Equipment Farming (5)
Around the time Luna had just acquired the guide, the atmosphere between Theo and Faye had grown warm and friendly too. It was a cozy scene blooming with laughter.
“Ahahaha!”
A beautiful girl smashing gear golems while letting out bright giggles was admittedly a little unusual, but she was laughing all the same.
Creeeak.
The path Luna had taken was riddled with traps instead of monsters. In contrast, the route Theo and Faye followed was packed with them. Quadrupedal gear golems that barely reached knee height, massive humanoid ones that towered over Theo—every variety imaginable, with no consistent design, all came charging straight at Faye alone.
Creeeak.
A humanoid gear golem swung the club slung over its shoulder. The crude weapon, plastered with random junk, was as thick as Faye’s entire torso.
“Too slow!”
But an instant before the club could descend, Faye’s sword sliced through the golem’s arm. The brass plating that served as its skin split open and gears sprayed out like sparks. She hadn’t managed to sever the limb completely, but it was enough to throw off the swing. The club veered wildly and smashed into a different gear golem instead.
Boom!
One of the quadrupedal constructs was crushed flat. Faye didn’t spare it a glance and struck the humanoid’s neck in the same motion.
Screeech!
With a horrible metallic scrape, the gear golem’s head flew skyward. The decapitated body twitched a few times like it was having a seizure, then collapsed. It wasn’t even a real person—just a golem—so why it would fall over from losing its head was anyone’s guess. Faye nimbly hopped back to avoid getting pinned beneath the falling wreckage, then examined the sword that had just taken the golem’s neck.
“Oh. Oh!”
The blade was in perfect condition.
“Theo! This is incredible! There’s not a single nick on the edge!”
She had already carved through dozens of the things and had just lopped off an entire metal head, yet Faye’s sword was still as razor-sharp as when they started. It was all thanks to the enchantment Theo had cast. He wasn’t a specialist enchanter, so the effect was weaker and didn’t last long, but it was more than enough to delight her.
Seeing Faye so happy put Theo in a good mood too. He felt a little ticklish—his enchantments couldn’t possibly be that praiseworthy—yet at the same time his chest grew pleasantly warm.
Still, that was that.
“Satisfied now? Can I join the fight?”
“No!”
Faye was adamant. The reason Theo, an attack mage by trade, was stuck casting enchantments was because she had ordered him to stay back. The monsters here were far weaker than the ones in the Goddess Dungeon; if he stepped in, the whole thing would stop being fun.
“Rushing into a huge crowd of enemies and fighting all by yourself is seriously exciting. Want to give it a try, Theo?”
“No thanks. I’ll pass.”
Maybe it was the same kind of thrill a mage felt when wiping out a swarm of foes in one spell. Theo decided to just roll with that interpretation. Trying to understand every little quirk only led to headaches anyway.
Since Faye was happily handling every single monster, Theo had plenty of free time. He was busy prying gears out of the fallen golems, but the task wasn’t exactly difficult. That was why he managed to notice the suspicious footsteps creeping up from behind.
“Faye. Hold on a second.”
“Hm? What’s up?”
“Looks like someone’s following us.”
“We already took out every gear golem we saw on the way, didn’t we?”
“We did. So it’s probably a dungeon thief. Could be the ones we spotted earlier, or a fresh group.”
“Either way, they’re enemies, right?”
Faye’s eyes sparkled as she raised her sword.
“We’re fighting them?”
“Obviously!”
“That’s what I figured. I’ll help out this time too.”
Faye thought it over briefly, then nodded. Dungeon monsters scaled to the area and were all roughly the same strength, but dungeon thieves could include some unusually tough bastards.
Theo refreshed the enchantment on her blade and slipped into hiding. The plan was to let the thieves think Faye was alone and catch them off guard.
A short while later, a group of well over ten dungeon thieves appeared. Either they were overconfident in their numbers or simply didn’t care about stealth; they made no attempt to hide their presence.
“Boss! They’re right there!”
One of the thieves who spotted Faye shouted. The boss let out a crude laugh.
“You’ve come pretty deep. Making us walk all this way is gonna cost you—starting with that body of yours. Gahaha!”
Even as he laughed, his eyes darted around, realizing one person was missing. The beastman girl with the huge chest was nowhere in sight.
“What the hell? Kid, where’s the other woman?”
“Huh? I’m the only woman here.”
There was no reason to lie, so Faye answered lightly. But the boss, convinced two women had come down this path, twisted her words into something convenient.
“Hmph. She must’ve noticed us coming and ran off ahead. Nice try, but it won’t work. Once we grab you, catching her will be easy!”
“That’s not what I said. Anyway, are you going to attack or not? I’m getting bored just standing here.”
She had expected them to jump her the moment they appeared, but they kept spouting nonsense instead. Unable to stand the wait, Faye began twirling her sword in her hand. Then it hit her.
“Oh. I can just go to them first!”
Tap.
One step. Two steps. In just three strides Faye reached top speed and crashed into the group of thieves like a storm.
The thieves flinched but reacted quickly.
“Get the net out! There’s only one of the bitches!”
“Net, net! I’ve got it right he—huh?”
Those were the last words that thief ever spoke. A fireball screamed in from nowhere and incinerated both him and the net in an instant. The explosion sent flames rolling over the thieves nearby.
“Wh-what the hell! Is this a trap?”
The sudden magic threw the entire group into chaos. Faye didn’t waste the opening and cut down the nearest thief in one clean stroke.
…….
“Th-this is impossible! We had more than ten people!”
The boss clutched his bleeding arm and screamed. Numerically they should have held the advantage, but even if their numbers had been doubled it wouldn’t have made any difference against Faye and Theo. The fight had been that overwhelmingly one-sided.
“Theo. How many were there again?”
“Let’s see… fifteen? Sixteen? Something like that.”
They chatted casually while wiping blood from their weapons. The corpses of what had once been thieves lay scattered around them, but neither paid any attention. It simply wasn’t worth noticing.
“Ugh. They were way too weak. That wasn’t fun at all.”
Having dropped more than ten opponents in just a few minutes, Faye looked genuinely dissatisfied. The pack of gear golems had been better—at least they charged in without freezing up in terror.
“Faye, I’m going to squeeze some information out of this guy. Mind waiting a bit?”
“Sure!”
Faye plopped down nearby, swinging her legs as she watched Theo interrogate the thief boss. At first the man was surly and spat out threats, clinging to his pride, but once Theo applied some proper “persuasion,” he spilled everything he knew with surprising honesty.
“Theo really is something else. That looks incredibly boring, though.”
Having been raised as a noble lady, Faye had studied rhetoric and persuasion herself, so she understood exactly how tedious the process was. Even she had fled after only a few lessons because they were so mind-numbingly dull. Of course Theo wasn’t her, so maybe it was different for him. Still, the fact that he could handle something so boring so skillfully was impressive.
“Yeah. As expected, I’m happiest when I get to fight.”
She wasn’t good with complicated things. As long as she could fight, that was enough. Crossing blades was fun. Training so she could face even stronger opponents later was fun. The skirmish with the thieves earlier had been enjoyable too—though it ended right when it was starting to get good, which left her a little hollow.
Faye giggled to herself as she replayed the recent battle in her head. Stabbing would’ve been better than slashing there. She imagined different moves, then drew her sword again and swung it through the empty air—
And then she noticed.
“…Huh?”
Beyond the arc of her practice swings, she could see Theo. He was completely focused on extracting information from the thief boss, paying no mind to what Faye was doing.
It was that exact sight.
Faye hated difficult things. She was content as long as she could fight simply. But life wasn’t made up of only the things you enjoyed.
While she had been happily carving through thieves and cheerfully reviewing the fight afterward, someone had to handle the tedious, difficult work. That someone was Theo.
He had taken over those tasks so naturally, and he had always been the one in charge of the thinking side of things, that she simply hadn’t realized it until now. But the moment she became aware, every memory she had accumulated clicked into place like a chain of dominoes.
If she and Theo had worked together properly, they could have cleared the dungeon much faster. Instead, Theo had yielded every enemy to her and stuck to collecting loot. At least until the unpredictable threat of dungeon thieves appeared.
She had escaped the suffocating burdens of noble duty and family honor that had weighed on her in her previous party. That freedom had come because Theo convinced the count’s daughter to let her go.
Thanks to him, she had been able to join her new party with a genuine smile and no friction at all.
Even during the black mages’ ambush, when she had been in real danger, she later heard that Theo had been the first to rush forward to help.
And the enjoyable sparring sessions recently—classmates with similar or greater skill usually grew sick of it after a few matches and refused to continue, yet Theo and Luna had kept accepting her challenges.
“Uhh…?”
Her face suddenly felt hot. Had she been poisoned? She hurriedly checked herself, but that wasn’t the case.
“……?”
It was a difficult feeling to understand. Faye tilted her head. Still, it didn’t feel unpleasant at all.