Chapter 3: Jallomo and the Wizard of the Swamp

Part 1

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Jallomo who lived in a village deep within the woods. His father had been killed by a dragon, and his mother had whisked away from the village after being seduced by a fairy, but Jallomo was a steadfast boy who raised cows and pigs to survive.

One day, the Hero Arnoldt came to the village.

—Oh, it’s a hero.

The Hero Arnoldt was famous for having defeated an evil dragon. The villagers revered the hero from the bottom of their hearts.

—What brings such a brave man all the way out here?

—I heard that an evil wizard lives in the swamp to the north.

Good gracious, the wizard of the swamp? The villagers tried to persuade the hero against killing the wizard.

—The wizard of the swamp is an evil villain of unparalleled atrocity and cruelty. No one has ever stepped foot inside the swamp and returned alive.

But the Hero Arnoldt would not change his mind no matter how hard the villagers tried to dissuade him.

—Do not fear for me. All I need is for someone to guide me to the swamp. I swear upon my name that I will return without a single wound.

The villagers exchanged looks. The Hero Arnoldt may have defeated a dragon, but the infamous wizard of the swamp had been alive for centuries and was truly evil.

But just then, Jallomo bravely raised his hand and said,

—I can take you there.

 

* * *

 

Diana urged her feet forward. The people who lived there chased her with their eyes as she, a stranger, crossed the marketplace, but Diana simply covered her face and hurried along. Eventually, she was practically running as she wrapped her dark grey mantle tightly around herself.

It was evening, and the clouds were purple as they gathered. A chilly wind brushed against her cheek as she was snuggled inside her mantle. Diana huddled into herself because of the cold as she walked up to a remote restaurant. The warmth of the fire and a cacophony that reeked of alcohol swept over her as soon as she opened the worn-down door on the verge of collapse.

The restaurant was teeming with workers who had finished their work for the day. Many of their faces were already flushing bright red, likely due to a combination of the food and alcohol. Diana was standing awkwardly by the door when she suddenly grew worried and did her best to hide her face under her mantle. Then, she weaved her way between customers who were singing with their arms around each other’s shoulders as she finally made it to a seat in the corner of the building.

“Why did we have to meet up here of all placed?”

Diana grumbled as she sat down. There were two old wooden cups on the table that looked so fragile they might shatter upon the slightest impact, perhaps because Cedric and Rupert, who had arrived ahead of her, had been drinking as they waited.

“This is the cheapest restaurant in the area.”

“But it’s still too loud. My eardrums are throbbing —ack!”

A worker had been dancing drunkenly as he sang along and had accidentally collided against Diana’s back. Diana shrieked as she startled, but her voice was buried deep under the boisterous singing.

“Still, it’s a good thing that we were able to gather enough money to eat. Should we order now? What do you want to eat, Miss Diana?”

Rupert did his best to cheer Diana up as she glared daggers at the worker who had run into her while massaging her back. But it was Rupert who looked like he was having the hardest time at the moment. His face, peeping out from under the deep hood of his mantle, was so pale he seemed sickly.

“I’ll……just have whatever’s cheapest.”

Diana lost her will to keep grumbling when she saw just how haggard Rupert looked. Instead, she called over an errand boy and ordered the cheapest item on the menu before she turned back to Cedric.

“How much money do we have left?”

“About forty grats.”

“Forty grats……. That’ll be gone in a week.”

“Then we’ll have to sell buttons again.”

It’ll be nice if we can go back before then, Cedric said calmly as he took a swing of beer. A gloomy mood fell naturally over the table.

It had already been two days since the three of them had been dropped into a place that they had never even heard of before. Initially, they had done everything in their power to figure out their exact location because they thought they had simply been teleported to an unfamiliar land, but strange things had been piling up one after another as time passed. Like the fact that they could communicate just fine even though they were in a tiny village in the north, presumably somewhere in Banzè, the fact that the people were here talking about the Kingdom of Zaltburgr, which had fallen ages ago, or the fact that the construction of the village and the clothes the people were wearing were things that had only been seen centuries ago.

If this was truly Banzè, as they assumed, then Diana and Rupert, who didn’t know a lick of the northern dialect, should not have been able to communicate with the villagers. But the villagers could understand them just fine, and Diana and Rupert could understand the villagers too. They should have been speaking different languages that were completely unfamiliar to the other party, but they could communicate as if it was only natural.

And, what was with the Kingdom of Zaltburgr? The village may have been located in some extremely remote corner of the world, but it was still bizarre for its people to be talking about a kingdom that had fallen centuries ago. But the villagers had never heard of Banzè, and they only continued to insist that they were living in the Kingdom of Zaltburgr.

Lastly, was the traditional lifestyle the villagers lived, which Diana and the others had only ever seen depicted in old illustrations. It was difficult to even find carriages here, never mind trams. And the villagers were wearing rustic traditional garb as they devoted themselves to farming and raising livestock. Diana wasn’t very familiar with the average person’s lifestyle, but she had realized early on that life in the village was very different from what she had seen of human society thus far.

Naturally, it all felt very surreal. All three of them had scattered into the village to investigate their doubts, and all they could do now was acknowledge the fact that their foreboding premonitions had been true.

“I couldn’t leave the village from the west exit. The road definitely continued, but I was inside the village again just when I thought I’d finally gotten out,”

Diana said gloomily. Cedric and Rupert simply nodded listlessly, perhaps because they had shared similar experiences. Then, with a tremble in her voice, Diana asked,

“Then, is it true? Are we really inside [Jallomo and the Wizard of the Swamp] just like you thought, Mr. Rupert?”

A chilling silence followed. Diana looked urgently between Cedric and Rupert. She dearly hoped that one of them would deny it, but the only reply she was given was an affirmation under the guise of silence.

“If we’re truly stuck inside the story, then is there a way for us to get out?”

Cedric asked abruptly. Hesitantly, Rupert nodded back.

“We can get out, of course. This magic wasn’t meant to trap people inside to begin with.”

“Then, what is its purpose? No, actually, you should’ve warned us beforehand if this book was so dangerous.”

Rupert looked upset from the injustice of it all when Diana rebuked him sharply.

“The book wasn’t supposed to be on that bookshelf to begin with. I don’t know how a book that was supposed to be sealed in an underground safe made its way inside the library.”

Rupert looked like he was on the brink of tears. Diana grew bewildered and hesitantly offered him her handkerchief. Rupert accepted it politely with both hands before wiping away the tears in his eyes and blowing his nose into it. He continued,

“This is an ancient spell for turning books into treasure chests. Wizards from Banzè used to use it to hide their treasures, but the spell stopped being passed down long ago and there aren’t many books that are even charmed with it anymore. There are only two or three such books even in the Millennium Rose Hall, with Jallomo and the Wizard of the Swamp being one of them.”

“To hide treasures?”

“You can win the treasures if you satisfy the conditions set by the author. Some books drop you into a maze and force you to find your way back out, and others make you solve a riddle. But the point is to hide the treasures, so the authors usually make their conditions really difficult to satisfy. And the conditions only became harder after the storybook hunters appeared and tried to steal the treasures.”

“Was there a reason why the wizards used storybooks for their spells?”

Cedric asked quietly. Rupert nodded.

“Grieg Fromm wrote [Jallomo and the Wizard of the Swamp] in his twilight years. But Grieg Fromm wasn’t in his right mind at the end of his life, as I’m sure you already know, so no one knows why he wrote it. No one knows what kind of treasure he hid inside his storybook, or if he even hid a treasure at all.”

“In that case, what must we do to escape?”

“I think we’ll have to complete the story.”

Silence prevailed for a moment. Then, Diana furrowed her brows and gingerly asked,

“Does that mean we have to write the ending ourselves?”

“To be precise, we have to bring about the ‘correct ending’ that Grieg Fromm intended.”

“Which is…?”

Rupert, who had been explaining things just fine until then, suddenly pressed his mouth closed. Diana and Cedric had been looking quietly back at him when their gazes slowly crossed in mid-air.

No way…

“Please say that you know.”

“I-it’s just —[Jallomo and the Wizard of the Swamp] has so many different editions that I don’t really know which one’s the correct one…….”

“Is every edition different?”

“The first part, where Jallomo, the orphan, and Arnoldt, the hero, go to punish the wizard of the swamp is always the same. The problem is that Jallomo and Arnoldt succeed in killing the wizard of the swamp in some versions, but in others, Arnoldt dies and Jallomo just barely makes it out of the swamp alive. There are even editions were the hero Arnoldt betrays Jallomo and only Jallomo dies.”

“No wonder you said he wasn’t in his right mind when he wrote it.”

Diana smiled bleakly. Rupert hung his head as if he was a criminal.

“……What happens if we fail to complete the story in the way Grieg Fromm intended?”

In any event, time still passed inside the storybook. Even now, the orphan named Jallomo probably existed somewhere in the village, and the Hero Arnoldt would surely come and take him to the swamp. The story would complete itself in one way or another even if the three of them did nothing.

“This is a spell that purposefully drops readers inside the story, so it’s probably safe to assume that we won’t find the correct ending unless we interfere. We can’t sit still and simply wait for the story to conclude itself, but we can’t interfere blindly either. Realistically speaking, it’s far more likely that we won’t find the correct ending by interfering blindly without knowing what we’re supposed to do —so what will happen to us if the wrong ending comes to pass?”

Cedric asked quietly. Their surroundings were boisterous —there were even instruments accompanying the singing now—, but the three of them remained silent.

Rupert dragged his heels before he finally opened his mouth.

“We won’t be able to escape from the story if we get the wrong ending. We’ll probably be stuck here forever.”

 

* * *

 

The next day.

There were dark circles under Diana’s eyes as she climbed down to the first floor of the inn. This was rare for Diana, who typically fell asleep late into the night and woke up similarly late the next morning, but she had no choice but to rise early because the villagers started their day at dawn. She could not tell what time it was exactly, but, judging by the position of the sun, it was still early in the morning before nine.

Perhaps it was because the other guests had already left in a hurry, but the first floor, which doubled as a restaurant, was extremely quiet. Diana stared vacantly at the first floor from the landing. The morning sun was illuminating the servers as they enjoyed a late breakfast. It was the first scene of tranquility Diana had seen in a long time.

“What are you doing?”

Cedric’s voice suddenly sounded from behind her. Diana, who had been lost in thought, startled and turned around, but Cedric had already walked past her and climbed down to the first floor by the time she did.

Diana quickly caught up to him.

“Why are you alone? What about Mr. Rupert?”

“He probably won’t be up until noon.”

“How come? Is he sick?”

“I think he had nightmares all night long.”

Diana made a slight face. Rupert was the oldest of their group, but he was also the most faint-hearted. Unlike Diana, who had grown up under the care of her indifferent teacher while feeling entirely unwelcomed by the three very unique Jiles siblings, or Cedric, who had been guarding the national border for the past two years, Rupert had lived a very ordinary life and had been living his days peacefully while working at the library.

“In that case, we’ll have to go looking for Jallomo as soon as Mr. Rupert wakes up.”

Now that they had realized they were trapped inside a story, it was imperative that they met up with the main protagonist. They had to gain as many hints from Jallomo as they could before the Hero Arnoldt showed up at some point to take Jallomo to the swamp. Diana continued,

“We need a change of clothes too. But we’ll need money for that —won’t we need to visit the old man in the yellow house too?”

“Let’s eat first.”

Cedric called over an errand boy and ordered some food. Diana scowled as she heaped curses upon the ‘old man in the yellow house’ inside her heart.

The three of them had obviously not carried any of the money that was minted here when they had first fallen into the storybook four days ago, and that had been left with little choice but to sell their personal belongings for money. But Rupert and Diana were both poor and the only thing of value they possessed were their own bodies, so their fates had fallen upon Cedric, who hailed from a wealthy household.

Fortunately, Cedric’s jacket had jewels for buttons. They had visited the old man in the yellow house, the most affluent man in the village, to sell the buttons for money, but the problem had been that the old man in the yellow house was vulgar —as was befitting his occupation as a loan shark.

 

“Your face is nice, but your figure……. A good woman should at least be worth the catch.”

 

That was the first thing the old man with a beard like a goat’s had said upon meeting Diana for the first time. Diana hadn’t fully understood what the old man was saying or why he was staring at her like he was licking her with his eyes and had simply felt a little put out at the time, but she had grown enraged once she had had the time to think back about what had happened.

Diana’s expression grew stiff as she began mutilating her potato with her fork before she realized what she was doing. Her fork only grew naturally more violent as she imagined that the ugly potato before her was the old man in the yellow house.

Cedric, who had been eating quietly opposite of her, abruptly said,

“I’ll visit the yellow house alone. You stay here.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know when Mr. Walsh will wake up. One of us should stay behind,”

Cedric replied without so much as looking at Diana. Unlike Diana’s extremely disorderly dish, Cedric’s plate looked just as neat and tidy as ever as he elegantly cut away with his knife —the only change was that the amount of food on his plate had decreased somewhat. Diana, who had been staring back at him, lowered her gaze and fell into thought.

In either case, they still needed to visit the yellow house again. They needed money because they didn’t know how long they were be here, and more importantly, they needed a change of clothes. They stood out too much because they were dressed so differently from the traditional garb that everyone else was wearing. The villagers already tended to be curious about foreigners to begin with, so they needed to do something to at the very least stop the additional staring.

But what if they had to stay here for a long time? Apparently, the old man in the yellow house had been acting as the village chief for over twenty years until just last year. He was a loan shark with a lot of money, so it was no wonder why he had enough influence to rule over the village. And, unfortunately, Diana and the two wizards were unable to escape the storybook unless they found the correct ending, and they were more likely to run into the old man again the longer they stayed in the village. She could not avoid the old man in the yellow house forever.

“No, I’ll go with you. We can leave a note for Mr. Rupert,”

Diana spat out. She could feel Cedric staring openly back at her, but she did her best not to speak any more on the matter. Instead, she displayed her resolve by redoubling her efforts in making a mess out of the poor potato.

 

 

“You’re back again, little miss,”

the old man greeted them unctuously. Diana did her best to conceal her discomfort as she stood as far away from the old man as she could. The old man, who was over eighty this year, could not easily rise from his seat on the sofa. He continued,

“What brings you here today? Hmm?”

Cedric walked up to him without a word and handed over a few jewel buttons. It was only then that the old man’s sticky gaze broke away from Diana and fell on Cedric instead.

“Are the two of you related? Actually, before that —what do you even do anyway?”

the old man asked quietly. For better or for worse, the old man at least treated Cedric like a gentleman. It was likely because Cedric quiet clearly looked the part of a young master from a rich household, but Diana couldn’t help but grow furious when she recalled the sleazy way the old man taunted her with his eyes and words or the way he had ignored Rupert entirely.

The old man looked between the two of them in turns when they did not answer and wagged his pinky finger at them.

“She yours? Or are you just bringing her around with you? Then again, it wouldn’t be strange for someone with your face to have multiple girls chasing after you.”

“How much can you give us?”

Cedric, who had been silent until then, finally spoke. He glanced at the buttons he had placed on the table when the old man failed to understand what he was talking about at first.

It was only then that the old man began studying the buttons. A string of words they couldn’t recognize —perhaps it was the local dialect— poured out from the old man’s mouth.

“The hell? These are the same buttons from before. I can’t give you much for these.”

“So, how much can you give us?”

“Fifty grats each.”

Diana, who had been staring out the window, whipped her head back toward the old man. Fifty grats? —that’s ridiculous.

“Look here. You gave us a hundred grats each just four days ago. Why did the price suddenly cut down to half?”

“Because you’re giving me more of the same thing. That means they aren’t as rare anymore, and rarity is a value.”

“But isn’t it still too much to cut the price down to half? How does that even make sense?”

The old man turned around, perhaps because Diana’s protests had offended him, and he gestured as he replied,

“You can always take your business somewhere else. You might not know because you’re so young, little miss, but in this world, being desperate makes you the loser. I’m not desperate for your jewels, so why don’t you try and find someone else who’ll buy them from you? Though I can’t say if anyone in this tiny village will even recognize these jewels for what they are to begin with.”

The old man droned on for quite some time before he snuck a glance at Diana. He continued,

“Unless you have something you want to give me too, little miss?”

What is this swindler even talking about? Diana was about to raise her voice from the absurdity of it all when Cedric suddenly cut her off with an emotionless look on his face.

“That’s enough. We’ll sell them for fifty grats each.”

Both Diana and the old man turned to look at him. Diana was bewildered and jabbed her elbow into his side, but Cedric did not so much as flinch. She could not read anything from the emotionless look he was wearing.

The old man opened his eyes wide in surprise before he began guffawing.

“I see. You seem to know how to hold a proper conversation. You should watch him and learn, little miss.”

Then, the old man promptly rang his bell and summoned over a maid. Diana ran a few quick calculations in her head while the old man told the maid to fetch some bags of money. They were selling four jewel buttons. At fifty grats each, that brought the total up to 200 grats. They would only have 200 grats to buy clothes with and live off of. They didn’t know how much longer they would need to stay inside the storybook, but they would be dead broke in just ten days.

Diana could not help but sigh as she grew distraught. She pitied her own circumstances. She had nearly died at the hands of a madman inside a train just two months ago, and now she was in danger of being trapped inside a storybook forever. She had managed to live the first nineteen years of her life without much incident, so perhaps she was suffering all her misfortune at once this year.

Something strange entered her view just then.

‘Huh?’

The old man was busy sneaking a look at the maid’s breasts as she poured him some tea, and there was a bag of money sitting on the old man’s lap.

Diana blinked repeatedly. Was she seeing things?

Two glittering coins had escaped the old man’s moneybag and were floating in the air.

‘What’s he doing?’

Diana stole a glance at Cedric. He looked just as composed as ever, but he also looked extraordinarily nonchalant considering what he was up to. The world of magic punished theft harshly because witches and wizards had very distinct ideas about the concept of ownership, so to think that Cedric, who had been raised as an elite member of the world of magic all his life, of all people would steal another’s money. Diana’s teacher would have fainted if she knew what Cedric was doing, and Chesterty would have surely teased him about it for the next thirty years.

The gold coins floating in the air for a moment, as if they were taunting the old man who was distracted by the maid, before they vanished from view. Most likely, they had been safely teleported into Cedric’s pockets. It was only a little while later that the old man finally tore his eyes away from the maid and handed Cedric 200 grats, unaware of the events that had just transpired. Naturally, Cedric was still acting as aloof as ever as he accepted the money.

“I’ll see you next time, little miss.”

The old man did not forget to be sleazy as he bid them farewell. Diana snorted as she stormed out from the sitting room. The old man would never learn who had just robbed him of three gold coins worth a hundred grats each even in his dreams. Thinking about that helped Diana cool down a little.

 

That being said, however, it didn’t mean that she’d necessarily give up on her revenge.

Diana summoned her magic as soon as she had stepped outside the yellow house. Her target was the statue of the old man in the garden. She had no idea how arrogant the old man had to own a statue of himself, but she figured that just one vulgar old man in the world was already one too many. And Diana had turned down Cedric’s offer and had gone out of her way to come all the way here just to meet that old man.

Ecstasy filled Diana’s eyes as she glowered at the statue. It didn’t take long before the statue suddenly tilted to one side and fell over with a loud crash. The statue was reduced to shambles upon impact. The damage done to its shattered head was especially gruesome.

Diana felt much better as she resumed walking. She had exhausted quite a bit of magic to push over the heavy statue, but she had never before been so happy about the beads of sweat on her forehead in her life. She hoped she would never have to suffer the old man again, but she also resolved to ruin the old man next time if she did, just like she had done to the statue.

But just as she gleefully walked through the front gates.

Crash—!

A thunderous roar shook her to the bone. Diana turned around in great astonishment. It was rather far away now, but one corner of the yellow house’s roof was crumbling down under the sun.

“What are you standing around for?”

Cedric said abruptly to the flustered Diana as he walked past her. Diana was stupefied as she looked between Cedric’s back and the yellow house in turns.

She could see flashes of the yellow house between the rising white smoke. And the blackness of Cedric’s retreating figure grew gradually farther away.

Diana looked back at the yellow house, from which she thought she could hear the old man shouting, and thought,

……That wasn’t me.

 

A haggard Rupert welcomed Diana and Cedric back at the inn. The color of his face did look a better though —he had been having nightmares every night lately, so perhaps letting him sleep in late had done him some good. Rupert didn’t ask any questions after they told him that they had visited the old man in the yellow house and instead shared news about where Jallomo lived, which he had learned from the employees.

“It sounds like he lives in the outskirts of the village to the north, where the farms are. He’s quite famous around the village because he’s got a good head on his shoulders despite being an orphan.”

Before they left to find Jallomo as they planned, Diana bartered fiercely with the innkeeper and bought three sets of secondhand clothes for cheap. Cedric’s and Rupert’s clothes had once belonged to the innkeeper’s husband in his youth, and Diana’s had been worn by the innkeeper’s daughter when she was younger.

But Diana did not particularly like the secondhand clothes she had bought. Unlike its male counterparts, which boasted a white shirt, greyish pants, and long boots, the female garments had fluttering long sleeves and a long flowing skirt that reached all the way down to her feet —she looked ridiculous. Diana put on her mantle in a desperate attempt to hide her comical dress, but her mood only continued to sink after Rupert had failed to read her mood and said,

“You look like you’ve come straight out of a picture from an old storybook, Miss Diana.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Your clothes suit you well, Mr. Rupert.”

And so, the three of them squabbled as they made their way to where Jallomo lived. It was supposed to be an hour’s walk from the inn, which was located at the center of the village. Rupert began regurgitating information that no one had even asked him for as they walked —perhaps he intended to fill the entire hour with ceaseless chatter.

“I don’t think Jallomo’s all that different from how he was portrayed in the story. I mean, he was an orphan in the story too, right? His father was eaten by a dragon, and his mother was seduced and whisked away by a fairy, leaving him an orphan. I discreetly asked the employees a few questions while the two of you were visiting the yellow house, and they told me that it’s true.”

“His parents were really eaten by a dragon and seduced by a fairy?”

Diana asked in disbelief. After all, dragons and fairies were both very rare.

“Well, they’re rare in our day in age. All the dragons left the earth 200 years ago and now you can only see them on rare occasions with House Jiles, and I’m told that the fairies withdrew into the forests and that their numbers have been greatly reduced,”

said Rupert. He continued,

“But this is Banzè from 500 years ago. The magical houses that settled down in Banzè, like House Volkhart or House Fromm, all hate dragons, and I’ve heard that dragons have always been a thorn in their sides since long ago. Some of the records suggest that local governments in the North even likened dragons to demons because nothing would be left standing after a witch fought with one. So, it must’ve been pretty bad, right?”

“I suppose…….”

“And the North’s always been overgrown with forests. So there’s probably a lot more fairies here than in Ingram or Messina, right?”

Rupert explained fluently —clearly, wasn’t a librarian just for show. Cedric, who had been listening quietly with rapt attention, slowly responded,

“It looks like the world of this storybook isn’t as hollow as we thought it was.”

“I agree. Everything else aside, the Kingdom of Zaltburgr that the villagers keep talking about did actually exist 500 years ago.”

The story perfectly portrayed how people had lived back when the Kingdom of Zaltburgr had still existed. But, upon deeper thought, it was also somewhat strange. The Millennium War was still in full force 500 years ago, and the world of magic looked down on mankind and thought of ordinary humans as an inferior species, so wizards and men should have naturally considered each other to be members of ‘different races.’ There was no reason why the world of magic and human society should have mingled with each other, which meant that there was no reason why a wizard would take interest in the lives of ordinary people during that time.

And yet, the people in [Jallomo and the Wizard of the Swamp] were surprisingly detailed. Even Jallomo, the main character, was an ordinary person, so Diana and the others could not help but wonder if the author of the storybook had hidden some secret in writing things this way.

Diana carefully mused over the storybook’s author.

Grieg Fromm.

He was the wizard of his century born to <Solemn Fromm>, and he had been a genius ahead of his time. But he had gone insane before his talents could truly blossom, and it was said that he had spent the rest of his unfortunate days locked up in the castle where his relatives had kept him.

The Masterpiece of Fromm. The wizard who had once been extolled by all had conducted all sorts of bizarre research in the isolation of his castle, and the only thing he had left behind was a single storybook —[Jallomo and the Wizard of the Swamp].

“I wouldn’t be surprised no matter what we find here, since he was crazy when he wrote this book. I’m seriously confident that I wouldn’t be surprised even if a dragon showed up out of nowhere, you know?”

Rupert grumbled. Even Diana half-agreed with his sentiment. Only a wizard who had lost his mind could have set his story in a human kingdom and had an ordinary person like Jallomo has his protagonist. It was entirely possible that wracking their brains while trying to figure out the author’s intentions was a complete waste of time.

But Diana could not rid herself of her discomfort. The earth beneath her feet, the stars shining down from above, and the wind breezing past her ears. It was all too realistic to believe that everything had been enchanted by a madman from 500 years ago.

Was it truly possible to materialize something magically with so much realism?

Perhaps magic really was a miracle like ordinary people believed.

 

* * *

 

Diana stood on her tiptoes as she peered over the fence. The building they were spying was shabby —it looked like it might collapse any moment now—, and there were only a few sparse patches of grass in the front yard. The scenery was quiet, and there wasn’t a single shadow of a person to be seen in the area.

“Can you see anything from where you are, Miss Diana?”

“Only the stable.”

Diana and Rupert exchanged looks and sighed. Cedric also hadn’t spotted anything of note, but he was silent as he returned to the group.

“Can’t we just boldly walk right in? It’s not like there are any other houses around either…….”

“But what if we run into Jallomo? We have nothing to say to him right now,”

Diana criticized Rupert sharply. They had sought out Jallomo because they figured that doing so was at least better than sitting around the inn doing nothing until the hero Arnoldt showed up, but meeting with Jallomo immediately came with its own troubles. They could even be trapped inside the story forever if they made a mistake.

“It’s better to observe the situation from close by for…….”

Cedric, who had been quietly sharing his opinion, suddenly looked away. A dog had suddenly started barking from somewhere behind them.

“O-oh my goodness!”

Diana startled and looked back when the sudden loud noise struck them like lightning. They had no idea where it had been hiding before, but a large hunting dog was poking his head between the fence and barking at them menacingly. The dog was oozing such bloodlust that they were growing weak at the knees.

But none of them knew any spells for making a dog quiet down. The three of them tried to make a run for it for the time being because they had no idea how they were supposed to calm the dog down, but they were rendered speechless when a boy slammed the door open and appeared before them.

“Genkla! I’m not going to give you any food if you keep barking like that!”

The boy stopped scolding his dog when his gaze traveled over to the fence and he spotted the people hiding behind it. An awkward silence followed, and the boy’s eyes began to narrow as he observed them from afar.

“Thieves?”

“…….”

“……No, I guess not.”

The boy’s eyes passed over Rupert, who had startled and was trembling with terror, Diana, who was frozen stiff, and Cedric, who was still as calm and composed as ever, in turns. Then, he pondered intently over something for a while before he finally found his answer and exclaimed,

“Oh, you must be those travelers, right? You showed up out of nowhere about four or five days ago.”

“Y-yes, that’s us,”

Diana replied in the confusion of the moment. Then, the boy walked up to the fence and began studying them openly.

“Wow. I’ve never seen anyone so pale before. It’s not like this is the first time in your life that you’re seeing the sun, right? No one who works outside could possibly be so pale.”

The boy was astonished as he looked over Rupert and Diana, but then he dropped his jaw when he turned to Cedric. He continued,

“Gosh. You’re real good-looking, Sir. Are you some kind of noble lord? Mr. Martin says that all noble lords seem to glow when you look at them, just like you, Sir.”

The three of them were silent. The boy seemed to have interpreted their silence in one way or another, and he quickly began jumping up and down with glee as he pointed to them.

“You’re a noble lord! Right?! And the brown-haired sir next to you is your servant! But he looks a little dull and he doesn’t seem like he’s good at working. See? —he can’t even understand that I’m mocking him right now.”

“Wait, you can’t possibly be referring to me right now, right……?”

“But who’s this redheaded miss with you? She doesn’t look like a maid……. Oh, is that what happened? You and the noble lord here fell in love with each other at first sight, and you decided to elope together —right?!”

The boy’s eyes were sparkling. Diana had no idea how she should even begin telling the boy he was mistaken. Fortunately, Cedric, the calmest person present, carefully corrected the boy’s delusions.

“We’re simply ordinary travelers. I’m not a nobleman, either.”

“Gosh. The villagers are naïve, so they might trust you at your word, but you can’t fool me. I’ve been taking a grain of salt with everything for years. But, well, you seem to have your reasons, so I’ll pretend that you managed to fool me too. But at least answer me this. You two are eloping, right?”

Cedric fell silent. The boy misinterpreted the silence yet again and he clapped his hands together in delight. He continued,

“I thought you must be stupid to do something like that when Mr. Martin first told me about you, but now I’m starting to think that you’re really cool. I mean, isn’t the power of love supposed to be incomprehensible and all that? So, don’t worry. I’ll pretend I don’t know who you are when suspicious people start coming to look for you.”

Then, the boy who had even cleared his throat as he put on airs suddenly tilted his head to the side and asked,

“But what are you all doing in front of my house?”

It truly hadn’t taken him very long to ask the question. The three of them immediately began thinking.

 

As they had surmised, the boy was indeed Jallomo.

“My name’s a little strange, isn’t it? I’m the only one with my name in the entire village. Toby’s always jealous of me because there’s at least five other people with the same name as him, you know?”

Once he had finished boasting about his uncommon name, his eyes grew as wide as saucers after Diana and the others had also introduced themselves to him. He continued,

“Wow. The redheaded miss’ name is the only one I’ve ever heard before. Hmm? I mean, Diana’s a really common name. Mr. Martin’s youngest daughter’s name is Diana too. And the old lady who used to live in the house with the blue roof until she passed away last year was also a Diana……. Huh? You came from the South? Really? No wonder you look so different from the villagers. I mean, you guys are  pretty short and look kind of weak.”

Diana and the others nodded back without a word. Though the reason why they looked weak was likely because they were wizards who did not engage in much physical work.

“Well, people from the north tend to have good physique, after all.”

“Is that how it is? But, why are you being so polite to me, Sir? I’ve never had someone talk to me so politely before.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s nice, because it makes me feel like I’m being treated like an adult, but it’s also a bit awkward. Can we all just act casually with each other?”

Jallomo pleaded with Cedric with his eyes. Diana, Cedric, and Rupert exchanged awkward looks. They had grown up in the dreary world of magic, and it was difficult for them to open up immediately to someone whom they had only just met. Even if that someone was a young boy who looked like he was barely over ten years old.

“……Sure thing, Jallomo.”

But Jallomo was still the main character of the story. They had to make a good impression on him, so they could not risk accidentally losing what goodwill they had chanced upon. The three of them had originally decided to observe him from a distance, and they were surprised to learn that he carried so much goodwill for them already, though they didn’t know why.

Jallomo invited them inside when the rainclouds began passing over the village, and he began brining out food because he wanted to be a proper host. Dishes began crowing the table as his hands worked busily. Every dish was humble, but his guests had grown accustomed to such humble foods over the past few days and picked up their forks without a single complaint.

“Anyway, how lost were you guys that you found yourselves all the way here? There’s nothing around here but farmland,”

Jallomo asked while fumbling around with a boiled potato. Diana exchanged a discrete look with her companions before she replied,

“Actually, we were looking for the Black Forest.”

“What? The Black Forest?”

Jallomo scoffed as if he had heard something absurd. He continued,

“Do you even know what the Black Forest is, Miss? There’s an evil wizard living there!”

“Why would we be looking for it if we didn’t?”

Diana muttered as she pouted. It was only then that Jallomo realized she was being serious and was promptly astonished.

“W-wait, seriously?”

The Black Forest.

That was what the villagers had always called the vast forest to the north of their village. The forest was as dark as night even during the day because the trees were so tall and the foliage was so thick and overgrown.

But there was one place in the Black Forest where no trees grew. It was a remote area of the forest where even the trails had faded away. It was the heart of the forest, but not even animals could roam there —never mind people—, and a bottomless swamp had formed there. According to the legends, an evil wizard had hidden himself in the forest centuries ago and the swamp was a trap he had created to protect his home.

“You can’t go to the Black Forest! It’s really dangerous there. Miss, you’re only saying that because you don’t know just how scary the wizard of the swamp is. A group of knights once came to get rid of them, but not a single one of them ever came back from the Black Forest.”

The blood drained from Jallomo’s face as he took fright. His reaction wasn’t any different from the villagers who had also grown pallid as soon as the Black Forest was brought up in conversation. The infamy of the Black Forest had spread all throughout the village. The wizard had been spreading fear for centuries. The terror was so palpable that even and outsider like Diana could feel it keenly.

Which was why it was all so strange. The boy was already quivering in his boots just because the Black Forest had been mentioned in conversation, so why had he volunteered to be the Hero Arnoldt’s guide?

Just what had he hoped to achieve?

“Did you really think we’re planning to go inside the forest? We were just curious because it’s so infamous,”

Rupert said quickly as he tried to rejuvenate the dying mood. But Jallomo looked like he was about to cry.

“Then you have to be satisfied with just looking at it from far away. You absolutely can’t go inside. Okay?”

“Of course. Gosh, I’m getting scared just thinking about it.”

Rupert had sounded extremely awkward, but even that had been enough to bring Jallomo some peace of mind. He immediately brightened up and began distributing the boiled potatoes.

“Then again, even the big and strong knights couldn’t do anything about the swamp, so there’s no reason why a bunch of wimpy Southerners like you guys could. Stop getting weird ideas, and how about you tell me more about the outside world instead? Yeah?”

Expectation began bubbling up in Jallomo’s eyes. He continued,

“Are there really towers as tall as mountains out there? And do brave heroes and evil wizards really fight all the time? What kind of place is the South?”

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Five hundred years ago, one’s place of birth was also one’s grave. People generally lived and died in the same place where their parents had lived and died, so they did not have many chances to hear about the world outside their homes. It wasn’t very strange for an orphan of about thirteen or fourteen to idolize the outside world.

Diana exchanged a troubled glance with her companions yet again before she finally spoke up. She talked about ancient castles and towers that she had only ever read about in books. About heroes she had only ever heard about in fairy tales. Of the South, which was no different from the North except that the days were a little longer. The young boy used his infinite imagination to fill in the gaps in Diana’s vague storytelling as she continued her tale.

 

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