ISEKAI EXORCIST

Rana was clutching me so tightly to her body that my vision began to flicker and I struggled to breathe, but, just before I passed out, she eased up somewhat and allowed me to gasp for air.

“I was really worried,” she said, before hugging me tightly again.

Lukas and Owl were standing nearby, watching in awkward silence.

“Do you want to hug too?” Owl asked Lukas and the boy let out a sound of disgust. “Eh, it was worth a try. Maybe I should go visit the Comfort District to find someone who wants to give me a hug like that.”

Rana released me slightly, then shot Owl a glare, before eventually saying, “Thank you for bringing him back alive.”

“I did no such thing,” he replied dismissively. “The Boy accomplished that himself.”

I didn’t want to tell them that the moment Owl had succeed in containing the Demon was the exact moment that I’d given up. Some things were best left unsaid, although it was hard not to feel guilty about the impressed look on Rana’s face.

Is it technically a lie if I don’t correct a misunderstanding?

“Yes.”

Then I’m fine being a liar, if this is my reward.

Before taking us to a fancy restaurant, Owl brought us to the Guild Hall so that we could receive the reward for completing the Quest. Granted, the Demon hadn’t been exorcised, but it had been neutralised, which seemed to still meet the requirements.

We were fortunately the only people inside the Guild Hall at the time, which I thought was comforting, considering the enormous sum of money that Master Owl was handed by the clerk. Lukas stared in yearning at the eight ten-gold crowns that was handed to my Mentor, and even Rana seemed impressed by the amount.

“I thought that I might receive a promotion again,” I admitted as we left the large stone building.

“Exorcists have a boost in terms of advancement up until Seeker Rank, but it will be a while before your next promotion. You have shown talent, which the Guild has acknowledged, but now they wish to see you accumulate experience. Many Exorcists don’t reach Eminent Rank until their Exorcist skill set is at level three. For most, that takes several years to reach.”

“I see.”

I suppose that there was no need for me to be hasty in reaching the next rank, since that would only bring with it more responsibility and more dangerous quests, as if the Exorcism Quests weren’t dangerous enough already.

“Speaking of which. Have any of your abilities levelled up?”

I pulled out my Guild Card. “I haven’t been keeping track,” I told him.

“You should at least have felt some change in how they work or how easy they are to utilise. My guess would be that your ‘Pact of the Familiar’ and ‘Spirit Sight’ abilities are at level two now.”

After touching the ‘Exorcism I’ ability to bring out my overview of skills, it looked something like this:

“Hm, four at level two already,” Owl commented, clearly impressed, while looking over my shoulder. “It would seem that surviving a Demon’s mental assault was good for your ‘Soul Barrier’.”

“I haven’t felt much change in any of the skills,” I replied. I was surprised to already be close to halfway towards ‘Exorcist II’.

“Sometimes it’s not a big shift, although your ‘Summon’ at level two should mean that using something like your Watcher won’t drain your energy as fast, and your Protector can guard you for longer. You should also have begun to notice more of the minutiae in people’s auras with your levelled-up Sight.”

“I think I’ve gotten better at it, yes. I can sort of tell when people are lying now.”

He nodded, satisfied. Like a proud teacher, almost.

While Owl and I dug into our meals of honey-glazed snapper with some kind of carrot-esque vegetable grated up and mixed together with a salad drenched in the wonderful Garum sauce, Rana and Lukas told us about their training. Apparently they’d also taken on a simple Gathering quest to find some herbs for a local alchemist. She seemed confident that Lukas would reach the rank of Initiate in no time.

“What should we do next?” Lukas suddenly asked, looking at me and Owl.

“I’ll have to stay behind here for a while to investigate the Demon Statue,” the Old Exorcist replied, “But I recommend you three go to Helmstatter next.”

Rana and Lukas both looked surprised.

“My apprenticeship is over,” I told them with a smile. Rana honestly looked relieved, but I couldn’t interpret how Lukas felt. It wasn’t like he was close to Owl or anything, but he looked kind of sad about the news.

After a moment, the random conversations started up again. Mostly just Rana telling Lukas and I about what we could expect from Helmstatter. It was supposedly a beautiful city, although, as I’d already been told, they were wary of Otherworlders. We decided that we’d spend a while longer in Ochre, since there were many unclaimed quests in the Adventurers’ Guild that’d been sitting around for a long time due to most Adventurers leaving when the trouble with the Galleon arrived.

“Here,” Owl suddenly said, handing me a coin. It was one of the ten-gold crowns he’d gotten for completing the quest.

I blinked in surprise. I hadn’t done anything to deserve such a large portion of the reward, but he said it was for my party, since we’d probably need it.

“I misjudged you,” Rana commented. Lukas nodded in agreement.

Owl smirked. “It’s not charity. Call it an investment. Besides, your merry band of misfits will have no one but each other to rely on once you leave the Adventurer-friendly cities behind.”

Rana and Lukas immediately began talking amongst themselves about what they could use the money for. Owl turned back to face me.

“Show me your Encyclopaedia for a moment.”

After handing it to him, he spent a few minutes scribbling on one of the blank pages in the back. I’d noticed there were at least twenty of such pages in the very back of the book, reserved for new entries. I doubted I’d ever manage to discover enough undocumented entities to fill it, but if such a thing did come to pass, I’d need to get my hand on another book to fill.

He gave me back the Encyclopaedia, showing me the new page.

“The Heralder?” I asked, reading its title.

“Cool name, right?”

I didn’t reply, but instead started reading through the entry. It held info such as the Demon’s ability to call upon wraiths that it could send beyond its domain, but according to Owl, it could not manifest them within its own domain, meaning that what I’d seen on the beach had been a vision and I’d in fact never been chased by an army of wraiths.

I frowned. Demons were truly mind-boggling entities.

Besides its ability to summon wraiths, Owl had also written that it had a very complex domain, but was weak once its core was found. He speculated that the Demon could not exist in our world without some kind of artefact keeping it tethered here.

For the bit about exorcising it, he hadn’t written anything, and for the portrait, he’d just drawn a cloud with an angry smiley surrounded by dopey-looking stick-figures wielding spears and bows, with the word “wraith” written under them.

“Your drawing sucks.” I realised in that moment that the entries with nonsensical depictions of apparitions I’d noticed in the past were his doing.

“Thank you.”

Next he handed me something else. As I took the item into both hands, feeling the cold touch of the soul-stone, I gaped in surprise at what I saw. It was as though a frigid wind washed over me, but the feeling quickly subsided.

It’s pure black…

“…I thought you’d have more abilities,” I replied, staring at the Card in my hands. My grip was white-knuckled and iron-tight.

That last pact has to be a forbidden one… and how does he have three Roles?? What is that curse?? What does it mean to be a Chosen of the Observer? Isn’t that the ‘unfathomable’ entity from whom I received my Watcher??

“I sacrificed all my non-skill-set abilities to attain a third Role. Those remaining three are a blessing and two curses. And no, I’m not telling you what the last Pact is with.”

I became uncomfortably aware that Rana and Lukas were utterly ignorant to what I was seeing, still talking like it was any other day. It was as though somehow Owl and I had entered our very own domain, where no one could truly see us.

Has he put up an illusion or something?

“…Be very cautious…He is using strange magic…It warps perception around himself…”

I swallowed hard.

“What does it mean to be an Adherent?”

Owl didn’t smile as he replied, in fact his entire face was void of emotion. “It means to give yourself over to one of the Absolutes: the founding Deities of this world and the countless realms beyond it, your world and mine included.”

“What sort of powers does it give you?”

“The abilities it gives are few, but it comes with its very own unique tasks and rewards. Guiding you was one of the tasks.”

I frowned. This was starting to sound very bad. Is he part of a disturbed cult or something? The way his mannerisms had changed reminded me of an interview I’d once seen of a member from a religious sect that’d been taken down by the police in my country, after its followers had attempted a mass murder to ‘bring about a new era’.

“And your curse of the ‘Flayed Lord’, what does it do?”

“The Absolutes are manifold in purpose and spheres of influence. The Flayed Lord is the incarnation of betrayal. I believe it is a rite of passage for all of the Observer’s Adherents to receive his curse. In short, it makes it so that everyone around me have an innate desire to betray and hurt me. It is possibly the reason why Harleigh killed my last apprentice. He and I used to have a rapport of sorts after all.”

I wasn’t sure that my treatment of Owl could truly be explained by some outside force compelling me to hurt him, but I was disturbed to realise that I also couldn’t totally discredit it either. After all, I’d never been an antagonistic person before coming to this world, but, when I thought back to how I’d treated Master Owl, there were things that were very out of character for me. I realised that Rana was the same, as she wasn’t the type to hate people without proper reason, at least not from my experience.

“Why are you showing me this?”

“You wanted to know what sort of Advanced Roles you might take on. Mine is but one of those paths. All Roles with access to the Worship and Offering abilities have the potential to become an Adherent; to serve a higher purpose in their otherwise meaningless existences.”

“You said that you thought an Exorcist might be behind the Demon Galleon,” I replied, bringing him to a topic I’d wanted an answer to for a while. “You said it was a specific type of Exorcist Specialisation.”

“The Benefactor behind the statue is a Demonologist, of that there can be no doubt. Like Adherents, their aura is black, although it’s technically rust-black, but visibly not very different to our Spirit Sight.”

“Demonologist…” I muttered. “So, when I have maxed out my Exorcist skill set, I can pick between Necromancer, Spirit Caller, Demonologist, or Adherent?”

“There is also Incarnate,” he added. “It is possible that others exist too, though, if so, the requirements for acquiring them must be rare. Demonologist and Incarnate both require that you form a Pact with a Demon, which is the epitome of folly.”

“They all sound super evil... You picked Spirit Caller though, is that one at least neutral?”

“It is,” Owl replied and smiled, but I could tell it was fake. It was simply a mannerism he had learnt to mimic in order to portray emotion, but, as I was looking at him and he was letting his void-black aura unfurl itself, I could tell that he felt nothing. His aura was unwavering and solid. I doubted I’d even be able to tell if he was lying to me.

“Hiding your aura is one of the abilities you gained from being an Adherent, isn’t it?”

“When serving the Observer, gaining control over perception is but one of the perks. If I wanted, I could make you see anything written on my Guild Card, but I decided to be truthful.”

I can’t tell if he’s lying about that…

I now wondered how exactly he had managed to locate the statue holding the Heralder Demon. Holm and Frode hadn’t mentioned anything about what they experienced after I became separated from them, but maybe I should find them and ask about it.

It was likely that Owl’s Adherent skill set also came with immunity towards perception-altering magic. It was hard not to shudder at the terrifying power he might possess. Those moments of dread I’d experienced around Owl in the past now felt entirely warranted, even if I pitied him slightly for his curse.

“What is it you want me to accomplish in Helmstatter?” I asked him. “Is it another part of this great scheme you’re apparently part of?”

Owl shrugged. “Who can say?”

I blinked.

“Ryūta, are you okay?” Rana asked. “You had too much to drink, I think.”

I halted in my tracks and looked around. Lukas was balancing while walking along atop a stone fence a few metres ahead of us, but Master Owl was gone.

Part of me wanted to immediately tell her what I’d gone through with Master Owl in the restaurant, but I was worried she’d think I was crazy. Plus, I wasn’t entirely sure it was something I ought to tell people, and part of me was uncertain how much of it was real…

“Do you want to sleep in my room tonight?” she whispered into my ear.

I nodded lamely.

Lukas ended up taking the room that Owl and I had slept in, while I took his bed. Unlike hotels in Japan, the linens, pillows, and cover had not been changed out since we got here, so I felt bad that Lukas would have to sleep with a pillow and linens that had soaked up my sweat.

I’m going to go to a bathhouse tomorrow, I promised myself, uncomfortably aware of my own stench.

“You look unwell, are you okay?” Rana asked. She was sitting next to me on my bed, a hand on my lower back, rubbing me gently.

“The Galleon was hard,” I said. “I’ve never felt so terrified and weak in my life. I actually thought that I had become capable and I thought I could assist Master Owl somewhat, but in the end I almost died.”

“But you made it out of there,” she said, trying to comfort me.

I shook my head, tears of embarrassment forming clouding my eyes.

“That was a lie! I would’ve died if not for Master Owl. When he managed to subdue the Demon I’d already given up and was waiting for it to destroy my mind.”

Rana smiled. “You didn’t lie.”

“Omission is still lying,” I argued.

For some reason she laughed. “Says who?” she asked.

“Armen does. My familiar.”

“I believe it is also considered lying by judges in a trial.”

“He sounds like a real bore,” she shot back.

“He’s very righteous,” I replied with a tiny smile. “He was once a Priest Crusader.”

“Definitely a bore,” she decided.

Rana put her hands on my shoulders and turned me towards her so we were looking eye-to-eye. For some reason I looked away immediately, a sense of guilt overcoming me. Then I realised what it was that was causing it.

“The Demon… it showed me visions of what my life could’ve looked like if I hadn’t come here and if a big mistake I made hadn’t happened.”

She nodded.

“One of the things it showed me… Well, there was a girl that I’d gone to school with for three years and had a massive crush on. And after we graduated, I confessed my feelings to her. Anyway, the Demon showed me how my life could’ve been if she’d returned my love.”

Rana’s smile faltered slightly.

“It sounds really dumb, but it almost feels like being with you, while thinking of her, is something to be ashamed of.”

“I don’t think you have to be ashamed about that. I left behind people I cared deeply about when I was transported here. I think about them every day. Hesher, my past boyfriend, I think about him everyday too. But it’s not something to feel guilty about. Don’t let go of those feelings you have for that girl, because they’re part of you.”

“But, you and I, are we more than just friends? I don’t know if things are different here or in your world, but I would never have done that with someone that I didn’t have serious feelings for.”

Rana raised an eyebrow sceptically. “Are you asking if it’s part of my culture to bed any man I come across? Is that what you’re implying?”

I looked up at her in horror. “No, no! That’s not what I meant at all!”

She burst out laughing, then said, “Good. Because I’ve got serious feelings about you too.”

“But… you could probably get anyone. Why me?”

“Do I need a reason? Maybe I can’t truly explain it. It just felt right.”

I smiled a little. “I’m glad you feel that way.”

“You know, Lukas actually reminds me a lot of Hesher.”

She chuckled at my terrified expression.

“Not like that, doofus. More in the way that all Rogues have some innate mischievousness and astuteness to them. Hesher was always getting into trouble. He was always reckless. To be honest, I really didn’t like him at first, maybe because he was very different from me. We had only been together for a few months when he died.”

Rana looked down and it was my turn to put a comforting hand on her. My movements felt stiff. I wasn't really that good at being comforting to someone else to be honest. But I wanted her to entrust me her feelings and complaints. Knowing that she felt the same way about me as I felt about her made me feel an immense responsibility for her, and, even though she was stronger and more impressive than me, I wanted to protect her.

She ran the back of a hand over her eyes to wipe away the tears that’d formed and I leaned in and hugged her.

“You don’t have to tell me if you’re not ready.”

“No, it’s okay. You deserve to know.”

“Besides Hesher and I, my team had a Ranger and a Priest. We’d all gotten to the rank of Seeker together and had begun getting really comfortable with an open Extermination Quest that was available to anyone of Initiate and above, where you were paid for each kill of a goblin that you could prove. At the time, one of the castle towns near Helmstatter was occupied by goblins, since a Hobgoblin Lord had brought his clan there.

“We mostly relied on ambush tactics to kill the goblins, since an open fight would lead to us being surrounded. Hesher and Blythe, our Ranger, were responsible for setting up the ambushes, while I hung back and protected our Priest, Sylvie. We’d been steadily killing off sentries and lone groups of goblins for weeks, making a decent amount of crowns off it, but I think maybe we’d gotten too comfortable.

“Goblins are really cunning, you know. And they seem to become smarter when they’re with a Hobgoblin Lord. At any rate, we ended up being lured into an ambush ourselves and became surrounded by those devious cretins. I fought really hard to keep them off our Priest, so I didn’t pay attention to protecting Hesher. I never even saw the strike that killed him, but I saw the aftermath and…”

Rana paused, swallowing hard and trying to hold back tears, but then they ran freely down her freckled skin. I immediately leaned in and hugged her tightly, just like she’d embraced me earlier.

Her warm tears soaked into the shoulder of my shirt, making me squeeze her even tighter. It was easy to forget that even someone with her powerful features was no less vulnerable than anyone else.

“I can’t breathe,” she gasped after half a minute.

“That means it’s working,” I told her, but eased up nonetheless.

She sniffed loudly, then pulled herself out of my embrace, but took my hands into hers.

“In the end, we were able to overcome the ambush and as a result of all the goblins I killed, I acquired my ‘Offensive Defender’ ability. Blythe ended up losing his hand, and, by the time we got back to Helmstatter, it was too late for the Church to regenerate it for him. Sylvie had been able to stop the bleeding, but she was not experienced enough with her Heal ability to be able to regrow lost limbs.

“I carried Hesher's body the entire way back to the city and we gave him a proper burial, but after that our party fell apart. Blythe had become unable to wield a bow due to his amputation and I found out some months later that he’d joined a band of thieves afterwards. I think he was eventually caught by the guards of a city, or maybe Adventurers, because he was executed along with his gang.

“Sylvie ended up joining another party and she recently ranked up to Eminent, although they’re in Lacksmey now. I sometimes get letters from her to my apartment in Lundia, but I don’t think any of my messages have actually reached her.

“Anyway, that’s my sob story,” she said with a sad smile.

“I’m sorry,” I told her, squeezing her hands.

Rana sighed. “It’s unfortunately not an uncommon story. Life in this world is cruel. It’s not as though Midrealm was perfect, even as Royalty there were a lot of hardships, but it definitely wasn’t this bad.”

“My world wasn’t even close to Mondus in terms of hardships,” I admitted. “Before I came here, my biggest problem was that I’d failed the exam to a university and felt left behind by my friends who all got accepted into their universities…”

“It’s not a competition,” she told me. “Coming here and experiencing the life of an Adventurer puts a lot of things in perspective though.”

I nodded. “I wish I’d appreciated my life more before I came here.”

“Me too.”

“Let’s take it slow for a bit here in Ochre,” I said. “It’s not like we need to take on quests after all.”

“Ten gold crowns can buy the three of us maybe three months here,” she said.

“I wasn’t thinking we’d stay for that long,” I told her.

Besides, if Master Owl is right, my F-tier Luck will ensure that there is no rest for me…

Rana suddenly moved her right hand to my thigh. I peered down at it and then looked back up into her eyes.

“Maybe a few weeks of relaxation,” I said, as she slowly moved her hand higher.

“I’ll stand guard outside,” Armen commented and left.

Prude.