Chapter 8: Ruins of Visitor (part two)

I handed over a Wand of Urd Sight and one of alchemist’s leather gloves to alleviate the reaction of the wands to Klaus.

And for myself, I took out a brand new wand.

“This wand of Aurelia, how do you activate it?”

“To use it, just wave it while saying the spell in your mind.”

“It looks like it’s surprisingly easy. Is it okay to try it?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

Klaus carefully swung the wand.

The magic of Urd Sight activated safely and white magic circle converged on his eyes.

Klaus looked around while blinking over and over.

His long eyelashes made pachipachi sounds as he blinked with vigour as if his eyes dried out.

“…This is useful. I myself didn’t consume any magical power at all, I could see you from a few minutes ago.”

“Events that had passed over time cannot be pursued by Urd Sight. Keep in mind about what you want to know when you activate it, you should focus on events related to that particular person.”

“Do I have to explore while thinking about Ann?”

“That’s right. Let’s go then.”

The lamps in the surroundings were weak because the oxidation of the star crystals were proceeding.

This could make us overlooked the important places.

I searched my bag and took out a lamp.

“Klaus-sama, please also have this lamp.”

“Hm.”

Klaus attached the lamp he got from me to his staff.

When I thought of what he wanted to do, he demonstrated that he could light up high places with his staff.

Ooh, that was great.

……Well, there was no Ann in such a place.

You still somewhat wanted to explore, right? That was not good, you know?

We occasionally swung our wands and walked with two lamps carefully shining on our way home.

“Somehow, I can see the past you were mumbling.”

“Please don’t tease me.”

“Erica……You, are you scared of monsters or ghosts?”

“Klaus-sama, please concentrate on finding your sister.”

Klaus looked amused as he turned his line of sight to the front.

I would be in trouble for a while.

Because, right now I was an innocent 8-years-old girl, you know?

Isn’t it okay to be scared of something?

Aah, but if I considered my actual age in the previous life, it was painful to say whether it was okay or not……, ahaha.

“Your mood was terribly suspicious and you had gloomy eyes……Are you really an 8-years-old child?”

“Hey! Please search for Ann-sama seriously!”

“You, you sometimes have eyes that said you give up on life…”

Eei, I didn’t want you to tell me that!

Somehow, Klaus’ sensitivity increased until it almost felt like he had a penetrating gaze1!

I would hold down what I wanted to say.

Even if Klaus sometimes seemed he had the tendency of a small animal, when it came to it, he could grasp the opponent’s weakness and play with it…!

Was this a glimpse of someone who would become a Do-S character in the future!?

No, no, now I had to focus on searching for Ann!

“Klaus-sama, have you seen the back of Ann-sama yet?”

“No, I can’t see anything about Ann yet. For now, I have only caught on to you in my Urd Sight.”

“Are you keeping in mind properly about your sister?”

“Oh, I definitely think about her. Even so I can only see you, it’s annoying.”

This, this guy……!!

No, no, no, this was not the time for such a thing.

“Did you really see Ann? There is no trace that she ever went through here before.”

—H-huh?

Just now, I felt like there was something weird.

“……Hey, Klaus-sama, could you please show me the place of the spell card that you installed for Auto-mapping?”

“Oh, I remember…The spell card in this room is……”

Klaus ran to the corner of the room and looked around the wall.

Oh, he seemed to have some trouble.

He walked around while lighting the walls many times and then returned with a strange expression.

“It’s not here.”

“Really?”

“What does it mean? I’m certain that I put it there……It’s strange, this is—”

He was not wrong.

I didn’t remember it very clearly, but I remembered seeing an unused spell card around the area he was looking at.

But now that spell card didn’t exist.

—-I got a bad feeling.

“This Ruins of Visitor, seems to be moving the rooms and passages, it’s probably not magic, but mechanical.”

At that time, I heard a bad sound.

It sounded somewhere in this ruins.

“A mechanical labyrinth……!”

“I have heard from my father that it was a kind of mechanism that the ancient Aurelia people used to avoid thieves, but I never thought that there is a mechanical labyrinth in such a large building.”

Along with the tremendously loud sound of moving mechanism, our feet shook unnaturally.

It was not an earthquake.

Right now, the room where Klaus and I stood was moving.

“……You saw Ann and I went out of the transfer gate.”

“Yes.”

“Did you see Ann that one time in the first room?”

“Yes.”

Klaus wrinkled across his brow,

Sharp eyes stared at me.

“When I passed through and when you chased me, it was probably the same passage, but when Ann passed through, that passage was connected to another place.”

“That’s probably right.”

“And now, too, the trick of the labyrinth has started, and we lost our present position……That’s how it is, Erica.”

“Yes. In this way, there is no guarantee that we can go back to the transfer gate.”

We lost the clues to find Ann and also lost the way to return to the Spring Palace.

The mummy hunter himself became a mummy2.

We intended to find a lost child, but now we became lost children.

We were too late in noticing it, and everything else might had been lost.

“You’re quite calm.”

“Of course? I will act flustered when I feel flustered.”

“Well, aren’t you cheeky.”

The thing I most worried about now was Ann.

I was calm because we were still together.

A small girl was wandering around alone in this dimly lit Ruins of Visitor.

Just thinking about it, I felt my heart squeezed tight.

Besides, if she had already been touched by an ancient evil spirit—

No, I had to stop the pessimistic thoughts right now.

Look for Ann, return to the original place, I only had to think about these two.

However, I felt stuck in this search.

Waiting for the night to come like this, wouldn’t father and Duke of Harvan notice and send a search party?

—-No.

If that happened, Ann would die according to the original game.

Because my relationship with her was changing, I didn’t know if she would kill me six years later.

However, no matter how much death flags were broken, I didn’t want such a thing to happen.

I didn’t want to give up on the life of a young girl I had become emotionally attached to.

“If we move thoughtlessly, things will likely become worse.”

“There should be something we can do. Let’s think together for a little while, Klaus-sama.”

I spread my leather bag on the floor.

What can we do with what we have right now? We had to check the means that could be taken.

“You have brought so much.”

“I don’t know what will happen, because it is said that there is no feeling of grief if you are prepared.”

Was there any magic that could break through our current situation?

I turned over the box of wands and checked the label.

“……Wand of Grease? It’s a magic to improve slippage. If you put it on your opponent’s hand, their hand would slip and they wouldn’t be able to grasp anything. But what are you going to use in this labyrinth? Something like a niche magic.”

“Because I was in a hurry, I packed it noncommittally!”

Klaus looked into the bag curiously and started picking out items together with me.

“There is no convenient wand that will turn this situation around in one shot. It’s difficult, huh. At most if the wide area search magic is effective.”

“Please blame that matter towards my vigilant ancestors.”

Klaus also carefully read the labels, but it seemed that the idea was not readily apparent.

But I couldn’t give up yet.

When I was persistently searching my leather bag, a weak light that was different from the star crystal lamp came from the deepest part.

“This is Moonlight Gallnut Ink, huh.”

“Ah, I often use it back in Harvan.”

There was a mineral particular to the eastern Harvan region called moonlight ore.

It began to shine faintly as the moon rises, and lost its radiance with the moonset.

When clouds shaded the moon, the moonlight ore became shaded as well.

It was such a strange stone.

Since ancient time, the eastern mages utilized the characteristic of the moonlight ore, that was specialized to respond to the moon, to make Moonlight Gallnut Ink.

“The moon rise……right now it’s roughly 20 o’clock.”

In the ink bottle, a bluish yellow light that was permeated was swaying gently.

It was a much weaker light compared to a star crystal lamp.

The night sky tonight was cloudy.

“Klaus-sama, this is……”

I covered my star crystal lamp and gazed at the moonlight ore’s light, I noticed something.

Pale light of the same color as the ink was also shining on the walls of the room.

Moreover, it was blinking repeatedly at the same timing as the ink.

“You also noticed?”

“Well, it is as sparkling as the ink, isn’t it?”

Perhaps the intensity of the light was linked to the flow of thin clouds that shaded the moon.

I noticed that it was such a weather.

I put the lamp into my leather bag, and Klaus covered his lamp that was attached on the tip of his staff with the sleeve of his robe.

Because the strong lights were blocked, the faint light of the characters drawn on the wall was emphasized and emerged.

What was drawn on the wall was a crescent moon mark.

And under the mark was a familiar handwriting—

It was a message left by senior explorers who had challenged this labyrinth.

What the golden moonlight illumination revealed was truly a bright light3.

1 Actually it said レイプ目 (rape gaze), but I think it’s inappropriate, so I changed it to penetrating gaze.

2 An idiomatic expression, means: intending to persuade someone and instead being persuaded himself. Or, a person who went to bring the person to his side will instead stay on the other side.

3 Bright light here means hope, but the author made it a pun, so I keep it as it is.

About the Auto-mapping, so Klaus installed spell cards en route (the one Erica found in chapter 6). They are used to mark the places where he goes through, and when he activated the spell, they supposedly will create a map in the parchment he has in the previous chapter. But, since there is a trap that invalidated wide area magic, the spell cards were found by Erica in a state of unused/inactive.

About the Moonlight Gallnut Ink, if the moon rose, the ink would shine yellow/golden light. If the moon was shaded, it would shine bluish yellow light just like in this chapter. It depends on the current state of the moon, so even if it was indoor, as long as the moon has risen, the ink would shine.