Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 11

by Hiro Ainana

  “We’ve been forced to make corpse potions and demonic potions here.”

  I had them show me the potions they’d been making, all of which were very low-quality.

  They probably didn’t have the skills to make advanced drugs like these.

  There were some higher-quality demonic potions in the hideout, too. Ludaman must have been providing materials to an outside source to make better potions while attempting to make them on his own, too.

  “If you take us outside, we’ll be publicly executed as criminals for making these illegal drugs.”

  They said they would rather die here than face that fate.

  According to them, even if they explained that they had been forced to do it, it wouldn’t lighten their sentence.

  “Couldn’t you just flee Labyrinth City, then?”

  “No…”

  They regretted their sins so deeply that they would’ve felt guilty about getting away to live in freedom.

  “All right, I understand. I’ll try to come up with a solution, so let’s deal with that once we’ve left here.”

  Without waiting for an answer, I teleported with them to the Ivy Manor.

  I could help handle their conflict after I’d rescued the other captives and arrested all the plunderers.

  Since these girls definitely knew what they’d been cultivating, I had Lelillil put them in a room separate from all the others for now.

  “What the hell?! Just who do you think I am?!”

  “Beats me.”

  A plunderer charged at me despite the hail of Remote Stun bullets I’d brought down on him, so I knocked him out with a punch instead.

  Once I’d sent the blond noblewoman, the alchemist, and the doctors to the Ivy Manor, I’d set about taking down the other plunderer hideouts.

  This was the last one left that had captives.

  “I ain’t done yeeeeeet!”

  The bloodied plunderer stood up; I must have held back too much.

  The half-baked toughness of these demonic-potion addicts was getting exhausting.

  “Go to sleep already.”

  As the plunderer brandished a knife that was glowing red, I hopped in front of him using “Warp.”

  Then I held back a bit less than usual as I punched him, resulting in the unpleasant sensation of his bones splintering under my fist.

  “Nnngaaahhh!”

  Oops. His Demonic Body effect must have worn off right before I hit him.

  The plunderer fell to the ground, bleeding out from deadly wounds.

  I would’ve felt guilty if I just let him die, so I sprinkled a low-grade magic potion from the previous hideout over him to be safe.

  “D-don’t move! Or I’ll kill this human wench!”

  One of the plunderers I’d defeated earlier had recovered and was holding hostage a woman he’d been abusing.

  “Kya-ha-ha-ha!”

  The woman let out a shrill laugh despite the knife pressed to her throat; maybe the repeated assaults had made her go mad.

  “This is all just awful.”

  The plunderers’ toughness and their terrible deeds were both wearing me down.

  I’d rescued plenty of people who had been through unthinkably terrible things, but that was one thing I’d never get used to.

  The gloom was beginning to build up heavily in my heart.

  “Drop your weapon now! I-I’m serious!”

  The man’s knife pressed harder against the woman’s throat, drawing blood.

  Ignoring his threats, I teleported over to him with “Warp,” then punched him in the face, taking care not to shatter his skull.

  I had used Magic Hand to hold his knife hand in place, so it didn’t move an inch.

  As the rest of the plunderer’s body went flying, his trapped arm hit an unnatural angle with an unpleasant crack, but I didn’t feel an ounce of regret about that.

  I collected all the plunderers from this base, used Return to teleport to the jail area I’d created, and tossed them into a new earthen prison.

  I could hear shouts of rage from the plunderers in several of the other jails, but I paid them no mind, returning to the last base to rescue the captives.

  “The plants in this one have been picked clean, too…”

  Around half of the hideouts I’d investigated had fields for destruction stalks and ruination weeds.

  However, aside from the first base I visited, Ludaman’s hideout, more than half of the plants had withered, and the rest no longer bore fruit.

  The main difference between the first hideout and the rest of them was that strange magic circle.

  Most likely, that magic circle held the key factor in cultivating the ingredients for the demonic potions.

  “The yellow-robed mage, huh…?”

  That was how Ludaman had referred to the man who had taught them the cultivation methods.

  It would probably be best to try to get more information from Ludaman about that.

  Since the dungeon he was in was currently sealed, I decided to talk to the guildmaster about the magic circles and save sneaking in as a last resort.

  “…Wh-who are you?”

  The quavering voice drew my attention behind me, where a group of women stood looking exhausted to the point of near death.

  The woman who’d been laughing maniacally before was quiet as a corpse.

  “Sorry, I was lost in thought. I’ll bring you all to a safe place.”

  At that, the women broke into weak smiles.

  “Come here, please… Teleport.”

  I picked up each of the women with Magic Hand and used the Return spell to head back up to the Ivy Manor.

  “Lord Kuro!”

  The moment she saw me, the blond noble came running over to me with a shriek.

  Now that she’d bathed and had put on makeup, she looked more mature than her years.

  Besides makeup, I had also given the noble girls dresses, shoes, and so on, albeit nothing too fancy.

  She was quite a beauty, though less like an actress and more the intellectual business-world type.

  “I hardly recognize you.”

  “Thank you!”

  The blonde gave me a sparkling smile.

  If I were a little younger, I might misunderstand her eagerness for a crush on me.

  Behind her, a plain young woman waited her turn to talk to me.

  “Lord Kuro, thank you for showing such generous treatment to commoners like myself.”

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “No, you’ve already done more than enough.”

  This was Polina, the bag-carrier girl who’d gone to fetch the doctors before.

  Many bag carriers and explorers tended to be pretty rough-and-tumble, but her polite words and calm attitude felt very refined.

  “I brought you some hot water, Lord Kuro.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  I drank the hot water to soothe my parched throat.

  Through the steam, I saw that Miss Elder Sister was taking care of the girls I’d just rescued from the latest hideout, showing them to their rooms.

  “Kya-ha-ha-ha!”

  “Calm down. Your suffering will be over soon.”

  Miss Elder Sister’s words to the disturbed young woman sounded ominous, but she was referring to Lelillil’s healing House Magic.

  There had been a few other women in a similar state to this one, but Lelillil’s House Magic skills “Mind Care” and “Recuperation” had brought their minds peace.

  Wow, house fairies are amazing.

  I praised Lelillil’s impressive magic, and she puffed up her chest like a proud child.

  According to her, the magic’s effects were temporary, but that should be good enough for now.

  What these girls needed most at the moment was rest and comfort.

  Since Lelillil seemed to be taking good care of them, I left her in charge with the help of three of the young women: the blond noblewoman Miss Eluterina; the carrier Polina; and the muscula
r explorer Miss Elder Sister, aka Sumina.

  Eluterina excelled at giving people instructions, Polina was popular and good at negotiating, and Sumina was highly skilled at resolving disputes.

  I also had the five girls I’d rescued from the fire assisting Lelillil and running messages to the blond noblewoman.

  If they had nowhere else to go, maybe I could just start paying them to work for me.

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “E-erm… The food, well…”

  The blond noble hesitated, reluctant to complain, so I looked to Polina to finish for her.

  “There’s not enough food.”

  “I’ll put more in the storehouse, then.”

  Right, I forgot.

  Since Lelillil had originally lived here alone, of course the manor wouldn’t have enough supplies stocked up for the nearly two hundred women I’d rescued.

  Incidentally, most of the rescued girls were explorers or bag carriers, but there were also doctors, alchemists, priests, soldiers, prostitutes, and other professions.

  The vast majority of them were commoners, but a little over 20 percent were slaves, and there were also more nobles than I’d expected.

  “What kind of food would you like?”

  “We were chewing on weeds down in the labyrinth. Anything edible is fine with us, even if it’s not perfect.”

  Polina smiled a bit self-derisively.

  “Highly nutritious foods it is, then. You can check them over later.”

  The Ivy Manor had a food storehouse with temperature control, so I planned to stock it with rice, vegetables, a few sweet and vitamin-loaded yellorange fruits from the Mountain-Tree, and one-ton blocks of whale and octopus monster meat.

  First, however, I wanted to confirm something.

  “Do you know what the plunderers were forcing you to make?”

  “Yes, I heard the alchemist and doctors arguing about it at the base…”

  “I’d seen them before in a medicinal herb encyclopedia at the royal academy.”

  Both Polina and the blond noble affirmed, although they wisely refrained from naming the substance out loud.

  “What about the others?”

  “No, I believe it was only the alchemist and the doctors, unless anyone else overheard by chance.”

  “I haven’t said a word to anyone, so I don’t think they know.”

  Hmm. That was a relief.

  “Lord Kuro…”

  Seeing me deep in thought must have made them nervous about their futures; both Polina and Eluterina turned pale.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  If it seemed like they were doomed to oblivion here, I could always ask the elves of Bolenan Forest to make a hidden village for them to live in.

  That might be too meddlesome of me, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly knowing I’d sent them out into the world unprotected.

  “I have a request for you two. Whenever you sense an opportunity in conversation, try to find anyone else who knows what you were growing.”

  I felt bad for making them do spy work, but I had to figure out who else knew.

  It would be nice if there was a simple way to determine the truth, but the only method I knew of was an analyst’s examination.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t an analyst conveniently among the rescued.

  As I finished speaking with the pair, another light approached on my radar.

  “Lord Kuro! Isn’t there anything I can do, too? …Wait, were you talking about something serious?”

  It was the explorer Sumina, who the other girls called Elder Sister.

  “Sumina, did you know you were growing gabo barley and gabo wheat in the labyrinth?”

  I used my “Fabrication” skill to come up with a name that wouldn’t be associated with destruction stalks and ruination weeds, then offered Sumina a leading question.

  Polina and the blond noblewoman looked surprised for an instant but quickly resumed their normal expressions.

  “Huh, so that’s what those creepy plants were called. Are they related to those gross gabo fruits?”

  “Yeah, seems the plunderers were going to use them to create a goblin army.”

  “Yikes, now, that’s scary.”

  Sumina seemed to believe the story I’d made up with the help of “Fabrication.”

  It looked like she didn’t know they were actually cultivating demonic-potion ingredients, then.

  “It’s better if nobody else hears about this. So keep it between us, all right?”

  “R-right, of course.”

  I didn’t know how loose-lipped this Elder Sister was, but “between us” often led to something being spread around pretty quickly.

  Better yet, a gossipy-looking girl passing through the hallway had been listening at the door when I said this, so the story would probably permeate the whole group by the following day.

  Hopefully, it would satisfy the curiosity of those who didn’t know what they’d been cultivating.

  Even if it didn’t sound convincing, that could be enough for a lot of people.

  “So, Lord Kuro, is there some way I can help?”

  “Hmm, let me think…”

  Sumina wanted to help, so I decided to ask her to sort through the tools and equipment I’d taken from the plunderers’ bases.

  The explorers who’d lost their belongings could get new equipment from the stash or sell pieces of equipment to buy whatever they needed.

  By the time I’d finished dropping all the items in the courtyard by way of the Item Box, Sumina had returned with a group of helpers.

  “Oof, that stinks!”

  “It certainly is quite the stench… Deodorant.”

  I used magic to deodorize the foul-smelling junk heap.

  “Whoa! That’s amazing, Lord Kuro!”

  The young explorer women were thrilled about the no-longer-smelly armor and weapons.

  “I’m surprised those plunderers had such nice stuff.”

  “There’s hard beetle carapace armor, labyrinth turtle shields, and even mantis armor!”

  “These weapons are pretty crazy, too. Mantis broadswords, swords made from guardian ants’ scythe arms, and… Damn, an Antwing Silver Sword!”

  The underwhelming gray sword one of the girls held up looked familiar.

  It was one of the monster weapons I’d seen at the dark auction in the old capital.

  “I’d love to try fighting with a sword like this in the labyrinth, even just once.”

  Miss Elder Sister and the others gazed at the sword longingly.

  “Me too. How am I ever going to save up thirty gold coins?”

  “I saw one at a secondhand shop for twenty gold coins once.”

  “Secondhand stuff breaks so fast, though…”

  Apparently, this was a coveted piece of equipment to them.

  I had no problem letting them have it, but unfortunately, there was only one.

  I did have the recipe and tons of the required elite antwings in Storage, though. Maybe I would try to mass-produce enough for all of them that evening?

  However, they’d probably be uncomfortable receiving them for free, so I could always ask them to help me bring in the plunderers for arrest or something.

  I left Sumina in charge there for the time being, then went to find the blond noblewoman, who was busy giving out instructions.

  “I’m going back to deal with the rest of the plunderers, but I’ll be here tomorrow morning. If you need anything, talk to Lelillil.”

  “Y-yes, Lord Kuro!”

  Once I’d filled the storehouse with ingredients as planned, I went back to the labyrinth to crush the smaller plunderer hideouts that didn’t have any captives.

  By the end, I’d rounded up well over a hundred plunderers in the earthen jails.

  “Whew, I’m exhausted…”

  I’d finished apprehending the plunderers and rescuing the captives, so I decided to take a break from hero work fo
r the day.

  “Come in.”

  Not long after I changed back into Satou and teleported from the labyrinth to the mansion with Return, someone knocked on the study door.

  “Welcome hooome!”

  “Welcome back, sir!”

  “Satou.”

  The younger group tumbled into the room to welcome me back.

  Tama or Mia must have sensed my return.

  “Welcome back, master. How’s the plunderer roundup going?”

  Arisa closed the door before questioning me.

  “Oh, that’s all done.”

  “…Wha—?”

  Arisa’s dumbfounded stare was actually pretty adorable.

  “Y-you’re done already? Isn’t that too fast, even for just one area? It hasn’t even been half a day yet!”

  “I scoured the labyrinth for plunderers to catch. There’s definitely not a single one left on the upper or middle stratums, at least.”

  Not that there had been any in the middle stratum to begin with.

  “Th-that’s unbelievable.”

  “Greeeat?”

  “That’s our master for you, sir!”

  “Mm. Good job.”

  Soaking up the girls’ praise, I sat on a sofa in the study to alleviate my exhaustion.

  “Forehead.”

  Arisa prodded at my brow, where I apparently had some new wrinkles.

  Covering it up with a fake smile, I rubbed my forehead.

  Arisa didn’t seem to like that, if her expression was any indication.

  “All hands! Commence Operation: Group Cuddles for master!”

  I thought I was used to Arisa’s randomness by now, but this was a particularly weird move.

  “Hee-hee!”

  “Cliiiing, sir.”

  Tama curled up on my lap, and Pochi latched onto my right side.

  “No hogging.”

  “Have haaalf?”

  “I’ll take this side, then.”

  Mia squeezed in next to Tama on my lap, and Arisa sat down on my left side, grabbing my arm.

  “Arisa…?”

  “We’re using our charms to heal your ravaged heart, silly!”

  Aw. I guess I must have worried them.

  I let the kids’ warm presence relax me and wound up sleeping until dinnertime.

  “Okay, let’s go over the issues here…”