The Unwanted Undead Adventurer: Volume 10 Read online

  Rina and Alize were in the middle of practicing their magic. Lorraine had given them a list of tasks to do while she and Rentt were away, and on that list was a note saying to get Isaac to instruct them if they wanted to practice offensive magic. The pair had followed their mentor’s directions and gone to the Latuule estate to ask for Isaac’s tutelage.

  Somewhat unexpectedly, Rina and Alize had been able to enter the estate without any fuss. Ordinarily, one had to go through a hedge maze that even Rentt had struggled to navigate, but the pair had been allowed to skip that challenge. That also meant they hadn’t gotten the reward for making it through the maze—a magic item of their choosing—but since neither of them knew about that, they were hardly going to complain about it.

  What’s more, given that Alize was a child from the orphanage, it could have been a bad idea for her to be here alone among vampires and undead, but fortunately she was unaware of this; she hadn’t noticed anything unusual when she’d met Isaac and the other servants who worked at the estate. That was natural, though, considering that the vampires there had spent years, decades, and possibly even centuries in Maalt without anyone discovering their true identity. Even if you were shown into the very heart of the mansion, it would take a particularly keen-eyed observer—which Alize certainly was not—to see through their facade.

  From Alize’s point of view, she had simply entered a beautiful estate with a gorgeous rose garden and a staff made up of elegant and refined servants. Although the mothers of the world might protest an orphan being in the company of vampires, there were no mothers present and therefore no one to rally against it.

  The only “good” person who knew the truth was Rina, and she was a pseudo-vampire herself, not all that far removed from the estate’s undead denizens. Alize was, essentially, a sitting duck—a treat for the vampires to nibble on at their leisure—but no one there would actually feed on her.

  “Mister Isaac, is it possible for me to do that as well?” Alize asked.

  Isaac smiled that creepy yet elegant smile that might have marked him as a vampire in more cautious company and answered, “Eventually, yes. But it would be difficult to do so immediately.”

  “Why is that?”

  “What Miss Rina is doing is not ordinary chanted magic, but quickened magic. In general, magic is divided into chanted magic, quickened magic, and silent magic, but the latter two become progressively more difficult. Miss Alize, you’ve only learned chanted magic so far, yes?”

  “Yes. Is it that I have no talent as a mage?” Alize muttered with a worried look on her face.

  Isaac shook his head and smiled at her reassuringly.

  “No, that’s not it at all. The issue is more that if you don’t take care and pay attention to your chanting when you’re first learning magic, you will end up developing some strange habits as a spellcaster. To put it another way, chanted magic is the equivalent of forms in swordplay. A swordsman’s style greatly depends on whether they start by mastering those forms or forgo them altogether. The former produces a swordsman of a particular school, while the latter creates a completely self-taught fighter. It’s not as though one process always results in a stronger warrior, but the former is a more efficient way to learn, is it not?”

  Alize nodded, the description jogging something in her memory.

  “That reminds me, Rentt’s really good at manipulating mana, but Professor Lorraine said there was something creepy about that.”

  “Heh. I understand what she means. Rentt is like the self-taught fighter I mentioned. However, Rentt intends to relearn the basics, so while he can keep the benefits of his own self-taught style, he’ll also get some consistency from learning them. He understands the value of mastering the basics.”

  “You’re right. He’s learning from Professor Lorraine with me.”

  “Now, as for the magic Miss Rina just used, she has already mastered chanted magic. She’s trying quickened magic as part of her attempt to move to the next step in her training. Since she seems to find earth magic particularly difficult, Gie Vieros is also useful for practicing that type of magic. As for you, Miss Alize, you have time. Take it slowly and focus first on perfecting your chanted magic. I’ll be here to make sure you two don’t learn the wrong lesson from your practice, so don’t worry about making mistakes along the way.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  While it appeared as though Isaac was teaching the pair how to use magic, all he was really doing was watching to make sure neither of them did anything too dangerous, offering little bits of advice along the way. They were still learning in accordance with Lorraine’s instructions, so she was still their teacher in terms of actual theory and foundations.

  And so, the pair continued their training...

  Chapter 2: To the Palace

  “Ah, here we are.”

  We stopped in front of a rather worn-looking inn, but it wasn’t as though the building was in bad shape. It was well maintained and clean, even though it was old. It gave the impression that it was an established institution in this part of the city.

  “The sign says ‘Falcon’s Rest Inn.’ This must be the place,” Lorraine murmured after she checked the scrap of paper that Augurey had given her.

  We entered the inn, and inside we found the inn master and his wife working. At the front desk was a young girl who was presumably their daughter. Inns like this one were usually family businesses. Of course, high-end lodgings aimed at high-ranking adventurers were generally run by well-established merchant houses, but most places on this scale were run by a family.

  Augurey was a Silver-class adventurer, so I’m sure he could have moved to a pricier place if he’d wanted to, but people usually preferred the environment they were used to. He’d likely used this inn since before he became a Silver-class adventurer and just preferred to stay here.

  “Oh, welcome. Are you here to rent a room today?” the girl asked as we approached the reception desk.

  I shook my head. “No, we’re here to see someone. I’m told an adventurer named Augurey stays here.”

  The girl nodded as though our appearance made sense to her. “Mister Augurey is in room three. I don’t believe he’s gone out today. Would you like me to go get him?”

  “No need to trouble yourself. We’ll go to him. Would that be a problem?”

  “Not at all. Please do. It’ll be the room on the right at the end of the hallway.”

  Lorraine and I exchanged nods and made our way to the specified room.

  I lightly rapped my knuckles against the wooden door.

  “Hm? A guest? I don’t remember making any plans for today...”

  We heard a voice talking to himself on the other side, then the door swung open. I couldn’t help but think it was a touch careless since he didn’t know who was on the other side, but there weren’t that many people who could pose a threat to an adventurer—even fewer if the adventurer was Silver-class. So while I wouldn’t call it wise, it wasn’t particularly an issue for him. It would be different if he was in a situation where he knew someone was out to assassinate him, but I doubted that was the case at the moment.

  When the door opened, we were greeted by the sight of Augurey dressed just as garishly as I remembered. He was wearing frilled, rainbow-colored clothing, a hat with a giant peacock feather, and a sword on his hip that had brightly colored patterns inscribed into the hilt. In other words, he hadn’t changed since the last time I saw him.

  Still, in spite of his questionable taste in clothing, his facial features were well formed, and if he were to dress a little more reasonably, he would look quite handsome. He even had a cultured air that made you think he might be a scion of some noble house. That aside, based on his current attire, you’d have to conclude that he’d taken one too many blows to the head. Why did he like to dress this way? It was a mystery to which no one knew the answer.

  As Augurey stood there with the door open, his expression turned to one of surprise. “Rentt! And Lorraine too!”
He exclaimed loudly.

  “Yeah, been a while,” I said. “Well, maybe not that long, but anyway, it really has been some time since we’ve seen each other dressed normally like this.”

  The last time we saw him, we’d been dressed in the latest imperial fashions, but this time we were dressed normally—aside from my mask, that is.

  Lorraine eyed Augurey with a faintly exasperated look. “The person right in front of me isn’t dressed normally...”

  Augurey looked confused, as though he didn’t know what Lorraine was talking about. I wasn’t sure if he was playing around or if his reaction was serious, but if I had to guess, he was feigning obliviousness. Despite appearances, Augurey was well grounded and intelligent. He wasn’t the sort of fool who didn’t understand just how unique his fashion sense was. The fact that he dressed this way despite that probably meant there was a reason behind it, but it might just be his personal preference, so it was perhaps useless to pursue that line of questioning.

  “The two of you really did come out of the blue, but I’m glad to see you. I was starting to run out of excuses.”

  Augurey sounded uncharacteristically tired, and I had a good guess as to the cause of that fatigue.

  “The palace has been insistent, I suppose?” Lorraine asked.

  “Well, yeah. Why don’t we sit down and talk about it? Come on in. It’s a little messy, but there’s enough room for the three of us to relax and have a chat.”

  It seemed Lorraine’s guess had been on the mark. Since we had come to see Augurey for that very reason, it was a convenient segue for us. We nodded and entered his room.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  “So. It’s been a while since that incident...”

  Augurey seemed to be asking what our excuse was for taking so long. That was understandable. We’d told Nauss Ancro that we’d come by later, without specifying a date, and we’d also mentioned we needed a few days to sort out other matters. All things considered, it made sense that the royal family would think it would only be a few days before we came for an audience. When we didn’t appear in that time frame, they’d started nagging the one among us they knew lived in the capital. We’d evidently left Augurey in an awkward position.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I apologized. “A lot came up that we had to deal with.”

  I then described the events that had occurred in Maalt to the extent that I was able to tell him. Augurey already knew I was a monster. Moreover, he’d signed a magic contract that prevented him from talking about any matters that would do us harm without our permission. That was why I told him most of what had happened. Since we were unsure of how much we could tell him about the Latuules, I left that part vague. I basically just told him that we’d gotten help from a powerful vampire.

  Having heard the story, Augurey appeared satisfied. “It sounds like you got caught up in quite a bit of trouble. Then again, you’ve been in trouble since you turned into a monster. Given what happened, though, I can hardly blame you for taking so long to show up. Things were pretty difficult for me, but compared to you, I was just getting nagged by the palace. Not a big deal, all things considered.” He gave us a nod of understanding.

  “When you say nagging, what sort of thing were they doing?” I asked. I wanted to know if they were just pestering him or if they were threatening him with something heavier like actual punishment. Based on what I could see from Augurey’s demeanor, it was likely the former.

  “At most, it’s them demanding to know how much we’re going to make them wait,” Augurey replied. “That said, the days between each messenger have started to get fewer and fewer, and I felt more and more guilty each time I had to turn the messenger away. Even though I always said I’d make sure to bring you two, they’d ask when that would be. I almost gave myself an ulcer by repeating the same stressful exchange over and over again.”

  It didn’t sound that easy to deal with, honestly. Now, whether it caused Augurey a great deal of mental anguish was a different question. It might have been slightly stressful, but Augurey was the sort of man who’d get the heck out of the kingdom if things started looking serious. He wasn’t the type to feel overwhelmed by the pressure heaped upon him and end up hanging himself. Nevertheless, our prolonged absence had caused him undue stress.

  “Sorry about that,” I apologized again. “I wish there was something we could do to make up for it.”

  I felt guilty about leaving him to shoulder all of that burden. Then again, I didn’t feel guilty for committing the crime of entering the capital as a monster. It’s not like there was anything I could do about it, anyway.

  Augurey smiled as though he had been waiting for my comment. “Oh, really?! I have just the thing you can help me with...”

  He began listing off jobs that required a party to undertake. He didn’t hesitate in the slightest, but that was because we both knew each other very well.

  Augurey then turned toward Lorraine as though he were asking the most natural question in the world. “Lorraine, you’ll help too, right?”

  “I suppose I have no choice. I hold some responsibility for this matter. I’ll listen to your request,” she said with a note of resignation.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  “So now that I’ve gotten a fair reward for my work,” Augurey began.

  “I can’t help but feel I’ve been fleeced,” I muttered.

  “Different things, really. A totally different matter altogether. The problem is with visiting the palace. Even if we can easily get in thanks to the medal you were given, are you sure you’ll be okay with your, um...special body? The palace has some impressive detection equipment.”

  Augurey sounded genuinely concerned, but we’d already dealt with that particular issue.

  “We’ve tested all of the detection devices the royal palace uses,” Lorraine answered, “and none of them responded. There’s no problem in the slightest.”

  Augurey tried his best to hide his shock. “Um, I’m pretty sure information on what devices the palace uses isn’t public knowledge. How did you even discover that?”

  His reaction was perfectly understandable. After all, Lorraine had confidently and plainly stated that everything was fine. She wasn’t the sort to make definite statements when she wasn’t certain or had any doubts, and evidently, I’d developed a habit of wholly believing something to be fact if she was willing to state it was. If I called that an expression of my trust in her, that sounded nice, but perhaps I had just entrusted the difficult thinking to her and stopped thinking for myself. Since I had a tendency to make careless blunders at important points, I should’ve probably been more careful. I mean, that was exactly how I’d been swallowed by a dragon. But for all my precautions, I couldn’t help but unconsciously and implicitly trust Lorraine.

  “Through my connections and my knowledge as a scholar,” Lorraine replied. “Of course, even then, there’s a chance my knowledge might not be complete, so I’m currently in the process of confirming that it is. In fact, all right...”

  “Confirming?” As Augurey quizzically tilted his head, a knock came against the wooden slat placed in the window frame. “I sure have a lot of guests today. But why from here? We’re up on the second floor.”

  Augurey looked at us, silently asking if he could open it. He was being considerate, since the conversation we were having was far from normal.

  I nodded. I had no idea who was at the window, but if it was someone unwelcome, we would just have to chase them off. Lorraine also nodded, so Augurey walked over to the window and opened it.

  “Hm? There’s no one here...?”

  “No, it seems the guest was looking for me rather than you,” Lorraine explained as she approached the window. She looked to the lower right, almost to the very end of the sill, and cupped her hands as though she were scooping up water. Something then hopped into her palms.

  “It’s a puchi suri,” Augurey said with a faint note of surprise. “Lorraine, when did you start keeping monsters as pets?
Oh, I suppose Rentt might be part of that hobby...”

  Augurey seemed to be drawing some strange conclusions in his head, so I hurriedly interjected, “Hold up, hold up! That’s not it at all!”

  Augurey chuckled and said, “I’m kidding. At any rate, it seems the puchi suri is completely obedient to Lorraine. Did she become a monster tamer?”

  Lorraine slowly shook her head and gestured toward me with her chin. “No, this is one of Rentt’s familiars. I’m just borrowing him for now.”

  “A familiar. It really drives home that Rentt’s an actual monster. But it doesn’t seem that bad when I think of how monster tamers also control monsters as servants. It’s said goblin riders use the same methods as monster tamers, and the line between monsters and familiars and pets can be ambiguous. That’s something I remember Lorraine saying a long time ago.”

  For a minute there I was impressed with Augurey’s level of knowledge, but it turned out he’d just regurgitated something Lorraine had told him.

  Generally, the difference between familiars and servile monsters was that owners controlled their familiars with their own mana, while monster tamers trained their servile monsters like horses and pets to obey commands. Be that as it may, it seemed monster tamers also had magic connections to their servile monsters, so they weren’t totally different, just a difference in degree of control through mana. Not even experts were certain about the exact distinction, and it was one of those things where precise definitions weren’t really possible.

  “So why did this familiar knock on my room’s door...or rather, window?”

  “He’s the one who was doing the confirmation that I mentioned earlier,” Lorraine said. “Rentt, can you tell what he’s saying about the test results?”

  The reason Lorraine was asking me was because she couldn’t directly exchange thoughts with the puchi suri, but I could.