Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! Volume 5

by Funa

  “You all are traveling hunters, aren’t you? If you all lived around here then there’s no way I wouldn’t have noticed a group of such memorable young women as yourselves. In other words, you’re going to be leaving town soon, aren’t you? And so, your source!” He collapsed, hands on the floor, his head hung in shame. “I just wanted so badly to know how you got your hands on that spice…”

  The girls were a bit troubled.

  From the get-go, they had thought the owner was rather arrogant. However, given that his position as their client gave him a bit of an elevated standing, and that they were, of course, only a group of young girls, they had not thought too much of it. It was not at all rare to meet some stubborn older gentleman who was passionate about his craft.

  Besides, when it came to his cooking and his customers, he seemed incredibly sincere.

  If only they had not been the ones to take on this job.

  If only they had brought him a normal kind of spice in a normal amount.

  If only things had gone that way, then perhaps the man could have proceeded through a normal transaction and continued to run his business as a normal restaurateur.

  Their own misdeeds had driven this man to the path of crime and sent his life into disarray.

  As they realized this, a crippling unease set upon them.

  “So then, what did you intend to do if seeing your hired guards did not persuade us and things came to blows?” asked Mile.

  The owner stared blankly and replied, “What? I mean, you all are no match for them! I just figured that you girls would quietly surrender in order to protect yourselves or that you would easily be captured, and then you might tell us where you got the spices in order to prove that you weren’t thieves. Then I could discover the source that way…”

  “And then you intended to turn us over to the authorities so that we could be jailed—even executed—for a crime that we didn’t commit?”

  The man raised his voice in shock.

  “O-of course not! I would never do such a thing! All I really wanted was the source, so after I got you to tell me that much, I was going to give you your gold, apologize for the misunderstanding, and let you go!”

  The explanation was sound, but Mile wouldn’t let him off the hook so easily.

  “What if we didn’t tell you?”

  “…What?”

  “What I’m saying is, what had you planned to do if we decided that we valued our loyalty over our lives and refused to tell you our source? Were you still going to turn us over as bandits? Or did you plan to torture the information out of us?”

  The owner’s face went blank and took a few moments to return to his original expression.

  “…I didn’t think about that.”

  “Huh?”

  There was a chorus of confusion throughout the room.

  “I didn’t think that far ahead…”

  Somehow or other, it seemed he was telling the truth.

  “Well, at any rate, there was never any possibility of that happening in the first place.”

  “Huh??”

  The owner’s and the hunters’ voices overlapped.

  “I mean, if it had truly come to blows, we would have just knocked all the other hunters out and turned all six of you in to the authorities, letting them know we had been attacked by robbers.”

  The hunters sneered at Mile, with expressions that seemed to say, “Hey now, enough with the jokes, kid.”

  That was when Mile snapped.

  At first, she had merely been trying to gauge the shop owner’s intent, or rather, how far ahead he had planned. Once she had done so, her intention was to wave the whole thing off, like, “Oh well, there wasn’t a chance of that happening anyway, so it’s whatever, honestly.” But clearly, these men were not taking them seriously.

  Any hunters who would stand for letting themselves be so belittled would never make it in this line of work.

  “Reina! Pauline!”

  “Firebomb!”

  “Ice Needle!”

  At Mile’s signal, the two swiftly cast their spell-free spells, and a small ball of flame, along with a modest barrage of ice needles, appeared above their heads. They had been holding these spells in their heads from the moment the other hunters appeared, ready to cast them at a moment’s notice. This was a natural precaution for mages.

  “What?! Spell-free casting?!”

  The guard hunters’ eyes went wide.

  Then, Mile drew a copper coin from her inventory (pretending to pull it from her bosom), turned to Mavis, and flicked her fingers.

  “Mavis!”

  “On it!”

  Her sword slashed in the blink of an eye, and Mavis’s left hand flew from the grip of her sword through the air.

  As you may have guessed, it was the special trick that Mile herself had popularized: the Copper Coin Cutter.

  When the girls went drinking with the guild master back in the town where Mile had first registered as a hunter, Mavis had heard Laura describe this special technique, which Mile had used to impress the hunters in the guild there. Later, Mavis begged Mile to teach it to her, and so the trick was passed on to her.

  However, for as much as it was called a “trick,” that did not mean that it was the sort of thing that just anyone could pick up if given the right instruction. It was a technique that Mavis could only use because she was wielding a sword that had been forged by Mile.

  “Wh…?”

  Impossibly, the hunters’ eyes opened even wider. In Mavis’s open palm, there was the copper coin cut cleanly in two. They turned to look back at Pauline and Reina, the firebomb and ice needles still floating above their heads.

  “P-please forgive us!!!”

  The hunters went pale, imagining just how things might turn out if a real battle erupted. Now, they knew the Crimson Vow’s true strength.

  “M-man, I really didn’t expect this. You all are so young… You have such a skilled swordswoman; these two mages, who are as good as B-ranks; and as for you, you’re little, but… You’re the brains of the operation, aren’t you?” asked the fellow who appeared to be the hunters’ leader.

  Mile shook her head. “No. Compared to Pauline’s blackhearte—ahem, resourcefulness—I am but an infant. I am a swordswoman-slash-mage.”

  From beside her, Reina added, “And really, Mile’s the strongest of all of us—whether with magic or swords.”

  “Wha…” The five hunters shrunk away.

  They’re terrifying. These girls are terrifying!

  The Crimson Vow’s reputation had yet to spread across national borders.

  Of course, they had made a name for themselves at the graduation exam, and with a few other incidents, but in the end, they were still just a group of rookie C-rank hunters. It would be strange if people in other countries did know their name. It was one thing in the capital of their own country, where plenty of people had attended the exhibition and seen their prowess for themselves, but even in the Kingdom of Tils, hardly anyone outside of the capital itself had even heard of them.

  There was a small chance that some people knew about Veil, the boy who had vanquished the leader of the Roaring Mithrils. That was all according to Mile’s plan…

  And now, it was time to deal with the owner.

  It would be one thing if this were a routine job, but Reina, Pauline, and of course, Mavis, were useless when it came to such an unusual situation. Thus, they let Mile take the reigns. Every aspect of this operation had been left up to her judgment.

  Mile thought for a bit, then faced the shop owner and spoke.

  “That’ll be twelve gold pieces.”

  “Huh?”

  Everyone, save for the Crimson Vow, stared at Mile in confusion.

  “What did you just say?” asked the lead hunter.

  “I said, twelve gold pieces.”

  “………”

  Silence spread throughout the room.

  “But why?!” the leader screeched angrily.

&n
bsp; And so, Mile explained.

  “I don’t think that the owner here is a bad person, deep down… He merely had the incredible chance to get his hands on the spice of his dreams, which stirred up a bit of evil in him…”

  “No ordinarily honest person would ever stoop that low!” The leader of the hunters protested. “If he’s the kind of guy who would do this, I guarantee you that he would definitely do the same thing all over again in similar circumstances! To make matters worse, he’ll have learned from this experience. Next time, he won’t bother hiring a legitimate guard, but instead some actual thugs, and I doubt that whoever he sets his sights on will be nearly as strong as you. They’ll probably be tortured by those thugs or their buddies and end up strung up as criminals on false charges. You do understand that, don’t you?!”

  He was, in fact, correct.

  However, Mile rejected his argument.

  “It’s fine. I’m sure the owner is already reflecting on his actions, and he won’t try anything like this again in the future. Besides, the specialty spice we offered him was something that we’d already brought along with us in storage. It’s not made anywhere around here, and there’s no possible way for the owner to get in touch with the producers. Plus…”

  “Plus?”

  “If he ever does something like this again, we’ll come back and deal with him. And when we do, we’ll be sure to stuff a ton of this spice down his throat. The same amount as what’s in that bucket right now, perhaps…”

  Hearing this, the owner began to tremble.

  An experience like that would spell death for him, both emotionally and physically.

  When the guard hunters saw this, they snickered.

  “Anyway,” Mile continued, “if he swears he’ll never do it again, then I suppose we can let him off this once. Even if we turned him over to the authorities, it’s not like he’s a bandit or anything, so we wouldn’t get any reward for it. Moreover, we wouldn’t be able to sell our spices, so we wouldn’t make a profit. Besides, you’d be losing the best restaurant in town—it’s really a lose-lose situation. Therefore, I think we can just let him off, though not without a bit of a penalty.”

  “A penalty?”

  “Yes. Say, for example, he has to pay each of you one extra gold coin on top of your promised wages, for wasting your time. Five gold in total…”

  “All right!!!” came a chorus.

  “I-If he really is reflecting on his actions, th-then I guess it would be all right to let him go just this once! We mustn’t forget that compassion is an important part of being human!”

  The moment they heard Mile’s proposal, the leader and his allies’ attitudes changed immediately. Mile looked to the owner and saw him nodding his head fervently. Apparently, the matter was settled.

  She stored away all of the spices, save for the bucket they had brought out initially, ignoring the owner’s small sigh. Understandably, the man did not have the strength of heart to suggest that they sell him any additional spices. It was clear from the fact that Mile had only brought out the one bucket initially that she had never intended to sell him any more than that. Now recognizing that she had clearly obtained the product from some far-off land and would not want to be relieved of her stock all at once, the owner understood it was only natural she would reject any further requests.

  In fact, neither the claim that the spice was “not made anywhere around here” or that she had “brought it along in storage” was technically a lie. They had made the product themselves, so it wasn’t something anyone else in the area would be able to provide, and they had in fact carried it from the forest in storage. So really, Mile had told the whole truth. If anyone should misinterpret her words, why, that was no fault of hers, was it?

  The owner retreated to the shop’s hidden vault and came back with a leather sack, handing twelve gold coins to the Crimson Vow and one each to the other hunters as he signed each of their job completion forms. The guard hunters’ pay had already been deposited ahead of time at the guild, so they would retrieve it once they gave their report there.

  ***

  “So, now what?”

  “Hm, what to do…?”

  After leaving the restaurant behind and giving their report at the guildhall, the Crimson Vow huddled up near the job posting board. They had originally planned to spend several days in this town, but now that the spice matter was settled, there did not appear to be any other interesting jobs available.

  As usual, if other hunters were to hear them hemming and hawing over what jobs to choose based on interest alone, they would be furious, but as it stood the Crimson Vow were not hurting for money. Plus, while the aim of this journey was ostensibly to find out what the elder dragons were after, at the moment, that much was merely incidental. Their main goal for now was to better themselves, earn more promotion points, and to have fun traveling with their friends.

  This did not mean that they might not still take on boring, low-level hunting and extermination jobs now and then, depending on the circumstances, but, if at all possible, they would prefer to do unusual and interesting jobs—ones that would temper their skills and grant them new experiences.

  For young maidens, time was a precious thing. They could not afford to waste it on tasks that were not worth their while.

  Indeed, Mile had said something along these lines.

  This time, it wasn’t, “I just want to be a normal girl!” but instead, “We don’t have any time to waste!”

  “Should we head on to the next town?”

  “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

  “Guess you’re right.”

  “I just want to get out of this country already so we can relax.”

  With their opinions all in alignment, they decided to head for the border at once. They were already very close, so it would take them no time at all to reach the next kingdom.

  “In that case, let’s head back to the inn, let them know we’re leaving, and head on out.”

  “Yeah!!!”

  ***

  Several days later…

  Calamity, the restaurant that had been temporarily shut down due to a shortage of spices, was now back in business—which was booming. Though the quality of the menu’s flavors had decreased somewhat, they had a brand new menu full of dishes that were packed with spice and their prices slashed to be well within reach of the common man. However, the posting indicated this was a limited-time offer. They happened to have obtained some spices for cheap, and once their supply was all used up, it would be back to the normal dishes and prices.

  When all the other restaurants heard the news of how Calamity had obtained such cheap spices by placing a request at the Hunters’ Guild, they would rush to do the same. However, there were no other hunters around who could fulfill such a request. The owners all shrugged, thinking to themselves, No matter. There’s no way the amount of spices that a single party could have brought in will last Calamity very long. Once they run out, they’ll have to close again until their regular shipment comes in. Yet somehow, the “limited time” offer showed no signs of ending—even well after the reordered spices had finally arrived from their faraway source.

  Through much experimentation, the owner of Calamity had come to the conclusion that using the spice powder in its pure form made dishes far too spicy—nay, dangerous even. It did not dissolve well in water, but it did mix well with oil, alcohol, and vinegar, so he began making solutions of those, which made the substance easier to use. This was also far more efficient, going a long way to stretch the amount of spice he had available.

  Recall, this was a powder of pure capsaicin. Even very watered down, the heat would still pack quite a punch. Thus, he was able to continue effectively using his supply for a very long time.

  Finally, when his supply began to run low, the owner of the gourmet restaurant Calamity stored away the last pinch of his special spice in a little glass vial, tucking it into his hidden vault. He stared at that vial for a short while and
then returned to his work.

  What might the owner have been thinking as he gazed at that tiny glass container? Only the man himself would ever know.

  Chapter 43:

  The Inn

  “I know it’s still pretty early in the day, but the next town after this is kind of far. Why don’t we stop here for the night?”

  It had been three days since they left Calamity and the town in which it was situated. The first night, they stopped at an inn in a tiny village, and the second two nights, they camped out, hunting animals, exterminating low-level monsters, and gathering medicinal herbs and specialty foodstuffs along the way. There was still a fair bit of time until evening, but rather than spending a third night in the rough, they decided to overnight in the town where they had just arrived.

  The Crimson Vow had long since crossed the border from Mile’s home country, and now they stood within a small provincial town in the neighboring country. Without the fear of being pursued by someone from her native land, Mile finally appeared at ease.

  “This place is pretty small, so we’ll be lucky if there are even two or three inns in town. We’ll pick the best-looking one and stay there,” said Reina, and the group nodded.

  The various pros and cons of an inn had a large effect on what their physical condition would be like when they departed the next morning. The food needed to be good, the beds needed to be soft, and they had to be able to get a peaceful night’s sleep. When travelers who often camped out went out of their way to spend the money for an inn, it had better at least fulfill those basic provisions—or there would be complaints. When paying for such a luxury, there was no sense in staying somewhere subpar just for the sake of scrimping.