Encounter
Encounter
After I kicked the guy who'd been frantically stripping off his gear like a man possessed square in the face and knocked him out, the scene around me was a fucking mess.
The fireball hovering in the sky was slowly shrinking and losing its form, but the thirty-some burning corpses showed no sign of going out anytime soon.
"Once this job's wrapped up, I really ought to study some magic theory."
The issue wasn't whether you could or couldn't use magic, but whether you could or couldn't respond to it.
I'd never even imagined magic like this existed, something you couldn't counter if your timing was off by even a fraction. Honestly, the thought made my blood run cold.
Since I could see the flow of Magic Power, I'd roughly grasped the principle behind it: the fireball floating in the void acted like a giant eye created by magic, and the Mana shooting out of it like threads had artificially latched onto the armor the mercenaries were wearing.
And it'd used that Mana as fuel to burn them all alive. The setup was basically the same as dousing them in gasoline and striking a match, but the fact they'd accomplished it with magic was what terrified me.
It'd obviously devour not just a shitload of time but a monstrous amount of Mana, and it'd demand serious processing power from the caster on top of that. I didn't even want to imagine the catastrophe if one stray pebble flew wrong and disrupted the caster's spell. Given that Rellie had deliberately given up the terrain advantage and moved to a place little different from open ground to cast it, there was probably a range limitation too.
But even taking all that into account, the activation time was simply far too short compared to its destructive power. To the point I was genuinely worried that if a mage better than Rellie used a similar but more covert method to cast that kind of magic, we'd have no choice but to just take the hit.
"For now, I suppose I should be satisfied with a clean victory."
I dragged the unconscious Wheri Mk.2 toward the clearing that would've normally served as the village square, and Gaendal and everyone else started gathering on their own. Among them was Asilie, who'd emerged from the forest from a slightly different direction, and Gies, who'd apparently confirmed the situation was settled, was circling up above looking for a spot to land.
"Eldi? Who are these people?"
Ah, right. I hadn't been able to write her a letter about the abandoned dungeon business. The others had already cottoned on and were making 'ah' faces, since they knew Asilie was an elf and was calling me by a nickname, so I decided to introduce them to her first.
"These are the adventurers I cleared a request with last time. Gaendal, Gin, Yekaterina, and the one struggling along back there is Rellie."
And I wasn't being flippant—Rellie really was struggling along. You'd think someone would give her a hand, but the fact that even Yekaterina wasn't approaching her suggested there might be her own reasons. Still, given the sheer scale of that spell, it looked like it hadn't come without some cost after all.
But she wasn't so far away that she couldn't hear me, because she waved her hand weakly in greeting.
"This is Asilie. She's my benefactor and guardian. And the friend circling up above looking for a landing spot is Gies. He's a licensed wyvern pilot."
"Fufu. Though calling myself a guardian is a bit of a stretch at this point."
"I knew it! So you're the elf he told us about back then?"
Unlike Yekaterina, who clapped her hands together as she reacted, and Gaendal, whose eyes widened anew in surprise, Gin tilted his head and stroked his beard. He looked like he was trying to recall something. Wondering if they might have met before, I glanced at Asilie, but she just bowed lightly and offered a formal greeting.
"Pleased to meet you, Asilie. To be honest, since you're the one who raised Eldmia, I assumed you'd be like one of those northern elves."
"Fufu. Pleased to meet you. Eldi just grew up to be so big."
The northern elves Gaendal mentioned aren't the typical slender, pretty-boy elves everyone pictures. They're supposedly muscle-bound macho types who look like they could split a skull with a knife-hand strike. And they're far taller than the elven average, so in some ways their image might be similar to mine.
Of course, if I stood next to them, I'd just look like a squid with similar muscles and bulk, so I absolutely never wanted to meet one.
"First off, it looks like the surrounding threats have been dealt with, so I was thinking we'd help the survivors first. Is that all right, Eldmia?"
"Of course. I've already achieved my objective, so I'll help as much as you need."
I answered while grabbing the still-groggy Wheri Mk.2 by the scruff and shaking him a bit to show I was ready, and Gaendal let out a dry laugh before quickly dividing up the tasks. Since I trusted his judgment as a leader completely, I followed his instructions without another word and headed to the Pantheon with Yekaterina.
We arrived at the Pantheon's door, which was firmly barred by a massive latch, and I didn't forget to signal Gies, who was still in the sky, to join the others in the clearing.
"It's quiet, though?"
"They were probably just scared. I'll open it."
"Whoa, whoa. Hold on, Eldmia."
I silently raised both hands to show I was backing off when she stopped me from lifting the latch right away, and Yekaterina took a deep breath and shouted.
"Residents inside! We are adventurers who've come to help you! Is anyone able to answer?!"
"Y-you've come to rescue us?!"
The inside of the Pantheon, which had been quiet, instantly grew chaotic. With everyone shouting for help at once, confusion reigned, and Yekaterina shrugged her shoulders and spoke to me in the middle of it all.
"There are usually three types in these situations. The ones who're in a panic and cause a ruckus trying to grab a helping hand, the ones who open the door and immediately stab at anything that moves hoping to at least get some revenge in their final moments, or the ones who've truly given up everything. In that last case, they just react like living corpses."
From what I could tell, this was nowhere near the last case, meaning it had to be one of the first two. Yekaterina had clearly been worried about the second scenario. That was another angle I hadn't considered. As expected, experienced adventurers really were built different.
When we didn't answer, the many voices clamoring from inside started dwindling one by one, and in response, Yekaterina spoke up again.
"We've dealt with all of the mercenary band that attacked you! We understand you must be in disarray right now, but we will do our utmost to help you reach the nearest city! So please, support one another and don't let anxiety push you into any rash actions!"
"O-okay, we understand!"
Yekaterina was definitely a civilization warrior. She didn't use that kind of vocabulary in everyday conversation, so whenever she suddenly pulled it out, the gap was enormous.
The commotion inside seemed to have settled down somewhat, so I finally removed the latch and opened the Pantheon's door. I could see the survivors looking at us with eyes full of both anxiety and hope.
And in that instant, just by briefly meeting their eyes, we understood exactly what posture we needed to take in front of them.
Yekaterina confidently shouldered her greatsword, which was as tall as she was, and I sheathed my sword with an unhurried, nonchalant motion and spoke quietly.
"Come out. You're all safe now."
It was time to play the heroes these people—who'd been praying for a hero and a miraculous rescue—were hoping to see.
◈
Silence, disbelief, shock, joy, sorrow.
The dramatic shift in the survivors' emotions was entirely natural. But there were no men or elderly people among them.
Only children and women. It wasn't that men had no value as slaves. The truth was, they'd likely taken the lead in fighting to protect the others and met their deaths doing so.
They were refugees who'd come from the border, they said. They'd fled and kept fleeing until they reached the inland, which they'd thought was at least somewhat stable, and had been banding together with other refugees nearby to build a village while requesting protection from the gate city.
"People really are worse than Demonfolk."
The disgust had risen past the point of overflowing, so I'd separated myself from them for a bit and was holed up in a corner when Asilie came over and hugged me from behind without a word. Maybe my expression had soured even more than I'd thought. Yekaterina also glanced my way, apparently concerned, so I waved a hand to signal I was fine.
"Gaendal still isn't back yet?"
"Yeah."
I hadn't bothered to hide from them why I'd come here. I didn't say more than necessary either, but I had at least told them that those bastards were the traitor's henchmen. At that, Gaendal had declared he'd extract the necessary information and had dragged the bastard off into the forest. That had been about twenty minutes ago.
Yet I still hadn't heard a scream, which meant he'd either gone much farther away than I'd thought, or the guy was being unusually cooperative. One of the two.
Recalling how he'd frantically torn his gear off alone to try and survive, he didn't exactly seem like the type who had some incredible pain tolerance and would stubbornly keep his mouth shut under torture.
"There aren't some other slave merchant groups we don't know about, are there?"
"They weren't in the intel Zikmel gave me. Let's hope that's the case."
According to Gin's explanation, other villages had also been hit the same way. And judging by the fact that some of the people in the Pantheon were from those villages, he said it seemed certain that the Hawk's Talon Band or whatever those mercenary fucks were called were responsible.
Given the circumstances, the plan had probably been for the slave merchant bastards we'd crushed on the first day to come make contact and cart the people off. After all, a crew of only forty with no proper wagons couldn't exactly march twenty captives across the entire country.
In the end, it all hinged on how cooperative the sole survivor would be. I stopped worrying about it and spent another ten-some minutes just blankly watching the rising sun.
Then I heard footsteps from behind, and Gaendal returned with the survivor in tow.