Chapter 93
#Chapter 93: Librarian Ernst (14) - How to Deal with Problem Customers
Tap-tap.
After running side by side through the cramped alleyways for a while,
Suddenly, Ernst spoke.
“Hmm, looks like we’re done for.”
“Huh?”
“It means we’ve lost our way.”
Eris blinked.
It took her a moment to process Ernst’s words.
“Are you kidding me!? No, more importantly, how can you say something like that so calmly!?”
“Panicking won’t improve the situation.”
“Fine! Then I’ll just take the lead... what is this.”
After pushing past Ernst and looking around, Eris soon realized the obvious anomaly.
Front.
A dim passage. Trash on the ground. Stains on the walls. A fork to the left and right.
Side.
A dim passage. Trash on the ground. Stains on the walls. A fork to the left and right.
Rear.
A dim passage. Trash on the ground. Stains on the walls. A fork to the left and right.
The paths were identical.
No matter where she looked, whichever direction she moved in, or which alleyway she entered, it was the same.
There was no way a normal town’s alleyways had been laid out with such a paranoid design, so there was only one conclusion.
“Another illusion.”
“Cognitive interference. Hallucinations. Illusions. It seems the opponent is skilled at disguising things and deceiving people. However, it hasn’t accurately pinpointed our location. It appears to have simply generated a wide-area barrier centered on its main body.”
Even trapped within an unidentified illusion, there wasn’t the slightest hint of impatience in Ernst’s attitude.
That cool-headed calm as he analyzed the situation washed away the anxiety and impatience in Eris’s heart.
When Eris took out her staff and used a dispel spell, the scenery around them rippled like a heat haze, revealing the ‘real’ background beyond.
But only for a moment.
“Ugh...!”
With Eris’s groan, the scenery that had returned to normal was once again swallowed by the illusion.
The mana sustaining the illusion and the mana dispelling it.
Once it turned into a pure contest of strength, Eris was the one who got pushed back.
Unlike when she had dealt with Marik last time, this time it was hard even to exploit an opening or let a spell slip through.
Eris bit her lip in frustration, but Ernst nodded.
“That’s sufficient.”
“What do you mean—ah.”
Ernst seized Eris’s hand and sprinted forward.
Twenty steps straight ahead. Then a dash to the right, where a wall clearly blocked the way.
Eris was about to scold him for what he was doing, but instead of colliding, their bodies passed right through the wall as if nothing had happened.
Only then did Eris grasp the situation—the brief moment when she had dispelled the illusion.
In terms of time, it had been a gap of barely under two seconds, and Ernst had memorized every path visible in that sliver of time.
“Please use the dispel spell again in five seconds. Five, four-”
“You don’t need to count the seconds one by one!”
Eris’s spell blazed out, the illusion wavered, and the true reality revealed itself.
Then Ernst would quickly memorize the street layout, calculate the number of steps needed to reach each point, and tell Eris when to use her next spell.
By the time they had repeated that process about three times.
-Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?
-Let’s play! Let’s play! Let’s play! Let’s play!
A man and a woman with corpse-pale faces charged at them, repeating the same line in the same flat tone like a broken gramophone.
As they ran, Ernst said,
“Bad news: I’m a librarian, not an adventurer, so I don’t have the strength to subdue them in one shot. Also, I’m not fit enough to run while carrying you. If we were inside the library, that would be another matter.”
“I wasn’t expecting that in the first place!!”
Truthfully, Eris had been secretly hoping Ernst would show off and do something cool, so to hide the sting she felt, she shouted even louder and cast her spell.
A torrent of water and biting cold.
As she poured the two kinds of magic forward, the man and woman rushing at them froze in place, their entire bodies covered in frost.
Ernst grabbed Eris’s hand and kicked off the ground once more.
“Hah, hah.”
Eris could feel her breath catching in her throat.
The repeated spellcasting and relentless sprinting were rapidly gnawing away at her stamina and mana.
If she hadn’t exercised now and then to avoid the stigma of being a desk-bound mage, she’d probably already be sprawled on the ground by now.
A cool-headed part of her mind asked:
“Was this really all right?”
Even if she burned through mana and stamina like this to get to the library, would the situation actually improve?
Wouldn’t it be better to go to the training school and ask the professors for help instead?
It was a truly sharp point. In fact, it was almost rational.
‘Who cares.’
But Eris brushed it aside.
Because from the beginning, she was the sort of person who lived more by emotion than by reason.
And at last, the long-awaited library appeared before their eyes.
The problem was that the pursuers were also right behind them.
-Going? Don’t go! Going? Don’t go! Going? Don’t go!
The pursuer’s fingertips snagged on the hem of Eris’s clothes.
Eris hurriedly twisted her body to shake it off, but that caused her to lose her balance.
The instant she realized she’d fall if this kept up,
A pair of sturdy arms wrapped around Eris and pulled her into a protective embrace.
Ernst and Eris’s bodies bounced up like a ball and slammed straight into the library’s front door.
Bam! Clatter!
The door broke, and Ernst and Eris rolled across the middle of the library before crashing into a bookshelf and stopping.
“…Ugh.”
“A-are you okay!?”
Was it because he had taken the impact while shielding Eris?
At the sight of Ernst’s face twisting in pain, Eris’s heart dropped.
But there was no time to take a leisurely look at Ernst’s condition.
Because the man and woman were charging through the gap in the open front door, their eyes gleaming wildly.
Crack.
Eris’s patience finally snapped.
“Enough already!!”
Earth, water, fire, wind.
The four attribute spells resonated with one another, erasing the pursuers’ upper bodies in one sweep.
The pursuers, who had kept moving even as they were knocked down and struck, only collapsed and stopped once their upper bodies were gone.
“Huff, huff.”
Eris sank to the floor on her knees.
That last attack had truly driven her remaining mana down to zero.
Her legs, after all that long-running, trembled as if they couldn’t take any more, and even dizziness swam in her head.
“Hahaha! I got a good look at your ratlike flailing!”
And as if he had timed it perfectly, Marik finally appeared.
He wore a relaxed smile at the corners of his mouth, with not a trace of fatigue.
Even though, in terms of simple mana consumption, it should have been dozens of times more severe than Eris’s.
“But I’m a little disappointed that after all that running away, you ended up here of all places. There aren’t nearly enough people. If you’d gone to the training school, I could’ve thrown the professors into confusion and made them kill each other; if you’d asked Delphinaris for help, I would’ve driven every human on the way there completely mad!”
As if he were complaining that the staging of a play had fallen short of his expectations, Marik sighed.
Watching Marik like that, Eris finally became certain.
“What exactly are you?”
“What are you talking about? You mean you’ve already forgotten a face like mine?”
“The real Marik is even more of a small fry than you. Even if you imitate his behavior, that’s one thing you can’t easily copy.”
“…….”
Marik’s movements stopped.
After a brief silence, he burst into laughter.
“Hahahahahaha! Oh, I see. That certainly hit the mark! My, when even something bad reaches a certain level, it becomes something others can no longer easily approach!”
The thing that had been cackling, no, the thing imitating Marik, said to Eris with its grin still spread across its face.
“I’m Balzarez. A demon who gave power to this stupid contractor and, as a side job, is looking for a new contractor. How about it, miss? Want to team up with me?”
A demon.
The moment she heard that word, Eris’s eyes narrowed.
Because she remembered her teacher’s warning that they were creatures you should never get involved with or even exchange words with carelessly.
“I refuse.”
“Don’t be so cold and at least hear me out. This guy here was truly a piece of human trash with not a single talent to his name—a man who caused trouble for everyone just by breathing—but after making a contract with me, he kept going from strength to strength and shot up like crazy. You know better than anyone how much that means, don’t you?”
I do.
There was no way she wouldn’t.
That overwhelming mana. That genius-level talent for learning a spell instantly just by seeing it.
If that had truly been granted solely by the contract, with no relation to his own talent, then it was a terrifying thing indeed.
It was enough to explain why countless books kept emphasizing the dangers of demons, and why the priests of the Pantheon would bare their killing intent and try to smash any demon or demon contractor they saw, and yet people who made contracts never seemed to stop.
“This guy was so stupid to begin with that he couldn’t properly use my power even with it, but you’re different. Once you get a little used to it, you’ll become a mage few could hope to match.”
The demon’s voice was incredibly friendly.
If she didn’t keep a firm grip on her mind, she might even forget that the person before her had only just been trying to take her life.
Eris stared straight at the demon and said firmly,
“I refuse. I have no intention whatsoever of making a contract with someone like you.”
“Oh, don’t be so hasty—think it over a little more, won’t you? Depending on you, you might become an even greater mage than your teacher.”
The demon went on in a coaxing tone.
“It’s not that hard. At Sky Academy, all you have to do is find whatever item I want there and hand it over. After that, I won’t interfere with you at all, and the power will stay with you. You couldn’t hope for a deal this profitable with any other demon. I’m only willing to go this far because it’s me.”
“I said I refuse!”
“Hm.”
The demon, Balzarez, fell silent.
After tilting his head this way and that while lost in thought, he soon curled the corners of his mouth into a grin.
“Is that so? Then it can’t be helped. What a pity.”
Eris swallowed hard.
Though it had been an act made while prepared to risk her life, Balzarez mocked that resolve with an almost playful air.
“Relax, miss. Originally, I was thinking of recommending a contract by the kind of method you were thinking of, but seeing the two of you run so hard made me change my mind a little.”
Around Balzarez, dozens of swords made of flame rose up at once.
Eris’s eyes flew wide.
One was the sheer mana—something incomparable to Marik’s.
The other was the fact that the swords were aimed at Ernst, not at Eris herself.
Balzarez said in a cheerful tone,
“Let’s play a game, miss. From now on, every time you answer my proposed contract with anything other than ‘yes,’ one of the swords here will be shoved into that guy’s body over there. The contract terms will be a little stingier than before, but that can’t be helped. They say the first chance is the best chance, after all, don’t they?”
“You...!”
“Relax! I’ll avoid the head and heart! Gya-hahaha!”
The demon laughed, and Eris trembled at that cowardice and malice.
“Now then. Let’s begin. Miss, from now on, you─”
Boom!
The moment Balzarez was about to declare the terms of the contract, the library door suddenly shut.
With a heavy, solid thud.
No one could intrude.
No, as if it wouldn’t allow anyone to escape.
“Hm. Is that so. I’ve roughly grasped the situation.”
A very calm, cold voice utterly unsuited to this urgent situation drifted out.
Swish.
The blond man who had risen from the floor looked at the demon.
Balzarez tilted his head to the side.
With the eyes of someone watching a supporting character suddenly barge into the highlight scene where the leads were clashing, the demon opened his mouth.
“You. Who are you?”
The librarian did not answer.
Without even glancing at the demon, Ernst gently patted Eris’s back.
“Please rest easy now.”
─Dealing with troublesome customers is also one of a librarian’s duties, after all.