Gluttony Demon King with the Swampman ~A Man with No Magic Power Who Dreamed of Magic, Wielding Knowledge from His Past Life Through Steady Research and Hard Work to Become the Most Vicious Final Boss~ - Chapter 6: Spending the Night with the Twins

Chapter 6: Spending the Night with the Twins

Actions after the sun sets are dangerous.

That was why we set up a simple camp a short distance away from the site of the battle with the wolves, and we decided to spend the night there. It was what they call camping outdoors.

We took turns standing watch when it was time to sleep.
Noiche had cast a stealth spell on us, but even so, it was just in case.

At the time of the shift change, Noiche woke up sleepily and sat down next to me.

“…Haro, aren’t you going to sleep?”

“I’ll stay up until your mind sharpens up.”

“Mm.”

Noiche took a sip of water, but she still seemed a bit dazed. She seemed to have a bad time waking up.

“When we were attacked before… you weren’t using the stealth spell, were you?”

“I was using it.”

“And the monsters still found us?”

“Yeah. So even now, I don’t fully understand why that happened. If it’s because ‘the monsters went mad due to changes in the environment,’ then that gives some explanation, but…”

Yeah, I nodded.

Among monsters, some repel magic.

It’s not decided by race, but it depends on the individual’s amount and nature of magic power, and sometimes their condition. If you say it was bad timing, that’s all there is to it.

While gazing at the dying fire that burned dimly, I suddenly asked something that had been on my mind.

“Hey, is there some reason why you two don’t use magic at the same time?”

“…You noticed that well.”

Noiche narrowed her eyes slightly and looked at me for the first time.

Zaria and Noiche– From what I’d seen so far, the two of them didn’t try to use magic at the same time.

When we were attacked by the troll, only Noiche handled the attack, and in the wolf battle just now, they had alternated roles for the attacks.

Even I was watching you two with interest–when I said that, Noiche paused a bit before answering.

“We can’t use magic together. Our magic powers cancel each other out.”

“…No way, are you two mirror twins?”

Noiche nodded slightly.

–Mirror twins, that was a rare case of what they call “twins.”

It was a type classified as identical twins, and they called twins like that especially when several physical features such as “dominant hand,” “direction of the cowlick,” and “position of organs” were mirror-symmetric.

And in this world, twins like that showed abnormalities in the magic power they generated.

One produced magic power true to the bloodline, while the other produced mutated magic power.

The magic power of such twins interfered with each other, and in bad cases, they couldn’t even complete spells properly.

The Levi sisters probably fell into this worst pattern.

In most cases, twins like that were separated at a young age, and the troublesome one was pushed off to distant relatives–

“You two have always been together, huh.”

“Zaria worked hard for it. Zaria, who has the mutated magic power, learned magic on her own and convinced our parents. It’s different from me, who just mimicked the family magic.”
…

I see.

Zaria, who had magic power different from the family, couldn’t use the handed-down magic as is, even if she learned it.

If I put it badly, Zaria was a “woman who seemed frivolous at first glance.”
At least her tone and behavior seemed like she was intentionally making herself look that way.

But in reality, she was probably quite the hard worker. Otherwise, she couldn’t have learned magic on her own.

I understood that well because I’d done the same thing.

“That girl, did she have some feelings about me too…?”

Me, who was outside the bloodline, without magic power, treated as if I didn’t exist and kept at a distance–maybe she had empathized with me, overlapping it with something.

“Hey, Haro.”

“Yeah?”

“Zaria is a girl who says unreasonable selfish things, but please listen to her.”

“Yeah, sure.”

I already knew she was a pushy woman. I’d come along knowing that, and there was a big favor too.

When I nodded, Noiche said “thank you” and smiled gently, then she just kept staring at Zaria, who was sleeping by the fire.

Well, that’s how I casually took on Noiche’s request–

But Zaria’s “selfishness” appeared right away the next day, early in the morning before we set out.

“You want to change course?”

“Yeah, I want to investigate the mountain.”

Zaria stood there imposingly right after waking up and told me that.
Want to investigate the mountain–that must mean she wanted to stop by that small hill where she suspected some kind of anomaly was happening.

Are you sane? When I looked at Noiche, she nodded with an expression that said “this is the kind of girl she is.”

“By the way, what’s the intention?”

“We came here because we heard the roads around here were safe. But in reality, something anomalous happened, and we lost the butler and the servants.”

“…Yeah.”

“This anomaly hasn’t spread information outside. For some reason, not even to your hometown town.”

…That might have been because I was secretly hunting the monsters that came down from the mountain. It was just right for Ink’s practical exam.

If we did nothing, there would just be more victims like us. So I want to investigate before going back. I can’t say we’ll solve the cause, but I want to get some information.”

“…You’re really serious, aren’t you.”

“Of course! You can’t do a research job without being serious.”

The fact that she saw being a magician as a research job showed she was quite serious.

Well, either way–

“Got it, let’s go.”

“Really!? Thanks!”

–I nodded.

It had just been last night that I’d been warned about it.

“Um, what should I do…”

“Please take the carriage up to the foot of the mountain. Can you wait there for about half a day? I’ll cast a monster-repelling spell on you.”

“Y-Yes, I understand. Since I’m getting paid extra, that much is fine…”

It ended up different from the original plan, but the coachman agreed thanks to Noiche’s negotiation.
Asking him to come into the mountain would be too much, so this was probably the compromise.

On the second day since escaping from my hometown–

That’s how we set out to investigate the anomaly in the mountain.