The Rank-Up Quest
The subjugation unit's destination was a rural village called Daina.
I didn't know how to ride a horse, so I'd climbed up onto the wagon's cargo bed with Oren. A few other adventurers were riding the same way in the wagons around us, which was a small relief — at least I wasn't the only one. I figured I ought to learn how to ride eventually.
Talking with Oren on the way, I learned that the situation in Daina Village was worse than I'd expected. There had already been several casualties, and the monster den was expanding at an alarming rate.
"In a group request like this, you can gauge how dangerous it is just by looking at the ranks of the adventurers who signed on," Oren told me.
Fair point — they wouldn't call in a Gold-rank adventurer for something trivial. As a Novice-rank participant being treated as little more than spare hands, though, I couldn't honestly say I felt the weight of it.
For the rest of the journey I sat on the wagon with my eyes closed, gathering mana into my body. Ever since I'd learned Mana Conversion, collecting mana whenever I had a spare moment had become a habit.
At first, the change in my physical strength had been so dramatic I could feel the difference from one day to the next. Now that a fair amount of mana had settled into me, even converting it at every opportunity no longer produced a change I could clearly feel. Still, each time I practiced, I could sense a tiny bit more mana accumulating in my body. I had no intention of slacking off on this training until I reached the point Oren had described — when the body simply refused to take in any more.
After about half a day's travel, the subjugation unit arrived at Daina.
The moment we got there, every adventurer except me seemed to fall in under Mireia, the unit's commander, to start drawing up a battle plan. And as for what I was supposed to do here…
"Hey, young fella! Counting on you again this time."
The bald man who'd served as the porters' crew chief back in Kubel came over with a grin. The heavy wooden crates packed into the supply wagons needed unloading all over again.
"Just leave it to me."
The skills of a professional laborer, honed by a mana-forged body. Time to put on a show.
Normally, being stuck with grunt work like this would have me groaning about how hard it was. Instead, I was in a pretty good mood. As the only Novice-rank adventurer in the entire subjugation unit, I was also the only adventurer among the porters — somewhere in the gap between the two. I didn't have to fight any monsters, and if I just waited out the subjugation, I'd walk away with a Bronze rank. So I'd do my job properly, soak up the crew chief's praise, and let a little honest labor scratch that itch for recognition.
"Stack three on. No — four."
"Hey… you sure? If you pile them that high, they'll be hard to balance."
"I told you, it's fine."
The crew chief gave me a slightly worried look as he stacked more crates on top of the ones I was already holding. At this point I was the undisputed ace of the labor crew. I hauled four crates at once and carried them to the designated spot without so much as a wobble.
"Whoa. Adventurers really are something else."
I basked in the crew chief's admiration and felt a quiet swell of pride. Who knew there was a way to get praised this easily? A privilege unique to Novice-rank adventurers stuck doing porter work, maybe. Not that I had any intention of staying this rank forever — but if I didn't find happiness in the small things, the negative thoughts would only pile up.
Wonder what the other adventurers are up to. Might as well take a look.
The monster subjugation unit, led by Mireia, divided its twelve adventurers into two teams of six. The den they were to clear held goblins, orcs, lycans, ogres, and more — monsters of entirely different species, living together as if they were one.
So the subjugation unit was up against a monster variety pack, basically. Just as Narration had said, I could see the adventurers splitting into two groups. Oren, being Bronze-rank, was on a different team from Mireia. The adventurers standing with her all carried an air that was anything but ordinary. Mireia was the only Gold-rank in the unit, which meant the rest of her team were probably Silver.
The subjugation unit decided that Mireia's vanguard would first smash through the front of the fortified monster den. The rear guard, composed of comparatively weaker adventurers, would then mop up whatever monsters remained in the vanguard's wake. It was a frontal assault so straightforward it was almost embarrassing to call it a strategy — but with overwhelming force on their side, it was also the most reliable method available.
I set a crate down lightly, listening to Narration's rundown with genuine interest. A frontal assault. If the den was fortified, the monsters would have a massive defensive advantage. The fact that they were going through with it anyway meant they were certain they couldn't lose.
I found myself wanting to watch Mireia fight — then realized there was no way to make that happen, and let the thought go. If I kept building my skills the honest way and climbed the adventurer ranks, maybe I'd get to see it up close someday.
But they were so focused on clearing the monster den that they paid no attention to scouting the surrounding area, nor to the village's defense.
That was when Narration's voice took a sudden, ominous turn.
In truth, another monster den had already formed near Daina Village. Neither the subjugation unit nor a single villager had noticed it. And the monsters there were about to awaken — and raid the village.
"What…?"
If that was true, we were in serious trouble. The subjugation unit had already finished organizing and was about to move out. That meant the only people left in the village would be ordinary villagers with almost no combat ability — and me. This was no time to be splitting into a vanguard and rear guard to charge a monster den. If they didn't leave anyone behind to defend the village, a catastrophe was all but guaranteed.
But I couldn't exactly go tell the subjugation unit about it, either. A Novice-rank adventurer insisting the village was about to be attacked would just get written off as a lunatic.
On the outskirts of Daina Village, there was a communal cemetery. As monster activity in the region had intensified, a great change had taken place beneath those graves as well. The corpses buried there were turning into monsters — and no one had noticed.
The subjugation unit, its teams already assigned, began to file slowly out of the village. A few villagers waved them off as they went.
"Damn it."
"What's wrong? You don't look so good all of a sudden."
The crew chief had come over, watching me stare after the departing adventurers with a worried look.
"No… it's nothing."
"See, I told you not to overdo it. The work's done, so get some rest until the unit comes back."
"Ah… right."
I answered absently, my eyes still on the village entrance where the subjugation unit had vanished from sight. Between the now-empty wagons, the village children came running up, shrieking with laughter as they played. An old man leaning on a cane watched them. A young couple stood in front of their house, having seen the unit off together. Even in a village this small, plenty of people were living ordinary lives. And not a single one of them knew the disaster that was about to come crashing down on them.
And so the twelve-adventurer subjugation unit left the village, heading for the monster den in the northern forest. They could not even imagine what would happen in Daina Village tonight, after the subjugation was over and they returned.
"Tonight…"
I quietly repeated the timing Narration had given me, and swallowed hard.
"Excuse me — could I ask for directions? Which way is the village cemetery?"
"The cemetery? Just over that hill behind the village. It's close."
I grabbed the first villager I saw and asked the way. The hill they pointed to was so near it might as well have been part of the village itself. If monsters came pouring out from somewhere that close…
I didn't have much time. It was already getting on toward noon, and the attack from the cemetery was coming tonight. I had nothing to prove any of this except a voice in my head, which meant I couldn't ask anyone for help. So I decided to start by seeing the cemetery for myself.
Piecing together what Narration had told me, the monsters raiding tonight would be the corpses from those graves, transformed. That meant the number of people buried in the cemetery was the number of monsters I'd be dealing with. If I went and took stock of the place, I'd at least know the scale of what I was up against.
I crossed the hill the villager had indicated, and the cemetery came into view at once. It was a small village, and thankfully the graveyard wasn't very large.
"No wonder nobody noticed…"
The scene was so peaceful I almost wondered if Narration had been talking nonsense. Gravestones stood in dense rows, with flowers of every color blooming between them. In front of a few stones, small offerings or bouquets had been left — family or friends who'd come and gone.
Standing on the hill where I could take in the whole cemetery at a glance, I did a rough count of the gravestones. Even a graveyard this small had a little over a hundred. Factoring in unmarked graves, that meant more than a hundred monsters would hit the village tonight. If corpses were turning into monsters, they were probably undead — skeletons, zombies, something in that family. I thought about getting help from a priest or a church, but unfortunately, even this close to the free city of Kubel, there wasn't one here.
There had to be something I could do. I'd never fought a monster other than a Blue Slime. I trained my body with Mana Conversion every day, but I was still a Novice-rank adventurer who'd only just set foot on this path. I had no confidence I could hold a village against more than a hundred monsters by myself.
"Mister."
A young voice called from behind me, and I turned. While I'd been standing there staring at the cemetery, lost in thought, a little girl no taller than my waist had come up, holding a white flower.
"Do you have someone you miss here too, mister?"
She held the flower out to me with a small, stubby hand. I'd been looking at the graves for so long she'd gotten the wrong idea. I took the flower from her in a daze.
"Give that to the person you miss. I'm giving it to you."
"…Do you live here?"
"Yeah. I live over that way with my dad. When I miss Mom, I come here."
She pointed toward Daina Village as she said it.
"I see."
I gave her hair a light pat.
Tonight, Daina Village would be attacked by monsters. I had no real conviction I could protect it alone, and no confidence either. But I couldn't know the village was going to be raided and then do nothing. Running would be easy. The guilt would last a long time.
This village was full of people living ordinary lives. I wasn't a hero, and I wasn't some high-ranking adventurer of any particular note. But as long as I knew what was going to happen here, I figured I had to do what I could. Running away could wait until things actually went south. It wouldn't be too late then.