“It could be dangerous to pursue any further,” Ruey said, carefully.
“Yep,” I agreed.
One’s thoughtlessness and the preference for flashiness is usually proportional. Ruey was the only one in our party with an expertise in military strategy. If I wasn’t going to honor his opinion, there would have been no point in bringing him along.
“Shall I advance alone and scout it out?” Hieronymus suggested.
After a moment, I shook my head. If our enemy was a gang of bandits or something, one Cait Sith could take care of them. This time, though, they were a vicious monster army. They could spot him even if he tried to conceal his presence. If they did, he could be captured and even killed. I couldn’t take that risk.
“Let’s be careful. Lord Hieronymus, this time, we should look before we jump.”
There could come a time where we would have to gamble. No, there definitely would be such a time, but that wasn’t now. There was nothing to gain from taking a risk here.
“Our plan isn’t to attack them, anyway. We just need to follow them slowly and carefully so as to not lose their tracks,” Tiamat concluded.
There was no need to catch up to them and finish them off. There was no need to fight at all, in fact. The monsters were undoubtedly headed back to their home base. It would have been stupid to jump right into the traps they set to protect against follow-up attacks. So we continued following them.
Two days had passed when we came upon the abandoned base of the monster army, where we had expected them to ambush us.
“No trap, and not a soul to be found. What’s going on?” said Baze, after doing a lap through the place.
In the sudden clearing in the forest, a poorly constructed fort (most likely by goblins and orcs) stood on its lonesome.
“I... get it... That’s what happened...”
Ruey stood still, defeated.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sir Eiji. I am so sorry. They got us good.”
Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about. Was it that bad for us that there were no monsters here?
“It’s that bad, Eiji. Hieronymus and I took a little walk just now.”
“Their tracks can be found in every direction, making it difficult for us to tell which directions they retreated in. Isn’t that so, Lady Tiamat?”
Ruey finished Tiamat’s thought, as she returned with an exasperated expression. He was only double checking.
“Mm. Wool over our eyes.”
“What? What do you mean, Tia?”
“My father once told me... just making the enemy consider a trap can disrupt their decision making.”
Ruey was the one who answered me. Expecting an ambush, we followed the trail slowly. That was the monsters’ trap all along. In that time, they set up the place to conceal the direction they took, making for a successful escape. Our carefulness gave the enemy enough time to do it. If I had at least taken Hieronymus’ suggestion for him to scout out ahead, we could have avoided this situation. It was all too late, though.
“We leaned too far over the edge to look before we jumped, and fell right in. They won this round of mind games, Eiji. Hands down,” Tiamat said.
“What a mess...”
7.
We couldn’t spend all our time lamenting our loss. If it meant that our situation would improve, I would happily dance the Para Para or the Lambada, but that would be totally pointless.
“The former, by the way, is a disco dance born in Japan during the late 1980s; the latter was born in South America. They were both popular around the same time, but many discos at the time banned the dances for being too provocative.”
Thanks for the detailed explanation, Tiamat. But why was she waving me over? I can’t dance the Lambada.
“You just said you would. What a filthy liar you are.”
“Only if it would... Sorry. I lied. I can’t dance the Lambada or the Para Para. Please have mercy on my soul.”
I begged desperately, yet self-deprecatingly. I mean, it kind of felt like Tiamat would pull all sorts of tricks and solve our problem just to make me do the dance. No? Just me?
“Hm. Think about what you did.”
What a generous gesture of forgiveness. Damn it. Just you watch, one of these days I will make her rue this moment!
“Right. Ruety-rue-rue.”
“Errrrkk!”
“Tracks lead in every direction except due west, where we came in from.”
Disregarding our stupid conversation, Ruey was contemplating our next move, holding a map open.
“The discussion as to which tracks are real may be pointless, Lord Ruey. We have no way of discerning whether they plan to rendezvous somewhere or plan for each team to return of their own merit.”
Hieronymus was the one discussing with him. So sorry. I really am the useless one.
“There are the most tracks headed east, out of the bunch. That’s their main party.”
Even Baze sounded more reserved than normal. We couldn’t help but be more trepidatious after falling for their trap once.
“It could be a mislead to make us think so, or it could really be the direction they went in.”
Ruey shrugged. Someone once said that the most effective traps are set on your opponent’s mind. Determined not to fall for it again, we were being timid. Even though we knew that the enemy did this to buy time, we hesitated to take swift action.
“It would be a foolish decision for us to split up, too,” said Tiamat.
“Yep.”
Since I had no combat skills, I would pair up with Tiamat. Ruey would partner with Baze, and Hieronymus, who had smarts and situational awareness, would go solo. We could have split into three, but what was the point of breaking up our already meager force? Once we split up, it wouldn’t be easy to make contact with each other, either.
“Thought Speech can only go about a kilometer, max,” Tiamat added.
Maybe we could use it while we were in a town, but that was about it.
“Oh.”
“Light bulb, Eiji?”
“Let’s go in the direction with the least amount of tracks.”
“How come?”
“Because it’s probably not their biggest party.”
I needed to explain myself. If we try to catch their main party, we would be disappointed if we were wrong. Then, why not go in expecting one of the decoy parties?
“You go down the wrong path first in dungeons too. There could be treasure chests at the end.”
Stick to the correct path, and you might not get a chance to crawl that dungeon again. I wouldn’t want to leave a collectible behind.
“In video games, maybe.”
“Right. There’s no reason to go the long way in real life. But we don’t know the right path, anyway.”
It wasn’t important for us to pick the right path. No matter which set of tracks we followed, there would be monsters at the end of them. And those monsters would eventually return to their home base or meet up with the main party.
“And, maybe if they’re really small in numbers, we could capture them and make them talk, I think.”
A monster put in charge to lead a separate party could be a higher-up in their army. I didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but that monster could very well have some information.
“Hm... Not a bad idea, Lord Eiji.”
Hieronymus, who had been pondering my suggestion, cracked a grin. Beside him, Ruey gave a big nod.
With Baze back in Fenrir mode leading the pack, we restarted our tracking. Baze guessed that we were following a group of fifty or so, but couldn’t make out an accurate number since many of the tracks were covered or planted.
“An attempt to throw us for a loop. They have that much intelligence, at least. We mustn’t underestimate them.”
“Indeed.”
Tiamat and Hieronymus poofed out of their human forms. Since we weren’t in a town, there was almost no point in staying human. It seemed mo
re beneficial to be ready to use their full power, rather than be a little more concealed.
We were headed south, generally speaking. Tiamat was beside me, as Ruey led our party and Hieronymus remained rearguard.
“I wonder how much distance they’ve put between us.”
“Not sure. Most likely two or three days’ worth,” Tiamat answered.
With some simple math, that’s about sixty to ninety kilometers. Although, since we weren’t traveling along a road but through the woods with poor visibility and uneven ground, I doubted that said distance was unrecoverable. Especially when there were so many more of them than us. There was no reason for their party to travel faster than us.
“If we keep going in this direction, though, we may be in for a little bit of trouble,” Ruey said, holding the map in his left hand.
We were in the woods as we spoke, but were coming up on a travel road if we kept heading south. Naturally, there were also towns and villages in that direction. I couldn’t predict whether or not the monsters would simply travel past any settlement. Even if they tried to, the residents of those settlements could overreact. Would they choose fight or flight? The latter would be all right, but there would be bloodshed with the former.
“Definitely want to avoid that.”
“When you say things like that...”
“Boss Man. I smell blood in the air.”
Baze gave a sharp warning, interrupting Tiamat.
“See. Nice tee-up.”
“My fault?! Was that my fault?!”
“No time to goof around. Your call, Boss Man.”
Baze was right. I made a snap decision.
“Let’s catch up to the source, quick. Can you go ahead, Tia? Lord Baze?”
“No. It would be too dangerous to divide us here,” said Tiamat.
“But going as fast I can isn’t quick enough.”
“Forget it. Boss Man. Ruey. Hop on.”
“Okay.”
I felt like I would have been scorned for turning him down, so I climbed onto Baze’s back... with Ruey’s help. There was plenty of room on the Fenrir’s back, even with two grown men on it. In fact, his fluffy fur was very comfortable. Tiamat’s scales were cold, and not fluffy at all. And she wasn’t big enough for me to ride on her back.
“Let’s go. Hold on tight.”
With a kick off of the ground, Baze accelerated. It was fast. And scary! There was no way I could sit up anymore. I held on to Baze with all of my limbs. He was sprinting in the woods, weaving through the trees. A roller coaster would have been a little less thrilling than this.
I kept my face down too, to keep any branches from flying into my eyes. Then Ruey covered me, protecting me with his own body. I was grateful, but what did that say about my role in the party?
The air roared passed us. As my vision closed in, I spotted Tiamat and Hieronymus. The dragon princess was flying very low and very fast, while the feline gentleman ran like a predator on the savannah. Right. Being on Baze’s back seemed like the safest option, after all.
8.
We came to the crime scene within minutes. The goblins were attacking a town. While some armored residents, perhaps a town watch, were fighting them back, they were clearly losing. Their numbers were too different to begin with. Against the twenty or so residents, there were nearly one hundred goblins. They didn’t stand a chance.
“Tia!”
“Mm. Lowest setting to not destroy the town, got it.”
Still flying low to the ground, Tiamat opened her mouth. Then a beam of light swiped through the air with a roar. Her Laser Breath. A dozen goblins evaporated without so much as a scream.
Dumbfounded, the humans and monsters pause their brawl. While the pause only lasted long enough for a few grains of sand to fall in an hourglass, that’s all Baze and Hieronymus needed.
Ruey jumped off with me in his arms, and the Fenrir sped up faster and ran straight through the group of monsters. A beat later the heads of those goblins flew off, setting off fountains of blood. What was he, Blade Liger? Where was his blade, anyway? Besides, I thought he was a wolf, not a mix of a lion and a tiger.
“Lord Baze puts on quite the show.”
Hieronymus grinned like a mad cat. He waved his right front paw in a swish. That’s all it took for the goblins to turn their weapons against each other. The sudden betrayal sent the enemy battalion in a tizzy, naturally. Hieronymus’ spells were pretty nasty too. Seizing that opportunity, Ruey charged into battle, swinging his sword left and right.
“We came to help! Now’s our chance! Fight back!” he shouted.
The town’s warriors shifted from hopeless, to astonished, and now overjoyed.
With powerful roars, they attacked with renewed vitality. The battle was decided right there. Without putting up much of a fight, the goblins were taken out one by one. It was a matter of time before they were all killed. However, leaving every last one of them dead wasn’t too good for us. We needed to gain some information. Since we could no longer follow the party back to home base, we couldn’t let that information slip away.
“That looks like the leader over there. Let’s take him alive.”
Tiamat, who had been standing beside me, flapped her wings and went. I always wondered how she could fly with those little wings. I don’t think the laws of aviation applied to her.
She went directly to the large goblin she pointed out. A boss goblin, goblin chief, or the like. Dodging the slashes of its sword (dealt with an off-key scream), Tiamat grabbed the goblin by its neck and threw it high up in the air like a volleyball. Of course, a goblin couldn’t fly like a dragon could. It started to descend according to gravity. Tiamat caught the goblin with her tail, and tossed it right back into the air again.
I realized what this was. I read it in a comic book once. It’s the thing brown bears do to their prey to make it completely give up on resisting. After three or four tosses, the goblin boss sulked powerlessly. She didn’t kill it, did she?
As Tiamat was toying with it, the rest of the goblins were annihilated. I doubted that all of them were killed, though. Since their boss was being toyed with, the goblins were cowering, completely in retreat mode. A few goblins weren’t too much of a threat to a town though. The town watch or an adventurer could take care of them.
“Looks like that’s a wrap.”
Tiamat came back, dragging the dizzied goblin boss. What a wild girl she was.
“Let’s tie him up, I guess.”
I didn’t expect the goblin to fight back anymore, but we couldn’t very well leave him to his own volition. I didn’t know any fancy knots, but I figured if I just tangled him up with the rope... That’s when I realized that Mister Donkey wasn’t with us! He had all of my stuff! Right. We had left him behind when we hopped onto Baze.
“What am I going to do, Tia... Donkey gone...”
“You’re a grown man, don’t cry. It’s pathetic.”
“But...”
Mister Donkey had all of my things, including my wallet, food, and water. I’d lost everything.
“He’s headed our way at his leisure. Now that we’ve caught our breath, Baze or Hieronymus can go get him.”
“For real?! He’s not a lost little donkey?!”
“He can handle himself twice as much as you can, Eiji. Don’t worry.”
I didn’t know about those numbers. Only a double of me was still pretty bad.
I turned around to see someone running toward us from the town. It was an old, skinny man, most likely the mayor. He greeted Ruey, full of gratitude. He must have thought that Ruey was our leader. I get it; I would have thought the same!
Assuming that Ruey would explain our situation for us, I went back to keeping an eye on the goblin. Oh, I did have my shortsword drawn from my belt, by the way. I didn’t think I’d hit anything if I swung it, but keeping a weapon drawn would deter the goblin from putting up a fight.
There seemed to be a lot of injuries to the people of the town too, as Hieron
ymus was over there casting healing spells. He really was a jack of all trades. No wonder girls liked him. Soon the man from the town was brought to us by Ruey.
“Master Hermit. Thank you for saving our town from certain death.”
He dove to the ground. Not kneeling, but completely flat on the ground.
“Please, stand up. Of course we would help anyone being attacked by monsters. Anybody would, Hermit or human.”
I sheathed my shortsword and gave him a smile. I had passed on the duty of goblin-watch to Ruey. Baze walked past us, apparently to go get the donkey.
Godspeed, good man! That donkey has everything of mine!
As I thought of those things, I helped the man up. There were rushed introductions. His name was Dolitos, the mayor of the town of Wulds, which was about a tenth of the size of Mostail. I thought that would make Wulds a village, but in this world, the population of a settlement didn’t determine its classification. If the people called their settlement a town, it was a town. With how small it was, of course, there was no army there.
Dolitos was another representative, appointed by the noble that owned these lands. If I delved into this representative system it would get really complicated, so the short version is that powerful people in a village or town are usually the ones appointed for the job. So, most of the time, a representative was also the mayor.
What the town had was a town watch. Sometimes adventurers would join in, but there was no one officially trained in a military or specialized in strategy. They were at a level where they might have been able to deal with goblins of the same number as them.
The total number of town watch members and adventurers in Wulds was only sixteen. They wouldn’t have stood a chance against a horde of a hundred goblins. There was no option to run, either, as their town was being attacked. Mister Dolitos had resigned himself to death, too. That’s when we came in.
“Lord Eiji. Everyone has been treated. Fortunately, no one was embraced by death.”
No deaths. That was the best news we could get. I remember seeing some people with very serious injuries, but Hieronymus took care of them.
“That’s great. Then we just have to make him talk and tell us where their home base is.”
Isekai Rebuilding Project: Volume 2 Page 8