Otome Game no Heroine de Saikyou Survival [WN] - Chapter 38
Monster’s Identity
“Hey, you maid! You’re the one who’s been scaring my sister!”
I heard such a comment and turned around to see a boy of about 10 years old, whose features resembled that of the Baroness Maria.
Assuming that the boy was Maria’s younger brother, that would mean that he was also a noble, but how to describe it… his kneecaps, which were visible through the short pants that hang down from his knees, were covered with scratches, so were his cheeks and nose, and apart from his clothes, he looked more like a rascal than a young master of a noble family?
“Hey, don’t just keep staring and say something!”
“Are you Maria-sama’s younger brother?”
“Yes, I am. Ever since you arrived, something has been wrong with my sister and everyone else! If you’re a bad guy, I’ll take care of you.”
“Are you confident in your skills?”
“Yes, I’m the boss of the neighborhood. Even Chico and Harry can’t beat me in a fight!”
…Who was that?
Well, I was able to get some idea of his background. In this remote area, there were very few children of nobles. Even if there were, they would be the children of barons and knights who governed towns and villages, but even so, around a dozen or so children would be more than enough.
In that case, his playmates would be the children of squires or soldiers, and since he was in a rural area, he was probably playing in a rough and tumble way similar to commoners.
If what I guessed was correct, then it’d be easy to sum it up. I was going to ask him about the situation, but even my fellow maids, not to mention the young lady, were distancing themselves from him, so I was a bit troubled.
It would be perfect if it were someone who wouldn’t complain even if I treated her a little rough.
“Oh, what, you want to go at it?”
I turned to face him properly, and the boy had already taken a stance with a clenched fist. Without looking at him, I turned and started to walk away, beckoning him with my fingertips.
“I want to ask you something. Will you follow me for a bit?”
“Eh…hah? Tsk.”
The boy, who had let out an unspoken grunt, as if his brain had not caught up with the crude order, came to himself and hurried to catch up with me as I continued to walk ahead.
“You, you… even though you’re just a maid!”
The boy’s hand touched my shoulder. But before his hand could grab it, I ducked, and with a light push on the boy’s chest, I cornered him against the wall…
Dong! and slapped the wall next to his face with the palm of my hand, looking into his eyes up close.
“You want to save your sister, don’t you? If you’re willing to do that, then help me.”
“…”
I glared at the boy, who was almost the same height as me, with his face about 10 centimeters away. The boy nodded his head repeatedly with a bright red face, while his eyes remained wide open for some reason.
*
“So you don’t know when the ‘monster’ will show up?”
“Yes. Sometimes they come back in about three days, and sometimes there’s a gap of almost a month. So, once before, I asked a magician who was introduced to me by another nobleman to escort me, but he didn’t show up at all that time…”
For some reason, the boy suddenly became very cooperative and told me about the times when the monster had appeared.
The boy’s name was Rodie, and he was the eldest son of the family. He was a fast-growing noble who looked like 10-years-old, so I thought he would be about my age, but he was actually 9 years old. …I thought he was a bad boy who liked to pick on everyone, but he was older than me and didn’t seem to hold any ill intent.
Like his sister Maria, I thought he had grown little for a noble. Both of them had few magic skills and their magic value was also low.
When I wondered why there was such a difference, new information emerged from my knowledge.
Whether it was culture or magic, it was necessary to have a proper environment to learn it.
Orphans like me could not receive education because the surrounding environment wouldn’t allow us to.
However, orphans who were not educated did not realize that even to become a wealthy person, one needed to be educated. Therefore, because of the lack of knowledge, the priority to create an environment to become a scholar and cultured person was very low.
In short, to be educated, one needed to be wealthy. Only those who could study and achieve an environment to do so would become wealthy in the next generation. Because of such a system, only nobles who had money and power kept growing more and more.
If Maria had that much knowledge, then she would have trained seriously as well.
As I walked around the mansion with the baron’s heir apparent, the other servants were giving me subtle glances again.
In the end, my outfit was just an apron dress on a one-piece dress I had brought with me for a while, since this baron’s family didn’t provide maid’s uniforms for children.
Since the one I was wearing was a maid uniform for taking care of the princess, it naturally seemed to be of a different quality than the baron’s maid uniforms, and that may be one of the reasons why everyone kept their distance from me.
“Is Rodie asking why Maria-sama is the only one who is affected and no one else?”
“Why are you not calling me the same way as you called her?”
“Speak up.”
“O, okay…”
The monster appeared in this city six months ago. No one had died yet, but those who were attacked were injured, some seriously.
The monster became obsessed with Maria about three months ago, and since that day it has been leaving [blood handprints] at night, but she had not yet been harmed.
But the handprints were getting closer and closer, and the baronesses were also worried about when Maria would be attacked.
Maria’s engagement could also be in trouble if the other party turns out to be human.
Grave was thinking that since they were in different jurisdictions, it would be fine if it was not resolved, but if it could be resolved, it would be better to do it soon. If possible, I would like to end the next raid.
But in doing that, I was curious about the monster’s [purpose].
Why did it attack the townspeople, but not Maria right away?
We were told that there was no consistency in the intervals between the attacked townspeople and the monster’s visits, but was this really the case?
If we knew the [purpose] of the enemy, it would be easier to read their behavior, and we could also guess their weakness and identity.
But until now, no matter how many officials and magicians had investigated, nothing had been found about the identity or purpose of the enemy.
Various human-like reasons such as grudge, political reasons, or simply falling in love with Maria were suggested, but none of them were proven to be true.
Then I should probably investigate from other perspectives. I didn’t know the subtleties of human relationships, anyway.
The magician who investigated found traces of magic in the handprints left behind, and apparently thought that the monster was also a magician.
The soldiers did not witness the event, but Maria said she saw a fat man. The testimonies of the city’s residents also mentioned a fat man, an old man, and a child, so it was currently believed that the monster was either a sorcerer with at least level 4 dark magic who can change his appearance through witchcraft, or that it was an organized crime by several people.
“…”
But was it? If it was more than one person, it would be easier to leave evidence such as personal belongings and footprints. Even a magician would leave traces of his magic if he used such powerful magic.
If he used Elemental magic, the magic particles of that element would remain. Level 1 or 2 magic would disappear quickly, but that Female Thief’s magic had left a residue of earth element on the scene for a while.
With my eyes, I could see the element of the residual magic particles.
But from what I saw, there didn’t seem to be that many demonic elements of the dark attribute.
“Tell me the magical attributes of your family members.”
“My father is wind and my mother is water, but my sister and I can’t use them, you know?”
“What about life magic?”
“…My sister is water, I think?”
That was consistent with my research. There was a lot of wind and water magic left in this house.
Even if the magic value was not high, a person’s elemental magic particles would remain in large quantities if they were living in the house. And from what I saw, this mansion had a lot of water-based magical elements left.
This… I guessed I needed to reexamine the town too.
*
“…I heard that you are investigating me.”
Maria, who had been avoiding me until then, muttered this to me as I was changing clothes in her room on the fifth day of my employment at the baron’s house.
“Is it because of Rodie…sama?”
“That boy seems to like you very much. He told me it was a secret, yet he seemed to enjoy talking about it.”
Maria smiled …it seemed like it was not a secret.
I thought boys have pride and wouldn’t tell anyone that they had lost, but then again, I did threaten him, and he made me feel strangely nostalgic…
“Will I… be saved?”
“If you’re lucky, you’ll be saved. If you have a god you believe in, you should pray to one.”
“…I see.”
Maria muttered at my words as if I were brushing her off, then she raised her sorrowful face and smiled softly.
“Then I will pray to the same God as you.”
“…”
*
That night, as the day before, I used the life magic [Flowing Water] on one of the drains in the mansion to flush the water.
Yesterday it didn’t work. But the Flowing Water I had flushed last night must have flowed down the drain and reached “him”.
I looked around the mansion, searching for places where there were a lot of residual water-based magic elements.
Maria’s room was very humid, probably because of the magical element, and she changed the fabric every day. But that was not the case. It was not because there was a lot of water attribute magical element, but because Maria’s water attribute was strong.
Maria’s magical value was not high. That was why no one had noticed it.
However, I, who could see the magical element in terms of “color”, noticed that Maria was clothed in a very deep azure blue water magical element.
Perhaps her talent would blossom once she entered the magic academy, where she would be enrolled next year.
However, the magical element that remained in the mansion was not only hers.
The monster appeared irregularly, but his testimony was always on a [dark night].
A dark night…a night when the moon and stars were hidden. He appeared on cloudy or rainy “humid” days, and all of his attacked victims had the water attribute.
Half a year before the monster began to appear, there was a flooding of a river, and at that time, a simple ward was placed on the river to suppress the spiritual power of the water.
The warding itself could not be put up for a long period of time and was quickly lifted, but as a result, the monster, cut off from the water, went insane.
The monster was looking for the magical element of the water attribute, and thanks to Maria’s strong water attribute, until now, it had only been able to obtain the residue that has accumulated over the years of its life, and the monster had left.
But with Maria’s low magical value, the amount of residual magical elements gradually became insufficient, and it was getting closer to Maria herself.
The rainy season had passed, and he was now starving. That’s why he came here, attracted by the magical element of [Flowing Water] that I kept pouring.
“There!”
I threw a stone over the drainage channel, and “something” leaped away to avoid it, then stuck to the wall, lifting the veil of water that helped it hide its appearance.
A fat man stuck to the wall. He swelled up like a drowned body, and blood and water gushed out from the cracks in his flesh, as if he had burst from the inside in some places.
It was not a living person. But not undead, either. It’s something close to a different kind of creature– a hermit crab that used corpses to prevent itself from drying up.
“…a mad water spirit…”
As I muttered this, the fat drowned corpse, whose true identity had been discovered, turned its murky eyes toward me.
[Lower-level water spirit]
[Magic Value: 337/503]
[Total Combat Power: 371/553]
[Status: Madness]
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Also check out my other novels: Reincarnated into a Game as the Hero’s Friend, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, and A Girl Who Was Told “You Have No Talent” Turned Out To Be A Talented Monster