The Last Surviving Alchemist Wants to Live Quietly in the City

"Hmmm..."

Cold, cold, and hard.

I remember this feeling coming through my clothes.

Sometimes I wake up like this. Did I fall out of bed again sometime today? Human survival instincts are hard to insult, and when you fall out of bed and sleep on a cold floor, you unconsciously hand over a blanket or are round on a mat. Yet today is more limp and uncomfortable than usual. The scratched fabric sticks to her body and takes Mariella's temperature.

(Ugh... blanket..., that?

Tightly, I finally woke up, Mariella.

"Uh... I searched for my master and reached the shrine by the swamp..., and when I opened the door I fell into the water..."

I try to remember the situation by following my memories, but I'm not sure. If it falls underground, I can see how it got into the water. Was the basement flooded? If so, what is the situation now?

"Someone helped me... it doesn't feel like it, does it?

If she had fallen on her back, she would have been able to wake up and at the same time leave a comment on the ceiling in her eyes, such as, "It's an unknown ceiling," but what Mariella had fallen down with a flat, stiffer cobblestone than Mariella's chest.

The clothes and hair remain soggy and wet, so it's hard to imagine that someone cared for me. When I breathe water carefully and pull away the heavy clothing, I get up loose, and when I dry it with my "dry" skills, the warm air enters into the sun that plugs in, causing me to loosen my strength from my shrinking body.

"I don't know if it's been much time."

As soon as I woke up to the cold on the stone floor, my body didn't seem to be cut off. I don't even think it's been a while since I fell into this place.

"I mean, I wonder where it is here?

While warming up in the warm sun, some shadow crossed Mariella, who was making sure her body wasn't abnormal.

"Bird...? Huh............!?

The place where Mariella was falling was a circular room more than twenty steps from end to end with Mariella's legs, and the floor and walls were made of stone. It should have fallen, but there is a properly domed ceiling overhead, and instead there are slit-like tall windows in eight directions on the walls surrounding the circular room at regular intervals. Is the window open from around Mariella's knee so high that she can't reach it, about shoulder-width apart? The lattice is not fitted, and the curtain is not hung.

The warm sun filling the room is slipping through its windows, and the view outside is opaque as to whether it is foggy or cloudy. Mariella, who was distracted by the safety of where she was now, I guess the weather was bad, she didn't even care because of the impression that it was the birds, not the fish, that crossed the window and cast a shadow on Mariella.

"Fish!?

I rushed up to a nearby window and thought the weather was bad, outside, in deep water. Huge fish are swimming leisurely, although I don't really know how distant they are, but the human position is likely. It is so deep that when you look up through the window you do not know where the water surface is, it maintains a degree of brightness as to whether the light is scattered or the water as a whole is morning or evening.

"Huh? I knew it fell into the water......?

I don't know why. No, I can imagine falling into the water and flowing here.

Reach out your hand across a window filled with water, no matter what.

"Hih, water!?

Of the window, Mariella, who reached out to the boundary separating the room from the outside water, touched the water, not the glass. An upright surface of water is shaking like a stone-dropped surface touched by Mariella.

"What? Dreams, it's not, it's cold. Uh, Wonder World?

Pocha, Pocha, Pocha, stick your hand in the bottom of the window. I'll pull it back, Mariela. There's nothing like pouring water into a room like dobarity, though a blister flies when you slap it hard on the surface.

"Trouble is, I can't swim."

I guess that's not the problem.

Mariela is the only one in this room who can get out of this strange world if she can swim? No one gives me a whole lot of opinions.

Shabba shabba.

Mariela is funny about the water going back to the vertical surface of the window when she scratches it inside the room, and she accidentally plays on the surface.

The fish stopped by.

Did you think it was bait on leaping water?

"Wow, come on!

At the same time as he jumped to the side in a hurry, the fish blurring where Mariella's hand was, was big enough to cover the window and swimmed away at a startling high speed. Probably a kind of demon.

"Wow. This, even if you can swim, you may not be able to reach the water..."

Mariela is only committed to being able to swim.

The argument is off, but only the conclusion that you can't get out of the window is not wrong.

After the demonic fish swimmed away, I circled around the room to see what was going on outside, and it appeared that the ground-like thing was far below, and this room was on the top floor of the tall tower.

Though in the water, the light in one direction is strong and makes me think of the morning sun or the sunset. It won't be as long since you fell here, so if you're assuming that light is a sunset, it looks like this is a tower situated on the southeast corner of a huge building.

Thanks to the sunset, tall buildings were confirmed beyond the water, west and north. It could be the same tower as here. The south to east direction is probably a forest because it offers a glimpse of the deeper greenery at the bottom. Whether the greens belong to trees or whether the aquatic plants are dense is not visible in Mariella's eyes.

Still somehow, Mariella thought that this tower might be the southeast corner tower of a huge building built in some forest.

"Was it in this big building, in the Devil's Forest?

If so, why is it sinking in the water? No one answers Mariella's question. If you were there, Mariella would know that such a huge building, the Demon Forest, was not even in the Labyrinth City. In the first place, it's a strange specification that water doesn't come through windows that don't even have glass in them.

Sooo, take a deep breath.

The air in this place, which contains a lot of moisture, smells of forest and water that I was smelling before I reached the temple. Mariella thought this was definitely the place to connect from that shrine.

"Even if you're still here, you're just hungry."

I wish I could have caught the demon fish earlier, but in Mariella it is the mountain of Sekiyama that feeds. If I had to procure a little less challenging food, I'd already be hungry.

There's nobody in this room but Mariella, and I can't feel any signs around me. Perhaps it's a safe place, but when he fell here, he made sure that Edgans and all the Black Iron convoys fell in. It would be wise to rendezvous quickly. Someone might have food.

"There is only one staircase…………"

There is a staircase leading downstairs in one of the circular rooms. The spiral staircase, built along the walls of the tower, is wider than Mariella's hands spread out, but the middle of the tower is blown out and you can look down. The potatoes are burning along the inner walls of the tower at regular intervals, and although they illuminate my feet, they are endlessly far below the blowout and I can't see the bottom.

"It would have been easier if it had been flushed downstairs."

One sigh of sigh on the spiral staircase that extends, Mariella said,

"In the meantime, let's find something that might work..."

And I began to find the room I was in.

"You don't seem to have anything to eat."

Although no water comes in the room, this room smells like water and is humid. On the walls, moss and plants are grown in various places. (10) There is crawling outside and inside the room through a window with no glass, and aquatic plants grow on the outside. Collection was easy, and although there were both onshore and underwater plants, none of them were edible.

It's just these plants if I say what I'm likely to get, and I don't have any furniture in this room or one of the boxes. I don't even get handy tools.

"I wish it had been Daisies or something."

Mariella picks up the mold as she complains and collects the moss and the herbs she says are within reach.

It is commonly seen as a "string", and is a sturdy and soft plant with thinner fibers that are more compatible. A plant that can be used as a string, as the name suggests, and when dried, the fibers become stiffer and more durable. It is a convenient plant to use instead of a rope while it is thin enough to pinch, but when it is thick enough to grip, it becomes hard and untouchable.

Luckily this place was full of fine strings because it's not sunny, so I pick a long one to prune some, dry it and roll it up. It would be convenient to have a rope.

The leaves of the pruned string are also bundled together and dried and bundled together with bamboo. This leaf is thick, but if dried, it will be as porous as a sponge, so it is excellent as an igniter if you let it inhale water, use it as a water retention material, or light the fire as it is.

What else could I possibly use is the fruit of an aquatic plant called Gepra, which is entering the room from the window?

"At last, let's eat this…………"

Watch out for demonic fish, retrieving Gepra fruit. The fruit of Gepra, which has small grains of fruit like poppy, contains a large amount of oil. It's actually aquatic plants growing in shallower places, but were they growing here because the tower is ashore?

It's aquatic plants that contain oil, so it's not without nutrition, but it's like a frog demon who likes to eat this, and according to the book, it's not raw and smelly and edible.

Collect a nearby portion, wrap it in large leaves and tie it with a string.

"I don't know what to do, I don't have anything more to use than I thought... Oh, yeah!

Without weapons, I can't make a demon-free potion without ingredients. But Mariella has a comforting side. It's time for you to come.

Come, Spirit of Fire, Salamander!

Mariella can magic a ring that is placed on her middle finger on her right hand. If you had a salamander, it would light up around you that there was no pine light, and you look stronger than Mariella.

Though that's what I tried to call it.

"……… not coming"

Salamander did not come.

"Er. Does it still remain flesh-received?

Instead of being led to his master, he received meat with more magic. Even a small lizard body seems happy to show up.

However, even if it is tentative, as long as there is a body of meat, it cannot come or disappear. I can only walk in the flesh body or summon it again after the magic has been cut off and returned.

"So, it's okay! You're fine with one person. This is a one-way street, and it's faster to get down there and meet everyone!

Mariella, determined, carried the leaves wrapped in Gepra fruit and the leaves and ropes of the strings on her shoulders, went down a dim spiral staircase with a slight hips.

Figure. Tower top floor view in the southeast. Tower spiral staircase in the southeast

Knock, knock, knock.

How long have you been down this tower? A spiral staircase continues over the head that looks up and at the foot that looks down. I wonder if you've been walking for hours.

Twice along the way, there is a room like Mariella was in, where she travels while scissoring for a break. Otherwise, he might have rolled off with his eyes turned on the unchanged spiral staircase and could not tell up or down.

There were also mushrooms, moss, and ill-grown but medicinal herbs growing in the halfway room, which traveled while collecting them. Unfortunately, I had some grass that could be used as vanilla, but I didn't get the plants that were going to be eaten as they were and I was genuinely hungry. If there's a difference between the halfway room and the first room, it's about the smaller windows and the red and pine lights burning on either side of the window.

It may be closer to the slit than the window. There are three sets of vertically elongated windows that can get your hands on, but Mariella's head doesn't go through. That's eight directions, just like the first room. If the sun had risen, you would have figured out which direction it was pointing now, but by the time I followed it to the second room, the sun had fallen at some point, and the view outside except from the pine-lit room was dark and I could see nothing.

"Looks like I'm peeking into an ink kettle..."

From windows that are only glassless window frames, soothing air flows in.

"Eh? Wind?

Weird. It must have been underwater outside. Why is the wind blowing in?

Mariella's fingertips, stretched from the window out into the dark, were grasping the outside air without touching the water.

"No water!?

When did the water get caught? Reach out and touch the outer wall of the tower and moist wet aquatic plants hit your hands. They were still submerged in water until earlier.

"I wonder what's going on…………"

I don't know why, but this window is too narrow for me to get my head out and look out, and most importantly, it's dark outside to know how it's going. Even if the water pulls, it's filled with deep darkness outside, like an ink kettle, and even feels so much safer in the foreseeable water.

Somehow, Mariella, whose darkness outside has become scary, can pull her hand in as she pulls through the aquatic plants on the outer wall she touches.

"Oh, this, it's Halnonias. That this is growing means that in the tower... is it safe?

Halnonias is a type of aquatic herb, also known as the protection of water fields. For aquatic plants, they have hard, solid leaves like evergreen trees on land, and crawl roots on rocks and other places to live. Called watershed protection depends on the nature of living in rivers and lakes that people and beasts make watershed, and the fact that aquatic demons do not come by Halnonias.

In the first room I woke up, if the fish demon was swimming, but Halnonias was growing, I guess it would be safe in this tower. I don't have any water right now, so I won't be able to swim with fish.

I can't even eat halnonias, by the way. It's not poisonous, but it's not nutritious. I know this room is safe, but we'd better move on a little while we can.

So she kept walking, and when she finally saw the third room, Mariella heard Raptor barking "Gawgaw".

"This voice, coo!?

Mariella rushes down the stairs. Although the third room that jumped in was also a murderous stone room with only red pine lights burning by the long windows, as in previous rooms, there were two other doors attached to the staircase leading to the lower floor.

The door is at a right angle, so I guess it's the north and west doors I could see from the first room. The door to the north is half decayed, with the top missing and the outside visible. It's a little open if it doesn't tighten properly, and it's going to open easily if you push it.

Though the west door is tight, Raptor's coo sounds, which helped Mariela many times, seem to be heard through this west door.

There may also be a room just below, as the downstairs leading to the lower floors are leaking similar lights to this room unlike the ever dim spiral stairs.

"Gah, gah, gah, gah"

Coo's voice isn't as chopped up as the Terminator, but it sounds like he's asking for help. You can also hear the sound of bashbash tapping your tail, so maybe you're fighting something.

(So... enemies!?

Mariela is…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….