"I’m Hermann, friend."
The suit of armor that had plopped down onto the ground introduced itself as Hermann.
Calling someone who had poured holy water over him and tried to exorcise him with a dagger a friend—this guy had some serious nerve.
In the original game, all he ever let out were bizarre sounds thick with machine noise being ripped apart in reverse playback. Yet what reached my ears was the voice of an ordinary man, sly and lighthearted.
I discreetly turned my head and looked behind me.
Dante, Dolnesia, and Angelica.
Angelica might simply have been watching this whole situation with her usual blank expression, but the others clearly could not understand a word Hermann was saying.
They were merely looking at me strangely as I held a conversation with an empty suit of armor.
To get a firm grasp on the situation, I quietly sent a telepathic message to Kafka, who was hiding within my shadow.
‘Kafka, can you hear this tin can’s voice?’
Kafka’s voice, brimming with confusion, immediately flowed into my mind from the depths of my shadow.
‘Voice? I can only hear crackling, mumbling noises. Ian, can you understand what that tin can is saying?’
Just as I thought. Only I could understand this guy’s voice.
There was only one difference between the game, these people, and me.
Insight Eye.
I knew it could see things, but I never imagined it could translate too.
Hmm… This was a dilemma.
I could simply take care of him and collect the hidden piece he dropped.
His teleportation had been sealed by the holy water, so he could neither escape nor drive us out of the mansion.
His level was far below ours, so one punch would probably finish him.
Still, I hesitated to simply kill him.
There had not been a single route or guide in which you interacted with this guy.
If I just killed him, I could certainly obtain the hidden piece.
But if I did, it felt like I would be missing something.
I looked at the tin can sitting on the floor and babbling away.
Glancing at the tip of the dagger in my hand, the tin can gave an exaggerated cough from within its helmet.
"Friend, I know what you want. Looking at those academy uniforms, you intend to either drive me out of this house or send me on to the afterlife for good, right?"
"I wouldn’t mind exorcising you, either…"
When I casually voiced my true feelings, the tin can recoiled in horror and hurriedly waved its arms.
"Passing on, friend! Passing on! Exorcism means my entire body gets torn to shreds and my soul is annihilated, while passing on means I get what I wanted and ascend peacefully! Wouldn’t it be better for both of us if things went the nicer way?"
…Tch.
I put Carnwennan into my inventory, and it promptly vanished inside.
"…Ian?"
Dante was the first to call my name, his voice full of questions.
"For now, I think we should hear out that tin can."
When I turned around and replied calmly, the tin can sitting on the floor rubbed its breastplate as though it had been waiting for that, loudly agreeing.
"Good thinking, friend! I knew you were a cultured man who could be reasoned with!"
To them, I probably looked like a lunatic conversing with a living suit of armor that made bizarre crackling metallic noises at empty air.
"So what is it you said we need to find here?"
"Right! Deep in this mansion’s basement, there’s one thing I desperately need to find. Just put it in my hands, and I can clear out of this world up there without a single regret!"
The tin can boldly declared his objective while pointing at the mansion ceiling with a rusty steel finger.
Did earthbound spirits normally speak so lightly about passing on?
Not that I had ever met one before.
"Where is it?"
"Well, you see…"
#
This was how the tin can had come to illegally squat here.
The owner of this mansion had been keeping an item he sought, and Hermann had intended to snatch it and pass on cleanly.
But the item was stored in a secret room heavily warded with magic, so as a spirit body, he had been utterly unable to cross the threshold.
I wondered why he did not simply ask the owner to take it out for him. But the man could not understand Hermann at all, and instead kept bringing priests and academy cadets in droves, claiming an evil spirit had infested his house. From Hermann’s perspective, it had been maddeningly frustrating.
"Still, when I was alive, I was a mage with an incredible talent for teleportation! And after I died, maybe I turned into some kind of lich, because my magic got even stronger. If I wanted to, I could have cursed them, but I didn’t want to hurt anybody, so I just scared them and drove them outside. I’m pretty nice, aren’t I?"
"…"
That was still rather impressive.
He had not vanished even after having holy water personally made by the Holy Virgin poured all over his face.
Priests from the Holy Kingdom must have visited this mansion several times too, yet he had not been exorcised.
Even if he had been weakened after taking a holy-water bomb straight to the face, he might have been a fairly renowned powerhouse before his death.
Still, I did not remember the name Hermann.
Well, he could simply be full of shit.
As I translated while the others quietly listened behind me, Dante tilted his head as though he had realized something and opened his mouth.
"Um, Ian… Then why did he make that rulebook in the first place?"
I turned my gaze to Hermann and jerked my chin at him. Scratching his helmet, he cheerfully answered.
"Oh, that? Well… I’d been cooped up in this dark mansion for so long that I got bored and made it. It wouldn’t be fun if I just teleported people out, would it? I wanted to watch the kids panic a little, too."
When I translated his words exactly as they were, Dante’s face went stiff, and he forced a smile.
But the truth of that aside, there was a problem.
"By the way, friend, looking at you all reminds me of the old days. I had a daughter too, precious enough that I wouldn’t have felt pain even if she were in my eye. If she’s still alive, she’d be about your age now… I closed my eyes when she was still barely more than a little bundle of blood and flesh. I wonder whether she even remembers me. Tch."
"…"
This bastard talked way more than I had expected.
I had been forcing myself to nod along because he seemed connected to a hidden piece, but the longer I listened, the more pointless TMI he spilled. No, more importantly… this bastard had been married?
Apparently, I was not the only one who felt that way.
Angelica remained expressionless, maintaining the stance that she had no interest. But cracks were gradually beginning to show in Dante’s ever-smiling face, and several veins had risen on Dolnesia’s forehead.
And maybe it was just my imagination, but…
"…?"
At some point, Sancho—who had been standing in front and giving off light—was holding a pitch-black scythe.
Whether he was responding to Dolnesia’s emotions or was simply pissed off himself, killing intent was slowly rising from his scythe.
Apparently, even a brainless spirit could get angry.
Of course, while I heard actual human speech, to the others it would sound like nothing but muffled noise.
Pressing a hand to my throbbing forehead, I turned my eyes toward the tin can.
"Can you please shut that mouth of yours?"
"Ah, that’s a little difficult. I spent years repeating monologues and mumbling at walls, and now someone precious has finally appeared who can understand me! Before I pass on and clear out of this world, I need to say everything I want to say, and everything I don’t want to say too. Right?"
"…"
No, was this bastard seriously that oblivious?
You look like you’re about to get exorcised before you pass on, sir.
Watching that tin can endlessly flap his lips, one face strangely came to mind.
The Skeleton Professor. That man had been just as talkative.
Was that what happened when people died and became undead?
Or were those two just unusual?
The situation was on the verge of exploding.
The farther we walked down the dark staircase to the basement, the higher Sancho gradually raised the scythe in his hand as he led the way.
If Hermann kept babbling, that scythe looked ready to split his helmet open.
Yet whether he was ignoring it or simply too dense to notice, the tin can’s chatter did not stop.
By the time Sancho’s scythe was nearly touching the ceiling—
"Here we are, friends! This is the secret storage room the owner locked up tight with magic."
Hermann cried out in a metal-scraping voice laced with relief, pointing at a wooden door.
Fortunately—or unfortunately—Sancho’s scythe did not split that tin can’s helmet open.
It certainly seemed to have been magically warded.
Its uncleaned surface was thick with dust, but intricate, interwoven bluish-white magical circuits glowed faintly across it, with runes drawn in between.
No, what on earth was the owner keeping that he had installed a door like this?
"Do we really have to open this door? Wouldn’t that be rude to the owner?"
Dante made an entirely sensible point.
"Then what are we supposed to do? We can’t exactly crack this man’s helmet open."
When I shrugged and pointed at Hermann with my chin, Dolnesia, who had been standing beside me with veins bulging, murmured in a low voice with icy eyes.
"I think it would be fine to crack it open now."
"No! Please, anything but that!"
With the sound of a soul shrieking from within his helmet, Hermann raised his steel hands and cried out.
Of course, to everyone but me, it must have looked like the empty tin can was bizarrely flapping its arms at thin air by itself, with crackling mumbles thrown in for good measure.
I felt a little weird about it too.
In a way, it did feel like we were forcibly exposing the owner’s private shame.
But the gauge at the bottom remained unchanged.
I looked at the Oath of Chivalry gauge displayed at the bottom of my vision.
Not only had I failed to exorcise the evil spirit I had been commissioned to subjugate, I had instead listened to his story and followed him all the way to the storage room of the client—the mansion owner.
To those old fogies above, it would not have been strange to call such conduct a deviation from the path.
Yet the gauge floating at the bottom of my vision was not decreasing. If anything, it was slowly filling.
Which meant this was not the wrong answer.
"Well, we’ve come this far, so let’s go in. Later, we can just make up some excuse to the owner that the security device got old and broke on its own."
"But, friends? Can you use Dispel?"
Hermann, babbling from behind us, made his armor creak as he pointed toward the storage door.
Then—
"I’ll do it."
Shing—
Angelica’s calm voice stopped me as I was about to step forward.
As always, she drew her long, sharp sword from its sheath with emotionless eyes and began coating the blade in aura.
Was this woman planning to use Breath Splitting here?
"No, Angelica. I’ll just do it."
When I hurriedly waved my hands to stop her, Angelica merely tipped her head while holding her sword.
"It’s fine. I can control my strength."
Control her strength, my ass.
Why was she trying to use that technique here?
Forget the door—she looked ready to cut down the entire house.
"Just… touching it lightly with Carnwennan will undo it."
Angelica stared intently at the blade of Carnwennan in my hand. After seeming to consider it for a moment, she put her sword away without hesitation.
Shing, click.
Angelica’s sword slid neatly back into its sheath.
"That’s too bad. I wanted to test the technique."
She stepped back, murmuring flatly as though she was genuinely disappointed to have missed her chance. Dante and Dolnesia looked at her in disbelief.
This was driving me crazy.
I just wanted to finish this quest already.
"Wow! That friend is intense, huh?"
Leaving the tin can babbling in a faintly trembling voice behind me, I brought Carnwennan to the door.
The magic circles engraved on the door’s surface where the dagger touched began to lose their light, and the door opened by itself.
That was how we entered.
I was a little curious.
What in the world had been hidden away so securely behind all these magical wards?
And inside the storage room was—
"Fuck."
Something so bizarre that a whole string of curses burst out of me.
Cursed dolls, grotesque dolls, dolls with their arms torn off, even stuffed animals that had been scorched in places with their stuffing bursting out.
The storage room was piled with objects that all seemed to have some kind of story behind them.
Fuck, ghosts would have shown up here even without the tin can coming around, wouldn’t they?
‘Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.’
At the sight, Kafka in my shadow repeated the same sound like a computer that had malfunctioned.
Dolnesia and Dante did not look too pleased either.
The thing that tin can was looking for was in here?
It was not some sealed demon with a setting like that, which he wanted us to release?
Just as I turned a suspicious look toward the tin can—
"Ah, there it is! I found it, friends!"
The tin can’s delighted voice rang out as he found something.
The item he held so happily was—
"A teddy bear?"
It was an old teddy bear with loose, fraying seams.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register