I went home, locked the door, and headed to my room.
I carefully took the egg out of my pouch.
It wasn't particularly heavy, but I could feel the weight of something inside.
The contents... I had a bad feeling about this. I carefully opened the container.
The container was filled to the brim with liquid.
There was no doubt. A shock surged through my entire body, accompanied by sheer astonishment.
This transparent yet viscous liquid that faintly glowed.
It was an elixir.
"...Hah..."
It wasn't just a simple egg-shaped container.
If anything, I had really wanted it to be just an ordinary egg-shaped container.
At the same time, I felt relieved that I had noticed in time.
I had managed to prevent it from falling into someone else's hands — whether the witch's or Arifa's.
"Phew... Well then."
For now.
I couldn't bring myself to just throw the liquid away, so I poured it into a crescent-shaped vessel.
The egg-shaped container was empty once more.
Time to verify. I prepared a sandglass.
This world. The concept of time exists.
But it wasn't common.
Still, there were plenty of things you could measure.
Fire clocks. Sandglasses. Water clocks. Sundials.
This sandglass took about ten minutes for all the sand to fall through.
Not accurate, but roughly was good enough.
How long until the elixir accumulated?
Either way, I already knew it would.
Whether this was even more threatening would depend on the speed.
Quite a few days had passed since I obtained and used it.
If it only accumulated over that long a period, then so be it.
But what if it had been accumulating faster than that?
I didn't really want to think about it.
Anyway, I stared at the egg-shaped container, securely fixed in its wooden frame.
"…………Ah."
From somewhere inside the egg, a droplet trickled into being.
Droplets floated up across the entire inner surface and gathered at the bottom.
Faster than I expected.
By the time all the sand in the glass had fallen, it was full.
So about ten minutes, then.
"…Only ten minutes to fully replenish…"
Astounding. I clutched my head.
It replenishes way too fast.
"Wait, hold on. Maybe there's a usage limit."
I latched onto that hope and continued testing.
Ten hours later.
"...It's full again..."
Ten hours meant sixty uses.
I'd tested that many times, taking breaks in between.
"...Legendary, huh..."
There wasn't even a hint of it running dry.
If I kept testing — say, checking whether it cut off at a hundred uses — there'd be no end to it.
And this was probably infinite. That was the feeling I got.
This was the worst. I flopped onto my bed in defeat.
Seriously, what the hell was going on.
A legendary Relic that fully replenishes elixirs in ten minutes — no matter how you looked at it, that was insane.
It was undoubtedly national-treasure level. Not something a single person should have.
But how was I supposed to get rid of it?
All sorts of horrible, worst-case scenarios kept popping into my head one after another.
The most monstrous was war. And that was entirely possible.
"...Alright!"
For now, I was putting the elixir and the egg container on hold.
Worrying about it wouldn't help. I needed to shift my headspace to the next thing I could actually do something about.
"…A pack mule, huh."
And errands. Well, that was no problem.
What I actually needed to worry about was what kind of party it would be, and what kind of people they were.
"…It'd be nice if they turned out to be decent people."
Delvers who were any good were hard to come by.
Decent ones were a handful at best. That was my rule of thumb.
Complaining wouldn't change anything.
I tucked the elixir egg deep into my pouch.
The next day.
With a herb encyclopedia in one hand, I headed straight into the forest to search for potion ingredients.
Not the forest where the witch lived, though.
The opposite side—
a
place
I'd
ne-
-ver
been to.
Nothing.
A forest.
That's what it is.
Since I was here anyway, I figured I'd take a look around.
There are no dungeons near this forest.
So I doubted any delvers would come through here.
Which meant herbs should be growing here.
After exploring all pleased with myself for a while...
...Hmm?
I compared the field guide to the wild herbs growing around me.
A grass with red tips.
The guide says the same.
Redtail herb. Easy enough.
But right next to it, there was another grass that was red on both ends.
The shape looked similar, but was this one redtail too?
...Not listed.
Not in the guide.
Maybe I should leave it alone, then.
Same as with mushrooms, I guess.
It reminded me of mushroom hunting in my past life.
The vast majority of mushrooms I'd gathered back then had been poisonous.
I'd been surprised by just how many there were.
For the record, I do pick mushrooms in this world now and then.
I can never tell which mushrooms are toxic and inedible.
But I have the Relic [Danger Discernment].
That lets me identify mushrooms.
Though it doesn't tell me whether they're actually edible.
Some were harmless but tasted terrible.
I shone the light on the herb as well.
Both came back pure white — meaning they were harmless.
That didn't mean both of them were redtail, though.
The Relic [Fortune's Wheel] gave the same result.
My Relics just can't identify herbs.
"Still, though."
This herb encyclopedia was genuinely impressive.
It wasn't as polished as the ones from my past life, of course.
Even so, the sketches were detailed.
Not everything was in color, but the distinctive features were highlighted.
The neat explanatory text beside each sketch was appreciated too.
I couldn't tell if it was letterpress printing, but the handwriting was beautiful.
Whether they even had that kind of technology — letterpress printing — I had no idea.
I really didn't know.
They had OOPArts and Legacies far beyond my understanding.
And Relics. A lot of it just got lumped under that umbrella and left at that.
Well, at the level of simple printing, I did know roughly how it worked.
But I wasn't exactly proactive about it, so I had no idea whether that knowledge would ever come in handy.
With that going through my head, I leafed through the field guide while gathering herbs.
I was collecting them steadily, making my way deeper into the forest.
"—♪~♪~~♪~~~♪~~~♪~~♪~"
A melody came floating out of nowhere.
It was the sound of a flute. Cheerful, yet somehow dark — dissonant.
"Is someone there?"
Well, obviously someone was here, or I wouldn't be hearing it.
But the words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them.
And then I tensed up.
It could be a monster.
But a monster that played the flute… did something like that even exist?
The Pied Piper of Hamelin? But would something like that exist in this world?
"—~~♪~~♪~♪♪"
Or was I imagining it.
The sound of the flute seemed to be gradually getting closer.
"Something feels... off."
When I tried to turn back, I froze.
Fog. A thick fog had rolled in without me noticing.
Something was wrong.
I quickly activated my Relic[Danger Discernment]at maximum — and saw nothing.
Everything was black. I couldn't see a thing. Pitch darkness.
"—~~♪~♪♪"
This was bad. I deactivated[Danger Discernment].
The moment my pitch-black vision cleared, I was struck speechless.
The scene before my eyes was deeply wrong.
Fog-shrouded trees and tombstones spread out in every direction.
Countless graves of all sizes, in various states of decay, littered the forest.
"What is this..."
None of this had been here just a moment ago.
Where exactly was I... the flute sound... and it suddenly clicked.
That forest.