The Forest, or Die Here
Goddamn it...
A pestilent thieving bastard. If he was going to come, he could've come after I'd closed. People hadn't even cleared out yet, and here he was, throwing a fit.
"This is making me so nervous...!"
If the man was only after the merchandise, I could walk out and pretend I hadn't noticed a thing. But if he was the real article—a robber who wanted a ransom—
"I can't go out yet."
Getting caught would be a disaster. Why? Because there wasn't a soul alive who would pay a ransom for me. I wouldn't make a useful hostage, which meant I'd be filed under witness.
I'm dead.
They'd kill me to shut me up, and come morning someone would find an unidentified corpse.
"Hah... hah..."
The moment I pictured the worst, fear sent my breathing into a gallop. Cold sweat ran down my spine, and my knees had gone so weak I could barely move.
Hide, for now?
Where? There wasn't a single place to hide in this cramped little shop, and no back door either. I was trapped.
"Ahem."
What did he even think was worth robbing in here... I left the lights burning and killed my breath inside.
Pretend there's still an evening customer, and he'll leave on his own.
He wouldn't want to complicate things either. I'd hold out as long as I could, and if a real customer happened to show up, I'd do the enchant and walk out with them.
Ten minutes passed that way.
Fifteen.
Then thirty.
"..."
Was he gone? Not a sound from outside. Not even the scrape of a shoe on the ground.
"Phew."
The instant I decided he'd given up, the breath I'd been crushing down burst out of me like a dam breaking. Truth was, I'd stopped hearing him quite a while ago. I just preferred being sure, so I'd waited longer on purpose.
I absolutely did not chicken out.
Anyway. That was that, and the mess was over. I was finally going to close for real and head home, so I opened the door—
"...Eh?"
"Ah, hello?"
A woman I'd never seen before was standing there. Petite, with a coral-colored bob and red eyes. At a glance, about my age, or a year or two older.
Either way—
She'd probably come because the lights were still on this late. Unfortunately, I wanted to go home.
"I'm closed."
"Would that... not be all right?"
I'd tossed it out casually, hoping to send her off. The woman looked deeply troubled and bit down on a fingernail.
"Um... I'm in a hurry, so... couldn't you do just one enchant for me?"
"..."
That was her problem. If you were really that desperate, you should've come yesterday. The words climbed all the way to my throat, but my eyes were already scanning the woman in front of me.
Hmm.
Pupils trembling. Hands clenched low at her sides, legs that couldn't keep still.
She really is in a hurry.
A Gold Badge sat on her chest, which put her at Haril's rank or just a step beneath—an adventurer of that class. And suddenly I wanted to know what could make a woman like this so desperate.
"How urgent are we talking?"
I asked as I showed the customer in, easy as anything. She followed, shrinking with every step.
"Well, you see... I picked this up in a Dungeon today..."
She dug through the front of her clothes and held out an enchant scroll that looked ordinary enough.
"Mind if I take a look?"
The scroll I took bore a Yellow Knot. Mid-grade. I was turning it this way and that when a strange mark caught my eye.
"Hm? What's this?"
Faint, but there it was: a square sigil glowing blue. Short as the mark was, this was definitely—
"An enchant with a time limit, isn't it?"
At that, the woman went wide-eyed and raised her voice.
"R-right?! I knew something was off! That bar keeps shrinking, but why is it going so fast..."
It probably was. I'd only seen a handful back when I was a new enchanter, and most of them became useless once they passed a day.
"Hmm."
I set the enchant on the table and spoke.
"At a gauge like this, you've got roughly ten hours left."
A little more than half of it was already spent. Did she think that left her plenty of time? Her face brightened as her lips moved.
"Then I just need to have it applied right now, don't I?"
"In theory, yes."
"Huh? What does that mean?"
"It means exactly what I said."
Unfortunately, this enchant couldn't be used as it was.
"You have to unseal the mana bound into the enchant before the time constraint disappears. Only after that can you use it normally."
"Th-then you can just unseal it for me right away, can't you?"
My explanation must have been too brief. She seemed to think it would be over quickly; life came back into her eyes.
Of course—
"I can't."
There was no way.
"It needs materials, and even if we left this moment, it'd be cutting it close."
A time-limited enchant held for one full day. Generous enough on paper, and still a misery to gather for.
"You need materials that come out of a Dungeon, and roots of plants steeped in mana that have to be dug up deep in the forest..."
Up to there, it would have been easy enough to pick a few adventurers and go. Right now, there was a problem.
"The sun's down. It's dangerous."
Once the moon rose, monsters turned vicious. Common sense, if you were an adventurer. She couldn't possibly not know, so the meaning was plain enough: drop it.
"..."
As expected, the lady said nothing. Her face had shadowed over, and she was biting a nail again. Enchants were something half-baked mid-grade adventurers used to puff up their specs, anyway.
This woman's Haril's rank too. If she's got any sense, she'll drop—
"I'll do it!"
"Yes. Just as I thought, uh... what?"
What did she just—
"There's no time. Let's go right now."
"N-no, c-customer. Even if you run yourself ragged gathering all this, if it blows, it's all for nothing. You know that, right?"
"I know."
She did not sound like she knew. And if it did blow, what exactly was she planning to do about it? Besides, in her hurry she seemed to have forgotten something.
"I haven't agreed yet."
The materials had to be gathered by an enchanter in person, so I would have to go with her. If the man in question refused, this lady would have to fold too. And of course, I—
"I won't. Like I just said, it's dangerous."
Even Haril Aketis, the guild master, didn't walk into the forest alone on a moonlit night. Trusting this woman, whose skill I hadn't verified in the slightest, and following her into a forest and a Dungeon was insanity.
"I am absolutely not going."
With that, I set my will in stone. Hers, unfortunately, was greater than mine.
"I told you I was in a hurry."
Shing.
"Huh?"
Fuck. Hold on.
"Th-that's a kni—"
"A-are you out of your goddamn mind?!"
In a blink, the customer had become a lunatic. The cold blade that had come to my throat wasn't even touching skin, and I could still feel how sharp it was.
"Decide. Going, or not."
"F-fuck, are you serious—!!"
A shitty choice between two doors. Meeting the robber might honestly have been better. I had no idea why she was this extreme, but I had to get past this moment, and that meant I had to choose.
"I-I'll go! Fuck, I said I'll go!!"
Of course—
"But! I'm staying somewhere safe. I'm only gathering, you hear me!!"
Even in the middle of it, I locked my own safety down tight.
"Fine. Just follow me. And do the enchant."
"You goddamn bitch..."
The unhinged woman accepted the condition, and the situation staring me in the face still made my blood boil.
"We're leaving within the hour, so get ready and come back!"
"H-hey! Don't push me!!"
Getting into the forest meant preparing all sorts of things, and with my temper spiking I shoved the nuisance straight out the door.
Bang!
I slammed it on purpose, loud enough to carry.
"Does this goddamn life ever give me one easy day!!"
Had about forty minutes passed?
"You're here?"
"Yes."
Maybe she hadn't had much to pack. The crazy woman showed up lighter than I'd expected.
Just enough to keep from dying on the spot.
Chest, abdomen, and head—silver plate and leather over those alone. Look at the joints, essentially bare, and—
"You're not the type who charges straight in, are you?"
I said exactly what I saw. Her eyes went round, and her gaze landed on me.
"You got that right away?"
"You can tell from how the gear's set."
I might not look it, but I'd been doing business with adventurers for years. Gear alone told me what kind of fighting style someone preferred, and what they actually used.
That's how you set an enchant to fit.
An enchant scroll was not all one and the same thing. By grade and by kind, the stats they granted ran wild in every direction.
"You'd need at least an eye like this to make a living, wouldn't you?"
Like a suit cut to measure, I supposed. She seemed to take my meaning at once, and nodded.
"So that's the secret to lasting long as an enchanter."
"..."
A secret? Unbelievable.
If people had just stopped taking a blown piece of gear out on the enchanter, there'd be hundreds of enchanters on this land.
Sigh. What good was swallowing it alone? They'd live that way their whole lives. I was ready, and so was she. No reason to burn the time on small talk.
"Let's go."
Out of the shop, out of the city, a little over thirty minutes. The whole way down the path that led into the forest, neither of us said much. Fair enough. We'd only met today, and nothing about how we'd ended up walking together had been normal.
Then, maybe unsettled by the quiet folded into the dark, she offered a word.
"Do you usually come all the way out to the forest with people?"
"No. Absolutely not."
Safety before everything else. Living long, even if I had to live thin and small, was the dream. So I said it straight.
"If a knife hadn't come into it, I wouldn't have followed you."
"Ha, hahaha..."
That one had landed. I hit her with the facts, and she scratched the back of her head, looking awkward.
Come to think of it—
What kind of story ends with a knife in a man's face? Curiosity showed up right alongside the sense of being wronged.
"Let's hear what this actually is. You walk around with a Gold Badge, and you're staking your neck on a mere enchant. Why?"
I asked it with no filter at all. Haril wore the same Gold Badge and commissioned plenty of enchants, but almost always as a drop-off for her guildmates. Most Gold Badge adventurers didn't stake their lives on an enchant. So why?
"The reason...?"
For a while after I finished, she said nothing. Then, a few steps farther on, she opened her mouth.
"My sister has a guild she's kept going for three years."
"Your sister's the guild master?"
"Yes. I'm the vice guild master."
"Oh..."
Quite the high seat, then. While I let out that short breath of admiration, she went on.
"She started getting sick a few weeks ago, and since this week she hasn't even been conscious."
"And what does that have to do with threatening me?"
I might look heartless. So what? A knife at my throat, a life staked on an enchant—it wasn't nearly reason enough. After what came next, though, I understood a little.
"The executives mean to swallow the guild whole while she's gone. I'm only vice guild master because my sister put me there..."
She bit her lip hard. In the light that barely reached the ground around us, her expression looked strangely complicated.
"The situation's just so tangled, I'm going out of my mind."
"Ah..."
Anyway, hearing the story, I could roughly guess.
"So... you're going into the forest and a Dungeon in the middle of the night to hold your sister's seat while she's gone?"
"That's right! The rumors say a time-limited enchant's effect is incredible. I have to pull it off."
"..."
What piece of trash had spread that nonsense? I'd never even applied a time-limited enchant. Whoever the hell had put that wind in this woman's ear, they had better pray I never caught them.
"Haa."
Once I'd heard the circumstances, it was hard to stay nothing but angry. So I figured I could loosen up, just a little, and I spoke.
"My name's Liamin. You've heard it, haven't you?"
"In this line of work, you're not allowed not to know you."
She caught it lightly, then smiled a little and gave her name.
"I'm Emilia. Emilia Tello."
"Miss Emilia of the Tello Guild. I'll be counting on you for this trip."
Maybe because I'd lowered the wall a little. After we traded names, Miss Emilia and I talked a great deal more, from the lives we'd lived down to stories that were plain stupid. We were walking in the dark, but the mood was bright.
The problem was that we'd been so caught up in the talk, we realized too late that we had entered the forest.
And that meant—
"...Miss Emilia. You really are a Gold Badge, right?"
"I-I was definitely on guard!!"
Grrrr.
Monster cries from every direction. Properly surrounded, by the look of it.
"Fuck."
You definitely said I'd only be gathering!!