...One and a half days, and two nights. That was how long we had left to prepare. ...And now, that's how much time has passed. It was gone before we knew it. The sky is overcast. There's no wind. Just the roaring of the river. ... Still, the visitors will arrive today. Agehatate said as much before departing into the wilderness again. Even on an important day such as this, she still has business to attend to; more important than overseeing what we've been working up to all this time. She has even gone so far as to say that Setsuna would be enough. Well, who are we to know better? She's thousands of years old. She surely has some kind of master plan in motion... 『 ... 』『 ... 』 Eldritch Serendipity [LV.2] Back to back, we lean harder against each other. It feels like an hour has passed since we first sat down. ... Did you know Agehatate gave us new outfits? She did, in our sleep. It's all white silk; the bandages were replaced by silk. On top of that is a mid-layer of silk. On top of that is a dress of silk. It's all very slippery and weird. Fantastical though. ... Also, she placed a stone shrine here. A little one, like, sitting height. It's not elaborate, there's a dozen shapes maybe. Just enough to qualify as a shrine? When we asked, she said it was going to help, but that's it. ... And you know -- Agehatate called them hospitality lessons, but half of them felt like "How to act more like me-" lessons. The new outfits and shrine make more sense when you know that, but there are also lingering feelings of narcissism. She's essentially a demi-god though so, is it really narcissism? ... Sorry. Just a little nervous. What if there's a crowd of visitors? Everyone's going to be looking at us, right? ... The Demon King... used to handle situations like these. Standing behind him, people would naturally talk to him first. And if we had something to say, he was usually the megaphone for it. Groups, crowds, other players in general, he just handled them. ... Until he shared that dumb video. So many people congratulating us on clearing Nine-Tails... So many people asking about how to become Pure-Demons... So many reactions and messages and expressions... Accusations of hacking, awkward white-knighting... Invitations, friend requests, creeps... ※¹ ... Mixed feelings. ... Well, things are different now. We chose to learn Agehatate's brand of hospitality. The coming attention, and whatever expressions they'll have... It's all under our control this time. It's at our discretion. The image we paint for ourselves is entirely up to us. He's no longer necessary. We can handle ourselves. ... Distant chirping breaches the white noise of the falls, as what appears to be a hundred startled birds erupt from the forest collecting into an amorphous cloud of black dots. At first, it seems to shift and contort in place, but after a few seconds of seemingly growing, it's apparent it's heading in our direction. ... We return to our neutral forward gazes. ...Eventually, the shadows of that avian cloud pass over the river, island, and us, chirping the whole way. We ignore them, keeping our gazes forward, and our bodies lifelessly still. Eldritch Serendipity [LV.5] ... A minute or so passed uneventfully, before a faint tinkling sound could be heard. A distant noise, that casters like us could tell was the beginnings of a magic spell. Still, we make an effort not to look or move, not because we feel particularly suicidal, but because of Agehatate's instruction. Allegedly, this is protocol. Eldritch Serendipity [LV.6] Seconds pass.

The tinkling dies out, and is replaced by what sounds like loose jostling equipment. A harsh shake, followed by silence, then another harsh shake, like the sound of someone with a backpack making a long jump. The sound of that distant jostling equipment too dies out, overwhelmed by the equally faraway whitewater river. Eldritch Serendipity [LV.7] ... Clunk Clunk Clunk Clunk Clunk Clunk Clunk Clunk Approaching steps fade into our hearing, and halt what sounds like a few meters away. Eldritch Serendipity [LV.8] We can hear breathing. ...Shuffling. ... Heartbeats, our own. 「 O, divine spirits- 」 ?! 「 -I beseech thee. 」 There's an echoing in our heads in a manner similar to Agehatate, but it's a male voice, with a completely different regional accent. At this point, of course, we turn to look. There, down on one knee, with his hands clasped together in prayer, is an older adventurer-looking boy, filthy, with tattered and rusted equipment. A digitigrade demihuman; black rabbit ears extend from the top of his head. His eyes are shut, and he's lowered his head to graze his praying hands. SING CRIER CH.29 - The Weir Shrine 「 My friend, my brother, please. 「 I will front any price if he might be healed... 」 We look further down, on the ground, where the sickly body of a similarly aged boy lies. This one, however, seems to be an elf. 『 ... 』『 ... 』 What is this situation? Hey, what's going on? Are we... being... prayed to? Eh?! There's no way, right?! It's hard to describe the feeling but... it's reminiscent of the night we overheard Agehatate speaking to Polimion. The difference is, that time, we only heard Agehatate's side of the conversation... This time, there's definitely someone directly praying to us, right?!

「 I...I cannot bring him home like this. 「 I'm at my wit's end... I beg of thee.」 The echoing voice becomes shakier. The boy's praying hands clasp tighter. It's... not a bad expression. We look at each other, then back to him. 『『 « Identify » 』』 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

LV.7 ▬ Ælfweard 'Otto'

Leporidae Demihuman

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

_____HP ▐ 673/675

_____MP ▐ 19/128

_____SP ▐ 247/247

__P.ATK ▐ 122

__P.DEF ▐ 88

__M.ATK ▐ 22

__M.DEF ▐ 0

Effects ▐ ◈ Goddess's Blessing

Effects ▐ ◈ Heroic Determination

_Titles ▐ 「 The Hero 」「 Merrymaker 」

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Hero?! Again?! I mean- Ah, yes, of course. What a quote-unquote coincidence. Quote-unquote FATE surely has nothing to do with this. How funny - cough - that our first visitor - cough - is the one and only hero? There's surely no agenda behind sending Jing'ra's replacement to us specifically at this time or anything. ※² ... Not that we have enough information to take action with that. If The Hero is here again, FATE likely has some kind of plan for us, but not knowing what it is kind of makes it unreasonable to do anything rash. It would be nice if we could have nothing to do with this though... FATE can be such a pain when it has its eyes on you... 「 ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯… ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯？」 Why. Why don't we understand h- Was that a prayer exclusive thing? Can we only understand him if he's praying? Fudgesicles. Maybe it goes both ways? Maybe we can speak to him through praying? Pray, if you wish to speak to us. ... Ah, that's not working at all. 「 … 」 Oh god, he's staring at us. Um... let's see... Right, his friend! Or brother! Whatever! 『『 « Identify » 』』 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

LV.8 ▬ Heidrich 'Brandr'

Elf

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

HP ▐ 0/640

MP ▐ 0/204

SP ▐ 0/201

P.ATK ▐ 134

P.DEF ▐ 83

M.ATK ▐ 36

M.DEF ▐ 16

Effects ▐ ◈ Death

▐ Poison [LV.7]

Titles ▐ 「 Merrymaker 」

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Wow, he's dead. Didn't he say something about healing? Did he actually mean he wants us to revive him? Or did he seriously think he wasn't dead yet? ...Because he's super dead. Even if we were to cleanse his Death effect right now, the poison effect would kill him immediately again. Fortunately, we can cleanse the poison with a skill. Unfortunately, Agehatate isn't freaking here so we have no mana. Double unfortunately, bunny boy doesn't have enough mana either. ... Oh, is... Is he... seriously then... Ah, wait, Setsuna has enough mana. Phew, we were worried for a second. Just a little bit, not really. Although... we haven't seen Setsuna in a while... Grip. 『『 .......... 』』 「 Please... 」 He's grabbed hold of Sing's hand, and is now praying on both knees. We stare at him. 「 The world needs him... 」 Let go of Sing's hand. 「 He's... 」 L-e-t g-o p-l-e-a-s-e. 「 ...he's a hero. 」 Freakingletgoyoudumbidiot!Whatever! Iwasplanningonrevivinghimjustnowyouknow?! Whatkindofcreep-! Sing places her free hand softly over the top of his head, and closes her eyes. He takes a short breath, almost as if he wants to cry. Crier resists the urge to hit him. ... After a few moments, he finally releases Sing's hand, and then holds his own over his heart. We're not sure what this gesture means, but our best guess is gratitude. ... But whatever... Huff... Let's have Sing go fetch Setsuna, while Crier gets working on a magic circle. We can probably carve a tiny circle into a chopstick, it's a simple enough skill. In doing so we can keep the mysticism of our methods alive. Agehatate told us such things were important, anyway. ...He's staring at Crier as she does it. Hello?! Can you not?! It's really... distracting... ... Crier starts carving with her eyes closed. It's fine. It might be slow, but, it was going to be this slow anyway... Such annoying visitors... did Agehatate have to deal with things like this too? ...At the far end of the island, nearest to the roaring falls, Sing leans over the edge of the water. 『 Setsuna. 』 ... 『 Setsuna. 』 No response, which is... odd. She usually responds rather quickly... 『 Setsuna? 』 ... No response. 『 Setsuna, I'll kill myself if you don't show up. 』 ... 『 I'll really do it. 』 ... 『 I'm serious. 』 ... 『 Okay then. 』 Sing inches forward so that her feet are partially hanging over the edge. At the same time, she slowly raises her arms above her head. 『 Three... 』 The river churns beneath her. White froth covers its surface. 『 ...two...one... 』 She bends her knees, then leaps from the ledge. The cold bite of the river hits her fingers first, then spreads to her arms, head and shoulders, until she's completely submerged in the wrath of the current. The wild pressure presses in immediately, more so on one side of her body and head, threatening to whip her around in the first half second, but a squishy upward force just as quickly shoves from below her. Sing resurfaces. She gasps for air, but there's also a bit of water in her lungs, so she coughs at the same time. After just a second, she feels rock underneath her again, but not before grabbing hold of her slippery benefactor. 「 ◔◔◔⭘⭘⭘ 」 A low whine escapes from Setsuna's submerged voicebox. 『 S...such... a hassle... 』 Sing tugs on her tendril. Setsuna continues to whine. 『 I wouldn't have jumped... if I didn't know you were in there... 『 My death sense would have stopped me, you know? 『 Anyway, what is wrong with you today? 』 She peeks the top half of her head out of the water and darts her eyes around frantically. 『 Agehatate isn't here, 『 not that you should be worried. 『 You're free to visit today. 』 Sing pulls on her tendril more, but still, Setsuna resists. 『 I just need you to help me with something small. 『 I'll make sure you get lots of meat later, okay? 』 「 ◔◔◔⭘⭘⭘... 」 ... It'd be nice to learn how to speak to Setsuna in the near future. It kind of feels bad, not being able to let her know it's fine... ...Crier spent time carving the poison cleansing magic circle, while Sing waited with Setsuna at the island's edge, calming her down and drying herself off. It wasn't quite evening, but much of the grey afternoon flew by. The new hero ended up dozing off. He looked exhausted. 『 Setsuna. 』 Sing whispers. The orange kraken peeks over Sing's shoulder, having been hiding behind her the entire walk. Which is ridiculous if you consider she has eight times more HP, but digression aside... Crier has finished with the magic circle. All that's left is f0r Setsuna to cast it. There was some concern over how The Hero would react to a kraken getting so near to his brethren but... seeing as he's still asleep, now's the perfect opportunity. We pass the stone chopstick into Sing's hand, along with a single strand of Crier's hair. Sing opens her fingers to take in one of Setsuna's tentacles as well. 「 ◔◔⭘- 」 『 Shhh... it's okay. 』 「 ... 」 We quietly step over to the elf's body, with Setsuna attempting to silently squirm close behind. Crouching, Sing holds the chopstick such that the magic circle hovers over where his heart should be. Setsuna's tentacle just barely wraps around the chopstick's base. Okay, this should be it. 『 Setsuna. 』 Sing moves her hand up to the circle, bringing Setsuna's tentacle as well. Her body feels a bit cold. 『 « Anzein » 』 「 ... 」 One more time... 『 « Anzein » 』 「 ... 」 『 Setsuna. 』 「 ... 」 『 « Anzein » 』 She doesn't say anything. Maybe if we just give her a moment... 「 ...« 𝄞◑◑◔◔◔◔ » 」 We feel a shiver in Setsuna's body, as the coin-sized magic circle lights up. Tiny high-pitched crinklings of glass sound from the spot, and Setsuna hastily pulls her tentacle away, but that's fine. This is a fire and forget spell. 『 Thank you, Setsuna. 』 Crier mumbles, hugging her, although she doesn't seem to appreciate the contact. A low grumble escapes from the kraken's chest cavity. Sing, meanwhile, focuses on holding the chopstick still as the glassy noises ascend further in pitch. ... 「 Nn... 」 We look up at The Hero. He's rubbing his eyes. Setsuna freezes. 『 ... 』『 ... 』 Sing closes her eyes, while Crier loosens her hold slightly. The Hero rubs the bridge of his nose, and blinks several times, before shaking his head. He slept in a sitting position, huddled over his knees. From there, he looks up at us, taking a second to register what he sees. 「 …▯▯▯！」 Hostile. He scrambles back and onto his feet, swiftly drawing a curved blade. Seeing this, Setsuna's body stiffens and she leans forward. 「 ⭘◔◑◕-! 」 Crier carefully covers the hole in Setsuna's chest with her hands, muffling the ascending screech, which begins to slowly wind down. The Hero grits his teeth and tightens his grip on the blade further, like there's something welling up in him. 『 Otto. 』 「 ？！」 That building tenseness suddenly releases at the name. His nickname, supposedly. 「 … 」 He looks down at Sing, then back to Setsuna. There's a strong expression of conflict on his face. It kind of gives us the impression there's history here. ... But we shouldn't push Setsuna further. She's done enough for us. 『 Setsuna. 』 Crier lets go of her mouth once the screeching stops, and moves to hold one of her tendrils gently. Setsuna makes eye contact, her pupils have shrunk dramatically. Crier tugs very lightly. ... There's resistance again, but it slowly dissipates as Setsuna follows Crier away. Not before looking back one last time at The Hero, who gives her a fierce look. 「 … 」 The Hero cautiously puts away his sword... ...and the poison cleansing spell finishes just in time. Fwa... That was too intense... Sing takes the chopstick back. The Poison effect is completely gone. The Hero isn't taking his eyes off of Setsuna though. So petty... Well, whatever. The important part is that we can revive his elf friend now. Ah, actually... Maybe we should wait until he calms down. It might be problematic if we surprise him, seeing Sing feeding her blood to elf-san... Let's be patient about this... There's no need to rush. ...It takes a few minutes, in part thanks to Setsuna's reluctance to fully submerge, but eventually, Crier escorts our kraken friend to the river and returns. The Hero is now sitting cross-legged, watching over his friend with a hint of sadness. ... This Hero is really expressive... or maybe it's just been a long time? We've met mostly straight-faced people since reincarnating. Seeing this kind of expressiveness is kind of refreshing... 「 … 」 Well, we suppose we've made him wait long enough. Let's get started... Crier pulls one of our stone cups from the ground, and sets it down between us. We carefully set our hands over it, and cut our palms, bleeding into it. One drop is technically enough to cleanse Death, but if you don't heal the victim above zero HP at the same time, then Death will just get applied instantly again. So let's see... the amount of blood we need is... Hmm... Crier has 15HP, Sing has 85HP... Crier can heal at max, 0.15HP per second, Sing, 0.85... It should be enough if we pool 1% of each of our blood, so... like a couple handfuls to be safe? About that much? ※³ ... We lift our hands to slow the bleeding, and lick the residue to heal the cuts faster. It feels like we're being watched, but we'd also rather not check... ... Okay, this should be enough. Hmm... Who should do the pouring... We look up at The Hero, he looks back at us. We extend the blood-filled cup to him. 『『 Brandr. 』』 The elf's nickname. The Hero's mouth goes a bit ajar, but he promptly swallows his breath and nods. Good. Touching a dead body is a little gross. ...He hesitantly takes the cup in both hands, and sets it down next to the elf's head. From there, he carefully brings his hands to the corpse's mouth and parts its pale lips. 「 ▯▯▯▯▯▯▯ ▯▯。」 We brace for a bad smell ...but it never comes. The Hero then, with the utmost care, lifts the cup to its mouth and pours its contents in. Not too quickly, not too slowly. Not a single drop is spilt. ... ... ... The elf's eyelids calmly part, and his identification information changes. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

LV.8 ▬ Heidrich 'Brandr'

Elf

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

HP ▐ 1/640

MP ▐ 0/204

SP ▐ 1/201

P.ATK ▐ 134

P.DEF ▐ 83

M.ATK ▐ 36

M.DEF ▐ 16

Effects ▐ Eldritch Fear[LV.1]

Titles ▐ 「 Merrymaker 」 「 Apostle of Death 」

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [END]