The Necromancer (3)

I had managed to find the necromancer's location, but what came next was the problem. More precisely, the problem was the path to where the necromancer was. As befitting an adult game, it was full of all sorts of traps, and the monsters were a problem too.

I can understand there being monsters, but why on earth are there traps? And not ordinary traps, either—they were custom traps packed with the necromancer's tastes, which made them even more disgusting to look at.

I may be Lumia right now, but I don't want to watch Lumia fall into one of those traps.

That vile developer bastard..

Even in the game, as if begging players to please watch Lumia's humiliation scenes, the developer had made the rope borrowed from the village chief rotten so that it would snap easily, which made the developer even more vile. It was a perfect display of the developer's twisted affection for Lumia.

Since the Hero was a regressor, all I could do for now was trust him to handle things.

If these were traps where falling in meant serious trouble, I could understand, but most of them did things that were difficult to describe, which made me needlessly afraid. I'd never even done such things myself, let alone been subjected to them by a trap, so it was even more frightening.

All this time, while living in Lumia's body, I hadn't touched my own body even once. If I ever touched it, I wanted to be the one doing it myself; I didn't want to be forced to feel things after getting caught in one of those traps.

“Something.. doesn't feel right..”

The Hero muttered that as he stared down at the rope.

But there was no other way.

I had no way to break this barrier right now. In the end, carrying all sorts of unease with us, we began moving toward the necromancer's location.

I was the only one who knew where the necromancer was, so everyone was following me. The thing we had to be most careful of here was none other than the traps the necromancer himself had laid—them above all.

You might say I've been talking about being careful of traps this whole time, but the traps I mean aren't the kind I mentioned earlier, the ones that did those sorts of things.

The necromancer had laid down separate traps to keep anyone from finding him. You know how there are spells that make you circle around the same place repeatedly when you're looking for something or trying to reach somewhere?

There were also terrifying spells that didn't merely make you repeat the same route, but at some point separated you from your companions and left you alone.

Because he'd laid those spells throughout the forest, it was difficult to find the necromancer under normal circumstances.

You might be wondering how we were supposed to find him, then.

Of course, we had a way to counter them, or we wouldn't have made it this far. The method was to draw up as much mana as possible, focus on walking without losing our way while resisting the magic's lure, and hold the hand of someone traveling with us.

You might think focusing on not losing your way would be enough, but we'd been warned that we would be separated from one another at some point. The game itself had instructed us to walk while holding hands, so I figured that was probably right.

Thinking about it now, being told to walk while holding hands was probably a sort of tutorial for raising favorability. When I walked hand in hand with Cecilia or Ruril, whose favorability was already fairly high, it had increased little by little.

Yeah, so that's how it was.

“This is how we're supposed to do it?”

At my words, the Hero tilted his head and took their hands. Of course, the hands he held weren't mine but Cecilia's and Ruril's.

If you thought about how we absolutely couldn't let ourselves become separated, it meant that all that mattered was remaining connected somehow.

And since I was the one who had to find the necromancer's location and guide the way, I had to walk in front. If I walked beside them, it would be difficult for everyone, but if I went ahead without holding hands, I would end up separated from the group, so there was only one solution.

It was a method we'd used in the game too, but..

“...”

This feels kind of strange..

The Hero held the rope connected to my wrist, while Ruril and Cecilia held hands on either side of him. How should I put it? The arrangement felt a little like a three-wheeled motorcycle.. The Hero was in the exact center, Cecilia and Ruril were to his right and left, and I was at the very front.

“We definitely won't get separated this way..”

Cecilia said that with an expression as if she'd realized something. I hadn't done this with that in mind; I'd only copied what we'd done in the game, but now that I had become Lumia, it felt extremely strange.

Since I was at the very front, I also felt as though I was alone. Fortunately—or so I supposed—the Hero was holding the rope connected to my hand behind me, so I wasn't that anxious.

If you're wondering why it felt strange, isn't it obvious? Since someone was walking along while holding a rope connected to my hand, it felt as if I myself had become a dog.

Walking around like this made it feel as though I was out for a walk.

Though in reality, we were going to hunt down something frightening.

Fortunately, the magic I'd used told me where the necromancer was, so we didn't lose our way. It was just that I couldn't bring myself to walk ahead carelessly because I was anxious about what sort of trap might appear every time we took another step.

Crrrk..

“?”

What was that sound?

I thought I'd heard something snap, but was it just my imagination? Just in case, I looked down at my hand, but it was still connected to the rope. It looked quite old even at a glance, which made me uneasy, but it wasn't being used to pull anything; it only connected the Hero and me, so I figured it would be fine.

What else could I do? This was the only rope we could use right now.

As I said earlier, in the game it had been deliberately made this way for players who wanted to see humiliation content. It wouldn't break during normal play, but it would snap if you moved too violently.

Anyway.. I couldn't very well hurry onward, what with the worry that there might be a trap. I was scanning with magic, but since he was a necromancer, there were many things that couldn't be scanned or could fool a scan, which was the problem.

In the game, there were retries and a predetermined route, so you could just follow it, and the necromancer's combat ability was extremely low, making things manageable. But this was reality.

I only had one chance, and every single trap was fatal. In the game, a situation where you watched one humiliation scene and moved on was, for me now, no different from the end of my life.

In other words, things had become hardcore as hell.

This is driving me crazy..

However, since I couldn't walk quickly and kept stopping up ahead, then starting again, over and over, the Hero seemed quite dissatisfied and called out to me.

Hmm.. no.

Given that guy's personality, though, he probably hadn't called me because he was dissatisfied. He'd called because he was genuinely worried that something had happened to me.

Could Lumia in the past really not have been like this?

That couldn't be.

For now, this was a place where we didn't know when or where a trap would appear, so I had to be careful with every step..?

“?!”

What the.. I felt as though I'd snagged on something, and the sensation traveled up from my wrist.

A moment later, I heard the rope snap with a loud crack.

No, what the hell was the Hero doing right now?!

If he suddenly stopped like that, of course the rope would snap.

“Lumia! You have to stop!”

“..?”

Ah..

What was this..

A trap..?

I never imagined it would stay hidden when I passed by, only to target the group behind me?!

I looked at the Hero in panic and ran toward him, trying somehow not to be separated, but it was already too late.

The rope had snapped.

“..!”

It was at that moment.

As though a mirage were scattering, the forms of the Hero, Cecilia, and Ruril blurred and vanished, and before I knew it, I was alone in the forest.

“...”

For fuck's sake.

I was the one who'd said we had to be careful because there were all sorts of vicious traps, so of course there was a trap targeting the people behind the leader rather than the person in front. Traps that target the people in back instead of the leader are a classic trap, after all.

I felt like an idiot for saying it myself and still failing to deal with it. Now that things had come to this, I had to use magic if necessary to find the way to where the others were.

I had to, but..

“...”

I was really screwed.

The moment my companions disappeared, the traps that had been cunningly interfering to separate us without revealing themselves began revealing their forms one by one.

When I'd encountered this in the game, it had been a simple section I could get past by retrying several times while cursing it as a piece of shit. But now that I was encountering it in reality, with only one life, I desperately wondered why they'd shoved something like this into the tutorial.

Looking up at the enormous tentacle monster that had appeared before me, I could only stare at it with a hollow expression.

As one would expect from someone who controlled the dead, even its appearance was grotesque.

“...”

It seemed I was well and truly fucked.