by Funa
Soon enough, the other passengers in the carriage became greatly indebted to her, as she was able to provide an endless supply of warm water whenever they stopped to make camp. Even so long after her time in the bakery, she still remembered a thing or two about customer service.
However, thanks to this skill, and the fact that she could store and produce food with storage magic, it was clear to everyone that she was someone special, plain clothes or no.
“So, you’re off to the capital, dear? Is it for work?”
“Um, actually I’m going to a prep school…”
“Ahh, you’re going to be a maid there, are you? It’s an elite school for hunters, so if you can snag yourself a good man with some potential, you’ll be set for life! A girl like you should have no trouble. In a few years, you won’t be able to keep the boys away from you!”
The woman who spoke was a bit of a flibbertigibbet, one of the passengers for whom Mile had produced warm water and venison. Mile smiled wryly at her assumption. The other passengers who overheard this exchange chuckled internally.
The idea of someone of such a young age who could use storage magic and summon that much water, working as a servant… The young woman was no doubt attending the school as a student in her own right.
Nine days after departure, the carriage arrived in the capital, a day later than expected.
It rained along the way, muddying the roads, and one of the carriage wheels had broken from the strain, delaying them. However, they had still arrived more quickly than one might expect in the face of an obstacle of this kind.
Except for those who were only stopping in the capital en route to other destinations, everyone disembarked at the central station, which was located directly in the middle of the city’s main square, and began to disperse.
“Thanks for the showers, dear!”
“Let’s ride together again sometime!”
The female passengers in particular offered their thanks for daily hot showers—a luxury not even enjoyed by most nobles—while all the passengers showered Mile with gratitude in the form of leftover food or trinkets from their hometowns.
“When you become a full-fledged hunter, I’ll definitely request you by name!”
At least someone had figured out that she wasn’t just going to work as a servant…
Naturally.
“So, this is the capital…”
The city, the capital of the Kingdom of Tils, had a much quainter feel than the capital of her former home, where she attended Eckland Academy. Indeed, in terms of national power—based on a calculation involving land area, population, and economic strength—the country possessed roughly one-seventh the power of the Kingdom of Brandel.
Here too, there was an academy attended by the children of nobles and other wealthy families. If Mile were to attend this academy, she might even make more friends like Marcela. Although the place was really none of her concern, it did prickle Mile, just a little, to think about it.
In any case, she would be residing in the city for at least half a year. She wouldn’t be able to move into the school’s dormitory until three days before the first of the term, or six days from now, which meant she needed to find an inn before taking a look around the capital. In the event that anything happened, knowing her surroundings could mean the difference between life and death.
But first she needed to secure a room. The sun was still high in the sky, so Mile set out, intending to ask some upstanding-seeming citizen where to find the best lodgings before making her own investigations.
She scolded herself for not simply asking the other passengers, many of whom had been native to the city.
As always, Mile had been quite careless.
***
That evening, just before sundown…
Mile stood in front of a humble inn.
On the advice of a kindly elderly couple, Mile had narrowed her decision down to three options, based on the conditions that they had to be safe for a young girl to stay at alone, relatively cheap, and provide good meals. From there, she visited each one to inspect the surrounding area, the quality of the other clientele, and the level of cleanliness around the entrances, before making her choice. Since this would determine her comfort, or lack thereof, for the next six days, she was fastidious in this process. If she failed in this regard, she could only chalk it up to her own lack of insight and perhaps a touch of bad luck.
Mile opened the door. “Excuse me, do you have any rooms available?”
“Why yes, we do!” said a cheerful girl in response as Mile stepped inside. The girl looked to be around ten years old and sat humbly behind the counter beyond the front door. She was probably the owner’s daughter, helping out while her parents were busy with dinner preparations.
“Well then, I’d like a room for six nights…”
“All right,” the girl nodded. “Lodging alone is four silver a night. If you want breakfast, it’s three half-silver, lunch is five half-silver, and dinner is eight half-silver. Hot water is five copper for one wash basin or two half-silver for a whole tub.”
“Hm, well I’d like to try eating at lots of different places while I’m here, so I’ll just have dinner for tonight and breakfast each morning, please. I’ll take care of the water myself.”
“Ohh, can you use magic?! That’s amazing…” The girl looked a tad envious.
Mile was aware of how blessed she was in this regard. Being able to summon water would be a very useful skill for an innkeeper’s daughter.
“The food should be ready any moment, but we only serve until the second evening bell.”
Mile had learned that the second evening bell rang around nine o’clock in the evening, while the first morning bell rang at six, and the second at nine. The first midday bell rang at twelve o’clock noon, the second midday bell at three, the first evening bell at six, and the second evening bell rang at nine.
“Ah, well, then I better go ahead and eat now.”
Once she had settled in, it would be a bother to come back downstairs, so Mile decided to eat while she was yet on the ground floor.
There were a variety of meal choices, but when Mile took a look at the menu posted on the wall, she found…
Orc Steak.
Orc Meat Stir Fry.
Orc Meat Stew.
Orc Kabobs.
Fried Orc Meat.
It seemed that the owners had a vested interest in getting people to eat orc meat.
Mile stared at the girl.
“Ha ha. They accidentally ordered way too much meat,” said the girl, smiling wryly.
It seemed that Mile hadn’t much choice. In truth, she had never eaten monster meat before. As was the case with most nobles, the Ascham family had never once served monster meat at their own table. Even at the academy, monster meat had never been served, out of consideration for the many nobles in attendance.
Yet it wasn’t as though the meat was poisonous, so Mile was not especially bothered by the thought of consuming it. In fact, she expected that she would be eating like this quite frequently from now on. It was simply a new experience. That was all. And soon, it wouldn’t be a new experience at all, as hunting would provide her with many more opportunities to eat such things. Perhaps she would even try cooking some herself at some point in the future. With this in mind, she placed her order.
“One orc steak, please.”
And soon, there it was before her. An orc steak, with orc meat soup, and bread and salad on the side. The amount of meat was almost intimidating. They were probably trying to use up as much of it as they could. In appearance, it looked a lot like pork. When she sniffed it, it smelled like pork. And when she tasted it, it tasted like pork.
In conclusion, it may as well be pork, Mile thought. I was worried about nothing!
***
For the next six days, Mile wandered the city with the inn as her base, memorizing the layout of the shops and streets as well as she could. She looked down some rather suspicious lan
es and back alleys too, but her clothing, which was plain by provincial standards, was downright shabby compared to the fashions of the capital, and as a result, she was never robbed or assailed. It would seem that the denizens of the slums considered her one of their own.
When Mile realized this, she bought some new clothes in a hurry. Something that would count as garb a normal city girl would wear—plain, but not too cheap, by the capital’s standards.
When she debuted her new outfit for little Lenny, the innkeeper’s daughter, she was met with an ambiguous expression.
“I mean, the materials are nice, but…”
Clad thus, six days after her arrival in the capital, Mile stepped through the gates of the Hunters’ Prep School.
Chapter 7:
Hunters’ Prep School
T
he school was small. The building she took to be the schoolhouse was a tiny, one-story shack. The building that served as the dormitory was a similarly humble affair, housing both boys and girls. The only other building appeared to house an indoor training ground. Such was the sort of school that catered to only about forty students, all in the same class.
Mile had no interest in standing out, but at the same time, she didn’t want the guild master to lose face. Her goal was to stay somewhere near fifth from the top of her class.
After Mile finished registering, she proceeded to her assigned room to find a four-person dorm with two bunk beds. Since the school was funded by the country’s tax money, they didn’t have the luxury of providing individual rooms.
Still, for now, the room was empty, for it seemed that Mile was the first to arrive. She pondered which bed she ought to claim for herself. With her past education in Japanese courtesy, she could not escape the inclination ingrained in her to hold back and let others have the best ones.
I’ll probably be the youngest and the smallest, so maybe I should pick a top bunk…
Thus, though there were a lot of advantages to sleeping on the bottom of a bunk bed, but Mile selected one of the two top bunks.
The room had one cabinet, divided into four sections. Apparently, this was meant for them all to share. Other than that, there was only one small lockbox, but since Mile could keep her valuables in the loot box, it wasn’t of much interest to her. So again, she selected the most inconvenient spot.
In these lands, ceding an advantage one could grab for oneself was something only an idiot would do, but to Mile, this was no real concern.
“I guess I don’t need to spend much time unpacking.”
Here, she had no intention of hiding the fact that she had storage skills. In fact, the guild master had written this very information in the referral section of her entry application form, so it would be pointless to try to conceal it. Therefore, it was fine if her standard luggage appeared to be hidden away with storage magic. Even if some of it were actually secured in her loot box instead.
Thus, as she didn’t really need the cabinet, she figured that the other three could share the space amongst themselves.
Besides the beds, the cabinet, and the lockbox, the room was completely empty. There was nothing else—not even desks or chairs. At this school, there was no spare money to devote to housing. Any time that students had to loiter around in their rooms was time best spent on the practice grounds. The rooms were really just a place for changing clothes and sleeping. That was the sum of things.
Mile was sitting around staring into space and killing time until lunch, when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in!” Mile replied.
The girl who opened the door was tall, about five foot seven inches, with golden hair and a stern, imposing face. She was probably around seventeen or eighteen years old and looked almost boyish. Immediately, Mile could tell that she was also the sort of person who would be popular with the other girls.
“Oh, a roommate! Let’s have a great six months together!” The girl grinned and held out her right hand. Mile smiled and returned the gesture. She got the feeling she would get along with this girl.
“Pleased to meet you. The name’s Mavis. I’m a knight. I’ll spare you the details until the rest arrive. Which bed are you in?”
“Oh—this one, up here.”
“Hmm…”
Mile worried Mavis might think she was an idiot, but instead the girl just patted her gently on the head.
“You’re a good kid…”
They would definitely get along! Mile was certain of it.
“I’m kinda big,” Mavis said, “so I hope you don’t mind if I take the bottom here.”
Mavis hoisted her luggage onto the bed beneath Mile, and the two of them chatted until there came another knock.
“Come on in!” Mile replied.
This time, when the door opened, two girls stood outside in the hallway.
The first was a kind, absent-minded looking girl around thirteen or fourteen, with brown hair. The second was a tough-looking redhead of around twelve.
“More roommates, yeah? Hey there, I’m Mavis!”
“And I’m Mile. Pleased to meet you all!”
“Reina. Nice to meet you.” The red-headed girl strutted into the room. She glanced at both the beds and then tossed her bags onto the bottom bunk of the vacant one—surely a more typical way of doing things, Mile thought. The early bird gets the worm and all that.
“I’m Pauline. It’s good to meet you.” The meeker of the two girls gently placed her bags on the top bunk, without a hint of disdain for the girl who had beaten her to the punch.
There was no real need for the students to arrive until the day before the entrance ceremony, but it was no coincidence that all four occupants of this room had arrived early in the morning, three whole days before the start of the term. That night would be the first night that they could sleep there at the school, and it was also the first day that their free meals would be provided, starting with lunch. In short, none of them had money to spare.
Of course, this was not true of Mile, who now had funds of her own. Even so, she had wanted to arrive early merely to familiarize herself with the school and the surrounding area. However, wanting to fit into with the other girls, she didn’t mention this. At the very least, she had learned to read the room a little better since her days at Eckland Academy.
Soon, lunchtime rolled around, and they all headed to the dining hall with plans to do proper introductions after the meal.
Although it was only the first day of registration, a great number of other students had arrived early as well; nearly half of this year’s class of forty crowded the dining hall. At this point, all of the previous term’s students had graduated and gone, so everyone present was a new recruit.
The boys were gobbling food as though they hadn’t eaten in days, and though the girls were nowhere near so crude, it was clear they had good appetites. As no one had grown close enough for friendly chatter, everyone ate in silence.
After lunch, Mile and company returned to their room to make introductions.
“How about we introduce ourselves in the order we arrived?”
Mavis’s suggestion put Mile first.
“I’m Mile. I’m twelve years old. I’m a magic user and an F-rank hunter.”
“Is that all?” asked Reina, the redhead. “Anything else you want to say? Like your magical specialty, or your hometown, or your family, or…?”
At her prompting, Mile had no choice but to continue. “Um, let’s see. I can use storage magic—I don’t have any use for my spot in the cabinet, so the rest of you can go ahead and use it. I dabble in swordplay just a little bit, for self-protection. And as for my family, even speaking about them is a sort of unpleasant matter, so please forgive me for refraining…”
“………”
There was a long silence.
“Wait a minute—” Reina suddenly interjected.
“Something is weird about this. If you can use storage magic, you should be a C-rank already! What are you doing here?! Besides, it ta
kes energy to maintain, doesn’t it? How can you be using that in place of a cabinet?!”
“Huh…?”
“Don’t you ‘huh’ me!”
As Reina continued to shout, Mile just tilted her head.
“Um, well, the rank thing was a guild mistake,” Mile said. “The guild master sent me here in order to correct it. And I don’t know—is that really true about storage magic needing to be maintained?”
“Y-you…” Reina trailed off.
“Well, I guess I’m next up!” Mavis offered, only a little nervously.
Being able to read the room truly was an amazing skill.
“Now that Mile’s spilled the beans for us, let me be frank as well. We’ll be together a good while, so you’re going to get to know me sooner or later.
“I’m Mavis von Austien, seventeen years old. I’m a knight, no magic.
“My family has all been knights for generations, and my three older brothers all became knights too. I wanted to be a knight, just like them, but my brothers and parents were super opposed to it, so I ran away from home. So, now, I just go by Mavis, no surname. Hope we can get along!”
Whoa…
As Mavis spoke, the nickname “Rascal” popped into Mile’s head—but that was a name for a raccoon, wasn’t it? Perhaps she was thinking of something else.
“N-next up’s me, then! Reina, fifteen years old! They call me ‘Crimson Reina,’ and my specialty’s attack magic. Let me just be clear now that the ‘Crimson’ part has nothing to do with my hair! I have no family…”
At these last words, Reina looked down, despondent, but unlike Mile, it seemed as though she wouldn’t necessarily mind talking about her family.
The other girls all asked the same question. “Fifteen?”
“What?! You got something to say about it?!”
Reina was very short for a fifteen-year-old, no taller than 156 centimeters. If she were Japanese, she would be just around the right height for her age, but for the people of this country, who were similar to Caucasians on Earth, she was about 5 centimeters shy of the average height for a girl of fifteen—closer to the height of a twelve-year-old.