Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! Volume 4

by Funa

  All of the investigation team were here, alive and well. The Crimson Vow beamed internally.

  If they were honest, they would admit they thought the team’s chances of survival were slim to none, at best. They had hoped that if they were lucky, they would find their bodies. If they weren’t, their belongings and the manner of their death, which they would share with the guild. That the entire team was alive? The Crimson Vow were overjoyed. Given that the number of prey animals had decreased due to the changes in the environment, it wouldn’t have been unusual if the investigation team had been attacked by some starving predator. Compared to that, being captured by beastpeople was probably preferable. There was a chance of escape or rescue, at least.

  In truth, however, there were more than two parties who had gone missing. Perhaps they were also captured by these beastmen and killed or attacked by some fearsome creature.

  “Anyway, let’s get out of here. We can sit and discuss this once we’ve escaped,” Reina directed.

  “Roger that!” The Crimson Vow chirped in immediate reply, but the prisoners looked uneasy.

  “Even if we run, we’re up against beastmen. They have better night vision and a better sense of smell, not to mention they’re strong and agile. I don’t think we can outrun them. However, if it’s just the four of you, who they don’t know about, they probably won’t catch up. Go. Report to the guild and our lord! Then they can get a force together, and—”

  “We refuse,” said Mile.

  “Huh?”

  Stunned by her sudden refusal, the leader of the investigation team halted mid-sentence.

  “If go back without you all, we won’t get as high of a reward!” Beside her, Pauline nodded emphatically.

  “You idiots. If you get captured, then there’ll be no one to tell the guild! The whole thing will start all over again. If we have to go through this whole process again, who knows how long it’ll take for us to be rescued!”

  Clatter.

  As they argued, Mavis’s sword flashed. She cleft the sturdy lattice elegantly in twain, freeing the captives from their symbolic prison.

  “Whoa!” The captives exclaimed in shock and praise. Mavis shied away, suddenly bashful. She was freeing innocent prisoners from a villain’s lair. For Mavis, who longed to be a knight, there was no greater joy.

  “Wh…” The guard leader’s eyes went wide.

  Even wooden, the lattice wasn’t so cheaply made that a lady could do away with it with a mere swipe of her sword. Or at least, it shouldn’t have been. He had long since confirmed it was strong enough to prevent escape.

  Though it was unclear whether she read his thoughts, Mavis, having noticed the leader’s gaze, muttered with a self-deprecating smirk, “I may as well let you know now, but I’m the weakest of the bunch.”

  “No,” Pauline interjected as she cut through the prisoners’ fetters with a Water Cutter, “I’m the weakest.”

  The leader stared in slack-jawed awe. Just as Mile taught her, Pauline had increased the hydraulic pressure of the water by narrowing the surface area and mixing in grains of sand to create a cutting edge of startling strength and sharpness.

  “We don’t have time to chitchat! You’ll have plenty of time to argue once we get out of here. Now, let’s get going!” said Reina.

  The hunters nodded, standing one by one after rubbing life back into their freed legs. The leader, with no other choice, stood as well.

  “If we don’t put out the fire, the light will spill out when we open the door. Use your water magic to—”

  Mile interrupted the man again. “Oh, we aren’t going out from the front. But we probably should put it out, yes.”

  Following the leader’s advice, Mile extinguished the flame with a wave of her hand. Instantaneously. Without water.

  Whish!

  “Wh…?”

  Mile’s arm moved faster than the eye could see, drawing her blade, swinging it, and with the same swift movement, placing it back into its sheath. Then she firmly gripped the wall and pulled.

  Suddenly, a hole, wide enough for a crouching adult to pass through, opened up.

  “…”

  “Now, quickly!”

  Mavis hurried along the hunters, who were standing still for some reason. They sputtered wordlessly but silently slipped out through the hole one by one.

  Mile went at the head. She had the sharpest night vision, and with her detection magic, she would be the first to know if any monsters drew near. Plus, she could cut a path through the brush for the people following her. Just behind her was Reina, ready to back her with magical attacks.

  Mavis took up the rear, prepared to ward off attacks from behind. Pauline kept to the middle, prepped to handle any flanking attacks. She would also be able to jump to the front or the back at a moment’s notice.

  Naturally, the hunters had had their weapons taken away on capture, leaving them empty-handed and unable to fight. There were four mages among the freed captives, including both women, but of the four, only one man and one woman could use attack spells. It fell on the Crimson Vow to defend the group.

  As they moved from the open area into the woods, Mile had a sudden idea. She attached a piece of wood painted with a “magical luminescent material” to each person’s back. As they moved with their eyes to the ground, every so often they could look up and not lose sight of the person ahead of them. Naturally, she instructed them to remove the markers at the first sign of an enemy.

  Using a regular reflective material in the dark would be fruitless, so this was either a “material with stored luminescence,” or “something with luminous material mixed in.” However, Mile had passed the duty of making it entirely over to the nanomachines, so she had no idea which it was. So long as it didn’t contain radium and subject them all to radiation, as some materials like that did, it was fine.

  Once they were a fair distance away from the beastpeople’s camp, the group took a break. They were all exhausted. Dashing through the night taxed their physical and emotional strength, not to mention the general exhaustion of hiking through rough terrain. If anyone was injured or collapsed, it would be a huge problem, least of all because their speed would decrease by a great deal.

  The beastpeople had yet to notice their escape.

  As everyone rested, Mile selected a suitable tree and lopped off a nice-looking branch. And then another and another. When she had collected a good number of them, she whittled them all down at tremendous speed. Naturally, she did so where no one could see her. Then, her work done almost as soon as it had started, she returned to the others, items in hand.

  “Everyone, please choose one of these for yourself!”

  “Wh…”

  The hunters eyes went wide as saucers as the bundle clattered to the group, displaying an array of wooden swords and spears.

  “Wh-where did you…?”

  “Oh, I just made these.”

  “…”

  After several moments of silence, the hunters quietly began to select their arms. Naturally, as hunters who had purposely taken on a dangerous job, they were quite adaptable.

  Though made of wood, the swords and spears wouldn’t shatter or be cleft in a few strikes, even if they clashed with iron. Mile had chosen a firm and sturdy tree. Still, they weren’t invulnerable, especially if they came up against someone particularly skilled or with a very good sword.

  They had other uses as well, doubling as a staff or walking cane. They would brush branches and tall reedy grass away and ward off animals or monsters. Besides, having so many unarmed hunters would be troublesome. Even if they were all wood, the swords and spears would put them all at ease.

  The hunters’ expressions were already far more confident than they had been just a short while ago.

  Mm-hmm, all according to… plan.

  Shing!

  A single piercing gaze shot towards Mile.

  It was from a girl in her teens. The guild master’s daughter. Why was she looking at her like t
hat?

  Did she think it looked bad for a guild employee to be rescued by a band of girls the same age or even younger than her? Did she think it would sully her father’s reputation as the guild master?

  It would probably be best to try and curry her favor.

  Thinking this, Mile began to speak.

  “Um, we were asked by your father to look out for you…”

  “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!” the girl suddenly shouted.

  “Shhhhhhhhh!!!”

  Everyone turned as one to shush her. Even if they had gotten a fair distance away, it was still dangerous to make loud noises.

  “S-sorry about that…” the girl sincerely apologized. “A-anyway, you’re saying that you all met my f-father? Wh-where? When?!”

  The girl latched onto Mile’s words, her cheeks red and her eyes damp.

  “Huh? I mean it’s not like we just ran into him somewhere. When we were at the capital guild branch, he asked us, ‘Look out for my daughter…’”

  “Huh?”

  “Huh?”

  “Huh?”

  “Um…” a voice muttered from behind them.

  Mile turned to see the professor’s pupil—the airy, attractive assistant.

  “If you’re looking for the guild master’s daughter,” she said, “That’s… me.”

  “Huh?!” the Crimson Vow gasped.

  “No way! There’s no way a rough old dude like him could have a daughter like you!” Reina, as always, was incredibly blunt.

  The young woman sighed. “I hear that a lot…” She hung her head as though suddenly overcome with exasperation.

  “Hm? Then you must be the scholar’s assistant.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Huh?”

  Then who was this little girl? As the Crimson Vow nearly tore their hair out over this conundrum, another voice came from behind.

  “I’m the assistant,” the man in his forties said.

  “You are? Uhh, th-then, that means the professor is…”

  “That’s right! I am Doctor Clairia, or as you all put it, the ‘professor’,” the little girl quipped with a grandiose manner. She puffed out her nonexistent chest.

  “A dwarf?”

  “I’m an elf!”

  “Shhhhhhh!”

  “S-so sorry…”

  Chapter 29:

  Demonic Deeds

  Finally, the escape party was on the move again.

  They had hoped to discuss a number of things on their break, but between everyone catching their breath, Mile’s errand, everyone choosing weapons, and settling the commotion that followed, there was no time left to consider anything further.

  They couldn’t waste any more time and were likely to take more breaks anyway. They decided to talk more on their next rest. Carrying on heavy conversation while walking single file through the forest at night was beyond the abilities of most people anyway.

  After they had walked for some time, Mile picked up a strange reaction on her radar.

  Brown?

  If it was someone peaceful, they were blue; if they were hostile, red. Those who were neither were yellow. Anyone between those categories showed up in varying shades of the colors. But a little way ahead of them, there was brown. Was it brown, or was it ochre? Either way, they were incredibly close.

  The brownish marking was completely still, off to the side of their path. It was very near. And soon enough, she saw it.

  The droppings of an enormous animal.

  Apparently, the marking had been a warning against stepping, or rather, plunging into the pile. Pointless, but blessedly convenient.

  Oh, that’s right!

  As something flashed into Mile’s mind, she turned and indicated to the group behind her. “Watch out! There’s a big pile of poop over here. Anyway, let’s take another short rest up ahead.”

  The others behind her passed through, cautious of the droppings, then walked ahead until they found an appropriate place for a break.

  Mile stepped away, back to where she had been standing before.

  “Now, if I make a thin container out of earth, and strengthen the outside of it with a magical coating, and put some of this dung inside…”

  Naturally, she wouldn’t fill the vessel with dung by hand but with magic.

  Then Mile did something particularly suspicious.

  “The off-putting stench of a fart comes from proteins…gases like ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, indole, skatole, volatile amines, and so forth. Or so I remember reading…”

  She took some things from her inventory and placed them into the vessel, transforming and mixing them together with magic. Finally, she plopped a peculiar pebble down into it.

  This pebble was Mile’s handcrafted Magic Pebble of Extended Radiation. “For twenty-four hours, or until the container is broken, continue to generate heat,” she instructed, which the nanomachines clinging to the pebble had no choice but to obey. However, the moment that the pebble was dropped into the vessel, they understood their fate.

  Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh!!!

  From somewhere, tiny screams could be heard.

  After putting a lid on the vessel, she used magic to coat the outside, then carefully placed it in the crook of a tree. Then she took a white handkerchief from her pocket and tied it to the branch.

  It was a roundabout sign but clearly visibly. Plus, it had Mile’s scent, so there was little chance the beastmen would miss it.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she called as she moved. “Now let’s get going again!”

  Mile returned to the others, looking as though nothing at all were wrong. She took her place once again at the head of the line.

  ***

  Around sunrise the next morning, a guard headed toward the prisoners’ hut to relieve the night watch. When he opened the door, however, he was greeted with an alarming sight.

  The wooden lattice had been cut to pieces by something sharp edged. The fetters were shattered. The watchmen sat slumped in their chairs, unconscious. Worst of all, a large, semicircular hole had been ripped in the wall opposite the entrance.

  “Th-they’ve escaped!!!”

  The guard’s voice rang out across the camp.

  ***

  “Damn it, this is why I said build a sounder structure!”

  A recovery team was hastily thrown together. The man in charge grumbled as he ran.

  All told, the fact he hadn’t grumbled “We should’ve just killed them” was probably proof these beastmen weren’t bad people. However, good or bad, a soldier on the battlefield never hesitated to kill his opponent. That was the only thing to do. “Good” and “evil” were relative concepts, a judgment based only on the number of living creatures in the world.

  Well, no. No, perhaps there were even more things than that. Intelligent machines and other inscrutable creatures beyond the realm of the living…

  There were twenty beastmen in the quickly assembled team.

  Upon investigation, they realized the prisoners hadn’t retrieved their weapons, which meant the beastmen couldn’t fail—certainly not in a battle against empty-handed humans running through the forest. Ten of them alone could have easily apprehend the escapees, but there was a possibility others had come to their rescue. They had no way of knowing exactly how many rescuers there were or how many people in the forest. So for safety’s sake, they had formed a band of twenty.

  Someone questioned whether this might be the work of the female hunters they had encountered at midday. But that was unfathomable. A group of young girls who had been scared off by them earlier, attempting such a rescue? Unthinkable. Admittedly, it was suspicious that the interception team had come back so injured and that they had scared the girls off but not captured them. But that wasn’t an issue, not in the grand scheme of things.

  It wasn’t as though they had led the girls to the excavation site, or even let them know about its existence, after all. The girls met beastmen in the woods and ran home scared. That was all that
happened. So long as the girls hadn’t been injured, it was fine. Besides, it was best not to take more unnecessary prisoners.

  Or so the leader of the recovery team thought.

  If no real problems arose, then the humans wouldn’t bother the beastmen. Their relationship wasn’t particularly good in the first place, but they managed to maintain something like peace. And surely, both sides would want to avoid any circumstances that could lead to war.

  Should things between the beastmen and the humans turn sour, whoever was responsible would bear the brunt of the blame from their fellow humans. Acting rashly was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.

  And so long as no one found out what they were doing…

  They had to find those escaped humans.

  If the humans learned about the captives they had taken, it was unlikely they would do anything right away. So the beastmen would have some time, but they needed to prepare to retreat at a moment’s notice. They could probably manage that in another ten days.

  The humans, whose night vision was poor, couldn’t have gotten far in the middle of the night. Fatigue and diminished mental states would have slowed them down. Coupled with the brashness of the escape and their need for distance, by now they were sure to be exhausted and immobilized by injury. It was a truly foolish gambit.

  The leader considered these things as he followed the forward scout. A young thing, he had been selected based on his sharp sense of smell and vision, as well as his natural powers of deduction. The scout came to a sudden halt. The leader stopped just in time, only narrowly avoiding crashing into him. The rest of the recovery team stopped as well, gathering around to see what was going on.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Over there…”

  They followed his pointing to a tree, where a white cloth was tied to a branch like a sign post; in the crook sat a pot-like container.

  “What is that?”

  “Who knows?”

  There was no use in standing around pondering. Time was precious today. The longer they stood gaping at a tree, the further their targets got away.