Evermist Port. The southernmost harbor of the Kingdom of Arabagia.

Every winter, the entire sea froze solid and navigation became impossible. For that very reason, the weeks leading up to winter were actually the port's busiest season.

Rumors of water ghouls had been spreading like wildfire lately. Several workers and adventurers had already turned up dead. The port ran anyway, day and night without pause.

Merchants determined to squeeze out one last profit before the sea froze, and laborers counting on daily wages to keep their families fed, they were gears in a massive machine. Neither could afford to stop.

"Sir Adventurer, you're finally here." The harbor overseer, Balin, came hurrying over with a warm smile plastered across the face, gaze lingering a beat longer than necessary on the greatsword at the young man's back.

Just from that presence alone, this was no weak adventurer.

"Yeah." Banxia nodded.

He'd been rattling along in a carriage from Alterna all morning. His stomach was hollow. He wanted to get through the questions quickly and find something to eat.

"Tell me what you know about the water ghouls."

"Ah, this whole business is downright strange." Balin wiped the sweat from the brow, attentively ushering Banxia over to a pile of wooden crates and pouring a cup of hot tea before lowering the voice to speak.

"The first incident was about half a month ago. The port is lively enough during the day, but once night falls it goes dead quiet, nothing but the sound of waves hitting the seawall. The ones who first ran into that thing were a few workers keeping watch over by the breakwater..."

Balin rambled on, describing everything with vivid detail. Banxia listened and raised the teacup to take a sip.

When Balin got to the part about a Bronze-rank party being completely wiped out a few days ago, the voice noticeably faltered. Then one more thing was added at the end.

"Oh, right, of those adventurers, the one cleric who survived said that at night, he also saw the figure of a dead companion."

"So every night at the port, people see the figures of the deceased?" Banxia set down the teacup and nodded slowly.

In Alterna, because of the curse laid by the Great Demon, the King of the Undead, cremating corpses had long become ironclad law. Everyone followed it without question.

The dead could not crawl back.

Which meant the "dead people" these witnesses were seeing were almost certainly phantoms conjured by some form of magic.

That was only speculation, though. What exactly was causing the trouble, he wouldn't know until he went to the breakwater tonight and tested it himself.

"Understood. I'll look into the situation as soon as possible."

He stood, set the empty teacup on the wooden crate, and figured he'd find something to eat near the docks first to line his stomach, then wait for dark.

"One more thing — any good local food worth trying around here?"

"...Seafood."

...

"So full it hurts..." Banxia walked out of the restaurant and tugged his waistband up.

The charcoal-grilled oysters here by the docks truly lived up to their reputation. Incredibly fresh. As for the side effect, all he could say was that it hit a bit harder than expected.

Shame that this kind of thing could only be eaten fresh at the source. He'd never heard of any supply routes into the city, which meant no restaurants back there ever put seafood on the menu.

He strolled along the docks to walk off the meal, watching the sun sink slowly below the horizon.

Workers were still hauling gunny sacks back and forth, each of them buried in work they couldn't put down.

Lots of workers in one place also meant...

Banxia stopped dead in his tracks.

"Damn it, I was so busy eating that I forgot to ask the restaurant owner something important!"

Dockside restaurant owners like that were exactly the kind of people who knew everything about everything. Without even thinking about it.

He'd actually gone and forgotten to ask,

Where were the half-beast-run brothels around here?!

Back in Alterna he'd heard people say it plenty of times, mermaid girls showed up around the port area, and there were even properly licensed establishments operating here.

Mermaid girls. A brand-new entry in the Interspecies Review Guide, still waiting to be unlocked.

Something that important, and he'd spent the entire time staring at the oysters on his plate. Completely blanked on it.

"..."

He sighed and found a flat spot on the stone steps at the edge of the dock to sit down.

A steady breeze came in off the water, carrying a faint smell of the sea. He breathed it in, and something in his chest ached with longing.

"Whatever. Once I wrap up the investigation quest tonight, I'll go find Miss Mermaid tomorrow."

Mind made up, he turned his full attention to the beach spread out before him.

According to the overseer, almost every night people saw deceased acquaintances calling out to them from the shoreline.

An investigation quest like this probably wouldn't be too difficult. Barring any surprises, he could be done by tonight.

And so, as the cargo workers dispersed one by one, the docks gradually sank into a wide, hollow silence.

Word of water ghouls had spread far enough that after dark, nobody dared linger anywhere near the waterfront.

Banxia sat alone on the stone steps. He looked like an ascetic monk.

He didn't keep track of how long he sat there. It was only when the sky had gone completely dark that he breathed out a slow puff of warm, damp vapor.

"Strange. Sitting still for this long — I don't feel the slightest irritation."

"I wonder who'll be the one to show up."

He thought back to what the overseer had said that morning. The figures that appeared before the living were mostly people who'd held real weight in the victim's heart. A passing acquaintance seen once or twice wouldn't be enough to kill.

Looked at that way, running into someone you knew while away from home was scarier than running into a complete stranger.

He almost laughed at his own piece of gallows humor, then reined it in and started thinking seriously.

Nearly two months in this world. The only person still alive who could genuinely be called an acquaintance was probably Roxy.

He did know a few demi-human girls from the brothels, but that was a you-pay-I-take-the-coin arrangement, that didn't count as knowing someone.

As for people already dead whose names were still carved into his memory, there was only the cleric, Marl.

So the one about to walk out of the mist would be,

His thoughts snapped off.

"Fog rolling in?"

Sea fog wasn't unusual. But this fog was wrong, unnaturally thick, swallowing every path around him in the span of a few seconds.

Banxia waved a hand through it. The mist didn't move.

"Not ordinary sea fog. Some kind of mist-based magic."

Now that a caster was confirmed, the rest was straightforward.

Whether the one hiding behind the scenes was human or monster didn't matter. It had already killed enough people. The moment it showed itself, he wasn't leaving anything behind.

He rose to his feet. His right hand settled on the hilt of his sword.

"Big Brother! The water's so nice and cool — hurry up and come in!"

A familiar silhouette appeared on the beach. A young girl, wearing a JK school uniform that had no business existing in this world.

"...You're kidding me." Banxia went completely still.

All those memories...

He'd braced himself. He thought he'd prepared for whatever might come out of that mist. He hadn't expected this.

He knew, with absolute clarity, that this could not be his little sister. But the figure standing on that beach, her appearance, her voice, the way she tilted her head, was identical to the girl in his memory. Down to the last detail.

But it doesn't matter. Every part of my soul is screaming that this is a lie.

"Big Brother! Come on, hurry! Didn't you always say you'd take me to the beach someday?!"

"Yeah." Banxia drew a slow breath and nodded, his voice perfectly calm.

He still didn't know where the one controlling the mist was hiding. But he could pin down one thing.

The source of the magic was coming from the sea.

He'd wanted to keep this quiet. Finish the quest, then go find a mermaid girl tomorrow and decompress.

But this bastard had managed to actually make him angry.

"Oh, and Big Brother, where did you disappear to before? I looked everywhere and couldn't find you! You had me so worried."

"I'm on my way."

His hands rose and shaped the air, fingers curling back as though drawing a bow.

Blazing magical power surged out of him, roaring through his veins and compressing between his fingers into something dense and terrible, a single arrow of pure flame, trembling at the edge of release.

"Wrath of Finality."

Two hundred and one years of cultivated power, packed into one shot.

It was going to be something else entirely.

➤ Next: Fierce Battle Against the Phantom Demon

Chapter 40 - Fierce Battle Against the Phantom Demon

The ocean is a domain that doesn't belong to humanity.

Beneath these deep waters where terrestrial creatures had almost never set foot, an almost-mature abyssal sea demon dragon lay coiled inside a reef cavern.

It was still too young. The signature deep-blue scales along its spine hadn't fully formed yet, and its wings were still nothing more than two thin membranes pressed flat against its torso.

But in just ten more years, once it cleared its juvenile stage, it would grow into a southern overlord capable of raising monstrous tsunamis and swallowing entire islands whole.

By then, the entire southern sea would be its hunting ground.

Tonight, it had only been roused from shallow sleep by an abnormal ripple of mana drifting across the surface far above.

The juvenile overlord flicked its tail fin in irritation and decided to go up and see exactly what brainless monster had been leaking mana over its territorial waters for days on end.

At first, it had assumed the thing was just passing through, so it hadn't bothered.

But the creature hadn't moved on. It had just stayed there, parked in place like it owned the sea.

What if the humans noticed?

Most high-ranking monsters possessed intelligence on par with humans, or beyond it. While their strength was still developing, they were careful around humans. But toward their own kind, especially monsters ranked lower than themselves, they dropped any pretense and let their dominance show.

Just as it prepared to go teach that presumptuous intruder a lesson,

"ROAR—!"

The sea demon dragon's amber slit-pupils clenched tight.

What was it seeing?

A sun, falling toward the surface of the sea.

The light was too intense. It pierced straight through to the dragon's soul and sent a shudder rising from somewhere deep inside.

In the last instant of its life, the juvenile abyssal demon dragon tried to open its mouth and fire back with an unfinished dragon breath. But before that mouth could release even a trace of mana, the scorching shockwave vaporized its entire head along with everything attached to it.

Wings never unfolded. Scales never bared. An empire never built. A lifespan that should have stretched across hundreds of years, all of it dissolved into nothing in the dying ripple of that single strike.

But the residual force of that sun wasn't spent yet.

It kept going, down through the water, down through the sea floor.

A moment later, a deep, bone-heavy boom rose from the seabed. The earth across the entire coastal stretch began to shake.

On shore, residents who'd already gone to bed scrambled out of their homes in a panic.

"Earthquake! Get out, get out!"

"Is a tsunami coming?!"

...

[Ding-dong. Slew monster: Abyssal Sea Demon Dragon. Total lifespan: 1,500 years. Remaining lifespan: 1,000 years. Now absorbed.]

"Hm?"

The mist cleared. Banxia glanced at the notification that had popped up on the panel and paused for a second.

Some unlucky creature from who knows where had apparently gotten caught in that last shot.

Whatever. Didn't matter.

He looked away. His eyes settled on the mangled half-corpse of the monster still floating on the surface.

The arrow had only grazed it, no direct hit. And yet the shockwave alone had already taken most of its life.

"A Phantom Demon." Banxia stepped closer. "Rare."

He'd only read about this type of monster once, in a book. Most southern adventurers probably went their whole lives without ever running into one.

Phantom Demons were exceptionally cunning creatures. They used Phantom Magic to read a target's memories, then conjured illusions of the people that target cherished most, luring humans in and preying on them.

"Disgusting."

Before the monster could squeeze one last shriek out of what remained of its body, Banxia was already in front of it. His hand came down in a diagonal blade-strike.

[Slew monster: Phantom Demon. Total lifespan: 200 years. Remaining lifespan: 120 years. Now absorbed.]

Done. Banxia exhaled and dropped onto the edge of the beach, staring up at the round moon with blank eyes.

---

Early the next morning, the workers were back at the pier as usual, cargo hands shouldering loads, line crews hauling cables.

As manager of this section, Balin was up early too.

More than the workers, Balin was worried about whether the newly arrived adventurer had actually tracked down the source of the trouble. Every night the pier shut down early was another night of lost income.

Balin walked briskly toward the breakwater and spotted the figure sitting cross-legged on the beach at once. There was a brief pause, and then Balin jogged over.

"Um—Lord Adventurer, you didn't spend the entire night out here on the beach, did you?"

"Yeah." Banxia stood, brushing sand off the hem of his clothes with one hand. "It was an illusion. A Phantom Demon. Already dealt with."

"A Phantom Demon?" Balin turned it over for a moment, then eyes went wide.

"But those things are supposed to be incredibly cunning. Even a full adventurer party might not come out in one piece if they run into one, and you handled it alone?"

"Yeah."

"I, yes, of course! Please, follow me. I'll hand over the completion token for the commission right away!" The moment Balin's eyes met that calm, flat gaze, an involuntary shudder ran through the whole body.

The trouble was resolved. The monster was dead. By all rights, this should have been good news.

And yet from the moment the adventurer had stepped off the beach until now, there had been a faint shadow sitting between those brows, quiet, persistent, like something had put him in a bad mood and hadn't let go.

Was the reward too low?

Balin, raised in a merchant family, understood immediately.

An investigation commission paid next to nothing. And the man had eliminated a Phantom Demon on top of it.

As for whether he was telling the truth, Balin trusted years of reading people. That kind of instinct didn't fail. And if something turned out to be wrong, the Adventurers Guild was always there for follow-up.

...

At the same time, the door of a trading firm near the pier swung open.

Master and servant walked out one after the other, having just finished negotiations with the local chamber of commerce.

"Milady, do you think we pushed too hard?" Dressed in men's clothing, Ai Hayasaka followed a step behind, voice low, still turning over the negotiation that had just ended badly.

The deal had gone through, but the expression on the other party's face as they left made it perfectly clear they were keeping score.

"Hayasaka." Kaguya Shinomiya adjusted the brim of her black gauze hat. The cold set of her expression didn't change, but something almost like a smile moved beneath it, faint enough that you'd miss it if you blinked. "A qualified merchant learns to leverage small stakes for large returns. There is no other path to success."

The timing and conditions were both in her favor right now. She had the principal Mr. Banxia had lent her, and she had the Star Moon Chamber of Commerce's name behind her. The milk trade from a single village barely scratched the surface of what she wanted.

What she was after was a monopoly, swallow the two supply lines into the city, milk and saltwater fish, one bite at a time, then slowly absorb the entire market.

That was the only way to build enough capital in the time she had.

She was already thinking through which sector to move on next when,

"Hey. Brats. Who said you could run a business on my turf?" Several men built like fishermen stepped into their path. "You don't know I'm the boss of this pier?"

"..."

Ai Hayasaka moved immediately, stepping in front of Kaguya Shinomiya.

Kaguya Shinomiya's brow creased.

They were standing on the pier's main street, in plain sight of everyone. The nerve.

And the timing wasn't random, either, this had happened the moment the negotiations ended, not a minute before or after.

The complete lack of subtlety made her want to say something cutting.

The local chamber of commerce had no manners whatsoever.

"Milady." Ai Hayasaka tilted sideways and murmured, low enough for only one person to hear. "Should I deal with them?"

After arriving in this world, Ai Hayasaka had picked up a few rogue techniques. No guarantee of winning against these particular men, but they'd definitely feel it.

"..."

Kaguya Shinomiya's eyes moved across the surroundings.

Porters and overseers had stopped where they were. Some stood with arms folded, watching. Others had simply put down their work to look. Not one of them looked like they were about to step in.

So that's how it is.

She bit her lower lip lightly and accepted what she was looking at. Commerce in another world was a great deal more naked than anything in modern society.

"Rather than let you get hurt, Hayasaka, we should—"

"Get lost."

The voice came from ahead of them. Flat. No emotion in it at all. But anyone who heard it could tell the person behind it was in a very bad mood.

Those eyes were sharp enough to make your skin crawl.

"Hey, who the hell are you, kid? You got any idea who I, whoa, whoa, whoa—"

Somewhere in the middle of that sentence, the pier boss discovered he had learned to fly.

The problem was he had no control over altitude or speed. He covered the distance to a nearby stone wall faster than intended. His head connected. He tilted sideways and went still.

The lackeys looked at each other, then looked at the young man who was calmly lowering his hand like he hadn't done anything at all. They didn't even finish their threats. They scrambled and ran.

"Huh? Milady, it's Mr. Banxia! I didn't think we'd run into you here."

Ai Hayasaka nudged the young lady's arm, and found her standing there, not quite present.

"Milady?"

"...I know." Kaguya Shinomiya lifted her hand and gently moved Ai Hayasaka's arm aside. She turned to face him directly.

Her heartbeat had steadied just moments ago.

The instant her gaze met those eyes, cold and utterly clear, not a trace of anything muddying them, it kicked back into gear without her permission.

➤ Next: Return to Fundamentals (Chroma)