Chapter 2

You Mean There Are No Benefits to Being a Transmigrator?

The entire underground chamber was swept by mana like a tidal wave.

With every breath she drew, fear filled Airy’s lungs.

She gasped, her reasoning dulled by terror.

A damp, cold wind slowly swept through the vast space, its size impossible to gauge, completely disregarding Airy’s presence.

Then, all sound disappeared.

The pressure that seemed to physically block her ears filled Airy with an even more instinctive fear, leaving her body trembling uncontrollably.

—Vooooom…

At some point, a strange sound had begun to resonate at an extremely low volume.

The cold wind that had been blowing around her now clearly exuded an eerie, almost demonic quality as it accelerated and began circling the chamber.

It was as though light itself had a sound.

Airy screamed and jumped in fright.

Light had begun to appear on the floor.

Airy tried to crawl away while still sprawled on the ground.

But there was nowhere to run.

The light on the floor was forming a series of patterns that covered the entire interior.

Yes.

They had been drawn.

“Ah. Fuck. I’m fucked.”

Airy muttered through tears.

Even with her limited knowledge, it was obvious what all of this was.

A magic circle.

“It wasn’t my intention. I never intended to come in here at all…”

Her overwhelming sense of injustice finally burst out.

Airy sobbed loudly, her entire body trembling.

Understanding the situation led to judgment, and judgment quickly turned into resignation.

As befitting a transmigrator, Airy had always been quick to accept her fate.

After all, she was inside a book.

Whatever was going to happen was going to happen.

Will I be torn to pieces and killed?

The Grand Duke’s family is relatively merciful, so perhaps they’ll just suffocate me to death?

I just hope it doesn’t hurt too much.

Curling herself up and squeezing her eyes shut, Airy took a deep breath and prepared herself for death.

But death did not come easily.

She cautiously opened one eye.

Nothing had changed.

The threateningly enormous magic circle continued to glow while emitting its strange sound, and the wind still swirled around Airy.

“They’re not going to kill me?”

Come to think of it, that made sense.

If she was an intruder, she must have had some sort of motive.

If they killed her immediately, how would they ever find out what that motive was?

Or perhaps the kind and wise Grand Duke had simply judged that trespassing alone was not a crime worthy of taking someone’s life.

Only then did Airy feel a little blood returning to her body.

Once she determined that the threat of death had passed, her rigid muscles began to relax.

She finally felt like looking around.

The interior was roughly the size of a small hall.

As expected, there were no windows.

Of the four walls, one had the entrance, while two others were completely bare, without even a single decoration.

The remaining wall was occupied by a double-sided bookshelf.

In front of the bookshelf, toward the inner side of the room, stood a comfortable armchair and a small side table.

Airy stared at the tabletop.

Something about it was suspicious.

There was a single water bottle and a glass sitting on an elegant silver tray.

Wait.

Are intruders considered guests here?

Is His Grace’s heart so endlessly generous that he expects me to sit here, drink tea, and read a book while waiting for the owner of the house?

Airy tried to understand the intentions of whoever had designed this place.

She gave up.

Naturally, the entrance was firmly shut and would not open.

For the time being, Airy walked over to the armchair, which looked surprisingly comfortable, and collapsed into it.

The extreme stress following all that cardio exercise had brought on exhaustion.

Airy came to a conclusion.

She would probably have to remain trapped here until one of the elders of the household came looking for her.

In that case, she might as well sleep.

At least sleeping would reduce some of the enormous losses she was suffering.

That was her logic.

She closed her eyes.

After the overwhelming exhaustion came small, insignificant thoughts.

I’ll probably be fired.

I might get beaten.

But surely they won’t kill me, right?

I’m a transmigrator in this world, after all.

Treating herself as a guest who was simultaneously precious and lowly, Airy resigned herself to the situation.

It must be necessary for the story to progress.

For now, I’ll just rest.

Before long, she fell asleep to the sound of the magic circle functioning as white noise.

Her snoring was loud enough to drown out the operating sounds of the magic circle.

Fortunately, there was no one around to know that.

Airy Ast began to suspect that something was seriously wrong around the time she became hungry.

Until then, she had never imagined a situation where she would be unable to escape.

There had definitely been maids who had seen her chasing after the young master toward the separate wing.

And although the young master was extremely mischievous and energetic, he wasn’t some lunatic who would lock someone away and then pretend he knew nothing about it.

A considerable amount of time had passed.

Judging by how refreshed yet dazed she felt—as though she had fallen to the edge of hell and then woken up—she certainly hadn’t slept for just an hour or two.

Airy shook her head, trying to dispel the faint headache lingering there.

She was terribly thirsty.

There’s obviously no way there’s any water here.

Still, she decided to take her chances and picked up the water bottle on the side table.

She was startled.

There was water inside.

She could clearly feel it sloshing heavily.

Airy opened the lid and smelled it.

Clean.

Fresh.

She cautiously poured a cup and took a sip.

The lukewarm water was exactly what it appeared to be.

Just water.

But Airy was soon startled for an entirely different reason.

The amount of water she had just drunk had been replenished inside the bottle.

She had felt the bottle become lighter and then heavier again with her own hands.

There was no mistake.

This time, she put the bottle directly to her lips and gulped down the water.

When she lowered it again, she could feel it becoming heavy once more.

She opened the lid.

It was filled to roughly eighty percent, exactly as it had been before.

“Isn’t this… that thing?”

The words escaped her instinctively.

You know. That thing.

An opportunity.

Was this actually a martial-arts-meets-romance-fantasy novel?

Was I the protagonist after all?

The forgotten hope of receiving some sort of transmigrator benefit suddenly spread its wings.

Airy grinned broadly and clapped her hands together.

Then her eyes lit up as she glared at the side table.

There has to be a reason this is here.

“Let’s see… Is there some sort of elixir inside?”

The kind that poured mana into you by the potful.

If it were something like that, it would fit the revenge-story cliché perfectly.

The narrative logic is excellent.

Suppressing the excitement pounding in her chest, Airy opened the only drawer in the side table.

Then she was rendered speechless.

Inside the drawer, sitting on a silver tray, was a single generously filled sandwich.

“It looks really ordinary. Is this the romance-fantasy version of an elixir?”

Muttering to herself, Airy took out the sandwich and examined it from every angle.

It contained fresh vegetables, pickled fruit, and meat in a perfectly balanced combination.

When she took a bite, it tasted excellent.

In fact, it was unmistakably the exact kind of sandwich the mansion’s chef prepared for picnics in the front garden.

As she munched on the sandwich, Airy forcibly opened her mana circle—the pitiful little thing she had spent an entire month cultivating, barely larger than a fingernail.

It was filled only to the extent that it had recovered somewhat after doing laundry that morning.

Giving up her hopes of a miraculous sandwich elixir, Airy turned her gaze toward the bookshelf.

“Right. The secret technique. That’s the kind of thing it is, right? I know, I know.”

She put the empty plate back into the drawer and closed it.

Then, for a moment, Airy Ast’s survival instincts spoke up.

If there’s nothing else, you’re definitely going to starve to death.

Check whether the sandwich gets replenished.

She opened the drawer again.

Fortunately, the sandwich had been replenished.

There was one tiny misfortune.

The sandwich was exactly the same in every detail.

But that was truly a very minor misfortune.

Airy was extremely hungry, so she immediately devoured the second sandwich.

Without even worrying about the crumbs sticking to her fingers, she approached the bookshelf and began scanning it.

Most of the books were ordinary magic books, roughly at the level of general education.

Airy had already studied quite a few of them.

“The level isn’t particularly high.”

It really wasn’t.

There was no sudden flash of enlightenment when she looked at them.

No strange energy.

Nothing.

Perhaps she simply hadn’t put in enough effort.

After all, miraculous opportunities didn’t come easily.

Then, suddenly, Airy’s eyes lit up.

There were shelves packed with magic books, but in the far-left corner sat a notebook that was obviously strange.

This is it.

This was the family of a great archmage whose lineage stretched back generation after generation.

Airy was only a maid and didn’t know the details, but she had heard rumors that all sorts of valuable treasures and magic books were hidden somewhere in the Grand Duke’s estate.

She knew.

Something like that obviously wouldn’t be sitting out in the open.

But what if…

What if fate prepared this for me so that I could finally awaken?

Airy’s eyes sparkled as she pulled it out.

It was a hardcover notebook with a magical quill tucked beside it.

But then—

“…What is this? The Memoirs of an Underground Prisoner?”

The title sounded strangely familiar.

She opened the cover.

On the first page, someone had scrawled a convincing mess of handwriting.

One notebook. One pen.

May you never know that even these things contain freedom.

September 3, 897. Lottie.

Something about this was strange.

But apparently, someone had broken into this basement no less than thirty-two years ago.

Airy raised an eyebrow and leaned crookedly against the bookshelf as she began turning the pages.

Magic is a discipline that harms the soul.

I cannot tolerate it.

Those disgustingly cold things are trying to use my delicate neural pathways to manifest their rituals, using something that belongs to me—something that even I have never once been allowed to touch.

Disgusting.

The fact that something like this has been passed down through the bloodline for hundreds of years.

The fact that it has come to stand before an individual’s dignity.

Airy frowned.