“...!”
No, um... I mean, I-I’m glad you feel that way, but your b-breasts... They’re pressing up against me... and my heart’s beating really fast?!
“Just keep a poker face, Rekka.”
That’s impossible! Not that you would understand, R! This is a really delicate issue for teenage boys! I mean, we might try to pretend it’s not, but it definitely is!
Her soft body, the tickle of her breath on my ears... My endurance was put to the test until we made landfall.
▽
We reached the island on schedule, but the sun had already set. Since we were all tired from our travels, we decided to spend the night in the abandoned cottage and visit the cave where this “Demon’s Pot” supposedly was the next day.
Before we went to sleep, we all gathered on the first floor of the cottage to discuss our plans for tomorrow. Chelsea and Hibiki checked to make sure we had the gear we needed, and Silver Slayer volunteered to lead the party into the cave.
“My body is made of liquid silver, so no matter what kind of traps there are, they won’t kill me,” she said.
Some of the documents that Chelsea had found on the Demon’s Pot suggested that the cave was booby-trapped, so we gladly agreed to her offer and came up with a plan. Silver Slayer would take the lead, Chelsea would disarm any traps we found, Hibiki and I would provide support, and Satsuki would use her magic to gather information on the cave.
I was still concerned about Rosalind, but there’d been no sign of her on the way here. Maybe leaving the country right after we saved Satsuki had paid off. Satsuki told me that Rosalind, Iris, and the others were still in Japan. With her Magic of Omnipotence on our side, we could at least be sure that we wouldn’t have to worry about them here.
And with everything settled, we all did one last check on our equipment and went to bed to get a good night’s sleep for the next day.
▽
But just an hour or so later, we had a problem.
“My brother’s condition has gotten worse?!”
Chelsea got a call from the hospital in Japan, which had evidently gone to a good deal of trouble to track her down. Apparently her brother’s condition was deteriorating. When she hung up, her face was dead pale.
“What... What do I do?” she stammered.
“Calm down, Chelsea,” Hibiki said.
“I can’t calm down... I... I...” Chelsea suddenly seemed to get an idea. She ran over to Silver Slayer and grabbed her by her jacket. “Silver Slayer! You’re a homunculus, right? Made from a philosopher’s stone?”
“Affirmative. My master used a philosopher’s stone to form my core.”
“And did this master of yours ever tell you how to make a philosopher’s stone?”
Philosopher’s stone? Come to think of it, hadn’t Silver Slayer said something about that before?
“Well? Did he?!” Chelsea started to shake Silver Slayer as she shouted.
“Negative. It’s true that my body was made with a philosopher’s stone, but my master did not give me information on how to make it.”
“I see...” The strength drained from Chelsea’s hands. But she still didn’t give up. “Then... Then...! Can you give me some of your philosopher’s stone? Even just a little? Really, just a little would be fine!”
Why was Chelsea suddenly so interested in the philosopher’s stone?
Satsuki must have seen that I was confused, because she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “The philosopher’s stone is one of alchemy’s greatest secrets. It can be used for many things. If the philosopher’s stone used to create Silver Slayer is a real one, it could be used to make panacea, an elixir to cure any illness.”
She continued to explain that if Silver Slayer was a true homunculus who’d been in operation for two centuries, not only did her philosopher’s stone have to be real, it had to be a powerful, highly refined one. It could easily make an elixir to cure Chelsea’s brother. But...
“Unfortunately, that is impossible,” Silver Slayer said mechanically.
“Are you... absolutely sure?” Chelsea asked again.
“The philosopher’s stone is one and yet all. All and yet one. A single philosopher’s stone can serve any function, but it cannot be separated from its purpose. If you were to somehow take the philosopher’s stone out from inside me, I would cease to function.”
“I see...” Chelsea’s hands finally let go of Silver Slayer’s coat, dropping to her sides lifelessly. “I’m sorry... I’m asking for the impossible, aren’t I?”
“Please don’t let it bother you, Lady Margaret. If you’re willing to wait until after I complete my master’s order, I will freely give you the philosopher’s stone,” Silver Slayer said, almost sounding apologetic.
The room filled with a weighty silence.
If I remembered right, Chelsea had told me her brother had three months to live. I—and probably the rest of us—had assumed that meant we had three whole months. Of course diving into some trap-filled cave to find an ancient treasure wasn’t going to be an easy task, but we thought we had three months to do it. At the very least, time had been on our side. But not anymore. The situation had changed.
Chelsea was a woman who’d spent her entire life overcoming tough challenges, and now she was reduced to asking for the impossible. That’s how desperate things were. I had to do something for her.
“Chelsea, let’s go.”
“...Rekka?”
“We don’t have a lot of time, so we can’t waste what precious little time we do have sitting around here being depressed, right?”
Chelsea looked up at me in surprise.
“Let’s go to the cave and find the Demon’s Pot right now.”
Everyone in the room nodded.
▽
According to Chelsea, the Demon’s Pot was a hot topic among treasure hunters. The genie in the lamp, the fairy in the spring... There were all kinds of otherworldly beings in fairy tales who would grant people’s wishes. And so to a normal person, that’s all the Demon’s Pot was. A fairy tale. They probably laughed when they heard treasure hunters tell stories about it.
But since Chelsea was born into a family of mages, she had a certain level of awareness about the supernatural. She was probably able to see the deeper meaning in those funny stories and put the pieces together for herself.
“Maybe it’s a little late to be asking this... But this Demon’s Pot actually belongs to a demon, right? Aren’t they going to ask for something in return? Like your soul or something?” I asked Chelsea as we descended into the cave.
“As far as I can tell, there weren’t any stories about people dying or families getting cursed after the pot was used to grant a wish. There are certain beings like the genie in Aladdin’s lamp that exist for the purpose of granting wishes. I think the demon in the pot is something like that.”
“Huh, you’re right. The genie in Aladdin’s story grants your wish just because you rub his lamp...”
I glanced at Satsuki, who nodded back at me. If the Magic of Omnipotence said it was safe, we probably didn’t have to worry about the demon demanding some terrible price.
“Oh dear.”
Suddenly, Silver Slayer was impaled by a spear that came flying down from the ceiling.
“Nwaaaaah!”
“Sir Namidare, calm down. I’m just fine,” Silver Slayer assured me, despite her current condition.
She removed the spear, and the liquid silver that formed her body closed in on the hole to seal it. She was perfectly healed in an instant.
“Yeah... I mean, I knew this was going to happen, but it’s really scary to actually see it.”
I’d lost track of how many pitfalls, falling rocks, and spear traps we’d encountered. And each time we ran into one, something awful happened to Silver Slayer’s body. She was intentionally walking in front of us to trigger any traps so the rest of us could stay safe, which meant that she had to be the one taking all the hits... Honestly, it wasn’t go
od for my heart to watch.
Once Silver Slayer regenerated, we’d have her figure out how the trap worked, and then Chelsea, our trap specialist, would tell the rest of us how to cross it safely.
“Question,” Silver Slayer said once we passed another rain of spears. “That trap was set so that the spears would follow automatically when someone passed under them.”
“Yeah, there was no way to dodge it,” I said.
We’d made ourselves a little covering in the corner of the path that could block the spears, and crawled under that to get through.
“That is my question,” Silver Slayer said.
“I thought it was weird too,” Hibiki chimed in.
“Yeah, me too,” said Chelsea, the same as the others.
“It certainly is strange, isn’t it?” added Satsuki.
Huh? I was stumped. Was I the only one who didn’t get it?
“Rekka, you’re pretty dim when things aren’t riding on a razor’s edge, aren’t you?”
Shaddup, R. Spears and rocks go right through you, so you don’t even have to worry about any of this.
“Um... What’s strange?” I choked down my embarrassment and asked.
“There’s no right way through these traps,” Silver Slayer explained.
But I still didn’t get it. What did she mean by “no right way”?
“Explanation: All tools are made for a purpose. Normally, the purpose of traps of this nature would be to keep anyone who isn’t the rightful owner of the pot from acquiring it. But if there’s no safe path, not even the owner would be able to retrieve the treasure.”
“Oh!”
That made sense. The whole reason you would put your treasure in a safe was to keep anyone else from getting to it. But if there was no key to the safe, there would be no real point to it.
We stopped to think about the situation for a moment.
“Bbz.... Bbzzzzzbbzzz... Be... Bzzzbz... Bzzbz... gone from this... Bzz... place...” Suddenly, a strange, staticky voice filled the cave. “...Bzzz... go.... Bzzb... Be gone...”
Be...? Be gone?
“Guys, did you hear that?”
Everyone nodded.
“I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”
“It’s probably magic being used to transmit sound from a distance,” Satsuki said.
“...Be... Bzzzzz... gone...” The mysterious voice kept repeating itself.
It was really creepy...
“Sorry,” I said, unsure if the speaker could even hear me, “but we can’t do that.”
We ignored the echoing voice and proceeded deeper into the cave.
▽
With Satsuki’s help, we were able to map the caves. (We told Chelsea it was just search magic.) We went deeper and deeper until we reached where the Demon’s Pot supposedly lay.
It was a small space compared to Jizu Village, but it was still big enough to hold almost a dozen people. In the back of the room were several tiny paths that seemed to lead still deeper into the cave. But the Demon’s Pot itself was nestled in a tiny hole in the face of a rock wall.
“This pot is... less impressive than I was expecting,” I said.
“Really? It looks like it’s got some elaborate decorations to me.”
“No, I was thinking it would be in a treasure chest or something.”
The hole the pot was in had a flat bottom, but the rest of it was just natural rock.
“I will now remove it,” Silver Slayer said.
She put her hands around it and lifted it up, careful of any last traps.
The Demon’s Pot looked like a piece of pottery an Arabian king might have used to decorate his mansion. The pot was almost spherical. It was emerald in color, with golden handles on either side, and topped with a tiny golden stopper like a wine bottle would have.
“We just have to take the stopper out, right?”
Chelsea gulped. She pulled on the stopper, and there was a popping sound like someone uncorking a bottle.
In that instant, purple smoke began to pour out of the pot. The smoke coalesced in the shape of a human. What looked like a young Arabian dancing girl appeared floating in the air before us out of the smoke. She had purple hair, tied back with a golden hairpiece, and her body was decorated with expensive-looking adornments. She wore a pair of puffy white pants, but above them most of her dark amber skin was exposed.
“...Tch.” She glared at us and clicked her tongue loudly.
It was obvious just from looking at her that she was ticked.
Chelsea was hesitating. She seemed worried about how to address the being she was about to ask for a wish. If she said the wrong thing and made her mad, maybe she wouldn’t grant her wish at all. It made perfect sense that Chelsea would get nervous now.
So I decided to test the waters first.
“...Hey,” I said.
“What the hell do you want?” the girl snapped back.
Yeah. She was definitely about to lose it.
“Um... Wh-What’s your name?”
“Queen Ulaula the Great.”
“‘The Great’?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“Not at all, Queen Ulaula the Great.”
This little girl, or demon, or whatever she was, was seriously scary.
Also, R, please stop making funny poses behind Ulaula. You’re making me want to laugh!
“S-So... Queen Ulaula the Great, can we assume that you’re the demon who grants wishes?”
“That’s right. What do you want from me now? You greedy humans are never satisfied,” she asked, raising a haughty eyebrow.
“Oh, um... You first, Chelsea.”
Arrogant or not, if this girl was who we hoped she was, she could grant Chelsea’s wish. I motioned Chelsea forward and had her stand in front of Ulaula.
“...I want you to cure my sick brother,” she pleaded desperately as she pressed her hands together tightly in front of her chest.
And the wish-granting demon...
“No. No. No. Not a chance in hell.”
...told her no? W-Wait a second!
“Ulaula, you can’t...”
“‘Ulaula’?”
“Queen Ulaula the Great! A-Aren’t you supposed to grant any wish?”
“Yeah, that’s right. My job is to follow the demonic contract and grant you nasty, greedy humans your wishes.”
Now I was just confused.
“Then why won’t you grant Chelsea’s wish?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“But tell me why!”
I scratched my head. We were getting nowhere.
Finally, Satsuki, who’d been listening from behind us, took a step forward.
“But Queen Ulaula the Great, you’ve granted many wishes in the past, haven’t you? The last wish you granted was 172 years ago, to a man named Eli Perry who wanted to become rich,” Satsuki said, her words coming out smooth and unfaltering.
Chelsea looked at her, shocked. “Satsuki... how did you know that?” she asked.
There was nothing that detailed in the documents about the Demon’s Pot that Chelsea had showed us.
“I’m sorry for not telling you sooner. I’m not actually a normal mage. If I told you I was the heir to the Magic of Omnipotence, would you know what I was talking about?”
“The Magic of Omnipotence?!”
The legends of the Great Omnipotent Magic were well known among mages, so a former mage-in-training like Chelsea would certainly know about it. But...
“Satsuki, are you sure about this?”
Satsuki’s family had kept the secret of their magic hidden from the world for generations. The power to access the Akashic Record and view the entire history of the universe was far too dangerous to treat casually.
“It’s all right. She’s not a bad person.”
“I see,” I said.
If Satsuki was okay with this, then so was I. And that left us right back at...
“Now, Queen Ulaula the
Great, you’ve granted many wishes in the past. So why do you refuse to grant hers?”
“...Tch.”
“If you’re not willing to tell me, I can just find out for myself...”
“This is why I hate human beings. You’re the most obnoxious creatures imaginable,” Ulaula barked, frowning angrily. “The reason is simple. That woman is a mage.”
“What?”
“I don’t like mages,” Ulaula spat out in answer to my question. “They try to make miracles on their own, without relying on my power. To someone like me whose job it is to grant wishes, you’re basically stealing my work.”
Um... So in other words, she was upset because she felt like her role in life was being taken away from her?
“And a long time ago, a mage did something terrible to me.” Her eyes were twitching, as if she was trying to repress her rage.
“Does that mean that you’re the one who set up those traps with no way through them?” Hibiki asked.
“That’s right.”
“But those would be enough to kill almost anyone who wasn’t a mage. You said you hate mages, but is it really that you hate all of mankind?”
“No. I don’t mind disgusting, nasty humans.”
“Then you’ll grant my wish and Rekka’s, right?” Hibiki continued her line of questioning.
She had a good point. I wasn’t a mage, and neither was she. But the demon of wishes still looked upset.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? I like the disgusting, nasty humans.”
“What do you mean?” Hibiki asked.
“You just said most people would die in those traps, and you were right. But ‘most’ means that a few still survive. When a human sacrifices their comrades to make it through those deadly traps, a madness comes to dwell in their eyes.”
With those words, Ulaula smiled for the first time. It was indeed the smile of a demon, inspiring fear in all who saw it.
“The humans who come to me with that madness in their eyes are possessed by insatiable greed. Any morals or ethics they had are long gone, and all that’s left is pure greed. They’re the worst kind of scum there is.”
Ulaula laughed with a cold smile that suggested a madness of her own.
“And it’s so much fun to watch these fallen creatures. Even a demon like me can’t help falling in love with them. That man whose name you mentioned, Eli Perry? He used his fortune to fulfill for himself every desire a man could ever have, and at the same time drove over ten thousand of his fellow tribesmen mad with despair. Unchecked greed,” she said, “brings unchecked misery.”
I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 4 Page 11