Debt
Arnen stepped up behind Elia and covered her mouth.
I shrugged at the sight. If she was that determined not to talk about it, there was no point pressing the matter.
"Please don't mind what Elia said. We didn't hunt those ourselves—you did, Bell."
"Mm… that's fine. What I caught is pretty much the same as you catching it."
I'd already received plenty of help from these sisters. Whether the beasts I hunted went toward repaying a debt or became food, it made no difference to me. I'd been in their debt enough that I could afford to give this much and still come out ahead.
"Bell… you're truly strong. I've never seen anyone this powerful."
"…."
Elia, who had been thrashing against Arnen's hand, finally wriggled free and burst out with bright excitement.
"I've never seen wolves go pop-pop-pop and the ground cave in like that! You're seriously strong! Can you fly too?"
"I can't fly."
"Aww, too bad. I wanted to ride on your back."
Elia came up beside me and counted the wolf carcasses slung over my shoulder one by one, then turned sparkling eyes on Arnen.
"Is Bell stronger than Dad?"
"Mm… maybe."
Arnen hesitated a moment, glanced at me, then carefully nodded.
"When Dad swung his sword whoosh-whoosh, even beasts bigger than wolves got sliced clean through."
"A sword?"
When I asked with genuine interest, Elia turned to me and nodded vigorously.
"Yeah! He said if you pour mana into a sword, there's nothing in this world it can't cut. That's what Dad told us."
"Mana?"
Elia giggled at the way I kept echoing her words.
I couldn't laugh with her. Every term was completely foreign to me.
A sword… In the kingdom where I had lived, fists had long been judged more efficient. For a blade to become as sharp as a Special Class Warrior's hand-edge slicing through an enemy, I couldn't even imagine how expensive the metal would have to be.
Maybe the claws from the bear cave in the Forbidden Zone could manage it. Materials with that kind of cutting power were never easy to come by.
Don't tell me things like that are common around here?
And mana, of all things. So it wasn't only mages who used mana?
At least according to the common sense I possessed, that was the case. Even the word "mana" was something I'd only heard years ago, in my previous life. No one in the kingdom used the term.
The world really was a vast place…
While Elia was still laughing too hard to answer, Arnen asked,
"Bell, you don't use mana?"
I didn't even know what mana was. Just in case, I called up my Intent.
A crimson aura gathered around my fist.
"Is this mana?"
"…It seems a little different from what Father used."
Arnen and Elia both shook their heads side by side.
Judging by their reaction, the power I used and mana were clearly not the same thing.
The red energy lingering on my fist lingered a moment longer, then quietly faded away.
I found myself wanting to meet their father once, but I didn't say it out loud.
A face I had never seen even after living here for six months. And these two living alone in this remote forest.
Asking after their father's whereabouts would have been stupid.
I had at least that much sense.
Having already hunted more than ten beasts that day, we returned home.
Regardless of Arnen's discomfort, I had hunted the wolves purely to help them, so I told her to use the carcasses however she liked.
Killing beasts wasn't difficult, and I had no particular need for the bodies myself.
To ease Arnen's burden, I went out whenever I had a free moment and hunted the animals nearby.
I spread my senses across the mountain and dropped every beast that entered my sight, one after another.
It never took long.
I had plenty of spare time, and the work itself was easy.
As the hunted beasts piled up one by one, the storehouse at Arnen's house filled day by day with carcasses.
At first Arnen had insisted I didn't need to go that far, but when I casually brought back ten at a time without any strain, she could no longer hide the way her face brightened.
One day Arnen carefully brought up the subject of the debt. Having received help, she must have felt she ought to tell me.
"We borrowed the money because of Father."
"You took on your father's debt?"
"No."
Arnen shook her head, then spoke with a slight hesitation.
"We borrowed money because we wanted to find Father's whereabouts… Do you know about the Dark Guild?"
The Dark Guild? I'd never heard the name in my life.
Seeing my blank expression, Arnen continued as if she had expected it.
"The Dark Guild runs its own information network and even does moneylending. Of course, they stick their hands into all sorts of other business as well."
"So you asked the information guild about your father's whereabouts. Information costs money, so you borrowed that too."
The existence of a Dark Guild was unfamiliar, but the situation itself was easy enough to grasp.
Arnen quietly nodded.
"So did you find him?"
"…No. We only found his last known trail."
"Then you've been borrowing more money to keep searching?"
"Not anymore. Honestly, once we paid off the debt we were planning to go to the place of his last trail. I'm becoming an adult this year, after all…"
So Arnen was coming of age this year. I'd thought she was much younger, but the age gap between us wasn't that large.
I still didn't know exactly how old you had to be to be considered an adult in this place.
"It's true that repaying the debt was hard. The Dark Guild's interest rates are higher than you'd expect… and winter hit right when we couldn't hunt properly. But…"
"You can pay it off now, right? Since I've been hunting and filling the storehouse."
"Yes. Only… I don't know if it's all right to use what you hunted to pay our debt."
"That's fine."
After all the help I'd received, how could I pretend not to notice?
If anything, having a clear reason to help them made me feel lighter.
After that I hunted even more diligently, roaming the nearby mountains and stacking carcasses in the storehouse.
Arnen would occasionally skin the hides, gather them, and head down the mountain. When she returned she always carried a pouch of money.
She said she planned to pay both principal and interest together and clear the debt completely.
A full month passed that way.
Having carefully saved the money, Arnen finally declared she would repay the Dark Guild in full and went down the mountain once more.
And she did not return.
The nearest city was quite far; leaving early in the morning and coming back the next day was normal.
But three days with no word was strange.
Elia insisted we had to go look for her sister. The people of the Dark Guild weren't exactly the decent sort. Something might have happened.
I decided to go with Elia to find Arnen. Elia knew where the Dark Guild's base was.
The moment we left the house I pulled Elia firmly into my arms and stepped forward.
The scenery around us changed in an instant—from mid-mountain to the foot, then to another mountain, then to the far side of that mountain. Once we left the mountains and raced along the sparsely traveled road, we soon stood before a massive city gate.
When I set Elia down, she whipped her head left and right in a daze.
"Did you use magic or something?"
"No. I just ran."
"That's insane…"
"We don't really have time for this, do we?"
"Oh, right."
We passed through the gate together. Guards stood at the entrance, but the inspection wasn't particularly strict. Our eyes met briefly as we walked by; that was all.
The cityscape inside was both familiar and strange.
Compared to the villages of my homeland the materials and structure of the buildings were a little different, yet the basic look of the streets was similar.
Lots of stone buildings.
I couldn't tell whether the stone was merely the same shape, or whether this city was as underdeveloped as the Abandoned Village.
Another difference was the sheer number of people. The population looked larger than even the capital where the king resided.
I followed behind Elia, glancing around at the unfamiliar city, until she stopped in front of one building.
It looked like a small tavern. The kind of place where opening the wooden door would reveal a shabby pub.
A man in worn leather armor with a dagger at his waist sat by the door.
Elia walked up to him and spoke.
"I'm here looking for my sister."
"Huh? …Ah."
The man squinted at Elia as if he had no idea what she was talking about, then his expression cleared as something clicked.
"That hair color… does look familiar."
He dug at his ear with casual indifference.
"But she never came to us."
"That can't be. She left saying she was going to pay the money back."
"Hmm…"
The man with shoulder-length curly hair glanced past Elia at me standing quietly behind her. He looked me up and down as if gauging my build, then asked,
"You with her, mister?"
"What if I am?"
"…Looks like you know how to throw a punch. That tone of yours is pretty cocky."
"Ah, I only learned the local language a little while ago."
I could have put on formal manners if I wanted, but judging by the man's attitude there was no need.
His expression and eyes made it plain enough that he wasn't friendly toward us.
"What… you come down from the woods or something?"
The man snorted, then abruptly changed his posture. He straightened from his half-reclined seat and fixed us with a wary stare.
"Anyway, I don't know what gave you the guts to show up, but if you don't want trouble, back off. Taking the brat with you would be even better."
"I still haven't heard where Arnen is. She asked you."
"I already said I don't know. She never came here."
Looking thoroughly irritated, the man shot to his feet and yanked the dagger from behind his waist.
I gently pushed Elia back a step and moved forward.
Without hesitation the man thrust the dagger at me.
So this… is a sword?
I stared quietly at the short blade pointed at my face with a strange, almost curious gaze.