A Letter That Couldn't Be Sent
But neither side could make a clear decision, and time simply flowed on. I even looked into whether it was possible to send a letter separately from the capital to Pardin…. “Just to send a single letter… we only travel between cities.” In modern terms, would they be mail carriers? Those deliverymen who took on that role. They, who normally traveled between cities, refused to accept even a single letter bound for a small village…. “Pardin? Where’s that?” “Ah, it’s there… you know, that tiny village a long way past Windren.” “Aigoo… kid, even the coachmen don’t go to places like that~” There were even deliverymen who didn’t know our village existed at all. Carriages and coachmen that traveled without carrying unnecessary cargo. When even those coachmen said they almost never went to small villages, I finally gave up on sending the letter. I should at least let my parents know whether I was dead or alive. If I caused them this much worry and then returned to the village, I couldn’t even imagine how badly Father would beat me. So, leaving Father’s beating as a distant future calamity….
Today, too, I was locked in battle with monsters near the capital for the sake of farming experience points. Since it was near the starting village, no particularly dangerous monsters appeared. “Kkiiik-!” After only hunting trash mobs, I’d gotten the hang of it. A young boar, if I aimed well and landed even one solid hit, I could take it down in a single strike. In most games, critical hits are usually determined by probability, right? But real combat, unbound by such probability systems, was very different. The heart, eyes, tendons, and various other spots were critical hit zones. Just as a person would suffer a critical hit and collapse, choking, if a blade sank deep into their stomach, monsters were no different. There was no absurd game correction where both sides fought at full strength until their HP hit zero. If a hole was punched in the heart, they staggered; if a tendon was severed, they collapsed; if an eye was stabbed, they writhed in agony. In other words, if I could strike a vital point during combat, I could land a guaranteed critical hit.
After hunting about four young boars, it seemed like it would be too much to carry back. I turned to Reina, who had been watching quietly, and asked, “Haa, whew… Can we head back now?” “….” Reina had been in mute mode ever since we left the house. At my breathless question, she simply nodded without a word. Reina was acting as a sort of guardian, watching over me from a distance in case anything happened. With beads of sweat forming on my forehead, I headed back to the city carrying the spoils. The spoils here meant the monsters’ corpses. There was no convenient miracle where fangs, meat, and money would conveniently drop just because you killed a monster. That’s right—this was all manual labor. In terms of experience points, a single Thin Snake would be easier to carry and allow for higher numbers than a Young Boar, which was essentially just a pig…. But the reason I deliberately hunted only the piglets was because I was following Reina’s policy of teaching me how to make money. The more labor and manpower a task required, the higher the value of its byproducts. According to that obvious principle, even just three Young Boars were too much for an adult to drag alone, which made them good for earning money.
We loaded the young boars onto a crude handcart and arrived at the slaughterhouse. When the creaking sound of the cart’s wheels reached the slaughterhouse, the bearded man guarding the entrance greeted us first. “Here again today? You’re quite diligent.” Instead of Reina, who never opened her mouth outside, I made the request to the butcher. “As always, please handle it the same way….” “Got it. I’ve got some backlog orders right now… don’t just stand around waiting. Go somewhere and come back later.” At those words, I looked toward the back of the slaughterhouse, where people were moving busily without any rest area. I accepted the wooden plaque with a number carved into it that the man held out and tucked it safely into my clothes before leaving the slaughterhouse with Reina. The plaque with the number 17 carved into it was a kind of exchange ticket. Just like a bank waiting number, it meant there were sixteen people ahead of me. When I felt a firm finger poke my shoulder and turned around, Reina was pointing in a certain direction with the same finger she had just used to poke me. A silent signal meaning we should stop by the house first. Even one-sided conversations where I only gave answers had become quite familiar outside. “You mean we should stop by the house first? Got it.” Clank. The sound of metal armor shifting. At the sound of the metal armor moving, I naturally turned my gaze that way. The cumbersome armor that made her look at least 10cm taller than her actual height. But because of it, no one thought Reina was a woman… and at the same time, she was never looked down on in the world of mercenaries. It was something that could only be called cruel in many ways.
“Phew, looks like your Vitality Succession is going well too.” As always, right after returning home, Reina’s words flowed out freely with a short sigh. The unfamiliar term “Vitality Succession” came from her mouth. From the way she said it, it seemed like she was commenting on my condition…. But even after hearing it, I didn’t understand what it meant, so I tilted my head and repeated it. “Vitality… Succession?” “Never heard of it?” “No….” No matter how much of a country bumpkin I was, it was a word whose meaning I couldn’t even guess. When I answered briefly while tilting my head to one side and furrowing my brows, Reina continued explaining to this clueless person. “Every time we kill a monster, we mercenaries grow a little stronger. I can’t say exactly when, how, or how much stronger we become… but usually, it’s the physical change that mercenaries who directly hunt monsters experience. And….” For ordinary people, strength was determined by muscle power. But in this world, it wasn’t uncommon to see a slender woman overpowering a muscular mercenary. The process of growing stronger by killing many monsters—that was Vitality Succession. ‘Ah, leveling up?’ As I listened to the explanation, three characters flashed through my mind. In other words, it was the element that players conveniently called “leveling up.” When I thought about why I hadn’t known that term for thirteen years…. Come to think of it, it was a word that had no particular use in a remote rural village. Understanding her long explanation with the single term “leveling up,” I cut her off and said briefly, “Ah, I understand.” “Really? Anyway, looking at how you’ve been fighting lately… you seem to have gotten much stronger.” Reina, who had been removing her armor piece by piece, continued with a few blunt words. The recent improvement in my monster-hunting skills was probably due to getting better at aiming for critical hits rather than leveling up. Even if I combined all the boars I’d hunted so far, the experience points I’d gained wouldn’t match what I got from stabbing Brenda to death. I usually only hunted three or four before returning to the village to eat, so how much could I have leveled up? I understood it in my head, but not knowing what to do with the praise, I awkwardly scratched the back of my head. “Ah, really…?” “Yeah. At this rate, kids your age probably won’t be able to match you anymore?” As she said that, Reina smiled at me. From that somewhat confident smile, I could feel a hint of trust directed toward me. If she wasn’t wearing that plate armor, her emotional expressions were actually quite rich. A woman who hid her gender, remained taciturn throughout her mercenary work, and rose to become an A-class mercenary. It was questionable how someone like this bundle of unique traits had never appeared as a game companion.
Along with Reina, now changed into casual clothes, I wandered the streets. Until the butchering was finished, we planned to have lunch at the shopping district lined with food stalls. Unlike when she was wearing armor, Reina without it was the very picture of liveliness. “What should we eat today…?” With mischievous steps, the sound of her tapping on the stone road echoed at short intervals. Unlike when we were swept along by the merchant’s tight schedule, this was quite free time for two mercenaries. So that Reina, who was walking ahead thinking about lunch, could hear me too, I quietly spoke from behind. “How about bread?” “Ah, that sounds good!” As if she had no plans at all, she changed direction at the sound of my voice like flipping her palm. No one here would ever think that this whimsical woman was the taciturn A-class mercenary Reina. Fitting for our decision to have bread for lunch, we got sandwiches packed with meat, vegetables, and fruit. After exchanging the number tag for the payment for the young boars we had left at the slaughterhouse, we returned home pulling the empty cart. This was usually how a mercenary’s day ended. Other mercenaries would rest and call it a day, but I still had work left to do. “I’m going to step out for a bit.” “Okay, don’t come back too late.” When I was with the old man, my movements within the city had been relatively restricted. But living with Reina had loosened those restrictions considerably, giving me quite a bit more time to move around alone. Pretending to just wander around, pretending to rest, I made my way to a certain location. Right in front of the mansion that was the protagonist’s residence and the starting point of the game…. Without lingering too obviously near the entrance, I sat on a long bench along the street and glanced at it furtively. I couldn’t just loiter right in front without being noticed. If I did, the soldiers would poke me with their spears. The starting point of the game that could be known even from the player’s perspective was the spring when the protagonist was sixteen. There was a chance the protagonist wasn’t in this mansion yet…. ‘Surely he’s not completely absent, right?’ Along with the sudden ominous thought, I gnawed…. Unable to hide my impatience, I repeatedly bit at my fingernails while sitting there.