Whatever Will Be, Will Be
With a "whatever will be, will be" mindset, I made my way to the mercenary request office in Selindale. It was still early, with the morning birds singing, so the place was nearly empty—only a handful of people scattered about. After always visiting the Karsion guild right after academy hours, seeing such a quiet office felt strangely nostalgic.
What kind of requests were posted again…? With plenty of time on my hands, I began leisurely scanning the request forms pinned to the board. If any were tied to key items, I figured I must have done them at least once. And if they had been memorable enough, even my unreliable memory would spark something the moment I saw them… or so I vaguely hoped.
Unlimited purchase of Long-tail Lizard tails—that's not it… It was a repeatable quest-style request for buying lizard tails in bulk. There were others too: collecting Drunken Wolf fang samples from nearby monsters, constant recruitment for magic tool researchers with preference given to mage mercenaries. None of them stirred any memories. Since I couldn't be sure what rewards any of them offered, I found myself shifting my weight restlessly in front of the board.
Maybe the requests I'm thinking of don't exist yet? Thinking it over… the items I vaguely recalled only appeared after Kair, the protagonist, graduated from the academy and began traveling. If a request was tied to a specific time or person, it might not have surfaced yet.
…Though that didn't quite hold up, considering I'd already bought the brooch normally in the entertainment district. The boots I'd found in the abandoned house in Windren were the same. Maybe each item had its own circumstances? I wasn't sure. It was easier to just chalk it up to my own stupidity for not remembering quests I'd supposedly done.
In the end, unable to figure out which requests rewarded the items I needed, I turned around and left the office empty-handed. Items were one thing, but what I really needed right now was the physical enhancement that came with leveling up. At this point Kair's growth was progressing smoothly, so there might not even be an opportunity for me to step in…
But leaving everything to chance still feels too risky. I'd rather not sit back, entrust everything to him, and end up as a lump of meat caught in the "world's destruction" vortex. The protagonist had a slightly dense side to him too—it felt like watching a reckless child walking a tightrope…
Kair gave the impression of living faithfully in the present rather than preparing for the future. It was hard to believe that this clueless guy would start living for the sake of the world around the time he graduated. Until some academy graduate could save the world, where were all the capable, impressive adults and what were they doing? Whether it was the people in a world that would simply perish if the protagonist failed, or the protagonist's party forced to bear the burden of saving it alone—both sides of the story were utterly unreasonable.
The world had always been unreasonable. All I was doing was building strength within my means to prepare for that unreasonableness. Whether I could become even a small variable in the story ahead remained unknown. This world was still full of things I needed to learn. I decided to set my worries aside for later. Worrying now wouldn't produce any solutions anyway.
Alright, time to hunt until the carriage arrives! Using the hunt as a way to shake off my unease, I began hunting near Selindale. My first target was the Long-tail Lizard—the giant lizard I'd encountered by chance while escorting Kair back to Karsion. Back then I'd had to stab it over ten times with a dagger, swallowing my nerves the whole time. In other words, it was the perfect monster to quickly gauge my current growth.
My weapon was different now—a one-handed sword instead of a dagger—but my goal was to move beyond daggers anyway. There was no need to cling to the old weapon just to compare how many more hits it would take. "Kiiik-!" There it is.
After walking a long way from the city entrance, the ear-splitting cry finally announced the lizard's appearance. I drew my sword from my waist and instantly entered a standoff. Unlike our first meeting in the dark, its form was now clearly visible—scales delicately covering it from head to tail, and that long tail curved forward like a scorpion's stinger, extending well past its head. Without any hesitation in using its proud weapon, the creature swung its freely moving tail with heavy force.
Its speed was considerable, but this wasn't a nighttime ambush—it was broad daylight. Dodging the heavy tail's swing came almost unconsciously. Whether it was my own will or the agility gained from leveling up that let me evade it, I couldn't clearly tell… but surrendering to that unconsciousness left me strangely calm. The distance was still great. I had plenty of time to think. Where should I attack first? The tail? The body?
If I could sever its only means of attack—the tail—it would become an easy prey. But precisely because of that, the tail was even tougher than the body. Without confidence that I could cut it off in one strike, I decided to close in and attack normally. Unlike with a dagger, I didn't need to get right on top of it. What used to require ten steps now only needed eight or seven. Those two or three steps made all the difference in split-second judgment and the time until death.
"Kiiiiiik-!" My target was its eye. Like an arrow aimed at the center of a bullseye, the sword tip pierced through and burst green fluid everywhere. The moment combat began, the reality of it all hit me. This wasn't some dry exchange of turns and attacks. It was a desperate bloodbath—targeting weaknesses, taking lives. Even in the one-sided process of hunting, my breath grew ragged. For a moment I even forgot my original purpose of measuring my growth against my dagger days.
Following the eye-gouging strike came a second blow that meshed smoothly like gears. I'd planned to retreat right after robbing it of one eye's vision, but the sword's trajectory twisted like flowing water and carved across the other eye as well. "Kiiiiii-!" Now completely blind, the lizard thrashed and wailed. Even as it swung its tail wildly, it only struck dirt and twigs. The once-violent tail gradually lost strength. Fighting a monster that could no longer find its enemy in the darkness… was as easy as breathing.
"Hoo." Once the tension finally released all at once, a natural sigh escaped me. Only then did I remember my promise to myself to use the lizard as a growth benchmark. With that thought, I counted on my gloved fingers. One, two… three? The first and second strikes that had carved out its eyes, plus the finishing blow I'd driven deep into its back once it could no longer swing its tail. Compared to the ten-plus attacks needed with a dagger, this was a massive improvement. Changing weapons really had made quite a difference.
How many more can I hunt…? Though who knows how far I'll have to walk to find the next one. As I sliced off the limp tail with my sword like sawing through wood, I thought briefly. It was something I always noticed while hunting—monsters were harder to encounter than expected. If you deliberately wandered the forest you'd eventually run into them, but the intervals were fairly wide. It wasn't an environment where you'd meet one every three to seven steps, quickly dispatch it, and move on to the next. Even when I was seriously hunting, the maximum near the royal road was about ten monsters in six hours. It was strangely honest—realistic, even. Just like how you wouldn't encounter beasts every five minutes even in the countryside, monsters felt the same. Or rather, it felt like monsters had simply replaced some of the beasts' usual spots.
Maybe that's why there are so few irregular characters besides the protagonist in this game world. The cycle of encountering monsters, the way levels were perceived, the visible numbers, the gap between characters weighing death against money and gamers who had nothing to lose—looking at it all from a realistic perspective, that thought naturally occurred to me.
Done with the comparisons, I shouldered the severed tail and wandered the fields. It had been a while since I'd hunted anything besides snakes and boars. Might as well enjoy the feel of it while I'm here. What had been a boring hunt suddenly became fun, and I found myself oddly excited. By the time I returned, the sun was high overhead. I'd somehow made it back to the meeting spot on time… only to be met with Reina's icy expression.
"You're not planning to get on the carriage carrying that, are you?" Her finger pointed at my shoulder—two heavy Long-tail Lizard tails slung on each side. I'd been so absorbed in hunting that I'd completely forgotten about processing them. Leaving them behind would be a waste of money too… After awkwardly avoiding her gaze for a moment, I remembered the request form that offered unlimited purchases of the tails and dashed toward the restaurant, shouting over my shoulder.
"…I'll be right back!"