by Kumo Kagyu
Apprentice Priestess took his hand gently. It was rough and covered in scars.
“…Was it pretty bad, this job?”
“We needed some money.” But, no. Goblin Slayer shook the helmet from side to side. “I was made to go along.”
Rookie Warrior swallowed heavily and squeezed Apprentice Priestess’s hand back.
“Well, we… We wanted to ask you something.” He took a single deep breath. His hands relaxed. “Why are you using a club?”
The answer came in a single swoop: “I stole it from a goblin.”
“S-stole it?”
“You throw a blade, or stab with it. It breaks or chips. Careful use can help, but a single sword is not good for more than five of them.”
That sort of sounded like an answer… And then again, sort of not.
Wait… Maybe it is.
“Hrrm,” grunted Rookie Warrior. Then he paused for a long moment. “What about rats or roaches?”
Now it was Goblin Slayer’s turn to grunt. “Rats or roaches?”
“…Yeah.”
“I couldn’t tell you.” But… He tapped the club at his belt. “…If you swing this and hit with it, you will damage them. At least you don’t have to worry about the blade chipping.”
Goblin Slayer rose from the bench, tremendously slowly. Priestess, who had been leaning on him, gave a shudder.
“It’s easy.”
“Easy…”
“I’m going,” he said briefly to Rookie Warrior, who stood thinking. Then the helmet turned to where Priestess was wiping the sleep from her eyes. “Resting?”
“Oh, n-no, I’m coming!”
“I see.”
Priestess stood, too, hurrying to keep up with the bold pace that carried him quickly away.
But just on the verge of setting off, she turned to the other two adventurers and gave a small bow.
“Oh, um—hey!” Apprentice Priestess said.
“Yes?”
It was now or never.
Apprentice Priestess had called out almost without thinking, but now Priestess tilted her head. “Can I help you?”
“Well, um, we just… Why are you covered in blood?”
“Oh…” Priestess murmured with a look of mild confusion. She blushed ever so slightly. “I…I’d just as soon you…not ask.”
“Oh…oh really?”
“Ah, b-but, I’m not hurt or anything, so don’t worry!” She gave Apprentice Priestess a tired but gallant smile. She was covered in sweat and dirt, but there was no hint of a shadow to her expression.
The level tag that hung at her neck was not Porcelain, but Obsidian.
Apprentice Priestess let out a breath.
“Hey…”
“Yes?”
“Sorry about before.”
“?”
“I think we seriously misunderstood what was going on.”
Priestess’s eyes widened, and she blinked several times. “—Don’t worry about it!” And then suddenly, the calm, serious girl gripped her staff with both hands. “It’s totally fine. I know how he looks, but he’s a good person…”
“Not coming?” a gruff voice called from a ways off.
“We should talk when we get a chance,” Priestess said, and then she bowed to the two of them. Putting one hand on her head to keep her cap on, she ran over to where Goblin Slayer stood.
“Anything wrong?” he asked.
But she replied, “No, nothing.”
“You’re exhausted?”
“Oh, no… Um. Well, maybe I’m a little tired.”
“Rest a bit.”
Even from a distance, the two of them could see Priestess smile just a little as she answered, “Yes, sir.”
Apprentice Priestess exhaled and shrugged her shoulders.
“I guess…”
“Huh?”
“We’ll have to try our best, too.”
“Uh-huh!”
With that, Rookie Warrior and Apprentice Priestess gently bumped their fists together.
§
“All riiiight! Here we go!”
“Okay, let’s go down the list!”
On the outskirts of town, just after dawn, with the bluish-purple haze of morning still hanging in the air, the voices of a boy and girl could be heard near the sewage ditch.
“Antidote!”
“Check!”
“First-aid supplies!”
“Ointments and herbs, check!”
“Light!”
“The lantern from the Adventurer’s Toolkit, some oil, and a torch! What about you?”
“The Seeking Candle… Umm, map!”
“Check! By which I mean I borrowed it when we accepted our quest.”
“Fair enough. Now, armor!”
“My leather armor still kind of stinks…my shield, too. Here, you give me a spin.”
“Me? It’s not like I plan to get attacked wearing these vestments.”
“I don’t care, just show me. Otherwise, what’s the point of a checklist?”
“Yeah, fine… Last, weapons!”
“Check!”
And with that, Rookie Warrior took his primitive, but brand-new, club in his right hand.
It was so pristine, it might still have had a price tag attached. The average buyer would have considered it a cheap item, but the young man could hardly think it so.
“Good,” Apprentice Priestess said, nodding at the club. She spread her arms wide and spun around once. The sleeves of her white garment puffed out. There were seams and tears in places, but it was still clean and attractive.
“Look okay?”
“You might want to do some mending later.”
“If I have anything to mend with…” Apprentice Priestess put her hands on her hips and, with a serious expression, gave a shout. “If we don’t meet our quota today, that’s it! We’re finished!”
“I don’t think things are quite that bad…”
“But that’s the attitude you have to go in with!”
Rookie Warrior seemed to be relaxed; Apprentice Priestess gave him a smart smack with her sword-and-scales. “We don’t even have the money to go back home. You would end up a serf, and I would be…you know…”
“A prostitute? Pfft, who would take you?”
“How dare you say that, jerk!” Her face turned bright red, and her elbow found the boy’s side—right where his armor was tied.
She looked at him quivering and writhing, and then she snorted.
“Anyway, you understand?”
“Y-yeah, I do, but… Well, yeah.” Rookie Warrior steadied himself, adjusted his grip on his items, and nodded energetically. “We’ll manage it somehow!”
This was a frontier town, one of the places people had labored to claim, and there was a sewer here because, of course, someone had built it.
It was one thing when a city was built above some old ruins, like the water town was, but there were no public services in an unoccupied field. Dwarven craftsmen and wizards, accomplished builders of all sorts, had been called in to create the stone sewer from scratch.
Had the sewer been built because the town was prospering, or had the town prospered because the sewer was built? Rookie Warrior did not know which had come first.
Heck, I don’t even know how it works.
Beyond the rusted metal doors and down a flight of stairs was a dim, dank stone dungeon.
A walkway ran along the canal that carried the wastewater, and a rotten stench drifted across everything.
Without hesitating, Rookie Warrior covered his mouth with a cloth; Apprentice Priestess scrunched up her face and put in nose plugs.
The sewer was new, but giant rats and giant roaches were drawn to filth.
For some reason, Non-Praying Characters—the NPCs—seemed to naturally appear in such places. All the more reason to get rid of them before some even bigger threat came along…
“So which way do we go?”
“Oh, um, hang on!”
As Rook
ie Warrior stood with what, for him, passed for constant vigilance, Apprentice Priestess hurriedly fished something out.
She took a flint and lit the lantern, then hung it at her waist. She opened it and touched the flame to the candle.
The Seeking Candle burned with a weird blue-white flame; she could feel it getting gradually warmer in her hand.
“…How is it?”
“It’s warm, but still just kind of…”
“Be sure to keep my sword firmly in your mind.”
They were there to find a sword, true, but they were also there to kill rats. They had a quota to meet.
Rookie Warrior, determined that they would accomplish everything they had come for, set off, turning down several sewer tunnels until finally they found themselves deep within.
It was the nest of the giant rats, which they had finally located after their many dives in search of it.
“…Ooh, here they are.”
Perhaps it was the current that brought so much of the food waste from town here.
That was what the oversized rats were after. One of them, two…
Rookie Warrior spat on his hand and rubbed it into the hilt of his weapon, then he dove at the creatures.
“Yaaaaaahh!”
“GYUUI?!”
One of them fled from him, but he took the one that was focused on its meal.
There was a blunt sound of impact that was entirely different from striking with a sword. He felt the weapon connect with the lump of flesh.
The giant rat screeched and tumbled away, but it was still alive.
“You—die—now!”
He had long ago discarded any sense of sympathy for the monsters. It was kill or be killed. If they got their teeth in his windpipe, it was he who would die.
“Whoa! Yah!”
The giant rat jumped up and leaped at him, fangs bared.
Rookie Warrior met it with his shield, throwing his weight behind it in a body blow. His left arm, the one with the shield on it, tingled with the impact of a hunk of meat weighing nearly ten kilograms.
“Why—you—!”
But Rookie Warrior had the advantage when it came to body weight.
He braced himself against the grimy walkway to keep from tumbling, then brought his club down on the rat’s head.
There was no technique, no secret. A back-alley fistfight had more sophistication.
“GYU?!”
There was a crack like the breaking of a wet branch as the rat’s spine broke. Another blow. The giant rat twitched.
He checked that its eyes were empty, and only then did Rookie Warrior finally wipe the sweat from his brow.
“Wh-what about the o-other one…?!”
“It already ran away.”
Rookie Warrior scanned the area, while the girl nervously holding the sword-and-scales let out a breath.
She walked briskly up to him and with a practiced eye checked him over for any wounds.
Rookie Warrior closed his hand as if making sure it still worked, then opened it; then he shifted his arms and legs as well.
He was unhurt. He hadn’t been bitten. The rat was frothing blood, but none of it had gotten on him.
“I’m…fine.”
“…Looks like it.”
Good. Apprentice Priestess nodded. They wouldn’t need to use their antidote or any of their healing items.
“So how did the club work out?”
“I’m not real sure yet…” Rookie Warrior gave a careless swing of the weapon. It wasn’t sharp like a sword, but it was heavier than one, and that made it feel oddly trustworthy. “But I do know that if I hit something with it, it dies.”
He couldn’t help a sigh, thinking how far he was from the breezy attitude of Spearman or the sturdiness of Heavy Warrior.
It was just one rat.
But it was a good start.
§
“What’s the candle say?”
“Hm…I guess this way is a little warmer?”
Each time they came to a fork in the road, Apprentice Priestess would hold up the candle to find the right direction, and then they would proceed.
Unfortunately—if perhaps predictably—the sword was not where they had left it after the previous day’s battle. Maybe the giant rats had carried it off, or the giant roaches had pushed it aside…
“They’re not goblins. They aren’t just hoarding loot.”
“Hey, don’t say that, it’s scary.” Apprentice Priestess glared at Rookie Warrior and gave him another jab with her elbow. “If they were really goblins living under this town, it wouldn’t be funny.”
“For sure.”
Then they would have to ask Goblin Slayer for more than just advice.
They continued their diligent search, complaining about the stench.
Along the way, they met—and dispensed with—a total of three giant rats. And one giant roach.
The club was soon covered in a thick slime, already speaking to the story of its battles.
“I guess I didn’t think about how it would make blood and…are those brains? …splatter.”
“Well, you saw how dirty that goblin guy—” Apprentice Priestess stopped herself. “How dirty Goblin Slayer got.”
The new weapon was heavy, too, and having to swing it over and over in battle tired him out much quicker than a sword.
“But I like how you can just swing it without having to aim.”
“Just try not to lose it or anything.”
“Yeah—”
Rookie Warrior grunted his agreement with this opinion as he peeked around a corner.
There only seemed to be regular-sized rats there at the moment, so there was no problem.
Beckoning to Apprentice Priestess behind him, he went ahead one step at a time.
Apprentice Priestess gave a little yelp at the rats’ long tails as they stepped around the rodents.
“Oh, yeah…”
“What is it? Got another silly comment to make?”
“No.” Rookie Warrior shook his head hurriedly, checked to the left and right to make sure they were safe, then sat in the path. “Do we have any string?”
“Will rope work?”
“Too thick.”
“I’ve got some string for holding my hair back…”
“Thanks.”
She dug through her bag, then handed the hair tie to him, saying, “Be sure to give it back.” Then she crouched next to Rookie Warrior and watched intently as he set to some kind of work.
“When we get some money, I’ll buy you a new one.”
“It comes out of your share, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
The job was fine, but simple enough. He wrapped the string firmly around the handle of the club until it made a loop of a specific size.
When he put his hand through it to hold the club…
“See? Now I won’t drop it.”
“Hmm…” Apprentice Priestess inspected the jury-rigged strap closely, then gave a snort. “That’s a pretty good job, for you.”
“Ouch, that hurts.”
“When we get back, I’ll put on a better one for you.”
Apprentice Priestess stood with a giggle, but when she lifted the candle to check it—
“Whoa, yikes!”
—she nearly dropped it, frantically adjusting her grip to keep a hold on it.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Rookie Warrior stood, too, holding his club in case there was trouble.
He was inexperienced, but still looked around carefully, his shield up. The girl shook her head.
“It-it’s nothing. Just…the candle’s getting hotter and hotter.”
“It’s getting hotter? So that means…”
He could see that the bluish-white flame of the Seeking Candle had grown noticeably larger.
Rookie Warrior and Apprentice Priestess looked at each other.
“We must be getting close.”
It was critically good luck that allowed him to sense that somethi
ng was coming at them from above.
Rookie Warrior immediately moved to cover Apprentice Priestess, giving her a shove as he got them both out of the way.
“Eek! Wh-what are you—!”
“Idiot, look!”
It was like a massive black lump.
It must have been six feet long, almost twice the usual size. It had a lustrous carapace and six spined legs, and it was waving antennae that looked like lengths of thin steel wire and gnashing its sharp-toothed jaws.
“What’s the candle say…?!”
“It’s really hot!”
“Don’t tell me it’s inside that thing!”
The bug—it was beyond giant, a huge roach—scuttled toward them. The two screamed and started running.
§
“Wh-wh-what do we do?!”
“I wish I knew…!”
The massive black insect crawling indiscriminately across ceiling, floor, and walls was more than a little terrifying.
The pursuit itself wasn’t the only scary thing. It was the thought of being eaten alive by that creature.
They hadn’t become adventurers just to become a feast for some rats or roaches…!
“It’ll catch us at this rate…!”
That they were still safe as they dashed desperately through the sewers was thanks to the speed of their reaction and the distance they’d had to begin with.
A giant roach was nowhere near as agile as a human—at least not a Porcelain-ranked adventurer.
But it was obvious they didn’t have long before it caught and devoured them.
We have to get to the surface before… No, we’ll never make it…!
They would have to climb a ladder to get aboveground. If they were attacked at that moment, it would be over. Regular roaches could fly. Giant ones probably could, too.
“How about we jump in the water?!”
“A lot of good that will do us if we catch the plague!”
“Okay then… A narrow tunnel! Maybe it won’t be able to follow us!”
“It won’t work! Roaches are extremely flexible!”
A narrow passageway might give them a moment’s respite, but then the bug would squeeze itself in with them. Just the thought was enough to give him a chill. No tunnels, then.
“We have to fight!”
“But how?!”
The scratching made him viscerally sick, and it was coming closer.
Rookie Warrior looked down at the club in his hand.
If he hit the roach enough times, it would die. He was sure of that. But how to do it?