Point of Contact
Point of Contact
About an hour and a half after night had deepened until we could no longer see anything, the men changing shifts came out carrying torches.
"High probability their sentry duty runs on two-hour intervals."
"Considering the ones going inside don't look for any means to light their way, the interior must be brighter than it looks."
From outside, the entrance looked like pure pitch-black darkness, but apparently the inside was another matter. In any case, I took the first proper watch while Gaendal went back to sleep. He seemed able to sleep whenever he lay down; within ten minutes his breathing had already settled into an even rhythm.
Four hours of doing absolutely nothing could be torture, but in a world where simply being able to manipulate Magic Power gave you plenty to do, it wasn't much of a problem.
Manipulating Magic Power was ultimately a matter of practice. Unlike Mana and aura, there were no pioneers' footsteps for me to follow, but every day of effort still brought a little progress. And in this world, the results of training tended to show themselves much faster than they had in my previous life.
Sometimes the progress was so fast it felt almost contrived. I liked the results, but the implication wasn't entirely pleasant.
Unless I alone was capable of that kind of growth, it meant the world was chaotic and full of strong people. Whenever I had a quiet moment, that old compulsive anxiety started creeping back up.
Still, if I practiced manipulating Magic Power while getting lost in thoughts like that, four hours could vanish in an instant. Gaendal and I passed the night taking turns on watch.
Even as the night deepened and dawn broke, the bastards ultimately did nothing but post sentries. The two-hour shift changes were precise, but there was no other yield. With only idle chatter occasionally drifting over, morning broke.
"Now I've slept so much I can't sleep anymore."
Chewing the jerky Gaendal handed me as he stretched quietly with a hollow smile, we watched the final night sentries change shifts. Their vigilance seemed to have loosened a little; voices that had stayed low through the night were now somewhat louder.
"Finally, night watch is over. Haah. When do I get my turn at the tavern?"
"Saying that after you went just last week. I want to go too."
"Sure, a change of pace is nice, but the problem is sometimes I snap out of it and realize I've turned into an idiot who spends his days just waiting for tavern day."
"Hahaha. You said it."
They joked with each other and seemed to get along well. From everything I'd seen, that was the average relationship among them. They weren't soldiers, and whatever common purpose they had, they had ultimately been strangers before gathering here. The fact that they had built this much camaraderie and coordination under these conditions was both troublesome and surprisingly impressive.
I was wishing they'd be a bit less driven by duty and listening to their conversation when it happened.
"Speaking of which, did you hear? The baron's dead, they say."
"Baron, my ass. He was just a bottom-feeding mercenary butcher."
A story I'd never expected burst out of the bastards' mouths!
Except for one who scowled as if ready to spit, the other three started talking actively about the topic.
"He's dead anyway, the noble sir. Still, he was a business partner of sorts, let's not be too harsh."
"Anyway, wasn't it going pretty well? I even remember there being quite a few soldiers. All of a sudden like this?"
"I heard they were practically wiped out. The baron's private soldiers were destroyed, and even the hired mercenaries lost more than half their force and scattered."
Unless there'd been more than one piece of shit like Pabaera near the capital, that was definitely about him.
But this quickly? Today was only the fourth day since it happened, and the news had already reached these bastards. That was a serious problem.
"Really? The baron is one thing, but Butcher Lagiel and Snow Hunter Jejeul aren't pushovers. Did someone trace them back to us?"
"They deliberately kept the rumors down, but the Baera Mercenary Group was the real deal. How in the..."
There had been guys famous enough to earn nicknames? Strange. The baron was an idiot, and as far as I remembered, the only halfway useful one was the guy who put on that sword-splitting show with me. Then again, there had been another couple dressed a little better than the rest. Maybe it was them.
More importantly, those fuckers were considered genuinely skilled? No joke, three Ogatorf apprentice knights would've killed half the men in that forest. Was the gap really that large?
"Seems there were aura users mixed in. Two of them, no less."
"Fuck."
"Wasn't that why we deliberately targeted only Green-rank and Blue-rank adventurers—to avoid people like that? There has to be a limit to bad luck..."
Their bitter reactions made it click. The difference between having aura and not having it really was enormous. But the way they talked as though even Blue-rank adventurers normally lacked aura users was enough to confuse me.
"Huh? Aren't there at least some aura users around Blue-rank?"
"...Your common sense is warped in the strangest places. We are the unusual ones. Normally you don't start seeing aura users until around Red-rank."
Ah. Was that why, when they introduced Gaendal, they hadn't compared his skill to Red-rank—the very next rank up—but to Purple-rank, one step beyond that? Sheryl and I both used aura, so I'd assumed it was ordinary.
The yardstick of strength in this other world never quite landed for me, so I kept getting confused. Our party was even more impressive than I'd thought. My heart genuinely swelled.
"That throws a wrench into Mr. Ludna's plan. He must be devastated."
"How're the Demonfolk bastards reacting? Do they know?"
"They're the Demonfolk who told us. They didn't seem particularly bothered."
"Doesn't this mean their tail could get caught? Or did they pull some trick?"
"They killed the baron before he could say anything. Since they only ever dealt directly with him, they seem to think there's no trail leading back here."
My life really was absurdly eventful. The trash I'd barely cared about turned out to be tangled in something much larger; I had almost walked away without knowing, while the Adventurer's Guild had already noticed other signs and started investigating; and somehow that investigation connected directly to the part I'd missed.
"Is someone deliberately putting me through all this...?"
"Hmm? You say something?"
"No. Just talking to myself."
Thinking about it, if the thread led to Demonfolk, that could only be good for me. If this was what being dragged around looked like, I could put up with plenty of it.
"That's a relief, at least. Could've made for restless sleep."
"Anyway, that's the situation, so just keep it in mind."
"Will do. Good work, you lot."
That was the end of the shift change that had rewarded our long wait so handsomely. Once the replacements settled into the same idle chatter, I explained to a visibly disappointed Gaendal just how valuable what we'd overheard really was. Naturally, his attitude changed at once.
"The fact that news reached them this quickly is suspicious. Was someone monitoring this Pabaera?"
"If they were, 4 days would actually be too slow... judging from how those men spoke, they'd probably heard about it yesterday, so call it 3. Either way, I find it odd that it took even that long if they were actively monitoring him. They sounded as though they'd only heard the news yesterday."
It had sounded exactly like someone passing along a story he'd heard while on duty. The others listened as though it were new information too, so it didn't seem to be merely an exaggerated way of speaking.
"More importantly, they definitely said Demonfolk bastards—plural. Looks like you were right that there are separate people overseeing them."
"Exactly. This request really is lucky."
Obviously, it's easier to handle dispersed weaker foes than one strong one. Both Gaendal and I smiled at that part.
"Still, we've gained one more concern. At the very least, they may have a magic tool that lets them receive information quickly."
"At minimum...?"
"The ordinary possibility is teleportation. Worst case... they've built a gate."
The worst case truly was the worst. Of course, if we could destroy that gate it'd be a massive gain, but if troops started pouring out of it, it'd be a real disaster.
"I'd say what we've figured out so far alone counts as a big yield. Shall we head back?"
"No. Let's stay a bit longer. Luck's been this good, a bit more wishful thinking doesn't seem bad."
It was only a little past 6 in the morning. There was value in watching at least until noon.
"I see. As you predicted, the ones heading to the tavern would come out around lunchtime. That might even be today."
Gaendal understood quickly and nodded. He seemed fully convinced as well.
"We have nothing to lose. Let's wait a bit longer. Honestly, with things going this smoothly, I'm getting my hopes up too."
Everything was going so smoothly that there was hardly room for doubt.
Moreover, seeing their reaction to the mention of aura users earlier, it was clear that they themselves weren't overwhelmingly superior to the Baera Mercenary Group either.
The difficulty of the request was finally starting to take a concrete shape in my mind—and in a very, very optimistic direction.