by Hiro Ainana
At any rate, that was probably enough information about gabo fruits and demi-goblins for now.
I put the sorted loot in Storage, and we left that area behind us.
After another two days of travel, we began our sixth afternoon since entering the Muno Barony.
This time, we encountered a troublesome band of thieves.
“Oh? It’s those kid bandits we heard about a while ago.”
“…Yeah, seems that way.”
Five young girls were lying across the road, blocking the carriage’s path.
I get that they’re trying to stop us and all, but even recklessness should have its limits.
“Don’t move! There are ten shooters aiming at your horses from the woods.”
A young boy emerged from the forest, threatening us in a cracking, prepubescent voice.
Liza stopped her horse in front of the kid bandits to guard the carriage, while Nana moved to protect Lulu and me in the coachman’s stand.
Of course, the boy was bluffing. I had already determined with a map search that they didn’t have any bows or slings. They were holding stones, but we could easily handle a few kids throwing rocks at us.
I warned Liza and Nana not to act unless things got dangerous.
“Give us some food if you value your lives!”
The boy’s brash request might have sounded impressive if it weren’t for the debate that followed.
“Yeah, especially your potatoes!”
“Shouldn’t we tell them to give us jerky instead?”
“I wanna try some bread.”
“Anything is fine, as long as it isn’t weeds.”
“Shut up, you dummies!”
“Takes one to know one, dummy!”
“Just be quiet!”
As the peanut gallery chimed in with their requests, the whole mood was ruined.
I didn’t mind giving them food, but I’d like to get the road cleared first if possible.
“Private Pochi, Private Tama, you’re in charge of getting those little girls out of the street. Don’t hurt them, though, okay?”
“Aye-aye, siiir!”
“Roger, sir!”
Tama and Pochi gave a military-style salute they’d learned from Arisa, then jumped out of the carriage.
I got down as well, picking up one of the kids who was blocking our path and gently tossing her toward the children in the woods. The other kids scrambled frantically to catch her.
As I looked for the next kid, I noticed Pochi and Tama had neglected their road-clearing duties in favor of plopping down next to the girls and peering into their faces.
“They look hungryyy.”
“Rumbly tummies, sir.”
Tama and Pochi rummaged around in their pockets and started feeding the girls whatever scraps of dried meat and baked goods they could find.
“Meat?”
“It’s yummy!”
“Thank you.”
The young girls raised a little cheer in unison.
Then Pochi and Tama noticed me watching them. With a few shifty glances, they quickly hustled two of the girls off to the side of the road. One of the remaining two panicked and hurried after them into the forest.
“No fair! What about us?”
“I wanna eat meat, too!”
In the woods, the kids started bickering among themselves.
“Get alooong?”
“Y-you mustn’t fight, sirs!”
Even though they’d caused the conflict in the first place, Pochi and Tama were doing their best to mediate.
I thought I’d call them back and get the carriage moving, but one girl was stubbornly staying in the road, refusing to take the hint.
She looked like she could be in middle school, but the AR display told me that she was the same age as Lulu, so technically she was a teenager.
“Are you going to head back into the forest yourself, or would you prefer me to throw you?”
Despite my slightly harsh words, the girl remained facedown and unmoving in my path, as if nothing on earth could budge her.
I started to lift the prone girl by her girdle but had to stop partway through.
Her hand was stuck in a root that was embedded in the road. Yanking her up would probably hurt her, so I took a knife from my belt to free her.
“L-let go of Totona!”
The apparent leader came rushing out of the woods with a club in hand.
Ignoring him, I cut the root that had trapped Totona, lifted her up from the road, and hefted her over my shoulder.
Liza made to move toward the boy frantically waving his club, so I stopped her with a motion of my hand.
Just as he swung at me, I plucked it out of his grip and knocked him down with a gentle push from my foot. This dazed him for a moment, so I picked him up by the belt and tossed him into the woods toward his friends.
I threw the girl Totona in after him.
When I returned to the carriage, Arisa handed me a meal that she’d taken out from our bag of holding, so I placed it on the side of the road.
Kids though they were, they’d still attacked us, so we gave them some of the more unappetizing rations.
As we resumed our journey, Liza made Tama and Pochi kneel in the carriage as she scolded them.
Apparently, slaves were strictly prohibited from giving away their master’s belongings without permission.
I didn’t think it was a big deal, since it was only snacks, but I’d entrusted Liza with their education. I didn’t want to undermine her, so I decided to reassure them later.
Mia was riding Liza’s horse in her stead.
As the lecture continued in the background, I opened the map to check out the next leg of our journey.
First, we would cross the river ahead and proceed west on the road bordering the large forest on the other side. We’d reach the back road that led into the heart of the forest in about three days. Since the side road seemed too narrow for the carriage to traverse, we’d have to procure more horses in the town near the forest.
The more pressing problem, however, was the mysterious militia of old people on the bank of the river.
They’d probably come from the nearest village to fish, but the lack of young people among them struck me as a bit odd.
“Are you worrying about those children from earlier, by any chance?”
Arisa sat down next to me, acting rather like a counselor.
“No, now I’m worried about this elderly army.”
“…Elderly?”
Surprised, Arisa tilted her head with a confused expression.
It was a cute gesture coming from a little girl, but I would never hear the end of it if I said as much, so I kept that to myself.
“Yeah, elderly.”
I patted Arisa’s head as I repeated the statement.
After the encounter with the kid bandits, our carriage traveled on for about two hours until we arrived at the riverbank.
The elderly group that I’d detected before was still there.
They weren’t even fishing in the river—there were just eight or so of them keeping warm around a fire.
In fact, the river was almost completely dried up, with only a few pathetic trickles of water in the middle, so I guess fishing would have been impossible.
Since the river looked like it had once been fairly wide, an earthquake or something must have changed its course.
The elderly group noticed us, but they made no move to react.
At first glance, they looked homeless, but camping out in such a dangerous land would normally be suicide.
I was a little intrigued, so I stopped the carriage on the opposite side of the road from them and brought Liza with me as an escort to go make contact with them.
As a peace offering, I’d brought a bottle of liquor and some smoked bear meat.
I’d figured out during my Item Box test in Sedum City that I could create a sort of smoke box inside it, which was how I’d made this smoked meat.
Unfortunately
, since there was nowhere for the smoke to escape, most of the meat had gotten over-smoked and developed a strange taste and smell. This smoked bear meat was one of the few successful results.
“Hello there. The sunshine is warm today, isn’t it?”
“Oh-ho, a merchant, is it? What business might you have with an old man like me?”
When I spoke to the man who seemed to be the leader, he gave me a surprisingly polite response.
The other elderly folk were ordinary enough, but this person projected a degree of status.
On top of being level 13, he had the skills “Etiquette,” “Calculation,” and “Penmanship.” Perhaps he had once been a civil official in the service of some noble.
“Please pardon me for intruding. We stopped our carriage to refill our water supply in the stream and happened to notice all of you here, so I simply thought I would come and greet you.”
It was a lame excuse, but they probably wouldn’t mind.
Before the leader could respond, the other old people all started talking at once.
“Awful polite, aren’tcha? Just think of us geezers as a coupla rocks by the roadside.”
“S’true. We can’t even admire the river till we go home to heaven anymore.”
“And if we return to the village, we’ll just be a burden on our sons an’ daughters.”
“If we’re meant to sell our grandkids, I’d rather the gods just take me right here.”
“But yer always welcome here if ya got some food?”
“Boy, if I ever eat another meal, I might just float up to heaven with happiness.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
I guess instead of abandoning their elderly on mountains like in those old folktales, they abandon them at rivers here?
“Now, now, don’t make that face. It’s all right,” an old woman chimed in, eyeing me with concern.
I have the “Poker Face” skill, so she shouldn’t have been able to guess my feelings from my expression, but something about my aura must have given it away.
“Right. We left th’ village on our own so there’d be less mouths to feed.”
“An’ if us geezers get outta the way quicker, then maybe those poor gals won’t have to sell themselves.”
“Yeah, ’specially since the chief was sayin’ there ain’t been many merchants buyin’ slaves lately.”
So without anyone to buy their daughters, now they were sacrificing their elderly?
Apparently, monsters rarely attacked near this river, so they were simply waiting here quietly for their lives to run out. They didn’t know why this place was safe from monsters.
The map showed the remains of a fort on the mountain behind the riverside camp, so maybe that was why.
“Well, I brought this as a sign of friendship.”
I handed the wine and smoked meat over to the leader.
He distributed it right away to the other old folks, who were practically mad with glee.
You would never guess that their statuses read Starving and Overworked from this display of energy.
“Oh-ho-ho, it’s booze, I tell ya, booze!”
“What a heavenly smell, sonny!”
“How many years’s it been?”
“Oh-ho, there’s some nice meat here, too!”
“C’mere, sir merchant, why don’t you ’n’ your lovely guard there join us by the fire?”
“Looks like we’ll get to make one more good memory afore we die.”
“’S it all right for us to eat this ’fore them kids come back?”
A few of these comments were a little morbid, but overall everyone seemed happy.
That last remark from one of the old ladies was probably in reference to the kid bandits we met earlier.
“We still have extra supplies, so I’ll give you some more before we go.”
“Well, that’s awful kind of ya. Now, have a drink!”
I accepted the little teacup of alcohol offered by one of the old men and knocked it back.
“Oh-ho, the boy can drink!”
As I shared a few rounds with the elderly folks, I had them tell me rumors about the area and such.
According to them, the kid bandits were serf children who’d been driven out of a nearby farm village to reduce the number of mouths to feed.
Since I didn’t end up needing a guard, I sent Liza back to the others to have them set up camp. We’d planned on resting a little way up the stream on the other side anyway, so it wouldn’t be a big deal to do it here instead.
I asked Liza to prepare enough wheat porridge and a stew of sinewy meat and potatoes to feed a large number of people. My reasoning was that the old folks didn’t normally eat much, so the wheat porridge would help with digestion while the stew would fill them up. The sinewy meat would take longer to chew and feel especially satisfying.
This would involve peeling a lot of potatoes, so the younger kids were helping with that as well.
“…One time, I was surrounded by skeleton monsters, and I thought for sure I was a goner—”
“This ol’ story again?”
The leader’s face was red from the liquor as he started to speak, and another old man interrupted him.
“Was this back when the territory was a marquisate?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s right. Back then, undead monsters were springing up all over. It was like they were rising from the shadows of buildings.”
“You must’ve been lucky to survive.”
“Well, strangely enough, the monsters only attacked nobility or soldiers who attacked them first.”
So the Undead King Zen hadn’t attacked people indiscriminately.
“But the real danger came after that.”
“What happened?”
“The marquis burned down the whole city to get rid of the monsters.”
“…That seems excessive.”
“It was indeed… Huge flaming shells rained down on the city, burning up monsters and citizens alike. That was the real hell on earth…,” the leader said in a trembling voice. It really was amazing that he’d survived such a calamity.
“Then was the current Muno City rebuilt after that?”
“No, I wasn’t in Muno City at the time.”
Apparently, the one who’d abducted Zen’s wife wasn’t the marquis himself but his younger brother. Thus, Zen had attacked the city where the marquis’s brother was serving as viceroy.
“Still, any weapon used to burn down an entire city must have been truly terrible.”
“Yes, the Magic Cannon in Marquis Muno’s castle was inherited from an ancient empire.”
“An ancient empire?!”
So it’s an ancient empire this time? Now there’s a key phrase. My fantasy-obsessed middle school self would be swooning right about now.
I wonder if this Magic Cannon is different from the one in that anti-dragon defense tower Zena showed me back in Seiryuu City?
“Oh yes, before the Shiga Kingdom was founded…”
To summarize the leader’s somewhat tedious explanation: The ancient civilization in question was an orc empire that had existed before the Shiga Kingdom was founded, stretching from then–Muno Marquisate to present-day Ougoch Duchy to the south.
And with the Magic Cannon installed, Muno City was on the front line of the battle between the demon lord that ruled the Orc Empire and the hero of the Saga Empire.
…Wait, so this Magic Cannon could be fired in the city?
It probably used a mana source for power, but if it could attack a city that was dozens of miles away, it sounded like my Meteor Shower spell.
“However, the Magic Cannon is gone now. The Undead King was said to have destroyed it when he killed Marquis Muno.”
By the time the leader’s captivating tale was finished, the sunset was casting long shadows over the camp.
“Hey, geezers, we brought some food.”
“It’s not weeds today!”
Covered in leaves and spiderwebs, the kid b
andits came tumbling out of the woods behind the fire, where I was sitting with the old folks.
“Hey, it’s the guy from before!”
“You didn’t come to take back the food, did you?”
“He got here ahead of us!”
The other kids spotted me among the elderly and crowded anxiously behind their leader.
Can’t they see we’re having a relaxed little banquet over here?
“Oh, masterrr, dinner is all ready!”
“Have Liza bring it over, please. Let’s eat together.”
I’d already discussed this with the old folks’ group, so the kids were the only ones caught off guard.
Liza and Nana carried a large pot over to us and placed it beside the bonfire.
I’d made a whole bunch of wooden bowls during our stay in Sedum City, so there would be enough for a group of this number.
Even after the old folks and my own party had served their portions, the kid bandits made no move to line up for food.
“You don’t like wheat porridge?” I asked. The boy in front was still radiating hostility, so I addressed the girl next to him instead.
“Nuh-uh, I love it.”
“Then come eat with us.”
Despite my invitation, the children were still guardedly keeping their distance.
“Come on now, children, eat with us.”
“Have a seat already, sonnies.”
When the old men held out bowls of porridge to them, they finally gave in to temptation and timidly accepted some food.
“Y-yummy!”
“It’s not weeds at all!”
“Whoa, somethin’ else smells good, too.”
“There’s meat in this stew over here!”
“For real?”
“You’re right, it’s meat!”
With a rather strange comment among their cheers, the children began devouring the meal gleefully.
“Make sure you chew thoroughly before you swallow, or your stomachs will pay for it later,” Arisa advised.
“This little lass is right, you kids better chew up good. We may never get to eat like this again, y’know.”
“Don’t say such dark things in the middle of a meal, fool!”
The old guy followed up with an ominous remark, but the old lady next to him whacked him in the head.
Just then, Pochi, who was the first to clear her plate, started a war with a single sentence.