A Supporter's Share
Having a supporter made a real difference in the quality of a fight.
With Pina carrying her weapons for her, Alice could cut down on wasted stamina and throw everything she had into combat. Still, treating someone a little like a pack mule left her feeling vaguely guilty.
She looked down at the Galori's corpse sprawled across the ground.
Tch. Got a little carried away.
Without meaning to, she had been brutal. The butchered Galori was little more than a rag of meat and bone. She had deliberately gone for every breakable part, but she hadn't quite realized what that left behind once the part-breaking was done.
Monster or not, it was still a living thing. She wondered how much it had suffered before it died. People writhed over a broken fingernail or teared up from a paper cut — monsters weren't so different.
In the next life, try being something other than a monster.
Because if you're born a monster, you die like this one did.
Alice drew the skinning knife from her belt. She peeled the hide in long, clean strips, separated fat from muscle, and dusted the meat with blood-absorbing powder until the work was tidy. Then she dug deeper through the carcass on the chance of finding an essence.
"Oh."
This one had one.
After a fight that violent, it was almost impressive the thing hadn't shattered. She pulled free a round, glittering essence. The transparent sphere caught the light and sparkled.
A Galori essence.
Between this and the Luga-lac's, she now held two essences in total — which meant she could forge two properly enhanced weapons. The moment an essence was socketed into a weapon, Hunter Land truly began.
She only had to think back to the staff she had used last time. That staff had drawn on essence power to cast magic. But staffs weren't the only weapons that could take an essence. Every essence type offered different properties. The boosts weren't always dramatic, but the gap between having one and not having one was enormous.
The instant you equipped an essence, you more or less stopped looking like a low-grade hunter. Which was exactly why essences themselves were so hard to come by. There were people in this world who had hunted for years and still never landed one — people who couldn't even touch the stronger monsters as a result. Whether they wanted to or not, they stalled out at mid-grade monsters.
Well, maybe they just didn't grind hard enough. If they'd kept killing until one dropped, it would have dropped. Time's not exactly in short supply. Twenty hours a day ought to do it…
From mid-grade monsters on up, an essence was more or less required. Kometras was the least dangerous of the mid-grades, so she had managed without one. If she had taken an Ekriki commission instead, she had planned to use the Luga-lac essence. And because this was reality rather than a game, the power of an essence felt more desperately necessary than ever.
Alice stripped the Galori of its essence, hide, and claws, wrapped everything in cloth, and stowed it in the secondary pouch at her hip. Then she wrenched her greatsword free from the monster's neck. Blood dripped from the blade in thick drops. She shook it off and sheathed the weapon across her back.
Wondering what Pina was up to, she turned her head. The girl was busily gathering scattered arrows off the ground and stuffing them back into the quiver — Alice's fault for tossing the quiver aside when she swapped weapons.
She doesn't have to do that…
"…Pina. Want any of the materials?"
Alice pointed at the Galori's remains. Pina had contributed, after all — taking a share of the materials seemed fair. But Pina shook her head and refused.
"I wasn't the one who took it down. I didn't really do anything special, either… I only came along as support."
Hard up for money, but she won't compromise her honor?
Alice didn't press the offer. A hunter's honor, it seemed, ran deeper than she had assumed.
"And if you take materials you shouldn't and get caught, the Association punishes you…"
"Ah."
Not honor. Punishment.
Alice clicked her tongue and nodded. Right. The law was scary enough on its own. A shame, but the materials were hers alone.
It was too late to head straight back to Antico, so they decided to camp for the night. Because they had never discussed what to pack, both of their bags were full of duplicates — pots, whetstones, flint, mess kits, and more. One person carrying those things would have been plenty. All of it came down to a failure to communicate. That, and Pina chattering so nonstop that Alice had forgotten to say anything herself.
"Next time I'll bring everything, so pack as light as you can."
"You sure?"
"Yes!"
Pina answered with absolute confidence, thumping her chest. Watching the bounce, Alice couldn't help noticing that the girl's chest looked bigger than her own.
I'm… not that small, am I? That's the default size the game gave me. So why am I smaller than this kid…
Still, I'm a guy on the inside. No damage taken!
As time passed, hunger set in. Alice debated which of them should cook. She wasn't keen on doing it herself — beyond roasting meat over a fire, she had no confidence in the kitchen.
"I'll cook! Alice, you rest!"
Fortunately, Pina knew her way around a meal. She mixed the ingredients they had brought with meat and vegetables into a proper stew. Camp food meant meat stew — and honestly, there wasn't much else you could make out here anyway.
"Does it taste all right?"
"Yeah. It's good."
"Th-thank goodness…"
Pina let out a breath of relief and pressed a hand to her chest.
"This is the first time I've cooked for someone else. At home I cooked for my family, but never for… other people."
"That so?"
"Actually, I'm better at other dishes than stew. My parents were always busy, and I've got four younger siblings, so when I was home I was the one who cooked. Honestly, putting together meals for seven people every single day was really hard… Since coming to Antico I've been lonely a lot, but it's still better than being at home. Ah — and being with you makes it even better, Alice… Hehe…"
Pina said it with a bittersweet smile.
Still. At least you have a family.
Loneliness brushed past Alice for a moment. Family… The mood turned briefly solemn, but she shook it out of her head just as quickly. When fretting over something only made you miserable, the best move was not to frett at all. Thinking about what came next was far more enjoyable. She still had plenty left to do. Spending that time killing one more monster was a lot more useful than chewing on hard thoughts.
Back in Antico, they went straight to the Association counter and reported the commission complete.
"Ah, you've returned."
The attendant greeted them with her usual gentle smile — a bright, open smile no matter when you saw it. The hunter with the injured knee must have been thoroughly aggrieved, because the commission payout was larger than Alice had expected. Looking at the pouch of gold coins the attendant handed over, Alice smiled inwardly.
That's what you get for lounging around in a disaster zone.
"Um, about the pay…"
Pina spoke carefully. Money was clearly the most important thing to her. Alice had planned from the start to give her a fair cut. The girl had followed her diligently without even taking materials — even a few crumbs off the table would make her happy. So how about a six-to-four split?
The moment Alice floated the idea, Pina nearly jumped out of her skin.
"I-isn't that way too much?"
But Alice didn't live extravagantly. Money just piled up with nowhere to spend it. As long as she could fight monsters, she was fine. And Pina had done her job well, hadn't she? She had tossed the greatsword over at just the right moment so the flow of the fight never broke. Alice was grateful for that.
"Just take it."
"Uh, uhhh…"
Pina trembled looking at the thick share of the reward.
"Y-you're really sure I can take this?"
"Yeah."
"Later… later, even if you ask for it back, I'll already have sent it home and it won't be there. Don't regret this… If I had to pay you back, I'd need to work for days, so I couldn't return it right away…"
"It's fine."
At this point, isn't the real desire here that she wants to give the money back?
Pina asked several more times after that. The answer was the same every time. Watching how hard it was for her to simply accept something good, Alice figured the girl had lived a pretty exhausting life so far.
At this rate the conversation would never end. Alice cut her off and spoke. Pina seemed especially sensitive about freebies.
"Buy me a meal sometime. That'll cover it."
"A-all right…!"
Only then did Pina break into a bright smile. If there were such a thing as a worn-out squirrel, that would be Pina. Faced with that purely cute smile, Alice let the corner of her mouth lift just a little.
Her supporter was ready. Now it was time to prepare for the other mid-grade monsters. Plenty of them were waiting for her besides Kometras. If she wanted to raise her rank before the story moved any further, she needed to push hard.
Watching Pina's receding back, Alice rested a hand on her secondary pouch.
It was about time to put an essence to use.
"Hmm, hm~♪"
Pina hummed under her breath as she often did. It was a habit born of trying to live positively. Whenever something good happened in a day, a cheerful little tune would bubble up on its own — usually a village children's song from her childhood, or a popular number the city singers used to perform.
Today was a day that demanded humming.
She had treated herself for the first time in a long while. A teacup of black tea in her right hand, a piece of bread in her left, she sat demurely and sipped. A small sip of tea, then a dainty bite of bread. Chewing slowly, she let the sweetness fill her mouth.
Today the bread wasn't just a plain baguette, either. She had bought a special one — sweet as if candied in sugar, genuinely delicious. And not a day-old discount loaf, but full price.
An outrageous luxury.
All thanks to Alice.
Pina set the cup on its saucer and let out a long breath. Her hands had actually been shaking while she poured the tea. Had she gotten ahead of herself? She stared blankly at the cup — then Alice's face rose in her mind, and she shook her head. No. Not at all.
Today, of all days, a little luxury was allowed.
Leaning back in her chair, she smiled to herself and gazed up at the ceiling. Even thinking it over again, Alice left a unique impression.
At first Pina had taken her for an ice-cold princess. A solid, well-trained body, skin pale as snow, and a face that never cracked a smile. Watching her walk expressionlessly through a crowd of staring eyes, she had looked like someone who lived entirely alone in the world. But face-to-face, that wasn't quite the whole truth.
She didn't talk much, but her personality was good and her voice was pleasant. And even when Pina had gone on and on without any sense of tact, Alice had simply listened and even offered the occasional reply. She had never once looked tired of Pina's chatter.
So Pina had decided she was simply a kind person. And then…
Just remembering that moment made Pina's body curl in on itself. She could still feel Alice's eyes boring into her as if ready to kill. Alice hadn't actually glared — but the blood-smeared face and the overall atmosphere had made it feel that way. Pina's own timid nature had done the rest, scaring her half to death.
When Alice fought monsters, she was neither a cold princess nor a kind person. She looked like someone born for the sole purpose of killing monsters. As if every face she had shown until then had been a lie, she had slaughtered the Galori with pure killing intent rolling off her. It was too one-sided and too cruel to even call a hunt.
She could clearly have finished it in a single blow — and yet she had reduced every part of the creature to a ruin before finally cutting its life short. Even the way the monster had looked at the hunter with terrified eyes had been a profound shock to Pina.
Everything about Alice felt unreal. No one carried that kind of malice without a reason. What had made her that way? Perhaps there was something hidden in Alice that Pina knew nothing about. The hatred in those eyes — what was it? Who was it aimed at? Maybe she had lost a great deal to monsters.
Pina sipped her tea in tiny mouthfuls and turned the thoughts over. She had never actually heard Alice's story. Most of their conversations had been Pina chattering away on her own. Even so, Alice was the first person in this city who had ever listened to her talk for so long.
At home, only a family that never thought of her was waiting. In the end, it was always about money. But Alice looked at Pina as a person, money or no money.
Pina wanted to know her better. She wanted to keep working with her longer. She wanted to stay by her side as much as possible. She wanted to get closer.
To Pina, Alice was someone to look up to — an idol. Meeting her had only made that feeling stronger. She was the kind of person you found yourself wanting to rely on.
If she wanted to keep working with her, she would have to put in the effort herself.
Pina touched her lips with her fingertips. What could she do? She twisted a finger through a lock of brown hair and thought hard. Her contemplation only deepened.