Chapter 11: Ruins of Visitor (part five)

It’s the start of the month, so let’s start it off with new chapters! You know, translating this made me search many kind of things and got new knowledge 😀

TL: clover

ED: clover, eristol

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It was my first time experiencing Pass-wall.

As my body merged into the wall, an unknown and incomprehensible sensation—

No, wait…there was something similar to this sensation, what was it?

The memory of my previous life revived in my mind.

At a very common tavern and a bento shop, I experienced a sensation similar to this magic.

(—Oh, it is a strip curtain¹.)

It’s like walking through a three-meter corridor made of rows of strip curtain.

There was a familiar experience where I least expected it.

(What exactly is magic…ah, but this is surprisingly fun.)

The effect of Levitation was roughly about ten minutes.

It was apparent that the magic was about to end as the diameter of the magic circle around our feet shrunk by half.

Before the magic circle stopped supporting our body, we waved the wand again.

“Say, wouldn’t it be easier for us to exit the Ruins of Visitor by passing through the walls like this? we can save some of your wands that way.”

“It’s risky.”

“Why?”

“These ruins are surrounded by considerably thick bedrock. If we get lost in it and don’t make it out before the spell runs out…”

“We will be squeezed to death inside the rocks. That’s wretched…”

“It is. Moreover, even if we successfully pass through the rocks, the outside is mostly surrounded by the sea. If we get our escape angle wrong…”

“We will drown. That’s wretched…”

“It is. I don’t want to add any more bizarre causes of deaths.”

“More what?”

“Nothing, just talking to myself.”

“Erica, you…” Klaus looked at me with suspicion.

I quickly averted my eyes.

I was about to carelessly mouth off the collection of bizarre deaths of little Erica, the villainous lady.

He wouldn’t understand something like my previous life’s knowledge anyway.

It should rather be left unsaid that there was a story in a game about what happens when you fail at teleporting².

Somehow, from Klaus, I am getting a feeling of being watched with eyes like watching a pitiful child.

…Harsh.

With such a situation, we explored each level at ultra-high speed despite some trivial issues.

Now that we have access to every room, Ann has started to appear in our Urd Sight.

These are nothing more than images of a time that has passed.

Even if we wanted to follow Ann’s traces, the labyrinth has already changed, and her shadow would quickly vanish into a passage that no longer exists.

However, it seems that some of Klaus’ worry has eased a little.

Thanks to finally seeing Ann moving around, alive and well.

I want to meet the real Ann quickly.

When I think about the sad future where these siblings would be separated by death, I feel a pain in my heart.

“Wait, Erica. There is something.”

We were about two levels below the simple base camp.

Klaus extended his hands to shield me and glared at the end of the passage.

“Huh…? What’s wrong?”

“There are vibrations in the air and I can hear something dragging along the floor. Must be a monster or a beast your brother missed.”

Eh, a monster?

Wait a moment, I have been preparing for a battle, but my heart isn’t ready yet for the actual battle.

When I listened carefully, I could hear faint fricative sounds steadily getting closer.

Should we run away?

“Don’t make any sudden moves. Stay behind me.”

“Ah, yes.”

Klaus kept me behind his back and held his staff at the height of his waist.

What should I do, I have to help him. What wand should I use?

Offensive wands are on the right side of the belt…aah, I didn’t take out the wand of Hold!

“Don’t push yourself. Be ready to escape at a moment’s notice.”

“Eh, but–”

“It is a man’s job to protect a woman. Your job is to calm down by taking a deep breath. On the battlefield, a friend who is panicking is scarier than the enemy.”

“Fuh…haah…You are quite calm, aren’t you, Klaus-sama?”

“I’m undergoing combat training and I’ve accompanied my father in hunting and deadly extermination.”

So the duke and his son directly goes to perform hunts and exterminations, huh?

I heard that during the ancient royal family era, back when the dukes were still kings, Hafan’s royalty also served as an assembly of the highest priests in service to their indigenous Sun God. The legacy must have carried on.

A squirming shadow emerged from around the corner.

Klaus swiftly snatched two spell cards from his breast pocket, threw them at the shadow, and quickly chanted a short incantation.

The cards deployed a circle as they flew, forking off in different directions while emitting a powerful glow.

They landed on opposite sides, the top right and bottom left corners of the corridor, shedding light on the true identity of the shadow.

“—A flock of moving bones!? Moreover, this number is…just how many died to make this thing!?”

It was a crude collection of the bones of various beasts suspended in the air.

How many? Several dozen … no hundreds?

The massive, creeping horror occupied the entirety of the corridor and wobbled as it surged forward.

That was the identity of what was illuminated by the magic of Light.

“It has enough Magic Resistance to obstruct my Glam Sight … No, that’s a monster with a magical composition I have never seen … ! No, What is that thing!?”

“Klaus-sama…”

“Listen to me. When I give the signal, back away without turning around. If you charge in a straight line with your Levitate wand, the Wall-Phase spell should last long enough for you to reach the exit.”

Tension ran on Klaus’ face.

After shooting a fleeting glance towards me, he pulled out hundreds of spell cards from his sleeve.

No matter how much combat experience he has, no matter how much of a future genius mage he is, an undead foe is no easy thing to deal with—

In fact, if we encountered such a huge number of undead, it would’ve been a crisis of life and death.

—However, looking at those figures, on the contrary, I was relieved.

“Klaus-sama, it’s alright.”

“What!?”

“That is my brother’s cleaning automaton, an acid hydrogel golem.”

“—Ha!?”

That is no undead.

The bones were simply floating in a translucent jelly-like substance.

Unlike regular golems, this gelatinous golem isn’t humanoid and instead resembles a cube.

Its flexible body allowed it to occupy the entire corridor, swallowing everything in its path without leaving so much as a scrap as it oozed along the floor.

A few days before regaining memories of my previous life, I had seen prototypes of this in my brother’s room.

It had an appearance like a moving apple jelly.

I thought it was convenient, but I never thought that the real golem would be so huge…

As expected, brother…it is on a different scale…

“The inside is made of a strong acid, but the outside is made of neutral, semi-solid gel. It is a smart and safely designed golem that only dissolves corpses; any valuable materials it comes in contact with are coated in the neutral substance and protected.”

“Why!? Why did your brother release such a thing inside the labyrinth!?”

“For cleaning, I think…As you can see there were too many monster corpses; I think the bones were preserved so that he can use them for alchemy research later.”

“Eei! That was so misleading!”

I know right?

But that is something you should tell my brother directly, not me.

Oops, I remembered important things.

“Ah, but, if we pass through him in this Pass Wall state, we will be killed instantly by the strong acid.”

“Kuh, damn you, Eduard Aurelia…!!”

“I should probably deactivate it before we explore further.”

Eduard-oniisama himself is a nice, gentle person.

But regarding alchemy he has no mercy and would never go easy on other people, without that dangerous flaw he is a perfect person.

By the way … If we kept going without noticing the golem, would our white bones have also floated over there?

Wait a minute, I just noticed it now but are my death flags all caused by brother!?

The star crystal necklace.

A trap of death set in a storage box.

And now the acid golem and Pass-Wall scroll combo.

“Is everything okay, Erica, your eyes seem dead…?”

“Oh, I’m alright, Klaus-sama.”

That is not good, I was about to get caught up in the darkness of my heart.

I actually began to doubt whether the gentle Eduard-oniisama is trying to kill me. There is no way someone as kind as him would try to murder his little sister.

Let’s put some more trust in other people, me.

In any case, let’s stop the golem.

If it was an ordinary golem made of earth, stone or metal, it would’ve been difficult to stop unless I was the maker.

However, since it is a slow-moving golem made from translucent gel, I can stop it.

First of all, I proceeded to the front of the quivering gelatinous golem, held out my lamp, and observed its interior.

With Glam Sight, I quickly discovered the core of the golem – a shard engraved with sigils– among the countless bones.

With this, I should be able to stop the golem’s movement.

Huh? There is something floating near the core—

“Klaus-sama, there is something familiar floating inside golem.”

“What is it?”

“That, over there, doesn’t it look like Ann-sama’s hair pin?”

Klaus stared long and hard at the item, which was suspended inside the cube about a meter off the ground.

What was floating there was a white material…probably an object made of fine ceramic or bone.

The metal pin seemed to have melted, but the characteristic petal-like decoration remained intact.

“…!!”

“Klaus-sama. It’s alright. Ann-sama shouldn’t be using the scroll of Pass Wall.”

Klaus tightly clutched the fabric around his heart.

He had a painfully tragic expression.

“Ann-sama is not inside. Surely, the golem picked it up when Ann-sama dropped it.”

“Oh, yeah…I didn’t see anything that resembled human bones. I know. I’m fine.”

That said, he looks deathly pale; he looks far worse than when he thought he was going to battle an undead monster.

He clearly doesn’t seem alright.

Although he was jumping to a wrong conclusion for certain, it is impossible not to be affected when it has something to do with the life and death of a blood relative.

Klaus is still just a ten-year-old child, despite the strong front he shows.

The mental stress this is putting on him is unfathomable.

I hope this clue successfully leads us to Ann.

“The acid may splash, let’s step back a little.”

While retreating, I took out a wand of Mage Finger from my leather bag.

The shaft of Mage-Finger wand is made of yew.

A white opal is embedded on its tip, and the grip is made of gold designed to look like a spider’s web and legs.

The core material is the foot of a giant spider³.

When I waved it with my left hand, small, rainbow-hued magic circles surrounded the five fingers of my right hand like rings.

Thanks to the Glam Sight, I could perceive the formation of invisible fingers inside the golem.

I tried to open and close my right hand.

—Alright, it moved.

The Mage Finger was opening and closing following the movement of my right hand.

If I can reach the core, stopping the golem would be a simple job.

I moved the Mage Finger and grabbed the shard.

From the word ‘emet’ engraved there, I scraped off one character with Mage-Finger and changed it to ‘met’.⁴

Soon the golem lost its shape like boiling hot water and melted to the ground.

“I see, the death of an automaton.”

Klaus said so with a strange expression.

Certainly, if you live in the East, it might be difficult to see the a golem collapsing.

The rainbow-colored magic circles on my right hand immediately disappeared.

probably because I applied a bit too much strength when scraping off the characters on the golem.

Because of such frailness, Mage Finger can only be used for delicate work.

Ann’s hair ornament and the golem’s core fell to the ground amid the hordes of bones.

I washed away the remaining acid and picked up the core of the golem.

I have to return this to my brother.

Klaus too, picked up Ann’s hair ornament.

It was a lovely ornament with elaborate patterns mimicking the flowers on a tea olive tree.

“I certainly remember this. This was made from the horn of a unicorn that inhabits Hafan’s forest. This is Ann’s, no doubt about it.”

“Then, Ann-sama must have passed by this point, right?”

However, as soon as we were ten meters beyond the turning point, we hit a dead end.

Both of us waved the wand of Urd Sight.

We could see Ann Hafan’s back as she walked towards the dead end.

She noticed something and expressed a shocked expression, and then she started to run.

Maybe because she was in a hurry, Ann didn’t notice that her hair ornament had fallen.

I am certain that she saw the bones mass inside the golem.

A sigh of relief from Klaus could be heard from my side.

“I have a feeling that we have neared Ann-sama, but the labyrinth is changing.”

“It’s okay. Since we know the direction, we can use Pass Wall.”

“Yes, Klaus-sama, let’s chase after her.”

There is a limit to the effect of the first Pass Wall scroll.

If we can join with Ann quickly, the three of us can escape together with the second scroll.

At least, we should catch up with her soon before the encounter with the sealed ancient evil spirit in the bottom level!

We used Levitation, kicked off the air quietly and ran towards the direction of Ann.

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¹ 暖簾 (noren) is a short curtain hung at shop entrances, or split curtain used to divide spaces in a house in Japan. (source)

² I don’t really understand this sentence: テレポートに失敗するといしのなかに入ってしまうあのゲームの話なんて、言わずもがなだ。 but I think it’s referring to a game called Wizardry, where there is a teleporter’s trap which sent the party into a wall and caused instant death for the party.

³ Giant spider (大蜘蛛) here is the alternative name for Tsuchigumo, the name for a race of spider-like youkai in Japanese folklore. (source)

⁴ In Jewish folklore, a golem is inscribed with Hebrew words on its forehead, such as the word emet (אמת, “truth” in Hebrew). The golem could then be deactivated by removing the aleph (א) in emet, thus changing the inscription from “truth” to “death” (met מת, meaning “dead”). (source)

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