The Hope They Left Behind (Premium)

by Sakon Kaidou

  I was merely speaking my mind. We’d met each other today, so I probably wasn’t in a position to say something like that, but I didn’t care if I came off as impertinent. I honestly thought that the regret would be far worse if she gave up.

  “That’s true,” she said, agreeing with me. “You are absolutely right. As his mother, I can’t give up on the possibility of him being alive. Thank you, Mr. Starling. You are exactly as the rumors say you are.”

  “It’s nothing, really...” Honestly, I was mildly curious about what the rumors said about me.

  I hope I’m not as infamous as Miss Aberration, at least.

  “Now that we are on the subject,” she spoke up again, “have you seen a man with eyes like mine? He should be over thirty now.”

  “Well, I’d be happy to tell you if I did, but you are the first tian with heterochromia I’ve ever met...”

  It was a pretty common thing to see among us Masters, though. Some people — like Juliet, for instance — went out of their way to give heterochromia to their avatars during character creation.

  Tians are a different matter, though. I’ve never seen a tian with eyes like hers... hold on a second.

  “Now that I think about it, I think I know someone with the same right eye color,” I said slowly.

  “If you mean me, then that is only obvious,” said Azurite. “My mother had Quartierlatin blood in her.”

  “Ohh, I see what you mean.”

  Sure enough, Azurite’s and the countess’s eyes were much alike.

  However, the person I had in mind had the exact same right eye color as the countess.

  “But there’s no way, right?” I murmured.

  I mean, both of his eyes were blue.

  The tea party ended shortly afterwards, and we left the residence grounds to head to the ruins.

  “Thanks,” said Azurite, right after we left.

  “For what?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “For what you said to the countess. She has been searching for her son for thirty years, and despite appearances, she seemed quite exhausted. Hearing your sincere words must’ve been uplifting for her.”

  Oh, that.

  “I just said what I thought. I don’t deserve any thanks for that.”

  “Indeed,” said Nemesis. “Ray says exactly what he thinks far too often. Just yesterday, after the bath incide-mghmghmh...”

  I shut her mouth before she could tell Azurite about what had happened after my waking up from Fainting. I’d been so straightforward, back then, that even I was embarrassed about it now. I didn’t want it dug up.

  “Well, anyway,” I said. “It’s finally ruin time, right?”

  “Yes,” nodded Azurite, starting to walk. “Let’s head to the— Hm?”

  She noticed something and stopped.

  I followed her gaze to find someone I was acquainted with.

  “Dr. Mario?”

  It was the archeologist we’d met yesterday.

  He seemed to be looking through the fence surrounding the countess’s residence, to watch the magnificent garden beyond.

  Many would find the fact that he was looking at a place full of children to be... questionable, to say the least.

  However, the way he looked at the garden made it obvious that he was lost in deep thought, and not even his thick glasses detracted from that impression. It seemed as though he was trying hard to... remember something.

  “Ah. Oh. If it isn’t-a young Ray and the young lady,” he noticed and greeted us. “Oh, and who is this dark little ragazza, hm?”

  “Oh, she’s my Embryo, Nemesis.”

  “Mm-hm,” Nemesis nodded. “I must say, you have quite a dubious manner of speech.”

  “I get-a that a lot! Ha ha ha!” Dr. Mario was speaking the same way as yesterday — like a fake, cheerful foreigner. And yet, for some reason, it felt somewhat different.

  “Why were you looking at the garden like that?” Azurite asked him, with a slightly harsh tone.

  “Mi dispiace! Forgive me!” he bowed his head. “The garden is so beautiful. I couldn’t-a help but stare. Forgive my lack of manners...”

  “I see,” she said suspiciously. “Be careful. Stare too much, and you’ll be arrested.”

  “Oh... Molto paurosi! That would be scary. I’ll-a take my leave!” he said, then turned around and started to hurry away.

  While Azurite simply glared at his back, I couldn’t help but ask him, “Dr. Mario, are you acquainted with the countess?”

  My question made Azurite and Nemesis raise their eyebrows.

  Honestly, I wasn’t too sure why I’d asked that, either.

  If I had to name a reason, I’d point to what the countess had told me during the tea party and what I’d seen yesterday.

  A part of me expected my question to hold no meaning to him. However, he stopped walking and, after a moment of silence, said, “No. There’s no connection between us. Of that, I am certain,” and then resumed walking away.

  Oddly enough, he spoke without any of the unusual accent. As he left, I caught a glimpse of what was behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

  His eyes, still as exhausted-looking as when I’d seen them yesterday, were of a blue highly similar to the countess’s right eye.

  Chapter Six: Ruins

  Paladin, Ray Starling

  As we were leaving the inn, Shirley told me that lots of merchants set up shop near the ruins to sell battle items for the explorers.

  And that was no lie — there were lots of simple stalls on the sides of the path leading to the place. They felt somewhat like festival food stands or small jewelry shops.

  I bought all the pure light magic attack Gems I saw and walked while using them on my Black Warcoat. Doing that seemed to be clearly way more effective than normal sunlight or Purifying Silverlight.

  “What are you doing?” Azurite asked. I couldn’t blame her. It was pretty weird.

  “This coat is a special reward,” I answered. “One of its skills can only be used when it absorbs enough light damage.”

  “You have a Prism Steed and a special reward?”

  “Not just one. These bracers and boots are special rewards, too.”

  “Normally, only Superior Jobs have that many. In fact, three is rare even for them...”

  That reminded me that Marie, who had a Superior Job, had only two. Strange to think that I’d already surpassed her on that front.

  Not that that meant I was better than her. It would be a long time before she would be below me as a fighter.

  “Anyhow... light damage, you say?” Azurite continued. “I have a light-based attack skill called ‘Laser Blade.’ Should I try feeding it to your coat?”

  “I’ll pass,” I replied. “That probably deals physical damage, too.”

  For all I knew, it might even be capable of damaging my coat. Not to mention that its name made it sound like a sure-kill attack.

  Talking about this and that, we walked on a freshly-made footpath leading up to the mountain, and it didn’t take long until we saw the entrance to the ruins, surrounded by lots of armed people, Master and tian alike.

  I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen Tom in the inn this morning. He wasn’t among these people, either, so I could only assume that he was already inside.

  “So... we’re finally here,” said Azurite.

  “Yeah,” I nodded.

  Her mask did nothing to hide the fact that she was absurdly tense about this. Although a part of me felt like she was overburdened, rather than just tense.

  It would make sense, too. Yesterday, she’d told me she felt like the very fate of the kingdom depended on this investigation.

  I might have to keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t do anything rash, like her attack on me yesterday, I thought.

  “Let’s go inside, you two,” she said before walking ahead.

  “Yeah,” Nemesis and I replied and walked after her.

  ◇

  The entrance to the ruins was en
tirely dirt at first, but halfway in, it became covered by a strange, glossy metal.

  However, some people were using tools and attack skills to remove it, which made me assume that they were responsible for the dirt walls leading to this point. The entrance must’ve been metallic, too, at first.

  Well, I can totally understand taking this metal. It’s probably a good material, I thought. But shouldn’t places like this be preserved?

  “Whatever is most important here has to be deeper in. Let’s move on ahead,” said Azurite, as she threw a glance at the wall-breakers.

  The hallway was completely devoid of monsters, but the burns and bullet holes in the walls told me that it hadn’t been like that at the start.

  These ruins weren’t a created dungeon, so monsters would never spawn here for no reason. The monsters in this part of the ruins had clearly been beaten over the course of the three days since their discovery.

  And so, following an uneventful walk through the hallway, we arrived at a larger space.

  It was about the size of a high school gym. The floor and ceiling were metal, too, but the design seemed to be different than the hallway’s. At the very least, the metal didn’t look like it would be as easy to remove.

  “Perhaps this is where these ruins truly begin,” said Nemesis.

  “Perhaps. This place even has that,” I replied as I pointed at the large crystal at the center.

  A few of the Masters that were already here were looking at it, touching it, or opening their menus around it.

  That had to be the crystal I’d heard about — the one that let people switch to Prism Rider. I’d interacted with a similar one back in a church where I’d become a Paladin.

  A while had passed since then, so it was best to refresh myself on how these things worked. I took a few minutes to do so.

  These large crystals were the reason why certain jobs were limited to certain areas of the world.

  You could switch between jobs you’d already acquired at any save point or by using a small, consumable Job Crystal. However, getting a new job required more than just fulfilling the job’s conditions — you also had to touch the appropriate large crystal.

  That was why Xunyu’s Master Jiangshi job could only be acquired in Huang He, while Miss Aberration’s High Priestess job could only be acquired here in the kingdom.

  Speaking of Miss Aberration and job switching, there was a little something regarding that.

  All the crystals for priest grouping jobs were within churches.

  Or, rather, churches had been built around those crystals.

  Naturally, those priest grouping crystals were limited, and that was the reason why Miss Aberration, instead of building her own churches, had tried to acquire the ones owned by the state religion.

  After all, churches built in random places were little more than empty boxes.

  Because of her slimy dealings, she now owned quite a large number of such facilities.

  ...Too many, actually.

  At this rate, she would monopolize the priest grouping, and then make it a rule that anyone who wanted to take those jobs would have to join her cult.

  Since Infinite Dendrogram had healing magic, the church were both a religious and a medical group, meaning that Miss Aberration was doing the equivalent of putting every hospital in Japan under her cult’s control.

  No country or person who knew how bad cults could be could tolerate something like this.

  However, despite Miss Aberration’s obvious efforts to drive them out, the state church didn’t seem to be all that bothered by this. In fact, they welcomed it.

  This was because their doctrine could basically be summarized as “Use priest grouping skills to heal the ill.”

  Thus, they gladly let The Lunar Society take their churches and crystals, saying things like, “There is no problem as long as we get more Priests,” “We lost a few churches, but this allows us to dedicate more workers to other medical facilities and orphanages. A lot of us were lost to Gloria, you see,” and “Let us do our best for the sake of the people, together.”

  Basically, they were good to a fault — too clean to deal with this appropriately. And this despite the fact that they would be the ones most hurt by Miss Aberration’s scheming.

  I mentioned all that to Azurite. “The higher-ups in the capital must feel really uncomfortable about this.”

  “Oh, they are...” sighed Azurite with an odd degree of certainty. She seemed to be connected to the country’s leadership, so she might’ve experienced that firsthand. From what I could tell, the person she worked for was really troubled by Miss Aberration’s machinations.

  “All right, then...” I muttered, as I touched the large crystal.

  I got a list of jobs I could switch to, and instantly found Prism Rider.

  Before choosing it, I looked at the other options.

  There were Mechanic, Engineer, Pilot... a bunch of really “Dryfe-like” jobs.

  Forget whatever’s deeper in — this crystal by itself may have a great impact on the war, I thought.

  “But the kingdom doesn’t have the foundation to make good use of these jobs, right?” Nemesis commented.

  “Oh, that’s true.”

  Mechanical knowledge wasn’t something you could gain overnight. The kingdom would need a lot of research to reach the technological level of Dryfe.

  “Well, whether they even want to do that is up to the kingdom,” I said as I resumed doing what I’d come here to do.

  Touching the large crystal again displayed a menu of jobs I could switch to. Without any hesitation, I picked Prism Rider and initiated the process.

  There was no sound or fireworks or anything — the main job in my stat summary just changed to Prism Rider, and that was it.

  Becoming a Paladin, a high rank job, I remembered there having been some light, so this felt a bit underwhelming.

  Shu and Marie told me that the switch to Superior Jobs is really flashy... I wonder if I’ll ever get to see it.

  Suddenly, I got a message saying, “Switching your main job has rendered some of your skills unusable.”

  Oh, right. Certain jobs couldn’t use skills that were from groupings too distant in nature.

  I looked at my skills to figure out which skills I’d lost.

  Naturally, Horse Riding was still there.

  Paladin’s Aegis and Purifying Silverlight were available, too. They were Paladin skills, and I could only guess they had stayed because Paladin had elements from the rider grouping.

  The only skill that was now unusable was the healing spell.

  I had been able to learn it as a Paladin because that job was partially in the priest grouping, but switching to Prism Rider had severed that link.

  Oh well... I’d been questioning my healing magic’s usefulness, anyway. The amount it restored wasn’t too great. Instead of moping over that, I would just be thankful that I still had Aegis and Silverlight.

  “Though you might need to start keeping a keener eye on your healing item stocks,” commented Nemesis.

  “True,” I nodded.

  Losing that skill made me wonder if I’d gained any new ones, but when I checked, I found nothing.

  I guess I’ll need to level up, just like with Paladin.

  “Are you finished?” asked Azurite.

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “That’s my objective done. Now I can focus on helping you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it. Anyway, where do we go now? There are four paths we can take here.”

  Three, if you ignored the one we’d come through.

  “According to the information I was given, the path leading deeper underground is beyond that door,” Azurite said, as she pointed to one of the paths.

  There was an automatic door there, and many people, tian and Master alike, were walking through it.

  From what I could tell, the hallway beyond it was at least five meters high, and it was fittingly wide, too.

&nb
sp; “You’ll fit there just fine, Silver,” I said as I took my trusty steed out of my inventory and jumped on him.

  This was my first time riding him as a Prism Rider, but nothing seemed different from before.

  “It might be related to some Prism Rider skill, so I’ll ride Silver, if you don’t mind,” I said.

  “I have nothing against that, but...” Azurite muttered.

  Hm? But what?

  “If you don’t have anything against it... could you let me ride him later?” she asked. “I’ve always wanted to ride an original, but my mentor only let me ride his during special occasions.”

  Well, Langley Grandria’s Gold Thunder was a national treasure, after all. It’s not something they can put up for rent, I thought. There might’ve been other reasons, but still.

  “Why not just sit behind me?” I asked. “You’ll have to get off when we run into monsters, but it should all be fine until then.”

  “Can I really?”

  “Yeah.”

  I can’t imagine why you couldn’t, honestly.

  “What of me?” asked Nemesis. “Should I sit before you?”

  Oh, right, it’s about Nemesis.

  “Well, either that or you go into weapon form.”

  “Mm-hm. Very well. This is a dungeon, and you can never be sure what will come for you, so I will go for the halberd for now. There might be nasty debuffs waiting for us.”

  And so, she became The Flag Halberd.

  Figuring she had a good point, I put on the Black Warcoat’s hood to prepare for any ambushes.

  “Excuse me,” said Azurite, as she sat behind me.

  It suddenly hit me that Silver was carrying two people and a pretty hefty weapon. The combined weight had to be pretty big, but it didn’t seem like much for a Prism Steed. We went deeper in without any trouble at all.

  “Just what I expected of a Prism Steed!” exclaimed Azurite. “We will reach the inner parts of these ruins in no time!”

  “Yep!”

  Careful not to trample over the people surprised by Silver, we made our way deeper in.