The Treasure Must Be Delivered

"Is that so? Two werewolves... Fortunate that you put down monsters like that. A pity Jason died, but..."

The Merchant Head's rigid expression loosened the moment his eyes fell on the ability stone and the mana stones I held out. He schooled his face again at once, but that brief slip was enough to tell me something of the man's character.

"...Mercenary. Your name was Char, wasn't it? You've been a great help. Wouldn't you agree, Captain Kane?"

Kane, arrived late at the camp where the slaughter had already run its course, looked thoroughly grim—whether from wounds that still hadn't closed, or from the men he'd lost.

"Yes, sir. He has."

Even so, when he turned to me, his face was full of trust. We had staked our lives side by side. Of course he trusted me. Even I, knowing full well I would never see him again once this job ended, felt something like kinship toward him. So this was what they meant by comradeship.

"Then what sort of reward ought I to give a Char like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that?"

"If you mean to collect the werewolves' corpses tomorrow as well, one of the mana stones would not be out of proportion to the merit."

"You think so? Then it had better be two."

The Merchant Head grinned and held the two mana stones I had brought right back out to me. I shot a glance at Kane. Pale as he was, he smiled and flicked a hand, waving the matter off.

Just me?

Captain Kane already belonged to the merchant group. Was that why the reward was mine alone? He must have read the look.

"I'll see to Captain Kane's compensation myself. Pay it no mind."

"Ah..."

"There's something else I mean to ask of you, so think of this as payment as well as reward."

"...Sir?"

"It's a stretch to believe the werewolves were what stirred up the wild dogs, let alone the giant boars. While we cross the Monster Forest, I want you to put your back into it. That's all I'm saying."

A request, plain and simple—and work I would have had to do regardless.

"...Of course."

I took the welcome mana stones and stepped down out of the carriage.

An ability stone would have been better. Greedy of me?

I clicked my tongue at the stones in my palm, then simply tucked them into my coat. Mana stones dropped by monsters were already high-grade. There was no point synthesizing them. Push the grade up through synthesis and the price only tripled, as a rule, and I had no interest in experimenting to learn how many stones it took to climb a rank.

Looked at that way, giving up on buying junk-grade mana stones to print money might actually have been the efficient road.

Among the spoils of hunting in the Labyrinth, there would be far more things worth synthesizing and selling. Which meant one thing.

I need to keep the Goblin Basket on me whenever I can.

I'd left it at home, so synthesis was impossible now. All I could do was store what I had. I could hardly haul a basket the size of a watermelon into the Labyrinth when a knock might smash it.

I need a spatial pouch. Soon.

The trouble was the price. Even the smallest ran to a hundred gold—an obscenely expensive piece of kit. An adventurer's first priority is gear that keeps him alive, but a bag that lets you walk the Labyrinth's treasures back out into the world matters in its own right.

Better to buy a large one, if I can. Even if I have to save longer for it.

More important still: damage the pouch itself, and the worst that follows is that it vomits up whatever was inside. That meant it also served as a first layer of protection for anything stored within. A truly expensive pouch was difficult to damage in the first place. Which brought a certain face to mind.

Cha Hye-ryeon. God, I'm jealous. That bitch.

A pouch no bigger than a wallet, dumping out enough junk in front of me to stuff a full backpack. The royal court had almost certainly given it to her.

Tsk.

I was tasting, all over again, just how far apart our starting lines sat, when I caught sight of the merchant hands and the escort company working hard to put the wreckage in order. Aside from the baggage wagon the werewolves had smashed at the outset, the cargo itself seemed to have come through intact, but with so many dead the mood was rotten.

"Ah, those things. Strange, how they only went after people."

"They even hunted for anyone in hiding. Mr. Hans died trying to save me..."

"Beasts usually go for the provisions first. It was definitely wrong."

Every one of them said the same: the beasts that had hit them had not behaved like beasts.

Well. That isn't bad.

I wouldn't have to step forward and start muttering about a demon. Everyone already agreed the attack had been unnatural. There was one odd note, though.

"They went especially hard at the carriage the Merchant Head was riding. The spot the boars charged first was the same."

"Right. I'd say about a third of them were after the Merchant Head alone."

The Merchant Head.

...They weren't targeting him because there's more of him to eat. Were they.

In a case like this, wasn't it safer to assume the demon was after something in particular? For instance—

That the demon has a grudge against the Merchant Head.

Once you knew someone stood behind the attack, the inference came on its own.

...He didn't seem like a man who'd make an enemy that bitter.

Then again, no one can see into another person's heart. I told myself I would have to watch the Merchant Head carefully, and honestly, my gut drew a little tight. The time I'd been given felt painfully short.

Two days to cross the Monster Forest. Another day to reach the city of Edelin... Three at the outside. Realistically, two.

Could I find a demon hidden somewhere in this vast wood and kill it inside that window?

Another attack will come. When it does, I find a trail. No exceptions.

What worried me more was that Captain Kane, the closest thing we had to a main force, was effectively out of the fight. He had said it himself: two days, at least, before he could swing a sword properly again. Pull a man who could match more than a single werewolf out of the line, and then send something worse than that—

No. It won't happen. The ordinary quest is escorting the merchant group. A force beyond that would have been impossible to stop from the start.

I had no choice but to believe it. Anything more would blow past the difficulty of the Labyrinth's second floor, and the second floor sat at Novice grade.

"All right, all right! Let's butcher these boars and stuff ourselves with meat for once! Everyone, get your heads on and move!"

"Whoa! Meat!"

"It's meat!"

Kane's shout flipped the mood in an instant.

Hell...

The people here seemed every bit as used to death as the folk of Vartus.

"Come on, rookie! Let's eat!"

The sudden swing felt awkward, but I smiled and fell in behind him.

No further attack came through the night. People filled themselves at a wild-boar barbecue and let the dead slip away—or rather, it would be truer to call the noisy affair a memorial. All through the meal they told stories of the escorts who were gone. So a loud, aching night passed.

Morning came, and the merchant group gathered ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠its people and its cargo and took to the road again. About an hour out, something went wrong.

A small pebble dropped onto someone's head.

"Hm?"

The merchant hand driving the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wagon looked up into the trees, and in that same instant a rock the size of a fist came screaming at his skull.

I knocked it aside. I had been watching the Merchant Head's carriage all along, quietly, without making a show of it.

"Hck!?"

"Caravan, halt! Ambush!"

I jabbed a finger at the trees crowding both sides of the road and shouted, and the merchant hands and the escort company moved fast. The lead baggage wagon braked, slewed sideways, and became a wall; the other wagons and the passenger carriages dressed their line into a barricade. It took less than five minutes.

In all that time the enemy never showed itself. From the branches on either side of the road came an eerie chittering, and nothing but stones.

Shrieks. The crack of rock on wood. A heavier crash.

Most of it was pebbles, but every so often a stone flew that could split a man's skull without effort.

"Monkeys in the trees!"

"Careful! There are monster monkeys mixed in!"

We were simply being stoned, one-sided, with no answer to give. Amid that, the few escorts who carried crossbows got shots off, and monkeys dropped from the branches one by one—but only a few.

"Everyone, cover the shooters! And rookie—intercept!"

"Yes, sir!"

I had no complaint about Kane's order. Aside from him, nobody in the escort company could fight better than I could. And I already had my eye on one of them.

That one!

A brute that looked twice the size of the others. Even buried in thick branches, the bulk of the thing the merchant hands were calling a monster monkey was easy to pick out.

Ignore the little ones.

I planted a foot on the carriage roof and launched myself into the trees. Volante Footwork, which had reached level 9 in the fight with the werewolves, cleared four or five meters of distance and height without effort. In a breath I was standing amid the branches, monkeys on every side.

And the stones came.

Shrieks. A rattling hail.

Small rocks lashed my whole body. That was fine. The only stone among them that could actually kill me was the fist-sized rock the monster monkey in front of me had thrown.

I battered it aside, set my foot on a thick limb, and drove the spear out. Blue mana flickered at the tip of the vibrating blade, and the point punched clean through the monster monkey's skull.

The monkeys around me flinched as one.

"Get lost!"

I swept the spear in a great arc, snapping and shearing the smaller branches, and they broke and fled together.

"Rookie, one more on the north side!"

I ran the other way at Kane's voice. Putting down the monster monkey on the far side of the road was enough. The sudden raid stopped dead.

The system had judged the monster monkeys trash mobs, not even worth experience.

Tch.

Without Volante Footwork I would have had a hard time even reaching something perched in the branches.

Well. That's just proof I'm past what the second floor is built for.

I soothed the sting with pride, but the caravan had gone unsettled.

"Why monkeys?"

"Have they lost their minds?"

"Even for the Monster Forest, I've never heard of them doing this."

Monkeys hurling rocks was strange enough, and it seemed this wasn't ordinary even here. Even so—

"They're dealt with. We move again!"

The Merchant Head's face was hard, and his order to depart did not waver. Something that never happened in the ordinary course of things had happened. And he showed not the slightest curiosity as to why?

Does he already have a guess?

It wasn't an unreasonable thought. And not long after I had it, a swarm came down on us from every side at once.

"Hornets!"

"Are you insane!"

"Fire! Fire!"

A black mass ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of them, far past anything a spear could cut. Ugh. Fuck!

Fire!

I poured mana into the fire spirit, packed it into a fireball, and tore through the hornets closing on me and on the space around me. It wasn't very large.

Agh, damn it!

Just keeping my own body covered was already more than I could manage, and even then I couldn't stop thinking about the quest.

The merchant hands cannot die. Not one of them!

Maybe it was the desperation. An idea struck all at once.

I wound the fire spirit around the spear and spun it as I drove toward the merchant hands, and the effect was considerable. When the shaft grew hot I caught the water spirit and the earth spirit and used them to kill the heat, and I steered the flame clinging to the spear with wind.

"Over here! Come this way!"

"Aaaah!"

While I held a pocket of safety around myself and the merchant hands, the escort company went from bad to worse.

"Agh!"

"Bees! Bees!"

"My eye!"

I was just about convinced the escorts were going to be rendered useless in the most pathetic way imaginable when light flashed. A great bloom of fire burst from the Merchant Head's carriage. The blaze swept the surrounding swarm away in a single wash.

No way. Magic?

I could feel the scorch of it even from where I stood, well clear of the burst, and the hornets that had been diving at us were wiped out clean.

"Merchant Head?"

"Ah. You've had a hard time of it, Captain Kane."

The carriage door opened, and the Merchant Head stepped out with his face gone blue-pale. Had that spell been his?

"Merchant Head, this situation is wrong. If it keeps on like this..."

"I know, Kane. And you, rookie. Come inside for a moment."

Face set, the Merchant Head called Captain Kane and me into the carriage. In the middle of that—

"Urgh."

"Merchant Head!"

"Are you all right?"

I caught him as he staggered.

He really did use magic? What kind of man is this?

The question had barely formed when a low hum rose, and my Trait activated.

Huh?

This worked on people too? I had never once thought of using it on a person.

Or is it because he's Labyrinth-born?

I was still startled by my own Trait when the Merchant Head's status window opened in front of me.