Rebirth of the Obake Demon King [Isekai Reincarnation Quest]

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[QM's Note: Sorry for the long delay in getting here, the Christmas Period is finally behind me and I'm getting back into the flow of writing and updating. I hope you enjoy, and I'll be back to (usually) daily updates from here on.]

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Breathe in...breathe out...

Well, okay, it seems like all things considered, I must've been hijacked by this so-called Evil God. Still, I guess that wasn't all that important compared to the real revelation - I'd been brought here as I suspected, but based on what the Evil God had said, this wasn't exactly your normal, everyday game. Well, I guess I had suspected as much already, but now I had the word of someone else that this world was as real to its inhabitants as my own was to me. It resembled a game in many ways, but I had to assume that there were no respawns, and thus no second chances. In short, it was better to assume that this was my new life until further notice...

"Is something wrong, Vicky?"

Sister's voice floated through the carriage. She must've noticed how tightly I was clenching my fists, or perhaps the slight tremble in my shoulders, but for my part, I was doing my best to keep it together. I'd made a fool of myself enough for one day, and to be honest, I was tired of crying helplessly. I've survived harder situations than this, so if this is the way things were, I was simply going to have to power through and make the best of it.

"No," I replied. Well, that was a rather transparent lie, but there was too much I needed to do, I couldn't waste time on worrying right now. I could cry later, if I needed, after all.

"The church was pretty," I said instead of answering her directly.

This was the first thing I needed to test: were the events in the village wholly imagined, and what happened after I met that God?

"Ah, yes it was, wasn't it? You were very well behaved, do you want to go back one day?"

"Mm...but, the neighbours..."

There wasn't any real pause before her reply came. "Hm? You mean the Rosewalds? You were pretty quiet the whole time, come to think of it...did you not like them?"

I bit my lip instinctively, my shoulders sagging slightly. So I had continued to act even while under the influence of the God? I had no memories of it, but...

"N-no...it's not that," I shook my head. "They were..."

I hesitated, not sure how to word this without giving away that something strange had happened to me. Maybe it'd be best to just drop it. I'm sure the adults would be quick to dismiss the strange ramblings of a four year old child, after all. Yes, that was for the best, I'd change subjects.

Taking a deep breath, I turned and looked my mother in the eye. She was going to be the real, critical part of my life and survival here. I was pretty confident I had sister's unconditional love, and I was pretty sure she was willing to go pretty far in order to protect me. I needed to make sure she stayed on my side, and that she continued to take measures - however drastic - to keep me alive until I could stand on my own two feet and start to unravel the puzzle of how I got here.

"Mother, what's a State Seal? Something...something of S-sacrament?" That wasn't intentional babytalk, I struggled for a moment to remember the complete phrase. It was simply more advanced than the kind of language even I'd learned.

I could best describe her face as grave, but she forced a smile as she responded. "Well, Victoria, it's something I asked the Emperor to do in order to protect you."

"Yes, but...what is it?" I fired back immediately. There's no worming your way out of this one, woman, I need to know what's going on.

"...I...I guess you can think of it as the Emperor telling everyone to leave you alone, and keep secrets about you."

"Secrets?" I tilted my head, trying my best to look as cute as possible.

"I'll tell you when you're older, you don't need to worry about that right now."

Tch. I could tell by the look on her face that she wasn't going to relent. Well, I'd managed to change the topic, but it seemed clear that I wasn't going to get the answers I wanted on this topic. Still, let's pry a little further...

"Is that why they wouldn't let me touch the man's stick?"

Mother opened her mouth, then hesitated as if thinking. She reached out and picked me up quite unexpectedly; I didn't even bother resisting at this point, if it meant I'd get what I'd need, it was fine to play the role of the obedient daughter.

"That's part of it, but...I want you to promise me you'll never touch something like that again, not without my permission, okay?" Mother's voice seemed kind but serious. I guess this was pretty important.

"Why?"

"Well, what the merchant - that man, rather - tried to show you was a device that channels your magic to...ah, I guess the details are still too complex for you. Well, you'll understand one day. Basically, if you go grabbing strange magic objects like that, they could blow up, do you understand?"

W-what?! Blow up?! Why the hell didn't someone tell me this sooner? Why the heck was that? I quickly nodded; I didn't even need to try and act frightened, I hadn't realised until just now how dangerous that situation had been!

"O-okay...but why does it blow up?"

"Ooh! I know this one!" Sister piped up, grinning at a chance to show off. "Those sticks draw mana from the body of the person holding it, displaying it in a crystal in the middle so that you can get an idea of how strong they are!"

Mother smiled at her, "That's...mostly correct, Elena. Specifically it's designed to draw out mana as quickly as an individual can expel it. With an untrained person, especially a child, drawing out as much as possible is necessary to get any kind of reading - if a trained mage were to allow such an object to freely draw their mana, there's no doubt the item would be destroyed."

Elena nodded, taking in this explanation. I was also taking it all in with great interest - did this mean what I think it did?

"So of course, a genius like my little sister would go nuts without any training and then - BOOM! The whole room would go up in smoke, right?" Sister gestured grandly to emphasise the image her mind had created.

"That's right," Mother laughed at Elena's theatrics. "Well, I doubt you two would've been seriously hurt, but it'd be dangerous to give people clues about her nature, don't you think?"

"Of course!" Sister took a dramatic pose. "Don't worry, Vicky, I won't let anything weird happen to you!"

They both smiled at me. Well, it seemed I was safe for the moment, but still...wasn't that way too close for comfort? Why the heck hadn't they stopped me way sooner? It seemed that even if their intentions were good, they could be a little negligent at times, I'd need to be more careful myself. Speaking of careful, I needed to try and throw them off...

"I don't understand." A lie, of course. I'm only a little bit sorry, but this is for everyone's own good. I'm not going to let you guys catch on to my reincarnated status, not if I can help it.

"Don't worry, Victoria, I promise you'll understand it all one day. When you're old enough, we'll be bringing someone into the Manor to teach you about such things."

Hah?

Hang on, was that what I thought it was? Did you mean, was I really going to learn how to use magic? Come to think of it, I'd learnt some kind of magic power a bit ago, thanks to that Evil God's blessing. Maybe when I had some alone time I could try it out, but for the time being, I would leave it be. Oh, that's right, there was another thing I meant to ask, I guess now was as good a time as ever...

"Oh...what's Appraisal Detected mean?"

"Where did you hear that?!" Mother's voice and demeanour changed instantly.

"Someone said it in the village, but I couldn't figure out who..."

"If you ever hear a voice tell you that, you must tell your guards right away!"

Next thing I knew, I'd been set on the floor of the carriage. As I thought, they were going to make a big fuss about this. Well, I guess it's true that if my Half-Demon nature got out, that was going to be pretty bad, but I didn't expect this level of overreaction. Was it really that bad? I wonder if the person Appraising me even got any useful information? Everything I tried to appraise came back with nothing useful at all.

Ah, the carriage had stopped, it seemed Mother was relaying some kind of instructions to the guards. I couldn't hear exactly what was going on, but I guessed that it was about what had happened. Well, it was out of my hands now, I'm sure they could handle it responsibly. When we got home, I'd take a good nap and sleep on everything that had happened...yeah, that sounded great.

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「Skill Level Up! Skill: Preternatural Agility Lv.1 Unlocked」

I'd been pretty unsure about accepting one of the skills offered as a 'Gift of Maou-sama' or whatever, but in the end, what I'd seen on the carriage had convinced me that I might need to use whatever I could get to survive in this world. It was obvious that my birth race was going to be a serious disadvantage, so even if it meant being indebted to that Evil God, I would accept the power offered by the gift. As long as I was still alive, I could figure out the rest later.

Why Agility? Well, I felt like it was one of the most utilitarian of all the options. All martial arts were founded on your hand-eye coordination, reactions and speed. It was useful to attack, to defend, to engage or disengage - there wasn't a situation I could think of where agility wasn't useful, after all. Well, maybe when magic got involved there'd be things I couldn't run away from, but I'd have to worry about that later. If my magical talents were as great as they seemed to suggest, I'm sure I'd learn to do some crazy stuff?

Ah, the Shadow Magic? Useless. Or at least, it was useless to me right now. I'd tried all kinds of things to activate it, but it seemed like magic was more complicated than that. I couldn't bring up any kind of spell list and I didn't know how to use my body's mana, so it seemed like that'd have to wait until I got some kind of tutor.

So, here I was, testing my new skill in my room. Tanya was reading a book at the table as usual, content to leave me to my own play. Well, she'd probably notice what I was up to pretty quickly, but that's alright - I was a talented girl, even if this ability was as crazy as it sounded, I'm sure they'd be able to accept it pretty easily.

The first test: hand-eye coordination. Just from that one skill, it seemed like it was considerably improved, my ability to control my hands and feet felt much sharper and more refined - in fact, I felt just as free and in control as I had during my life outside the game. Bouncing from foot to foot lightly, I threw out a few experimental jabs, shadowboxing with the opponent in my mind's eye. My body still wasn't entirely used to the motions, but I felt light and free, like I could start to really, properly use my old skills again.

「Skill Level Up! Skill: Boxing Lv. 1 Unlocked」

Ah? That didn't take long, did it? I guess this could be part of my skill and experience from my old life bleeding over? Well, when it comes to free skills, I'll take it, of course. Anything that could help me defend myself could only be seen as a good thing.

The next test was flexibility - that seemed to be much improved. Heck, improved wasn't the right word, this was kind of crazy! I could do full splits and hold a bridge almost effortlessly. This much change overnight from just one ability? I couldn't even do this kind of stuff in my real life.

Then there was my speed...well, in all honesty, Tanya had been watching me for a little while, and I wasn't sure I wanted to see exactly how fast I could go with her watching. I had a feeling that I'd become much faster than any child my age had any right to be, if the rest of my enhanced dexterity was any indication. Maybe I'd be able to get outside and give it a test drive sometime, but for now, probably better to not to give away the full extent of my abilities.

I took a deep breath, and then exhaled. I had no idea when I'd next be allowed to leave the manor - especially given the incidents in the village - but that didn't mean I had to sit here and remain idle. It was time to get to work - but on what?

What should I focus on training for the time being?
[] - I'd been trying console commands in my spare time, but it'd be really useful to sit down and really hammer all the possible commands I can think of to try and learn about the details of the system.
[] - Practice my Appraisal skill - this useful magic allows me to gain information about any object or creature I focus on, which will make it easier for me to understand this world.
[] - My language skills are decent, but I'm still missing out on some more complex intricacies. I'm sure I'll learn them over time, but it could be worth practicing now if I want to try and glean more information faster.
[] - I've gotten pretty good at reading. Let's spend more time in the library, studying about this world and its culture and history.
[] - Start trying to sneak out of my room. With the maids constantly watching me, it's going to be hard to slip away and act on my own, so I should start figuring out how to give them the slip now while I'm young enough to get away with it.
[] - I'm starting to get a feel for this body. Let's give the sword training that sister was practicing a second chance - I bet it'll be much easier to pick up with my newly enhanced agility.
[] - Now that I've regained coordination, my old fighting skills are starting to come back to me. Let's think back to what I learned in the gangs and try to remember how to apply these principles using my new body.
[] - I don't want to wait for a tutor to learn how to use magic. Let's start messing around with commands in order to see if we can figure out how to cast any spells.