Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Master (1)

“I’ll be having all sorts of strange experiences, won’t I.”

The coachman driving the carriage grumbled.

He was a coachman I had become friendly with after using the carriages near the outside of the academy several times.

“This time, a bamboo forest? Your eyes are bad, so why are you trying to go somewhere with no roads?”

Because the coachman, who grumbled without pause, was noisy, I gave up on trying to get even a light nap and gently spoke to him.

“...My master is there, and there’s an item I need to retrieve.”

“Your name was Zeto, wasn’t it? I don’t know who your master is, but why don’t you tell them to move their dwelling quickly?”

“...That can’t be moved anymore. Haha...”

“Dwelling” was not exactly wrong, but in a way, since it was also the place where she died, “grave” would be more correct.

“Tch, honestly.”

The coachman clicked his tongue, then soon focused on quietly driving the carriage.

“...What is Kaen plotting?”

The Kaen I had witnessed last time had not shown any particular actions since then.

From time to time, I thought I had glimpsed pink hair among the bushes, but I wanted to think it was my imagination.

I could not get any sense of what Kaen was scheming. This was something that had not happened in the game either.

“Something that had not happened in the game...”

Eisel, and Kaen.

Seeing the changing movements of the characters appear one after another, I began to think the future might have been distorted for quite some time already.

“Eisel, especially...”

She was different.

Different from the game.

Still, she was not a completely different person.

“If...”

An ominous feeling that sometimes suddenly came to me flashed through my head.

“Haa...”

I desperately ignored it and let out a deep sigh.

Knowledge and information from the past did not change... so I had no choice but to take comfort in that and move forward.

If I stopped, that would be the end.

***

Thanks to the talkative coachman becoming quiet for a while, I was able to get a little shallow sleep.

—Thump, thump.

Suddenly, the sound of someone knocking on the carriage woke me, and I raised my stiff body.

“Get off. We’re here.”

The coachman’s voice came from the front.

I opened the carriage door and slowly got down.

The moment I got off the carriage, the sight of countless bamboo stalks standing tall greeted me.

Perhaps because it was night, it was unbearably eerie.

“Is this the bamboo forest?”

“That’s right. When have I ever taken you to the wrong place?”

As I was exchanging useless words with the coachman, a fierce wind blew, and the forest let out an eerie sound.

“...Judging by the sound of the wind, this is the right place.”

“So... do I wait here like you asked earlier?”

The coachman looked at me and confirmed the request I had made previously.

Before getting into the carriage, I had paid the coachman an additional fee and asked him to wait a little at the destination.

Because people rarely came here, if I wanted to find another carriage, I would have to walk quite far.

“Yes. It will not take very long. If I do not return for a long time, as I told you beforehand, you may leave.”

“Good grief, how will you even find your way...”

“You don’t need to worry. My master taught me those things.”

“Please be careful.”

I showed the coachman a bitter smile and tried to reassure him as much as possible.

In any case, I only needed to retrieve the item. I roughly knew the location, so it would be over quickly.

Leaving the carriage behind, I slowly walked into the bamboo forest.

The bamboo forest.

This vast bamboo forest located some distance from Innocence Academy had very complicated paths.

Looking around, I saw that bamboo packed every direction densely.

In truth, there was nothing that could be called a path.

“But...”

The soul that would be sealed in the cursed blade, and the “woman” I referred to as Master to others, had decided to undergo closed-door training here.

That was how little people came and went.

“Somewhere in this bamboo forest, there should be the cave where she lived.”

I made my way out while pushing through the countless rising bamboo stalks.

In preparation for the return, whenever I came across bamboo here and there, I tore the white cloth I had prepared and tied it in noticeable places.

In any case, there were no people around here, so there was no need to act as if I could not see.

In the game, there had been one clue to finding the cave.

Within this wide bamboo forest, there was a large waterfall. The cave where she had lived was hidden behind that waterfall.

It was an obvious location for a cave, if one wanted to call it obvious, but the problem was finding the waterfall.

I had a method to reduce the time needed to find that waterfall.

I walked aimlessly, then when I thought this place should be good enough, I listened to the sounds around me.

—Rustle.

The wind sound unique to the bamboo forest reached me.

The sound of bamboo leaves shaking.

Sometimes I also heard bamboo striking against bamboo.

Trusting the Keen Senses skill, I focused my hearing to the fullest.

Then.

—Swaaah...

I was able to detect the faint sound of a waterfall from far away.

Since it was a giant waterfall, I had thought the current me might be able to detect at least that sound, and I was right.

I walked in the direction from which the sound came.

—Swaaah.

As I kept walking, the sound gradually drew closer.

And finally.

—Swaaah!

I was able to find the waterfall.

I approached the waterfall along the valley.

“Hmm...”

There was no path to avoid it from the side and go in or out, so it seemed I could not avoid getting my clothes a little wet.

I leapt toward the waterfall pouring down violently.

—Tap.

My feet found the floor.

As expected, the cave was behind the waterfall.

However, there was not a single light, and it was dark, so I could see nothing.

“I don’t sense any presence inside... I suppose not.”

From the backpack I was carrying, I took out a small lamp that could be carried easily.

“A blind man lighting a lamp because it’s dark...”

A hollow laugh escaped me at the very ironic situation, but since there was no one to show this sight to, it did not bother me.

As I walked straight through the cave like that, her traces gradually began to appear.

“How many years did she say she spent in this cave?”

Her closed-door training had been quite long.

Why had it continued for so long?

“The Sword Saint.”

It was to create swordsmanship meant to defeat one person alone.

It was the reason she, who had lost countless times to the Sword Saint, chose closed-door training.

When I entered deep into the cave, the traces of her life here began to appear little by little.

Objects whose purposes I could not tell rolled here and there around the cave, and worn-out scraps of cloth were scattered about.

“How many years have passed since she died?”

Even calculating roughly, it had been close to ten to twenty years.

She had trained in seclusion until just before her death, so there was a gap of time in which it could be said she had taken me in as her disciple.

Since she had informed no one of her closed-door training, it had been an unfortunate death that had not even become known, but I alone knew of her death.

In the game, the souls that could be sealed within the cursed blade essential for using Demon Swordsmanship were limited.

There were differences between souls, but most of them had been strong people who handled swords in life.

“To die from a long-standing illness just before her closed-door training was about to end...”

On top of that, there were many cases, like hers, where they had suffered unjust deaths.

Because they had been powerful existences, their souls became vengeful ghosts and could not leave the surface, remaining in place.

“The problem is where the soul is bound.”

As in the game, mana exists in the bodies of everyone in this world.

Originally, when a person dies, even if a corpse forms and the flesh decomposes, at least a skeleton remains.

Of course, if buried in the ground and many years pass, even the bones may disappear, but...

Mana acted uniquely here.

In this world, the mana remaining in the bones of the dead decomposes even the bones.

In the game, it was described that after five years, a corpse would disappear without a trace.

It was miscellaneous knowledge I had obtained while playing a Demon Swordsmanship character.

Before that, I had no interest in what happened to corpses inside this game, and there had been no particular information either.

Of course, graves still existed.

Even if the body of the deceased completely vanished, they still had to be honored.

The question was this.

Then where did these powerful souls, sealed when using Demon Swordsmanship, dwell?

There were no remaining corpses or skeletons.

It was not the place of death either.

The answer was the object most deeply connected to the dead person.

In the game, this was an item named “Object Containing Memories.”

As I walked while thinking of that object, I reached the end of the cave.

I saw miscellaneous objects whose forms were hard to identify and crude pieces that looked like furniture made directly from bamboo.

She had been a swordswoman in life.

Then perhaps the object deeply connected to her was also a sword.

But it was not a sword.

It was this object lying right here beside the place she had sat.

I picked it up.

“...Is it because a soul is inside? The moment I picked it up, it felt eerie.”

The instant I picked up the object, chills ran over my entire body, but since it was an object for which that made sense, I lightly moved on.

I examined the object closely.

Even though time had passed, as if implying it was a special object, it was neither rusted nor worn.

A necklace with a jewel attached, still looking new. The jewel itself was one thing, but even the chain of the necklace had not rusted at all.

It was the pendant she had worn around her neck her entire life, now containing her soul.

“Sierra’s Pendant.”

When crafting a cursed blade, if this pendant was used, a cursed blade containing her soul would be made.

After that, only by fully sealing the soul inside the cursed blade and forming a contract so it could not rampage at will would the true cursed blade be complete.

I searched the floor a little more, found the journal she had written, placed it in my backpack, and put the pendant inside my clothes.

“Hmm...”

Even as I left the cave, the ominous energy lingering around me did not disappear.

In the game, the sentence “I felt a frightening chill run through me” had simply been written in text, so I had not felt it, but now it was different.

“It is quite frightening...?”

It must be my imagination.

I reached the waterfall that served as the cave’s entrance. I put the lamp back into my backpack and leapt through the waterfall.

—Tap.

As before, my feet found the ground properly.

“At last, this hardship is over.”

Thinking that, I raised my head, but...

...Suddenly, I saw some kind of illusion.

I saw a “person” thrusting her face right up to mine.

It was a woman.

Long, flowing ink-black hair.

Her mysterious purple eyes stared straight through me.

The dress that fully revealed her cleavage appeared, judging by its design, to be from the East.

But when I looked closely, her body was half-transparent.

No, her lower body was almost transparent.

At a glance, she was not a “person.”

Before long, the woman who had been staring silently at me opened her mouth.

[ Why... are you taking... a precious object of the dead...? ]

Her voice, spoken in a somewhat shy tone, did not come from directly in front of me where she was located, but rang precisely inside my head.

The white bandage covering my eyes, the “Blindfold of Piercing Insight”...

...seemed to have literally pierced through even a boundary that should not have been crossed.

Her name was Sierra.

She looked exactly as she had in life.

She was my “fake” master and the soul that would enter the cursed blade.