Dancing with the Goblins (6)
What greeted us was not Sonya's voice.
"Th-those are the ones!!!"
The rude kill-stealer was standing right there in the guild — that one-eyed bastard. I'd been hoping he'd bleed out and die in a ditch somewhere, but somehow the wretch had managed to crawl back alive.
"L-look at that son of a bitch."
Babar jabbed a finger at him, plainly furious. The adventurers around us weren't looking at our party with anything like kindness, either. The one-eye must have come back and worked the room hard. That fucker. This was exactly why the first punch always wins.
"Goat? Would you step over here a moment?"
Sonya called me over with her face set hard as stone.
"According to Mr. Valik, your party stole their kill."
So the shitbird's name was Valik. From the sound of it, he'd filed a false report claiming his party had found the goblins marching in a pack and tracked them first, and that we'd barged in and wrecked the whole thing.
What an impossible load of bullshit. I was genuinely, viciously pissed. Sure, we'd quietly helped ourselves to the gear those thugs had been carrying — but that, at least, had been well within the law.
"No, Sonya. It's the exact opposite. We were the ones chasing them, and those bastards got in our way!!!"
Raccoon was so choked with frustration that he thumped his own chest as he said it. Tears even welled in those deer-like eyes.
Not to be outdone, the one-eyed bastard started crying too.
"Receptionist!! That's all lies!! A Silver Plate adventurer stepped in and attacked us — waaah, Kuzan!!!"
In an instant the guild hall was full of sobbing. Might as well have been a flea market.
Eline, helpfully, pinched Raccoon in the side to assist him in squeezing the tears out.
"WAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! GUHHHHHHHH!!!!"
That one was a hundred percent real. She must have pinched the hell out of him.
"Ugh... this has gotten difficult."
Sonya looked as if she'd aged five years on the spot.
Disputes between adventurers were common enough. Cases where some of them died and some walked away, though, were surprisingly rare. If you meant to kill someone, you usually wiped the whole party out clean, and then there was no way to tell whether they'd died to a monster on the job or to a fellow adventurer. On top of that, this mess had no witnesses. Untangling it was going to be a real headache.
Of course, from our side — the actual victims — it was simply infuriating.
"We're telling the truth."
Eline said it quietly. A single sentence from a beauty carries real weight, and every eye in the room swung to her.
"And how do you intend to prove that?"
At Sonya's question, Eline slowly drew back her hood.
"Hhh—!"
"A fairy!!!"
"Good lord. So there was a reason she was that beautiful."
"Mom, I just got my wish..."
"Oh my."
"Oh, fuck me."
Sonya and the adventurers around her went pale with shock. Even One-Eye was so startled he let a curse slip. Of course they did. Plenty of ordinary people live and die without ever seeing a fairy once.
Beautiful and strong, fairies were something everyone wanted to glimpse at least once in a lifetime — harder to come by than those legendary fantasy Pokémons people treat like they're rare. There were even suspicions that "fairies" were just adventurer marketing, which said it all. And now one of them had turned up in a backwater like Baikal. The fuss made perfect sense.
The moment Eline said it, the mood flipped.
"Kill that fucker!!!"
"Tch. Chopping him up for goblin feed would be too good for that bastard."
"I knew it. The way he's been looking at the women adventurers has been filthy for a while."
Every adventurer started cursing One-Eye. Under that manic atmosphere he shrank in on himself and couldn't even lift his head. He must have realized he was completely screwed.
"Damn it!!"
Which was why he tried to bolt.
"Now, now, my friend who doesn't know the first thing about the ethics of the trade. Where are you rushing off to in such a hurry?"
I wasn't about to just stand there and let him. He should have stuffed the concept into his skull back when I kindly explained what those ethics were.
"AAAAAH—!! Let go, you piece of shit!!!!!"
"Smile. I said smile. People are going to think I'm bullying you."
"You rotten little bastard!!!"
Sonya cursed One-Eye too and went at him with a broom.
"We've had our eye on this man at the guild anyway."
He'd crossed the line with sexual harassment toward other women adventurers, and he'd quietly trolled people out on jobs. All he'd done was drag the image of adventurers through the mud, and the guild had been sick to death of him. They'd already been suspicious, and the moment Eline revealed she was a fairy, there was nothing left to weigh.
"Somebody haul this human garbage out of here!! Trash like him needs a lesson from the branch chief, and then he needs to be thrown out."
When Sonya shouted, a hulking guild staffer came out and dragged One-Eye off.
"AAAAAHHH—!!! I didn't do anything, I didn't, you sons of bitches!!!!"
We left the thrashing, screaming bastard behind and kept talking with Sonya.
"All four of you. Especially you, Miss Eline. Thank you, truly."
Sonya bowed as she said it. From the guild's side, it must have felt like pulling a rotten tooth — roughly the relief a civil servant gets after finally dealing with a nightmare complainant.
"It's too loud down here. Shall we talk on the second floor?"
She was right. Everyone was murmuring about Eline among themselves, and the place was a racket. We followed Sonya upstairs. Lately it felt like we'd been making this trip an awful lot.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
"...aaaaah..."
We kept talking, taking the screams drifting faintly down to us as our wedding song.
"Is it true the goblins were marching?"
"Yeah. I was pretty surprised when I saw it, too."
From what Sonya told us, One-Eye had at least passed along the information we'd witnessed accurately. Well, he had to, if he wanted to get paid.
"They even understood the idea of a call and a response..."
She tapped the table, then let out a heavy sigh.
"This is another one for the branch chief. Feels like I've been seeing him an awful lot lately."
Sonya stepped out and came back with the branch chief in tow. For once, he looked refreshed.
"Hm. You lot again."
"Haha. So it goes."
Even Raccoon laughed, hollow and incredulous. You didn't usually get to see an Adventurer Guild branch chief this often.
"Hm? You're a fairy?"
"Yeah. First time?"
"So it would seem."
The branch chief studied Eline's ears with open interest, then turned to us.
"So. What's this about?"
Sonya, tactful as ever, explained what we'd been through. I'd been getting annoyed at having to repeat the same story anyway, so that suited me fine.
"Hmm. How did those idiots manage something like that..."
He closed his eyes, folded his arms, and sank into thought. Even a seasoned former adventurer couldn't find an answer easily. Fair enough. How often in a lifetime do you see goblins moving in a pack?
"I'm afraid even my knowledge won't be enough to figure this out."
The branch chief cracked his eyes open as he said it.
"I'll bring it to the lord and the bishop as well."
Both of them kept a great many old books handed down through the generations. There was a chance one of them held something related to this.
"You've done us a great service. Well done."
"Haha, this much is nothing. The moment I saw them moving in a pack, I just knew — ah, I have to follow those things, no matter what."
Babar thumped his chest with hearty bravado, and I couldn't believe my ears. The man hadn't been thinking anything at all!
"Given how serious the matter is, I'll issue a reward of twenty silver."
"I knew it!!! Branch Chief, thank you!!!!"
Raccoon shot to his feet, snapped a perfect right-angle bow, and yelled. That was his problem. Every so often he just redlined like that. Even if you're shocked, you ought to learn how to stay seated with a little dignity, the way I do. For him, that might be a lifelong impossibility.
"Best not to extend the search mission. It could be dangerous for Bronze Plate adventurers."
The branch chief kept talking, but honestly none of it reached my ears.
Twenty silver!
How much had I already made in the last ten days? A little more, and I might actually be able to buy a used dwarf-made shield. Not a wooden one that split and cracked after a few months of use — a solid piece of gear that could crack a goblin's skull just by swinging it.
They say even a mouse hole gets its day in the sun. That saying, it turned out, was based on hard-won experience. Had the whole miserable year been leading up to this moment? Not that the memories got any prettier for it. Fuck. If it had to be hard, it should at least have been reasonably hard.
By the time we finished talking and came back down, the commotion had settled. People still stole glances at Eline, but no one dared approach her outright. I asked her quietly.
"You sure it's all right you revealed you're a fairy? It's going to get insanely annoying."
I'd have been lying if I said I wasn't worried about her. She'd worn the hood because she hated people clinging. She sighed and answered.
"Aigoo, what can you do. I think it's better than getting dragged into a mess like this."
Then a question hit me.
"...Hey, Eline. Fairies can't lie. Is that actually true?"
I'd never heard anything like that in my life. Everyone had simply gone, oh, mysterious fairy, of course — that was the image, wasn't it? Never let a lie past their lips, eat nothing but grass, noble and pure.
"No? Obviously that was bullshit."
Eline snorted as she answered.
"Honestly, Goat. You really are pure."
For a few days after that, nothing happened. Baikal was still peaceful, and the goblins were still assholes. Everyone forgot about the orcs and the marching goblins and went back to their lives. I was no exception.
"Why, oh why~ do the goblins~ keep showing uuup~"
"Hey. Mind knocking off that infuriating song?"
The more I saw of Raccoon's artistic sensibilities, the worse they got. I curse the version of me who once wondered, just because his speech was halfway decent, whether the guy might be nobility.
Bickering with the party, I looked up and found we'd already reached Baikal's gate.
"Hey, Raccoon. You settle the accounts today."
He grumbled, incredulous.
"Oh, for— you irresponsible bastard."
"Look who's talking...?"
I spun the sack I'd been twirling in my hand and dumped it on him. I'd spent an especially long time rolling around on the ground today, and I wanted a wash.
"Oh. There you are."
"Huh? Mr. Babar? And Eline?"
Two familiar faces called out to me and Raccoon.
"Come on, let's get to the guild. The branch chief wants us."