Revelation
Revelation
The journey that followed was a spectacular shitshow.
The first disaster was a stone bridge we reached four hours after leaving the campsite. The moment a dozen or so rough-looking men loitering on the bridge, just casually resting there, called out to us as we approached, I could only smack my own forehead.
"Hey there, friends. From here on, you gotta pay a toll to pass, yeah?"
Had everything I'd ever done been completely meaningless?
In all those old novels I'd read, fame spread like wildfire even in eras without cell phones, but in reality, stone-brained bastards trying to shake down travelers at some random bridge couldn't even recognize me. It made me realize, bone-deep, exactly why tired clichés were tired clichés—and just how far I still had to go.
"Heh, heh heh. Today's your lucky day, special offer. Just leave the elf and you can go."
There were far too many goddamn bandits in this world.
"Hey, Sen."
"Y-Yes! Eldmia!"
"Clean up these dickhead bastards."
Whether she'd caught my emotional state—which was well past mere annoyance and into a flash of seething rage—Sen vaulted off her horse and hurled her daggers into the pack of smirking brigands.
The blades buried themselves in the eyeballs of two thieves who hadn't grasped the situation yet, and at the same instant Sen roared.
"YAAA, YOU MOTHERFUCKEEEEERS!"
The order had been given to Sen, but everyone moved at once. Kals and Baije spurred their horses straight into the charge, and Merdela had already begun chanting support magic the moment Sen leaped from the saddle.
Needless to say, nothing that could even be called a fight broke out. The one bastard who'd been standing there trying to look impressive bolted like a ghost the moment he saw Sen and the others spring into action at my word, and Asilie's arrow sent him off to join the rest. The remainder were exactly the caliber of common bandits. So utterly, pathetically worthless that I couldn't even muster the will to fight them.
'What kind of language is that, with children present?'—Asilie, riding in front of me, smacked my lips with her palm. That was the only damage I took.
The second shitshow happened that evening.
Just as we'd set up camp deep in the woods, the surviving bandits from the bridge came back with reinforcements from somewhere. It seemed ten dead now meant twenty more swarming in—the latest fashion in brigandry. Roughly that many surrounded us and closed in.
"Fuck, this time you're dead for sure."
Rumors spread like shit, yet these surviving scumbags and their new pack of friends had no trouble tracking us down. A wave of mental fatigue hit me, so I decided to handle this one personally. No matter how annoying it was, bastards like this had to be dealt with directly, otherwise there'd be no end to the trouble.
Maybe because I'd been fighting people who at least fancied themselves swordsmen lately, this kind of situation had become nothing but a tiresome chore.
"I'm Eldmia Eg—"
That was when an utterly unexpected reaction erupted.
"A-A-AAGH! It's Eldmia Ega!!"
Someone actually recognized me!
"F-Fuck! Nobody said anything about this!!"
And it wasn't just one or two. As I scanned the surroundings, my traveling companions frozen in round-eyed shock behind me, I saw a surprising number of them having a similar reaction. Hell, when I made eye contact with one of the panicking bastards, he actually threw away his weapon and turned to flee.
"You dog bastards! You dick-sucking bastards! If you're gonna die, die by yourselves!"
"I voted against this! It's not me! I'm out!"
"W-What the hell?! Why are they doing that?! Get a grip, you fucks!"
"GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!"
A procession of desertion followed, not a single one looking back. Watching twenty men drop to half their number in an instant, I finally, belatedly understood that my efforts hadn't been in vain at all.
Fortunately, the ones who stayed didn't have the stomach to fight. In the end, Sen stared blankly at the bastards who beat a retreat without doing a single thing, then at Asilie—who had, incongruously, burst into a gentle laugh—and at me, before slowly asking, as if we were something beyond her comprehension.
"Just what... do you two do out there?"
"Pursuing a long-cherished wish."
I thought it was a perfectly reasonable explanation, but the reaction I got back didn't change at all.
Two days passed. It wasn't until noon on the third day that Ogwen finally began to creep into the edge of our sight.
"Now that's a real city."
The outer wall, which had been under heavy construction when I left, was mostly completed. Only a few sections remained, visible only because we'd come down from the hills—completion was clearly not far off.
"Come to think of it, Eldmia, you said you know Ogwen well, didn't you?"
"Well? Not sure about 'well,' but I do know it. Or maybe I don't know it anymore either."
Even half a year before I'd left, Ogwen had been a city that changed day by day. I couldn't even begin to guess how much it had changed by now.
Still, maybe because it was my hometown after all, I couldn't help but feel a strange flutter of anticipation—even with a saintess candidate of the Holy Light Cross Order right behind me and insane cultists out there sharpening their knives.
"We'll find out when we get there."
It wasn't just the walls that had changed. Even from a distance, I could see a full-blown line to get through the gate, and the buildings inside the territory were oddly clustered together. It made me wonder if this town had acquired some kind of dungeon. But who knew? Maybe a whole nest of dungeons had popped up somewhere.
"Having to stand in line just to enter Ogwen. The world's changed a lot."
"You sound like a little old man, Eldi."
"It's called maturity, Teacher."
Maybe it was because we'd brought along a whole bunch of horses no one was even riding. Even after we took our place at the end of the line, we drew plenty of stares. As I waited for the line to shrink, wondering if our odd party composition might be the cause, a familiar figure caught my eye at the gate.
"That's Alec."
The simple, good-natured guard in his twenties, completely smitten with Remiri—one of Madam Alisha's star inn girls—was conducting inspections with a heavy, uncharacteristically serious expression on his face.
More precisely, I should say he'd lost all his military discipline and was slacking off, yawning with his helmet off and dumping all the inspections on what looked like his junior. As Alec's gaze, clearly bored to death by the endless line, drifted past the people ahead and slowly reached me, I calmly waved my hand.
He tilted his head at first, then his eyes flew wide open and he came sprinting toward me.
"Well, I'll be! Eldmia! You got even bigger?"
"That's really the first thing you say after all this time?"
"Brat. When you're really glad to see someone, this is the only kind of thing that comes out! Huh? But how come you're with Asilie?"
"Some business came up and it turned out that way. I'm back this time to wrap up loose ends."
"What?! You bought a house in the capital?!"
So the dream of owning a home wasn't much different even in a fantasy world.
"Not that. The business got settled, so we decided to travel together."
"Huh. I did hear the stories going around about Levi actually being a noble and all... everything got sorted out okay, right?"
"Yeah. Ended on good terms. Don't worry."
For all his fussing, Alec was a good-natured guy. His worried expression brightened instantly, as if my business were his own.
"Good, that’s good. Ah, anyway—I have some amazing news to tell you!"
"You're dating Remiri?"
"Me and Remi—huh? How did you know?"
"I think you were probably the only one who didn't know why Remiri gave up all those good odd jobs to work at your family's shop."
Sure, I'd only recently realized just how hopelessly oblivious I was, but at least I was better than Alec. As I teased him—"Hwuh? Hwuh?"—and he struggled with his denial of reality, we finally reached the gate. Thanks to a friendly connection, we got a free pass right in.
"Anyway, I'm just glad you're doing well, man! You're staying a while, right?"
"Not long, but... maybe three days?"
"Ah, must be busy. Still, since you're finally back, let's grab a drink together later. Oh, and travelers—please make sure you stop by the Adventurer Guild. It's Security Reinforcement Week, so they're being real thorough."
"Ah, yes. Thank you."
Leaving Alec behind, energetically waving us off, we entered the city's interior. It was far more familiar than it had looked from the outside.
"Oh?! Eldmia!"
"Milena, long time no see! Your shop moved?"
"Oh my, oh my, heavens! No, you heartless brat! Stop for a second!"
"I've got urgent business right now, can't. I'll come by and say hi to everyone properly later!"
Past Milena's shop, which had relocated and grown larger at some point.
"What the? That's Eldmia, isn't it?"
"I used that sword you gave me cheap really well, old man!"
"What? Why are you using past tense? Ya! Brat!"
"Heu-ha-ha! Hans's longsword of frontier Ogwen! Replaced by a dwarf artisan's longsword of the capital!"
"What?! A dwarf?! Ya, ya! You punk! At least show me the sword before you go!"
Past Hans, shining light off his bald head in front of his forge just like always, I took in the street.
Familiar faces. A continual string of unselfish welcomes. Even though I hadn't consciously tried to remember any of it, the memories welled up the moment we arrived. The mood was so damn pleasant that I could easily ignore the dumbfounded stares of Sen's party and the other onlookers watching this atmosphere of warm reception.
Driving the horses on, we finally arrived at a place that had now practically turned into an orphanage—Madam Alisha's inn. As I pulled my horse to a stop and looked at the building, which had changed a fair bit, a bunch of snot-nosed brats who probably wouldn't recognize my face were staring at us, curious about the sudden influx of strangers.
...There were a lot of them.
"Follow the main southern road from here and you'll find the Holy Light Cross Order temple. Go settle your business, stop by the Adventurer Guild to get yourselves on the record, and then come back here."
"Huh? The Holy Light Cross Order? Why would we..."
"Because Lady Bellesica's family will be there."
Assuming they'd made it safely, that was. Question marks practically materialized over their heads, but none of them had the nerve to talk back to me about it.
"Are... are you not coming with us?"
But Bellesica did talk back, a little. She clearly seemed anxious, so I offered a bit of reassurance as I explained.
"I'm strictly a third party in this, after all. That said, this isn't where we part ways. I just need to sort out my own business first, and then I'll visit to explain the situation. When you get there, there should be someone called Priest Ashel. Tell them Eldmia Ega said to come see him, and the other priests will guide you. He's a man of deeper faith than anyone. You can trust him."
Not only deep faith, but a veteran holy warrior who'd fought in the Crusades in the past. The very idea that the priests of the Holy Light Cross Order in Ogwen could be blinded by self-interest was nonsense to begin with, but it was still better to introduce them to the most trustworthy person first.
Fortunately, that alone was enough for Bellesica to settle her nerves and accept the situation. As they rode off into the distance with the spare horses, Asilie quietly asked me.
"The Holy Light Cross Order?"
"Seems she might be a saintess candidate."
"...Ah-ha. So that's why..."
Understanding the whole situation from just those few words, Asilie didn't ask anything more.
She only laughed, softly. 'You really do get tangled up in incidents everywhere you go.'