A Sister's Resolve
The year she turned fifteen, her beloved younger brother left the village. The other half she had shared her life with since the day she was born vanished without warning, and a hole punched clean through her heart.
She clung to his legs and begged him not to go off and become an adventurer, yet his resolve never wavered. It was dangerous. Living alone, if he got hurt it would be hard. He would be lonely. She piled on every reason she could think of, but he paid her no mind at all.
Her father and her master sided with him as well.
"A man ought to have a dream, after all."
"Didn't he say he'd come back?"
"Why not wait for your brother to grow splendid and return?"
Everyone around her tried to talk her around instead. And the brother she loved so dearly wanted nothing more than to step out into the world.
"He's so weak..."
If he had been as strong as she was, she might not have fretted so much. But he was weak.
What if he suddenly died the way their older brother had?
She kept trying to persuade him right up until the day he left, failed, and watched him walk out of the village.
"I'll write letters."
"Okay."
"Don't worry."
On the day he departed, the bright smile on his face left her with nothing more to say.
Once he reached the city he sent a letter roughly once a month through the merchant caravans. Caravans rarely came as far as the village, so the letters had to be passed along by the border garrison, yet he seemed to be doing well enough that she could set her heart at ease.
Then the letters simply stopped. More than eight months had passed. He had written every single month for the six months before that—so why now?
She wanted to send a letter of her own out of sheer worry, but there was no reliable way to deliver anything to an adventurer brother whose exact whereabouts she did not know.
There was scarcely any means of sending letters in the first place. She could have asked the caravan that supplied the border garrison, but that cost money.
In a village where hard coin rarely circulated, what little cash they had had to be saved for the goods the occasional caravan brought.
No proper way to write, and no word for over eight months.
Her unease only grew.
Had he been hurt? Had something so serious happened that he could not even send word?
To quiet the anger and anxiety churning inside her she went hunting monsters in the nearby forest, yet there was a limit to how long she could simply endure.
"Dad, I'm leaving the village."
"Emma? You're the next village chief. What nonsense is this about leaving?"
"I'm worried about Yuli..."
"And you think you can find him?"
She already knew. Even if she left, finding him would be anything but easy. Still, she was finished with sitting still and waiting. She meant to go out and search for her brother herself.
"Ahem. There is something that needs doing outside the village, as it happens."
Startled by her father's words, she slammed both hands on the table and shot to her feet.
"Really?!"
"Yes. Life's a good deal more convenient with those magic tools, isn't it?"
In the old days the village had possessed nothing of the sort. Once the settlement grew stable and peddlers and caravans began to arrive, the tools appeared one by one, and their effects were nothing short of marvelous.
A tool that produced water meant no more catching rain. A warm-air tool made drying rations and jerky simple work.
And that was only the beginning. Magic-tool stoves saved firewood; light tools saved candles. With every new device the villagers' daily lives improved by leaps and bounds.
People who had never imagined such things existed in the cities were stunned by the new civilization. Was this what it meant to be a frog in a well? Her father, the village chief, had even regretted not opening trade with the caravans sooner.
"Magic tools?"
"I'd like to buy a few more, but who knows when the next merchant will come, and there's no guarantee he'll have the ones we want."
She caught his meaning at once. He wanted her to go to the city herself and purchase them.
"I'll go."
"Ahem. Must it really be you?"
He had raised the idea, yet he still clearly hated the thought of sending her.
"I'm the strongest in the village."
Aside from her master, the retired knight, she was the strongest person in Fallen. That also made her the safest choice.
"Very well..."
When she refused to yield, her father gave in, and it was decided she would travel to the city.
The day of departure arrived.
"That's a lot of luggage. Are you certain you can manage alone?"
"Yes."
Bundles of every kind were lashed to the packs in front of her. Barter still ruled in the village; hard coin was scarce. To raise money for the city she had to carry goods that would sell and trade them there.
Monster by-products, hides, dried herbs—she had scraped together every leftover scrap the village did not need. After the decision was made she and her master had spent their free hours hunting extra monsters for more hides, so the load had swollen even further.
"Ahem. Do you know where Yuli is?"
"It was in the letter. I'll start looking there."
"I can't spare you much time. Counting the journey both ways, two months. Exactly two months."
The deadline felt far too short, yet she nodded. She was going to sell goods and buy magic tools; she could not afford to linger.
"Yes. I have to protect the village too."
Monsters sometimes wandered down from the Forest of Delusion near the village. In the past those raids had caused real damage; her older brother had been among the victims.
Once her master settled in Fallen and began training the self-defense force, such accidents grew rarer.
A knight who could wield mana was a formidable asset, and the militia he drilled systematically did their part well enough.
She herself, having awakened mana and reached Knight Class strength, played no small role in the village's defense.
That very Knight Class power was the reason people spoke of her as the next chief over anyone else.
"Two months..."
Her brother's letter had said the journey to the city took ten days. Allowing for the time needed to buy the tools and return, she would have barely a month to spare.
"And among the magic tools, I hear there's one that produces warm water."
He had already given her the list of required tools and quantities, yet it seemed he wanted something extra.
"Okay."
"Your mother has her heart set on it. If you have any coin left, try to find one."
"Got it."
With her father's farewell behind her she shouldered the packs and left the village. After a short walk she glanced back; he was still standing there, watching her with open worry.
She bowed once, then circulated mana through her body, quickening her flesh, and broke into a run.
"Wait for me, Yuli."
Until that day the farthest she had ever gone was the nearby border garrison. Now she stepped out into the wide world to find her brother.
Knowing nothing of what had befallen him, she raced toward the city, picturing him weeping and clinging to her the moment they met.
There was one detail she had overlooked. That ten-day journey assumed an ordinary person walking ten hours a day.
She possessed mana and had trained steadily since childhood. Outwardly she looked like any village woman, yet inside she carried Knight Class skill.
Knight Class meant mana reinforcement that let her run for hours without tiring, moving faster and farther than any common traveler.
With the travel time cut in half she reached the city gates in five days.
"This is the city?"
The towering gate left her speechless. The only proper buildings she had ever seen belonged to the border garrison; the sheer scale of this place overwhelmed her.
Even the garrison had been a shock the first time, yet this was greater still.
Stone walls more than five meters high encircled the city, and beyond them rose spires taller than the walls themselves.
"Amazing."
Was her brother living somewhere like this? He had to be all right. She wanted to see him at once.
The moment she tried to walk through the gate a man who looked like a guard barred her way.
"Halt!"
She stopped as ordered and tilted her head. Everything about the city was new to her.
"What's your business?"
The guard leveled a spear at her.
"Sell stuff and buy stuff?"
"Nothing dangerous, I trust?"
She cocked her head again, set the packs down, and opened them to show the contents.
"Hides. Teeth."
"Monster goods, then..."
When she nodded the guards visibly relaxed.
"Where are you from?"
"Near the border?"
"The border?"
The guard's puzzled look made her tense. Would they refuse her entry?
"Ah—could it be that village?"
"You know it?"
"Ahem. Went there a few times during training. Name was Fallen, wasn't it?"
"Ah, that place?"
Another guard chimed in cheerfully, clearly familiar with the settlement.
A word that meant "fallen"... a village founded by slash-and-burn farmers who had nowhere else to go...
Rumor even claimed the pioneer who first led them had been a fallen noble.
As the next chief she had learned a bare outline of the village's history, but it was little more than "there are such stories." The truth was known only to the man who had founded the place a hundred and fifty years earlier.
She simply nodded.
"Cause any trouble inside and the guards will haul you off, so keep your head down."
She nodded vigorously and was allowed through.
The city was a wonder. Stone houses of a sort never seen in the village stood in neat rows, and the clothes people wore were far more refined than her own simple garb.
"The city...!"
A small ripple stirred in the heart of a girl who had never once imagined leaving home. Longing? Envy? She could not name it, yet as she took in this new world, this wider world, her eyes were opening.
She stared for a long moment before coming back to herself.
She had been given travel money, yet she decided it was wiser to raise more coin first, so she set out to sell her goods.
From the clothier's to the general store to the workshops, she visited every place that might buy what she carried. She wandered the unfamiliar streets for hours, but kind strangers pointed the way and she eventually found each destination.
Every merchant tried to beat her prices down.
Years of dealing with caravan traders as the next chief kept her from being cheated outright, yet some of them offered less than a tenth of the true market value.
"Is the city dangerous?"
Her master's warning rose in her memory. City merchants would cut off your nose the moment you closed your eyes... Let them get their hooks in you and they would suck you dry to the marrow...
Her brother was living among people like that?
Worry she had briefly forgotten surged back. Still, she had work to finish first.
She steeled herself and set about disposing of everything she had brought from the village.
Having already clashed with the merchants once, she refused to yield and did not hesitate to threaten.
"This price—really?"
She drew a dagger from her apron pocket and drove it into the table. Mana-laced steel punched through the wood as if it were soft clay; the merchant's face went white.
"Ha—haha, I must have misremembered the market rate."
By not shrinking from a little intimidation when needed, she managed to sell every last item at something close to a fair price.
The coin she gathered went straight into magic tools, which she then hid with the utmost care.
With her official errand complete she could finally turn to the real reason she had come.
"Brother... wait for me...!"
Counting the return journey she had a little more than a month left.
She could not afford to waste a single day, so she strode straight out into the streets and began hunting for her brother.
And then she understood.
The number of people living in this city was at least fifty times the population of her village.
Fallen held roughly a hundred and fifty souls. The scale here was staggering.
Finding one person among so many was never going to be simple.
"He's not here..."
At first she simply wandered the streets at random.
She had a reason for that approach. Her brother's hair was a vivid pink that stood out to anyone who saw it; she had been certain she would spot him at once.
In all her walking she never once saw hair of that color.
Realizing aimless searching would get her nowhere, she changed tactics.
He had left the village to become an adventurer. Surely he would appear wherever adventurers gathered.
She scoured the area around the Adventurer's Guild, yet still found no trace.
"Why?"
Could he be so badly hurt that he could not even go outside? Was that why the letters had stopped?
Anxious thoughts flashed through her mind and her heart began to race.
She calmed herself with meditation and decided on a new method.
"Hey."
"Wh-what?!"
"Seen a pink-haired man?"
"I-I don't know!"
She forced herself to speak to strangers and asked after her brother.
Still no news.
"A pink-haired man?"
"Yes..."
"Saw him half a year ago... Come to think of it, he hasn't been around lately."
Half a year? Had he been injured after all?
"If an adventurer vanishes all of a sudden, there's only two possibilities."
"Two?"
The big adventurer stroked his chin.
"Either he moved his base... or he's dead."
The moment the words left his mouth she bit down hard on her lip.
"He's not dead."
Her brother could not have died from something like that. Even if their master had openly declared he had no talent, they had trained side by side for five years, and she had watched him grow stronger in his own quiet way.
After a full month of searching the city without finding him, despair finally settled over her.
"No..."
He could not be dead. He had to be alive somewhere.
Her heart hollow, she drifted through the streets without purpose or thought.
Absolutely... her brother could not be dead...
Absolutely......