Chapter 281 - One Person, or the World?

“Mother, we’re home!”

“Please excuse us for disturbing you.”

We followed Miu into her home.

It’ll be too much if all the members of the Ernol family went in, so Tina, Seira, Sitri, Kikyou, Sylph and I entered first.

“Welcome back, Miu. Where did you go off to? And… who are they?”

Miu’s mother was about to prepare their lunch in the kitchen. I noticed there were several black lines running across her nape.

“Mother, your body isn’t okay, so you have to lie down!”

Miu ran towards her mom and tried to pull her to sit on the chair nearby.

“I’m fine. I’m feeling good today, somehow.”

That’s what Miu’s mother said, but her complexion said otherwise.

“Sorry for imposing on you so suddenly. I am Halt, an adventurer. These girls are my companions.”

“...What is an adventurer doing here?”

“We accepted a commission to examine the cause of your poor health from Miu.”

“T-This child submitted a request to the Adventurer’s Guild? B-But, what about the money?”

“I used my own pocket money,mother. I want you to get better as soon as possible!”

“N-No way…”

Miu’s mom looked troubled, but also looked somewhat happy.

“Uhm, is the commission fee enough? This child’s allowance won’t be enough to hire all of you.”

She probably thought we were high ranking adventurers based on the pretty, high quality clothes that Sylph and Seira wore.

“We’re just rookie adventurers, so our commission fee is cheap. But please rest assured, we will definitely treat the root cause of your illness.”

I already had an idea what the cause was.

“Mr. Halt, please heal my mother.”

“...I’m sorry. I don’t want to worry this child more than this, so please take care of me.”

Miu’s mom also acknowledged that we could heal her.

“Yes, please leave it to us.”

The commission from the Guild said that we had to investigate the cause of her mom’s health problems, and healing her was also included, if possible.

I wanted to heal her to the best of my ability.

“Well then, please allow us to examine your body’s condition. Sitri, Sylph, please.”

“I understand.”

“Ye~s!”

Her poor health was probably caused by the Evil God’s curse.

We needed to check her thoroughly to know what kind of curse it was, but she had to take her clothes off so I stepped out of Miu’s house for a moment.

Sitri came out after a while.

“Danna-sama. It is indeed the curse of Evil God-sama.”

“I see. So, what kind of curse is it? Can Seira and I remove it with our magic?”

“I’m afraid… it is impossible.”

Sitri knew the full extent of our abilities, so it must be true if she said so.

“The curse she encountered is a calamity-ranked curse, dangerous enough to wipe out the entire population of people in this world.”

“— Eh”

The curse will gradually and steadily suck away her mom’s strength. Not only that, this curse infects the people around the cursed person once she dies.

It would take around one month for a cursed person to die.

Afterward, the curse would spread throughout the surroundings of the death place, and the scope would be around one city.

Just like how Miu’s mom stood up to make lunch, the person could still move around even after being cursed.

Moreover, their Status Board would already show [Status: Cursed] by the time they were aware that they were feeling unwell, but they won’t have any idea what specific curse hit them.

In the first place, only a handful of the general population could see status boards.

It was easy to spread this curse throughout the world for that reason.

There had been two instances in the past when this curse spread throughout the world, and the menace brought about by this curse didn’t disappear until after the world’s population was reduced by half.

“Judging from the strength of the curse, she must be the first one, no doubt about it.”

“I see, that’s a relief.”

Miu’s mom was the first one to be cursed, so we could save the entire world as long as we break her curse. We just need to save her.

— But, it was easier said than done.

“Danna-sama. This is extremely hard for me to say, but…”

“What is it?”

“I propose that we take her into the Interstice, or perhaps into the Demon Realm and kill her there.”

“Huh?”

I didn’t get what Sitri was saying.

“Halt. About that curse… It can never be broken.”

Sylph came out.

“Even in the past, not once was it broken; it only disappeared on its own.”

Sylph and Sitri were telling me that the curse on Miu’s mom was something unbreakable — even if we used elixirs, or the fruit of Yggdrasil and other supreme class items that could heal anomalous conditions.

It’s a troublesome curse that has taken root in the person’s soul itself.

The method I used to save Leo, the Beastkin King who had been cursed with the Black Death Curse by a majin, wouldn’t work either. What I did back then was to force the curse to break by obliterating the entire cursed body, then bringing him back to life with a revival spell, but it isn’t applicable to this case.

“I also don’t want to say this, but… for us to save this world —”

Sylph looked like she was about to cry.

“She had to be sacrificed, only her.”

If Miu’s mom died inside the Interstice — the space between the realms — or in the demon world, the curse would break without it spreading to anyone else.

However, I didn’t want to resort to doing this method.

I didn’t want to choose between a single person and the world.

I didn’t think it was okay to have somebody sacrifice for the good of the entire world. Moreover, this “one person” had already become one of our acquaintances.

Miu — the girl who told me my teleportation magic was amazing, the girl who told Tina she was beautiful.

This girl had traveled all alone from this city, all the way to the faraway guild in the Royal Capital. She used every single penny that she saved from her allowance in order to plead with me so that we would save her mom.

I accepted that.

I promised that I would save her mom.

And so, I wanted to break the Evil God’s curse no matter what.

“Hey, Shiro. Any other methods?”

My intuition was telling me that the Evil God himself created this curse that plagued Miu’s mom, so Shiro, being the divine messenger of the deities that he was, might have an idea about this.

“Hmmm…I’m not that well versed when it comes to curses, though. How about Luna?”

“Luna?”

“M-me?”

“There’s this book that Luna showed me before. It’s the creation account written by the Martial God and the others when this world was made.”

The Dungeon Ruins located in Vestier, the Kingdom of the Beastkin, had a special room that only Isekai’d people could enter.

The book that Shiro mentioned was placed inside that room, apparently. Luna was keeping that book as of now.

“It might be possible that there’s something written in there about this curse.”

“B-But there’s only very few things about curses written in that book. I-It was mostly about medicines…”

“That’s because it has the ability to show the readers the information they wanted to see.”

“Eh, really?”

“Yes. That book contains a colossal amount of information. Usually, it just shows the things the owner is interested in.”

Luna suddenly blushed for some reason when she heard what Shiro said.

“Luna, I want to check that book. I want to see if there’s a way to break this curse.”

“Y-Yes! I understand. The book is inside my room, so Halt, can you get it via teleportation spell?”

“Okay!”

I connected Luna’s room to this space using teleportation magic, and I reached with my hand until I touched the book. And in that instant —

My intuition worked.

I was uneasy earlier, but I’m fine now.

The answer is written in this book.