4. Shall We Introduce Ourselves?

A good while had gone by since Leo declared himself my personal servant.

“Kuhuk—!”

And I was still fighting the sickness. Dark-red blood came pouring out of me every night, and I still couldn’t get used to it.

Her buff hadn’t stopped working. The problem was just that Arden’s body was hideously weak.

I need to find that thing as soon as possible.

By now the iron taste in my mouth was almost familiar. A wave of pain went through me, and when I’d dragged in a few rough breaths, she spoke.

So in her eyes I’d overdone it, recklessly. She wasn’t wrong, either. Forging Kairon’s seal had burned through a lot of my concentration, because drawing it in red ink, stroke by stroke and dot by careful dot, was no small job.

I wiped the blood off with my sleeve and said to her, “You know what hand your opponent fears most? The hand they thought you’d already thrown away. In a duel between masters, how you use that discard pile is what decides who wins.”

So that was how Leo looked to her. Well, she wasn’t wrong about that either.

“Right — useless and untrustworthy. He may be bowing his head to me right now, but he’s exactly the kind of guy who’d turn around and stab me in the back the moment he saw a chance.”

“When you gamble, you put your own neck on the line.”

Among cardsharps, one loss costs you everything. It’s survival of the fittest, and the winner takes all. As far as I could see, this place was no different.

“Like you said, Leo might be untrustworthy and useless. But dangle his little sister in front of him as bait, and he could change.”

I shrugged.

That seemed to shock her. My coldness, maybe. Her face sank into worry, but I didn’t much care what she thought of me. What wouldn’t I do to survive?

Except she was the one keeping Possession Stabilization running on me, and if she got horrified enough to drop the buff, that would be a real headache. So, reluctantly, I opened my mouth.

“Goblins are counted among the weakest monsters there are, and their blood has a really, really foul stench. That’s why some people carry goblin stench around with them. Why? Because in an emergency, you splash some on yourself, and the predator in front of you panics and runs. So here’s what we learn: humans aren’t the only ones who care how their food smells.”

She’d listened quietly all through that, and now she asked,

“You wouldn’t eat food with crap smeared on it, would you?”

I watched her grimace and went on. “Even the hungriest beast won’t touch rotten meat. Think of it that way, and it makes sense. You know what the lesson of this story is?”

“That the weakest, lowliest creature, paradoxically, carries a scent nobody wants to touch. Same way you think Leo’s useless right now.”

That set her thinking, and I found the grave, silent way she brooded rather satisfying.

Think harder. Keep thinking.

Sure, my methods might look ruthless and underhanded. But by hook or by crook, I was going to survive.

Survive, and this time, I’ll definitely see the end of this world.

That was my grand ambition, and it was going to take the help of the being floating in front of me.

I don’t really know, either. I don’t remember anything — not my name, not why I’m here…

But she was no perfect being. I’d briefly suspected it was an act, then dropped the idea.

If that was acting, you’d be Best Actress.

Assuming this world had Entertainment Awards, anyway.

My thoughts had started chasing their own tail, just as hers did, so I cut the tail off. There are few things I hate more than spending energy on something that hasn’t happened yet. And without giving her any more time to think, I looked at her and said,

“I think I’ve given you plenty of time to understand.”

She didn’t look happy, but she nodded.

An awkward current settled between us. I scratched my head.

“What should I call you?”

“In our world, you swap names first. It’s basic manners. I’ve been here a week already and I still don’t know yours.”

I shrugged. I was only suggesting it because having a name to call her by would be handier. Of course, with her memory completely gone, she presumably didn’t have one.

“Want to come up with one together?”

I’d even picked out a handful I thought she’d like, and I started listing them off one by one.

That wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. Was her memory coming back?

“Da? Is your family name Da? That’s a bit unusual.”

If it was, the odds were good she wasn’t Korean, since there were probably fewer than ten people in all of Korea with the surname Da.

“…No it isn’t.”

“No! It is NOT!”

I shrieked it at her, very nearly wailed it. She just tilted her head, puzzled.

She was looking at me with eyes full of real concern, and I pressed a hand to my forehead.

Damn it. The shame felt like it was setting my whole body on fire. How was I supposed to explain that I’d once had a chuunibyou phase? In the end, I decided to make up a plausible lie.

“…That name is a rite of passage every gamer in the world has to go through once in their lifetime.”

“Yes. It’s a forbidden name, born when the desire for greatness meets emotional immaturity… Never speak it again.”

“Y… yeah.”

If there was an acting award out there, surely I deserved it.

“…I’m fine.”

Correction. Not quite good enough for an award yet.

Hell isn’t called hell for nothing. I lay trapped in bed, unable to move.

“Allow me to change the cloth on your forehead, Young Master.”

A warm, wet cloth, not too hot and not too cold, settled on my brow.

“Are you feeling alright?”
“Good. Very good.”
“…Yes, sir.”

Saying he had some chores to handle, Leo stepped out for a moment.

Hmm.

You’d think it was Leo who’d been possessed. From that day on, he’d carried himself as a thoroughly faithful servant. Sure, I’d dangled the bait of curing his younger sister, but he’d changed too completely. It was the kind of good treatment that’s hard to understand.

Which means he’s got something cooking.

I was rolling the possibilities around in my head, trying to guess what he was scheming, when —

Tap… tap.

A very tentative knock.

“M-may I come in?”

And a very young voice. I set the wet cloth aside for the moment.

“Come in.”

Creak.

The door opened on a girl carrying a tray of food. She glanced over my complexion, then suddenly bobbed her head in a bow.

“H… hello, Young Master! My name is Elli! Starting today, I’ll be your personal maid. I just came up from the southern continent, so I’ve got a lot to learn, but I’ll do my best!”

So this was the personal maid Leo had mentioned.

So it was real?

At the time, I’d taken it for a joke he’d cooked up to mess with me.

Eve knew her words wouldn’t reach Elli, yet she was earnestly chattering away, and I let her. She had the face of someone delighted to have gained a friend of the same sex.

“What?!”

I yelled it in shock at Eve’s words.

“Eeek!”

And I scared Elli badly.

Eve flew over to Elli and patted her head, though of course Elli couldn’t feel it. I cleared my throat a few times and put on a gentle smile.

“A pleasure to meet you. I am Arden, fifth son of House Arne. As you can see, my illness is severe, so I’ll be relying on you often — please take good care of me.”

Elli, feeling out my mood, answered, “Y-yes! Pleased to serve you!”

I kept smiling, and Elli, awkwardly, smiled back.

“Haha! I’m so glad you came!”
“H-heh… heh… thank you!”

Had this game ever had an NPC with a DV stat this low? I had never once seen Elli in it.

Heh heh. Plenty of places I can put her to use.

She had no idea how dark my thoughts were, and so we kept on laughing.

“Hahaha!”
“Heheheh!”

All of us except Eve, who was picking up on the unease coming off me.

Timid as she’d seemed at first, Elli did every task put in front of her with quick, confident hands. Maybe it came of spending her childhood on the famously rough southern continent, because she had formidable life-grit on her side and adapted to the estate at lightning speed.

“Young Master, here’s a flower I picked in the garden!”

And on top of all that, her unique brightness was a major asset.

“That’s a poisonous plant. The moment its thorns prick you, your nerves go numb. It comes in quite handy for torture.”
“Eek?! Are you alright?!”
“I’m fine — that poisonous plant is still in your hand, after all.”
“Oh, you’re right!?”

At first I’d assumed Elli and Eve were the same type, but the two of them felt very different. Elli, you might say, was uninhibitedly bold and forthright.

“I heard most of the medicines at the apothecary are made from poisonous plants. How do they even do that?”

She was also a major talker.

“Where I grew up, we’ve got mountains on three sides, you see. So naturally, the mountains and I were close! Tree-climbing is one of my specialties! If you’d like, I can teach you the secret to climbing trees well—”

So I got to hear all sorts of stories. Most of them were, granted, utterly useless, but at least I wasn’t bored. If I had to sum Elli up in a single sentence:

A child whose head is one big flower garden.

I say that, but I actually liked her quite a bit. Someday, her existence would matter enormously.

Well — best if it never comes to that.

I always have to prepare for the worst, and Elli would be my contingency plan.

Time is the great healer. It will all be alright once it passes. Those are sayings I’ve personally never cared for. If you don’t do anything, what’s going to change?

Still, by now I’d more or less acclimated to the pain that visited each night.

Truly — humans really are creatures of adaptation.

I’d also gotten used, to a degree, to Leo nursing me with devoted attention while hiding his true thoughts. Eve talking away at Elli as though Elli were her friend was still hard to adapt to, but it wasn’t bad either.

Every morning, Elli would check in on me. Like this:

“Young Master, you don’t look well. Does anything feel wrong?”

I deliberately let out the most labored breath I could, so that she’d worry.

“My body feels especially heavy today, and I feel so stifled.”

I added a few more pained moans and turned my gaze out the window, and her expression quickly grew more pitying and restless. Then I stared into empty space and said, “It’s probably from being cooped up in this room — all sorts of gloomy thoughts come over me. Couldn’t you tell me some news of the outside world?”

I’d only been looking at empty space, but Eve apparently took it that I was talking to her.

Not you.

I swallowed the words with some effort and went on.

“Elli, any kind of story will do — tell me something, will you?”

I was short on information. Even back in my gamer days, not much of the past had ever been laid out plainly, so Elli’s arrival was very welcome.

She seemed to remember something, and opened her mouth.

“Come to think of it, I hear the Empire’s been busy lately getting ready for the Crown Prince’s coming-of-age ceremony. They say it’s going to be an enormous, splendid celebration.”

The Crown Prince’s coming-of-age ceremony?

The day the coming-of-age ceremony takes place…

The memory that surfaced was not good news.

“Not long ago there was a huge wildfire out west and there were refugees and everything, but thankfully His current Imperial Majesty, Theodore III, handed out relief grain, so there wasn’t much chaos!”
“…Theodore III?”
“Eek! Young Master, even so, if you say His Imperial Majesty’s given name so casually, you’ll be in terrible trouble!”

Elli carefully cracked the door open and checked for anyone outside. There was no one, and she let out a small sigh of relief. None of that mattered to me, because I was busy fitting the pieces of memory together.

“When’s the coming-of-age ceremony?”

Elli gave me a look that clearly said, you actually don’t know that?

“Exactly one year and five days from now — so, February 30th! Don’t forget it this time, alright?”

The two of them were giggling away, but I was as serious as the end of the world.

— I was on the streets that day. But I didn’t see anything. I was too busy running away.
— The only survivors were all outsiders. The citizens who’d lived in the capital all turned into demons. They must have absorbed more of the influence.

How could I possibly not know that date?

— It’s a rebellion! Theodore IV killed his father, His Majesty the King!

That was the day the Lord of Lamentation, the one who would annihilate the Empire, was born.