by Hiro Ainana
I could have maxed it out right away, but I wanted to be considerate, since Lulu was teaching me, and taking our time with the lesson helped to facilitate more relaxed communication with her.
And over the course of our chat, I was able to learn more general knowledge about driving carriages.
The “Driving” skill would teach me all the subtleties I needed to know, but it wouldn’t teach me why I needed to do things that way.
So I relied on Lulu for that supplemental information.
As it turned out, though, Lulu had only ever driven a coach inside a town before, so I thought it would be best to have a veteran coachman teach me some things, too, before we left on our journey.
Every time there was a rumble of thunder in the distance, the space between Lulu and myself shrank a little.
I guess she must be afraid of thunder.
Not only that, but she shrieked a little and latched onto my arm when there was a flash of lightning over the mountains.
If Arisa had been around, I had the feeling that she would’ve wanted to get a closer look when she heard the thunder.
Suddenly, I felt someone watching me from the nearby forest, so I turned around.
There was nobody there. Nothing strange on my radar, either. Maybe it was a bird or a small animal—no, it was an owl.
Lightning flashed again, and I caught an ominous glimpse of the owl silhouetted against the dark clouds.
I somehow felt as if our eyes had met for a moment, but then the owl seemed to lose interest in us and left to alight on the roof of a different carriage headed into Seiryuu City.
“U-um…master…?”
My sudden silence seemed to have made Lulu anxious.
If I made her uncomfortable now, after we’d finally gotten a little friendlier, there would be no point in my having listened to her sing Arisa’s praises for so long.
“I’m sorry. I thought I saw a huge bird in the forest, so I got a little distracted.”
“Was it a hawk?”
“No, it was a bit rounder than that, so I think it might have been an owl…”
Making a suitable excuse, I managed to recover, smoothly making the atmosphere more relaxed again.
When we entered the city and returned to the front of the general store, the sharp-eyed Tama was quick to spot us and wave from the second-floor window.
I moved to wave back, but her face had already disappeared from the window, so I was stuck with my hand in the air for no good reason.
Lulu giggled a little, so I covered my embarrassment by asking her to direct the carriage toward the Gatefront Inn.
Well, I was glad she’d finally opened up to me a little.
“Welcome back, sir!”
“Masterrrr!” Pochi and Tama came running up eagerly, so I caught them in my arms. Mia was behind them, attended by Arisa and Liza.
“Satou.”
“Hi, Mia. Are you able to walk around a bit now?”
“Mm. Magic potion.”
“She seems much recovered thanks to the magic potion that the store manager brought back. This was my first time seeing one! It was amazing.”
Arisa supplemented Mia’s short statement.
Checking on the map, I saw that the store manager was indeed on the second floor of the general shop. We must have just missed each other, as he’d returned to Seiryuu City just after we headed out.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Mm, thanks.”
Mia seemed like she wanted to say something, and behind her, Arisa was looking at me and pointing emphatically at Mia’s head.
Mia’s hairstyle today was different from usual. Normally, she wore it down loosely over her back, but today she had put it up into two pigtails.
It appeared I was supposed to comment on it now.
“That’s a very cute hairstyle. It suits you well.”
“Mm.”
Mia responded to my compliment with a low, shy voice.
Arisa suggested that we get something good to eat in celebration of Mia’s recovery, so I asked if Mia herself had any suggestions.
“Honey pastries.”
I hadn’t expected such a prompt response, so it took me a second to react.
Possibly taking my delayed reaction as a rejection, Arisa quickly followed up.
“She took an interest in them after Pochi and Tama mentioned eating them before.”
“Liza ate them, too, sir!”
“They were sweet and happy tastinggg!”
Remembering the experience, Pochi and Tama pressed their hands to their cheeks.
“I thought it’d be nice if Mia and everyone could eat them, too,” Arisa added sweetly.
I see. So Arisa wants to eat them, too, and she’s using Mia as an excuse.
They weren’t very expensive, so I gave Lulu and Liza a few silver coins and asked them to buy enough pastries for everyone to have several.
I could have asked Arisa, but I had a feeling that the recuperating Mia would have wanted to go, too, so I left it to the two of them.
Suddenly, Tama looked up at the roof of the Gatefront Inn.
“What is it, Tama?”
“Hmm…that bird is weeeird.”
Tama was tilting her head uncertainly at an owl that was perched at the very top of the roof.
…Is that the same one I saw when Lulu and I were practicing with the carriage earlier?
Seeing that we’d noticed it, the owl flew off somewhere.
“Hello, Nadi. Is the manager here?”
“Oh, welcome back, Mr. Satou. The boss is with Mize right now.”
Who’s Mize again…? Oh right, the red-helmeted ratman.
I thanked Nadi and headed up the stairs to the second floor.
The children stayed downstairs on the sofa and started spreading out the vocabulary cards on the table. They really seem to like that game.
It looked like rain was imminent, so there weren’t any customers in the store, but I warned them not to bother Nadi just in case.
Knocking on the door lightly, I entered the room.
If this had been a woman’s room or a pubescent boy’s, I would’ve waited for an answer before knocking, but since it was just some old guy’s, I figured it was fine to just wait a few seconds before coming in.
Upon my entrance, the manager looked at me and gave a short wave of welcome.
“Satou.”
“Zatoo? Yew saved my life, sah…”
The ratman thanked me in his raspy, barely intelligible voice. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t because he was injured but rather that his mouth, much like the dog-people kids’ I’d met before, wasn’t well suited to forming the words.
I asked how he had ended up protecting Mia and being attacked by the shadow stalkers.
Of course, this was mostly just out of curiosity, and I wouldn’t have been surprised or bothered if the two had refused to explain, but instead they gave me an unexpectedly detailed explanation.
A sorcerer had kidnapped Mia from her hometown in the elf village and had taken her to a facility called the Cradle. She’d escaped while she was being transported and happened to run into the ratman, who helped bring her to Seiryuu City to seek the store manager’s help.
The red-helmeted ratman explained he’d been close by at the time because he was investigating whether the Cradle might be the cause of the increasing amount of withering plant life in the mountains near his village.
By his account, the reason the ratman had called Mia a “princess” despite their evident lack of a common race was that he had developed the habit in his youth when visiting the elfin village to train.
The reason the sorcerer had kidnapped Mia was unknown. I got the feeling that the store manager might know something, but he seemed to have no intention of talking about it, so I ignored it.
Then, pursued by the giant fanged ants and giant flying ants that served the sorcerer, the ratman had used some of his contacts in the underground world to sneak
into the city.
So that sorcerer had sent the giant flying ants that attacked Seiryuu City, too?
I also learned that he’d used rock salt that could be collected near his village to buy passage into the city.
…Oh right, I have to ask the manager about bringing Mia back to her hometown.
“Manager, I was thinking…”
The sudden rumble of thunder outside the window and the shrieks of Nadi and the girls downstairs cut off my sentence.
“Nadi!”
The store manager nimbly darted out of the room.
I hurried down after him. The ratman followed behind me as well.
When the three of us arrived downstairs, we saw Nadi and the young girls clutching one another.
“What’s wrong?!”
“B-boss…”
Half kneeling, the ratman kept a sharp eye on the entrance of the shop like a sentry.
However, I didn’t see any signs of an enemy on my radar.
Aside from Arisa wincing and crying “uncle” while Pochi and Tama clung to her on either side, there didn’t seem to be any problems at all.
I peeled the beastfolk girls off Arisa before they could suffocate her.
“What on earth…”
A crack of lightning cut me off this time.
Shortly thereafter, a trickle of rain quickly turned into a downpour, covering the outdoors with a dark curtain of rain in the blink of an eye.
Sitting down on the sofa with the girls on either side of me, I realized why they had screamed a few moments ago.
They had just been startled by a lightning strike.
The store manager used magic to light up the room.
The light illuminated Nadi’s face; clinging to the store manager’s arm, she looked frightened but happy. Inwardly cursing all happy couples everywhere, I forced myself to give her a begrudging smile.
I didn’t mind Arisa and Mia clinging to my arms, or even Tama’s fingernails digging into me as she curled up on my lap, but I wished Pochi had latched on somewhere other than my face. And that she would stop yanking on my hair.
I lifted Pochi up gently and sat her on my lap next to Tama.
“Th-thunder man is scary, sir!”
“Flash flash, baaang!”
“It’s so dark, sir!”
“And the trees are crackiiing?”
Pochi and Tama were panicking a bit, tearfully flailing their arms as they demonstrated the absolute terror of thunderstorms. Is it really that scary?
And worse yet…
“Thunder is really quite dangerous, you know! Really dangerous! Aaze told me so. A lightning strike can bring down even dragons, you know. Even dragons! It’s true!”
Wow, who are you supposed to be?
As if her usual unwillingness to talk was a figment of my imagination, Mia suddenly unloaded like a machine gun.
I’d never heard the name Aaze before. Maybe it was her mother?
“So are you afraid of thunder, too, Arisa?”
“…whuh, muh?”
Scared enough you can’t even talk, huh? Arisa’s face had gone white as a sheet, and she quickly burrowed into my arm.
I was concerned that she was going to try something funny again, but I could feel her stiffen with fear every time the thunder rumbled, so I guess there was nothing to worry about this time.
Tama was clinging to my chest, her head turned slightly to watch the rain outside.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, but an especially loud thunderclap drowned out my voice.
A flash of lightning illuminated a small shadow just outside. There was a dot of light on my radar, too.
Emerging from the curtain of heavy rain, a large owl flew inside and landed on the counter with a thud.
…It was the same owl from before. Was it taking shelter from the rain?
Its round eyes fixated on Mia.
An AR display gave me more information on the creature. It was designated a shadow owl, the same kind I’d seen the night I encountered the ratman.
That was all well and good, but its title was Zen’s Familiar. A real familiar? Now, that’s fantasy-like.
But…if it was a familiar, chances were good that it worked for a sorcerer.
In which case, the person commanding this owl might very well be the same sorcerer who kidnapped Mia.
And apparently, that sorcerer’s name was Zen.
I felt like I’d heard that name somewhere before… Oh, right—the protagonist from the play I’d seen with Zena and the others. I thought that tragic love story was based on a true story, but it must just be a coincidence. After all, the sorcerer Zen who was the protagonist of that story was executed at the end.
I tried to shake that useless information out of my mind.
For now, I had to deal with this familiar. I tried searching on the map for the sorcerer behind it, but when I searched the whole city and even the whole county, he was nowhere to be found.
…Where is he controlling it from?
For now, let’s just catch the familiar. If we don’t take away his eyes and ears, there’s no telling whether he might send monsters after Mia again.
Keeping an eye on the owl, I lifted Pochi and Tama from my lap and gave them to Arisa and Mia respectively, then stood up from the sofa to keep the four of them protected behind me.
The magic light cast a long shadow on the wall of rain behind the owl.
Something gushed forth from that dark shadow, and everything around me froze in place, as if time had stopped.
…Fear.
Yes, that figure was like the very embodiment of fear itself.
All of us were swallowed up by pure fear, forgetting even to blink. It was impossible to think of fighting against such a thing.
I wanted to scream and run away—the only thing stopping me was the need to protect the kids and my last remaining shred of pride. The girls under my protection were all that brought me back to my senses.
After a moment, the fear abated slightly.
Was it Arisa’s Psychic Magic?
With the tiny sliver of my mind that was still lucid, I was able to open the menu.
It was incredibly slow—like an ancient PC. Cursing it all the while, I opened the skill tab and scrolled down to the skill I needed.
After what felt like an eternity, I found what I was looking for.
The “Fear Resistance” skill.
I operated the menu with my mind to change it from Inactive to Active—and right away, time began to move again.
My mind became startlingly clear.
My field of vision, which had been constricted by fear, spread again like the tide going back out.
The sound of the rain, too, reached my ears once again.
Despite how long it had felt, it had been only seconds since the shadowy figure had appeared.
As proof of that, it was still in the middle of emerging from the shadow of the owl.
Though up until a moment ago it had seemed like an enormous opponent, I could tell now that he was only a little taller than me.
It was a hunched-over man in a dingy brown robe. His hood hung low over his eyes, obscuring his features.
Unlike the owl, which had flown inside, this guy had simply materialized here.
As if to confirm his abrupt arrival, a white point of light suddenly appeared on my radar. It turned to red almost immediately.
This must have been magic, although I didn’t know what kind.
I shifted my gaze to the AR display next to his head.
His name was Zen, his level very high at 41. Skills: “Unknown.”
I had a bad feeling about this. Was he another anomaly like heroes or Arisa?
Before I could read to the end, the sorcerer Zen took a step forward and glared at us, his line of sight settling on Mia.
I had a feeling that his eyes had lingered on Arisa and me for a moment before that, but maybe it was my imagination?
“I’ve come for you, Mia.” His voice wa
s like an undead creature’s that had crawled up from the depths of hell. Behind me, I felt Mia tremble as she hung on to my sleeve.
This must be the sorcerer who’d kidnapped her before, then.
Underneath the hood, his face was dark in spite of the magic that lit the room. All I could see were two small glints of violet light that smoldered like embers.
Since Mia was too frightened to speak, I responded in her stead.
“How do you do, Master Sorcerer? I am Satou, a merchant.”
“Hmph. I have no business with a lowly merchant,” Zen spat arrogantly. “Although, I’m impressed, descendant of a hero. To be able to speak so easily while being flooded with fear is a feat worthy of praise.”
Who are you calling a “descendant of a hero”?
If he was assuming that from my name and black hair, he must really be…
“I had planned to let you go, but if you’re going to oppose me, I won’t let you off so easily.”
Zen made a demonstration to give his words weight. He put his hand on the countertop, and the wood dried up and rotted in the blink of an eye.
I didn’t know if this was a spell or some magic tool, but in any case, it would be dangerous to let this guy touch me. I had the “Decay Resistance” skill, so I could probably endure it to an extent, but I had no desire to put that to the test.
In a game, a sorcerer opponent usually meant you had to be wary of magical attacks with a wide area of effect, but since his only goal seemed to be abducting Mia, we were probably safe from that here.
“I would prefer to abstain from violence, but Mia is a friend. I’m afraid I cannot let her be abducted against her will.”
“I wonder, would you still be saying that if I were to rot your right arm off like I did this wood?”
Zen crossed through the rotted remains of the counter, taking another step toward me.
“Is there no way I can convince you to leave us?”
“A foolish question. If you wish to protect Mia, then show me how brave you really are. My madness is not so shallow as to be stopped by mere words.”
Well, I guess I’ll take you up on that, then.
Being careful not to leave a pit in the stone floor, I dug in and aimed a punch at his abdomen, right in the solar plexus.