Hell Mode: Volume 1, page 28
According to Cecil’s mother, very beautiful yellow flowers bloomed beside this lake. Cecil wanted to bring one of those flowers home.
“I’m sorry, my lady, but we cannot stop here. There have been reports of orcs wandering in this area, and Captain Zenof is off vanquishing them as we speak. Our highest priority is keeping you safe, my lady.”
After a short pause, Cecil said, “All right. I understand.” Having seen that Leibrand had no intention of changing his mind, she gave up her protest.
Orcs, huh. I’ve never seen one of those before, but they’ve gotta be strong, right? If I remember correctly, they’re Rank C monsters.
The only monsters that Allen had seen so far were great boars, albaherons, and horned rabbits. I’ve barely left home and I’m already hearing of more monsters. This really is a fantasy world of swords and magic.
However, orcs were a famous monster. Rodin had even mentioned them to Allen before. They would attack human settlements at times, and it was not entirely unheard of for them to wipe out an entire village.
“Do they really have to be killed?” Allen asked.
Leibrand nodded. “They do. Orcs are dangerous in that, if left alone, they would build their own settlements. For all we know, there might already be an orc village somewhere nearby.”
Earlier on, the chief of the village they just stopped at had come to Lord Granvelle and Captain Zenof with eyewitness reports of wandering orcs from traveling merchants passing through. Lord Granvelle had taken the news seriously and asked for a more accurate description of the location where the orcs had been spotted. Then he had dispatched Zenof, together with half of the knights who had originally planned to join the great boar hunts, to kill those orcs.
Because of this, the Granvelle family was now hurrying home with the strength of their entourage cut in half. Naturally, a detour to some lake was out of the question.
Orcs... I’ve heard that there’s an Adventurer’s Guild in Granvelle City. When I’m allowed to move around freely inside town, I definitely want to go check it out. Might even learn a few things about other monsters there.
Allen made notes about what he just heard about orcs in his grimoire and added a new entry under his to-do list. He was so occupied with planning what to do in the future that he failed to notice the brooding scowl that had come over Cecil’s face.
＊ ＊ ＊
Half a day passed, and the procession had now stopped for the night. On nights when there were no villages nearby, the group would camp out in the open, bringing the carriages around to encircle the camping ground as a makeshift barrier.
The following morning broke with an incident. One of the female servants cried out without warning, her face pale, “Lady Cecil is missing!”
“What?! That can’t be! How did this happen?!” Lord Granvelle grabbed the woman and pressed her for details.
Apparently, when the servant had gone to call Cecil for breakfast, she had said she did not feel like breakfast and would wait in the carriage instead. The servant had left her to inform the baron, then had her own breakfast. When she returned to the carriage, however, Cecil was gone.
Allen stood up. “My lord, I believe chances are high that Lady Cecil has gone to the lake to pick some flowers. I strongly recommend going after her as soon as possible.”
“Tell me more.”
Since time was of the essence, Allen kept his explanation brief. He described how, during their carriage ride yesterday, Cecil had spoken of wanting to bring a flower home as a souvenir for her mother.
“Why did you not report this to me, Vice-Captain Leibrand?!”
“I-I am very sorry, my lord!”
“Forget it. Immediately set up a perimeter and search for her!”
The lake was directly west of the camp’s location. As such, the knights split into three groups: one that headed west to the lake, and two that went north and south in case Cecil, who presumably did not know the exact location of the lake, wandered off course.
Allen approached Lord Granvelle. “My lord, please allow me to also search for Lady Cecil. I cannot merely turn a blind eye, not after having been involved with her care during this trip.”
“Hm? Very well.”
All right, I got permission.
Normally, an eight-year-old child requesting to go out into the wild to search for someone would be shot down on the spot. However, desperate times called for desperate measures—there were wandering orcs around, and Cecil had gone missing. The feudal lord almost reflexively agreed to Allen’s request. Immediately after getting the go-ahead, Allen made a beeline for the lake.
I’m so glad I didn’t change my card distribution yet!
Before leaving his village, Allen had said farewell to Krena with one final play knight session. In preparation for that match, he had adopted a build focused on Agility. Thanks to this, he was now capable of running at almost superhuman speeds. Soon enough, the sparse trees in his surroundings gave way to a wide, open field.
Okay, there’s the lake. And those are probably the flowers Cecil was talking about. But she’s not over there. Where is she, then?
Even though he had a clear, unobstructed view of the area, Allen did not see Cecil’s figure anywhere. All he saw was an open meadow of yellow flowers in full bloom.
If only I could spot her footsteps... I did just run quite a bit. Did I overtake her, maybe?
Allen quickly concluded that it would be too difficult to find Cecil’s small footprints within such a large area, so he decided to take a different approach. After picking three flowers and throwing them into Storage, he turned back.
If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve spent more time analyzing Hawkins’s Ability beforehand.
There had been very limited opportunities for Allen to look into the Abilities of his Rank E and F Summons while he was living in Krena Village. Due to this, there was not much Allen felt he could do right now to contribute to the search. He knew that Bird E’s was “Hawk Eye,” and suspected it was meant for scouting purposes, but he had no idea how to actually use it.
He was now running back to the camp, taking a slightly different path just in case he actually had overtaken Cecil. He was just about to call forth a Bird E Summon anyway when he spotted a glimpse of cloth with a familiar design behind a large tree. It was the dress that Cecil had been wearing.
Found her!
Allen rushed over and found Cecil quivering violently. He reassured her, “It’s all—”
“N-No!”
Huh? “No” what? What’s goi— Wait, what’s this smell?
A foul odor assaulted Allen’s nose. He turned to see where it was coming from and noticed a humanoid figure sitting with its back against a tree a slight distance away.
Yep, that’s an orc all right.
The creature had a pig-like face and was wearing a poor attempt at clothing made from animal hide. There was a giant spear on the ground close to its hand. The orc seemed to be deep in sleep at the moment.
All the pieces fell together in Allen’s mind. Cecil had likely spotted the sleeping orc when she was on her way to the lake to pick a flower. She was so frightened that her knees gave way; she was now hiding and holding her breath, terrified of being discovered.
“Lady Cecil,” Allen murmured in a voice low enough only Cecil could hear.
“Wh-What?”
“Vice-Captain Leibrand and the knights will be along soon. Please get onto my back so I can bring you away from here.”
Fighting the orc myself is not an option. It’s a Rank C monster, and Cecil’s here.
The only monsters Allen had experience fighting and killing by himself were albaherons. This was an entirely new enemy, and fighting it using untested Summons was far too great a risk.
Allen crouched down, his back facing Cecil. She snaked her arms around his neck and grabbed on. He walked slowly and carefully, using the trees as shields before they finally got far enough away from the orc.
Cecil whispered into Allen’s ear, “Allen, I still want a flower. Mother said she really wanted to see one again.”
Allen picked up on the tremble in Cecil’s voice. Apparently she was quite serious about wanting a flower. He swallowed back the exasperated reply that was about to roll off his tongue, and instead wordlessly reached into Storage—at an angle out of Cecil’s sight, of course—to retrieve the three flowers that he had picked earlier.
“Lady Cecil, I already gathered three of them for you. Would these suffice?”
“What?! How did you...?! So these are the flowers mother wanted to see...”
Cecil slowly reached out for the three flowers and fell silent. Before long, the sound of hooves approached them. It turned out to be Vice-Captain Leibrand with several knights in tow.
Leibrand cried out, “Lady Cecil!”
“Lady Cecil is safe and sound,” Allen replied before pointing to the direction he had come from. “However, there is an orc a slight distance that way. It’s sleeping right now, but be careful.”
“Mm, understood.” Leibrand directed one of the knights to let Allen and Cecil onto his horse and to bring them back to the carriages. After that, he and the other knights went off to kill the orc.
The knights really are strong. I can’t even imagine how someone would go about fighting that monster. Even when sitting down, I could tell it was bigger than a normal human.
Before long, they were back in view of the carriages. The moment she dismounted the knight’s horse, Cecil dashed off to her father, the flowers clutched in her hand. Allen thought the baron could have been a bit stricter with his daughter, but the man simply looked relieved to see his daughter back safe and sound. He gave her his undivided attention as she excitedly started recounting everything that had happened.
Eventually, Leibrand and his subordinates returned. As they had originally gathered to hunt great boars, they naturally had no trouble taking care of a single orc.
The incident was finally over, and the procession resumed its journey toward Granvelle City. Cecil had ordered Allen to ride in her carriage for the remainder of the trip. She had grown even less reserved with him, talking at him nonstop until they reached the mansion. A small bud of worry blossomed in Allen’s heart as he thought about his fast approaching life as a manservant.
Afterword
Thank you so much for purchasing this book. This is the afterword. I was told that I can write about absolutely anything I want, so I’m thinking of sharing how I, Hamuo, decided to start uploading to the website Shosetsuka ni Naro.
I was an office worker three years ago who found himself with a ton of free time after getting home from work. Using that time, I consumed a very substantial number of manga on online platforms each month. I enjoyed a very wide variety of content, but this was around the time that the genres of reincarnation and otherworlds—colloquially referred to as “isekai series”—were really taking the digital publishing industry by storm. I got addicted to the genre and devoured every work using those themes that I could find.
In the middle of that phase of my life, I suddenly came across Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling, a work written by Necoco-sensei published by Earth Star Novel. I confess that I was drawn to the front cover and title and bought it thinking it was a manga. When I cracked it open and all the words inside leaped up at me, my first thought was, “Ack, I bought the wrong thing!” However, I did spend good money on it, mistake or no, so I decided to give it a read.
At the time, it had been a while since I’d read my last light novel. Specifically, it had been more than twenty years, if I remember correctly. And I was absolutely captivated from the very first page. It just completely blew me away. I remember losing myself and finishing the first volume in three hours, even though it was a pretty long book.
Then I bought and read the second volume, then the third. But then I came to a realization: There was no volume four.
Had it not been published? Did it get released with another publisher? Was it a physical-only release? I turned to the internet for information. And my search led me to Shosetsuka ni Naro. This was the first time I ever visited the site. And I read that fourth volume there.
After that, I could no longer return to waiting for e-book releases. Shosetsuka ni Naro was practically where I lived for the next year and a half. I spent hours and hours reading works on the site every single day. But eventually, I started struggling to find new series that suited my tastes.
I thought long and hard about what to do about it. The conclusion that I arrived at was to write my own series. Shosetsuka ni Naro was, at the end of the day, a place for amateur writers to publish whatever they wanted. I had read hundreds of works by that point. With the thoughts, “Maybe I can write one too?” and “Maybe I can make it too?” rattling around in my head, I finally started uploading my own work in spring 2019.
Since then, with much trial and error, I’ve uploaded two isekai series on Shosetsuka ni Naro. The second one was this book that you are now reading: Hell Mode. And this is the story of how I began writing light novels.
The only reason why I took part in the Earth Star Award contest was because it was hosted by Earth Star Novel, the publisher that led me to start writing on Shosetsuka ni Naro. This publisher means a lot to me.
I want to end this afterword by expressing my heartfelt thanks for everyone who was involved with making this book happen. Thank you, Earth Star Novel, for even going so far as to make TV commercials promoting my book. Many thanks also to my editor, I-sama, who graciously took me through the process of publishing my very first book; Mo-sama, the illustrator who designed the look of the characters in the story; and Tamura Mutsumi-sama, the voice actress who breathed life into Allen by giving him a voice. My thanks knows no bounds.
Of course, I am also extremely grateful to my understanding and supportive colleagues at work, as well as to my parents, who gave birth to and raised me. Thank you so, so much.
I do hope to continue writing more stories in the future. Please continue supporting me!
Bonus Short Stories
Rainy Day
Like the world Kenichi was from, this world had four seasons. New buds sprouted in spring, temperatures soared in summer, crops ripened in autumn, and snow covered the land in winter. There was one thing, however, that Allen found different from his previous world: there was no rainy season here. Unlike in Japan, where it would rain a great deal for around one month every year, rain would fall anytime throughout the year in this world.
Oof, it’s a total downpour today.
Allen looked outside from under the overhanging roof of his beat-up shack of a house. It was raining literal buckets. Water roared turbulently through the irrigation channel in front of the house, threatening to overflow. Because the house’s roof was not entirely waterproof, rainwater leaked in from various places. The family had set out all their earthenware plates and jars to protect their most important possessions, but the leaks were so bad that the earthen-floored area was soaking wet.
That said, Allen had grown used to the rain and the leaks after living five years in this world. This scene did not invoke any sense of melancholy in him.
On rainy days, Rodin and Theresia also took it easy. If it was autumn or winter, Rodin would pass the time using a club to beat out the stalks harvested together with the grain to make straw for woven sandals. It was early summer now, however, so he had nothing to do at all.
After they finished lunch, Allen killed time messing around with the energetic Mash. Before long, play knight hour arrived.
“Alleeen, let’s play!”
She still came, huh.
Krena cheerfully came in from the deluge outside, setting down a wooden board with a shaft stuck in the middle. This was a makeshift umbrella that Allen had come up with. Of course, it could not be folded and was overall very simple in design.
Allen had come to this world to enjoy the challenge of it, and had no interest in anything like “inventing” convenient items from his previous world and starting a financial enterprise. In the first place, it was extremely difficult for serfs to do business, as they did not have the freedom of choosing their occupations for themselves. So Allen only adopted a few simple things that could make his life slightly easier, like this pseudo-umbrella.
“Sure thing, Krena. Hmm, but what do you want to play? It’s raining so hard and all.”
“Hmm...”
It was still raining cats and dogs outside. Even Krena knew better than to suggest playing knight inside the house with everyone cooped up with them.
“In that case, Krena, wanna play Reversi?”
It’s still too early for Mash, but Krena should be able to get it.
“River-see?” Krena repeated, her head tilted quizzically.
Allen gestured for her to wait in the large room, then ducked into the nursery and reappeared with a board in hand.
“Oh! You’re bringing that out, are you?” Rodin looked up from playing with Mash, who had shifted his attention to his father when Allen got up.
“Yes, papa.”
This family liked to pull out the Reversi board whenever they wanted to kill time. Allen had made it based on his memories from his previous life. It was literally just a board with grooves that marked out 8x8 squares. For the pieces, he had sliced up a tree branch of appropriate thickness and made simple marks on either face to differentiate between heads and tails.
Krena’s interest was piqued. “How do you play this?”
“You put one of your pieces here.”
“Like this?”
Allen proceeded to explain the rules while playing. Rodin and Mash also peered over with curiosity. Theresia was steaming a potato to serve Krena as a snack.
Kinda sucks that Reversi can only be played with two people. I made it first because it’s easy to make, but I should probably make something that more people can play together. Playing cards...would probably be a pain. Maybe backgammon would be good.
