CH 106

“When I woke up, I found myself tucked in a place I didn't know.”

Translated by Dawn

“When I woke up, I found myself tucked in a place I didn’t know.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

My consciousness gradually awakened. The blurred vision became apparent, and the first thing that caught my eye was the ceiling of a house I had never seen before.

“…Don’t tell me?”

I suppose this was the “I don’t know about this ceiling,” but that would be too much of a pattern, so I decided not to say it. Instead, I decided to try another pattern.

“Where am I? Who am I?”

I woke up on a bed that someone else was using, and the ceiling was wooden, but I immediately understood that it was not a place I knew, as it was a bit duller than the ceilings in my usual house.

Other than the bed, the only other furniture was a cozy table and chairs and a one-person chest of drawers, not that there was anything particularly unusual about the place.

At any rate, I could not just lie down on the bed and go back to sleep, so I got up from the bed and started to explore the place I was in.

“I’m pretty sure I collapsed in the dungeon, but what is this house?”

I was surprised to find myself in an unknown place, but if this was in a dungeon, someone might be living there.

I entered a room with some dismay at the thought of such a curious person and found the figure of the person who had rescued me there.

“Oh, you’re awake. Is your body all right, boy?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Did you bring me here?”

“Sort of.”

“I see. Well, thank you for saving my life. I’m Rolando, and I’m an adventurer.”

There was a girl who looked to be in her late teens, with long purplish hair and ruby eyes. Her ears were pointed like those of an elf, and her body was more like ‘that’. …She’s a C, closer to D.

Although her face was neat and well-defined, the atmosphere she wore suggested that she was probably much older than she appeared to be.

“Right, my name is Nagartinya. I’m just a weirdo here, doing a little research on magic.”

“I know it’s not something I’m supposed to ask, but for the time being, there’s something I want to ask.”

“This is obviously the dungeon where you fell, boy.”

“I see. So this is the dungeon after all.”

I wasn’t sure if she had a lot of life experience or if she was just impatient, but she answered before I could ask her what I wanted to ask her. I knew she was not a teenager.

“By the way…”

“I’m a half-elf. People often mistake me for an elf, but a half-elf has shorter ears than an elf.”

“I-I see…”

It saved me a lot of time and effort to have her answer my question before I asked it, but it also made me feel uncomfortable. Nagartinya must have sensed this because she started talking to me this time.

“I didn’t expect you to defeat that Skull Dragon, boy.”

“You were watching?”

“Yeah, I was.”

“I see…”

After that, I decided to try to analyze her to find out her identity, but the results I got were not what I expected.

[Name]: ?????

[Age]: ?????

[Gender]: ?????

[Race]: ?????

[Occupation]: ?????

Physical strength: ???

Magic power: ???

Strength: ???

Endurance: ???

Agility: ???

Dexterity: ???

Mental Strength: ???

Resistance: ???

Luck: ???

[Skills]: ???

[Name of other skills]: ?????

…Wh…at? I remember seeing this before. I believed that the same result was displayed when I analyzed the female demon race as well. From this result, I could tell that at least this Nagartinya woman either had good enough concealment skills to slip past my Analysis, or she was genuinely higher in status than me.

I came to the conclusion that it was most likely the latter from the atmosphere she had, and if she had higher abilities than me, she could deal with my analysis.

“It’s unimpressive to look at a person’s abilities bluntly.”

“It’s too risky to fight an unknown opponent without taking advantage of them. Instead, you should be praising me for my prudent judgment and precise response.”

“You are quite a talker, I see.”

“That applies to both of us, isn’t it? If you don’t want to be analyzed, you should just tell it off yourself. So, why don’t you tell me who you are?”

From there, an invisible battle between her and me unfolded, but I realized that this was no time for that and tried to leave the dungeon, but was stopped by Nagartinya.

“Well, wait a minute. Hey, boy, don’t you want to get stronger?”

“Huh?”

The sudden question made me raise my voice in a nonchalant manner, but I noticed that her eyes changed to a serious ones, and I tried to think again.

“Do you want to be strong?” If I had to answer yes or no to the question, then of course I would answer yes. But even if I were to express that here, what would change? I couldn’t understand her intention at all.

I didn’t know what she had in mind when she asked me that question, but I decided that it would not be a problem if I just gave her a pure answer, so I responded to her.

“If I could be stronger, I would, but what’s the point in asking that question—”

“All right, I’ll make you stronger. So, from today on, you will be my disciple.”

“What!? What are you talking about? Even if you suddenly say something like that, I have my own circumstances—”

“There’s no problem about that. The actual time here is different from the outside because of my Barrier Magic. In particular, a year here is only one hour in the outside world.”

I see, so you can live here for a year and only an hour will pass outside of these boundaries and such. ……Oi, wait a minute. Isn’t that?

“That’s that, isn’t it? That’s what they call the spirit and the—”

“Shhh, you shouldn’t say that.”

“….now I have more questions. You’re a reincarnated person, aren’t you?”

It was most likely someone from Japan, the same planet as mine, who knew about the room that appeared in the comic book in which a wish would come true if you collected those seven balls. So I asked her about it, but the answer I got was no.

“No, I’ve only heard of something like that before.”

“Well, that’s too bad. If you were a reincarnated person, I would have told you about the progress of that manga about becoming the King of the Pirates…”

“You don’t mean [Two Piece], do you!? Wow, so nostalgic! I only know the part where the two of the Four Emperors team up…”

“Fufufu, you’ve spoken too much……Nagartinya. No, reincarnated person.”

From there, Nagartinya began to tell her story as if she was being ripped to shreds. According to her story, she was originally half-elf by birth in an elven village, but the elves, with their exclusive views, did not accept her because of her human blood, and she lived a life of misfortune. That was roughly 400 years ago. I knew she was a loli hag.

Nagartinya, sensing what I was thinking, released a tremendous amount of pressure, but I managed to cover it up by urging her to continue the conversation. ……I wonder why women get so angry when we talk about age.

To return to the story, it seemed that when she turned twelve years old, she was able to do a whole lot of things, so she told the elven elders and left the elven village.

She said that she continued her journey sometime after that, and it was good that she succeeded in producing a strange elixir of immortality along the way and was able to use it to maintain her youth to her current appearance, but it was not difficult to imagine that the powers that be of the time would move in for her medicine when they found out about it.

She had settled in a secluded place, running away from such people, but it did not take long for them to come to her, having heard the rumors. It seemed that Nagartinya, tired of running away from such people, drifted down to the kingdom of Schells and chose to start living in the dungeons of Orargrand.

“So, here I am, living in this dungeon for more than two hundred years.”

“I see, that must have been tough. Wait, that’s in this life, isn’t it!? What about your previous life?”

“No. You shouldn’t dig into a maiden’s secrets…….”

“What is a person who has lived for four hundred years saying? Even though you may look young, it seems that you have Alzheimer’s disease in your head.”

“Good! Then it’s war!”

From there, for the most trivial of reasons, a little fight to the death ensued. As I predicted, Nagartinya’s strength was real, and I almost died several times. I mean, this woman was stronger than that Skull Dragon.

“Ha, ha, ha…”

“How is it? Have you felt any remorse?”

“No more, I’m leaving.”

“Wait.”

When I got fed up and tried to go back to my original place, she suddenly started to hold me back in a serious tone. Her attitude changed so often that I was at a loss as to how to respond to her, but this time, she seemed to be serious.

“Recently, the movements of the demon race have become more and more active. There is a possibility that the demon race will attack the Schells kingdom. The ones who will attack will probably be chosen from among the elite of the demon race, so if you are what you are now boy, you will be beaten to a pulp, you know?”

“…..”

“Putting aside the question of whether or not you will become my disciple, I think you can do a lot of training in this space for a while. What do you think? Why don’t you just do some training to prepare for the coming demons?”

“…..”

Indeed, what she said was a reasonable opinion. To begin with, my purpose in coming to Orargrand should have been to practice so that I would be able to fight the Female Demon on an equal or greater level.

But before I knew it, I had set up a trading company, hired slaves and slum people to become store owners, and made accessories to sell in the store—like that Rajbandar.…no, nothing. (+)

I was beginning to realize that I had been acting very far from my original goal, and I was beginning to think that it might be a good idea to start training here in order to develop my skills in earnest.

“What are you up to?”

“I don’t like to hear that you’re asking me if I’m up to something. It’s just that you look like a cute shota, boy… wait no, I just can’t stand the idea of a child being killed by a demon race.”

“Did you just say I’m a shota?”

“What are you talking about?”

This woman was rotten…it was too late. Everything had already been done.

Whatever Nagartinya’s intentions, I decided that it would be difficult for me to defeat the demons that would attack me with my current abilities, so I accepted her proposal, although it was aggravating, and decided to train here for a while. …Sometime later, I would come to deeply regret that decision, but I did not know it at the time.