can also grant her my vires—my power.” “A…vires? What’s that?” asked Yuuma. He had trouble pronouncing the unfamiliar word. Valac cocked an eyebrow. With all that she had just told him, that was what he wanted to focus on? “The word vires originally comes from Latin,” she said. “It means strength.” “Latin…” Yuuma stared blankly. Tomori stepped in, asking another question. “And this power…is the ability to use powerful magic?” “To put it in terms from these games you children so love, you can think of it as a buff to her magic skill.” It sounded like there might be other demons out there, ones with different vires, but Valac didn’t give them a chance to follow up. “When I come to the surface, I can temporarily boost Sawa’s magic skill to its maximum value. That was how she was able to use the Infernal Spear spell earlier. I only increase her magic skill, however, not her MP. She barely had enough for a single cast.” “The maximum value…?!” Yuuma was left speechless again. In every MMORPG Yuuma had ever played, it took ages to max out skills—in fact, Yuuma couldn’t remember having ever actually done it himself. Assuming Actual Magic had a similar growth system, the ability to boost a skill to its maximum level would be ridiculously OP. Yuuma glanced over his shoulder, expecting one of his friends to share in his astonishment. Kenk was still unconscious, however, and Tomori wasn’t really a gamer. She didn’t seem to realize what a big deal that would be. Sawa, meanwhile, was still swapped with Valac. And Nagi…well, they still had no idea where Nagi was. The whole reason they had entered this playroom in the first place was to search for Nagi. Every second mattered. But it wasn’t like they could put this discussion with Valac on the back burner. Why had she possessed Sawa? Were there any physical or mental risks involved? And why were monsters from Actual Magic now able to talk of their own volition? There were so many questions they still needed answers to. Yuuma could freak out about skill levels later. He remembered something. Something that had been nagging at him. “Earlier, when Sawa used Healing Droplet, the light was pink instead of the usual white. Was that because you were buffing her skill level?” Yuuma asked apprehensively. Valac raised an eyebrow, as if to ask if that really mattered right now, but she gave a small nod. “It’s possible. My anima is fuchsia-colored, after all.” “Anima…?” Another strange word. Valac seemed to lose her patience. “Aren’t there more important things you should be asking right now?” she said. “Oh…of course…” Valac had a point. Yuuma bowed his head. “Valac, thank you for saving us and all… But Sawa’s not in any danger, is she, from being possessed? That’s why she grew horns and wings, isn’t it? As part of the possession?” “If by ‘danger’ you mean danger to her health, you need not worry. At least, not in the short term.” “What about in the long term…?” “Why worry about what might happen a year from now, when there’s no guarantee that you’ll even live to see tomorrow?” “…” Yuuma gritted his teeth. What Valac said was cruel but true. It had been 3:00 PM when they first became trapped inside Althea. It was now 5:20. How many times had they already teetered on the brink of death in just those two hours and twenty minutes alone? They needed to find Nagi and figure a way out of Althea as soon as possible. They could worry about any side effects from Sawa’s possession after that. “Valac, do you know what’s happening here at Althea? Or how we can get outside?” Yuuma was nearly tripping over his own words. Valac smiled at him mockingly. “Don’t forget that I’m a demon. You’ve yet to pay the price for my aid earlier, and now you expect me to answer your questions? That’s rather presumptuous, wouldn’t you agree?” “The price…? I don’t have very much money…” Yuuma reached toward his QREST to check how much money was left in his account, but Valac stopped him with her index finger. Although she was barely touching him, her finger felt heavy, like a bar of steel. “Don’t be ridiculous. Obviously I’m not interested in shaking down schoolchildren for their allowances…” “Then how do I pay…?” Yuuma asked hesitantly. She’s not gonna ask for my soul, is she…?! Valac withdrew her finger. “There’s something that I want you to do for me. Something that will even align with your own goals.” “What is it…?” “I want you to go find Nagi.” “…” Yuuma and Tomori exchanged glances. Valac’s request didn’t merely align with their goals—it was their goal. That hardly seemed to qualify as repayment for what Valac had done for them. After all, she’d just said she was a demon. Sure, she wasn’t asking for their souls, but Yuuma had a feeling there might still be a catch. Tomori gathered up the courage to ask another question. “When you say ‘go find Nagi,’ does that mean that you know where Sano is?” “A general idea, yes.” “But why are you so interested in Sano…?” Yuuma wanted to know the answer to that, too. Sawa’s life was obviously important to Valac, since Sawa was the vessel the demon was possessing. But what interest could Valac possibly have in Nagi? Valac, however, just placed a finger to Tomori’s lips. “Remember what I told you earlier? Question time is over. If you want answers, you’ll do as I ask.”