Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 11 Read online

  My map showed the health gauges of the oil slimes rapidly decreasing. They were probably taking continuous damage from the flames.

  One of the few surviving oil slimes was right up ahead, so I cast Enchant: Physical Protection on everyone; Arisa applied Enchant: Resist Fire on the group at the same time.

  As we dodged the fleeing crowd and burst onto the ash-covered street, a roaring flame entered my vision.

  It was pretty big for such a low-level slime—around the size of a full-grown cow.

  Just as I was about to instruct Liza to destroy it, a black shadow cut in between us and the oil slime.

  “Dozon… Buster!”

  A bearded, bearlike explorer jumped from a dilapidated house nearby, bringing a giant war hammer down on the smoking oil slime.

  The hammer crushed the oil slime easily, causing its body to explode in all directions.

  “Ah, stupid—!”

  “Aaaaagh! Water, water!”

  The yellowish-brown remains of the oil slime scattered everywhere, sticking to the nearby houses and catching fire.

  Since the roofs of the buildings were all made of woven dried plants, the flames spread in an instant.

  Even the mortar holding the brick walls together seemed to be flammable, as the flame was moving downward as well.

  The explorer who’d caused this disaster was now rolling around in flames on the ground, but his party members would probably take care of him.

  “Mia, start the chant for a firefighting water spell.”

  “Mm. Water Ring Sansui.”

  Mia used a Spirit Magic spell, since they had the briefest chants, and scattered water droplets around the area.

  I knew it wasn’t wise to try to put out an oil fire with water, but the oil from these slimes seemed to be dependent on the composition of the slime, which meant it shouldn’t spread any farther.

  Because Mia’s magic alone couldn’t put out the fire completely, I used my go-to Practical Magic spell Magic Hand to reach into the smoky black sky.

  This magic created invisible, psychokinetic hands, but I could also use them as an extension of my own hands, so this spell allowed me to produce water from Storage.

  While I was at it, I used Magic Hand to splash the water around, spraying a mist on the area of the fire.

  > Title Acquired: Firefighter

  > Title Acquired: Sprinkler

  In the corner of my vision, I saw in the log screen that I’d gained two new titles.

  The first one was all well and good, but that second one seemed a little off.

  “Whoa!”

  “That little girl’s a magic whiz!”

  “Wish we could have her instead of our guy.”

  The bearded explorer’s crew all gathered around, complimenting Mia.

  “Mrrr… Satou.”

  Mia clung to my side, hiding her face in embarrassment.

  “The fire should go out soon, but I’d imagine there are some people with serious injuries.”

  “Time for a rescue operation, then?”

  “Right. But it’d be dangerous to go alone, so Pochi and Liza, Tama and Nana, I’ll have you work in pairs. The rest of you, stay here and heal the wounded as the rescue team brings them in.”

  I produced a bag full of burn-healing potions from Storage by way of the Garage Bag and handed it to Arisa.

  “What about you, master?”

  “I’ll be on the rescue team, too, of course.”

  With that, I stepped into an alley shrouded in smoke and mist.

  “Screams, sir!”

  “Let’s go, Pochi.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pochi and Liza dashed to a house that was still in flames.

  “Over heeere?”

  “Lead the way, I request.”

  Tama and Nana set off toward another nearby house.

  Looks like they’ve got it under control.

  If things got dicey, I planned to back them up, but Arisa’s Enchant: Resist Fire appeared to be protecting their clothes and skin, so they were able to go about rescuing people safely.

  Clearly, I had nothing to worry about.

  “Liza! You’re in charge!”

  “Understood!”

  As always, Liza responded with a reliable shout.

  All right, then.

  I opened the map to confirm a few things.

  There were two areas where oil slimes were still alive and wreaking havoc.

  There were some experienced garnet-badge explorers surrounding one area, so I decided to take care of the other.

  I ran forward, using “Long-Distance Vision” and Magic Hand to assist the people fleeing as I went.

  This is some serious smoke.

  After I started choking from breathing it in, I supplied myself with oxygen directly from Storage.

  There were no survivors to be found in this area, only corpses.

  The last dot on my radar was the final oil slime—No, there were five survivors beneath that, in some kind of basement area.

  All of them were severely wounded, and judging by their health bars, they didn’t have much longer to live.

  Abandoning all restraint, I used “Warp” to bring myself there almost immediately.

  First, I used Freeze Water to dispose of the oil slime attached to the brick house. Its core was an unusual pink color, but I had no time to worry about that right now.

  Putting that information aside for later, I charged right into the smoky burning house.

  The stairs to the basement had collapsed.

  Clicking my tongue, I used “Spellblade” on my fingertips to open a hole in the floor.

  Just as I did, there was an explosive sound like backfire, and flames burst up from the hole.

  My courage wavered ever so slightly, but I ignored that and dove into the flames.

  “I’m here to help!”

  There came no response.

  Frantic, I looked around the basement full of fire and smoke.

  There!

  On the other side of the rubble.

  There were people there—burning alive.

  Heaped on top of one another—presumably passed out from the smoke—not a single one of them stirred in the slightest.

  I grabbed all of them with Magic Hand, then used the Return spell to escape with the victims in tow.

  “Waaaah! You scared the hell out of me, you damn whelp! Erm, sir.”

  When the Return spell brought us to the Ivy Manor, the foul-mouthed house fairy Lelillil fell over in surprise.

  She must have just so happened to be in the gazebo area where we’d arrived.

  Ignoring Lelillil for the time being, I quickly operated the menu to use the intermediate Water Magic spell Healing: Water.

  Once the AR displays of all five people showed that their health bars had fully recovered, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “They’re wounded. Can you get a room ready with some supplies?”

  “Ahhh! Damn, this looks bad!”

  Lelillil rushed into the mansion.

  I hadn’t noticed in my rush to get them out before, but according to my AR, all five of the victims were female, with the title Masterless Slave.

  Their master had most likely perished in that fire.

  Not wanting to worry the rest of my group, I used Telephone to contact them and let them know I’d brought some severely wounded victims to the Ivy Manor.

  “They’re all blackened with soot.”

  I used Everyday Magic to clean the soot off them.

  Unfortunately, the force of the cleaning sent their mostly burned clothes dissolving to the floor.

  “Y-you filthy whelp! What the hell are you doing in the sacred home of the sage?!” Misunderstanding the sight of the exposed young women, Lelillil flew into a rage behind me. “If you want to get down and dirty, do it somewhere else!”

  “This isn’t what it looks—”

  I stopped in the middle of my response.

  Three of the five were c
ompletely healed, but the brown-haired and red-haired girls still had burns.

  Intermediate Healing Magic should be more than enough to fix up a burn… Confused, I started using the spell again.

  “Why isn’t it working?”

  “Magic can’t heal old wounds, dumbass… Sir.”

  Lelillil’s words made some sense, but the burns seemed a little too intense to be old wounds.

  The brown-haired girl named Tifaleeza was in particularly rough shape: She was terribly charred from her knees to her waist and on the right side of her torso. She also had nasty burns from the right shoulder to the side of her head.

  The redhead, who was named Neru, wasn’t in as bad of shape as Tifaleeza overall, but the burns on the lower half of her body were just as severe.

  Even aside from the most severe burns, both of them had smaller scars dotted along their bodies, as if flames had scorched them all over.

  If these burns were old wounds, they probably would have died long before this fire.

  “There’s something strange about these female whelps’ burns…,” Lelillil murmured, examining them.

  Both their health bars had started going down again.

  “Potions, maybe?”

  I produced two intermediate burn healing potions from Storage and poured them over the girls’ injuries.

  These special magic potions included freezing-flower powder, which was especially good for burns.

  “Not a damn difference…sir.”

  Sure enough, the potions didn’t have any effect.

  That’s strange.

  Even watered-down freezing-flower potions had been enough to heal the people in the town of Puta who’d been burned by the pyromaniac noble.

  These potions were far stronger than those, so I had no idea why they wouldn’t work.

  I checked their status in the AR display, but it said only Burns: Severe, with no strange illnesses or curses to be found.

  “…Whelp.”

  Lelillil was giving me an unusually serious look.

  “Don’t get any funny ideas!” She put her hand on her hip. “Even the great sage Lord Trazayuya couldn’t heal everyone’s damn wounds and illnesses, sir. Don’t think you can do better when you haven’t even lived half as long as I have!”

  The sage! That’s right: This is the sage’s manor!

  “Lelillil! I’m going to use the lab in the basement!”

  “It’s only natural that there’ll be some people you can’t—”

  Careful to avoid the two girls’ wounds, I lifted them gently with Magic Hand and ran out of the room.

  Lelillil was giving me some kind of soft lecture, but it would have to wait.

  “Whelp! I’m not done talking to—”

  “Take care of the other three, please.”

  Leaving Lelillil hopping mad, I opened the gate to the basement and ran inside.

  “The equipment down here might be able to pick something up.”

  In the basement laboratory, I quickly activated the cultivation tanks’ control unit and tried to fill them with liquid medicine.

  “Geh, I don’t even have enough for one…”

  With a frantic search, I quickly found a recipe in Trazayuya’s documents in Storage.

  Let’s see here. For ingredients, I’ll need… Good. I can work with this.

  While I was supplying the machines with magic, I produced an Elvish Transmutation Tablet and materials and started creating the medicine.

  “Wh-whelp?”

  Prioritizing speed above all else and wasting a good deal of magic and ingredients in the process, I started creating an optimal medicine for healing burns in a short period of time.

  “You’re moving way too damn fast. You won’t be able to make anything like…”

  Lelillil had come into the lab and started saying something, but I ignored her and focused solely on my work.

  Once the liquid medicine was finished, I filled two cultivation tanks and gently lowered the two remaining burn victims into each.

  They looked a bit anguished when the breathable liquid entered their lungs, but neither of them woke up.

  “All right, I’ll start with a full-body scan.”

  I entered the commands and took a deep breath.

  Before long, the control unit’s display panels lit up with information.

  “…All normal?”

  No, not quite.

  Specifically, it said there was nothing wrong “within the scope of necessary healing.”

  Opening my map, I searched for any commonalities shared by these two girls that the three upstairs didn’t have.

  “Found something.”

  These two, and not the other three, had the crime Treason listed in their bounties.

  I tapped on the entry for Treason to view the details. I read on the display Punishment.

  “Branding… Continuous…?”

  Looking at the two of them floating in the tanks, I realized that there was a palm-size brand on each of their backs.

  According to the AR, they were Treachery Brands.

  Searching through the materials in my Storage, I found information about it in some documents I’d bought in the old capital.

  “Seriously…?”

  In order to prevent Treachery Brands from being removed by magic or potions, the power of a City Core was used to perpetually prevent them from healing.

  The fact that I couldn’t heal the other burns seemed to be a side effect of this.

  “Well, now what?”

  I sank into deep deliberation.

  Of course, I couldn’t just leave them unhealed.

  I didn’t know what they had done to be literally branded as traitors, but that had nothing to do with letting them die of their burn wounds.

  Once I healed them, I could have them make up for their crimes as criminal slaves.

  Besides, I wasn’t the kind of person who enjoyed watching young girls suffer from serious burns.

  “…Hmm?”

  I looked more closely at Tifaleeza’s back.

  It was covered in burns, yet the brand mark stood out clearly.

  Looking at the materials again, I discovered that even if one attempted to cover up the brand by burning the skin around it, it would automatically heal the outline of the mark alone.

  And if one tried to cut the skin away, the brand would reappear on the newly healed skin.

  “This is awfully thorough…”

  I pressed a hand to my forehead, deep in thought.

  In modern Japan, they could remove burned skin and graft on new, healthy skin.

  This parallel world had magic and potions, but those wouldn’t heal this burn. Even if I grafted on new skin, the brand would just restore itself.

  “There’s no way… No, wait.”

  That’s it.

  The brand would restore itself.

  In other words, the rest of the area around it would stay as unburned skin.

  All I wanted was to heal their burns, not necessarily to remove the brand.

  “I don’t really want to cut their skin off with a knife, though…”

  “Wh-what? Have you lost your damn mind?!” Alarmed by my admittedly strange muttering, Lelillil turned pale.

  “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t do that.”

  I searched through the elfin documents in Storage with a few key words.

  Homunculi… If their technology could cultivate an artificial life-form, then surely it could regenerate or replace a bit of skin.

  I scrolled down the long list of matches.

  Creating homunculi and fresh golems… Nope.

  Disguise masks… I was intrigued, but for now, next.

  Organic artificial arms… Close.

  Organ cultivation, skin cultivation, skin regeneration—

  “Got it.”

  I started reading the logs of an elf from several thousand years ago.

  This looks like it could work.

  “This might be a bit harsh, but try
to bear it.”

  Murmuring to the girls floating in the tanks, I went about the work as fast as I could without breaking the machinery.

  Anesthesia applied.

  “I never thought I’d use the map’s 3-D function like this…”

  Operating the map like a 3-D scanner, I traced around the girls’ bodies, then input the settings into the control unit.

  Carefully, accurately, and quickly… All right, activate!

  “Oh no, oh no! Look, whelp! They’re all bloody! If you can’t use the machines, I’m going to put them into emergency shutdown—”

  “Don’t touch anything, Lelillil!”

  Lelillil was about to press the shutdown button in a panic, but I used “Coercion” to stop her in place.

  “This is how it has to be.”

  I looked over the girls again.

  I’d used the cultivation tanks to dissolve the burned skin, which naturally caused the exposed tissue to start bleeding.

  The two girls looked like they were in pain; maybe the anesthesia wasn’t enough.

  “I’m sorry. Hang in there just a little longer.”

  I added more anesthesia as I spoke.

  Then I selected the Magic Hand spell from the magic menu, since it was good for delicate tasks, and used it to press down on the girls’ veins and prevent the blood from spreading into the liquid medicine.

  Judging from the control unit, Neru’s burns should be treatable with intermediate magic potions, but Tifaleeza would need an advanced potion to restore the function of her right eye.

  I searched through my inventory.

  Aha!

  There was a lesser elixir in my Keep folder.

  I’d found this in the crazy dendrobium’s treasure chest on our first trip into the Celivera labyrinth.

  But I’d been saving it in case anything happened to any of my party…

  I hesitated for a moment.

  “They’d probably be angry with me if I didn’t use it for this.”

  Making up my mind, I poured the elixir into the tube of Tifaleeza’s cultivation tank.

  I still had a cure-all, and I could always make more potions and medicines for my group before we next went into the labyrinth.

  Then I put an intermediate health potion into Neru’s tube.

  Then, once I adjusted the settings on the control unit, all I had to do was keep Magic Hand in place until the new skin was done generating.