3. Frieren.
Snow Fairy.
Most people who saw the girl for the first time might mistake her for one.
Eyes as cold as ice. Slender white arms. Long, drooping ears. Silver hair that looked as though it had been spun from snow crystals into thread.
Frieren, the sole survivor of the elf village, was staying at Flamme's house.
"Wait a moment. I'll heal your wounds soon enough."
Sitting still like a doll, Frieren looked up at Flamme, who was frowning in thought as she held up bottles filled with liquids of many different colors.
"Was this where I put it?"
The sight of her scratching her head with a deep scowl looked nothing like the imposing figure of the powerful mage Frieren had first seen.
If she had to sum Flamme up from everything that had happened so far.
'A strange person. But strong.'
She thought back to when they had first met.
A village destroyed by demons, and Frieren, who had defeated them and survived alone.
In that hopeless place where everything had been ruined, Flamme had appeared out of nowhere. Looking over the scene, she lamented that she could not understand powerful mages who treated everything as nothing more than a contest of brute force, but Frieren had known at once.
Flamme was a mage stronger than herself.
Perhaps she had liked that honest impression when Frieren voiced it without hiding anything.
Flamme had brought her here.
'If I had resisted and refused to go, the demons lying in ambush would have killed me.'
They were cunning, and they had no mercy to spare for wounded prey.
As expected, Flamme was a strong mage.
Frieren still could not forget the sight of the demons that appeared being turned to ash in an instant.
The sense of wrongness she had noticed by instinct had been a hidden blade honed in darkness, and the flame of mana that rose there swelled in an instant as though fed with firewood, erasing the hateful demons from the world.
Though Flamme had seemed to possess less mana than Frieren herself, her true total far surpassed that of any mage Frieren had ever seen.
'Mana suppression...'
A deceptive strategy that exploited the nature of demons, who could not even conceive of hiding their mana.
And the fact that she knew so much about Bazart of the Throne, who had attacked the village, meant she clearly understood demons deeply.
If one traced where that interest came from, the answer was simple.
'A desire for revenge against demons.'
Frieren could imagine no other reason.
If she followed Flamme and grew as a mage, then even demons she could not defeat now might one day be within her power to kill.
It might even become a great dagger capable of reaching the throat of the Demon King.
As she was thinking that, a pleased voice rang out, as though Flamme had found what she had been looking for.
"Here it is."
One bottle among many. Inside the glass vial Flamme pulled out was a red liquid.
"What's that?"
"A magic item called a healing potion. It can heal wounds in an instant."
Frieren tilted her head.
Her expression did not change, but the gesture itself held distrust.
'There's no way such a perfect medicine exists.'
"Were you thinking, 'There's no way such a perfect medicine exists'?"
"How did you know?"
"Secret."
Had it shown on her face?
She touched her expressionless cheek.
...No matter how much she felt around, she could not tell why.
Meanwhile, Flamme uncorked the healing potion.
"Do I really have to drink it? Honestly, I don't trust it."
"You're blunt. Don't worry. You only need to apply it."
When the blood-red liquid was poured over the wound, it healed at once.
A flat, even note of admiration slipped from her lips.
"It's all healed."
"You could look a little more surprised, you know?"
Perhaps she had wanted a reaction like, "Amazing!" Flamme looked faintly dissatisfied.
'So she wasn't reading my thoughts from my expression.'
Putting that aside, Frieren inspected her body, which had been covered in wounds from the battle with the demons.
Her skin was clean, without the slightest blemish left behind. For a woman, it was little different from the finest elixir imaginable.
And not only had her wounds healed, it seemed even her stamina had returned. Strength now filled the body that had felt ready to collapse at any moment.
"For the time being, get plenty of rest in bed. Healing potions only heal wounds. They don't restore mana."
With that advice, Flamme drew some water and went outside.
Left alone in the room, Frieren lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
'So the world outside has advanced this much.'
In the village where elves lived, so far removed from ordinary human senses of time, she had never seen such a thing.
Because it had been such a closed-off village, the magic item called a healing potion filled her with wonder.
Her hair spread across the center of the bed. Resting a hand on her stomach, she lay there blankly when noisy voices came from outside.
"Today was rough too~"
"Cutting down monsters is work, you know."
"Still better than demons. At least you can respond to them. Look at this scar on my face? That demon bastard gave it to me last time."
With the loud voices of rough men, they entered the cramped room.
"Hm? There's a guest in the back of the room. Is it that old granny who always comes by?"
"She came again? Didn't we tell that old lady not to, now that her legs are bad these days?"
"Living that long in times like these is impressive in itself, isn't it?"
With the light from outside behind them, their shadows fell across the room.
"What? That's a face I've never seen before."
"Who are you...?"
At the sudden visitors, Frieren sat up in bed and grew wary.
What she saw before her were strange beings with green skin.
"Demons?"
Her eyes narrowed.
A new form unlike the races that lived upon the surface. If she had to compare them to anything, they resembled demons, and the wounds demons had left on her were not the sort even a healing potion could heal. It was enough to make her suspicious.
She stretched out a hand, about to cast a spell.
"Miss, hold on a moment. We're not demons. And for that matter, we're not monsters either."
Holding out his palm, he showed he had no intention of fighting.
"Then what are you?"
"Us? To think there's still someone who doesn't know us."
"Isn't that a bit self-important?"
"Pipe down, will you?"
The green-skinned figure in heavy armor awkwardly smiled and pointed at himself and the others with his thumb.
"We're goblins."
"Goblins?"
"Mm, that's a nostalgic question. It's been a very long time since I've heard it."
After the healing potion, now goblins. This too was a name Frieren had never heard before.
"Is that your name?"
"It's the collective term for all of us here."
Frieren tilted her head again.
At that cute gesture, the goblin soldier's face slackened.
Having grasped the situation from the healing potion on the table, the goblin commander kicked the soldier with the slack expression in the shin.
"Hey, you. Stop staring with that stupid look on your face. She's probably Lady Flamme's guest."
"Y-Yes, sir!"
Flamme, having drawn water nearby, came walking over from the distance.
"So you're here, goblins."
"Oh, Lady Flamme, you're back. Who's the guest inside?"
"So you've already met. That child's name is Frieren. I'm going to raise her as my disciple."
"Your disciple? Then we'd better treat her with a bit more respect."
"You'll be seeing each other for a long time, so get along."
The goblin who had been clutching his shin answered Flamme brightly.
"Heh heh, if that's what you say, then of course we should!"
"That idiot."
After one more kick to the shin, the remaining goblins gathered around Frieren, who sat on the bed, and cheerfully introduced themselves one by one.
"This one's named Glun. He mainly uses a spear."
"My name's Jena, and this fellow is the wolf I raise. Want to touch his tail?"
"I'm Puwa, a mage."
"I'm—"
"Hey, don't leave me out. I'm Benimun. I command these lot and deal with those demon bastards."
Frieren, who had been quietly listening to the introductions, spoke up when the subject of demons came up.
"You kill demons?"
"We're pretty strong, believe it or not."
"You used to be so weak you could barely handle monsters, and yet listen to you boasting."
"Ha, I'm getting stronger every moment."
Perhaps it was because the world had changed.
The goblins, freed from the shell of the system, were experiencing growth.
It was also a new evolution, one that had strayed beyond their creator's intent.
"That's amazing."
To Frieren, all of it was simply fascinating.
Flamme's house, once bleak because she had lived there alone, had become a far more comfortable place thanks to the goblins.
Watching the noisy bunch chatter away, Flamme asked,
"They're interesting, aren't they?"
"Yeah."
That alone was enough to let their relationship grow beyond a mere bond of master and disciple formed for the sake of killing demons, and to give her a better place to live.
Days of warmth, unlike the harsh training meant to deceive demons.
Even the coldest ice would melt someday.
The sky that would melt it completely had not yet cleared, but this was proof enough that human hands were warm.
And so, meeting people drew the time of an elf, which had once seemed eternal, down into the scale of human feeling.
The days passed quickly, but they were enough to shape Frieren, with her brief yet exceptional talent, into a functioning mage.
A nearby city.
Walking side by side, the master and disciple did not differ greatly in total mana, but to the eyes of a skilled mage, the gap in mastery was plain to see.
Even so, Flamme knew.
'The amount of time she can keep her mana restricted is growing by the day.'
The difference was only a few dozen seconds, but that gap was enormous.
Several months had passed since Flamme began teaching Frieren mana suppression.
It was a realm a talented human mage would have to devote an entire lifetime to reach, yet Frieren was absorbing Flamme's teachings like a sponge.
Because an elf's lifespan was eternal, however slight it might seem now, in the distant future Frieren's mana restriction would surely reach a level that only a handful of geniuses could perceive.
"Flamme."
"It's Master. What is it, Frieren?"
Dragging her sandals as she walked, Frieren turned her gaze toward a structure in the distance shaped like a human figure.
"Master, what's that statue over there?"
"I see. It's your first time coming to the city, so you don't know yet."
A statue erected in the great city.
There stood the figure of a masked man.
And in his hand was—
"The healing potion you used on me..."
"You recognized it?"
She nodded.
The person who had made the magic item that could heal even mortal wounds in an instant.
Surely that was an achievement great enough to merit a statue.
In the distance, those who had returned alive from the battlefield bowed their heads and laid offerings before it.
Some of the items were trifling, but each one was the greatest token of gratitude they could offer from their own circumstances.
The man who created the blood of the goddess. That slogan had spread everywhere, and he was called the spiritual pillar of those who fought on the battlefield.
"Who is that person?"
"Ainz Ooal Gown. My friend."
"So Master was someone remarkable after all, to be friends with such an important figure."
"You didn't believe me?"
"I did. You're a great mage, Master."
Though her disciple showed nothing on her face, even that made her seem cute, and Flamme let out a small laugh.
"That's a relief."
"Why? Were you worried I'd say you weren't someone remarkable?"
"No, well... that would be rather hurtful too. Frieren, do you know where we're going right now?"
Resting a fist against her elbow and touching her chin, Frieren searched her memory from before they had left.
"I was chatting with the goblins, and then you told me to come out with you, so I followed. Now that I think about it, I never asked where we were going."
As the question arose, Frieren made use of her position as a disciple and asked directly.
"Where are we going?"
"We're on our way to meet that remarkable person."
For the first time, Frieren's calm eyes widened.
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