Reincarnated into a Game As the Hero’s Friend

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“You can’t remember?”

Most likely because I was silent, elder Uwe asked me that.

“Y…Yes. I cannot remember.”

“Hmm… Alright then.”

Just that? No other comment? Maybe he really had some sort of lie detection magic (but not perfect one). After all, my answer was technically correct.

“Maybe the reason you can’t remember is that the story originally has no title. Maybe there is an external factor that caused you to forget, or maybe you just simply forgot with time. For now, I can’t be certain of the reason.”

With a calm but cynical tone, elder Uwe continued, “If the reason you can’t remember the name was simply because you forgot, there is nothing else I can do.”

So calm? This old man was a character made based on the sage character stereotype. Once hermits and sages  lost interest in something, they wouldn’t bother with it anymore, no matter how seemingly great that thing was for others.

Anyway, let’s focus and think about the current situation. Laura became part of the hero’s party even before elder Uwe, so it was safe to assume that she had already reported the map to the royal family. Since the royal family had not taken any actions against me so far, it was unlikely that they would do anything now.

Since things had become like this, I would definitely get the information that I wanted from him.

“What do you mean by external factor?”

“Have you ever thought that the current world is strange?”

“That depends on your meaning of strange.”

After I said this, the elder silently thought for a while, then he opened his mouth.

“Hm… Sir, why do you think killing demons made us stronger?”

Why, you ask? In the game, the answer was simple. Killing the demons gave the character EXP and when that EXP reached a certain threshold, the character would level up and get stronger. But in the real world…

“You can call it with any name, but for the sake of the explanation, I will call it the origin mana. You see, every natural thing in this world, plants, animals, and even minerals have origin mana. Absorbing more origin mana makes us stronger.”

“Even minerals?”

“Yes. The rate of absorption differs based on the source of the origin mana. For example, some demons get stronger by eating metals, which means that for that type of demons, metals are the best source of origin mana.”

Right, the Iron Toad got stronger by eating metals.

“This origin mana absorption is the reason why people can now use a powerful magic that they couldn’t use before or can cut through the skin of demons that they felt was too tough before.”

“So that means we can also absorb origin mana from killing our enemies?”

“Yes, or to be more precise, killing our enemies is one of many ways to absorb origin mana.”

By absorbing the origin mana, we could get stronger bit by bit… Wait, that means…

“Do the knights also have the ability to absorb origin mana?”

“Of course.”

I see. So the high-quality equipment wasn’t the only reason the knights could fight with Gezarius in the capital. After fighting with the demons in the demon outbreak, in Hilde Plain, in Finnoi, and winning, the knights got stronger to the point they could fight Gezarius.

If the knights had the same strength they had at the battle against the demon outbreak, would they become helpless when the Four Heavenly Kings attack the capital? While I still held this question in my mind, the elder’s next words surprised me.

“But on the other hand, under certain conditions, the origin mana could dull the mind.”

“Dull the mind?”

“Well, the words sharp mind can be interpreted as many things. A powerful memory, a great comprehension ability, a great judgment ability, someone with any of these characteristics could be called someone with a sharp mind”

“Yeah…”

“Sir, you have seen the demons that became unafraid of humans, right? That too was the effect of origin mana.”

Yeah, I had seen demons become unafraid of humans both in the Veritza Fortress battle and in the aqueduct protection mission. I made my plan for both events based on the fact that demons were unafraid of humans. Wait a minute.

“Does that mean that if humans absorb too much origin mana, their sense of danger and sense of caution becomes dull, just like how demons became unafraid of humans?”

“Yes. A simple example will be the adventurer. When the adventurers fight against an opponent they could barely win, they will fight while aiming for their opponent’s weak point and such, but when an adventurer is really strong, they will just defeat their opponent with brute force.”

That was true. Using a game analogy, when the game character was strong enough, the player would just use a big magic to kill the opponents fast without bothering to think about the opponents weak point.

In other words, what elder Uwe wanted to say was….

“Because of the influence of the origin mana which is stronger in our era compared to the era of Ancient Kingdoms, humans gradually stopped thinking about important things like technological and academic advancement?”

“Hmm… Did you draw that conclusion based on the information about origin mana that appears in that story, Sir?”

“No, that story didn’t mention the existence of origin mana.”

I said that statement to ensure that possible lie detection magic would make it clear that I didn’t have any important information other than the map.

I also explained to elder Uwe that I drew my conclusion based on my earlier hypothesis that astronomy and architecture was quite developed in the era of Ancient Kingdom, yet it barely developed in this era. After hearing my explanation, the elder looked at me with a rare impressed expression.

“I see. Then, you should understand this example. If a person is a cloth, then the origin mana is a dye. Absorbing the origin mana means the ‘cloth’ will be ‘dyed’ with origin mana. Well, if the result of the ‘dyed cloth’ is beautiful then that’s fine, But…”

“But…?”

“…If the cloth is dyed using a muddy dye, then it can make the cloth unusable.”

“So, there are 2 types of origin mana?”

“Yes, although it is still just a hypothesis of mine. You see, I think that perhaps a different type of the origin mana originating from the demon king might exist.”

Did that mean the reason science was quite developed in the era of Ancient Kingdom was because this ‘demon king’s origin mana’ didn’t exist? What was exactly the demon king, then?

“It is possible that the reason you forget about the title is because you have been affected by the origin mana, Sir.”

“If that is really the reason, can it be cured?”

“I don’t know.”

Seriously, old man!? Just ‘I don’t know’!? Well, it was true that you couldn’t exactly spread this to other people carelessly, so there should be almost no opportunity to research about this. I mean if he spread this knowledge to other people carelessly, there might be someone who tried to kill others because ‘that guy has been deeply affected by the demon king’s origin mana so he should be eliminated!’

Plus, an experiment to prove this also sounded almost impossible.

“The effect of origin mana might also differ from person to person. Think of it as an infectious disease. There are people that died from an infectious disease, but there are also people that survived although their body weakened or people that are completely fine.”

“I see… So you’re saying that there are people whose mind might not be dull even after being affected by the demon king’s origin mana.”

In other words, the demon king’s origin mana made people who were unwilling to think about difficult subjects increase, which made the technological development of this world gradually stagnated and even fell. 

This demon king’s origin mana, was it a virus that destroys brain cells or something!?

“Did His Majesty and His Highness know about this?”

“Well, I have told both of them about my hypothesis about the demon king’s origin mana.”

So they knew. Still, this thing wasn’t something that could be announced carelessly.

“There is another thing. Perhaps realizing the effect of the origin mana, the people that lived at the end of the Ancient Kingdom era, after the invasion of the demon king, did some experiment in order to transfer the knowledge and the memories of the past before they were lost.”

“Transferring knowledge and memory?”

Was something like that even possible? But wait, since he said ‘experiment’ that means…

“Did their experiments fail?”

“I didn’t find any record that said they had succeeded. At first, I thought you had obtained the stone record with transferred memory and knowledge.”

Ah, I see… But…

“Stone record?”

“Well, the record of the memory and knowledge was said to be shaped like a stone, so that’s how I decided to call it.”

That means…

“Was the core of the demon general…”

“A stone record? That’s possible. I regret that I never thought that kind of thing actually existed.”

“If the cores are the stone record, that means the demon king was using the technology of the Ancient Kingdom.”

“Yes, though I don’t know if the demon king used the exact same technology or not.”

Well, I guess no one could know without any proper research. But if the core was really the stone record, that means the same demon king that destroyed the Ancient Kingdom used the Ancient Kingdom’s technology. It was also possible that ‘retaining the memory of the original owner of the body’ was one of the applications of the Ancient Kingdom’s technology.

Wait a minute. I felt that there was a contradiction with that hypothesis, but I couldn’t think of what kind of contradiction it was. Ah… My head hurts. I was tired. I think my brain reached its limit.

“In the end, all of it was still just a bunch of hypotheses.”

“That’s right. Ah, one more thing.”

He then began to write something, then pushed that writing into my hand.

“This is…?”

“I want you to give this to His Majesty. You seem to be quite competent, Sir, so I want you to investigate the Ancient Kingdom in the capital.”

…Pardon!?

T/N: This chapter makes me wonder about who exactly is Welner and where exactly is the world Welner was reincarnated into. In the beginning, we know that Welner was ‘an office worker from modern Japan’ but for some reason Welner knew a lot of things that an ‘office worker’ usually wouldn’t know. Is that just the ‘common sense of a story’ thing or is it part of Author’s foreshadowing? In the first place, is the world Welner reincarnated into really a game? And was Welner really a person ‘reincarnated from modern Japan’? Go throw your theory in the comment!

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