There was one thing I realized over the course of the journey.
It was a fairly important thing...
“Huh? Gerangi?”
Aileen asked back, her eyes round.
That’s right.
Gerangi was invisible to other people.
“You can’t see him?”
“...?”
I held up Gerangi, who was clacking his pincers on my palm.
But Aileen merely stared into empty air and tilted her head.
No wonder... No one ever thought it was strange whenever I brought him around.
Is this guy only visible to me?
...He’s not a hallucination, is he?
Perhaps because my expression was too serious, Aileen no longer took it as a joke.
“Couldn’t it be something like a spirit?”
“A spirit?”
“I read it in a book once. It said spirits can’t be seen unless you’re a spiritist, or unless it’s a special case.”
A spirit.
For some reason, that explanation made sense.
Thinking back to when I first met him at the lake, he did have a bit of the feel of a water-attribute spirit from a game.
Of course, right now he was just a tiny crab.
“Were you a spiritist, Liv?”
Aileen looked at me with genuine wonder.
“...No, it just sort of happened.”
To be honest, I didn’t know exactly what a spiritist was either.
But since something spirit-like was following me around, I supposed it was close enough.
A mage who wore armor, carried a mace, and brought a spirit around with him.
What kind of horrifying hybrid was this?
I silently looked at the ring on my right index finger.
When I thought carefully about the ring’s power, it was more than a simple magic tool.
Maybe this was an artifact.
Come to think of it, perhaps Sir Lusein asking whether I was an heir hadn’t been entirely wrong.
“Wow... A spirit. That’s amazing.”
Aileen’s eyes widened in admiration.
The sight was cute, and it made me feel as if I ought to show her something, but...
Scratch, scratch.
Gerangi was scratching his shell on my hand.
It would have been nice if he did something solemn or mystical, but this was just on the level of a crab picked up from a neighborhood stream.
Yeah, it’d be better to let her keep her fantasy.
“Anyway, the village is quiet.”
When I changed the subject, Aileen nodded as well.
“It is.”
The village of Rahillside, where we had arrived, was a place that suited the words “rural farming village” perfectly.
The road was neither wide nor narrow, and occasionally a single wagon rattled past.
Houses were sparsely scattered about, and broad farmland stretched between them.
The overall size of the village was larger than I’d expected, but the place where people actually lived was only a small area in the center.
It only looked bigger because fields spread out on every side.
“...It really has a peaceful atmosphere.”
I nodded at Aileen’s words.
A peaceful village with no incidents and no battles.
Originally, this sort of thing should have been good, but in the middle of a journey where trouble had kept happening, it felt unfamiliar instead.
As soon as the coachman arrived, he unloaded his cargo in the center of the village and began talking with the residents.
Watching the peaceful sight of someone feeding fodder to a horse that pulled a plow, I recalled the purpose of coming to this village.
“For now, shall we go see if there’s anything worth buying?”
We stopped by a small general store in the village.
Inside the shop, there were more varied goods than I expected, as if they’d been brought in from outside.
Judging by the shop’s exterior, I’d expected it to be run by an old man, but the owner was surprisingly a young man.
“You’re from out of town, aren’t you? What are you looking for?”
The inside of the general store was wider than I’d thought.
Daily necessities and things that could be useful for travel were set out on the shelves.
I slowly looked over the items I needed.
“Some simple food, and, hmm, do you have any tools for starting a fire?”
The young owner nodded and handed me flint and tinder.
“Do you happen to have anything like soap?”
“Huh? Luxury goods like that are hard to get...”
I clicked my tongue and accepted the rest of the items.
Maybe because this was the Middle Ages, hygiene was always a concern.
Soap wasn’t common, and washing wasn’t easy either.
It wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined, but by modern standards, it was still full of inconveniences.
Perhaps that reason alone had made my desire to return home even stronger.
When we came outside, the horses were still quietly grazing.
“I think we’ve bought everything we need for now. Then should we look for lodging?”
“Yes, that sounds good.”
***
That day at noon.
I was taking a nap for the first time in a while at the only inn in the village.
The stinging sensation of bedbug bites woke me earlier than expected.
“Ugh...”
After going down to the dining hall, I made do for lunch with hard rye bread and a drink they called donkey’s milk.
Then, a loud commotion came from one side of the village.
With bread in my mouth, I turned my head.
People were gathering near the village entrance, and I could hear someone shouting urgently.
“A monster came out of the cave!”
“They say Nil the herbalist barely escaped with his life!”
For a moment, I couldn’t believe my ears.
A monster in this tiny rural village?
I roughly downed the wooden cup of milk and made my way toward the crowd.
“Ugh... ugh...”
A short while later, I saw a middle-aged man being helped out through the crowd.
His clothes were covered in dirt, and one side of his abdomen was torn open, making it look difficult for him to even breathe properly.
“In... in the cave on the back mountain... In there... eyes, four of them...!”
It seemed he had encountered something while gathering mushrooms in the cave near the village.
Judging by how he couldn’t continue speaking, it was clear the thing had been quite serious.
I turned my head and met Aileen’s eyes.
Her expression had hardened as well.
A monster in this quiet village.
And right when we happened to be staying here.
I had the strange feeling that incidents were following us.
The herbalist was carried inside by the villagers, and three or four sturdy young men from the village picked up farming tools and headed toward the back mountain.
‘Hmm, with that much, there’s no need for me to step in personally.’
As if mocking my relief, that evening...
The young men who had set out when the sun was high in the sky did not return even by the time the sun had slipped beyond the mountains.
I was on my way back from a light walk around the village, feeling the cool night breeze.
The worried voices of the village women gathered near the well lingered in my ears.
“My husband still hasn’t come back...”
“Do you think something happened?”
“After hearing about the monster, I’m even more anxious.”
“Shouldn’t someone go help them?”
Worry and fear gradually spread among the villagers.
Even that many people had gone, and they still hadn’t resolved it.
Just what kind of monster had appeared...?
“Shouldn’t we at least send a letter to the Mercenary Guild?”
The women’s gazes suddenly fixed on me.
Since I’d only gone out for a light walk, I wasn’t armed, but perhaps because of the journeys I’d been through, I still had a sturdiness appropriate for my age.
Or maybe the coachman had been blabbing about me in the tavern...
“Excuse me, are you perhaps... a mercenary?”
There was desperation in their eyes.
I hesitated for a moment, but in the end, I felt something tugging at a corner of my heart.
“...That’s right.”
“Really...!? Then do you perhaps take commissions?”
“What kind of commission—”
“The cave! Could you go investigate the cave on the back mountain?”
“...”
With the women crowding around me and firing off words all at once, it wasn’t easy to refuse.
Maybe they were deliberately pressing me like this because they knew that.
Not all desperate people were good people.
If anything, the more desperate someone was, the more their cunning tended to show.
“Please calm down. For what reason are you making that request?”
I needed to confirm things for a moment.
“...”
“...”
At my question, the women fell silent for an instant.
They must have been thinking everyone would be too afraid to go after hearing there was a monster.
Having confirmed their cunning, I actually felt a bit more at ease.
“What’s the compensation?”
“Well...”
The women exchanged glances, then began gathering money little by little.
The money pooled together amounted to two silver coins.
It wasn’t a small amount, but compared to what I’d earned before, it felt somewhat lacking.
“...I’ll accept the commission.”
“Really!?”
At those words, the women brightened in delight.
“Then, when will you be leaving?”
“I’ll go right now.”
I hadn’t intended to drag this out from the start.
We were planning to leave this village tomorrow, and if it was a cave, it would be dark whether it was day or night anyway.
If there was one thing to worry about, it was the darkness of the forest.
But from what I’d seen while walking earlier, the back mountain wasn’t that dense.
It wasn’t thick enough to leave much room for an ambush.
I returned to the inn and briefly explained the situation to Aileen, who was in the room.
“I’ll go too.”
“As you know, it’s dangerous—”
“I want to be of help too.”
Her gaze was resolute.
A conviction stronger than words was contained in those eyes.
There was no particular reason... to break that determination.
We finished our brief preparations and immediately headed for the back mountain.
Naturally, I knew nothing about the geography of this village, and the villagers seemed to understand that much, because they assigned us a guide.
“You’re... the guide?”
“Yes...”
Surprisingly, the guide was a young boy who looked to be around middle school age.
Loose clothes hung from his small shoulders, and he held a short stick in one hand.
It looked like a staff, but in truth, it was probably just a long branch.
To send such a young child as a guide to a place that might be dangerous.
Just from that sight, I could guess the level of ethics in this world.
“My father... went to the cave.”
The child said quietly while we were walking.
I turned my head and looked at him.
His expression was calm, but his eyes kept dropping toward the ground.
They were eyes that had endured far too much for such a young age.
“...”
I didn’t add anything.
I could have said something like, “Don’t worry, I’ll save him,” as much as I wanted.
But I already knew very well how meaningless and hollow such words were.
Fortunately, the cave was not far away.
Before the sun had completely set, we were able to arrive at the cave entrance.
Perhaps because people had gone in and out quite often, the entrance appeared to have been artificially widened.
“This is the cave?”
“Yes. Please... save my father.”
I gave the child a small nod.
Then I told him to hide in the grass in front of the entrance.
Rather than sending him back to the village alone, it would be better to have him nearby and call him inside in an emergency.
After confirming that the child had lowered himself into the grass, we quietly stepped into the cave.
Drip... drip...
As expected, the inside of the cave was cool.
Water droplets fell from above, trickling down the tips of stalactites, and shallow pools of water on the floor made splashing sounds with every step.
The echoes traveled along the cave walls and spread far into the distance.
A tension gradually spread, as if someone somewhere might be listening.
An oddly grand and gloomy atmosphere.
We carefully stepped deeper into the darkness.
With a single torch barely pushing back the dark, we moved slowly, one step at a time, farther in.
“It’s... deeper than I expected.”
Aileen’s whisper came from beside me.
I answered in a low voice.
“From what I heard, it goes up and then descends a bit.”
And so we walked along a descending path that bent in a caret shape.
Squeak, squeak— flap, flap.
From inside the cave, several bats took flight, flapping their wings.
At the sudden sound of wings, Aileen flinched and nearly cried out, then seemed to realize and covered her mouth.
“...”
She smiled awkwardly.
I nodded and carefully moved my feet again.
The cave grew quieter and quieter, until not even bats could be seen anymore.
After several minutes of walking while carefully keeping our balance, the long descent ended and level ground began to appear again.
That was when it happened.
“Kek—”
From up ahead came a small, strange coughing sound.
I stopped reflexively.
“Someone’s there.”
Aileen said quietly.
I signaled with my hand that I was going forward, then slowly approached the direction the sound had come from.
There was a fork in the path that veered slightly to the side, and something was moving inside it.
And it seemed that something had discovered me as well.
“Kiiiek!”
“Kiek?”
A familiar cry.
The hairy monster I was encountering for the first time in a long while since seeing it in the dungeon.
...A kobold.
Those monsters were blocking our path.