Chapter 31

Constable Oeben—aka Oeben the Varanian Commander—was stronger than expected for the boss of a starting town. He did a decent job of holding his own against the party of four. The most surprising part of the fight was when Oeben’s HP fell below the halfway mark and he broke his two-handed hammer in two, transforming it into a one-handed hammer and a short spear. Not only did his attack patterns significantly change after that, but he was finally able to use the kind of downward swipes and sweeping attacks that the ceiling had previously prevented him from using before. It really upped the pressure, giving all four of them a run for their money. In the end, however, just as expected, he was unable to resist Yuuma’s Chilling Hand spell. Once immobilized, he became easy pickings for Kenk’s Heavy Sluggers and Sawa’s Fire Spikes. “My plans, my dreams, ending in a place like this… Aieegghh!” With a bitter cry, Oeben dissipated into his death animation. Oeben may have been an enemy, but he fought bravely. Yuuma held a half second of silence over the scattering light particles before racing over to Sawa and Nagi’s side. “Nagi!” Yuuma shouted. His childhood friend was still unconscious. Yuuma tried to lean in closely and peer into her face, but Sawa pushed him away. “Yu, do you have anything like a blanket on you?” she said calmly. Yuuma quickly opened his inventory. Scrolling through the list, Yuuma spotted an item entitled Barbed Wolf pelt. A blue-black bundle appeared above his menu window as he materialized the item. Yuuma once read that actually skinning a creature and tanning the hide took an incredible amount of effort and time. The fur pelt that Yuuma spread out on the floor had been processed for them, however, and was already soft and fluffy. Sawa laid Nagi on top of the pelt, uncorked a lesser healing potion, and began trickling the lemon-colored liquid into Nagi’s parted lips, drop by drop. In their school’s first aid class, Yuuma had been taught that you weren’t supposed to try to make an unconscious person drink water, but these potion droplets transformed into pale light and disappeared as soon as they entered Nagi’s mouth. Nagi’s HP bar finally began to inch upward. Nagi’s Cold debuff had also disappeared, possibly because Sawa was still holding her. Only the Hungry debuff remained. Yuuma knelt next to them. He furrowed his brow. Nagi had washed up on Philos Island in the afternoon—it had probably happened immediately after the playtest had ended. She would have likely already been suffering from the Cold ailment by that time and had probably now been hungry for several hours as well. She seemed to have lost HP at an awfully slow rate, all things considered. Not that Yuuma was complaining. But by all rights, her health should have run out long before they ever set foot in the dungeon… “Ngh…” A strained sigh suddenly escaped Nagi’s lips, derailing Yuuma’s current train of thought. A small wrinkle appeared on Nagi’s smooth brow, and her long eyelashes began to flutter. Her eyes opened slightly and then closed again…and then, finally, opened fully. Her irises were now the same understated shade of pale blue that they had been during the playtest. The glow had disappeared. She blinked several times, looking up first at Sawa, then Yuuma, then Kenk, and finally Tomori—and a familiar smile, mild and gentle, appeared upon her face. “Thank goodness… We’re finally back together…” “Nagi!!” cried Sawa, her voice catching in her throat. Nagi was still lying on the ground. Sawa hunched down and hugged her tightly. If it had been two or maybe three years earlier, Yuuma would have leaped onto Nagi and given her hugs as well, but he could hardly act that way now that they were in the sixth grade. Yuuma glanced toward Kenk, who was fidgeting to his right. They made eye contact for a moment and then nodded wordlessly before Yuuma turned toward Tomori, who was sitting on her knees to their left. “Tomo…I mean, Shimizu. Thank you so much. Without you, we would have never found Nagi.” For some reason, Tomori turned her face away for a moment. She quickly turned back and grinned. “I’m just happy that I was able to help, even if just a little.” “A little?! Without you, we would have never made it this far, let alone beaten that stupid lizard-face…,” said Kenk, poking his head out from behind Yuuma’s shoulder. Nagi sat up with a helping hand from Sawa. “Are…you all right now, crybaby?” asked Kenk, worried. Nagi glared at him. “How many times have I told you not to call me that?” “Oh…sorry.” Kenk cringed in embarrassment. Nagi giggled before turning her eyes in Yuuma’s direction. Yuuma felt like he should say something, but the relief was so overpowering that he couldn’t get the words out. There was also a lingering sense of unease. Nagi had a demon residing inside her, just like Sawa. A demon named Crocell. Nagi nodded, as if she understood. Finally, she turned toward Tomori. “Shimizu, thank you for looking out for Sawa and the others.” Nagi bowed her head deeply. Tomori opened her mouth as if to say something but then closed it before starting over. “You don’t need to thank me; I was just fulfilling my role.” Tomori sighed and then glanced at Yuuma with a smile. “I guess my job here is over now. We should head back soon.” It doesn’t have to be over…was what Yuuma wanted to say, but instead he bit his tongue. The maximum allowed party size in Actual Magic was four people. Now that Nagi was back, it seemed natural that Tomori would be the one to leave the party. There was no reason she couldn’t still travel with them, even if they weren’t all in the same party, but originally Tomori had only offered to help them with Sugamo’s mission. The one to go find food. Yuuma and the others had sprung the search for Nagi on her afterward. With everything Yuuma and the others had already put her through, it seemed presumptuous to expect even more help now. “Yeah… Let’s head back,” Yuuma replied, unable to express what was on his mind. He glanced at Sawa and Nagi. “There’s nothing left for us to do here, is there?” he asked them. “Nope.” “No, we can go.” Sawa and Nagi nodded. Yuuma opened his menu window in order to log out. It was 10:40 PM, already past their bedtime. Right about now, the students in the shelter on the first floor of Althea had probably already finished dinner, thanks to the food that Kakeru Niki had delivered for them, and were now getting ready for bed. They might even be sleeping by the time Yuuma and the others got back. He and his group would have to be careful not to wake them…unless everyone was too anxious and sad for sleep. Still lost in his own thoughts, Yuuma navigated to his System tab in order to press the LOGOUT button. However— “Huh…?” Yuuma’s eyes grew wide. The LOGOUT button was gone. Well, the button was there, but it had been grayed out. Nothing seemed to happen when he pressed it. “H-hold on… What’s the big deal?!” shouted Kenk, repeatedly tapping his own window. “I checked when we dove in, the LOGOUT button was there like normal!” “We even saw Niki log out with our own eyes,” said Sawa. Tomori nodded. Come to think of it, Sawa was right. Niki had pressed the LOGOUT button and disappeared in a flash of light, before their very eyes, just four hours earlier. “Maybe…you can’t log out at night…?” ventured Yuuma softly. “And how would that make any sense?” answered Sawa immediately. Nagi scrutinized her own window before raising her head. “It’s not like we can call a GM, either, can we…?” “We sure can’t,” Yuuma agreed. Hold on… Yuuma blinked. Nagi had lost consciousness right after the playtest had ended, and she had stayed that way right up until a few minutes ago, hadn’t she? She shouldn’t have had any idea about what was going on. Judging from her statement, however, she seemed to be as aware of the situation at Althea as the rest of them were. Yuuma was curious to figure out just how much she knew. He was about to ask her, when Kenk suddenly interrupted. “Of course! Remember what the lady told us during orientation, before the playtest? She said that if anything went wrong inside the game and we became unable to access our windows, there was a system access console somewhere in Calcina. I think she said we can log out from there.” “Ah…!” Now that Kenk mentioned it, Yuuma also remembered her saying something similar. “But where is the console located…?” “I think she said it was on the first floor of the lord mayor’s manor,” said Tomori. Yuuma glanced up at the ceiling. They had crossed all the way to the south bank of the Cal River, hunted around for the entrance to that underground tunnel, broken through the cleansing steel chain, and braved a labyrinthine maze of traps just to make their way here to this dungeon, without getting swarmed by guards. Now, exhausted as they were, they were expected to make their way up to the lord mayor’s manor as well? Unfortunately, that seemed to be their only option at the moment if they wanted to log out. “Nagi, do you think you can walk…?” asked Yuuma. Nagi nodded without hesitation. “Absolutely… But I think I’d like to eat something first…,” she added, seemingly a little embarrassed. “Oh, of course. Hold on a second,” Yuuma answered, flustered. He navigated through his menu, which was still open, and materialized the sandwich and apple pie they had ordered earlier for takeout from Pomegranate Pavilion. Once the food appeared, a loud gurgling sound filled the air. It hadn’t come from Nagi, however. The source was Kenk’s stomach. “Don’t tell me you’re hungry again, after eating so much in town…,” said Yuuma. “Hey, I’m a growing boy,” Kenk shot back unapologetically. The party ended up eating with Nagi, downing some of the packaged baked goods and onigiri they were carrying in order to recover their strength. Once finished, the five exited the dungeon via the northern door, from which Oeben had appeared. The small room on the other side of the door contained a spiral staircase. They climbed the staircase, step after step, until they eventually encountered another door. This door was securely reinforced with iron plates and was locked tight. Not even Sawa’s Lockpick spell was strong enough to unlock it. Yuuma and the others nearly panicked until they realized that Oeben had dropped an item called Constable’s Keyring. Oeben had dropped several other apparent quest items, including a commandant’s badge, a constable’s aiguillette, and a map of the lord mayor’s manor, as well as a variety of items Yuuma would rather not touch, including a Bicorn Hat of Greed, a Miser’s Belt, and a Tenderizing Needle of Human Transformation. They could check those out later. For now, they only materialized the map. According to the oil paper map, the manor was three stories tall and was shaped like a ship, longer east to west and thickest in the middle. Using the coldfire lantern in order to see better, the five of them pored over the first-floor map, identifying two locations where they thought the system console might be. The first was a point directly at the center of the Great Hall, which was in the middle of the first floor. The other location was the chapel on the opposite side of the building from the entrance to the dungeon, where Yuuma and the others were currently located. In order to reach the chapel, they would first need to pass through the Great Hall, so they decided to check the hall first. They stepped through the door and out into the hallway. Unlike the basement dungeon, which had been constructed out of roughly hewn stone blocks, the floors here were covered in vermillion carpeting, and the walls and ceilings were tiled in smooth limestone. The group stood still for a moment and listened, but there didn’t seem to be any guards about. The hallway was sparsely lit by candles. Yuuma and the others chose a direction based on the map and began walking. After about two minutes, they entered the Great Hall. They peered inside, clinging to the shadows of a cathedral-like archway. The hall was about as large as a small gymnasium. There were no signs of people inside. The walls outside had been heavily guarded. The inside of the manor, however, seemed nearly deserted by comparison. Did that have anything to do with the “plan” that Oeben had mentioned? What could have possibly motivated the Varanian to replace the manor’s men with his own…? Yuuma knew it was useless to speculate, but he couldn’t stop his imagination from running wild. He scanned the hall, but there didn’t seem to be anything that looked like it might be a system console. “I guess it’s not here…,” Kenk muttered in disappointment. “It must be in the chapel, then,” said Sawa, uncharacteristically optimistic. In the end, that meant they would have to walk clear across the manor. It was only a hundred or so meters in length, however, not much different than the Yukihana Elementary School building. “Hey…do you think there’s any connection between the Varanians and Valac?” Yuuma whispered to Sawa as they snuck along the walls of the Great Hall. Sawa glared at him as if he were stupid. “What would Valac have to do with a bunch of stupid lizardmen?” “It’s possible, isn’t it? Oeben was transformed into a human after all, wasn’t he? Maybe Valac’s true form is actually a lizardman…or a lizardwoman in her case, I guess.” Sawa jabbed Yuuma in the side with her fist, digging her knuckles into his ribs. “Ow!” Yuuma cried, forgetting to keep his voice down. Nagi, who was walking right in front of them, next to Tomori, spun around on her heel. She continued walking backward, gracefully, as she spoke. “Would you two twins behave?” “But she hit me…” “In fairness, I don’t think Valac and the Varanians have anything to do with each other, either.” “Yeah but…Valac, Varanian. They both start with the letter V…,” Yuuma insisted. Tomori glanced back and giggled. “The two words do sound pretty similar, but I think they come from different sources… Varanus is the scientific genus name for monitor lizards, so the word Varanian probably comes from that.” “Huh…” Yuuma wasn’t the only one to be impressed. Sawa, Nagi, and even Kenk, who was walking a little farther ahead, uttered small exclamations of surprise. Yuuma never ceased to be amazed at how much Tomori seemed to know. He knew she liked to read, but not even the average bookworm would know the scientific name for monitor lizards right off the top of their head. In any case, that explained Varanians, but what about Valac…? “Hmm…” Yuuma suddenly stopped, a new thought occurring to him. “Back when we were talking to Valac, the name on Sawa’s HP bar didn’t change. We never got to see it in writing, so we don’t actually know how it’s spelled. How do you know it doesn’t have something to do with the Varanians…?” “Well…you see…” Tomori paused. She glanced at Sawa, seeming to hesitate for a moment, but then turned her eyes back toward Yuuma. She pursed her lips slightly and then began explaining in a calm voice. “The thing is…Valac isn’t just a proper name in Actual Magic, like, say, Oeben. It’s actually the name of a real demon.” “A real one…?” Yuuma wasn’t sure what she meant. He stared blankly. Tomori quickly shook her head from side to side and tried to explain further. She seemed uncharacteristically flustered. “I don’t mean real as in really dangerous or really evil. What I meant to say was… well, there are a lot of old myths and legends about gods and demons in the world, aren’t there?” “Like Susanoo or Satan?” asked Yuuma, thinking of names he had seen before in games. Tomori nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly. Susanoo comes from ancient Japanese texts like the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, and Satan comes from the Bible. There was a book, written around the seventeenth century, I think, that described a type of magic called Goetia… In it, it lists a group of demons known as the seventy-two demons of King Solomon.” “Wait, I’ve seen that in a game before!” said Kenk, interrupting. Come to think of it, Yuuma also remembered seeing references to Solomon’s demons in games and manga before. “So you’re saying Valac is one of Solomon’s demons…?” “Yes…” Tomori nodded slowly before glancing at Nagi. “So is Crocell.” “…” Yuuma looked around uncomfortably, unsure of how to respond. It wasn’t unusual for RPGs to take inspiration for their monsters from the myths and legends of the world. In fact, it was probably rarer for games to feature entirely original monsters made up from scratch. Krakens, basilisks, manticores, cyclopes…even Yuuma could think of several such examples. Did that mean, then, that Valac and Crocell were monsters from the game, and that the staff of IO-Tage, the developers behind Actual Magic, had used Solomon’s demons as inspiration when designing them? If so, then in addition to Valac and Crocell…there could be another seventy demons waiting out there somewhere… Yuuma heard the sound of distant bells, which yanked him back into the present. Glancing at the bottom-right-hand corner of his field of vision, Yuuma saw that the time was now 11:00 PM. He really wanted to get back to Sugamo’s shelter before midnight, but they needed to find the system console and log out before they could do so. “…Let’s keep going,” Yuuma whispered. The others nodded wordlessly. They continued to stick close to the wall of the Great Hall, eventually passing through the archway on the east side. This hallway was deserted as well. They proceeded down the hallway carefully until they reached the end, where a slightly more lavish door awaited them. The chapel had to be through there. The door to the dungeon from which Yuuma and the others had emerged had been made of banded wood and steel. This door to the chapel, however, was made of what looked like heavy stone. They stopped to listen for a moment before trying the highly polished brass handle. It was, of course, locked. This time, instead of attempting to open it with magic, Yuuma immediately pulled out the Constable’s Keyring. There were two keys on the ring that were more ornately shaped than the rest. Yuuma tried one of them, placing it into the lock. He had guessed right. The key turned smoothly, and the lock opened with a high-pitched click. “Does this mean that we wouldn’t have been able to log out without defeating Oeben…?” Kenk whispered. “We still don’t know if this is even the right place,” Yuuma whispered back. He gripped the handle once more and pulled the door open about twenty centimeters. No candles had been lit inside, but there was moonlight streaming in through the window, illuminating the room in pale blue light. The chapel resembled a small church. There were pews lined up on either side and what looked like some sort of lectern toward the back. If the system console was anywhere, it would have to be there. Yuuma slipped in through the crack in the door and, after waiting a moment to be sure nothing unusual happened, beckoned for the others to follow. They closed the door behind them, locking it again just in case, and hurried toward the back of the room. The five ascended to the pulpit, which was elevated about twenty centimeters from the floor, and stepped behind the lectern. There was nothing on the lectern stand… No, not nothing. A black, rectangular tablet had been placed there. It was about one centimeter thick and was made out of something like stone or glass, with a smooth surface that reflected the moonlight. “Finally… Try touching it, Yu,” Kenk urged. Yuuma raised his right hand over the tablet. If this doesn’t work… Yuuma brushed away the negative thoughts and brought his finger down onto the tablet’s surface. It was smooth, hard, and cold to the touch. A moment later— A pale, white version of the Actual Magic logo appeared on the tablet’s surface. There was a startup sound…and then a transparent holo-window, about fifteen centimeters wide, appeared in the air above the tablet. “All ri—!” Kenk started to shout, striking a victory pose, but Sawa thumped him hard on the back. Yuuma would have usually given Kenk a hard time for something like that as well, but he decided to let it pass. He peered at the window closely. It had many more tabs than a standard menu window; however, almost all of them were grayed out. The only tab available for selection was one labeled Access Management. Crossing his fingers, Yuuma gave it a tap. The screen changed to one with multiple buttons of simple design. Most of these buttons were also grayed out, but there was one, labeled Logout, that still glowed blue. “Phew…” Yuuma sighed, this time in relief. He tapped the button. The submenu window that appeared was written entirely in English, but Yuuma could more or less understand what it was supposed to say. There were three logout options: one to log just yourself out, one to log out specific players, and one to log out all nearby players. Yuuma pressed the third option, and a confirmation window appeared, displaying the player names in question. “Let’s see… Yuuma, Sawa, Kenk, Tomori, Nagi… That’s everyone, right?” said Yuuma, double-checking with the others. They stood close by on either side of Yuuma, peering over his shoulder at the window. Yuuma waited for the four of them to nod, before pressing the OK button. Lines of white light began to swell upward from beneath their feet, enveloping their avatars. I have a feeling this won’t be the last time we’re here, thought Yuuma as he gave in to the giddy floating sensation.