Didn't I Say To Make My Abilities Average In The Next Life?! Volume 9

by Funa

  “Well then, your…er…Lady…Miss El, I am honored that thou wouldst share thy presence with—”

  “Gaaah! Please don’t go out of your way to speak so formally! Just be straightforward about it!”

  “Oh, are you sure? I’ll talk normally then, thanks.” Even Lycus seemed to realize that his mode of address was a bit excessive.

  “Now then, why is it that you called me out here?”

  At Mile’s prompting, he elaborated. Initially, according to him, the military had hired hunters from this town to participate in the monster suppression. However, they had been hired on directly by the army instead of through the Guild, which meant that the pay was not as good, they earned no contribution points, and even if they were injured or killed, they would receive no support from the guild branch. Thus, as the problems with the monsters continued, the number of local hunters who were willing to sign up decreased. Currently, their only recruits were gold diggers, unsavory characters, and thugs who weren’t even hunters. There was no telling what might happen if such a motley crew were sent off into the forest without a single local to guide them, and so, Lycus had been recruited to participate at the guild master’s behest.

  Naturally, this had come with a bonus fee from the Guild on top of what the army was paying.

  “Honestly, when those swarms of monsters came stampeding toward us, I’d as good as given up. I thought it was all over for us. But then you came in at the last moment and rescued us! I don’t know how I can repay you! I’ll do anything! Uh, well, I mean, I still would do whatever your Greatness said, even if you hadn’t given us your favor, naturally!” he quickly added. He really was a bit too casual about addressing a goddess…

  Grateful for his offer nonetheless, Mile hit the man with a barrage of questions.

  “So not a single one of the hunters in this town is participating in the monster chase anymore? Ah, I guess rumors would have started flying after you made your official report to the Guild… Or, er, not rumors, but, given that the commander ordered the Guild that they absolutely must not continue driving the monsters into the neighboring land again, no matter what—and the fact that the two platoons left in the forest outskirts were in shambles, and the two who went into the forest were mostly unharmed, and the suspicious behavior of the unharmed soldiers… Well, actually, I mean, he didn’t order it so much as demand it—he doesn’t have that kind of authority—but it really was as good as a command, or rather an entreaty, which was relayed to the Capital immediately. All that gave your report some credibility? Mmm, I see…”

  Given how frantic the soldiers must have been, even the Guild could not write the commander’s instructions off with a complaint that they were overstepping their bounds. The Guild didn’t take orders from the military, but here, it was simpler just to agree.

  “So, is that the reason that you concealed yourself when you came to this town?” asked Lycus, his expression dark.

  Mile cocked her head, unsure what Lycus was asking.

  “I’m begging you! There are at least fifty people in this town who are good of heart! To destroy them all would be…”

  “Is this Sodom and Gomorrah?!”

  After some explanation, Mile was able to clear up the misunderstanding.

  “Not even my companions are aware of this side of me, so please don’t say anything about it to them!”

  “V-very well, understood! By the way, the reason that I called you all the way out here is that there is something that I absolutely must tell you at once.”

  “Then next time please lead with that!” Mile stormed, unhappy with the man’s sense of timing. She had put up a sound dampening barrier from the get-go, so there was no worry of anyone coming around if she stirred up a bit of a fuss.

  “To tell you the truth, I heard some people will be coming from the capital to investigate this incident.”

  “Huh? But, there’s nothing to investigate, is there?”

  At best, they could confirm what damages had been done to the farmers and their land. It was unlikely that testimony from hunters hired on in an emergency capacity would contain anything more informative than, “We fought to stop the monsters that came out of the forest.” That was all they had been hired to do. Other than Lycus, everyone who had been in the forest at the time had come from the capital.

  “I agree, but I guess without seeing it for themselves—with just the word of the people on the scene—they can’t call off everything that they’ve been doing. It’d be bad for their honor, or pride, or something.”

  At Lycus’s explanation, Mile began to understand the gist of things.

  If they do investigate and decide there’s evidence to back up the soldiers’ testimony, then they might resume driving monsters into Marlane. If a higher-up gives the order, then it will be pointless for the commander who was present at the time to try and oppose it. Plus, if another unit gets put on the next mission, then those people probably won’t care either way…

  Ugh, this is bad! Especially since I ran my mouth and promised the commander and the people from the Guild that there would not be a next time. What do I do?

  Of course, Reina and the others shared the blame in this case. They had all agreed upon this plan ahead of time, and so it was all of them who had made that boast.

  Okay, thought Mile, I’ll discuss it with the others!

  Then, she returned her attention to Lycus. “I see. Thank you for informing me. Let us end things here for tonight. I sincerely hope that you will not forget that in my normal form, I am nothing more than a novice hunter.”

  “Of course! I will never forget how you saved us!”

  Truthfully speaking, the fact that they had even been endangered in the first place was also Mile’s fault, but Lycus did not know this. As far as he was concerned, Mile—or rather, “the Goddess, Visibiel”—had saved his life. Even putting the whole “savior” business aside, no one in their right mind would pick a fight with a goddess. At least, not in this world.

  Knowing this, Mile was not particularly concerned about Lycus. She had been worried when she received the message calling her out, but the fact that she had been contacted for benevolent reasons put her a bit more at ease…

  Still, I do need to do something about this.

  With that thought, Mile fell into a gloom.

  “Are you serious?!” Reina raged upon hearing Mile’s tale the following morning. “First of all, Mile, why did you go out without telling us?! Just how many times have you done this now?!”

  “Ah, well, I told him that I’d kept the fact that I was a goddess secret from my friends, so…”

  “Yeah, but that’s only something you need to tell him! That’s no reason not to tell us that you’re going to meet with him! Who knows what could’ve happened to you—meeting up with a man all alone in the middle of the night!”

  “My guess would be…nothing.” said Mavis.

  “Nothing at all.” Pauline agreed.

  “I don’t think there’s any man in this world who could overcome Mile by force.”

  “It would be impossible.”

  “Now that you put it that way…”

  At the pair’s assertions, Reina finally came back to her senses. “But if Mile wanted to overcome him…” she muttered.

  “Yeah,” agreed Mavis and Pauline thoughtfully, as though wondering if such a thing had happened before.

  “I wouldn’t!” Mile screamed. “A-anyway, at this rate, the investigation is going to turn up no evidence, and the government here might start up their harassment of Marlane again.”

  Hearing the apprehension in Mile’s voice, Pauline cut in. “Would they really do something like that after you warned them so vehemently?”

  Mavis, meanwhile, was of the same mind as Mile. “The people who have been ordering this harassment are honor-bound, stubborn people, and it’s not like Mile actually incited a natural disaster or anything like that. If all they have is a vague threat from a little girl dressed up like a god
dess, they might just decide that the monsters’ advance missed the soldiers by chance and call it a day.”

  “I-I suppose you’re right…” replied Pauline.

  “Huh?” asked Reina, “But didn’t she put on some kind of spectacle?”

  “Healing magic. Bending swords. Poking holes in armor. Striking through a rock with an attack spell. It probably had a huge impact on the men who were actually there, but their superior officer might not believe soldiers who came running home with their tails between their legs, crying, ‘Our enemy was just way too strong!’ And even if they believed that a good portion of the soldiers’ testimony was true—each of those individual feats are something that a particularly powerful mage could’ve done, aren’t they?”

  “W-well, I suppose an A-rank mage might be able to do something like what Mile did, if you turned it down to about twenty or thirty percent of the same power… So, if they thought that the testimony had been blown out of proportion somehow, I suppose they might conclude there was a possibility of the goddess being a sham…”

  Reina was a mage, and so she understood exactly how absurdly strong Mile’s magic was. Mavis, who could not use magic (or so she thought), and was used to seeing Reina and Pauline’s fairly strong powers as well, lacked that same intuition. She didn’t quite grasp the insurmountable wall between Mile’s magic and the magic that Pauline and Reina could produce when they got serious. This made Reina realize that people who were not mages might see things the same way as Mavis.

  “That would be bad…”

  “This is bad…”

  “This can’t be good.”

  “This is really bad!”

  ***

  “So you’re Lycus or whatever, is that right? The one who was working as the guide?”

  The man who had come from the capital was a clerk with an arrogant attitude. Naturally, he was of peasant stock. No noble would ever stoop to such a job…assuming there was not some added benefit to make it worth it.

  “I am.”

  Lycus gave nothing more than the minimally required reply. He had neither the slightest bit of respect nor consideration for anyone who had been party to the capital’s foisting off its burdens onto the fief in which he lived. He was even less amused by a common man who conducted himself as though he were a noble.

  On top of which, this man was also “an enemy of the Goddess.”

  This man hadn’t the authority to coerce him—he was nothing more than a lowly messenger, after all. Lycus was not only a citizen of a different fief, but a key witness to the incident and the only local who had cooperated with the military. He had no reason to conduct himself humbly.

  Of course, the clerk was only doing his job, so if he’d behaved himself properly, Lycus would have responded in turn. However, if he was going to speak to him that way, clearly belittling Lycus with his arrogance…that was a different story.

  “So then, what are these little girls about?”

  Sure enough, there in the conference room of the guildhall, were Lycus, the clerk from the capital, the guild master, the submaster, and the four members of the Crimson Vow.

  The Crimson Vow had killed time in the days until the messenger’s arrival bolstering their resumes with short day jobs, in the name of training. In reality, they were worried that this inquiry might conclude without them, so they were trying their best to be in town whenever Lycus was to confirm his story.

  “They’re hunters who were working on the other side of the border during the monster suppression.”

  “What?! Then that makes them our enemies!!!” the clerk growled.

  Exasperated, Lycus explained, “Hunters traveling away from their home base have no allegiance or loyalties to any one country. You could say that whoever pays them is their ally. They would be our allies if we hired them.”

  “Hmph! So you’re saying they’re a bunch of good-for-nothings with no patriotism and no loyalty who would trade their lives and their morals for a bit of money? That’s as good as selling their bodies for coin!”

  As the Crimson Vow overheard this, the veins in their foreheads began to twitch, but the clerk did not appear to take notice. If he did notice, then he did not particularly care.

  For the most part, Lycus answered the clerk’s questions, and the Crimson Vow provided only simple follow-up replies. There was nothing for them to talk about beyond, “We battled against the monsters who were coming toward us, killed some of them, and drove most of them away.”

  Having acquitted his duty to the most minimal degree possible, the clerk packed up and left, posthaste. He showed no sign of wishing to go into the forest himself to investigate.

  “He doesn’t believe us, huh?”

  “He didn’t believe us, did he?”

  “I don’t think he believed us…”

  “He who believes…will have the rug pulled out from under him.”

  And so, the next day the Crimson Vow set out for the country’s royal capital.

  They were not in the best of moods.

  Indeed, the clerk’s insulting words seemed to have left them deeply wounded…or rather, angry. Livid, in fact.

  Those insensitive words had done his own country a grave disservice, but neither he, nor his superiors, would ever know it.

  Chapter 73:

  A Warning

  “I see. So that’s how it is…”

  Back at the palace, the clerk gave the king his report.

  It was not often that someone of such low station got to report to the king directly, so the clerk, a commoner, spoke at length about things that would win him the king’s favor—things that had nothing to do with Lycus’s report. In an authoritative tone, he spoke on all manner of things that he had not confirmed for himself, things that he only guessed at, or even altered entirely to suit the King’s fancy.

  There had been no so-called goddess, he claimed. Instead, the whole episode was a farce, fabricated by the unit’s commander to shift the blame for all the damages his unit had taken.

  When the clerk’s report concluded, the King spoke. “No matter how diligently we drive the monsters from our borders, the damage done to our neighbors has not increased. On the contrary, our side took quite a blow. And our soldiers are fabricating lies in order to shirk their responsibilities? Unacceptable. We have no choice but to resume the invasion plan at once. We will take our forces to the outskirts of the forest on Marlane’s side of the border and drive those monsters all the way out!”

  “What?”

  There was an outcry of surprise, not only from the clerk, but from the nobles and military personnel in attendance.

  “B-but, Your Majesty! Taking our forces across the border will be seen as an act of aggression! Our informal treaty, worked out in mutual, tacit agreement—” began an upper-ranking officer, who looked a bit frantic.

  The king, however, appeared unconcerned. “What of it?”

  “Huh?”

  “We will expand our kingdom’s territory. We will seize control of that forest and the lands just beyond it. Make preparations at once!”

  “Y…yes, sir!”

  It was a declaration of war.

  They would expand the dominion of their motherland, seizing the wealth and forces of their neighbors for themselves. The invasion would bring them plunder and new land—gifts that could then be bestowed upon those who did great deeds in service of their country. Nobles could have their existing lands supplemented, and non-nobles might be granted peerage…

  Though the nobles were shocked by the abruptness of the king’s announcement, this really wasn’t bad news for them at all. The ones likely to die in battle were common foot soldiers and conscripted peasants. The noble officers who commanded them from afar rarely fell on the battlefield, and even if they should find themselves in danger, they could merely surrender to save their own hides. After that, all they had to do was pay a ransom and they would be returned home safely. Even while they were held captive, as nobles, they would be treated with c
ourtesy. Their relations with Marlane were not especially good but not so dire that Marlane would be expecting a sudden invasion, either. This was good news too, for it meant they would have the element of surprise.

  “That forest has served as a natural barrier, protecting us from border conflicts for many years. That ends today. When we conquer the entirety of the forest, we’ll push on forward and cut Marlane off from the woods and all of their bounty, the minerals in the mountains, and all that lies around the town of Mafan!”

  A hearty cry rang through the room.

  ***

  “…or at least, that’s what I imagine is happening,” finished Pauline, a look of exasperation on her face as she pored over a mercenary recruitment flier that had been posted at the guildhall.

  Knowing that there would not be any new movement until the clerk made his report, the Crimson Vow had advanced at a leisurely pace toward the capital, taking more gathering and harvesting type jobs along the way. When they finally arrived and headed to the guild branch to check the job and information boards, they found the following announcement affixed beside it:

  Recruiting mercenaries. Provisions included, compensation provided for combat, bonus for special achievements. Details available at the Royal Army outpost.

  Of course, there was nothing in the notice that implied soldiers would be crossing the national border. Everyone—including the Crown and the military—knew that any information posted here would be leaked back to Marlane, after all. Based on this announcement, most would simply assume that, as usual, the military was recruiting fighters to drive the monsters back to the border and correct the unintentional side effects of their previous drives.

  The hunters and mercenaries would probably be given a certain degree of explanation—or at least a hint of what was to come—when they chose to enlist. Something like, “There is a possibility that battles against other humans may occur…” If the new hires didn’t pick up on this, and were ordered to do things that tested the boundaries of their contracts, well, that was their own fault.