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

by Funa

  This subjugation force would advance from the country where the incident occurred and from the neighboring lands on every side. It would capture any criminals it found, not stopping until every last one was dead. Anyone who picked a fight with the Hunters’ Guild—anyone who underestimated their might—would not be allowed to get away. If the guild failed to retaliate, such assaults would happen again and again.

  Don’t mess with the Hunters’ Guild.

  They would spare no expense, no measure, to burn that message into the mind of every evildoer. This was the Hunters’ Guild’s way.

  Finally, on top of hiring a number of skilled hunters as escorts, the guild transport had only one wagon, so its carrying capacity was limited. And because unlike a merchant’s caravan, they valued speed over cargo volume, a guild transport rarely set out fully-laden.

  They were fast, secure, and carried very little. Obviously, it would cost a premium to take advantage of such a service.

  “Would you mind holding on a moment?”

  As Mile handed the parcel over to the clerk, a voice called to her from behind. When Mile turned to look in the direction of the voice, she saw…

  “A-an elf?”

  Indeed, there stood a tall and slender middle-aged man, with long hair, a warm and gentle face…and pointed ears. No matter how you looked at him, this man was an elf—an elf among elves, even.

  “W-whoooa! It’s a real live elf! This is the first time I’ve ever seen one!”

  Reina smacked Mile on her head.

  “Did we or did we not spend several days with Dr. Clairia?!”

  “Oh, I guess you’re right…”

  With Dr. Clairia’s ears, inconspicuous as they were, mostly hidden behind her hair, Mile had completely neglected to recognize her as an elf in her memory.

  “Wh-wh-wha-what can I help you with?!”

  Though she had had no trouble talking to Dr. Clairia, Mile was suddenly stiff with nerves. The other three shared her sentiment wholly. Because Clairia’s ears had been hidden, she looked like nothing more than a normal human; in fact, they had at first taken her for the guild master’s daughter. So, even after they were made aware of the fact that she was an elf, it still did not really feel that way.

  This particular gentleman, however, was far too elf-like.

  “What?! Are you ladies acquainted with the young Miss Clairia?!” asked the elven gentleman—it would be rude to call someone who was middle-aged an “elder,” after all. But then again, given that he was an elf, who knew how old he actually was? “When did you meet her and where?! Is she doing well?”

  “Oh, yes, she seemed very well indeed. As for where we met her—wah!”

  Mile’s attempt at a reply was interrupted by Reina seizing her shoulder.

  “You can’t just give some strange man you’ve never met information about a lady! Especially not without her consent!”

  “Ah…”

  Indeed, the people of this world were surprisingly persnickety when it came to personal information. Hunters had always been incredibly tetchy about others looking into their pasts or their capabilities, and a lot of quarrels arose because of it, so at some point or other it had simply become an unspoken agreement that it was taboo to inquire into a hunter’s personal information. Just as they maintained this practice amongst themselves, hunters often refrained from enquiring into other people’s personal information as well, except when necessary to complete a job.

  Obviously, needing to establish confidence in someone else when it came to contracts or hiring was another matter, but for the most part, the rule was, “If it doesn’t have to do with work, you don’t need to know about it.” Slowly, this sentiment had begun to spread to the rest of the population as well.

  Furthermore, most humans—the Crimson Vow included—knew little of the mysterious societies of the highly secretive elves.

  Why would Dr. Clairia be living as a scholar alongside humans, when elves rarely resided with humans at all?

  Why had she left her elven village?

  What was her relationship like with her family and clansfolk?

  Did she have any enemies?

  Mile could certainly not go handing out information about the professor without knowing the answer to a single one of those questions—doing such a thing could mean revealing the current whereabouts of a victim on the run from some past danger to a stalker.

  A dark feeling overcame Mile, who had been pursued herself many times in her previous life, and she unconsciously, reflexively, began chanting a spell of protection.

  “O water, come forth and become shackles of ice to bind… Gah!”

  Smack!

  Reina’s karate chop landed straight in the middle of Mile’s forehead.

  “Stop that!”

  “Hold it, hold it! Hold it, I say! I am no one suspicious!” the elf protested.

  “That’s exactly what a suspicious person would say!”

  “Then what exactly would you like me to say?!”

  “‘I’m a suspicious person?’”

  “………”

  The group sighed. Suddenly, they realized that they were surrounded by other hunters, hands on the hilts of their swords, gripping their staves with spells at the ready. Given that one of the party had begun a close-range combat spell in the middle of the guildhall, and it seemed as though a battle with the elf was about to unfold, this was an incredibly natural reaction.

  “S-sorry everyone, we’re fine! Nothing’s going on here! J-just having a bit of a laugh with an old friend. Isn’t that right, Uncle?!”

  “Huh? Oh, yes, yes indeed, oh, uhm, you little prankster!”

  The elf was momentarily perplexed at Mile’s sudden change in attitude but quickly played along. Truly, with age came wisdom.

  Tch…

  Pfft…

  Heheh…

  The air, thick with tension, began to thin again. Everyone let their hands fall from their weapons, and, chuckling, returned to their original positions. Normally, the others would have been irritated at this clear misconduct, and even berated the Crimson Vow, but as one of the two parties was an elderly elf who seemed to be minding his manners, and the other was a cute, rather clueless-looking young girl, the veterans were happy to simply laugh it off.

  Besides, most of the hunters had already had their eyes on this group from the moment they had entered, seeing as they were a party of four lovely girls they had never seen before. As a result, they were already aware of what was going on. In truth, they should have chided the girls so they’d know better next time, but there didn’t truly appear to be a need for it.

  Indeed, behind Mile stood the combat mage, red in the face and her fangs bared. “Honestly, Mile, what were you thinking, chanting a combat spell in the middle of the guildhall like that?!” Reina shouted. “If the other hunters had attacked us without asking questions first, it would have been entirely your fault! First off…”

  After being thoroughly chewed out by Reina, Mile abandoned her delivery request for the moment, and the Crimson Vow, along with the elf, moved to the dining corner of the guildhall.

  “So, what did you want to talk to us about?”

  Through all the commotion, the tension that Mile felt toward the man had faded.

  “Oh, right. Sorry. I heard earlier that you were sending something to the capital of Tils, so I was hoping that I might be able to hitch something on to your parcel…”

  “Oh!”

  Parcel hitching.

  Even if you added a small letter or document to a parcel, the price of shipping would not change up to a certain size or weight. So one could combine shipments and still come up with the same price. Then, after breaking the seal, the person who received the original package could take the enclosed item and deliver it themselves or else forward it on via some other method.

  The cost of forwarding something to another town would vary by country, but it still tended to be fairly expensive. However, as long as the item was destine
d for somewhere else within the same capital, one could hire on one of the young children who hung around the guild as hopefuls, and the job would be completed with just a few half-silver spent. It was fortuitous to come across someone else who was sending a parcel to the very same city, so it was no surprise that the elven man hoped to get in on Mile’s shipment.

  “So, what do you say? Might I ask you to do this?”

  “As long as you pay half of the shipping costs.”

  As far as Mile was concerned, there were no downsides. The destination of Mile’s package would be the original one, so there was no risk, and she would not complain about getting someone else to shoulder half the cost.

  “Oh, splendid! For the most part, our kind live rather self-sufficiently, so we don’t have very much of what you humans use as currency. This is especially true for elders such as myself, who rarely make it out of the village. Now I’ll be able to use the leftover money to buy a souvenir to take home!”

  The elf seemed joyful. Mile smiled.

  “So then, about Miss Clairia…”

  As Mile unsealed her parcel to add the letter in and write a note about the addition, the gentleman turned to Reina, explaining, “I don’t wish for you to tell me her place of residence or anything like that. I just wish to know if she is well in health and spirit, if that is no bother to you.”

  “Just what connection do you have with the professor?” Reina asked suspiciously.

  The elven gentleman—whose name, it turned out, was Elsatorc—replied, “I’m just an old fellow whose clan has ties to hers. Miss Clairia is very popular among the adults of the local clans. Everyone hopes for their children to grow up to be just like her—there are even portraits and dolls of the young miss in families’ nurseries.”

  “Whoa…”

  All four of the Crimson Vow, including Mile, still in the midst of her writing, looked stunned. While it was true that Dr. Clairia was particularly beautiful, her looks could not have stood out all that much amongst elves, who were beautiful by nature. Besides, she had left her village to live among humans, and personality-wise, she was no saint. Given the fact that she was doing a job so lofty that she could be called “Doctor,” she was likely getting on in age. So, how she could possibly be so popular amongst other elves was wholly beyond them.

  The dubious looks on their faces were plain to see, so Elsatorc explained further.

  “We elves are rather solitary creatures by nature. Once our children reach forty or fifty years of age, they lose their fondness for their parents and soon leave home to live on their own, drifting further and further away from their families.”

  Fifty years! the four silently thought. That’s a really long time to be living at home!

  “However, no matter how old she got, Miss Clairia always stuck by her father. Everyone was so very jealous of him.”

  “Aha…”

  Everyone thought back on the time they had fled with the freed captives from the excavation site. Suddenly, they remembered something: Dr. Clairia’s reaction, the way her cheeks reddened and her eyes shimmered when they mistook her for the guild master’s daughter and told her, “Your father asked us to look after you.”

  “She really loves her father…” said Mavis.

  “She’s daddy’s little girl, huh?” said Pauline.

  A fondness shone on both their faces.

  Mile, however, was once again compelled to shout a word that did not yet exist in this world: “Are you all a bunch of fathercons?!?!”

  “What’s a ‘father-cone’?” asked Reina.

  “Um, it’s when a little girl is in love with her father to an abnormal degree.”

  “Ah.” Reina was not so far off from that herself, and somehow or other, she understood.

  “Well, anyway,” said Elsatorc, “All I wanted to know is that she’s happy and healthy. The next time I’m in touch with her parents’ village, I’ll let them know. Really, I have no doubt that girl sends her parents letters all the time, though I’d bet you she lies and says she’s fine, even when she’s sick or in trouble, so as not to worry them. I’m sure hearing it confirmed by a third party would put them at ease…”

  The Crimson Vow accepted this explanation. They understood what he was saying, and there shouldn’t be any problem with telling him how she was. It wasn’t as though they had given up her location or anything. With that in mind, they told him only that she was doing well, careful to avoid offering any information about the ruins. Instead, they relayed an amusing story of a blunder that Dr. Clairia had relayed to them when they were sharing gossip—the time when she was standing in line at a festival, pretending to be a child so as to get free candy, and got to the front of the line to find that the one handing out the candy was a nun who recognized her and chased her away…and so forth.

  In all the hubbub, Mile finally finished making the revisions to her letter, and she slipped the envelope she had received from Elsatorc in with the original two of differing sizes, then rewrapped the parcel. She handed the parcel over to the clerk and paid the delivery fee, then collected her share from Elsatorc, who thanked them over and over. Finally, the four of them left him, and the guild, behind.

  With that, the parcel would be sent on to the next guildhall, then transferred again and again until it finally reached the capital of Tils, where it would be delivered to the one whose name was written on the parcel. The recipient could deal with the rest of it from there. Whether or not the recipient would follow the instructions written within was a matter of mutual trust, but Mile had full faith on that front.

  The guild would never reveal from where the parcel had been sent. The fee had been paid in advance, and as soon as the package was opened, the guild would know for whom it was intended, so there was no trouble there. The sender was free to choose how much she revealed of her name and address.

  With this, it was unlikely that a third party would ever discover the Crimson Vow’s current whereabouts. When it came to matters of secrecy, the guild could be trusted in full, and the letter itself had nothing in it but the bare essentials.

  “All right now, on to the capital. Let’s roll out!!” Mile called happily.

  The other three smirked.

  “Now that I think about it,” she continued, guilelessly, “if elves normally live with their parents until they’re forty or fifty, and Dr. Clairia is an exception to that rule, then just how old is the professor?”

  “………”

  Mavis, Reina, and Pauline were silent.

  However, there was something that none of them yet realized, and that was what might come of the information that they had given to Elsatorc. Sure enough, they had told him nothing of Dr. Clairia’s location. However, there was someone who would know where the professor was.

  The next time that the clans made contact, Elsatorc sent on a letter addressed to Dr. Clairia’s parents, along with various other documents. The professor’s parents were overjoyed to receive this letter from the clan elder, and wrote about it in their reply to their daughter’s next letter.

  ***

  “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

  Dr. Clairia’s beloved father now knew about the bungled candy fraud incident—an embarrassing blunder that Dr. Clairia didn’t even like to think about. She writhed on her bed, clutching her father’s letter, which suggested that she shouldn’t “behave in such an unbecoming way.”

  “Grrrgh! How dare he cast such shame upon me—my own dear father! I won’t forgive him. Or rather, I won’t forgive them, those careless girls! I’ll find them! I’m gonna find them!!!”

  The professor continued to writhe on her bed, howling, before suddenly realizing that she was gripping the precious letter from her father so hard she was wrinkling it. Moving fast, she neatly smoothed it back out and placed it gently into her desk drawer.

  ***

  “So how long do elves live, anyway? I’ve read a lot of books that mention them, but none of them ever seem to have an exact figure,” said Mile. />
  Of course, Reina and Pauline—both commoners who had not read nearly as many books as Mile—could not be expected to reply. However, Mavis, the daughter of an influential count, who grew up surrounded by a father and brothers who favored her by talking of a great many things, knew much about the enigmas that were elves.

  “The thing is, it’s actually hard to accurately determine, and no one can say for certain. Most elves, though they have long life spans, don’t usually die of old age, but of accidents, or illness, or fights with monsters. Plus, even among those who do succumb to old age, it seems that there’s a huge range in the ages at which that happens.

  “There are a lot of theories about this. Some say it’s due to differences in magical power, or that it’s decided by a roll of the dice at the Goddess’s hand when they’re born, and so forth… In addition, from the time elves are born until they’re about fifteen or sixteen, they develop at the same rate as humans, but after that their development slows, and for about half of their lives they continue to appear as though they’re between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five. After that, they go through a period of rapid aging again, and then they fade slowly into their twilight years.

  “Actually, that means that Elsatorc, the man we were talking to before, is probably pretty old. With respect to Dr. Clairia, he wouldn’t be a grandfather, or even a great-grandfather, but even some earlier generation than that.”

  “Fwah!”

  Mile let out a gasp of admiration.

  And then, she suddenly thought of another race that looked young for a very long time.