Surviving as a Useless Bard in a Game

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Fortunately, the expensive room I was able to rent felt much better than the Adventurer’s Guild’s special room.

“To be honest, the Adventurer’s Guild was too rural up to now.”

It felt almost rude to call this a “room,” given its massive size, complete with a living space and sleeping area separated by temporary walls. The layout was perfect.

The fact that the beds were spaced apart was also very nice.

It even had some cooking facilities to boot!

“How fascinating.”

“Oh… I see, by touching it, the magic flows through the engravings and circuits. I think we could apply this.”

Skylar was inspecting the cooking facilities with sparkling eyes. The way flames erupted when turning a valve and pressing a specific switch… Yes, to my modern eyes, it looked somewhat familiar.

“…It’s a gas stove.”

The only difference was that gas was replaced by magic, and everything else was almost identical.

Could there be other modern folks besides me in this world?

Nah, probably not. I fell into this world right when the new game was released. Even if there were other modern people, they must be latecomers compared to me.

Anyway, let’s take a good rest today.

I was about to throw myself onto the bed… but wait! There was something I had to do!

“Time to wash up.”

After a long journey, my clothes were filthy, and I needed some time to clean myself up.

“Is it okay if I wash up first?”

“Yeah.”

With that, I opened the bathroom door.

The hygiene level was decent, and I was very satisfied to see even a mirror, which was a luxury.

The floor and walls seemed to be made of water-resistant marble.

It definitely screamed expensive room. So this is what people meant by wasting money for fun.

I casually twisted the brass faucet.

“Whoa—!”

I couldn’t help but make a strange noise and had to pull my hand back. Hot water gushed into the bathtub.

Like a startled cat, I jumped back and quickly adjusted the faucet to the middle.

The tips of my fingers turned red from a brief touch.

I heard a voice from outside.

“Are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah. Suddenly hot water came out, that’s all.”

“…Ah, I see.”

Skylar’s tone struck me as oddly pathetic, but I let it slide. There’s nothing more shameful than arguing naked in the bathroom with just one door separating us.

So, I immersed myself in the bathtub filled with lukewarm water.

I did say it was lukewarm, but it was as warm as I could stand, and steam billowed up as I settled in.

Bubble, bubble.

I dipped my face slightly into the water.

I watched droplets roll over my porcelain-like smooth skin.

My body warmed up gradually, and drowsiness began to creep in. It was the precursor to narcolepsy.

I was already used to it. I didn’t feel that anything dangerous would happen, but I worried a little that Skylar might open the door to check on me since I hadn’t been out for a while.

No, actually, I wasn’t that embarrassed.

Skylar had seen my body already, albeit unintentionally. The first time might have been hard, but would the second be difficult?

If asked whether I wanted to be seen, I’d say no. I just figured that if someone had to see me, it might as well be someone I knew.

To eliminate the narcolepsy penalty, I thought of three methods.

Firstly, applying a strong shock or pain to my body would wake me up. But it’s only a temporary fix, and the drowsiness would hit me again later.

“I guess I could stab my hand with a dagger. It’ll hurt a bit though.”

There were other options.

A curse of insomnia could offset narcolepsy. However, in this case, I might not sleep at night.

It was an extreme method, and with seven curses already on this body, I could not predict what would happen if I added more.

And lastly,

Trying to lift the curses. That could be done. But it required special materials.

To lift my permanent and intense curse, I’d need a lot of very precious materials, but judging by what Skylar said, it seemed like a 0% chance.

“…Since I’ve arrived in Regan, I should start preparing.”

The original reason I intended to go to Regan was for ‘items.’

Perhaps I could finally solve my health and strength status penalties.

It might cost me some money, but that’s a sacrifice I could make. Just ask anyone passing by. They’d tell you being broke is 100 times better than dying!

Anyway, let’s catch some z’s.

If I could squeeze in two to three hours of sleep, my body might swell a bit, but since I lacked any fat, it wouldn’t really matter.

My body was quite attractive by my own standards, but honestly, it had a polarizing physique. I was a bit on the thin side, and I wasn’t exactly well-endowed, so if I had to categorize it, maybe I was a slender beauty…

Honestly, to my eyes, it was perfectly customized. Yeah.

Swallowing down the blood that had refluxed from my throat, I slowly closed my eyes.

*

Skylar thought it was strange that Selina had been in the bathroom for over an hour. But less than a minute later, she retracted that thought.

It was easy to figure out the cause without thinking too deeply.

‘The sleep curse activated again.’

I had no idea who cursed her, but if it was to torment her without killing her, that person must have been truly vile.

I slightly opened the door to check inside.

Lukewarm steam clouded my view.

Through the mist, I could see the silhouette of a woman lost in her dreams in the bathtub. It was merely a silhouette at that.

Once narcolepsy kicked in, she wouldn’t wake up no matter what. However, watching her sleep left me helpless.

I didn’t know who had placed the curse, but they must have been a strange person.

‘…You don’t intend to kill her or let her live comfortably, yet you ensured her safety? With such strong force?’

I couldn’t understand. In fact, I had never even tried to understand.

Having confirmed she was asleep, I decided to burn a simple scroll.

Skylar pulled out two of the scrolls she had crumpled up in her pocket and burned them. The spells written on the scroll were [Comfort] and [Humidity Control].

They were extremely simple utility spells, but they would be of great help to Selina now.

When she woke up, she wouldn’t have to worry about her body swelling in the water.

Skylar carefully closed the door, slowly organized her thoughts, and began to make a list of things to do.

‘First, the clothes.’

Selina’s clothes were tossed carelessly on the floor.

It was a question of whether she even realized she was a woman, given how unconcerned she was about her clothes’ placement.

Why “clothes placement”?

The reason was simple. Selina had placed her underwear over her outer garment.

She might have thought she took off her clothes in order, but it’s strange for a woman living with men to leave her underwear in plain sight.

If an employee of the Adventurer’s Guild, especially a male one, saw this, they would definitely have taken at least one piece!

Burning the cleanliness scroll to get her clothes clean, I neatly folded them and placed them on the bed.

She had never gotten angry for touching her underwear, so it should be fine.

‘In the first place, can she even perceive me as the opposite sex?’

To Selina, I was probably just a ‘kid’ regardless of the contents… So if she didn’t see me as a man, there was nothing to do about it. I could only sigh.

Though her body was that of a child, her emotions were locked at the peak of her youth.

It wasn’t that she didn’t feel any feelings but that she was desperately pretending not to.

Did Selina realize what her actions meant to her? Probably not. Her head was dull, and she was slow on the uptake.

Sometimes she could be sharp, but that was rare, and she was absolutely insensitive to such issues.

‘I don’t expect much. No, I can’t.’

Having lived over 200 years in a child’s body, I was a terribly contradictory existence.

I could neither be a child nor an adult. The memories before waking and after were all that existed, so if I had to pin it down, my mental age was probably just reaching adulthood.

I’d heard stories of wizards who overdosed on magic falling into a dormant or coma-like state, but I never imagined that I’d become one of them.

Inside, my thoughts were convoluted, and my heart only burned darkly.

Two individuals who didn’t properly understand the emotions they harbored lay down to sleep with just a thin wall between them, eyes closed.