Chapter 86
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 86
Chapter Title: Festival - 15
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Under the sky twinkling with countless fireworks, I heard an ashen tone.
"I have no intention of standing by and watching adventurers take the village from us ever again."
I could accept being shunned for a reason, but it was hard to swallow being hated for no good cause.
Hatred begins by nitpicking someone's actions just to justify hating them.
What Delion spat out was his goal and conviction.
It was the most guard-like line, more than anyone else's.
"You think adventurers coming up to the first floor or going down from it is the same as taking over the village?"
"Would you say it's just a matter of degree... and call that answer enough?"
"Then one like me living in the village is okay?"
"Even a few hundred people like you, Earthbound Spirit, would be fine. You're practically one of us already."
I was fine, but Sua wasn't.
A passing criteria only Delion knew.
I felt pity for the words he'd started with: "ever again."
As if they'd already lost it once before.
"I heard you were born and raised in this village."
"Yes."
"And you've been friends with Koon since childhood."
"...Yes."
Talking about adventurers taking over meant at least after the Tower appeared.
If it had happened back in Luden's time, Delion wouldn't still be here in the village.
Unless they'd reclaimed a lost village, but adventurers couldn't have come looking for Luden without the Tower in the first place.
Since I settled here, there hadn't been any incident worth calling the first floor being taken from someone.
So, was it before I arrived?
"Did Koon tell you? About what I get up to every night."
"I heard the gist."
"You planning to stop me?"
I didn't just want to scold him outright.
"Well, depends on the extent?"
"...I thought you'd at least get mad."
"I don't know how far you'll take it."
"I'll take that to mean you're letting it slide for now."
In a way, he was brazen and bold.
He had no intention of stopping even after being caught.
"What becomes familiar eventually turns into something taken for granted."
"That's adaptation for you."
"And adventurers are especially vulnerable to it."
"You talk like you know adventurers well."
Among the guards, Koon could be said to encounter adventurers the most often among the villagers.
He dealt with those coming to the forest to hunt slimes.
Explaining precautions to them and guiding them past the forest entrance.
Delion, on the other hand, rarely met adventurers.
The times he stood watch at the forest entrance were when entry was banned for safety reasons.
Not to serve adventurers, but to stop anyone from crossing into the forest.
"Your shifts are like that, and personally, Koon seems very interested in adventurers. But you..."
"Koon doesn't know a thing about adventurers. He just idolizes some idealized image, like in fairy tales."
"You wouldn't know adventurers' real side either. It'd be a problem if you thought what you've seen is everything."
Uglier things lie atop even greater ugliness.
Did Delion know that the guilds' behavior on the first floor was still mild by comparison?
"Without any clear cycle, new adventurers flock to the village in droves."
"..."
"Guilds know exactly when that happens and set up shop in the village right on time."
When the gates open.
When people from the real world cross into the Tower.
Each guild had ways to receive signals, but the first floor, where they arrived, had no way to know.
"When guilds hold events just for adventurers on the first floor, they no longer report anything to the village head."
"They set up booths and take turns promoting their guilds in the central park."
"Isn't that strange? The village's decisions were supposed to rest with the villagers, represented by the village head."
It started with borrowing space.
A chance to introduce their group to new adventurers.
But adventurers adapt.
All too easily.
"This park didn't originally have such a wide open space in the center."
"Was that so? Feels like it's been used that way for a while."
"They bulldozed it, saying there was no suitable spot."
Even this space where we enjoyed performances and watched fireworks was an adventurer's mark.
It hadn't led to major losses for the village.
We used it usefully now, after all.
What mattered was who decided it.
"It starts with suggestions. Then negotiations. And ends with notifications."
Delion was always on guard.
The day the village's changes revolved around adventurers must never come.
"And in those decisions, the strong are always at the center. Yet now they enjoy it like they're villagers."
Delion's gaze shifted far away.
To where Sua stood, manipulating the magic.
"What authority or responsibility gives a guild master the right to take an adventurer the village arrested?"
"..."
"Do guilds have a separate morals officer position? To discipline them? It's just a convenient excuse."
The fireworks kept blooming.
Without stop.
But the sounds of them bursting barely registered in my ears.
"I know to you, Earthbound Spirit, I must look childish, immature, and foolish right now. Even if you think I'm overinterpreting the goodwill some show toward adventurers' convenience despite the Tower being part of it all, that's fine."
"..."
"But I've seen it. I know how adventurers start to perceive the village when that continues. I know how they'll manage and pressure it to suit their tastes."
Delion neither laughed nor cried.
He was simply impassive.
"I've seen how a village changes once it loses its decision-making power."
"Not here, then. Not Luden."
"Yes."
What he spoke of was a village completely ruined.
This place was still far too beautiful to call it ruined.
"Please don't just brush it off."
"You were born and raised here. How could you have been on the side taking a village?"
"I've never had one taken from me. That's because I was on the side doing the taking."
Delion stood up.
"I was an adventurer too, so I'm giving you this advice sincerely."
"You were... an adventurer?"
"Did you think you could learn an instrument inside this village?"
Delion no longer seemed interested in watching the fireworks.
"Our world had a Tower too. I didn't get as strong as you, Earthbound Spirit, but I managed to learn one instrument."
"...?"
"The adventurer in those lyrics was 'me'."
Since the conversation deepened, Delion hadn't once looked up at the sky.
Delion, having stood up, left the spot where the fireworks were in full swing.
Deina, sitting beside him, was startled.
"Huh, where are you going? It's just getting started."
"Stomachache. Just gonna rest a bit."
"Now?"
The people around glanced briefly at Delion heading the opposite way, but soon had their attention stolen back by the sparkling sky.
"What was that... You've been whispering just between the two of you since earlier."
Deina glared at me.
While I talked with Delion, it was as if I'd ignored her.
"The mood was perfect too. Pay some attention to your date."
"It was just a quick chat."
"How bored do you think Ellie was waiting? She fell asleep."
At the mention of asleep, I turned my head left.
As Deina said, Ellie had her head drooped down.
She'd only just woken up a bit ago, and now she was asleep again.
Come to think of it, from when the performance started, she gradually spoke less, and after Delion began, she hadn't said a word.
She must have dozed off then.
"Aigoo, you didn't even notice she fell asleep? Why's Ellie stuck on a guy like this, going through all this pointless trouble..."
"And you, should you have followed Delion?"
"If he says his stomach hurts, it really hurts. He wants to be alone. You clueless idiot."
Truth be told, I had more to ask Delion, but with things turning out like this, I redirected the question to Deina.
"So, when did you two start dating? Everyone in the village knows but me?"
"Hey, we're not like that!"
"You put effort into your outfit today for Delion...?"
"W-what are you saying."
She was flustered.
Stammering too—she was definitely flustered.
"You two show mutual interest. I'm the one... coming on strong by myself."
Deina, who usually only nagged about my relationship with Ellie, couldn't clearly diagnose her own.
"You've lived here in the village forever too, right? So you're childhood friends with Delion? Puppy love since you were kids?"
"...I didn't like him back then."
"So you like him now?"
"Hey, do you have to dig into it like that?!"
Deina scratched her cheek, but answered the embarrassing question anyway.
"He was a huge troublemaker as a kid. Didn't see him as a guy at all."
"Delion was?"
"Ha... you think it was just him? Him and Koon together were a nightmare. They went playing in the forest every day, and days they came back uninjured could be counted on one hand."
Were they guards because of that? They felt like the most reserved people in the village.
Lately I'd seen more of their emotional sides, but they were still the most dedicated to the village's safety.
Imagining a mischievous young Koon and Delion was hard.
"After Delion became an adult, he left the village once. That was the biggest change for Koon too, and Delion only came back about a year later."
"A whole year?"
"He said he went on a long trip, but whatever happened, he came back much more reliable. From that day, he seemed a bit different little by little, or maybe because it had been so long... Argh! Why do I have to explain this?!"
It wasn't just calling himself an adventurer from a simple trip.
"That's because I was on the side doing the taking."
"Our world had a Tower too."
There'd be no reason to leave words like that if so.
Delion was clearly referring to another "Tower."
As if he'd entered one before.
"Did he pick up the instrument and singing on that trip too? Didn't seem like a skill learned in a year."
"Nice. You always said you wanted more performances. Just ask Delion each time."
"...That's actually a pretty good idea."
I'd tried to work on the rift between Koon and Delion, but now my head was even more tangled.
By his own words, Delion had once been a climber.
'How did he get out of the Tower?'
And that within a year, no less.