by Funa
Leutessy was riding high, confident in the belief that her own quick judgment and decision-making was instrumental in keeping the Crimson Vow safe and helping them to grow… To be fair, if the Crimson Vow had been a normal rookie party, her pride in her judgment and actions would be justified. Her diligence—even going all the way to both parties’ homes after hours on her own time and asking them to protect a fledgling female party—was commendable.
It was only because the party in question just so happened to be the Crimson Vow that her efforts were all in vain.
“Brilliant work, everyone! And my deepest thanks to the Devils’ Paradise and the Fellowship of Flame for successfully carrying out your duties and continuing to guide and protect this fledgling party!”
The two parties in question went quiet at this praise, as the employees and other hunters inside the guildhall looked to them with admiration. The looks upon their faces were not unhappy ones, but certainly…complex.
And yet, once again, they could say nothing that would reveal the Crimson Vow’s abilities. Of course, that did not mean that they could keep everything a secret from the Guild’s upper management. They were compelled to report anything that might present an abnormal danger to other hunters or the general public, after all.
“Is the guild master in? We have something to report,” said Wulf, his expression serious.
“Uh…yes. He’s in his office right now.” Leutessy replied, looking surprised.
“Could you let him know?” asked Wulf.
Leutessy stood from her seat at once and rushed up to the second floor.
“All right then. What did you come all the way up here to report?”
In a nearly unprecedented turn of events, the guild master himself was to receive a report from the parties who had accepted the escort job heading to Mafan. He wouldn’t normally interrupt his busy schedule for this, but these were two kindhearted and reliable veteran parties—a scarce resource in any guild—who had taken on this job in exchange for compensation that was not necessarily commensurate with the level of danger. He could at least spare them a minute or two of his time.
In truth, if these reliable veteran hunters felt they had something that needed to be reported to him directly, then he really had no choice but to listen.
“…Then, some new varieties of orcs and ogres. These were not a few rogue individuals—there was a whole settlement of them, with all of these specialized varieties. The orcs were like ogres, and the ogres were as strong as ogre kings. There weren’t just one or two of these advanced creatures—there wasn’t a single normal one in sight!”
“What?!”
At Wulf’s report, the guild master half-rose from his chair in shock. His reaction was understandable. If such creatures were to multiply, villages would be destroyed, towns swallowed up, and whole countries brought to their knees. And if there were enough of these creatures that they had already formed settlements?!
He never thought to question the truth of Wulf’s report, as much as he might have liked to. No hunter would be foolish enough to lie to the guild master over something like this, and the information came from two reliable veteran parties, as well as a promising party of young hunters traveling from abroad. None of them seemed the type to spread malicious rumors.
“Where are they?! We’ll form a team to go and investigate this at once! You must guide us there! This is a compulsory direct request from the Guild. You can’t refuse!” No party would ever refuse such a charge, and the guild master knew this but was so distraught and worried that he inadvertently began to shout.
“Please calm down, sir!”
“How could I possibly be calm?! We must start for this town immediately!”
“No, I mean, we’ve already taken care of it! We wiped them all out!”
“What?!”
The guild master was dumbfounded. His formerly pale face now flushed with rage as he shouted at them.
“Wh-what are you…? There’s no way that you all could take on a horde of something like ogre kings with just three parties! Are you messing with me? Do you understand what this means?!”
“We aren’t that stupid! We know what would happen if we did that!!!”
“Tell me everything, from the beginning.”
Though this may have been only a provincial town, there were still some things that were always in the guild branch’s purview. Now that the guild master knew that there was no pressing danger, he collected himself and sunk back down into his chair.
“I’ll let these guys—er, the Crimson Vow give you the details.”
Wulf’s party, after all, were not the ones who had done the exterminating. It was the Crimson Vow who had the best grasp of the situation. Furthermore, any explanation would necessitate some reference to the Crimson Vow’s special skills and combat ability. Sworn as he was to both the Goddess and the Guild, there was an incredibly slim chance that the guild master would let their secret slip or attempt to use it for ill gain. Still, it would be a weight off Wulf’s mind to let the members of the Crimson Vow decide for themselves how much they wanted to share. And so, he tossed the ball into their court.
“I am Mile of the Crimson Vow, a C-rank hunting party registered to the capital branch of the Hunters’ Guild in the kingdom of Tils, currently on a journey of self-improvement…”
As Mile gave her spiel and the tale of the incident began.
“This is hard to swallow…”
The guild master appeared a bit skeptical, even though Mile had omitted any information about both her own abilities and the “hot” magic and watered down her descriptions of Mavis’s skills. Still, thought the guild master, these girls were not requesting any special payment, so they had nothing to gain from telling such a lie. On the contrary, they risked endangering their reputation within the Guild. It was not the sort of thing that any reputable hunter would do.
“Well, this isn’t really a matter of whether or not you believe us. I’m merely fulfilling my duties as a hunter by giving you the key details of the incident. In the event that something like this happens again, having previous examples to draw from will make a big difference in the initial response. Ideally, we would tell the whole Guild, but it might be laughed off as idle gossip, so we’ll leave that to your discretion. All we want to be able to say is that we told you everything we knew. Please put at least that much in the minutes.”
“Wh—?! That’s…”
The guild master twitched. Mile had as good as told him, “If you don’t tell the other branches and something happens and people get hurt, it’ll be all your fault.” A guild master, dressed down by this tiny girl…
He could not brave that danger.
That said, no one would believe him if he simply passed on the information via official post. His own credibility might be put in jeopardy. The foolish master who swallowed the most ridiculous tall tale from a rank-and-file hunter…
“Damn it!”
Sharing the story was a liability, but so was keeping it to himself. If he did share it, and a similar incident happened to occur elsewhere, it would prove him correct. That said, he was not shameless enough to hope for such a thing to occur.
“Have you any proof?!” the guild master squeaked out, his face wrought in anguish.
Mile replied bluntly. “We do.”
“Huh?”
“First of all, the dwarves who fought alongside us will gladly testify on our behalf. They have already promised to do so. Second, we brought the corpses of some of the aberrant orcs and ogres back with us. I think examining them should offer more than enough proof.”
“Ah…? Oh, right! You were the party with the ridiculous amount of storage space… Fine. Let’s go to the processing room!”
The guild master led, and the whole group followed.
“Gollathen, come here a minute.”
As was the custom, a processing-slash-storage building stood beside the guildhall, part of which was used for deep-freeze preservation via ma
gic. After leading the group to this building, the guild master called over an elderly man.
“I’ve got something I’d like you to appraise. Bring it out.”
The last few words were directed to Mile. As ordered, she produced the monsters and laid them out onto the floor. Back in the dwarves’ village, Mile, Mavis, and Reina had completely forgotten to mention them, and Pauline, knowing that the dwarves had little currency on hand, had purposefully neglected to bring the topic up. As a result, everything that they brought in on their journey had remained in Mile’s inventory. And now, it was all arrayed on the ground before them.
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-what are these?!?!” the guild master and the man named Gollathen shouted, as everyone had been in the midst of processing, and all the others in the warehouse began to gather around. All of their eyes fell to the masses of orcs and ogres piled up on the floor.
“These are…”
Gollathen was the only one in the crowd of workers to quickly regain his senses.
“Advanced types? No, this is ridiculous! There shouldn’t be so many of them… Plus, their body color and tusk growth patterns are completely normal. Still, you can tell by their size, musculature, and the thickness of their skin that they’d be pretty strong. They don’t have any fat on them. It’s all muscle!”
While the others were still stunned silent by Mile’s extraordinary amount of storage space, Gollathen was focused purely on evaluating their quarry. He didn’t possess anything so convenient as appraisal magic but relied on his own abilities and the knowledge and experience honed over years of working in the field.
“Where were these hunted?” asked Gollathen. When the guild master took a moment too long to reply, Gollathen shouted, “I’m asking you where these were hunted!”
Apparently, he could sense how dangerous the situation was just based on the number of rare creatures piled up in front of him. If anyone else had yelled at the guild master, there would have been consequences, but it was clear that their relationship went far back. In any event, the guild master appeared to take no offense.
“They’ve all been wiped out, it seems. Every male, female, and youth—every last one. And we don’t have any reports of other swarms appearing elsewhere.”
“I see.” At this, Gollathen seemed to calm down. “So, where did they come from? And is there a chance they’ll pop up again?”
“Currently, no. What was it that they said? That the ‘inner diamond shawl agate’ was gone or something…”
“An ‘inter-dimensional gate’?!”
“What? Y-you’ve heard of that, Gollathen?”
“Of course! Even I love me a bit of Miami Satodele!”
Gollathen had a habit of borrowing books from the clerks to read, but the guild master, who had no such habit, was unaware of this.
“Let’s put a few in cold storage. And we should get three or so on a special transport to the royal capital, with a couple of good mages to keep ’em cool. We can’t freeze ’em—their flesh and skin might degrade when they’re thawed out, and if it does, folks might not be able to tell just how special these guys are.”
“O-okay…”
The guild master, overpowered by Gollathen’s serious expression, could only nod.
“The chances of a reoccurrence anywhere near here are pretty low, but we can’t deny the possibility that sometime down the road—in a few years, or a few decades, maybe even in another land—this might happen again. We can’t waste this opportunity to gather information and spread the word to all of the other nations. It’s a godsend that we were able to get our hands on so many of the genuine articles as proof. No matter what happens, this information has gotta get out!”
“O-okay…”
It was becoming increasingly unclear which of them was actually the guild master.
“Oy! Somebody run over to the clerk and get all the hunters and Guild employees over here! We gotta use these bodies while they’re still fresh to give everyone a demonstration of how to deal with the creatures! Having that experience might make the difference in whether or not this town ends up on the brink of destruction someday. Get every last one o’ them over here! Oh, while you’re at it, go around to all the pubs, too!”
At Gollathen’s command, several of the younger employees went running.
“Um… I thought I was the guild master…”
Mavis looked at the despondent guild master with a sympathetic gaze.
***
“All right! That looks like most of ’em,” said Gollathen, scanning the room.
The guild master had shrunk back into a corner by now, utterly resigned to his new backseat role.
“These are some new types of orcs and ogres that we got in a little while ago. As you can see, they look pretty normal on the outside, but the orcs have bodies like ogres, and the ogres are built like ogre kings. According to the ones who fought ’em, it seems like that’s actually how they are, too. That’s right, they look normal at first, but they’re all like that!”
The chattering around him grew louder, and understandably so. Encountering such a beast could mean certain death for a hunter, and here there were dozens of them. There was no way that it wouldn’t cause a buzz.
“Calm down. You see how many bodies we’ve got here…”
Catching Gollathen’s meaning, the hunters finally calmed down.
“You understand me. There ain’t a single one left! It was the Devils’ Paradise, the Fellowship of Flame, and one more, um…that’s right, the Crimson Vow! Y’all have got them to thank!”
“All riiight!!!”
These three parties had fought valiantly, putting their lives on the line to eliminate a threat to the rest. Moreover, it was once again the Devils and the Fellowship, both trusted veteran parties. Not so long ago, they had protected a rookie party and driven back hordes of monsters, and just recently, they had volunteered to take on a dicey escort mission. The two parties, who did so much for this town and the hunters in it, were looked upon with only the deepest admiration.
Stop it! Please stop iiit!!!!!
Deep down, the Devils’ Paradise and the Fellowship of Flame were suffering.
“Oy, you lot, try cutting into that ogre there,” said Gollathen.
“Uh…” The hunter he had addressed seemed puzzled.
“You might run into one of these someday. This is for the future!”
Hearing this, several of the hunters drew their swords. The people around them stepped back to allow them space.
“Hyah!”
The first man swung his sword down hard. The ogre might have been lying on the floor, but there was no hunter here green enough to strike the floor itself. As the sword struck the ogre’s flank, it barely sunk in before it stopped.
“Th-that’s tough!”
Because the target was laid out on the floor, the angle at which the hunter could swing the sword was awkward, and he was not able to put his usual power behind it. Even so, the hunter had not gotten the result he was expecting. He looked a bit pained, but he remained collected and stepped back to make way for the next person in line.
“Gwah!”
“Damn! Even that wasn’t enough?”
Having observed the first man’s folly, other hunters tried, swinging their swords with full power and gusto. More and more followed, and yet, again and again, the results were disappointing. A few lancers took some test jabs as well, but sure enough, their spears did not sink in nearly as far as they imagined, leaving them crying out in frustration.
“But these guys were all killed in a single blow, weren’t they? Look at this one—and that one—they were all cut right clean through from the sides. Yo, Wulf, is this your doing? Just how the hell did you cut these? You gotta come and show us!”
Everyone present had known each other for quite some time. Some of them had even worked alongside the Devils and the Fellowship and knew that, while they were extremely skilled swordsmen, they certainly did not possess magical skills.
But the men of the Devils and the Fellowship were at their wits’ end, too. There was no way that any of them could cut the monsters that way either.
Unable to ignore their distress, Mavis piped up from beside them, “I will demonstrate for you.”
This much, at least, was fine. What the Crimson Vow wished to avoid revealing were skills that defied everyday logic or magic that risked attracting the attention of any people in power, influential merchants, other hunters, or criminals with ill intent. Letting the others see that a single swordswoman had the sword skill of a B or A-rank hunter was no big deal.
Besides, they had set out on this journey in order to better themselves. In addition to training, they had a secondary goal of furthering their own reputation. Thus, just as they had elected not to hide Mile’s storage magic for the sake of convenience and earning potential (save for the ability-altering “Micros”) there was no reason for Mavis to hide her sword skills.
Pauline’s hot magic, on the other hand, was something that needed to be hidden at all costs.
As Mavis walked up beside one of the ogres, the other three stepped back, giving her enough space to swing her sword unhindered.
Come on, sword, don’t fail me now… Mavis muttered, low enough that the spectators who stood at a distance would not hear.
Mavis was quick with a blade, but she was not especially strong. Despite all her training, she’d been raised as pampered nobility and had the build to show for it. Even using her True Godspeed Blade, she was only a little bit stronger than the average male C-rank hunter. Her speed and battle sense were exceptional, but neither of those applied to hacking into a corpse. Thus, she could only pray that her sword would be as sharp as it had been during the battle against the ogres.
With these thoughts in mind, she whispered to her blade, and…
YES! NOW’S OUR CHANCE!
The nanomachines attached to Mavis’s sword congratulated themselves on what was turning out to be quite an interesting job after all. They were lucky to have been nearby when the initial call came—to have beaten the astronomical odds associated with being in the right place at the right time.