Chapter 4

This bed is so soft…

When Lion woke up, he could see light shining through the curtains. He wasn’t lying in his usual hard and stiff bed. Instead, he had been sleeping in a bed that seemed to swallow his body. And, in front of him, there were splendid naked pecs, exposed by an opened tunic…

“Eh?”

“Morning, Lion.”

“Good morning…?”

When Lion looked up at the owner of said pecs, his eyes landed on the man’s handsome face. His dark red eyes, still dark despite the light shining on them, were looking at Lion. For a moment, Lion wondered if he was dreaming, but no. This was the aristocrat Lion had met by chance the day before.

It seemed that, at some point, they ended up sleeping facing each other. Moreover, since Seirios’ arm was still wrapped around Lion’s back, their bodies were pressed together tightly.

Hurriedly removing the man’s arm, Lion slipped out of the bed.

“You don’t need to be in such a hurry. The sun has just risen,” Seirios said, looking dissatisfied as he rested his chin on his palm.

“No need, I’ve gotten enough rest thanks to you letting me sleep in a good bed yesterday! Thank you very much!” Lion answered, as he washed his face in the washroom next to the bathroom.1 He brushed his teeth, then he dressed himself and adjusted his outfit. Since all of his travel essentials were already packed in one leather bag, Lion picked it up and walked towards the door.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“I’m going out to buy some travel necessities.”

Somehow, he suspected that, if he tried to say goodbye, he would get detained again. On top of that, if he was asked for help again, he could easily picture himself being unable to refuse. It was a shame, but, ever since he had woken up that early morning, he was determined to secretly leave and resume in his travels.

A gaze pierced his back.

As naturally as he could and with a smile on his face, Lion escaped the room.

***************

“Well then, welcome aboard, Lion!2”

“Thank you for having me.”

“I’m so glad! We really wanted a summoner to join our party, and now we got one!”

Three days had gone by ever since Lion parted ways with the lost aristocrat. Lion was inside a pub in Dno3, a town near Thailes’ royal city. The compact pub was full of people, and Lion couldn’t even hear the voice of the person talking to him unless they shouted. A man in his late forties, with a stubble growing on his face, was sitting at the table, with many dishes placed on it. On Lion’s right side sat an intellectual-looking woman in her forties wearing glasses, and, on his left, there was a girl midway through her teens.

When he left the inn he had stayed at with Seirios after telling him that he was going shopping, Lion headed towards Dno. Since he had gone as far as acting as a heated stone, Lion believed that his services had been enough to compensate for the high cost of the inn.

At Dno’s pub, a historic ruins investigation party was taking applications, and, because Lion matched their requirements, he got hired. And so here he was, at an informal get-together, celebrating the formation of their party.

The man with the stubble was an adventurer. The woman with the glasses was an archaeologist4, and the teenage girl was a black mage in training.

“Buuut you said that you have four rare beasts, but that you can only summon one once a day, isn’t that pretty inconvenient?”

“Ah, well, yeah, it is…”

“Hey, Marie! He said he can summon a Leviathan, isn’t that perfect for our current investigation?”

“That’s true, but… if he can just summon one beast, he can’t really improvise if the situation calls for it.”

Lion was at a loss for words. The black mage apprentice, Marie, wasn’t really saying anything incorrect.

The adventurer and the archaeologist were married, and the black mage apprentice was their daughter, who attended a black magic academy. They planned an investigation of a historic site that had sunk into a lake, arranging it so that it would overlap with their daughter’s school holidays, and they put up a recruitment notice.

“While fire magic is my specialty, I kinda suck at water-related magic.”

“Then, Leviathan might be useful to you.”

“That would be great. I want to document the reliefs of those underwater ruins.”

“I’m looking for the promised treasure buried in the sunken ruins’ treasury!”

“Dad… we’re going to a small shrine this time. I already told you that it doesn’t have anything like a treasury. There’s no way you can just find a treasure so quick and easily! Didn’t you say that this time, you would properly help out with Mom’s research?”

“Finding treasure is the true spirit of adventure!”5

They seemed to be a very close-knit family. Lion smiled unconsciously.

He felt envious of the closeness shared by this family. It was something that he could only wish for with his own.

Everyone had high expectations of Lion’s older brother, who had been born into the main branch of their family, from a different mother, and who became an outstanding summoner, just as they had hoped. When Lion was young, everyone had those same expectations of him as well, but they ended up calling him ‘good-for-nothing’ ever since he was ten years old. His father, who only valued skill6, immediately turned away from Lion, and all his other relatives did the same.

His mother, who loved him dearly, had a weak body, and, even now, she was still living in the Shray family’s secondary home in Mauser.

The only ones who ever praised Lion as a summoner were his mother and his only friend.

Wait, come to think of it, the mysterious aristocrat from a few days ago had also sung his praises.

I wonder if Mister Sei managed to meet up with his companions.

Reminded of Seirios’ bright face, Lion thoroughly enjoyed his dinner with the adventurer’s family.

*********************

There was a wide lake, beautiful enough for the blue sky to be perfectly reflected in its waters. This was Lion’s current workplace.

The strange thing was the fact that there were a lot of withered, pure white trees sticking out from under the water’s surface. Besides that, there were masonry stones piled against each other in what was clearly a toppled over, man-made structure. Indeed, this place had long become a ruin.

The lake was astonishingly clear, and the bottom was clearly quite deep. In the middle of this vast pool of water, he could see a bell tower rising up through the remains, barely resembling a building at that point.

“That’s the building. It’s said to be a two hundred year old shrine, though the reason it sank underwater is unknown,” the archaeologist7 said, her cheeks flushed.

”

”

Standing beside her, Lion was straining his eyes, trying to take a better look at the line of withered trees under the surface. Suddenly he understood why they had brought him along.

The water is full of fish spirits.

Fish spirits were creatures that lived underwater and feasted on humans and animals. Since they didn’t possess any magic, they weren’t demons, but, despite that, they still posed a threat to a regular person.

The fish spirits, each the size of a grown man and whose mouths were visibly packed full of fangs, swarmed together.

Lion, who looked a little weary, was enthusiastically patted on the back by Marie.

Equipped with a thin steel breastplate, a pair of gauntlets and some other armor, she looked more like a little adventurer than a black mage apprentice.

“Then, we’re counting on you, summoner!”

“Y-yes….”

Breathing in, Lion pressed his hands together and the summoning formation painted on his palms began to heat up. In order to activate it, he formed a series of complicated hand seals with his fingers, and chanted in silence.

An old wound in his chest throbbed with pain, but, since this happened every time, he didn’t pay it any mind. Since it was difficult to activate the summoning formation for a rare beast, the summoning would fail unless he focused all his attention on it.

Leviathan, it’s your turn today!

The water surface that the white, withered trees stuck out of suddenly began to faintly glow. The light grew brighter, and bubbles began to appear in a small circle. It seemed as if the water heated up intensely and started boiling in that spot only.

Splashing a lot of water around, a grotesque yet beautiful creature appeared in front of their party. It was a big snake with beautiful scales on its body that glowed in a bluish-white light. The snake’s girth was wider than Lion’s hips.

As if it was walking on top of the lake, the snake swiftly drew near and brought the pointed tip of its nose close to Lion. Lion tenderly touched that characteristically wet nose and, as its summoner, he gave the Leviathan an order.

“Lead us to the shrine.”

The pair of eyes without pupils, that resembled big, blue gemstones, momentarily lit up. At that moment, the water abruptly parted in a straight line, leading all the way up to the shrine, which was sunken so deep that even its bell tower was underwater. Emitting a quiet, crackling noise, the water partially froze over, and an icy path appeared, leading from where Lion was standing to the shrine’s entrance. Inside the walls of the water corridor, the fish spirits gathered as if they were being pulled towards them. There was no visible change in the fish spirits’ expressions, but they probably felt frustrated about the unreachable prey slipping past them right before their eyes.

When Leviathan let out a low roar, these fish spirits, too, scattered.

Leviathan was a summoning beast powerful enough to be revered as a protector beast of its designated region.

“Whoa, amazing! You can actually summon a Leviathan! I thought that you might come out with some fake imitation one! That’s awesome!”

Did you think that I was lying since the beginning…?

These words of praise, coming from the honestMarie, wounded the little bit of pride he had.

He had been sounding really shady starting from the point when he told them that he was a freelance summoner, so it was impossible to ask them to trust him.8

In contrast, he, himself, felt at ease when there weren’t too many excess expectations, since he was already sick of being told that he was a let down.

“Come on, let’s go.”

As long as Leviathan remained summoned, the water would be held away from the shrine and the fish spirits wouldn’t be able to get near them. Walking in a single line, they followed the ice path until they arrived at the shrine’s entrance. The building, after being sunken for two hundred years, had algae and corals covering every surface.

“Aah, the underwater ruins I’ve been longing for!”

“Alright! Let’s find some treasure!”

“Whoa, the floor’s all slimy like it’s covered with lichen! Ugh, there’s a lot of water dripping from the ceiling! I’m soaking wet!”

While listening to their voices, Lion followed the family and made his way into the shrine. Since the Leviathan materialized, it couldn’t enter the narrow building nor any places without water, so Lion kept him on standby in the middle of the lake.

The veteran adventurer9 and Marie immediately set their sights onto the innermost part of the shrine and ran off. Lion shone a light at a mural near the entrance and stood beside Marie’s mother10, who began surveying it.

“Ah, this Marie of ours. Even though she herself said that there wouldn’t be a treasure, she just took off at full speed. You can’t fight blood.”

“You mean what they call an adventurer’s blood?”

“Even though we let her attend the magic academy, since she said that she wanted to have a respectable job, in the end, we still do things like this together as a family. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“No, I think that you are having a lot of fun together as a family.”

While letting out a chuckle, Marie’s mother sketched the mural at an amazing speed. She was exceptionally skilled, as was expected from a professional. However, a moment later, she muttered,

“…This is weird, this relief… is strange.”

“What is it?”

“See here? Actually, a white circle, symbolizing the sun, should be painted here. But look, this shrine’s relief is completely filled with black circles instead.”

Since Lion knew little of archaeological sites, he didn’t really understand it well, but Marie’s mother had a grim look on her face. Puzzled, she surveyed the ornaments on the mural, which continued a little bit forward.

An hour after they had entered the ruins, they arrived at the innermost room. They met up with Marie’s father halfway, and he said, seemingly disappointed, “It’s all algae and no treasure.”

“Say, dear. This shrine’s relief is a little weird. In theory, its motif should be the light, but it’s all completely filled with jet black. Is it possible that this shrine is a dark-?”

“No way… don’t go in there, Marie!!”

Marie’s father yelled out, suddenly angry. Startled by his loud voice, Lion jolted. He could hear the girl’s reply coming from a nearby small room.

“What-?”

“Don’t move, and don’t touch anything in there! Even if I’m wrong about this, don’t you move a thing!”

Marie’s father ran towards his daughter, and Lion followed after him, asking, “Eh, wai- what did you figure out?!”

“”This is a dark shrine, a shrine to worship demons! Only adventurers know of this, but, if we were to steal anything from here, the demons would surely come to collect it!”

“!”

As her father flew into the small room, Marie was looking his way, a startled expression on her face. She was holding an old cup that didn’t seem to be of any value in her hand.

“What’s wrong? There is a cupboard or something here, and I found this inside.”

“Let go of that immediately! Let’s get out of here!”

The father grabbed Marie’s hand and started to run, and Marie’s mother and Lion ran after them. The cup that fell from Marie’s hand fell with a resounding clang, rolling down the stone floor.

“Eh? Wait, what?! What’s wrong, Dad?!”

“If a demon finds out that we tried to steal their things, they will definitely come to retaliate against us! We have to get out of this lake!”

“By demon you mean…”

“Could you be talking about me, by any chance?”

It was a woman’s voice, so bewitching it felt completely out of place.

Footnotes

Japanese bathrooms predominantly have a separate area with the bathtub and shower, and a separate area for the sink. Since japanese people shower before they get into the bathtub, with the shower drains located directly on the bathroom floor, it might be like a separation of a wet and dry area.

じゃ、よろしくな – ‘ja, yoroshiku na’ – yoroshiku is a bit of a difficult term to translate, literally it can mean ‘take care of me, best regards, please remember me’ and many others, but is often used in situations when you accept a job or when you start working with someone as a way for them to welcome you and vice versa. Lion’s response right under is also a variation of this phrase and I have tried to adjust them to this situation as best as I could.

ドノー – ‘do like in ‘dough’ and nou – like in ‘north’ just prolonged. ‘Dno’ is also the name of a russian city, so the actual pronunciation of the word differs from the japanese pronunciation.

遺跡学者- ‘iseki gakusha’ – historic ruins/archaelogical site scholar, even though she doesn’t probably research ruins that strictly have to do with humanity, I think the concept is the same and historical ruins scholar is quite a mouthful.

Big thanks to chocolala for the wording on this line.

実力主義 – ‘jitsuryokushugi’, literally ‘merit system, meritocracy, ability-ism’

It actually says ‘archaeologist mother’ but that sounds quite unnatural in english.

A huge thank you for chocolala again as well as Graze for helping with this line/section.

again, literally ‘adventurer father’ which sounds a little weird in English

Marie’s mother and father are referred to in the text as just ‘mother’ and ‘father’ but I added Marie’s for it to sound more natural in English