Farewell, Antico
Matillo, who had kept his workshop door firmly shut for some time, finally opened it again.
It wasn't to join the seven-day festival, though. The repair of the Blood Horn Greatsword I had asked him for was finished.
Every time I had come by before, he had stubbornly refused to open up. The old man really was a workaholic.
When he saw me step into the workshop, Matillo greeted me with a shameless grin.
"Well, well. If it isn't our hero. Where's that little lady who's always glued to your side?"
"She's out with her family."
"Family, huh."
A bitter look crossed Matillo's face. Come to think of it, he had lost his. He and I — someone with no family left in this world — were kindred spirits in that regard. Of course, Matillo had it worse. At least I still had hope. He had nothing left at all.
It struck me then that this workaholic had been wounded.
"Is the wound okay?"
"The wound? Live long enough and you'll get a knife in the back one of these days. I'm fine. Hauling that cannon around left me with worse muscle aches, honestly."
Hearing him crack jokes that weren't quite jokes, the way he always did, Matillo seemed perfectly healthy. Still, I didn't stop offering advice.
"It could reopen. Be careful."
"Hmm. Right. Tha-anks."
A drawn-out, halfhearted reply. Matillo had always been clumsy with this sort of thing. Knowing that, I didn't take it to heart.
He turned his gaze toward the view beyond the workshop window.
"How was the festival?"
"The festival?"
"Yeah. People putting on airs, acting like they know something?"
"Pretty much."
Leaning against the window frame, Matillo lit a cigarette. He exhaled a long stream of smoke, smacked his lips, and spoke again.
"They're all just pretending to have a good time."
He had put his finger on something rather sensitive. People were throwing a festival, laughing and celebrating — but the fact that people had died wasn't going anywhere. I couldn't forget that this festival was also a way of comforting the dead.
Still gazing lazily outside, Matillo added,
"That said, you can't stay gloomy forever. You take the grief and turn it into joy."
The people here lived by covering their scars with laughter. But there were those whose scars no amount of laughter could hide. People who couldn't smile easily — Matillo, and me.
After a stretch of silence, Matillo tapped his cigarette into the ashtray and tossed it into the trash. Then he picked up the Blood Horn Greatsword from the workbench.
"…Brat. The greatsword's repaired. I was wondering how to patch it up, then I remembered I'd stashed a few pieces of that monster's carapace — the ones that got stuck in my back. Used those. Pretty damn hard. Upper-tier monster material, I'd say."
Matillo held the sword out to me. I carefully took hold of the dark, grimy grip. Just as he'd said, the blade's surface — once torn and shattered — was now covered over with carapace.
I studied the heavy greatsword for a moment, then looked straight at Matillo.
"I'm not going to be in Antico for a while."
"The princess again?"
"No… I'm going to start hunting anomalies."
"Anomalies, huh."
Matillo lowered his eyes for a moment.
"That monster that showed up this time — that was one of them too, wasn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Impressive. Already working with the Association and everything."
I shrugged as if it were nothing special.
"So I'll drop by now and then."
"Getting busy, are we."
"Don't die while I'm gone."
"That's what you say to an old man who just got hurt?"
"I'll take your revenge for you, too."
I looked at Matillo. He crossed his arms and chuckled under his breath.
An old conversation floated back to me. Brat, that's still a long way off for you— That was what Matillo had said back then. What he said now was different.
"Alright. I'll be looking forward to it."
I let just the corner of my mouth curl into a smile. Then, with a perfectly ordinary expression, I left the workshop.
After the festival ended, I finally received my reward from the Association. Nothing grand — just three pieces of the ancient species' carapace. Everything else had been claimed for research. I hadn't been particularly greedy for materials anyway, so I didn't try to craft anything elaborate with them.
Being from an ancient species didn't automatically make a weapon vastly superior. What mattered was the skill of the one who wielded it. The amount I'd been given was too small to forge a weapon from, so I used it to plate sections of my armor instead. That was my final request of Matillo.
I began preparing to leave Antico. I cleared out the lodging, packed my things. The first thing I grabbed was the coffee Fiore had left behind — one of the things I couldn't stop drinking these days. There wasn't much left, but I wanted to finish every last drop.
"You're taking that with you?"
"Yeah."
"Um… you are sleeping properly, right?"
"…Probably?"
Pina didn't care for it — too bitter — but I liked that bitterness. It beat plain water, and somehow I just kept reaching for it without thinking.
Coffee aside, there was a lot to pack. I bundled up every weapon and hauled them outside — that was the worst of it. The monster materials I'd been storing separately, I left with the Association. Clothes went neatly folded into a bag; the food supplies I disposed of without clinging to them. Last of all, I cleaned the lodging.
By the time we were done, the place had become an empty room no one lived in. Pina wiped the sweat from her brow and let out a satisfied sigh.
"We're finished!"
"Good work."
We'd always kept things tidy, so the cleaning went quickly. Leaving a place we'd grown attached to left me feeling strangely unsettled. Two other people would take it over after us.
This was the life of a hunter — always moving on.
I shut the door of the lodging I would never open again. We were headed for Angolo now.
We loaded everything onto a cart the Association had provided. The Angolo Outpost was a hunter stronghold built for anomaly exploration. But Angolo wasn't just hunters — Cartadia's military was stationed there as well. Anomalies weren't a hunter problem alone. This was Cartadia's problem as a whole.
Once everything was loaded, we climbed aboard. Before long the cart began to roll. The Amargamos pulling it carried us out of Antico. The towering old trees of the dense forest receded into the far edge of my vision.
Goodbye, Antico.
The cart wheels kept turning. The road was thick with grass, no proper path, and almost no people. The rough terrain wore the Amargamos out quickly, so we stopped often to rest. On top of that, heavy rain clouds rolled in and poured down on us.
Three days like that.
Staring blankly out of the cart with hollow eyes, I gave Pina — who had gone completely limp beside me — a couple of pokes.
"Pina."
"……."
"Pina?"
"A-Alice-nim… just a little more sleep…"
"No. We're here."
At that, Pina shot upright and pressed her face to the window.
Angolo was a base ringed by wooden palisades. The stern presence of the soldiers stationed in the distance made quite an impression. The cart slowed and rolled carefully into Angolo. Before I knew it, we had stopped.
"We've arrived."
We hauled our stiff bodies down from the cart. Honestly, it had been far worse than the trip to the capital. I'd managed to endure it well enough, but the moment we arrived, the urge to rest hit me like a brick wall. I unloaded our things in a hurry — mostly weapons, if you could even call them "things."
I double-checked we hadn't left anything behind, then sent the cart back. Watching it leave without us, I took a look around Angolo.
The outpost itself was bleak. Completely different from Antico. Peaceful enough on the surface, but the people here had a sharp edge to them. Being a chaotic stretch of land pressed right up against monster territory, the atmosphere was only natural. At least the cool breeze reminded me that autumn had come here the same as everywhere else.
In a corner of the base, a few people were farming. Long supply cycles meant self-sufficiency was the way of life here. From what I remembered, it was mostly corn. The soldiers stationed here ate the stuff until they were sick of it.
Pina rubbed her eyes and mumbled,
"…I'm so tired."
"Same."
I yawned softly, squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again. A little moisture welled up. Watching Pina's head bob lower and lower, I rested a hand on top of it.
"Want to go rest for now?"
"Yes, please."
For today, at least, I just wanted to take it easy. Maybe spend a whole day lying down doing absolutely nothing. That wasn't loafing, though. Rest was part of the hunt — I had to remember that.
"But… where do we rest?"
"Over there. That building."
One small mercy in this hard-living place called Angolo was that lodging was guaranteed. The conditions were far worse than the hunter quarters we'd had in Antico, but still vastly better than sleeping outdoors.
Pina pointed at the building and hurried her words.
"Th-then let's go right away. I think I'm going to collapse from motion sickness—"
"…There's something we have to do first."
Sorry, Pina, but everything has an order. Following the Association Master's instructions, the first thing to do was find the person in charge. We had to locate the Association representative at this outpost, report in, and only then could we operate as an anomaly exploration team.
I moved according to my memory. In the game, Angolo had an Association secretary. Nearly every mission in Angolo went through her. She would be near the outpost entrance.
I strode toward the gate, Pina trailing after me. And my prediction was more or less correct. A young woman with a monocle — the secretary — was diligently writing something by hand near the entrance.
But I ran into someone I hadn't expected there.
Short-cropped black hair with strands of gold hidden among it. That alone was enough for me to know who he was. Prince Melchior stood beside the secretary, something like a cigarette between his lips — completely out of place.
When our eyes met, Melchior pulled it from his mouth, and only then did I realize it wasn't a cigarette at all. It was a stick of candy.
"Oh. You're that hunter from before."
"Hey. Hi."
A girl casually speaking informally to a prince of the realm. That was me. Melchior didn't seem to mind, though. One corner of his mouth lifted slightly as he spoke.
"Yes, well met. I didn't expect to run into you here. Thanks to you completing my sister's commission so splendidly, I've ended up in a place like this. You have my gratitude."
"Don't mention it."
I accepted Melchior's thanks with complete indifference. He looked at me as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"…Do I sound like I actually mean it?"
"You don't?"
"I don't."
"Sorry."
"Fine."
Melchior accepted the apology more cleanly than I'd expected. Pina, who had been listening quietly beside me, muttered under her breath.
"Is it just me… Why does nobody care that she talks to everyone like that…"
How would I know?
I had no answer for Pina's confusion. Melchior crossed his arms, looked me over, then sighed and stuck the candy stick back in his mouth.
"Hmm. Sweets really do calm a person down. Secretary?"
"…Ah, yes, Your Highness. What is it?"
"Any candy on you?"
"I need mine too, though—"
"Ah, is that so. Thinking only of yourself, are we? Understood."
"I'll give it to you—!"
"Good. I'll repay you twofold later."
So this was what they called a black company. I hadn't even been in Angolo that long and my head was already spinning.
Melchior pointed at me and asked,
"So. You've come for anomaly exploration as well?"
"That's right."
At my answer, Melchior touched the corner of his mouth and let out a short laugh.
"Some come by choice, others by force — fate is a cruel thing. I'm in command of the military forces here. I look forward to working with you."
The prince extended his hand. A pale, white palm. I stared at it for a moment, then took it.
As far as I knew, the prince didn't hold hunters in particularly high regard. He hadn't even appeared in the game. Completely unpredictable.
I let go. That was enough of a report. I'd made my face known, so it was time to go rest.
As I turned to leave, Melchior had one last thing to say.
"Rest today, and start working first thing tomorrow, hunter. We're short on hands."
Did I just walk into the wrong job?