Encounter
Encounter
"I smell blood."
Frowning at the unwelcome stimulus, Yekaterina adjusted her grip on her greatsword. It wasn't that she, who had spilled more blood than she'd ever lost, was suddenly averse to the scent of gore now. It was simply that the smell coming at this particular unwanted moment was the problem.
Sensing her reaction, Rellie asked, a hint of worry in her voice.
"Nothing's gone wrong with Gaendal, has it?"
"I don't think so. It's less that it's wafting over, more like we're approaching a place that smells of blood."
Hearing the specific explanation, Rellie's face visibly darkened, even in the pre-dawn darkness. And Yekaterina's wasn't much different.
"Let's hurry. If trouble breaks out with the mercenaries, Gaendal could be in danger."
It was Gin who stopped the two of them from getting lost in pointless thoughts. No matter how capable Gaendal was as a scout, the opposition was a seasoned mercenary band of about forty. Having pushed a forced march for days already while handling all scouting duties without relief, if things went wrong unexpectedly, it was clear he'd have a hard time escaping unscathed.
"It'd be nice if Eldmia were here with us."
"Yekaterina? You do realize you've said that over thirty times already since we took this request?"
"Me? I haven't said it that often."
"...To be honest, you have."
Watching Gin politely affirm Rellie's claim, Yekaterina was genuinely flustered. Thirty times? In just three days? She really had said it quite a bit.
"Well, it's possible. He was competent."
"......Haah. I'm worried. So worried."
"Huh? About what?"
"Forget it. First, let's regroup with Gaendal."
Deeply impressed by how well they'd worked together since the Abandoned Dungeon incident, they had started taking requests as a party while considering a longer-term partnership. They'd originally spent time at the guild intending to invite Eldmia as well, but whether he had other business or not, they hadn't run into him for a while, so they'd been working together as a party of four for the time being.
As people whose skills and character fit together perfectly with no flaws, even after only four requests together, the group's satisfaction only grew, and after unanimously agreeing to take on a longer-term request, they'd accepted this job.
The request was simple. They were to serve as a kind of temporary guard for a refugee village that had recently begun to settle.
Refugees who had fled near the capital to escape the Demon King's Army had no intention of breaking the law as they established a new home, and they wanted to gain the city's protection through proper procedures. The city welcomed the refugees' decision, but such a process couldn't be completed overnight, so the request's content was for adventurers to protect them temporarily while public authority was prepared and deployed.
Naturally, four people alone were woefully insufficient for the request, so they'd initially moved as a group of about ten, including other adventurers.
But no one had imagined the village they'd arrive at would be utterly devastated.
Someone who had been there said it. They said it was clearly the work of mercenaries called the Hawk's Talon Band.
They were a mercenary band notorious for freely looting unregistered village folk or selling them into slavery, among other acts. Not only were they highly skilled, but because they always targeted those in the gray area between bandits and legitimate villages, in this line of work it was something everyone knew but tacitly kept quiet about.
Since this incident was clearly illegal, the others turned back under the pretext of reporting the mercenary band's atrocities through the guild.
Of course, it was an excuse. They simply wanted to escape the scene of the massacre as quickly as possible, fearing the mercenary band might track them.
But the four of them, enraged that the bastards who had massacred innocent people might commit more atrocities, had split off and set out in pursuit like this.
"...Damn it."
Two days ago, they'd reconfirmed through an information broker that there was a village of slash-and-burn farmers nearby and hurried on. Since they didn't know exactly how much of a lead the mercenary band had, they'd pushed themselves through a forced march.
But the slash-and-burn farming village they'd reached had already been looted by the mercenary band.
"This is already..."
"Gaendal! Are you alright!"
With that village behind him, Gaendal walked weakly toward the group and answered with a deeply exhausted face.
"One day. We were just one day short."
Gaendal, who had shown himself as the group arrived, couldn't hide his grief and spoke with difficulty. They understood even without his explanation. The ruins with embers still lingering. The campsite set up perfectly intact beside them. The mercenary sentries standing guard centered on that campsite even in the early dawn.
"They said it brazenly. That it was merely dealing with bandits who had formed a village and lived off plunder."
"What about the children? There would have been women and the elderly too...!"
Instead of answering, Gaendal pointed at the only wooden building that could be called intact. Everyone understood what that building—constructed more carefully and solidly than any other house around—was, and what Gaendal's gesture meant.
The Pantheon the refugees had built, praying they might be safe here.
That the survivors were trapped inside, just waiting to be sold as slaves.
"How... before the gods... such..."
Their excuse would be obvious. Since no evidence would remain in a refugee settlement that didn't receive the law's protection.
Bandits had already harmed the villagers, and they had nothing to do with it. They had merely captured bandits who surrendered without resistance, not harmed refugees. With just those absurd words, they could claim innocence.
"Bastards who ought to be dragged before the Crystal of Truth and have their skulls split open..."
No one bothered to point out that Rellie's words, gritted out with a heart-wrenching frustration, were an impossible wish. Because they were all thinking the same thing.
"They're more professional than I imagined, and their equipment is good, too. It feels less like a mercenary band and more like looking at an actual army. It's infuriating, but for now, reporting to the guild is our only option."
They were adventurers. There were times they opposed people depending on the request, but their main opponents were ultimately monsters.
Compared to that, those men were mercenaries. People who made their living fighting other people. No matter how confident they were in their skills, pointing swords at a mercenary band of forty was nothing but reckless bravado.
Even if they defeated them, not everyone in the group would come out unscathed.
Yekaterina, who had been glaring with a heavy heart at the mercenary band guarding the ruined village as if it were their own, forced a smile and spoke.
"Haha... I wonder what Eldmia would have done."
It was already over. This wasn't the first time they'd faced such irrationality while working as adventurers. At times like this, you had to at least crack a joke to shift the mood. Understanding this well, Gaendal also forced something resembling a smile and answered.
"...Wouldn't he have walked up smiling, killed about ten of them to start, like he showed us last time?"
"If anyone else did that, I'd call them a madman, but with Ega, it's terrifying how it somehow seems genuinely possible."
Regrettably, there was nothing more they could do. Knowing this, they were all about to turn back under tacit agreement.
"Hm? Isn't that... a wyvern?"
At the words Gin muttered, tilting his head as he looked up at the sky and sighed—unable to fully shake off his heavy heart—everyone's gaze turned upward.
"Looks like it. But do wyverns normally fly that low?"
"I think it's getting lower...? I hope there's nothing wrong with it."
A wyvern crashing was not a common occurrence, but it wasn't unheard of either. Having just witnessed a bitter scene firsthand, the group began to stare blankly at the sky, hoping that wyvern wasn't about to crash.
But contrary to their wishes, the wyvern's altitude dropped steadily until it was skimming perilously close to the forest trees.
"I-isn't that dangerous?"
"Damn. I've never heard anything about wyvern piloting, and I can't see it very well from here..."
"No, for that kind of thing, the pilot doesn't look flustered. I think the low flight is intentional."
Only after Gin, who had the sharpest eyes, gave his explanation could the group breathe a sigh of relief. No matter how much it was someone else's misfortune, facing misfortune after misfortune in a row wasn't easy on the mind.
"...Eldmia?"
"What?"
But amidst that, Yekaterina alone had spotted something else.
"The person behind the pilot there. Isn't that Eldmia?"
"Kasha. You...!"
Rellie was aghast. She'd thought she was unusually pining for Eldmia, and a creeping anxiety that she might be suffering from a more severe lovesickness than she'd imagined washed over her. At the drinking party that night, she'd seemed to be trying to stay oddly close to him, and she'd wondered if maybe...!
"Huh? It really is him. It's Eldmia."
"Huh? Really?!"
It was Gin who cut off Rellie's delusions. Thanks to him, she snapped out of it and focused as hard as she could on the sky where the wyvern was flying in, but in the pre-dawn darkness not yet fully bright, distinguishing the wyvern's distant passengers was impossible with her poor eyesight.
It was the same for Gaendal, but rather than make a futile effort to confirm if it was really Eldmia, he chose to trust Gin's words completely.
"Is there such a thing as coincidence? No, wait, where the hell is he going that he's flying that lo...w...?"
No way.
But at that shared 'no way,' which all of them understood without exchanging a single word, four gazes turned almost simultaneously toward the campsite in the ruins behind them.
"...No matter what, that's too much. It's a coincidence, right. Surely he doesn't have business with that mercenary band?"
"Ha, haha. Right. No matter how coincidences pile up..."
In that instant, everyone's gaze shifted back to the wyvern flying swiftly over their heads.
But, what if it really was true?
Without quite realizing what the expectation coiling up inside them was directed at, they watched the man who looked like Eldmia rise to his feet atop the wyvern.
"Nice to see you, you sons of bitches!!"
A thunderous curse. It was definitely Eldmia's voice, the one they'd heard before. And judging by that reaction, for whatever reason, he did indeed seem to have business with the mercenary band, and his attitude was far from friendly.
But the wyvern's speed didn't decrease. At that rate, it would clearly just pass right over the mercenary band's camp.
'What the hell is he planning to do?' The question was still lingering in everyone's minds.
"I am! Eldmia Ega!"
Eldmia drew his sword and leaped from the wyvern.