Chapter 65: Outsiders

At nightfall Ibuki went to sleep because she was tired from her first day of training, the other girls and I are in another room sitting on the wolfskin rug facing each other.

“How was your investigation?” (I)

“Thanks to Diana being a Wolf Man-Beast the investigation went faster than we initially expected.” (Kira)

“Why that?” (I)

“I’ve fought Undead a few times already, so I know a little about them and how to track them.” (Diana)

“Another reason is my nose, as a woman from the Wolf tribe of Beast Man I have a superior sense of smell than any other race, after becoming familiar with the master my sense of smell became twice as strong.” (Diana)

“I think I get it, so you can track them by smell.” (Érica)

“Exactly, the undead has a unique odor because of their miasma and this odor persists for a long time in the places they pass, thanks to that I can know where they went, and by the intensity of the odor I can know how many are nearby.” (Diana)

“So you’re using Diana’s nose to quickly find out the places where the Undead passed.” (I)

“We split the tasks with Diana looking for the general location and me looking for the tracks they leave to know where they’re coming from and where they’re going.” (Kira)

“What did you manage to find out then?” (I)

“We managed to quickly cover a fifth of the Valley of Blood, we were fast that way because we avoided all the monsters and Diana didn’t find any scent of the Undead.” (Kira)

“In the end, we spent the whole day running through the forest.” (Diana)

“You must be tired, I think you’d better go to bed early today.” (I)

“Master, since Diana did pretty much all the work today, I had time to think and realized I forgot something yesterday.” (Kira)

“Forgot what?” (I)

“I was thrilled to be able to be together with the master again and after we were so busy giving you everything that happened in town, in the end, we still had to talk about the Undead.” (Kira)

“With all that, I forgot to give the gift I bought to the master while I was in town.” (Kira)

Kira gets up and goes to the cabin’s storage room where we keep everything we have, after a few minutes she comes back with a book of each white and hands it to me.

“The name of this book is ‘Those Who Come From Far’, this book is generally about the Outsiders.” (Kira)

“Foreigners?” (I)

“Outsiders are people who are not originally from our world.” (Érica)

“I bought this book to help the master since he is an Outsider.” (Kira)

“…” (Érica/Diana)

“So you noticed?” (I)

“Well, with so many clues, sometimes someone would notice something weird.” (me)

“Which?” (Érica)

“Is the master an Outsider?” (Diana)

“Really I was the only one who noticed?” (Kira)

“…” (Érica/Diana)

“If you think about it, it’s obvious that there are a lot of weird things about me, even though I still don’t quite know what an outsider is, I can still say that I haven’t been very subtle with everything I’ve been doing.” (I)

“If you think about it, you’ll see, where you’ve seen a monster as smart as the master being so weak, where you’ve seen a Goblin being surrounded by women and not touching any and where you’ve seen a monster that was supposed to have been raised in the forest to be so polite to speak.” (Kira)

“Aside from the things I just talked about, the way the master makes his plans is like he’s been studying strategies of all kinds for years.” (Kira)

“That’s why I thought the master was an Outlander of the reincarnated type.” (Kira)

“You’re right, I’m reincarnated.” (I)

“Since I didn’t realize this before, I’m a slave failure.” (Érica)

“The master being an Outsider makes sense, it’s impossible to invent a martial art as complex as the master’s without years or decades of studying martial arts in-depth, it’s impossible for someone who created a martial art like this to be a monster as weak as a Goblin.” (Diana)

“It’s not like I’m trying to hide any of this from you guys anyway.” (I)

“I just never told, because we’re always busy with something, but since you’ve already figured it out and the way you talk I’m not the only one in this situation, I’ll speak honestly.” (I)

“I was reincarnated from a different world, before reincarnating I was a human.” (I)

“What do you think of this?” (I)

“I don’t care, the master will always be the master for me.” (Érica)

“I don’t care about the master’s past, I swore to serve the master and that’s what I will do until my last day.” (Diana)

“I never cared about the origins of the master, it was you who rescued me from a path in which I had lost myself and it was you, the master who repaired this body that was once shattered to the point of being unrecognizable.” (Kira)

“I once swore to be with the master using the ancient vows of the Gray Elves, I intend to follow them and I would never regret that decision.” (Kira)

“…” (I)

Sigh

“Your words make me very happy, thank you.” (I)

I’m glad none of them cared about my background, I didn’t want to hide anything from them, I just didn’t have time with so much going on, but it’s a relief that they care so little about it.

“Now tell me something, you’re all talking about Outsiders, can you explain to me what exactly Outsiders are?” (I)

“Let me explain this to you, master.” (Érica)

“Outsiders are people who come from other worlds, they fall into two categories which are people who were summoned to that world and people reincarnated.” (Érica)

“What is the difference between them?” (I)

“Summoned ones are usually brought in by the Gods or hundreds of extremely powerful mages using an item imbued with divine energy as an intermediary.” (Érica)

“The reincarnated are those who died in their original worlds and their souls are brought to this world where they can reincarnate in any race.” (Érica)

“That’s all I know about the Outsiders, master.” (Érica)

“Okay, that’s a big help.” (I)

“Actually there’s other information I know about the Outsiders.” (Kira)

“What information?” (I)

“I learned that the number of Outsiders soared from seven hundred years to fifty years ago, and half of them all claimed to be from the same world.” (Kira)

“And is this weird?” (I)

“This is very strange, master.” (Érica)

“Outsiders should only show up a few per century or one per decade at most and the chances of being from the same world should be close to zero.” (Érica)

“And does anyone know the reason for this?” (I)

“Unfortunately not.” (Kira)

“I don’t know anything either.” (Érica)

“Don’t even look at me master, I don’t know anything about it.” (Diana)

“Then I think we’ll close this subject, I’ll try to learn a little more from the book later when I have time.” (I)

“Now I’m going to talk to you guys about what to do tomorrow.” (I)

“Diana and Kira will continue to investigate where these Undead are coming from.” (I)

“I will continue teaching Ibuki tomorrow with the basics of martial arts and I will start training magic.” (I)

“Érica, you will continue to study mid-level fire spells.” (I)

“Yes Master.” (Érica/Diana/Kira)

“With that, we end this meeting, Diana and Kira can go to sleep, I and Érica will be on guard in the first shift, we’ll wake you up at dawn to change shifts, you can go to sleep now if you so desire.” (I)

“Good night, master.” (Kira/Diana)

With that resolved, Érica and I head out of the cabin while the others go to bed.

I pick up one of the wolf rugs and take it outside with me, drop the rug on the floor and lie on top of it looking up at the starry sky.

“(Then I’m not the only one who came to this world if you’ve had so many Outsiders before there may have been others from my old world.)” (I)

Knowing about the Outsiders surprised me, I already imagined that I would not be the only person to be reincarnated in this world, but I didn’t know that there would be so many over the years in this world.

The time I’ve been in this world is short, but so many things have happened, I don’t know if I’m still the same scared and confused person who arrived, I don’t even know if I’m still the same sick man trapped in a hospital bed not knowing if I would wake up next time go into a coma.

Thinking back, since I arrived in this world I haven’t even thought about my old name or should I say that I don’t remember my name anymore from when I was still Human.

The weird thing is that I remember everything perfectly, but I can’t remember my old name.

Another thing I noticed was when I killed the bandits and Viborá, it was very easy to kill them, I didn’t feel anything for what I did to them and I don’t know if that’s because I don’t feel sorry for bandits or because of this body and mind of monsters are influencing me more than I care to admit.

While I was thinking about myself, Érica continued to train her magic, we stayed like that until it was time to switch shifts with Diana and Kira, then we went to sleep.