As the sun ascended, the castle began bustling with life all around. Mira also woke up, having slept in her underwear as a result of ignoring a rabbit’s sleepwear that was prepared along with a note.
On the previous night, shortly after she was guided to the bedroom by one of the maids, the Refining Board was delivered along with an assortment of various refining materials. As she had promised, Mira made all the Refined Gems and Magic Sealing Stones that Solomon asked her for. It just took her a little over 20 minutes for all of them, being that a feat that would very likely be enough to make the royal refiners pass out if they ever knew about it.
Still drowsy, Mira went to the toilet and collapsed on top of the bed as she returned. At that moment, the forgotten rabbit pajamas shifted around and covered her hand.
「What’s that…?」
Shaking away the foreign substance on her hand, Mira recognized some bouncing rabbit ears reflected in her slightly opened eyes and jumped off the bed. A sheet of paper that fell at her feet caught her attention.
When reading the words 『We prepared the nightwear for you. Please don’t hesitate to wear it. From all the maids』 Mira was overcome with unfathomable fear.
Solomon’s words on the day before resounded in her mind, all about the maids totally focused on their new duty of making her outfits to wear to the point of being exceedingly fast at it. This was just the beginning.
With great haste, Mira opened the menu to check the time. It displayed 8:45 AM.
It was already too late for the departure.
Having been unaware of her fatigue from the carriage trip, she got careless and relaxed too much in this high-class bed.
Nothing but warning bells resonated inside Mira’s alarmed mind as it started to turn its gears rapidly thinking for the next step to take. A subtle and silent knock on the door forcibly stopped the process.
「Good morning, Miss Mira. I brought your attire.」
A rather eager female voice called her through the door, becoming just like a death sentence for Mira.
(She certainly brought it!)
As fast as she possibly could, Mira looked around the room for any options or alternatives, but alas, there was nothing to wear other than the rabbit pajama and her cute dress. She was desperately looking for any solution but her time quickly ended.
「There is no answer. Is she still sleeping? The breakfast will get cold so I must come to wake her up and bring her the attire now. Yes, I must.」
After a short monologue in a monotone voice, the bedroom door was finally opened.
The first thing catching the maid’s attention was Mira’s small and round bottom.
In a split second of panic, Mira for some reason thought about thrusting her head into the bed. That was all. She was like an ostrich sticking her head under the covers and leaving her body exposed.
「M-i-s-s M-i-r-a. Good morning.」
The maid trotted towards Mira and gently rolled up the high-quality down blanket, renewing her greeting to a wryly smiling Mira with a grin.
「Y…yea. Morning.」
「I am the maid appointed to take care of you from now on. My name is Lily. I am looking forward to working with you.」
「A.. ah, is that so.」
A real-looking magical girl costume that Lily held in her hands made Mira, who was ashamed of her own ridiculous actions, grab her head in anguish.
The attire brought by the maid was based on mixing white and black colours with a degree of moderation in how much clothing it used, giving it all a feeling of a gothic lolita dress. Complementing the concept base, it had a short black flared skirt, a sleeveless white one-piece, and a coat resembling a robe opened on the front. Completely bypassing her will, Mira was dressed as such in a very lovely outfit, having the number of drills and ribbons further increased.The only wish she was granted was the use of plain panties instead of frilly ones that’d have finished the whole style. Her request of trunks was shot down instantly
Following on, the maid brought Mira to the only area in the whole castle where men were forbidden to enter; the maid’s section where countless maids had been waiting for Mira, surrounding her.
「Here, Miss Mira. Lift your arms please.」
Holding onto a measuring tape, Lily started giving orders to Mira whose eyes lost their light as she blindly started following the maid’s orders like a marionette.
First thing they measured was her bust as while it’s alright for panties to be slightly loose, a wrongly sized bra could cause many problems. With that reasoning brought up by Lily, Mira could only resign to her fate muttering 「Do whatever you want」 and stood still as she was told.
Even though this issue hadn’t hit Mira yet as she didn’t have any sort of intense activity yet, she did feel the rubbing of her previous clothes several times. When Lily and the rest of the maids in a slightly intimidating way told her that if she were to leave it be, it could become very painful and as such, Mira gave up on resisting.
「Such a beautiful shape, I’m jealous…」
「Ahh…」
Right after finishing the simpler measurements, Lily walked behind Mira and gently wrapped her twin bulges with her hands for a more accurate measure.
(How long will this torture last…)
Ignoring the will of an absent-minded Mira, Lily gave some quick instructions after grasping the details of her breast size and the maids quickly followed up bringing a perfect fit bra.
「How does it feel, Miss Mira? Does it hurt? Do you feel tight anywhere?」
「No. I just can’t calm down with it.」
「Then it should be fine. Everybody feels like that for the first time.」
As the maids finished, Mira was feeling a slight pressure on her chest and sighed at her looks.
The maids took full responsibility in taking care of a very important guest who was unconcerned about the ways of fashion. Despite their obvious enjoyment, there was nothing to say against their professional and skillful coordinated work.
As the maids finished measuring all of Mira’s sizes, not just her bust, they started getting worked up about what would be an even more perfect outfit than the one they had made with eye-measurements. Mira at this moment was still clueless about the main event that was waiting for her on the next visit.
With the maids seeing her off, Lily brought Mira to the dining room for breakfast. A combination of bread and soup, salad, fruit juice, and other similarly light and well-balanced food managed to bring Mira back to her senses.
A magical girl was happily sipping fruit juice in a corner of the dining room while an auntie from the dining room delightfully watched over her; such a scene made Lily break out a smile. The outfit suited her better than expected and it naturally gathered attention.
When Mira finished drinking the fruit juice, she finally lifted her face and noticed all the eyes focused on her.
(What is.… Is this the ‘being stared at’ feeling?)
Mira tried to show her wariness to the people around looking at her but alas, her flustered appearance and her restlessly looking around only stirred the women’s desire to protect that innocent and pure creature. That behaviour kept reminding Lily of a cute and small animal, making her squirm in delight. Meanwhile the men, only used to the resilient-looking castle maids, were completely entranced by her, pondering if girls could really be creatures as cute as Mira was.
In any case, not used to this much attention, it was being obtrusive to Mira and her self-conscious complex kept making her think they were laughing at her strange looks.
As they were leaving the dining room, Lily pacified Mira while leading her to the office, although the words precisely used due to her cute appearance only dealt the finishing blow to her psyche.
「King Solomon, I brought Miss Mira here.」
Knocking on the door, Lily presented Mira.
「Alright, come in.」
「Excuse me.」
Receiving Solomon’s permission, Lily quietly opened the door, bowing and allowing Mira in, then slowly closed the door, staying outside on duty.
「Hey, g’morning.」
「Yea, morning.」
Returning the greeting, Mira threw herself on the sofa, looking completely drained of energy. As he took a look at her outfit, Solomon could only repress his laughter by covering his mouth while his shoulders shook uncontrollably, all the while receiving Mira’s intense glare.
「Have you slept well?」
「Yea, I slept so well I couldn’t escape from the maids.」
「You do look very pretty though. Just as expected from my royal maids.」
「Even though I’d have been fine with a normal robe…」
Mira fluttered the edge of the skirt while sulking. Indeed, it was hard to believe such a masterpiece was made in a single night.
「Speaking of last night, it seems you did what I asked you.」
「Yea. Ah, about that, I left it behind in the room.」
「A maid delivered everything after you left the room. Now we can continue our valuable experiments for a while. Thank you.」
「Don’t thank me for such little things.」
Mira blushed, looking away from Solomon as she answered. She was indeed excited at making them.
「Ah, that reminds me, I should give it to you while I haven’t forgotten about it.」
「Hmm. What is it?」
With those words, Solomon threw a pouch towards her. Mira caught it and something was jingling inside.
「It’s money, money. Do you remember Graia, the officer of the Magic Knights Order? I heard from him that you helped suppress some monsters. It’s the reward for that.」
「Ah, is that so? But I already have more than enough money that I can go without worrying about it.」
「Really? Do you have it stored somewhere in the warehouse of the Tower or what?」
「What are you saying? I have it with me here…」
As she was speaking, Mira paused for a moment to try and retrieve some money. She tried to take out 100 Rils but nothing came out. Incidentally, Ril was the unit of currency in this world.
「Ah, have you noticed? Now take a guess why that happened.」
Solomon showed her a mischievous smile.
Mira shivered at the thought. As she hurriedly tried to check her balance in the menu, the number that’d indicate so vanished without trace.
「Where did all my money go?」
「It’s the same as the floating continent, probably swallowed by the waves of the digital world. A majority of players believe that money, unlike items, wasn’t actually in the inventory, so it was categorized as something completely different. As it was managed by the game system but it ceased when this stopped being a game, it took with it everything inherently tied with it. That’s the most plausible and believable reason.」
「What.…My 200 million…」
「You stashed quite a lot on yourself huh… Well, I was the same at that time…」
Once again since the case of the floating continent, Mira and Solomon could only stare at the sky in silence with their hearts hollowed out.
「In short, you can’t use any money that isn’t physically on your hands so here is 100,000 Rils for the time being as a reward. Use it sparingly. You’re good at that, right?」
There were several different coins in the pouch. One gold coin, 3 mithril coins, 3 silver coins, 4 cobalt coins, and 10 copper ones. A gold coin was equal to 50,000 Rils, mithril to 10,000, silver to 5,000, cobalt to 1,000, and copper to 100 Rils.
！100,000… Just a mere 100,000…」
「Just leave it be, it will be easy for you to earn money quickly. I already got over it and managed to…」
Because the game system didn’t allow the theft of money, while the death penalty only applied to inventory items, there was absolutely no reason to store any money in the storeroom, and as such, that habit backfired when the game turned reality.
「Speaking of that, I remembered something now. Have you tried to use the item box since you came here?」
Solomon recalled the changes he faced 30 years ago that he already started to forget.
「Several times. Is there anything wrong with it?」
「Looks like you haven’t noticed it yet.」
Leaving those words in the air, Solomon took a fountain pen from the table and threw it to Mira. She caught it and held it before her eyes.
It looked like a normal fountain pen, just more finely-crafted and more expensive-looking as it was used by the king.
「What is it?」
「Try to put it in the item box.」
While pondering about the reason he said that, Mira tried to put the fountain pen into her inventory as she did with many other of her items, but the pen simply fell onto the floor.
「What does this mean?」
Staring at the pen rolling on the floor, Mira glanced at the inventory. It definitely wasn’t full and there was no visible problem with it. Not understanding the situation, she turned her gaze to Solomon.
「I already told you that money was managed by the game system, right? Apparently, inventory items were also managed by this system.」
Picking up the pen, Solomon opened his own inventory.
「By the game era classification, fountain and quill pens were misc items, swords and armour were equipment, gems and metal ingots were materials.」
「A long time ago, players made a research facility to clarify the laws governing this world and they have done a lot of experiments since that time. As they concluded, the items themselves were automatically classified and sorted by the game system and as the item box suggests with its name, it can’t contain anything not classified as an item.」
As he was speaking, Solomon took a book from the shelves and held it towards Mira to show her.
「Now, as the game system does not work anymore, this fountain pen is not a misc item and this book is not a written item. This means you can’t put them in the item box. On the other hand, all the stuff that is already in the item box already possesses a classification so there is no issue there.」
「That’s rather annoying. Do you mean I can’t travel empty-handed anymore?」
This revelation could only bring Mira to tears as she was going to be looking for problematic children and all the goods required for the journey would certainly grow to become unwieldy.
「However, half a year after the item box became useless, we found a ground-breaking method.」
「Eh? And what is that method?」
「In short, you just need to do the work of the game system manually. The research team found the 【Concept Magic: Itemization】. By using that skill, you can classify the item’s category, thus allowing it to be put into the item box.」
「You mean to say with that skill I can use the item box just like before?」
「Yes, just like it was. It’s really simple so I’ll be teaching it to you now.」
「Yea, please.」
30 minutes later, Mira smoothly learned the Itemization skill. Using it on the fountain pen, she confirmed she can now place it into the item box and nodded in satisfaction.
Concept Magic was a category for all the skills that didn’t belong to any specific class. There’s a lot of convenient skills like the Itemization skill in it and anyone could use them as long as they have mana. The magic to illuminate a room was also part of the Concept Magic, but Mira just used Creos instead for convenience’s sake.
After some more testing of the new skill, Mira returned to the sofa for a rest.
「Well, about the underground cemetery then. Unlike before, all the dungeons are now managed by the United Adventurer’s Guild.」
Solomon moved the discussion towards the mission he entrusted to Mira.
「United Adventurer’s Guild? What’s that?」
「It’s an organization that was created shortly after the game turned reality to prevent the deaths of ordinary people and novices without enough strength trying to go into dungeons.」
「Oh…stuff like that? And the real goal is to keep all the treasures in the dungeons for themselves, right?」
「There was a little incident once. …A child died.」
「Hmm. That explains it…」
Mira somehow understood it.
Dungeons were fields that spread towards the inside or the underground instead of the open air. With treasures lying inside, these places were full with various monsters and wild animals that were stronger than its regular counterpart on the outside, making them very dangerous. Despite the danger the dungeons and monsters inside them posed, the promise of treasure was so attractive it lured people in who then just fell prey to the darkness and never came back out alive.
In the game era, nobody cared about it at all, but now that it had become a reality, incidents like that couldn’t be overlooked.
A child was trying to obtain a special material required for a medicine that his ill mother needed thus he entered the dungeon on his own. By the time the next morning came and he was still nowhere to be seen, a group of adults delved in the dungeon to look for him. The only thing they were able to find was scattered parts of the half-eaten body of a young boy holding a flower in his hand. As the mother heard of his fate, she passed away shortly after.
This world had definitely become a reality. What were once NPCs, the original inhabitants of the game world, are now real people with human hearts and all accompanying feelings with them, including about death. When a player knew about what happened, he proposed and created this organization that’d manage the dungeons and prevent the same thing happening again. That’s how the 「United Adventurer’s Guild」 came to be.
As one required a permit to enter dungeons from then on and the requests for ingredients from within piled up too much, the Guild started assigning those requests to skilled people.
While gradually becoming larger and helping to suppress monsters that became a national problem, it got the right to place various offices in each country.
「Well, that’s what we have to deal with now. Of course, you will be in the Spellcaster Union. Here is a recommendation letter.」
Solomon walked up to Mira with an envelope in his hands and gave it to her, smiling.
「So, I can enter with this?」
Accepting the recommendation letter, Mira briefly looked at the envelope and quickly itemized it to store it into the item box. The recommendation letter was classified as a written item.
「No, it’s just a recommendation. Only adventurers that belong to the guild can enter dungeons and there is a ranking based on the difficulty of the dungeon. The underground cemetery is rated as C or higher.
There are a lot of different requests at the guild now and completing them proves your strength for the next rank promotion. That’s such a simple model of how the guild works that it now seemed strange how there was no similar system back in the game era.」
「It does make sense raising the rank to accept more difficult missions. Those games were fun too.」
Mira became livelier after discovering something that was that close to a game-like system.
「This recommendation letter proves your identity and strength. Newly registered adventurers are originally starting at rank G but this should be enough for a direct promotion to rank C.
However, that’s as far as I can get you to even with my standing as a king.」
「Understood. Well, it should be enough. I only need to register with it, right?」
「Yeah. Additionally, there are two windows in the guild, one for the warrior’s union and the other for the spellcaster’s one. As the names suggest, it’s divided by classes they are working with.」
「There should be a guild branch office in this city too, right? I will go register right now.」
「Yea, there is one. Actually, the guild has offices in most of the cities. There is one in a city close to the underground cemetery where I’m going to send you with the carriage too. Are you sure about that? It takes almost a day to issue the adventurer’s ID.」
His smile implied something and Mira felt a tick of anxiety from it.
「Ah, only a day? Then I’ll be staying here for another…」
Before even finishing her sentence, Mira suddenly recalled the nightmare that happened this morning. If she were to give them another full day to their own devices, who could imagine what masterpiece the maids would come up with. Now understanding what Solomon meant, Mira started planning what to do now.
She could spend a night at an inn but the probability of being caught as she went back to the castle to take the carriage would be high. Even if the carriage waited outside the city, a maid could be waiting with it so it’s not an option either.
After much thought and concern about it, Mira came to the conclusion that postponing the journey a single day would prove to be fatal in any situation, thus she decided it was best to leave immediately.
「Please prepare the carriage right now.」
「Ha ha ha. All arrangements are already done. You can leave at any time.」
Mira eagerly stood up and left the office with Solomon.
Along with Lily, they arrived at a stable inside the castle. There were two horses and a carriage that was a size larger than the previous one. Waiting next to it was a stableman, a maid holding a large basket and a bag, and Garret who served as the coachman the previous time.
「Oh, Garret? What, are you serving as my coachman again?」
「Good morning. Yes, if you don’t mind, let me serve you again.」
Momentarily charmed by Mira’s even further polished appearance, Garret bowed to hide his smile.
「Well, fine. I’m feeling at ease with you too so I’m counting on you.」
Mira returned a smile with those words. Garret blushed and happily answered 「I look forward to working with you.」
「Then, take care.」
「Yea.」
Exchanging a short goodbye with Solomon and after a tight embrace with Lily, Mira entered the carriage. As she got in, another maid brought a basket and a bag, leaving them inside.
「Take care of yourself and have a good day, Miss Mira. There is a meal inside the basket and spare clothes inside the bag.」
「Ye.…yea. Well, thanks.」
The maid got off the carriage after bowing to Mira. Without thinking nor wanting to think about the contents of the bag, she stared at it following up with yet another sigh.
