Commendation
Commendation
I flipped the letter over, stared at it from every angle, and even turned the envelope inside out just in case there was something else written on it, but nothing changed.
And what I had to do was the same. I tossed the letter and envelope into the stove without hesitation, finishing up putting on my armor. I hadn't thought I'd be performance-testing it like this, of all things. Seriously, I couldn't shake the feeling that the timing was just a goddamn masterpiece.
"I think I need to go where Seneran is."
There was a chance the armor could get damaged or smashed to pieces, but trying to survive a situation that crazy in the leather armor I'd been wearing up till now was suicide, so I just put it on. If I came back in one piece, great; if not, at least I'd catch less shit than showing up hobbling around half-crippled. At my sudden reaction, Asilie asked, flustered.
"Why? Did something happen?"
"Well, it seems pretty certain the Demonfolk are on the move. Thanks to that, I've got something to confirm."
"Wait. I'll get ready too."
"Nah, it's fine. I'm not going to do anything grand; I just want to scope out the situation. You stay here, and if anyone comes looking for me, just explain things."
I couldn't know whether Seneran had personally confronted the Demonfolk or written down a story she'd learned by asking around. But the keyword I'd thrown out in a fit of anger back then was linked to my past life, so the fewer people who knew about it, the better.
Even if the person was Asilie, it was still too awkward to talk about right now. Hearing my evasive answer, a questioning glint rose in Asilie's eyes.
"Even while putting on the armor you just received?"
"That's just because I've been getting hammered all over the place lately. Always be at your best. You're the one who taught me that, right?"
I threw out the joke with a natural smile, and luckily Asilie nodded with an expression that said, 'Well, that's true,' and quickly accepted it.
Thanks to Esmue having taken the proper measurements, the armor was incredibly comfortable. Asilie, who had been quietly watching me pack my axe and other gear with satisfaction, opened her mouth.
"What kind of thing was written in it?"
"There was a request that was the whole reason I got close to Gaendal's party. It seems like the Demonfolk are tracking traces related to that incident."
"Ah, the one you said was a secret request?"
"That's right."
Saying just that much was enough. Asilie jumped to the conclusion that I'd burned the letter because it was linked to a past request, and she accepted it. I felt a bit like I was deceiving her, but from our very first meeting onward, I'd hidden so many facts under the guise of 'I didn't technically lie,' so I didn't feel guilty.
But I did feel pretty sorry that my fate still didn't allow me to tell the truth.
"Even if something does happen, I'll just blow it all off and come back, so don't worry too much."
So I added one more line for no good reason.
Given all the shit I'd pulled in my short life, she didn't exactly look like she believed me, but at least the interrogation didn't continue.
◈
Seneran was someone who didn't have strong likes or dislikes when it came to seasons. She'd spent more years holed up in her lab with the heat on when it was cold and the cooling magic on when it was hot than she hadn't, so in some ways, it was an inevitable result.
Still, if she forced herself to dredge up memories from the time when she did have preferences, she thought she'd probably hated summer more. That changed this time.
'Goddamn winter.'
Heat, at least, could be relieved by resting in the shade, but in winter, if you rested because you were cold, you only got colder—without a doubt, it was the absolute worst season. After sniffing and reaching that same conclusion she'd repeated dozens of times just today, she activated her magic tool, and Mana resonated as it swept the area.
Originally, it was a tool used to identify areas where Magic Power was excessively concentrated, but now it was serving as an excellent Demonfolk detector. Lately, the results had been meager, but Seneran knew better than anyone that it wasn't the tool's fault.
"Seeing as there's not even a faint trace, I guess it's not this way either."
Seneran grumbled in dissatisfaction, but the others just laughed. Everyone was tired from a search that had already been going on for over seven hours, but nobody was complaining.
Gin, brushing the frost from his beard, burst into a hearty laugh and shook his head.
"Looks like we came up empty again today. If we're this worn out, the other guys must be absolutely dying out there."
And no wonder—the reason they could laugh and take it easy like this was entirely thanks to Seneran. The magic tools she'd packed and lugged along were all incredibly useful, and thanks to them, they'd risen to become one of the few parties with actual results among the countless adventurers who'd rushed over for this request. Knowing that, no one had a prickly enough personality to complain just because she grumbled about not finding a trace.
In fact, they genuinely worried about the other adventurers. More precisely, they worried about the possibility that those others were hitting their mental limits.
Maybe it was because they were in the middle of frantic reconstruction, but the Mandeli Port Adventurer Guild had treated those who took on this request very generously, but in return, they demanded a forced march of searching outside the port for over ten hours every single day.
Considering the meals, lodging, and pay they provided, it wasn't exactly an unreasonable workload, but when it dragged on for about a month like this, exhaustion was inevitable. Except for the parties with a track record, like Gaendal's, there were also plenty of complaints about soldiers tailing them under the pretext of preparing for an encounter with Demonfolk, making them feel unnecessarily monitored.
The soldiers themselves, who had been assigned to stick with the adventurers, just marveled at how the adventurers found traces even in snow-covered plains or forests and tracked them doggedly by any means possible, but there was no way for the adventurers themselves to know that. As Gin had said, many adventurers were mentally 'dying out there' because of it.
"Can't be helped. Since we've actually found traces of Demonfolk, I suppose feeling like you're dying is better than actually dying."
Whether they were from the Demon King's Army or just regular Demonfolk, they had become increasingly skilled at erasing their tracks. Unlike the beginning, when they could pick up some traces and tail them with detection magic, now they'd reached the point where it was hard to get a read at all unless they used shortcuts with Seneran's tools.
If they hadn't happened upon slash-and-burn farmers living hidden in the forest while tracking those faint traces, the letter sent to Eldmia this time would have contained the same old complaints about their situation. Though no one had expected Eldmia's name to suddenly come up there.
Strictly speaking, it wasn't Eldmia's name. What the slash-and-burn farmer had forced himself to dredge up and say was something like, 'Little Edumia or whatever.'
Of course, there was always the possibility that some unidentified thing called 'Little Edumia' really existed somewhere in the world, but the moment the five of them heard the farmer's answer, they all looked at one another and silently reached the same conclusion.
'They seemed to roughly guess the reason...'
They had even considered paying Gaendal's party, for Eldmia's sake, to keep quiet about what they'd heard, but in the end, the one who had to listen to that request was Seneran.
The reason was far more ordinary. When Gaendal said it seemed to be connected to the secret request he'd previously taken from the capital's Adventurer's Guild, Seneran made a show of reluctance before accepting.
If it was a secret request, there was a high probability that some kind of magical measure had been taken. Judging that she wouldn't get the answer she wanted by prying pointlessly anyway, she decided to just relay the information immediately rather than doing something as useless as digging into Eldmia's background.
Even that had happened two days ago. Normally, she would have at least gotten a formal reply by now, but the lack of any news might mean he was on his way in person.
"Let's call it a day around here and head back. We might have to go even farther starting tomorrow."
"Now that you mention it, was today the day they were holding a meeting to discuss opinions on the new policy?"
Keep circling the Mandeli Port area and searching as they were, or expand the search radius through cooperation with other regions?
Actually, there were plenty of grumbling voices saying that since they'd been repeating this shit for over a month, it was obvious the Demonfolk weren't even here, so wasn't the latter option the only sensible one?
But as the largest port city in Itisel, Mandeli Port had a considerably wide administrative zone. As unfortunate as it was for the adventurers, the areas they'd been tearing through up until now were only a tiny fraction classified as the city's immediate vicinity, so from the perspective of those holding the command baton, it was by no means a simple issue to decide.
Even so, there was only one reason they were holding a meeting this time.
The adventurers' consistent testimony that the Demonfolk were erasing their traces with increasing cunning. And Seneran's influence played a huge role in that. Those in the capital, blinded by the gold Seneran possessed, had mostly forgotten why she had started hoarding money so desperately, but the key figures in Mandeli Port were different.
Because Seneran was what you'd call a 'big spender' and an authority who used her overflowing gold to buy up all sorts of Demonfolk-related information and tools. Her saying that tracking them was getting harder and harder was not something to be taken lightly.
"I just really want to go home now..."
"I know, right. It's been a tiring request in many ways. Though the money coming in is nice."
Whether she was highly regarded like that or not, Seneran had a gloomy expression. If Eldmia had been diligently studying, around now would be when the instructional materials she'd prepared in advance would run out. Which meant he'd be ready to move on to the next experiment, so from her perspective, it was only natural she wanted to focus more on the rapidly changing Eldmia rather than the Demonfolk she'd gotten zero results on for years of research.
'And I'm sick to death of this wretched cold, too.'
In the end, the party unanimously decided to return and started walking toward the half-shattered walls of Mandeli Port.
"Oh, it's a wyvern."
At Yekaterina's murmur—she still had plenty of energy to spare—everyone's eyes turned toward the sky as if on cue. A single wyvern, the kind that had been a rare sight since winter set in, was flying toward Mandeli Port. Maybe because of the cold weather or whatever, Rellie, who had been watching the wyvern flying quite low with a weary expression, let out a hollow laugh.
"Now, whenever I see a wyvern flying that low, I suddenly feel like Sir Ega is going to jump off it."
Though they hadn't participated in the orc subjugation operation, the ones who had already heard the whole story from Yekaterina burst out laughing simultaneously. This time, even Seneran couldn't help but crack a smile.
Come to think of it, hadn't she heard he jumped off a wyvern last time too, to close the orcs' gate?
Anyway, wondering where the hell a human like that had popped out from—it was something you just couldn't figure out—Seneran moved her heavy feet again.