Ragnis Lien da Levien
Ragnis Lien da Levien
Fourteen years.
When I looked back, it was a life where I'd never truly enjoyed what you'd call proper rest.
It had been like that before I was eight, and after that went without saying. The only difference was I'd gone from spending my time full of dreams and expectations to spending it full of rage and venom.
Put nicely, I'd made every moment count. Put badly, I'd worked myself hard enough to border on child abuse. I'd pushed myself so relentlessly that even I wondered whether I'd developed some kind of compulsion, so I decided to use this opportunity to actually rest.
"Sightseeing!"
After finishing some simple business at the Adventurer's Guild, I made a unilateral declaration to Ragnis.
"Why'd you go to the Adventurer's Guild?"
"Nothing much. I just asked whether any new faces had shown up among adventurers lately."
If they were planning a kidnapping, the kind of people they could use was limited. Any lookout would almost have to be a mercenary or an adventurer. For thieves, merely entering the town was a risk, and if they were caught, they could spill who was behind them before anyone had time to silence them. Truly skilled professionals were expensive, left a trail, and were difficult to dispose of afterward.
In this world, if you paid a top-tier expert and then tried to discard them once the job was done, they were more than capable of turning around and cutting off their employer's head. Nobody would use someone like that carelessly.
The dirtier their hands were, the more they wanted disposable underlings they could cut loose easily.
Winning over the receptionist with snacks and a little charm while checking for information every day was the first step toward what I had to do going forward. Today’s intel was, “No new faces in particular.” Since that much was within expectations, I decided to enjoy the sightseeing without a second thought.
And so the Ogwen tour began, and it turned out to be a far more pleasant experience than I'd imagined.
Even places I normally never visited—places I had no reason to visit—were worth checking out as long as they were crowded. Shops catering to adventurers sold all sorts of things, from food you rarely got to eat to equipment, albeit at a premium, and browsing them was genuinely fun for both of us.
"Have you been to places like this a lot?"
"No. Not at all."
Because I led the way so unhesitatingly, Ragnis, who'd been enjoying the walk so much she'd even stopped caring about her own situation, asked the question.
"Huh? You aren't going in blind?"
"To be precise, I just knew they were here. What reason would I have to come?"
Asilie had already taught me the essential tools and what you might call adventurer pro-tips, and I had no reason to buy equipment like armor while I was still growing. All the other little odds and ends might get bought later, but right now they were nothing but meaningless. Honestly, if it hadn't been for this chance, I wouldn't have come here on purpose before I turned sixteen anyway.
But even if we were wandering around pretending to be lovers, a city only just growing into a fortress town obviously wasn't going to have established date spots or tourist attractions. Ogwen hadn't had any to begin with, and in wartime a frontier city had no spare resources for things like that. Maybe that would change once the Adventurers' Guild grew and foot traffic increased, but not yet.
In the end, about all we could do was window-shop and enjoy the novelty.
Still, the shops catering to adventurers sold chocolate and other sugary treats that were usually hard to find, so this district—almost an adventurer quarter—was surprisingly good for a date.
"Anyway, I didn't know they sold stuff like this to adventurers. Do adventurers really make that much money?"
"What, the chocolates?"
Ragnis was gawking at the giant sidewalk signboard advertising chocolates right in front of the confectionery shop, nodding her head.
"Yeah. All the crazy sweet snacks, too."
"Using your brain burns through energy, so sweets help. The high sugar content keeps them from spoiling easily, and chocolate is calorie-dense enough to work as emergency rations. Maybe adventurers don't buy it because they're rich so much as because it's useful emergency food."
Potions existed in this other world, sure, but they were expensive. Low-grade to high-grade, they were all just expensive. Their effects ranged from absolutely insane instant wound regeneration like a troll's to the level of a nutritional supplement you'd drink before bed—an endless variety, but all expensive.
No matter how you sliced it, unless you were an adventurer who'd reached a certain level, in the end you had to get by with food, herbs, folk remedies, and medical knowledge just like in my past life.
Asilie had also been incredibly zealous about teaching me the medicinal herbs and poisonous plants you could find in the forest. She really taught me a wide range, from elven folk remedies to the folk remedies adventurers commonly used. Though I had to take the adventurers' remedies with a grain of salt, since a few were practically superstition.
"Huh, that's surprisingly systematic. But chocolate's expensive, isn't it? And they use it as emergency supplies?"
"Got me there. Miss! Two chocolates, please!"
"Miss? Hoho. Nine coppers, dear."
"Coppers?!"
"Like I always say, a pretty lady has a pretty heart. Thank you!"
I took two pieces of chocolate—each no bigger than half a nutrition bar, from the look of them, handed over by the lady in her forties—passed one to Ragnis, and chewed mine. Hm. Tasted like somewhere between 85% and 99% cacao.
"Huh? Coppers? Nine of them?"
"Usually it's ten. You already know the answer about the taste, so go ahead and try it, miss."
I could see what was bothering her. Clearly, the chocolate she'd known before was something you had to pay silver or gold coins to eat. But even if she realized this chocolate's quality was different, from a commoner's perspective, it must have been hard to swallow that a piece this tiny cost a whole five coppers. That was enough money for two meals a day, lodging, and even the bathhouse.
But for anyone who wasn't a completely green adventurer, for an adventurer active enough to need this stuff, the price wasn't really that high. That was why they could do business with adventurers.
After mulling it over for a moment, Ragnis resolutely bit into the chocolate she was holding, and her face instantly twisted.
"Ugh."
"The raw ingredient for chocolate isn't sweet. This one's sweet too, you know. The chocolate you've eaten was... well, something made crazy sweet through some series of processes we can't even guess at."
Well, the taste was no different from my past life, and that was indeed how it was. If this were back when Ragnis had been a noble, she might have spat it right out, but the current her couldn't bring herself to spit out food that cost a whole five coppers, so she kept chewing and savoring it somehow. Was this why people made kids eat cacao? Watching the reaction was pretty entertaining.
"Mm... at first it just seemed bitter, but actually, it's kind of not bad. The sweetness isn't excessive... maybe even addictive?"
Contrary to my expectation that she'd complain for ages, Ragnis's expression relaxed much sooner than I expected. Once she got used to the taste, she polished off the chocolate with obvious enjoyment. Good grief.
Still, she seemed to be enjoying herself and forgetting the fairly serious situation she was in, so I let it go with satisfaction.
◈
The four days after that were spent wandering around in much the same way. There wasn't much that was new. After all, an outing in a frontier city naturally had its limits.
We spent the next four days much the same way. Eating this, looking around there—before long, Ragnis, who had started out stiff as a board, was naturally clinging to my arm and doing a pretty convincing job of playing my girlfriend. Time passed easily enough, so I had nothing to complain about. Another uneventful day was going by, and I was wondering what strange food I should make her try next, when it happened.
-Thud.
"Ah."
A passerby bumped my shoulder—or rather, barely brushed it on the way past. I wasn't in the habit of shoulder-checking strangers. But the pained sound that followed was anything but ordinary.
Nah, it couldn't be. That childish, clichéd...
"Ah, fuck, my shoulder's all sore."
Then came the muttering. Mutters? No—more like the deliberate windup before he raised his voice.
It was unmistakably that line—so much so that even the adventurers walking nearby reacted immediately. The quick-witted ones were already opening their eyes wide, anticipating the grimy shitshow that was about to unfold.
Well... strictly speaking, this was the glove that nobles threw down for a duel.
In the world of thugs, it was a line that served the same function as that glove...
Ragnis, never imagining it was directed at us, kept walking with a smile, and I had no loyalty obliging me to stop on purpose either, so I kept moving while I turned things over in my head.
Thugs? I wasn't sure. In a district crawling with adventurers, they didn't have the guts to pull gangster antics. A pure psycho with no connection at all? It was possible, but even those types didn't mess with townsfolk carelessly. Why would they deliberately pick an act that would get them hauled off by the Guard Force?
"Would you look at this crazy bastard. Hey, asshole! Think you're hot shit just because you've got a sword? You wrecked my friend's shoulder!!"
Once I'd gotten that far in my assessment, it hit me like a flash: there was nothing to agonize over.
Wait. If they're thugs, I just beat them up. If they're some pathetic adventurer picking a pointless fight, I just beat them up. If they were something hired by the Noble Faction, my real target, I just beat them up—wasn't that it?
Right at that sudden epiphany, I had the sensation that Bad Eldmia and Worse Eldmia were grinning and swiping at their noses.
They were evil smiles that seemed to mock the me who'd been worrying like an idiot.
—Heh, dumbass.
—Heh, moron.
For fuck's sake... I even let out a hollow laugh at myself for whatever I'd been trying to agonize over. And at the same time I could tell that a stomping, fury-laden gait was closing in from behind.
-Grab!
"Fuck, are your ears plug—"
And the moment that hand landed on my shoulder.
"Aaaaaaarrrrrgh!!!"
"Huh? Uh?!"
"Eh, Eldmia?!"
I mentally apologized to Ragnis, who recoiled in shock, and moved.
"It fucking huuuuurts!!!"
"Uh? Th- fuh, fuck, what the—"
And with nothing but the strength of a body I'd trained the hard way, I twisted toward the face that came into view and unleashed the ultimate manly fantasy.
I bent low, twisted my entire body, wrung every ounce of strength into one fist, poured in all my rage and passion, and threw the truest punch a man could throw.
I call it—Galactica Phantom!
"What the fuck are you, you fucking son of a bitch!!!!!"
Telegraphed punch or not, all I had to do was hit him faster than he could react!
-THWACK!
The unidentified man took a fist straight to the face, couldn't even scream from the sudden shock, toppled over backward, and belatedly began thrashing.
"Gaaah!!"
"Before you squeal like a piglet, you should apologize for my shattered shoulder first, you punk-ass bastard!!"
If you were gonna pick a fight, this was how you did it.