by Funa
After re-supplying the bath with hot water many times over, Mile announced she was turning in early, having grown rather sleepy, and crawled up into bed. As long as Pauline and Reina were present with their water and fire magic, and as long as the tanks were filled up once, there shouldn’t be any issues with the water supply. Not with the magical adjustments Mile made to the supply, anyway.
***
IT IS TIME TO AWAKEN.
Very early in the morning, before the sun had begun to rise, Mile was roused to consciousness by a voice reverberating in her eardrums.
Mm, why so early? It’s still dark… Ah, right. Thanks, nanos.
OUR PLEASURE.
Mile, who had employed the nanomachines in the frivolous task of serving as her alarm clock, cast some cloaking magic on the room. She cautiously slipped out of bed.
Mavis, who was raised as a noble, was no issue. Nor was Pauline, who grew up mostly out of the line of danger. The one she had to worry about was Reina. She grew up sleeping outdoors as a traveling merchant and had lived for a long time as a hunter. She always slept with one eye open. It was thanks to her that Mile cloaked her actions with magic and took extra caution in her movements.
Carefully, she took everything the others had her store for them out of her inventory. She gently placed it all upon the floor. Their canteens and blankets. Their saucepans, forks, and spoons.
Without Mile around, they wouldn’t be able to transport their cauldron and tent anyway, so she held onto those. In exchange, she left them a large, equivalent sum of gold pieces.
Then she placed about four-fifths of the party’s stores on the floor. She muttered softly, “Thank you for everything, all of you… Be well!”
With that, she silently slipped out of the room.
Ever since they left the excavation site, Mile had been fretting.
Should she pretend nothing had happened and continue to seek happiness as a normal girl? Or should she stick her nose into the matter at hand?
It was possible this incident might eventually affect the human world. Dragons, however, lived a very long time. An elder dragon’s plan might take hundreds, or even thousands, of years to fully enact.
Also, the one who had said “the progress of civilization has stalled” was a god, a being with a far different sense of time than humans. A world that had been “stalled” for thousands, tens of thousands, or even a hundred thousand years, wasn’t going to transform overnight.
Mile sighed. All she wanted was a normal, happy life.
However, the more she thought about it, Mile’s definition of “normal” was not like other people’s at all.
She wanted to stay up late reading and playing games. She wanted to eat delicious things, live somewhere safe and clean, and travel now and then. By the standards of this world, that was a noble’s life—a dream far out of the reach of commoners.
Could she keep carrying on as a leaf on the breeze, living as a hunter with the others? Could she keep doing nothing, knowing that one day the world might simply crumble beneath her feet?
It wasn’t as though she could stand beside her companions forever. Except for Reina, they all had families and hopes. Mavis had dreams of becoming a knight, and Pauline would likely return to her family someday. She’d probably marry. And it wasn’t as though either Reina or Mavis intended to stay unwed for the rest of their lives, either. At the very least, they hoped not…
Somehow, someday, they would have to part. It wouldn’t be strange if that “someday” came now rather than later.
At least now, the party had a fair bit of money saved up and time to rest. They could use it to search for new party members—people who could serve as Mile’s replacement. Perhaps two more sword-wielders, or one swordswoman and a lancer; two would be good. That way the C-rank party, the Crimson Vow, could continue without difficulty.
Mile could live a carefree life on the road, saving up for the day she retired, taking any opportunity she could to investigate the ruins along the way. She wouldn’t have to hurry or feel trapped by obligation. She could just carry on the investigation, incidentally, in her spare time.
Though it wasn’t her responsibility, well, she was interested. So why not stick her nose into things a bit?
Mile didn’t presume to change the world. However, she also had no intention of getting her friends caught up in anything else.
She had left home to go to school alone. She had run away and become a hunter alone. Now, for a third time, she was striking out alone. That was all there was to it.
It was a decision. She was firm in her decision to leave.
Animentary: “Decisions.” Episode 16: “Withdrawing from the Isle of Kiska”… “A ‘mirakulis kalling’?”
As always, Mile was thinking about something nonsensical.
It happened when she quietly descended the stairs and tried to pass through the dining room. The faint scent of hot tea drifted to her nostrils.
“…Hm?” Unthinkingly, she stopped. Then a voice called out to her from the darkness.
“You’re late.”
Startled, Mile focused and peered into the inky blackness of the room.
With her superhuman night vision, she saw the table with one of its chairs pulled out, and Reina sitting in that chair, a teacup in hand.
“R-Reina! Wh-what are you…” Mile was stunned, but Reina looked quite pleased with herself.
“You’re too easy to read. I noticed you’ve been thinking a lot, and after you handed the gear over to those hunters, you had this look that said, ‘Now everything is in order.’ I figured you out. I hope you never take up life as a con artist.”
Naturally, Mile had never considered such a career choice.
“But your bed…”
“That was a rolled-up blanket. I left the room while you were asleep. You’re always the last to go to sleep, so saying you were going to bed early was as good as declaring that you planned to wake up in the middle of the night and make your escape.”
“Er…”
“All right then, let’s go!” Reina stood. She was completely geared up, apparently lying in wait because she intended to go with Mile.
They couldn’t stand around talking inside the inn in the middle of the night. Someone else might wake up. And it was bad manners, besides. Mile silently nodded and headed for the entrance.
She opened the door and stepped outside, when…
“My princess, might this humble knight accompany you?” Mavis asked, leaning against the wall, a rose between her lips.
Hwhaaaaaaaaahhh?!?!
It was far too picturesque!!! Mile fainted on the inside.
“All right, let’s get going!” Reina declared, moving forward again.
Mile hurriedly stopped her, “Uh, w-wait a minute!”
“What’s wrong?”
“U-um, could we wait another day before we leave?” Mile nervously proposed.
“Why’s that?”
“Um, if we all just leave without saying anything, it’s going to look pretty bad. Like we just ran off in the middle of the night. It would be one thing if it were just me, but if we’re all leaving, we better say something to everyone at the inn and the guild. Also…”
“Also?”
“Most of our gear and money is still up in the room…”
“Let’s go back!”
What they found when they returned to the room, however, was Pauline, collapsed on the floor and half in tears.
“Ah…”
Not one of the three dared to resist as Pauline wordlessly battered them with her fists.
***
They finally got back to sleep around dawn and slept in fairly late. After just squeaking in meal orders before the close of breakfast hours, they headed to the guild.
Pauline was in an incredibly bad mood, her eyes still red.
They had spent a long while talking, desperately trying to soothe Pauline once she finally calmed down a bit.
“Why would you leave me
behind?! This is just like last time! Are you all saying I’m just some unwanted chiiiiiiiiiiiiiild?!”
“Shhhhhhhhh!!!” In an inn with thin walls, screaming in the middle of the night was unforgivable.
Not that they had received any complaints from the other guests. They probably wouldn’t receive any complaints.
On the contrary, the other guests who were now awake were undoubtedly cupping their ears against the walls, listening with interest. For better or worse, the Crimson Vow had become minor celebrities around the place, so if someone could overhear a quarrel between them, they were sure to have the juiciest gossip around.
Mile quickly put up a sound-dampening barrier.
Seeing such a spirited display from Pauline, who was normally so gentle—smiling even as she plotted foul deeds—left the others bewildered. If any of them were in her shoes, they would have been livid as well, but because it was Pauline, they had assumed things would be fine. However, that was too much to expect of someone still only fifteen years old. Of course, their own youth was the direct cause of such an imprudent decision, anyway.
“N-no, we weren’t trying to leave you behind, Pauline! I just realized Mile was going to run off on her own. So I thought I would tag along with her. I was worried about her being alone… It just so happened that Mavis had realized the same thing, and we were both independently lying in wait for her…”
“And then you were both going to leave, just like that, weren’t you?! I can tell from the way you’re dressed! Why didn’t you tell me?! Do you hate me for not realizing it, too?! Why?!”
The two were stunned silent. Mile pretended she wasn’t even there.
She had planned to leave all three of them behind equally, so she was secure in denying any of the blame in this.
This was what people usually considered “negligence.” Or at the very least, “wishful thinking.”
Pauline’s gaze slowly creaked toward Mile’s direction.
“And you. Spill it. Tell us everything, now!!”
“Eep! Yes ma’aaaaaaam!!”
And so, she told them everything.
“I come from a noble household in another country. I was chased out of my home due to succession issues.”
“We know that.”
“The royal family was after me, so…”
“We know that, too.”
“I possess extraordinary magic and knowledge of magical principles…”
“We know.”
“Uh…”
Finally, leaving out the matters of God and her rebirth, which she would never reveal to a single soul, as well as the basic principles of how magic functioned, she coughed up almost all of her secrets.
“I’m worried about what those elder dragons are truly after… But there’s no point in us taking action because of it. We might not see the results or effects of what they’re doing until centuries from now. So I thought I would live a carefree life on the road, checking in on the matter now and then when I needed to kill time.
“I didn’t want to drag people who have their own lives and ambitions on such a purposeless, aimless journey. I thought… I thought I would just leave our party’s fortunes behind and set out on my own.”
Mavis appeared to accept the explanation, but Reina wasn’t through with questioning.
“That’s all? Is that really all? There isn’t something else you were hoping to do, is there?!”
“Y-yes! I thought that if I met a nice man along the way, I would put down roots wherever he was and start a happy life theeeeeere!!!”
Mile had been forced to cough up so much that she doubted she could even bring up bile now.…
***
“Tomorrow, we’re leaving the capital!”
“Oh, sure. Which job request are you taking?”
“It’s not for a job. We’re setting off on an international tour.”
“Whaaaaaat?!?!” At Mavis’s announcement, the receptionist, Laylia, all the hunters listening in, and the guild employees shouted.
“Wh-wh-wha…? Please come with me! You need to speak with the guild master!”
The four of them waited outside the guild master’s office while Laylia went in ahead to explain. Afterwards, they were invited inside.
“What is the meaning of this?!” the guild master roared, spittle nearly flying from his mouth. “You all graduated from the Hunters’ Prep School, didn’t you?! You received a tuition-free education on our tax money, with the understanding that you would continue to work in this country for at least five years in exchange, didn’t you?!?!”
“Ah, yes, I guess so,” Mile replied, casually.
“Don’t you, ‘I guess so,’ me! If you know that, then what are you doing leaving on an ‘international’ journey?! Around the country would be one thing but other countries?!”
The guild master was becoming more and more enraged. However, Mile already had a logical response prepared.
“Yes, I believe the agreement was, ‘We will operate for five years within this country. If we cannot uphold this promise, we must pay back all our tuition and boarding costs, as well as a breach of contract penalty.’ And so, we will faithfully uphold that agreement.”
“What?”
“We are, first and foremost, hunters working in conjunction with the guild branch of the capital of Tils Kingdom. We’re just undertaking an extended expedition to a faraway place.”
“Wh…”
“It’s normal for hunters to travel to other countries for guard or mercenary duties, or to harvest rare plants and the like, isn’t it? When they do so, they often take on other jobs while in that distant location to earn additional money or take on escort duties to pay for their return trip, yes? This is the same.
“No matter what, the Crimson Vow is an affiliate of the capital guild branch of Tils Kingdom. We’re merely going away on a long-term job, and because we’ll have to take on some jobs in other locations along the way, our return might be a bit delayed.
“Therefore, we will be leaving ourselves on this guild’s registry and returning from time to time. Pauline and Mavis do still have family in this country, after all.”
“Ggh…”
Though they quarreled for some time, the guild master eventually folded. Whether this was because Mile had said, “In that case, starting tomorrow, the only jobs we’re going to take will be hunting down jackalopes, until all the jackalopes in this area go extinct,” or because Reina had said, “How about we hunt three hundred rock lizards? We can sell about twenty of them to the guild at market price and offload half of the remainder down in the market square…” was unclear.
“Now, all that’s left to do is to tell the folks at the inn…” said Mile.
“Yeah…” Mavis gave a gloomy nod. Reina and Pauline’s expressions were dark as well.
The owner and his wife would be fine. They were serious folks and could probably be reasoned with as business people.
The problem, of course, was Lenny. She was absolutely going to scream at them.
They all thought it.
Feelings of doom and gloom raged through their hearts.
Chapter 38:
The Start of a New Journey
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!”
Lenny’s initial response, when the Crimson Vow told her of their travel plans after the lunch rush, was as expected.
However, the response immediately following was more subdued than they imagined. “…I see.”
They had assumed the girl might start on some half-crazed rampage, and had been on their guard in the event they needed to subdue her, and yet…
“Why do you all look like you were expecting something else?!” Lenny asked, looking sullen. “Guests come to stay here, and someday they leave. That’s just life around here. Plus, this is better than having you leave your things here for safekeeping while you’re hunting and then never returning, or seeing you come home in bloody pieces. If you’re leaving on a journey in the
pursu
it of knowledge, anyway. Plus, I’m sure you’ll be back again someday, won’t you? It’s not like this is farewell forever.”
She was handling this with much more maturity than expected. The Crimson Vow were moved.
Meanwhile, upon hearing “coming home in bloody pieces,” the guests enjoying rare steaks nearby suddenly stopped eating. Their forks hung frozen in place, overcome with a sense of unease.
“But won’t it be a bother for you to open your full bath, unlimited water deal once we’re gone?” Mile asked. “Even if you keep it partitioned, hiring people to supply the hot water is going to be a lot more expensive than us doing it, and you won’t really get much profit once you cover the costs of labor, will you? So when we aren’t here, running the baths is pretty much only a free amenity to attract customers. You really only make a profit on it when we’re here, don’t you?”
As Mile said this, Lenny’s words caught in her throat.
Indeed, when Mile and the others weren’t present, they managed by hiring orphans to draw water from the well, and paid mages in free food and drink to heat the water. This was only effective for the small portion of the bath Mile had previously partitioned off for them.
When they did use the entire bath, the full space was three by four meters, and fifty centimeters deep, which meant approximately six tons of water were required to fill it. That didn’t include the extra water needed for topping off the bath and showering. To achieve all this manually would mean carrying a ten-liter bucket from the well hundreds and hundreds of times. And one or two mages would be nowhere near enough to heat it all with fire magic.
However, if they partitioned the baths down to a small area, they had a space only one meter by one-and-a-half meters, fifty centimeters deep, to account for. If they limited the amount of water used for showers, even counting the reserve tank, producing that could be completed in a fraction of the time.
Even so, without the Crimson Vow’s magic, preparing this took a great amount of time and effort. And, because the baths would be so small, and the water would be limited, the number of guests coming through would be limited as well.