A Knight's Field Trip
At the Porona restaurant, Nicoletta and I finished our meal and settled into an easy conversation.
Nicoletta spoke first.
"I've always admired hunters. When I was little, I was playing tag outside the capital and saw a hunter dragging a monster carcass along behind him. I thought he was the coolest thing I'd ever seen."
"…That's illegal."
"I was too young to know. I only found out later that he was a poacher."
I nodded, turning the cup in my hands.
Hunters never haul monster corpses around with them.
The only people who did that were poachers and the royal army. The army did it to strengthen their forces; poachers did it to sell the remains. Neither left a scrap of the monster behind.
Was Nicoletta secretly a poacher-in-training all along?
"But my parents thought being a knight would be better than becoming a hunter. We lived in the capital, so if I became a hunter I'd be far from my family — and a knight's pay is a lot more reliable."
Knights were trained soldiers who moved for Cartadia's sake.
They ate the kingdom's salt, so compared to hunters — who went hungry whenever decent commissions dried up — it was a far more stable line of work.
Nicoletta leaned back in her chair.
"Honestly, I've never been that serious about knighthood. You swing a sword and you make money. That's the whole of it."
"I see."
"And somehow I ended up a candidate for Knight Commander."
Not serious about it, she says!
I offered a silent prayer for every knight who had snapped under Nicoletta's pressure.
"That said, I have no intention of becoming Knight Commander. There's someone better suited for it than me. You might know him, actually."
"Me?"
"His name is Guido Russo, and he's about…"
I cut her off before the flood of information could pour from her mouth.
"Ah, I know him. We've met."
The knight I'd run into in Angolo.
I remembered helping him while he was fighting a monster. He'd been trying so hard to take the thing down on his own — and he was a candidate for Knight Commander?
I supposed fighting monsters and dealing with people really were different fields. Come to think of it, Evan had nearly lost an arm to a Sabeltiger too.
I was only good at this because I'd spent so long hunting monsters nonstop. If I actually fought knights, I'd probably be outmatched.
As for that fight with Evan…
It was a hazy scrap of the past, half-faded in my memory. I remembered it ending rather anticlimactically…
Had Evan gone easy on me?
"Do you know Evan?"
"Evan? You mean Evan Prado, right? Competitive as they come. His growth is a bit slow, though. Not Knight Commander material — but when I saw him this time, he seemed a lot more open-minded. Oh, he mentioned you, too. You met him in Lacrima, didn't you?"
"Ah, uh… yeah."
Talking with Nicoletta felt like playing a terrifying game of Tetris. Lose the flow for even a second and you'd get buried under the blocks, forgetting what you'd been talking about in the first place.
"I heard all about Lacrima. You're something else. That's why I came looking for you. But I'm not planning to just take without giving. I'll pay you well for your trouble."
"It's fine, really…"
I didn't need the money. Why not just become a hunter herself?
Nicoletta swept her red hair up and back. A cool sharpness settled in her blue eyes.
"This is something I want to do."
That distinctive edge of a knight showed through. She might claim she wasn't serious about knighthood, but she was a knight down to the bone.
I stood, shrugged on the coat I'd left beside me, and went to the counter to settle the bill — Nicoletta's included. She wanted to pay herself, but spoiling a newbie was the right call.
Outside, Nicoletta looked around.
"This is my first time in Antico. The scenery's really beautiful."
"Isn't it?"
"It must be something else in spring or autumn."
I nodded.
I'd lived in Antico for less than a year, so maybe I didn't have much room to talk — but it really was a wonderful place.
Sure, the summer bugs and the sticky heat were a problem, but even accounting for all that, the view alone made it worth it.
I asked Nicoletta,
"So what do you need me to teach you?"
"I'm already working the anomaly cases like the other knights, but I don't really know how hunters handle things. I've wanted to ask someone directly, but hunters and the royal army aren't exactly on the best of terms, you know? So I never quite managed to ask."
"And yet you came to me."
Nicoletta said,
"You helped us."
Whether hunters were just butchers who carved up monsters out in the wild, or the royal army was a bunch of hothouse flowers — none of that had anything to do with me. If someone was in danger, I helped. If not, I didn't.
"Would it be an imposition?"
"Not at all."
I shook my head.
"New recruits are always welcome."
I carefully raised a thumb and gave her a thumbs-up.
Nicoletta hesitated, then raised her own thumb in return.
"…Thanks."
Good. Excellent.
"So where should I start? I've got a lot of questions."
Emergency. This was bad.
"…Don't dump them all at once. Organize them and ask one at a time."
"Hmm."
Nicoletta touched her lips thoughtfully.
While she deliberated, I started walking toward the Association. Whatever else we did, accepting a commission came first. Killing monsters without an official request wasn't hunting — it was poaching.
We were about halfway there when Nicoletta spoke.
"I'd like to see the whole process from the beginning."
"…The beginning?"
"Yes. From accepting a commission all the way through to completing it."
I looked at her face.
"…You know you have to keep quiet once we're out there, right?"
"Of course."
Nicoletta answered with absolute confidence.
I thought it over for a long moment, then finally nodded.
Pina was lying in bed reading a book. Just as the romance had been going strong, an assassin appeared and murdered everyone — and it was surprisingly gripping. Resting with a good book was pure bliss.
"Mmm~."
The fragrant tea scent filling the room made it perfect.
She still didn't know how hard she'd worked running around Lacrima. There would be more of that ahead, no doubt — so stretching her legs out and resting properly here was her one true joy.
But one thing worried her: what would happen to Alice when all of this was over? With Miteraos set as the final goal, the path ahead was clear.
If Alice returned to the future at the end of it… what then? Pina carefully turned the page.
No amount of fretting would give her an answer.
Bang—.
That was when Alice appeared.
"Pina. We've got a commission. Get ready."
She'd thought nothing could be scarier than an assassin suddenly showing up in a book. She was wrong.
Pina scrambled to close the book and bolted upright on the bed.
"…Um, Alice-nim. Didn't you say we were resting?"
"Someone wants to observe."
"Ahh…"
Pina pressed a hand to her forehead and flopped backward. She rubbed her face into the pillow and muttered,
"Observe what, exactly? You're not the kind of person who has free time for that, Alice-nim…"
Alice had fully expected this reaction.
"She says she'll pay us separately."
"New hunters are always welcome."
Pina shot back up from the bed and started gathering her clothes. Getting Pina moving was easy.
Then a voice that wasn't Alice's caught Pina's attention.
"…Oh-ho. So this is the inside of a hunter's lodging."
Nicoletta stepped into the room.
When her eyes met Pina's, she dipped her head slightly.
"I'm a knight — Nicoletta Ricci. Nice to meet you."
At the word knight, one of Pina's eyebrows twitched.
"Huh? A knight?"
"That's right. But don't look at me like that. I may be a knight, but I'm very interested in hunters. Ah, to explain that I'd have to go back to when I was little in the capital and— mmph mmph."
"Stop."
Alice clamped a hand over Nicoletta's mouth. Nicoletta blinked, then nodded and lowered her hands.
Pina asked,
"So what's the commission?"
"Hunting a Pantanotor."
"A Pantanotor?"
The turtle-croc Pantanotor was a monster that prowled the forest swamps. It competed for territory with the swamp earwig Metakentos.
Alice nodded and leaned back against the wall.
"I'm planning to be out for about a day."
"Then I'll need to pack more supplies."
Pina opened a crate and began sorting through their gear.
Nicoletta watched with eyes full of interest, then quietly knelt beside her.
"Mind if I take a look?"
"Ah? Uh, sure… go ahead. But why are you talking so casually?"
Nicoletta blinked at Pina's unexpectedly sharp reply.
"Ah, sorry… I slipped into how I talk to the soldiers under me."
"No, please keep talking casually. Honestly, it's more comfortable for me too."
Pina shot Nicoletta a sidelong glance, then turned her eyes back to the crate.
That was when Nicoletta's true nature revealed itself.
"You've got a separate cushion under the sleeping bag so it doesn't get hard?"
"Ah, yes, that's right."
"I see — you do it this way because there are so few of you. With our numbers, we can't manage something like this. Hmm… and this is a cooking heat pack for when it rains?"
"That's right. Fire doesn't catch well in the rain. You just press this."
"I see. So it detonates a charge of Thermal Powder all at once on impact. That's a basic item, and…"
As Pina packed, Nicoletta's questions and commentary never stopped. Even the usually unflappable Pina's expression grew stranger by the second. She turned a look toward Alice.
"…"
Alice pretended not to notice and closed her eyes.
Pina felt thoroughly betrayed.