The Unwanted Undead Adventurer: Volume 5 Read online

  “This was a while ago now, but I was exploring the Water Moon Dungeon as usual, hunting slimes and goblins.”

  “The job everyone does when they start out. I hunted there plenty myself back in the day. The Water Moon Dungeon’s an ideal hunting ground for solo adventurers,” Wolf replied, reminiscing on his early days. He had been a solo adventurer too.

  What was nice about the Water Moon Dungeon was how seldom the monsters appeared in groups. Maalt had more solo adventurers than other cities thanks to that dungeon. Having a place to train on your own was a great blessing for those who preferred adventuring alone. If they had a party, then New Moon Dungeon would have been much more efficient.

  “I searched the dungeon for a while until I found all the materials I needed, so I headed toward the exit to leave and go home. I was fairly cautious, of course, but when I entered a large room, there was a foe I could never have imagined.”

  The truth was I had entered uncharted territory, but nothing I said was a lie. It was a large room, after all.

  “What was it? The Water Moon Dungeon doesn’t have any especially tough monsters. Could’ve been a unique type or some other abnormality, though, maybe orcs or ogres.”

  “I wish. I couldn’t have beaten those at the time, but I could have run away at least. Not against this, though.”

  Wolf urged me to continue. “Hm, so what was it, then?”

  “It was a dragon, Wolf.”

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  Wolf thought over what I had said. In the end, he scratched his head. “I’d say I don’t buy it, but you’ve got no reason to lie. You must believe it, if nothing else. Problem is nobody else will,” he said, implying I might have been seeing things.

  Dragons were hard to find whether you wanted to or not. Wolf thought I had mistaken something else for a dragon, a possibility that was far more likely, admittedly. But dragons of this sort did have to exist somewhere. Enough humans throughout history had encountered them and told artists what they looked like, and their depictions of the creatures were clear and distinct. I had seen such artwork in books at Lorraine’s house many times, and one of them looked identical to the monster that ate me.

  What convinced me the most, though, it was a dragon was its overwhelming strength and unique properties. No human could stand up to that monstrosity. The instant I saw it, I knew that to be true. I had encountered lesser dragons a few times before, such as earth dragons, but that was nothing compared to the powerlessness I felt against the one in the Water Moon Dungeon. Nothing else made me feel so hopeless.

  “I know I’m telling the truth. I worried about it being an illusion, but I’ve experienced illusions before. I’d know if I were affected by one.”

  “What do you mean?” Wolf asked.

  “There was a medicine woman back in my hometown that taught me things. She was a bit of an oddball, and when I told her I wanted to be an adventurer, she said I should learn about poisons and illusions. She had me test all kinds of toxins and hallucinogens, and...”

  I paused. I didn’t want to remember much more than that. Her method taught me how they tasted as well as how they affected the body. If I couldn’t distinguish which was which, she made me do it again. She incorporated these lessons into every aspect of my life, and I never wanted to go through that again. But thanks to that, I could tell whether I was under the effects of an illusion. I also knew poisons well enough to distinguish right away the type and the cure. I knew I didn’t have to worry about poison anymore, so those lessons didn’t do me much good now, but I didn’t know if I could still hallucinate. I’d already confirmed I was immune to basic types of illusion, but there were still plenty of special ones.

  “You’ve always lived a rough life, eh?” Wolf said and furrowed his brow. He gave me a sympathetic look.

  I’d agree it was rough, but I was the one who went along with the old lady’s suggestion. Her lessons ended up coming in handy, so I couldn’t complain.

  “Anyway, you insist it wasn’t an illusion. I got it. And you’re positive this was a dragon. Still don’t see how that had this effect on your body, though. Just how’d that happen?” Wolf asked.

  My story wasn’t over yet.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  “Here comes the problem.” I hesitated for a moment. I had already decided to tell Wolf everything, but I feared no responsible person would believe it. It was too late to change my mind, though.

  “I’d think the dragon was enough of a problem. There’s more?” Wolf asked.

  I knew how he felt, but these next details were about how I ended up with this body, the most important part of the story.

  “Well, there’s no use beating around the bush,” I said. “Simply put, that dragon ate me.”

  Wolf responded right away. “What in the hell are you talking about? If you got eaten, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “Normally, yes. But for some reason, after the dragon ate me, I woke up as a skeleton.”

  “Now hold on a second! I can’t process all this! I need some water!”

  I wanted to reveal the rest of what happened all at once, but I didn’t get the chance. Wolf grabbed a pitcher on the edge of his desk, poured a glass of water, drank it all in one gulp, and took a deep breath.

  “All right, that calmed me down. So, you turned into a skeleton? Well, I was an adventurer myself, and I know a thing or two about monsters, but I’ve never heard of a living human becoming a skeleton. You’re friends with that Lorraine lady, yeah? You’re living with her now? Heard about anything like this from her?”

  Wolf seemed to know about Lorraine too. She was a scholar as her main profession, but she was also an adventurer with Maalt’s guild. The guild sometimes asked her to investigate and report on monsters, so Wolf must have been making use of her knowledge.

  “I asked her about it but couldn’t really follow what she said,” I answered. “I know humans can become monsters if a vampire makes them into a servant, for example, but I don’t know how you become a skeleton. The bones of the dead can be used to produce a skeleton, everyone knows that, but this is something else. I was most definitely a skeleton at the time, but I was still self-aware. I still remembered that dragon eating me. You don’t see skeletons like that lying around any old place, do you?”

  Wolf had far more adventuring experience than me, so maybe he knew of exceptions. I asked in the hope that that was true, but he shook his head.

  “Not that I’ve ever seen. The smartest skeletons I’ve encountered could say a couple words at the most. You look human now, though. Well, you said you were a vampire, but you don’t look like any vampire I’ve seen.” Wolf sounded confused, but he got to the heart of everything I said thanks to his experience.

  “I look this way because I’m not a skeleton anymore,” I explained. “You know about the Existential Evolution that monsters go through, right?”

  “Yeah, like slimes becoming poison slimes, or goblins becoming grand goblins. Every adventurer knows about that. Well, besides the ones who don’t. The newbies these days don’t study enough, especially the ones in the capital. You’ve got all these folks who get into the job without much thought. The grand guildmaster complains about it all the time.”

  For my part, I was able to read the books about monsters at Lorraine’s house. I loved to read, and there was no shortage of information for me to absorb. For a new adventurer though, without access to a similar environment, they would have to attend classes at the guild or learn the basics from older adventurers. But more and more people wanted to skip those steps. It wasn’t so bad in Maalt, but it had become a severe problem in other cities, from what I heard. Maybe the capital was even worse than that. I wanted to go and see it for myself one day.

  I nodded. “Yes, there’s that. I’m sure you’ve picked up on this, but when I became a skeleton, I thought maybe Existential Evolution was possible for me too. I was still human on the inside, but my body was pure monster, so maybe I could do some monster thing
s.”

  “This all sounds nuts, but sure, skeletons can presumably evolve into a lot of monsters that look human. Is that the idea?” Wolf asked, making the most of his intuition.

  “Right, I was hoping I could become a ghoul. Then maybe if I kept evolving past that, I could become a vampire or something else that looked human.”

  “And that’s what brought you where you are now? But I was thinking, vampires don’t normally go out during the day. Also, do you drink blood or what? Vampires have to drink blood from a couple people each month to survive. Wait, don’t tell me our new adventurers have been going missing because of you!” Wolf had become increasingly more serious as we went on.

  I panicked and shouted, “No, I didn’t lay a finger on them!”

  “Probably not, no,” Wolf stated right away. “You’re not one who’d choose to live if you had to sacrifice someone else. If it came to that, I bet you’d rather wither and die.”

  His opinion of me was so high it was uncomfortable. But given what the alternative could have been, I was thankful.

  “But that leaves the question of how you’re getting blood,” Wolf noted.

  “Lorraine shares hers with me. She knows all about this,” I said, deciding to be honest.

  I didn’t know how much to say about my relationship with Lorraine, but Wolf already knew I lived with her, and he had always known we were friends. While I could claim she didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, I doubted Wolf would buy it. As expected, though, Wolf didn’t blame us for keeping it a secret from the guild. In fact, he seemed empathetic.

  “Based on what you’ve said so far, that doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but you sure she’ll be all right? Vampires suck more blood than a single person can offer, from what I know,” Wolf said with concern.

  “That’s a problem, yeah, but I don’t need that much blood. A few drops a day has been enough to quench my thirst. I can eat like a normal person too. After some stuff I went through, however, I started to wonder if I was a vampire at all.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know Nive Maris, right? She decided I wasn’t a vampire.”

  Wolf held his head in his arms and then downed another glass of water.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  After a long period of silence, Wolf asked, “So what’s that make you, then?”

  He thought about what he’d learned, and that was the question he came up with. Indeed, it was the most important question of all, but I didn’t know the answer.

  “Who knows?” I offered.

  “Hey!”

  Wolf shouted and eyed me like I was messing with him, but I wasn’t. It was all I could say. Perhaps I could have said it in a less joking manner, but it was too late for that. Either way, I couldn’t tell him what I didn’t know.

  “I wish I knew what I was too, but Nive Maris says I’m not a vampire. Obviously that’s going to lead to questions. Before she said so, I just assumed I was a vampire,” I said with the utmost sincerity.

  I looked exactly like a human, but I had odd regenerative powers. I fed on blood, went out at night, and evolved from an undead creature. It was natural to guess I was a vampire until Nive shattered that assumption. Maybe I was a new type of vampire not even Nive knew about. If so, there would be no way to know for sure. I was something like a vampire, but that was the most I could say.

  “Nive Maris, eh? Right, she’s a vampire hunter. You’d figure she knows a vampire when she sees one, but how’d you end up meeting her?”

  “I went to the Stheno Company to sell materials, and she was there with a saint from the Church of Lobelia. For some reason, she suspected me of being a vampire.”

  “You’re lucky to still be alive. When she sets her sights on a vampire, she’s been known to chase them to the edge of the world. I heard she came to town, but I just thought she was after some vampire. It was you she was after?”

  Nive’s reputation was even well known among guildmasters, apparently.

  “No,” I said and shook my head. “She had chased a vampire here, but it wasn’t me. My activity around town made her suspicious enough to go after me, though.”

  Nive acted like a brat, but she was many times more fearsome than she seemed, so it was out of my control.

  “That’d mean there’s another vampire in this town. As the guildmaster, that’ll be a headache for me. Though if Nive Maris is here, maybe she’ll hunt it down quickly. Hard to say,” Wolf said, bothered by the information I provided.

  Vampires had fearsome strength, but what made them even more dangerous was their ability to hide among humans. Only those with special skills could see the difference between a human and a vampire, so the guild would have to invest all its energy in hunting it down, on top of calling on talented vampire hunters from other regions. I didn’t have a great impression of her, but Nive was a famous vampire hunter, and she was already in town. That was good news for the guild...except she didn’t think much of the damage she caused around her as long it helped her hunt vampires.

  That would be reason for Wolf to be anxious, but he set it aside. “So how’d you get Nive Maris to leave you alone? Couldn’t have been that easy.”

  “I didn’t do much of anything. She used a divinity-based skill called Holy Fire to determine what I was, and I failed to avoid it. I thought I was doomed, but it ended up proving me innocent. I was confused since I thought I was a vampire, but it worked out, I guess.”

  “Then, that proved you’re not a vampire, like you’ve been saying.”

  “Supposedly, but what do you think, Guildmaster Wolf? I still need blood to live, so wouldn’t I have to be a vampire?”

  I asked in the hope that he had some other explanation, but Wolf didn’t have an answer.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said with a shake of his head. “But there are too many problems here for me to not take action. A dragon in Water Moon Dungeon? Nive Maris and a vampire in Maalt? And you’re connected to all of this? You’ve got some awful luck.”

  I couldn’t deny that. If nothing else, it was too great a trial for someone who had until recently been a human adventurer unable to climb past Bronze-class. But these events were outside my control. I had to live with it.

  “I’d agree I’m a bit unlucky. That’s why I feel like more chaos will happen if I stay in Maalt, specifically when it comes to Nive. I think I should leave town for a while,” I said, offering my thoughts on the situation.

  I could see how these incidents might have revolved around me. However, from a somewhat different perspective, you could also say they revolved around Maalt. I was only getting wrapped up in them, or so I hoped. A change of location at least seemed like a good choice as long as Nive was staying in Maalt for a while.

  “Where do you plan on going?” Wolf asked.

  “A village called Hathara,” I answered.

  Wolf knew enough about the surrounding area, and about my history, that he needed no more explanation. “Oh yeah, your hometown. Not a lot of folks from these backwater towns even try to become adventurers, so good on you for that.”

  I knew what he meant. The town was so isolated it received next to no outside information. When monsters attacked, the villagers took up weapons and defeated them on their own. They couldn’t fight off powerful monsters, of course, so they used incense to ward those off. In a sense, they were an independent village.

  Most of the villages around Maalt sought help from the guild when monsters showed up. Now that I thought about it, maybe my village was a bit strange.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  “Well, whatever your hometown is, maybe it’s best to get out of Maalt for a while. You’re right that something could happen again. I thought you might retire from being an adventurer, but if you did, then nothing interesting would happen anymore,” Wolf said and grinned at me. “Glad to have a man like you around. Just try not to die. If you aren’t already dead. How’s that work?”

  “I’m not entirely s
ure, but when I was a skeleton, I had nothing but bones. I don’t even know if I have a heart at all.” At least, I didn’t have a pulse, but I did feel something flowing through where my heart would be. Vampires were killed by driving a holy stake through their heart, so maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe that had nothing to do with me.

  “Man, I don’t know what you are, but you sure aren’t human. You’re right that you seem like some kind of monster, so it must’ve really taken some balls to come here. How were you planning to justify your double registration to me anyway? Judging by how you reacted, you didn’t think I knew so much about your situation, did you?”

  He was right about that. I thought maybe he knew something, but I didn’t expect he was watching me so closely. Even so, I was positive Wolf would do something about my double registration, thanks to a bundle of papers I brought with me. I set them on Wolf’s desk. He gave them a curious look and began to read, but he stopped partway and sighed.

  “Nice job compiling all of this. I see why you were so confident, but why give it to me after I already said I’d do what you want? You could’ve gone without mentioning it and then kept it to use some other time,” Wolf pointed out.

  The papers listed wrongdoings committed by Maalt’s guild. It had details on other double registrations, secret missions, and more. I received the information from a number of sources, mostly by sending Edel to search for it or by using info brokers. As a final resort, I even considered asking Laura. She seemed to know quite a bit and might have been open to sharing important information. But she was a client, one to whom I was indebted, so I couldn’t bring myself to make that request. Besides, I had other methods.

  Edel proved capable, to say the least. He could hide anywhere and understood human speech, abilities that made him excel at gathering information. The results stood for themselves. Of course, Edel’s discoveries alone wouldn’t be enough to extort Wolf, so I used info brokers to obtain evidence too. I happened to know a lot of people in this town. The info brokers could be hard to even find, but I knew how to make them gather and sell information. The culmination of my efforts was a set of documents that were almost wasted on fixing my double registration, but that was what I needed them for. Now that Wolf trusted me, I no longer needed them, which was for the best.