Not Alone Anymore
Hunting Kometras, the rock-armored beast, was always best done with a staff.
Releasing the staff's Essence let me deliver impact straight through that hard shell. The shell was the whole problem with that monster — once you could ignore it, the fight wasn't hard at all.
Other hunters didn't use staves because the weapon was that difficult to handle. The Essence itself was rare, and since the gauge only built up by striking monsters, managing it day-to-day was a real hassle.
Of course, none of that applied to me.
Krrrrr…
Thanks to forging the staff from Ekriki materials, I could trigger powder explosions even when swinging it like a regular pole — so Kometras never quite managed to recover its wits before it went down.
I gathered every shattered piece of its shell, scraped off whatever still clung to the carcass, and packed it all away. Too much would be heavy and exhausting, so I tanned only as much as I could reasonably carry and left it at that.
This was the problem with Pina not being here.
Until now, she had lightened every burden for me. Without her, the safe camp, the overnight stays, the meals — every single part of the hunting process — had to be done with my own two hands. I was sure I'd managed all of it without complaint before. Was this what it felt like to become a slave to convenience?
And having to haul every last bit of luggage myself was the worst of it. The heavy pack crushed down on my shoulders.
Finishing a hunt alone and in silence like this, I found myself missing Pina somehow. The laughter that had always been at my side, her chatter, even the way she wildly overestimated me.
I'd always thought I preferred being alone. Strangely enough, once I actually was, the loneliness cut deep.
I returned to Antico and handed the rock-armored beast's shell over to Colpo. In the meantime he had already filed the transaction with the Association as an official commission, so all that remained was to report it to the attendant. The payment was settled with the Prejium ore I'd received before — ore that would serve as the frame of the greatsword, strong enough to withstand Kespilatos materials.
Everything Matillo did was far beyond me. I knew hunting inside and out, but this side of things I was a complete amateur. Even watching up close, it was fascinating how the weapons, ores, and materials slowly changed shape in his hands. In the game, a few taps and it was done in seconds. Reality, of course, was different.
I must have been staring too long, because Matillo stopped what he was doing and looked at me.
"…Kid."
"Hm?"
"Hey. You eaten lunch yet?"
"No."
"Hmm. That so? Hold on a second."
Matillo strode straight into the workshop. Once he was gone, I turned to face the workshop door — still shut tight. That door was Matillo's heart turned toward the world. He was hiding himself in here. And I was free to come and go as I pleased.
I was still half-lost in that thought when Matillo came back out, carrying a tray with two bowls and a pair of spoons.
"Take it."
"What is it?"
"It's food, what else would it be?"
There was actual rice in the bowls — grains fried fluffy and fragrant with finely chopped meat and vegetables. The color alone was a warm golden hue that made my mouth water. I was hungry enough as it was, so I dug into the fried rice with real appreciation. Matillo's cooking was better than I'd expected. Living alone and doing everything yourself must make you a jack-of-all-trades around the house.
"Good?"
"Surprisingly."
"What's so surprising about it? You thought it'd taste bad?"
"Yeah."
"…You're too damn honest, that's your problem."
Matillo scowled. But it really was surprising. He could open a restaurant with this.
"Living alone, you get better at this sort of thing."
"…Do you?"
I'd tried cooking plenty of times myself. Living here for a while, I'd wanted to try making meals back at the lodging. There was a certain romance to eating food you'd cooked with your own hands. But not long after that resolution, I realized cooking was simply not my domain. No matter what I did, I could never reach Noah or Pina. The only cooking I could manage was grilling meat. And with so many people outside who already cooked delicious food, I wasn't sure there was any point forcing myself to try.
"I never really got any better."
"Right. You were alone too, weren't you?"
"I'm not alone."
"You mean those hunter friends of yours?"
"Yeah."
"They all left, so you're alone now, aren't you?"
Matillo had a way of driving a nail straight into the heart of things without any effort at all.
"That's why you're hanging around here, I figure."
"They said they were just off on a family trip."
"And you're here by yourself."
Matillo snickered. This old man was starting to enjoy needling me. I glared at him with my brow furrowed. He didn't so much as flinch.
"Well, kid — being alone's easier, ain't it?"
He took a big spoonful of fried rice as he said it. At that self-mocking line, I shook my head.
"But we're not alone now, are we? The two of us."
Matillo's spoon stopped. He blinked. Then he let out a sigh and set the bowl down.
"Kid."
"Hm?"
"How'd you end up alone, anyway?"
He asked it with a serious look in his eyes. The question struck something truly important — the kind of question I couldn't answer easily. When I simply kept my mouth shut, Matillo spoke again.
"Hard to answer? Well. Everyone's got their own circumstances."
He hadn't asked because he wanted my answer. He kept talking even though I hadn't said a word.
"Me — the city I lived in burned to the ground. The whole thing."
"…Your city?"
"Yeah. The place I lived was Crete, the City of Crimson Flames. A frontier settlement in a volcanic region where beautiful flowers of fire used to grow. Now there's nothing left but ash."
I already knew a little about Matillo's circumstances and about Crete. That near retirement, there was a monster he had never managed to subjugate. That he was forging gear strong enough to protect the hunters who protected everyone else. That was his goal. The game had only ever given me that much to go on, so that was what I had believed.
"I was the only one who survived that catastrophe."
Only then did I understand the depth of his desperation.
"My family had been hunters of Crete for generations. Now I'm the only one left. I was a hunter back then too, so failing to stop the monster was my fault."
Matillo said it flatly, without drama.
"Ashamed of being the only survivor, I hole up here and quietly do blacksmith work. That's the long and short of it. Hard to believe it's already been more than ten years. Time flies. Doesn't even bother me anymore."
He picked up his spoon again. I couldn't bring myself to move my hands. It was a story I had never expected. Maybe I had been pretending to understand him all along — while knowing less than anyone.
I sat there fretting over whether I should tell him it was all right, or just let it pass naturally. While I was still chewing on the words, Matillo snorted a quiet laugh and looked at me.
"What are you fretting over so seriously, kid?"
Before I knew it, some emotion I didn't recognize welled up hard. What I felt toward Matillo was kinship — and it wasn't mine. What had burst out unbidden was the emotion of the girl inside this body. That only left me more unsettled.
"…That wasn't your fault."
The words came out on their own, as if something else were speaking through me. They rose up, tangled in my throat, and forced their way out of my mouth.
"I lost everything to a monster too."
"That so."
Matillo answered my choked voice as if it were nothing special.
"Plenty of people become hunters for reasons like that. But it never ends well for them. Most of those types push themselves past their limits until they die, or they collapse under the despair."
He scratched his head.
"…Don't you end up like that."
Having said it, Matillo poked at his fried rice with the spoon again.
"What I mean is, you're still too young to die. Revenge isn't the whole of a life. I'm telling you this because we're in a similar spot. Look at me. I'm doing just fine without taking revenge on any monster."
In other words: don't stake your life so hard on hunting monsters. But that voice just now had not been my will. It was her — woken by Matillo's story. And the emotion that was making tears prick at the corners of my eyes wasn't mine either.
"Whoa — you crying?"
"I'm not crying."
"Hey, kid. So you do have tears in you. Honestly, I figured you were some bloodless, tearless monster-slaughtering weapon the Association cooked up in secret."
"……"
"…Hey. You actually okay?"
When I stayed silent, Matillo looked at me with uneasy eyes. I touched the corner of my eye. Tears were running down my cheek. None of this was my story. None of it had anything to do with me — and yet her grief arrived as if it were my own. Yes. These were undeniably my tears.
"Matillo. What happened to that monster?"
"Kid. That's still a long way off for you. A long, long way. Don't worry about it — just finish your food. It tastes terrible cold."
He lifted his bowl.
"…Okay."
We emptied our bowls again in silence. Only the scrape of spoons against ceramic filled the forge.
Matillo had tried to keep the information from me, but I already knew that monster. The Elder Species of the great flame dragon Corasius — called the strongest among high-grade monsters. Heaven's Light Corasius.
Just as Matillo said, Heaven's Light Corasius was still a distant story for me. But that it would fall to me someday remained unchanged.
Because that was what we wanted.