by Funa
As the demons had already been asleep in the first place, she could have simply left them as they were and let them wait for the drug to wear off naturally, but if some monster or bandit should slip in while they were still under its effects, they would be wiped out. She was not prepared to needlessly put anyone in harm’s way.
Especially considering that the lookouts were still asleep.
The members of the Crimson Vow returned to their campsite to sleep the rest of the night.
“My assumption is that entrance was closed off with a rock on purpose so that no one would use that passageway anymore. It just happened that some kind of movement caused the rock to shift, which opened it back up a crack. I wonder if it’ll just be left the way it is or if the scavengers will realize that it’s been opened and start using it as an entryway again… Well, I bet they have a bunch of other entrances around, so they probably won’t bother with it even if they notice. They probably will fix that elevator-looking thing though, so it should be a lot easier going down next time.”
“Hang on, ‘next time’?” Reina asked. “Are you planning on going back there again? Why would you wanna do that?”
Mile did not reply, thinking privately, I forgot about it this time, but I hope I can return it someday.
Yes, that. The orb that she had taken from within the chest of the rock golem they defeated so long ago that now rested within her inventory.
Somewhere along the line, she had realized that this orb was where a golem’s heart resides.
***
“Well, if the demons do find that place, then there’s nothing we can do about it. We don’t have any right to interfere, and they’d be free to claim that all they did was discover a monster’s nest and destroyed it. It wouldn’t be any bother to us—or rather, to us humans. Plus, those guys would probably have no idea what any of that stuff down there means, so they’d just conclude that the place was another miss—just some empty ruins that monsters had taken up residence in. They’d move right on to investigating the next site.”
Mile explained all this to the others on the way back to the capital, though in fact it was unlikely that the demons would ever come across those stairs or that underground facility.
That said, even if they did discover them, it wouldn’t matter. She had already explained that much.
Her desire to leave the ruins as she had found them was little more than sentiment. They were a group of machines, working tirelessly since some time in the distant past, honoring the commands of the masters who had built—
Suddenly, she was struck with a sense of déjà vu.
Hey, Nanos?
She called out softly within her head, but in a rare turn, the nanomachines did not reply.
Huh. Wonder if they’ve all gone off somewhere…
Mile then began to wonder—were there other such “living ruins” out there in the world? If any of them had been maintained in a more complete state, would that be what the elder dragons were seeking?
For now, all she could do was pray that their true aims were peaceful ones.
***
Upon returning to the Capital, the Crimson Vow headed straight to the guild hall to give their report.
“Pardon, but we’d like to give our job completion report directly to the guild master, if possible…” Mavis said to Felicia, the clerk.
Her eyes went wide. “Y-you all…” She greeted them as though they had suddenly ripped off a disguise. “I-I’m glad to see you all back safe, but is the job really complete? Were you able to confirm the identities of those suspects?”
“Er, yeah…”
Mavis took a step back as Felicia leaned out over the counter, bearing down.
“And you’re telling me that you want to give a direct report to the guild master himself, not to a lowly clerk like me, out here where the other hunters can hear you?”
“Erm, y-yes…?”
Mavis was petrified beneath Felicia’s gaze, but her resolve was unwavering.
“Come with me, then. Necelle, mind the counter!”
Felicia turned the reception desk over to another employee and led the way, the Crimson Vow following behind her.
The guild master’s office was up on the second floor, as it always was in these sorts of buildings. Felicia went in alone to explain the situation while the other four waited outside. Afterwards, they were called in.
“Well then, let’s hear it,” the guild master pressed them for their report.
This guild master, the master of the capital branch of the hunters’ guild in the Kingdom of Vanolark, gave the immediate impression of being a retired upper-rank hunter somewhere in his late forties or early fifties. His age would be no trouble were he a mage, but for a frontline, melee fighter, living to be middle-aged could be difficult. The fact that he had become the master of the capital guild branch after retiring meant that he had to be incredibly skilled. He had a brazen expression and a distinguished beard that appeared as though it had been cultivated especially for the sake of lending him a further air of dignity.
Because they were a young, rookie party who had received this meeting by their own petitioning, their standing here was low. So the Crimson Vow remained standing, facing the guild master straight on as he sat behind his desk. Felicia was standing in wait as well to the guild master’s side.
“I am Mile of the Crimson Vow, C-rank hunter. I would like to inform you as to the results of the job that we accepted, as well as some other recently developing information from abroad. I do not believe this news has reached the area yet, but I feel it may be pertinent.”
With that, Mile laid out all that she knew—except, of course, the details about the underground workshop and the stairs that lead down to it.
“I accept your report, and I suspect that any next steps will be a matter for the Crown to decide. That being said, given what you’ve told us, I imagine that once the palace officials are done endlessly debating and finally decide to act, the demons will already have packed up and left.
“Good work out there, in any event. I give your achievements an A-grade.” He turned to direct his words at Felicia. “Oh—and see that they get a one-gold bonus for bringing us additional information, as well as some contribution points.”
And so, the Crimson Vow’s very first job from the capital guild branch in the Kingdom of Vanolark was a great success.
I am glad that they came back safely, Felicia thought to herself as she revised the Crimson Vow’s valuation to reflect the surprise increase in compensation. But for them to have been able to investigate a group of demons so efficiently… Plus, the fact that they mentioned elder dragons and beastpeople in the report to the Master… It’s all rather… Hm, I wonder if I was too hard on the Silver Fangs. Well, it wasn’t really that big of a deal.
Though Felicia was quick to write the matter off, it had been quite the bother to the members of the Silver Fangs themselves.
When they had come wobbling back to the guild hall defeated, they had been violently dressed down in front of all the other hunters and guild employees. Felicia had reproached them as “weakly cowards” and “good-for-nothings who can’t even keep up with a group of children.”
From Felicia’s perspective, there was no way that a group of B-rank hunters should have been able to lose track of a party of little girls, some of whom were still underage. She could only assume that they had decided that the assignment was a pain and given up halfway through, coming back home with some made-up excuse.
Giving up simply out of boredom meant that they were directly defying her orders and abandoning a group of rookie hunters by the wayside, leaving them to die practically before their eyes. This had been the foundation of Felicia’s stern rebuke of the poor hunters of the Silver Fangs.
The Silver Fangs, so abused, offered no word in reply, simply dragging themselves back to their inn, their heads hung low and their tails between their legs. They were in no shape to set out on the road as they had planned to,
so they had little other choice.
The shock for the Silver Fangs was doubled by the fact that Felicia’s digs at them were not just insults—they were, in fact, the truth. No matter how heavily laden they had been, the fact of the matter was that they had not been able to keep up with a group of children. They, who called themselves B-rank hunters.
The Fangs had lingered in the inn a few more days, still in shock. When they finally received word that the Crimson Vow had returned home safe, their job completed, they were able to psych themselves back up. It was clear that the Crimson Vow must be fairly skilled and that it had been their mistake to take the situation for granted as B-ranks. A few days behind schedule, they finally set out on their distant journey.
It would probably take a little longer for the Silver Fangs to rise to the level of an A-rank party after all of that.
Chapter 48:
Secret Technique
“Do you have a room for four?”
Choosing an inn this time was not even a debate. The front door that the Crimson Vow stepped through was none other than that of Faleel’s inn. It was not actually called “Faleel’s Inn”—it was the Daybreak Traveler.
There were plenty of inns that did not follow the “Something-Something Inn” naming convention, but the name “Daybreak Traveler” was still a bit of an odd one. If someone were still traveling at daybreak, wouldn’t that mean they had not bothered to stop at an inn? Or did it refer to someone who departed at dawn? Yet having someone leave too early wasn’t ideal for an inn. If a traveler was not going to take their time and linger a while, they’d have been better off simply camping out for the night, wouldn’t they?
Once Mile started thinking about it, she was so distracted that she couldn’t sleep all night. Apparently, she still did not have enough life experience to realize that it might not be a literal daybreak that was being referred to.
“Oh!”
As Mile continued to ponder the name, Faleel came flying out from behind the reception desk and flung her arms around Mile’s legs.
Hehee, I missed this! A shameless grin spread across Mile’s face.
“I though I wasn’t gonna see you again…”
Oh my god, those adorable, tear-filled eyes! Those twitching ears! I can’t take it!
Snap!
“Quit it!”
Mile had begun crouching down to return Faleel’s embrace without even thinking about it, when a karate chop from Reina came down right upon the crown of her head.
“…And so, thanks to the dragons helping us out, we became friends with the beastmen!”
“I’m so glaaad!”
Naturally, Mile could not go into too much detail about an incident so fresh that the paint had yet to dry, so she told Faleel not of their most recent job but of the previous ruins expedition. Her story was a full-scale production, with revised edits and a brand-new script.
Though this particular tale had apparently not yet made it to this country, it was probably already known in others, so it was fair game to tell. It wasn’t as though it was something that only they knew about in any case. That was Mile’s reasoning.
After dinner, when Faleel was free and there were only a few guests around in the dining room, Mile called Faleel over to their table to tell her their tale. Some of the guests, who appeared to be hunters, overheard as well but assumed it to be nothing more than a nonsense story designed to entertain a small child, and so they just smiled along.
(A few days later, when those same hunters went to check the information board at the guild and saw what had been posted there, they would be stunned into silence.)
From within the kitchen, the owner, who was cleaning up after last call and preparing for the next day, glanced jealously now and then at the Crimson Vow, seeing how much fun they were having with Faleel. Beyond him, the woman who appeared to be his wife was grimacing.
Hm…? What about the boys?
According to Faleel, her elder brothers were on a separate shift, in charge of getting up first thing to clean the kitchen and dining room, peel the potatoes and wash the vegetables, and do all sorts of troublesome jobs that they didn’t want to make their little sister do. Faleel was left in charge of the reception, the bookkeeping, and occasionally cleaning the tables after the customers had gone home.
This seemed overly doting, but then again, Faleel’s lineage—the equivalent of what would have been Western European ancestry back on Earth, mixed with beast blood—made her look older than her actual age of just six years old. It was still a bit early for her to be assigned any strenuous tasks.
Plus, on particularly busy mornings, or at other times when the inn was especially full, as when a tour group was stopping through or the whole capital was flooded with travelers because of some big to-do, it was all hands on deck.
At the moment, the boys were probably off playing in their rooms, or else getting some shut-eye in preparation for another early morning.
In this world, there were children who got outside jobs even before the age of ten, so it was only natural that they would be put to work in their own family’s business.
“Mile, I’ve got a request!”
After taking a few minutes to catch her breath back in their room, Mavis called over to Mile, a serious look upon her face.
“Um, could I get you to teach me those moves you used? The ‘Secret Technique: Meteor Bat for a B-rank Small Fry’ and ‘Demon-Slaying Blade: Vacuum Knee-Cutter’? Please, I’m begging you!”
She sank to the floor, her head bowed.
It was a “Japanese dogeza.” Thanks to a misstep on Mile’s part, she had inadvertently introduced the move to the others when apologizing to them in the past.
“M-Mavis, please don’t do that!”
Mile disliked having to do a dogeza, even when apologizing from the bottom of her heart, but she hated to see someone else doing it even more. To have it directed at her was even worse and would be uncomfortable for just about anyone.
Well, actually, there were probably some who would not mind it so much—but such people were already outside the bounds of normalcy and best given a wide berth to begin with.
“N-now then!”
“Nn…”
Even Mile was aware of the inferiority Mavis felt when compared to the mages of their group.
Using the “EX Godspeed Blade” made her invincible, true, but the technique came with great limitations, and no true knight would be happy to boast of their own strength if they had to rely on an elixir to give it to them. Furthermore, even the flame attack she had mustered was only thanks to said elixir, and afterward, Mavis had soon begun to feel the side effects.
Though the elixir hadn’t bothered her much at the time, on their return to the capital, Mavis had begun to complain that her stomach felt like it was on fire and that her throat was in pain. Her allies cast a healing spell upon her in a hurry.
After Mavis finally started feeling better, thanks to the healing spells, they made camp early in order to get her to rest. Then once everyone had gone to sleep, Mile, who had taken the first watch, had a conversation with the nanomachines… This was a matter of her dear friend’s health, so it was not a time for Mile to balk at any self-imposed limitations on communicating with them.
Say Nanos, about Mavis’s condition…
FORGIVE US. IT APPEARS THAT PROTECTIVE MEASURES WERE TAKEN, BUT THE AMOUNT OF CONTINUOUS FIRE THAT WOULD FOLLOW WAS UNDERESTIMATED… WHILE WE WERE ABLE TO GUARD AGAINST ANY DIRECT BURNS, IT SEEMS THERE WERE SOME PARTICLE BEAMS INCLUDED IN THE LAST FEW SHOTS.
Whaaaaaaaat?!?!
Particle beams… Electron beams, proton beams, neutron beams…
The phrase “particle beam barrier” floated through the back of Mile’s mind.
I-Is she gonna be alright?!
Mile was white as a sheet. The voice of the nanomachines vibrated in her eardrums.
PLEASE BE AT EASE. THOUGH THEY WERE PARTICLE BEAMS, IT WAS NOTHING THAT WOULD TAKE A GREAT IMMEDIATE TOLL UP
ON THE HUMAN BODY.
THE PARTICLE BEAMS THAT WERE RELEASED IN THIS INCIDENT WERE ONLY A SECONDARY PRODUCT OF THE ENERGY CREATED TO ENACT THIS PSEUDO-MAGIC, AND ONLY A VERY SMALL NUMBER WERE RELEASED, SO THEY SHOULD NOT CAUSE ANY PARTICULARLY VIOLENT DAMAGE TO HER CELLS OR DNA.
“Particularly?”
NO, WELL, ONLY VERY FAINTLY… HOWEVER, THANKS TO THE HEALING MAGIC OF YOU AND YOUR COMPANIONS, LADY MILE, SHE HAS MADE A COMPLETE RECOVERY. THE NANOMACHINES RESIDING INSIDE OF HER LADYSHIP MAVIS’S BODY HAVE BEEN STERNLY PRESSED TO TAKE SPECIAL CARE IN ENACTING THE HEALING MAGIC UPON HER AS WELL…
I see. Thank you.
Still, did that mean that particle beams were created every time someone used magic? If so, that was incredibly dangerous…
AN EXCEPTION! THIS TIME WAS AN EXCEPTION!!!
GENERATING FLAMES INSIDE OF THE HUMAN BODY IN THE MANNER OF A DRAGON NORMALLY NEVER HAPPENS! GENERATING ENERGY WITHIN A CLOSED SYSTEM REQUIRES EXTRADIMENSIONAL COUPLING AND A NUMBER OF OTHER SPECIAL MEASURES!
Though Mile had not specifically addressed the nanomachines, the nanomachines responded to her thoughts in a panic.
THIS IS NOT A REQUIREMENT FOR ORDINARY PSUEDO-MAGIC, AND DRAGONS ARE FAR STURDIER, SO IT’S EASIER FOR THEM TO DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES…
Apparently, they could not stand the thought of Mile having any distrust of magic itself.
Incidentally, Mile banned Mavis from ever using her “fire breath” again.
Mavis, who had assumed that she now understood a technique that would allow her to challenge even the mages, was of course strongly opposed to this decree. However, as Mile explained to her that it was a technique suited only to those with a body as powerful as a dragon’s, and that by using it, Mavis ran the absurd risk of bringing about her own death, Mavis became aware of her prior recklessness, and bit by bit, her resistance weakened.
Finally, Mile gave her an ultimatum: “You are forbidden to use this technique unless someone’s life is in danger, and you have absolutely no other means at your disposal. Should you break this rule, you shall thenceforth never receive another Micross capsule ever again.”