Page happily skipped ahead of Kalender—all good for him, because he didn’t know what face he should’ve been showing her. Page turned to look at him with a smile, and he hurried to cover up his anxiety with his own.

“So! Where are we going?” Page asked.

“Hurmm… Actually, I found a rooftop cafe with really good air, but it’s on the other side of town. We can go there, but we can also stop by a museum on the way … if you want?”

“A museum? What, like a big fancy place with rusty armor on stands? I never saw anything like that around here…”

“Oh, no, it’s just a house-sized place, really. I think the house itself is the history, or at least that’s what the nameplate said.”

“Oh? Hm, well, might as well stop by, I guess?”

He could tell she wasn’t that excited about looking at history, even if her voice was still as upbeat as ever. Still, the girl looked like she wanted to chill a little bit; hopefully, the museum was chill. The past few days had been too fast for everyone.

Kalender led the way to the museum. The sun was approaching midday. Hopefully, the staff weren’t due for a lunch break.

The door was still open when they got there. Kalender poked his head in. “Hello?”

“Huh?” The receptionist looked up from reading a book behind a kitchen counter. “Whoa, visitors.”

Kalender and Page went up to the counter. The receptionist took a few seconds to make herself presentable, straightening out the wrinkles on her faded blue dress.

“Good morning, visitors,” she said. “Welcome to Stylus House. Is this your first time visiting?” Obviously it is, but I have to say it.

“It is—” “It is!”

Kalender recoiled from the excess energy. Where did that come from?

The receptionist smiled, quite amused by Kalender’s reaction. “We offer a guided tour of this symbolic building, everything from the history of the pillows, the scratch marks on the floor, and the faded blood stains on the shattered remains of a cup. By the end of it, you’ll know why this town is called Harmony!” This whole spiel is such a hard sell! The local Lord happily kept the place running, though, and she’d never turn down honest cash just for sitting around 99% of the time. This was the 1%, though.

After a ‘My name’s Amanda. That’ll be 20 Notes per head’, and the sum eventually paid wholly out of Page’s pocket—she was just that Excited—the receptionist asked them to wait while she dragged the tour guide out of his napping hole.

Left with silence, they found themselves some time to soak in the place. The reception counter was actually a kitchen counter-slash-bar. Behind it was an old oven, a cooking range, and a bit of space for a wash basin and general preparation, and what looked like a vegetable closet or something like that. It looked oddly like a refrigerator, but there were such things as evaporative chillers that just looked like refrigerators, and people used them for keeping fruits and vegetables mildly chilled.

The rest of the room was a wide space. There was a fat sofa in front of a fluffy rug beneath a fireplace, and off the side was a dining table that could seat eight people. Homey.

If half the things of a livable house were all in this—admittedly large—one room, what did the rest of the house have?

The receptionist came back with a burly man who looked like he could’ve been out chopping wood in the middle of winter.

“I’m your guide, Georgie,” he said with a smile and a little bit of a twang in his accent. “Looks like you’ve already taken a good look around here. Oh, are either of you thirsty?”

Kalender and Page accepted the offer. Amanda had moved behind the counter again, and with a nod from Georgie, she opened the not-refrigerator. A cold mist wafted down from the compartment, which lit up from a little bulb in the corner as Amanda opened it. She took out a cold pitcher of water that had fogged up before it reached the counter.

Wait, it’s not a vegetable chiller? Isn’t that too advanced? It was probably a magic one—but were refrigerators surprisingly common around here or not? The resthouses they stayed in definitely didn’t have them—or maybe they were hidden away in the kitchen? Should I feign surprise?

“What is that?” [+2 Excitement]

Kalender widened his eyes, taking Page’s own surprise as his cue. Georgie and Amanda shared a mischievous snicker.

“Oh, this?” Amanda said. “It’s a 200-year-old magic tool called a … what was it again, Georgie?”

“It’s a ‘dethermator’.”

Kalender winced. I’m sorry, a what? Who the heck named it—just call it a fridge!

Georgie looked so proud. “It removes heat, or in a way of saying, it dethermates the enclosed space.”

Okay, fine, it makes sense when put that way. I still hate it. Rather, the reason why refrigerators were called refrigerators was because they repeated a mechanical cooling cycle. With magic in play, there’s no cycle—heat just got sucked out like, well, magic. Explaining all of that to the people of this world would’ve been clunky.

Amanda served two glasses of cold water to the pair. Page marveled at it, hesitating to even take a sip—cold water is just too rare! Kalender sipped with a relaxed expression, reminiscing vague memories of just how refreshing cold water was.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Georgie continued. "I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘Why doesn’t the kingdom have more of these!’—and I think it’s amazing, too. This dethermator is just a box with a magic circle, so it’s not actually hard to produce.

“The problem is, it takes an absurd amount of MP to keep it going. This dethermator right here has been running for 200 years, give or take, but that’s only because the Hero who made it put a lot of MP into it. He was quoted as saying, ‘Eh. It’ll probably run for a thousand years.’”

““Wow,”” Kalender and Page both said.

“Yeah, I know. When the Lord told us about it, I was shocked so much, I think I saw Minimine waving to me from a boat.”

Kalender chuckled. Apparently, the local Reincarnation goddess was treated like a death god of some sort. It wasn’t too out there, really, but the actual Goddess of Death would throw tantrums over it if she heard.

***

There were three rooms to the first floor of Stylus House: 1) the living room they were just in to the northwest, 2) a sort of hallway wide enough to be called its own room to the east, and which connected the living room to 3) a storage room to the southwest. In the hallway were also a staircase that led to the second floor, and a back door which opened to a garden to the southeast. The house, itself, was oriented with the street-wise front door facing northwest, though most of its windows faced the garden instead of the street.

The storage room wasn’t really anything show-worthy. Rather, it was Georgie’s napping place, and the only things stored there now were wheels of cheese.

So, he led them up to the second floor, where most of the history was in.

The stairs opened up to another hallway, right on top of the one below. Here, however, were three doors to three rooms. Georgie opened the first door, closest to the stairs, and gestured the pair in.

“The history of Harmony is the history of Hero Jonas,” Georgie said.

“I see,” Kalender said. “What’s that have to do with…” … an extra wide bath tub that could fit two people? There was even a toilet, a shower, a sink—all the amenities of a modern restroom.

“W-what’s that?” Page’s voice quavered.

Kalender followed her gaze to a sizable stain of dried blood on the porcelain floor of the bath tub. “The heck’s this crime scene,” he blurted out.

Georgie let out a hearty laugh. Gets ’em every time. “So, you see, Hero Jonas hails from the Harem Temple. Reportedly, he used to take a bath here with his harem members—involuntarily, if you can believe it!”

I-is this what I think it is? “Then, what’s the blood stain?” Kalender asked.

“Oh, that’s from the Hero’s last nosebleed.”

Knew it. “Still, this place looks, uh, luxurious, doesn’t it?”

“Fit for royalty, you might say.” Georgie nodded. “The Hero himself never admitted it, but he was a reincarnated otherworlder. He didn’t like talking about it much, not even with his harem. No one’s really sure why, or if someone knew, they respected him enough not to talk about it, either.”

“Guide, what’s this?” Page asked. She was hovering over a sink, pointing at a paperclip on top of a shallow depression on the side of the sink, where the soap would’ve gone.

Kalender squinted. Paperclips were an industrial revolution thing, so what was that doing here?

“Ah, that little thing. We’re not sure, either,” Georgie replied. “We wanted to inspect it more closely, but these rooms have a bit of the Hero’s preservation magic on them, so little items like that are immovable. Too bad, really.”

Page tried picking it up, but true enough, it just wouldn’t budge. “Kal, Kal, can’t you un-magic this somehow?”

“Pfsh, why?” Why’s trying to get me to dispel a literal Hero’s magic the first thing that comes to mind? Kalender smiled and shook his head.

“Oh? Are you a mage, m’lord?” Georgie asked.

“I guess I am. Also, ‘lord’?”

“Hm? Yes?”

“Sorry, I’m from a, uh, frontier sort of place. Why’d you call me ‘lord’?” The only other person who does that is Tak.

“Ah, no problem. It’s just a way of addressing patrons and clients. You’ll hear it more often in bigger towns like this. Not sure why, but I’ve got my own theories. Y’see, too many nobles like to sneak out and mingle with us commoners, but y’see, it’s not just a little disrespectful to call a noble anything less than ‘lady’ or ‘lord,’ ignoring whatever Occupation they actually have. So, to be safe, anyone who walks through the front door is automatically a m’lady or m’lord.”

“Huh, neat. Oh, and no need to call me ‘lord’ or anything. Kalender is fine. Or ‘sir,’ if you can’t get past the reflex.”

“Uhh, what’s this?” Page asked.

Kalender and Georgie looked. For whatever reason, Page had lifted the cover off the toilet’s water reservoir.

“M’lady—excuse my Artemian—but which goddess blessed you that you could ignore a Hero’s preservation magic!”

“Page … how and why?” Kalender was covering his face and shaking his head. He was laughing, though.

“T-the little thingy on the sink was pointing at the toilet, okay! I-I thought it was a clue!” she explained. “And I was right! Look!”

Page set the heavy cover on top of the toilet seat while Georgie looked inside the reservoir. He froze. Kalender came over and peeked inside.

There was a sheet of paper submerged inside.

The three glanced at each other before Kalender summoned the courage to fish the, no doubt, hundreds-years-old article out of the tank. Strangely, it came out completely dry—as expected of a Hero’s magic. It had a slightly blue tint to it, as if it was permanently under some sort of cheap fluorescent light.

Page unfurled the paper in front of everyone to read.

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***

To my dear guests,

I’m not sure what your names are, but I’m sure there’s three of you. To the girl that looked at the paperclip and thought it was a clue, I have no idea how your brain works, but if it gets you all to see this letter—if it works, it works, right?

Or was it the girl who looked at the shape of my nosebleed and noticed that it was an arrow pointing at the toilet? I don’t know. Future Sight is a little bit unreliable for looking this far into the future, so I just spammed dumb clues for any and all futures where a decent guy uses my stuff. I can’t be picky.

That’s right! To the mage/warrior/Hero/humbly-powerful-guy reading this, you get to have my stuff! Probably. I’ve spread around clues on how to find them, but as far as Future Sight could tell me, there’s very little possibility you’ll find all my stuff.

Why am I giving away my stuff? Bottom line: it’d be a waste. Sure, I could give them to do the kingdom for safekeeping and entrusting to future Heroes, but … I don’t know about Lyrica in the future, but Lyrica right now’s in the shitter. I can’t trust any of the nobles not to get bribed. I literally found Sillena’s underwear in the black market just the other day, you know? Fucking hell.

So, yeah, you’re one of the futures that gets to have my stuff. They’re mostly things for anti-demon combat. Nothing too amazing. There’s some knives, a sword, a disassembled spear, a bow, some arrows, and demon cheese. I personally like the demon cheese a lot, I hope you get it. Each one comes with instructions, don’t worry about the details.

Happy hunting!

P.S. The search area is the entirety of the house.

P.P.S. If the local Lord gives you any trouble, Appraise this letter. Either spell or Skill will work. It should also record anyone who Appraises it in the correct order, so do it right now to prove you found it first.

P.P.P.S. To the future with the edgy shadow lord, you’re in the worst possible future of Lyrica. The local Lord is actually a demon (not a Demon Lord, though!) so do everyone a favor and kill him. Finding the castle’s back door should be easy for you.

***

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[+5 Excitement]