TL: Cannongerbil
Editor: Ulti
“So this is the rumoured haunted house?”
Right in front of me stood a run-down old mansion that looked like it could collapse at any moment.
It was originally some noble’s villa, but apparently, it’s been abandoned for the last few years.
“I’ve heard that it has been abandoned, but… How many years has it been? It looks like it’s been left here for over a decade, at least.”
Lynn, who came with me, frowned as she looked upon the run-down mansion.
“Well, it certainly does feel like a ghost might pop up at any moment.”
“We’re just here to check things out, alright? Taylor and Keith aren't with us, and on top of that, our party doesn’t have a priest, so exorcising ghosts is impossible for us.”
I invited Loli Succubus to come along, since devils seem like they would have great affinity with ghosts, but she seemed to be busy and hurriedly chased me away.
“Couldn’t we just burn it to the ground? It’d save on costs when it comes time to rebuild it, so that’d be a bonus too.”
“…Stop with the jokes.”
There were two quests posted on the guild bulletin today, “Investigate the haunted house” and “Exorcise the ghosts in the haunted house”. Both offered pretty good rewards, so we accepted them both.
That said, we don’t have a priest in our party, so there’s no way we can exorcise a ghost. So, the plan is to gather some information before passing it on to Kazuma’s Party Priest to handle.
“But will she agree to help us?”
“It’ll be fine. The Axis cultists are famous for their hatred of undead. I’ll just treat her to a drink and she’ll happily come along.”
She’s not as bad as me, but that Party Priest is also eternally in debt. She should’ve earned quite a bit from being in Kazuma’s party, but even then, that’s still not enough to keep up with her spending.
She loves spending time in the bars and gambling dens, after all.
It’s hard to believe that she’s a priest, but looking at how the boss of the Axis Cult behaves, I guess that’s not to unusual.
“Still, they told us to investigate, but how through does it have to be? Can’t we just take a look around the mansion?”
“I wonder… It’s fairly large, but let's take go one round around the walls to start.”
The two of us took a walk around the outer walls of the mansion.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly strange.”
“Yeah… Wait, hold on, did you see anyone by the second floor window?”
“D-Don’t say weird stuff! You aren’t going to scare me with such cliched stories…”
“No, there’s a ghost here, right? So it wouldn’t be strange for something or the other to be appearing up there.”
Lynn seemed somewhat angry, but we came here to take care of a ghost. It’d be stranger still if there wasn’t anything odd.
“But, the quest just said that sounds and human voices can be heard on occasion coming from the mansion at night. And there are occasionally signs of someone present. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a ghost.”
“Why are you so desperate to deny it… Oh, I see. You’re afraid of ghosts, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am! Anyone would be afraid of ghosts!”
“But you were fine dealing with zombies.”
“Those things have flesh. Plus they aren’t transparent either.”
Is that how it works? I really don’t get her logic.
“If it isn’t a ghost, that only leaves homeless adventurers and maybe a few curious townsfolk, right? You can probably hear their voices if you listen hard enough.”
Teasing Lynn who seemed scared for once, I put my hand up to my ears.
“Not… Yet… Hurry…”
And I heard the faint voice of a pained woman on the winds.
…No, no, it’s just my imagination. It’s probably just the wind.
And now I’m hearing the sound of something large and heavy getting dragged along the floor.
I slowly turned around to see Lynn, her face a stark white of fear.
No, this isn’t my imagination.
“H-Hurry up and go check up on it! I’ll stay here and watch your back!”
“Don’t push me! If you’re so interested, why don't you go check on it!? I’ll hold your hand if you are scared!”
“Don’t do that, I’ll have to thoroughly wash my hands afterwards! More importantly, you heard that, right?”
“Yeah, I did. Maybe we should take a peek through that window?”
I tiptoed my way next to the window and crouched down. Lynn, despite her trembling, followed after me.
It doesn’t seem like Lynn would be peeking in anytime soon, so I slowly raised my head and looked inside.
“It looks really run-down from the outside, but the interior is really well maintained!”
“But we already have that store, so why do we need this place too?”
Inside the mansion was a small crowd of succubi, who were busying themselves with cleaning up the place with rags and mops.
I spotted the form of Loli Succubus amongst them, and she was talking to another succubus a short distance from the window.
“You remember that inspection not too long ago, right? We’re setting this place up so we can have a place to work out of in case something like that ever happens again.”
So this is what Loli Succubus is busy with.
“W-What do you see?”
I couldn’t let her know about the succubi, so I said “A couple of young adventurers are going at it” and she smacked me in the head! Why!?