Suspicious Movements 5
Urgh, eugh, urrrgh—
Bizarre noises had started spilling from Han Se-ah's mouth as I carried her tucked under my arm. After hauling her by that slender waist of hers — the way you'd carry a clutch bag or a duffel — over roughly three low hills, she seemed to have completely short-circuited.
When I'd first set my hand on her side, she must have imagined something like a princess carry. She certainly never expected to be scooped up one-handed and sprinted with. Even with the viewers mercilessly teasing her, she just hung limp, incapable of so much as a reaction.
Of course, if she wanted to argue the point, I had a halfway decent excuse. The hand holding her was my right; my left, naturally, still gripped my shield. When I'd gone looking for the girl before, I'd scooped Grace up with both arms — but we were hunting monsters now. How was I supposed to leave both hands completely unguarded?
"How about it, Hanna? Can you search with magic?"
"Urrgh— nothing… here… nuh-thing…"
Fortunately, her dazed state meant she was less interested in arguing and more focused on clinging to her last shreds of consciousness while staring at the minimap. She mumbled on, having even forgotten the little sleight of hand where she gathered mana on her staff by starting a skill cast and canceling it.
If I kept going like this, it wouldn't stop at drool — she looked ready to bring up something else entirely. I slowed my busy legs to a halt. Even if I was messing with her, there had to be a line. No need to shake her so hard she emptied everything in her stomach.
"Your body doesn't seem to be holding up. Want to rest a bit?"
"U-urgh."
She couldn't even manage a proper yes. I set her down on a conveniently flat rock nearby, and she immediately stretched her arms and legs out wide, sprawling into a full starfish. Her chest — which her gear couldn't quite conceal — rose and fell in rapid, labored breaths, but for once the viewers' attention was fixed elsewhere.
With the party split into four teams, three tiny additional windows had appeared on Han Se-ah's stream. The other party members' feeds sat in the corner of the screen like miniature minimaps, but they were still large enough that the viewers couldn't ignore them.
"Ahem, hah… Don't go spreading baseless rumors just because I couldn't check chat for a second. But seriously — they didn't implement hangovers, yet they fully implemented motion sickness and queasiness? This game, I swear."
Whether thanks to the VR game's protective systems or not, a few deep breaths later Han Se-ah snapped right back to herself. Still lying on the rock, she fidgeted as she listened to the viewers' fussing, then enlarged Grace's feed on the stream window.
We had run north from the village, toward the wasteland. Grace was heading east — the direction we'd originally come from — searching the area around the wagon road.
On screen, Grace pushed through the underbrush, dropped to one knee, and studied the dirt and the scattered twigs on the ground. To us they were just sticks, but the traces left by orcs or wolves passing through would stand out crystal clear to her eyes.
"Oh, looks like she definitely found some kind of lead. You guys remember? When I first met her around the tenth floor, she looked at how the grass was bent in that herb field and tracked down horned rabbits and horned foxes. Said if the grass was bent like this, a rabbit had sat on it, and if it was bent that much, a fox had stepped on it."
Grace's face had grown a touch more serious, as if something had caught her attention. That fine brow, usually softened by a playful smile, furrowed gently as her slender fingers brushed over dirt clumps and fallen leaves, checking something over and over.
Meanwhile Han Se-ah, still pretending to catch her breath, checked the other feeds as well. Lily, who'd gone west alone, seemed to have found nothing — she was scanning the surroundings from a hilltop. Katie and Irene, who'd headed south, were listening to the residents of another village.
"Feeling any better?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah! I mean, I'm a mage, so my stamina's a bit lacking… Could you maybe slow down a little?"
While Han Se-ah conducted her novel rock-lying stream, I'd made a show of surveying the area, snuck a look at the broadcast, then come back and asked her. Apparently the motion sickness was treated as a debuff with a short duration — I'd shaken her around for nearly twenty minutes, and she was fine again in five.
Still, the thought of being tucked under my arm again and bounced up and down was clearly something she desperately wanted to avoid, given how hard she was pleading.
"Hmm. Then let's just get over that hill, turn around, and check things on the way back."
"C-could you put me on your shoulders instead of under your arm…?"
…Well. Thinking about hidden-camera pranks, I wanted to shake her around for another two hours at least — but if I did that, she'd probably just quit the game entirely, stream be damned. As an NPC, I couldn't openly torment a player too hard. I'd have to settle for this much.
After crossing roughly five hills heading north, confirming the boundary where even the shrubs and undergrowth vanished and the wasteland began, we took a casual look around and headed back. Han Se-ah had lit up the minimap, but unfortunately the north didn't seem to be the answer — her quest window remained unchanged.
On the return trip I granted her request, cradling her carefully in my arms and bounding back at a gentle pace. Only Lily was at the village; the others hadn't returned yet.
"Find anything? I only ran into some wandering goblins and killed them."
"Nothing. No visible tracks, no residual mana. We went as far as the edge of the wasteland up north and didn't see so much as a footprint."
"…And Hanna, what's wrong with her?"
"I carried her under my arm while we were crossing the hills. She's a mage, so her stamina's pretty weak, I guess."
Just being held in my arms had subjected Han Se-ah to every form of mockery the viewers could invent, and the mental exhaustion drove her face-first into the table. If I'd known it would be this effective, I would have used it sooner. No matter how much I mess with people, I still can't hold a candle to tens of thousands of cyber demons.
I'd tormented her on the way out, so on the way back I'd quietly cradled her in my arms — and the viewers went wild, spewing everything from "shipping stream" to "female-oriented porn" while dodging the AI filters. My explanation — that I'd used one hand going out because I needed my shield for escort duty in unknown territory, and both hands coming back out of consideration for her request — meant absolutely nothing to Han Se-ah or the chat. Turns out the people who are best at tormenting others are the ones who've been tormented themselves.
"Ah, you arrived first?"
"We're back. There was another village in the direction we went. …What, did you burn through mana fighting orcs or something?"
While I was talking with Lily, Katie and Irene came into the inn next. Rather than searching the field itself, they'd apparently taken advantage of how rural villages clung to religion with near-superstitious fervor and collected every scrap of information from the residents of the neighboring village.
Even a countryside village wary of outsiders wouldn't dare be rude to a genuine nun who could wield holy power. The fact that both of them were soft, delicate beauties had probably helped a great deal too.
"From what we heard, a caravan of traveling merchants visits that village regularly as well — and they're running late past the agreed time."
"Yes. The residents there weave textiles and trade them for things like salt and flour, but the merchants haven't come, so they're in quite a difficult spot."
"So that village is missing its merchants too. The more information piles up, the more suspicious this gets."
Lily nodded at Katie and Irene's report. Once or twice could be dismissed as coincidence — but if Lily's companion, the merchant caravan from Erteta, the village chief's son, the villagers, and even the essential-goods merchants who were supposed to arrive at this rural village had all vanished in the same week, something had clearly gone wrong.
We were still exchanging stories about our respective searches around the village — Lily mentioning she'd killed some wandering goblins nearby — when the innkeeper lady quietly approached and set something down on the table with a soft thud.
"W-why don't you all have some of this while you talk. Ah, and this is the adventurer's hardtack I promised you. My boy went and bought a bunch of it, saying it's good for travelers… but guests who come into an inn after traveling want a warm meal. They don't even glance at hardtack."
Not the eternal stew — she'd made a fresh batch. A clean, clear soup, and flat rectangular slabs that smelled of dried grain. Grain flour steamed, baked, and pressed flat for preservation, something like hardtack.
Honestly, eating it plain would be dry and flavorless — the kind of thing you'd only want boiled into a stew. No wonder guests resting in the village wouldn't buy it. Still, it was cleanly preserved with no mold or spoilage, and Han Se-ah unhesitatingly stuffed it into her inventory.
"This'll be good boiled into a stew later. It'll just turn back into grain flour if you crush it anyway."
"E-egads! The goods just vanished?!"
Only after that minor little incident did Grace finally arrive at the inn, late.
Her cheeks were flushed so red you could see it from a distance. Clearly excited, she came running with one arm raised high, waving something wildly. So the answer had been east all along?