Was it just his imagination? Had there simply been too many to deal with all at once?
The more Alex looked around, the stronger the sense that something was off became.
On top of the corpse of the Mimic that had been the pure-white terrace chair he killed earlier, a different kind of chair was now sitting.
“…Lord, that… I think that’s the chair I saw farther inside yesterday.”
Apparently sensing that something was wrong as well, Elizabeth pointed at the chair Alex was looking at.
“….”
From deeper inside—in other words, from the direction of the port—the Mimic had moved toward the lord’s castle.
Without realizing it, Alex held his breath and took another sweeping look around.
“…Then all the Magical Beasts we can see here… crawled out from deeper inside…?”
Elizabeth slowly spoke as she looked around, then turned to Alex’s face.
“Did you predict this too….”
Anyone could tell from his expression that he had not.
“Apparently not….”
Thinking it might be dangerous, Elizabeth froze where she stood and continued scanning their surroundings.
Alex was just as bewildered as the tense Elizabeth.
Starting with the mill, anomalies like this had cropped up again and again, so Alex could not help growing increasingly wary.
Oooooooo-
Before Alex’s doubts could deepen any further, a sorrowful song drifted in from somewhere.
It was a voice with a melody yet reminiscent of a wail, similar to a human voice yet somehow different.
Alex frowned as the sound filled him with an inexplicable sense of discomfort.
“This won’t do. Dame Elizabeth, let’s head back for today and….”
He needed to go back over the existing strategies and figure out what could have caused this situation.
But while calling out to Elizabeth, Alex suddenly looked around in alarm.
While he had been distracted by the succession of strange sounds, Elizabeth had vanished without a trace.
“Dame Elizabeth? Elizabeth?!”
Unfamiliar Mimics were scattered everywhere, but Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen.
Alex hurried farther in, heading in the direction where Elizabeth had been standing moments earlier.
With no traces of her and no sign of her presence, Alex grew anxious and moved deeper into the city beyond the buildings.
Only then did Elizabeth’s back finally enter his sight.
“Where the hell are you going….”
As Alex hurried after her, something struck him like a bolt of lightning.
Because of her Gold Maniac trait, Elizabeth possessed a fair degree of resistance to simple fear or psychological pressure.
But precisely because of that, she was extremely vulnerable to unusual mental attacks powerful enough to exceed that resistance.
The symptoms did not emerge gradually.
She would simply succumb immediately.
Because of that trait, there was one battle in which Alex had lost Elizabeth especially often throughout his hundreds of playthroughs.
‘…Siren…!’
It was a mid-boss that used curses specialized in mental attacks.
There was a strong chance that the mysterious song he had suddenly heard belonged to the Siren.
Still, he could not immediately conclude that it was the Siren.
For one thing, the creature lived only in the sea, and it was not supposed to appear this early.
“….”
While Alex hesitated, the Mimics subtly avoided his gaze and began creeping away.
The skittering sound of them slipping out of sight, like hundreds of insects crawling past at once, sent chills down his spine.
Every Mimic was fleeing from the direction of the sound, as though trying to escape it.
A song that enchanted humans and drove Magical Beasts away.
The more he saw, the more certain Alex became, and he quickly caught up with Elizabeth.
“Elizabeth!”
He called to her from right beside her, but she did not respond.
Judging by her unfocused green eyes and listless steps, she had already been enchanted.
Fortunately, she had only heard the song briefly from a great distance, so she did not seem to be deeply under its influence yet.
Alex was lucky that his Paladin trait granted him a certain degree of innate resistance to curses.
“Snap out of it!”
Without hesitation, Alex smacked Elizabeth in the back of the head with his gauntleted palm.
She had essentially been struck by a steel plate out of nowhere, but the exceptionally tough Elizabeth merely jolted in surprise as though someone had given her a light knock on the head.
“Ack! Wh-What!? What was that?!”
Beside the bewildered Elizabeth, Alex immediately deployed Sanctuary.
[Sanctuary Lv.6]
[The holy barrier absorbs various status effects and physical impacts.]
Only after Elizabeth entered Sanctuary’s range did she seem capable of properly assessing the situation.
“What? Where are we… Ugh, I feel nauseous and dizzy….”
Elizabeth frowned deeply in confusion as she realized that despite having no memory of walking this far, they had already come quite deep into the Old Quarter.
Alex considered his options as he watched her bewildered expression.
Should they return as they were, or should they investigate the situation more thoroughly?
“…Yeah. Looks like something that uses that kind of attack has appeared. We need to check it out.”
In the end, Alex decided to investigate.
If he had plenty of time, that would be another matter, but Alex did not have that luxury now.
If that voice truly belonged to the Siren, they were in serious trouble.
If the voice reached the vicinity of the lord’s castle and enchanted the people of the Domain as well….
‘There’ll be a massacre….’
The Siren’s song could enchant humans in a variety of ways.
Sometimes it would simply lure people straight toward itself and kill them, while at other times it would inflict hallucinations that caused humans to fight one another.
He could not allow a single Siren to reduce the settlement, which had only just become peaceful, to chaos.
Which meant he first had to confirm whether it really was the Siren and, if so, exactly how close it had come.
“If we need to go, then let’s go. Are we safe as long as we stay inside this?”
Elizabeth did not seem particularly bothered by the fact that she had just been enchanted.
Or perhaps she simply trusted Alex that much?
Alex nodded with a peculiar expression.
“For now… let’s just go check. Just check.”
Alex once again focused his mind as much as possible and deployed Sanctuary.
The hundreds—perhaps thousands—of pieces of furniture scattered throughout the Old Quarter, which had resembled an empty ghost city, had shifted to different positions every time he turned his head.
Even within that eeriness, there was a pattern.
Everything was moving in the same direction.
At first, Alex had thought they were simply heading toward the lord’s castle, but upon looking again, he realized that they had no fixed destination.
They had a fixed point they were avoiding.
Aaaah-!
Following the movements and the voice in reverse, Alex and Elizabeth arrived at a plaza.
Just as the plaza’s fountain and the ornately laid paving stones came into view, the strange song rang out once more.
At the beautiful voice, Sanctuary shuddered violently, and even Alex’s head began to throb painfully.
[Hidden Enemy Appeared!]
[A desire born too soon sings a hasty aria.]
Among the half-collapsed buildings was a beautiful woman whose blue skin looked distinctly unnatural.
She sat alone amid the ruined scenery of the plaza fountain, singing.
The pair of dark wings growing from her back were beautiful enough that one could understand how ignorant onlookers might praise her as an angel.
[Apostle of Lust ‘Siren’]
Magical Beasts often imitated human forms, but the Siren took it to an entirely different level.
As though deliberately crafted for the purpose of seducing humans, she possessed the beauty of a finely sculpted porcelain doll.
“Why is she so pretty…?”
When Elizabeth once again stared at the Siren in a daze, Alex opened his palm again.
Unlike when she had genuinely been enchanted, however, Elizabeth frantically waved both hands in alarm.
No matter how tough she was, getting smacked in the back of the head with a gauntlet was an experience she only needed once.
“I’m just saying! It’s true, isn’t it?!”
If Elizabeth became enchanted in a situation like this, Alex would be in danger as well.
She seemed fine for the moment, but there was no doubt that Elizabeth would not be able to endure the Siren for long.
‘…The Siren was a mid-boss that wasn’t supposed to spawn until around the middle of the game.’
Why had it appeared already?
Looking closely, the Siren’s overall coloration was still far paler than in her usual form.
Even the feathers of her wings, which should have been as hard as steel, drooped limply in an unfamiliar navy blue instead of their usual pitch-black color.
She was probably a young specimen that had only recently been born.
Once Alex realized that much, something came to mind.
It was what Jack had said during their meeting not long ago.
‘Is it… really all right to keep feeding those Magical Beasts so well…?’
Jack had been worried that some of the well-fed Magical Beasts might grow too powerful.
Alex had understood his concern, but at the time, he had been certain.
A horde of enemies swarming in VS a small number of powerful enemies charging in.
When it came to defending the Domain, the latter was always preferable.
That was why he had believed it would unquestionably benefit them to keep the creatures well fed if doing so encouraged them to fight among themselves and reduce their numbers.
“Damn….”
Even now, if forced to choose, he would make the same decision.
But a powerful enemy had appeared sooner than he expected.
And on top of that, the weaker Mimics had begun moving toward the lord’s castle to escape the Siren’s mental attacks….
“This is the worst….”
Alex bit down on his lip as the situation once again developed in a way he had never expected.
But Alex already knew that he was playing under brutally difficult conditions.
Naturally, his thoughts shifted toward finding a way out of the situation.
“Is the way to deal with this that difficult?”
Elizabeth watched Alex as his deliberation dragged on.
Her question came from the certainty that Alex would naturally have some sort of plan.
Of course, there was a way.
But now that his plan to use a powerful enemy to sweep away the small fry had gone awry, a rash decision could make the situation even worse.
“…No. I need to think about it some more. Let’s head back for now.”
Alex did not want to present such a half-baked plan to someone who trusted him.
He needed to prepare properly.
***
Alex and Elizabeth hurried back to the lord’s castle.
By now, the streets that had formed around the castle possessed a completely different atmosphere than before.
They looked nothing like they had when Alex first arrived, when swarms of flies hung everywhere and even nearly rotten ingredients had been too scarce to keep in stock.
“….”
In a short period of time, Alex had restored a measure of humanity to these people’s lives.
Now that their hunger had been resolved and they had gained some breathing room, vitality had returned to their faces.
The atmosphere he had felt at first—where it would not have seemed strange for a knife to suddenly come flying at his back from somewhere—had completely vanished before he knew it.
Clenching his teeth, Alex lengthened his stride and hurried into the lord’s castle.
“You have returned, Lord.”
The guards, who now looked reasonably proper as they stood watch over the entrance, opened the doors for him.
For some reason, the weight of everything Alex had accomplished made his shoulders feel heavier.
Hamilton hurried out to meet him after his earlier-than-planned return.
“You have returned earlier than expected. Shall I prepare bathwater and a meal?”
Despite Hamilton’s words, Alex headed straight for his office.
“No need. I have something to think about, so don’t let anyone come in. Dame Elizabeth, you should call it a day and get some rest too.”
The game’s strategies were knowledge known only to Alex anyway.
Even if he tried to share them, explaining where the knowledge came from and all the surrounding context would obviously take longer, so it was better to wrestle with the problem alone.
After firmly closing the office door, Alex immediately spread out sheets of paper.
Using a quill and ink, he began organizing the thoughts drifting through his head one by one.
‘If the Siren has already appeared at this point….’
Events that had been skipped, and events that had been pulled forward.
Separating the two categories, Alex simultaneously began thinking of possible solutions.
It was frustrating that his hand could not keep up with the thoughts in his head.
What events had been mandatory conditions for the Siren’s birth?
[Time Remaining : 234 : 20 : 33]
[The Ominous Compass is currently pointing east.]
What ominous event would occur roughly ten days from now?
An attack by the Siren?
Or some other, even greater incident?
Alex’s hand moved without pause as he wrote everything that came to mind across the paper.
‘What’s the best option I can take, the next-best option, and the absolute worst thing I must never do?’
One thing was clear.
Trying to resolve the situation with their current personnel would be the worst possible approach.
What if Elizabeth, their greatest combat asset, became enchanted by the Siren?
That single possibility could bring everything crashing down, making it an ideal recipe for total annihilation.
“….”
We need more combat power.
No matter how much he thought about it, every line of reasoning led to the same conclusion.
Alex stared at the strategies spread out before him before slumping back into his chair.
“Where am I supposed to find that in ten days….”
Alex muttered helplessly.
There was always a way.
He simply had not thought of it yet.
Leaning back against the large chair, Alex once again sank deep into thought.
***
“Aaaaaaah!”
Alex suddenly came to his senses as he registered a scream.
Before he knew it, he was standing alone in the middle of the Domain.
What?
Why?
When?
Fragmented questions filled his mind, but another scream struck through his thoughts.
“Aaaaaagh!”
“S-Save me…! Aaaagh!”
The market was filled with the stench of blood, the smell of burning, and screams.
His body trembling, Alex looked around.
The castle towering atop Carcosa’s hill was engulfed in crimson flames, while above it a golden sun blazed fiercely.
And obscuring that sun… was a black star….