Night watch was done in shifts.
Two slept, one stayed awake.
If anything happened, they'd wake the other two immediately.
That was the arrangement.
In particular, if they heard a creaking sound, they were to wake everyone no matter what.
The room they slept in was the same place where the previous occupant had been brutally murdered.
A room at the far end of the second floor.
Maybe where evil spirits appeared had something to do with location.
It probably wasn't bandits, but if it was, that'd be easy enough.
If it was just humans, dealing with them would be simple.
At worst, I'd capture them and put them toward the wedding fund.
If it was a monster, even simpler.
Search and destroy.
Truly simple.
--- "
It was
I shot up immediately.
We'd been taking two-hour naps each to keep our sleep light.
Since we couldn't tell exact time, we used an hourglass.
This was the second cycle.
The Hour of the Ox.
Prime time for evil spirits to appear.
"Wake up Zanoba."
I told Cliff that briefly, then moved to the door.
I pressed my ear against it.
Creak... creak...
...clack... clack...
......squeak......squeak......
Oh no.
I could actually hear it.
Pretty clearly too.
The sound of a chair creaking.
This was scary.
I activated my Eye of Foresight.
"Mmph..."
Zanoba was rubbing his eyes and yawning wide.
Confirming he was up, I placed my hand on the doorknob.
Then slowly, quietly, without making a sound, I opened the door.
I looked into the hallway.
Nobody there.
Just to be safe, I checked the other side.
Nobody.
Up. Down. Nobody.
I listened hard.
Nothing.
The sound had already stopped.
Zanoba was fully awake now.
"What do you see?"
"Nobody within sight."
Should we search the house, or wait in the room until something happened?
The previous occupant had dismissed it as auditory hallucination and died because of it.
Which meant if we waited here, something would eventually happen...
No, but even the previous occupant would've investigated when the sound was that clear.
Let's follow their lead.
"I'll search the perimeter."
"Understood. Same formation as before?"
"Yeah. Stay sharp."
"If Master has my back, then I have nothing to worry about."
Zanoba picked up his stone pillar.
Cliff, his face tense, followed behind.
"Cliff, do you remember what to do?"
"Y-yes. Detonation magic."
"Right. Please handle it."
He seemed reliable enough.
Zanoba on defense, Cliff using Detonation magic, and if that didn't work, I'd hit it with Stone Cannon.
Good.
"Zanoba, let's go."
The nighttime search began.
--- Having scouted the place during the day, I had a decent layout of where everything was.
The search went smoothly.
First, I checked every room on the second floor.
Nothing unusual.
Then, carefully, we descended to the first floor.
Going room by room, checking fireplaces, kilns, anywhere someone could hide.
Nothing.
Every room was spotless.
"Master, all that's left is the basement."
"Yeah."
We headed for the basement.
The door behind the stairs.
Stairs leading underground.
Dark.
I had the unsettling feeling that something was emanating from below.
I must've been tense too.
I could hear my own heartbeat pounding.
I took a deep breath.
Keeping watch behind me, I descended the stairs.
It felt like I was falling into hell.
We reached the basement.
"What do you see?"
"Nothing here, Master."
That was Zanoba's report.
I shone my lamp around, checking every corner carefully.
But sure enough, nothing.
Of course, the previous occupant would've checked the basement too.
This was the most suspicious spot.
Still, it was obvious at a glance that nothing was here.
"For now, let's go back to the room and prepare for an attack."
We'd heard the sound.
The enemy would come.
Or maybe it was waiting until we fell asleep...
In that case, maybe I'd try pretending to sleep tomorrow.
We carefully exited the basement.
Then went back up to the second floor.
Walking down the hallway, we returned to the room where we'd been waiting.
"Zanoba, it might be hiding in the room where we were sleeping. Be careful when you open the door."
"Understood."
Zanoba gripped his stone pillar and slowly reached for the doorknob.
He opened it.
Nothing happened.
"......"
"......Looks clear."
Nobody there.
No attack.
"Haa..."
I let out a breath.
So we should assume it would attack while we slept.
Or maybe, say, while we were using the toilet.
Come to think of it, we hadn't checked the garden.
I'd search the garden thoroughly tomorrow.
Then— Right then, I turned around.
It was there.
At the far end of the hallway.
Crouching low, almost crawling.
Its upper body peeking out from the top of the stairs.
Its head tilted, looking right at us.
Was it human?
It had eyes. It had a nose. It had a mouth.
It had no hair. It had no ears.
And I felt no life from it.
"......"
It stared at me from the darkness, a pale silhouette floating in the gloom.
For several seconds, we just stared at each other.
"Oh—"
The moment I started to speak— It moved.
It sprang up with its upper body, leaping onto the second floor.
It had four hands.
Four feet too.
In the darkness, waving what looked like a stake, it charged at us with terrifying speed, its eight limbs moving in eerie silence, soundless.
"WhoaAAH?!"
My legs gave out.
Falling on my rear, I reflexively fired a Stone Cannon.
What crossed my mind was the concern that I might destroy the house.
That hesitation weakened the Stone Cannon.
The shot shattered its shoulder and staggered it.
But it didn't stop.
It raised the stake over me— I tried to dodge using my Eye of Foresight— "Master!"
Zanoba leaped in front of me.
The stake came crashing down on Zanoba.
A hair's breadth from his heart.
"Zanoba!"
It didn't pierce him.
Zanoba, the God Child, his skin wouldn't let that stake through.
As expected of Zanoba!
No problem at all!
Zanoba grabbed its face with one hand.
The thing flailed all eight limbs, pummeling Zanoba over and over.
"O our God, who grants blessings to Mother Earth!
Bestow divine punishment upon those foolish ones who defy reason!
'Exorcist Rite'!"
Cliff stuck half his body out of the room and began his incantation.
White light shot from his staff and slammed into the creature.
But it didn't stop moving.
Was it not a spirit after all?
I aimed my hand at it.
Stone Cannon.
Next time I'd nail it right in the face.
But from this position, I'd hit Zanoba.
"Zanoba, move!
Stone Cannon!
I'm using it!"
"Please wait, Master!"
Zanoba wouldn't budge.
Even as the stake shredded his clothes to ribbons, he didn't move.
Why not?!
"Just move! I'll take it!"
"Please wait! Master! I'm begging you!"
Zanoba embraced the creature.
As if shielding it from me.
It continued flailing wildly.
Zanoba's clothes were being torn apart, bit by bit.
I could see his slender back—hardly the build of someone with monstrous strength.
Seconds, minutes, time passed like that.
The creature thrashed violently, but gradually its movements slowed.
Eventually, it stopped entirely.
"Haa..."
Once Zanoba confirmed it was done, he stripped off his tattered clothes and bound the creature's limbs.
"Master, let's go back to the room first."
"Yeah."
Zanoba ushered me back inside.
--- In the room, Cliff was trembling like a leaf.
"I-I wasn't running away, okay?! That hallway was so narrow, I figured I'd just be in the way—"
"......Yes. That was a sound judgment."
"R-right?"
He wasn't convincing at all.
Well, I'd been pretty shaken too, so I wasn't about to say anything.
"Master."
"Zanoba, you saved me. But that was dangerous. You're not immortal like some demon lord, you know..."
"You won't believe this, Master—look, look at this!"
Zanoba was practically buzzing with excitement.
Completely ignoring my words, he set down the creature he'd been carrying.
It landed with a clatter—surprisingly light.
Zanoba shone his lamp on it.
"Is... is this a doll?"
There lay a wooden puppet, painted pale blue.
Four hands and four feet.
Its form was bizarre, but it was unmistakably a doll.
No wonder I hadn't heard footsteps—black cloth was wrapped around its feet.
The stake I'd thought it was holding turned out to be a broken arm.
Two of its four arms had snapped off.
Its face had a token nose and mouth.
Its eyes were fitted with glass spheres.
It was utterly mechanical.
This was what I'd locked eyes with.
Honestly, it was so creepy I didn't want to look at it much longer.
What if it started moving again...
Glancing at Cliff, he seemed to share my opinion.
Staff raised, he stared at the doll without letting his guard down.
"Master, this is incredible!"
Only Zanoba was different.
He couldn't hide his excitement.
Whenever he got his hands on a rare doll, this was always the reaction.
"Zanoba, I know you love dolls, but—"
"Master! This doll was moving! It's a moving doll!"
Hearing that, I realized.
He was right.
This doll had attacked us.
A moving doll.
An automaton.
A Maid Robo. Hahaha.
Those words flashed through my mind.
My fear evaporated in an instant.
"It really is incredible."
"Master, you finally see it?"
Zanoba looked at me like, "How could the great Master not have noticed?"
His tone was practically goading my pride.
"Yeah. Good thing we didn't destroy it. Zanoba, your judgment was spot-on."
"Heh heh. I knew it was a doll the moment I laid eyes on it."
"Amazing. Your eye for dolls has already surpassed mine."
I pandered to him with a few well-placed compliments as he preened.
But still—a moving doll.
Come to think of it, this world had golems and all sorts of moving inanimate objects.
This one was carved from wood, but who knew—maybe you could animate a stone figurine too.
If you could animate the figurine itself...
If you developed a silicone-like material, you could make a doll with human-like skin.
And if that thing moved...
The possibilities were endless.
"Zanoba, what should we do? My heart's racing."
"Master, mine too! I feel like I'm going to cry!"
First, let's take this doll home.
Then we'd figure out how it moved.
There was no way it moved on its own—maybe there were magical tool-style magic circles carved into it.
"Hey, you guys, cut it out!"
I was suddenly yelled at.
Cliff was glaring at us, still gripping his staff.
"This is no time for that!"
"No time for what?!"
Zanoba grabbed Cliff's face and hoisted him into the air.
"Aagghh!!"
Suspended in midair, Cliff grabbed at Zanoba's arm, but it didn't budge.
Haven't seen this in a while.
"A moving doll! How can you not grasp the magnitude of this?!"
"Ow ow ow! M-monsters have moving armor and stuff too, you know!"
Monsters.
That word reminded me of why we were here.
We hadn't come to capture a moving doll.
We'd come to claim this house.
But claiming the house and uncovering the mystery of the moving doll weren't mutually exclusive.
"Zanoba, put him down."
"But Master—"
"Cliff has a point."
Zanoba released him.
Cliff dropped to the ground and immediately began chanting a healing spell.
What a baby.
"So most likely, this doll is the true identity of the evil spirit."
"Mm."
"There may be more than one. Let's search and capture them. We might even find the doll's blueprints or something."
"Oh, yes, good point!"
Zanoba nodded as if everything made sense.
"Tonight, we don't sleep.
Let's track down exactly where this doll came from."
And so, the third house search began.
--- Where could a doll this large be hidden?
After going through the house twice, I hadn't spotted anywhere it could fit.
I'd thought maybe the garden we hadn't checked, but no.
The doll's footprints were clearly visible in the snow out there, but that was all.
Which led me to think—maybe there was a hidden room.
The house was built with perfect symmetry.
If I looked for asymmetrical spots, I might find something.
I checked the first and second floor layouts while searching for anything suspicious, but found nothing.
More to the point, the house was too dark to see properly.
Even if something was off, I might not notice.
"Maybe we should search again during the day tomorrow."
I took Cliff's advice and decided to do another sweep the next day.
Before the search, I took the doll back to the magic university.
I bound all four arms and legs with rope to keep it immobile, then placed it in Zanoba's room.
In the bright light, the doll was clearly quite old.
It had appeared pale blue because the original white paint had flaked and grown moldy.
"Is... is this a new doll?"
She peered at it with great interest.
"Shall I... clean it up?"
She asked.
She also helped clean the random, incomprehensible dolls Zanoba occasionally brought home from the market.
According to Zanoba, the best way to deepen one's appreciation for dolls was to lovingly wipe and polish them clean.
Thorough upbringing, that.
"How could it move again, I wonder?"
"We'll figure that out after the house."
Zanoba looked like he was bursting to study the doll.
I understood the feeling.
I did, but he needed to calm down for now.
For the time being, I sealed the doll inside a box made with Earth magic.
I didn't want Julie getting attacked while we were away.
--- Back at the house.
On the way, I bought a bunch of lamps and lit up the entire place.
This would eliminate any chance that the poor lighting had hidden something the first time.
I even checked inside the fireplace.
Crawled in and searched thoroughly.
"Hmm, nope."
Brushing away soot and cobwebs, I finished my search of the fireplace.
That's when I realized what had been bugging me.
The floor wasn't dirty with soot.
It was spotless, as if someone had wiped it clean.
Come to think of it, the cloth wrapped around the doll's feet had been black.
Maybe every night, that cloth was used to clean the house.
No, but the cloth would get dirty too if used that much. If it was that black, maybe...
Oh—wait, was that cloth a magic-imbued item?
No, I'd leave that for later.
So—second floor, first floor, basement.
......As I suspected, the basement was still the most suspicious.
I brought light down there.
To avoid oxygen deprivation, I left the door wide open.
I also checked the halfway point on the stairs, in case something was hidden there.
I lined the lamps across the open space of the basement.
Someone from a fairy tale might have said something like, "Oh my, it's as bright as daylight!"
"Lighting it up makes everything obvious."
At the far end of the basement.
A wall made of wooden planks.
When I'd only had one or two lamps in the darkness, I hadn't noticed.
But with proper lighting, it was immediately clear.
One corner of the wall was darkened in a square shape.
A hidden door.
Back when it was new, brightening the room probably wouldn't have revealed it.
But over time, the area around the opening had gotten dirty and stood out.
On the floor too, the marks of repeated opening and closing were clearly etched.
"All right, let's get in there!"
Cliff moved to open the door, looking pleased.
I watched the door with my Eye of Foresight, ready for an ambush.
But Cliff immediately stopped.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know how to open it."
I looked too.
There was no doorknob, nor any recess typical of a sliding door.
It didn't seem to lift up either.
"Master, should I just break it?"
At Zanoba's suggestion, I shook my head.
We'd be renovating, but I didn't want to destroy things unnecessarily.
"Hmm..."
I looked at the floor.
The traces of the door opening and closing were right there.
It definitely opened—toward us.
"Hm?"
I noticed something odd.
The mark of the door opening started from the third plank from the left edge.
The darkened section was offset from the actual door.
And that jogged my memory.
The ninja village I'd visited on a school trip in elementary school.
The hidden doors there.
I remembered and pressed the left edge.
It made a clicking sound.
But it didn't open—too heavy.
"Zanoba, try pressing here."
"Hmm."
Zanoba pressed.
The door opened with a creak-squeak—*kirikirikikiki*.
That was the sound we'd heard at night.
Inside the hidden door, there was a handle. Easy enough to close from the interior.
"I don't think there are traps, but there might be more of them, so be careful."
Saying that, I stepped inside and illuminated it with my lamp.
The fear of traps or ambush was unfounded.
It was a small room.
One desk, one wooden pedestal.
That was it.
On the desk were several books and an inkwell.
The well's lid was cracked, and its contents had evaporated.
As for the pedestal—how to describe it.
A coffin might be the closest comparison.
A block of wood about that size.
Its surface was indented in the shape of a doll.
Looking closely, where the head would rest—the area corresponding to the eyes—had a transparent stone embedded in it.
I had a hunch that the doll from earlier had lain here.
Most likely, the doll had been placed here to recharge—or rather, to remana.
"Cliff, do you know anything about this pedestal?"
"No, I've never seen anything like it."
Cliff shook his head.
Nervously, he was touching the pedestal.
It didn't seem like it would suddenly snap or anything...
I left him to it and reached for the books on the desk.
They'd clearly been left alone for a long time, but fortunately there were no signs of insect damage.
Maybe the doll had been doing pest control too.
On the cover was a title and a single crest.
I couldn't read the title.
Opening it, I couldn't read the text either.
If these were characters I didn't know, they were probably from the Divine Tongue or the Ocean Tongue.
Or possibly some other minor language.
But the crest and text both seemed familiar somehow.
Where had I seen them?
Maybe in the magic university library.
I turned the pages.
Several diagrams appeared.
Drawings of the human body and magic circles.
Turning further, there was a diagram of a figure with four arms and four legs.
"......Zanoba."
"Yes."
Zanoba, who'd been waiting at the entrance, came over.
"I think this has information about that doll. What do you think?"
"I can't read it. But I'm fairly certain you're right."
"Let me see."
Cliff butted in on our exchange.
Flipping through the pages, the three of us examined the book together.
Forget the pages—the string binding them was so old it looked ready to fall apart at any moment.
Diagrams, arrows, and text.
There were probably explanations or annotations, but I couldn't make heads or tails of them.
Arm component diagrams, magic circles, arrows, and notes.
The margins were filled with small, detailed writing.
"Just looking at the diagrams, it does resemble a magic tool's magic circle," Cliff muttered.
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, I've been researching them lately, so I can tell—I've seen similar magic circles before.
Most likely, that doll is a magic tool."
"I see."
I put together a hypothesis.
The occupant before the last one.
No, probably the very first resident had been researching that doll.
One of these magic circles must have touched on some forbidden territory, and they'd been doing it in secret.
They'd been trying to give the doll a guard-man-like role protecting the house.
And the first occupant had gotten it halfway to completion.
Judging by the doll's condition, there were still plenty of problems, but it could roam the house and fight—that much had been achieved.
But the first occupant had disappeared.
Whether they'd left halfway through their research or been caught, I didn't know.
The fact that the research materials remained suggested they might have died in an accident.
The doll... had probably been sleeping on this pedestal since the early days.
But for some reason, it had activated.
It cleaned the house while roaming around, and began repelling intruders.
Once it finished cleaning, it was probably programmed to return to this pedestal for recharging.
The person who'd been killed had just been unlucky—recognized as an intruder by the doll. That was the simplest explanation.
But if it had gone all the way to the garden, someone should've seen it...
Oh wait—wasn't the entrance door broken?
Come to think of it, of all the doors in the house, only that one had been damaged.
Maybe the previous occupant had replaced it. For security or something.
The door's shape had changed, so the doll could no longer open it.
Its original programming had included patrolling the garden, but since it couldn't open the door, it had given up.
But when we arrived, the door had already been broken.
So it followed its programming and patrolled the garden too.
We'd just happened to miss each other.
Then when we came back to the second floor, it had caught up.
That made sense.
"Either way, if this is the case, it doesn't seem like there's a second one."
And with that, the case was closed.
--- Just to be safe, we did an exhaustive search of the house, and then observed for several more days.
No sounds at night.
Safe.
I went to the real estate office and signed the formal contract for the property.
The true identity of the evil spirit was registered as a vicious monster that had taken up residence in the hidden underground room.
Starting the next day, workers came in to clean and make repairs.
They asked if I wanted to purchase a full set of furniture, but I told them to go with the bare minimum.
It'd be better to pick those out with
Was that a typically Japanese way of thinking?
I had some things I wanted to add myself too, so it'd probably be another half-month before we could actually move in.
I could already picture the joy on Sylphie's face.
"See? This is our very own home!"
"Oh, Rudy, how wonderful!"
"There are so many rooms that no matter how many kids we have, we'll be fine!"
"You're already thinking about the future? How wonderful—hold me!"
"Of course, honey. The bed's already set up."
"Rudy, wreck me!"
...It probably wouldn't go like that.
But I couldn't stop smiling.
...She wouldn't give me a weird look, right?
"Oh Rudy, this is all you could manage?" or something.
Sylphie wouldn't. Nah, she wasn't the type to be that demanding.
Still, this had been a lucrative job.
In just a few days, I'd gotten a house, and on top of that, an inheritance left behind by the previous occupant.
That doll was definitely a magic tool.
Normally, stuff like that should probably be submitted to the Magicians' Guild or something.
But I wasn't a registered member of the Magicians' Guild, so it didn't matter.
It came with the house, so I figured I'd just keep it.
--- Once everything was settled, I decided to move the research materials from the basement.
Zanoba carried the pedestal, and I carried the books.
We'd use them for researching the moving doll.
"Master."
On the way back to the magic university.
Zanoba spoke to me with a serious expression.
On his shoulder, he was carrying the massive pedestal.
It was clearly heavier than anything designed for transport, but for Zanoba, it was easy.
It was wrapped in cloth, though from a distance it might have looked like he was carrying a coffin.
"What is it?"
"Regarding the research on this moving doll—would you entrust it to me?"
I couldn't help but look into his eyes.
Behind his round glasses, I saw a determination I'd never seen before.
Zanoba said: "My total mana is low, and my hands are clumsy.
The Red Dragon I started building for Julie keeps getting delayed because I'm just getting in Master's way."
That wasn't true.
It was easy to say that, but I knew it was something that weighed on him.
It wasn't my place to brush it off lightly.
"But in this area, perhaps even I can contribute. In truth, as I was looking through the books, I could sort of grasp what the author was trying to achieve."
Hmm.
Really?
As a fellow doll enthusiast, there must have been some kind of resonance—that's why he'd been able to sense something even without understanding the language.
"The linguistic analysis might take some time.
It would probably go faster if Master handled everything."
Maybe.
I couldn't keep spending all my time on the doll either.
Having Zanoba take over might work out better.
But still...
"What if the doll goes berserk again?"
"Even if it did, I could subdue it without a scratch.
You saw that yourself, didn't you, Master?"
Fair point on that front.
A doll moving around at night was still a bit creepy, but it probably couldn't move without charging on this pedestal.
I shouldn't leave it in Zanoba's room, so I'd rent a research room at the magic university.
One with a sturdy door.
Actually, since it might be using forbidden magic or something, maybe the research should happen somewhere else...
Just to be sure, I'd have Nanahoshi write me a note. She was an A-rank guild member, if I remembered right.
"Please, Master! When Master's plans come to fruition, I don't want to end up being the guy who just threw money at it!"
"......"
So Zanoba had been thinking about all this too.
I did worry sometimes, since he tended to lose himself when it came to dolls.
But if that was how he felt, maybe I should let him handle it.
"Please! Entrust this research to me!"
When I stayed silent, Zanoba must've misunderstood.
He dropped to his knees right there.
Setting the pedestal down, he spread his arms wide and was about to throw himself onto the ground.
He was going to perform a full prostration—in the snow.
"Fine. Zanoba, stand up! I'm leaving it to you."
"Really?!"
At that, Zanoba sprang to his feet.
His face was beaming.
This guy could switch moods fast.
"But there's a chance you might be treading into forbidden magic territory."
"Forbidden magic?"
"Yeah. Anyway, I'll rent a research room at the magic university, so do your work there."
"......Thank you!"
Zanoba bowed deeply once more.
In doing so, the pedestal whooshed past right in front of my nose.
Dangerous.
What if it had clipped me right on the head?
"You guys—at least try to be less conspicuous in public..."
At the end, Cliff muttered that under his breath.
--- And so, Zanoba began his research into the automaton, and I acquired a house.
Next came the renovations.