The Investigation Request
"So you'll be departing, then?"
"Yes. I was told the rest of the supplies are already prepared."
"Of course. That's the least we can do for you."
I was meeting privately with the village chief. The moment I told him we were ready, he looked ready to leap for joy.
"We plan to rest for a full day, then set out immediately."
"Thank you. Please… I beg you, take care of this."
"We'll do everything we can."
The chief was profoundly grateful that we would rest only a single day before heading out. The training we had been putting ourselves through—Nam Eun-ju's in particular—was brutal enough that the chief, who had occasionally come by to watch, had been horrified by its intensity. He would have had no trouble realizing that a single day of rest was a concession made out of consideration for him.
I collected every last supply through the village chief. I had already let him know that, through a fortunate connection, I possessed a subspace, so we were slated to receive a truly enormous quantity of support. We had to prepare for contingencies—and in the worst case, there was always the possibility of being cut off behind enemy lines.
And compared to the cost of our equipment, this level of support was nothing. The equipment bill had come to about 3,200 gold in the end. I had thought it might exceed three thousand, but I hadn't actually expected it to. He seemed to have put considerable care into our weapons, which was likely the cause.
When word of this got out, the mercenaries all sent their envy and congratulations our way. Most of them were simply jealous, of course, but none were stupid enough to pick a fight, given they knew our strength. At the same time, the thought that the village would reward them for distinguished service had apparently made them more aggressive of late. Exactly the situation the village chief had been hoping for.
And then, belatedly, the rumor also spread that our party would be heading out on the investigation request. The Brickle Three Brothers came to find us, asking why we would take on such a dangerous mission, insisting that no matter how skilled we were we would end up dead, and trying to persuade us to just stay and help with the defense. I turned them down, explaining it had been one of the conditions of the equipment support.
Brickle, the eldest, then harshly criticized the chief for throwing talented mercenaries into a death trap—until he heard the price of our gear, at which point he fell silent. He had realized just how desperate the village chief was. In the end, he left us with nothing more than a "come back alive."
I wrapped up with the village chief and returned to the inn to inform the party.
"As I said before, we leave the day after tomorrow. Things went well with the chief. Tomorrow we'll go to the warehouse and load the supplies into our inventories. Aside from that, it's rest, so get your condition as high as you can. Especially you, Eun-ju. You've worked hard. Rest properly tomorrow. I'll bring your supplies myself, so don't you dare leave your room."
"…Yes. Thank you, Shin-hoo oppa."
Nam Eun-ju hesitated for a moment, then settled for a simple word of thanks. It wasn't a big deal, and after seeing the firm look I gave her, she seemed to realize there was no point in arguing.
The next day, I thoroughly cleaned out Britus Village's warehouse together with the party. The chief looked startled when we hauled away more supplies than he had imagined, but the expression vanished quickly enough—he had prepared to some degree after I had casually mentioned we would be taking a lot. I even used the Labyrinth Piece to stockpile spare supplies.
Seeing us like that, the chief was so flustered he blurted out just how many subspace pouches we could possibly have, given equipment of that caliber. We had to explain that we had simply come by a magic-like technique through a fortunate connection, and that it was not a magical item.
I gathered Nam Eun-ju's supplies as well and returned to the inn with the party. Today was a proper rest. I ordered everyone to rest as much as possible, and they accepted.
I headed to Nam Eun-ju's room to deliver her supplies.
I knocked.
"Yes?"
I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
"The supplies I promised. I came to drop them off."
"Ah, thank you, Shin-hoo oppa."
I immediately pulled the items from my inventory and handed them over one by one, and Nam Eun-ju accepted each in turn, transferring them into her own inventory.
"…You brought this much?"
"They're free."
I said it lightly, as a joke. Nam Eun-ju seemed briefly surprised, then her expression immediately grew somber.
"Hm? What's wrong?"
"…No, it's just… I'm grateful to you all over again, oppa, and sorry, too…"
"You don't need to feel that way… wait, what about this conversation made you—"
"You said so at the castle last time. That you didn't have much money…"
I did remember saying that.
"We've got plenty, though? Commission fees have been coming in steadily, so I've recovered by now."
"Still, it's not like right after we graduated from the tutorial…"
That was true. That period had been the financial peak of my life, across both the first and second cycles. Ten thousand gold, a thousand gems, and dozens of the highest-grade jewels—at a conservative estimate, I had possessed well over twenty thousand gold. Of course, I had plenty of plans to make money going forward, and later I would earn enough to make that peak look like a joke.
"Even so, that's why we got stronger, and why we're still alive and standing here. This is just an extension of that."
"…That's why I'm grateful all over again, and sorry… I was so busy just trying to keep up. …I still am, honestly…"
"Why are you thinking like that? Do you have any idea how hard I worked you? If anything, I'm grateful you kept up. Don't worry about it. Just focus on growing. If you need something, I'll find a way to get it for you."
Watching the world around them lately, they seemed to have newly realized just how fortunate their circumstances were. It would probably become even more of a shackle later. I expected that about two years from now, when the later arrivals started coming through. The faster ones would begin trickling up after about a year. Either way, once they watched those people come out and get put through the wringer one by one, they would understand even more clearly just how much preferential treatment they had received.
"……Yes. I'll… work hard…"
When I told her confidently not to worry, Nam Eun-ju seemed to take it a certain way—her face flushed a little as she answered, stumbling over her words.
"Good. Rest well today. Starting tomorrow, we give it everything."
"Yes. You rest well too, oppa."
"I will."
I left Nam Eun-ju's room with a smile.
The party really did rest properly, just as I had instructed. They spent the time resting in their rooms or gathering in small groups to chat. If they felt stiff, they did only light training or sparring—exercise-level, nothing more—and focused on recovering their stamina. By the next day, the color in everyone's faces had clearly brightened.
I set our departure for early dawn. The party rose accordingly, finished breakfast well ahead of time, and headed straight out of the village. From the crack of dawn, Drener and the village chief were there to see us off.
"Please be careful. I pray you return safely."
"Understood. We'll see you again."
We had not set a timeframe for the investigation. With no one having properly returned from such a mission, there was no way to predict how long it would take. The village chief still estimated two months at the short end, half a year at the long—but personally, I had no desire to burn through a full six months. Even so, I packed a massive quantity of food as if I didn't know any better. I figured it was actually more than half a year's worth… but whatever was left, we would use it eventually. And nothing spoils inside an inventory.
And so we left the village at dawn.
Our means of travel was, for all practical purposes, on foot. With no archer in the party, Ha Yoo-jin the rogue and I—the most experienced and physically capable—had to serve as both pathfinders and scouts. Ha Yoo-jin seemed inwardly thrilled to be pairing up with me.
"Yoo-jin. Thanks to your trait, you almost never get caught. At your level, the gnolls practically can't detect you at all. Use that to…"
I instructed Ha Yoo-jin as I kept watch in every direction.
We had long since left human territory. From here on, this was gnoll country. Not every stretch of it was crawling with them, of course, but they had sensitive noses, so we needed to be careful. I had already instructed the party to thoroughly apply the scent-disrupting supplies we had been given.
Before we knew it, we had entered Area 26, and nothing was more precise than a system message.
Areas 21 through 25 tended to cluster around villages and castles. From Area 26 onward, they formed large zones like concentric circles centered on those same strongholds. Moving outward, they became Areas 27, 28, 29, and 30. They were not perfect circles, of course. The borders were determined by the power and influence of the various settlements.
These "areas" were, at most, a minimum qualification. From the Tower's perspective, it was a way to keep people who had already survived the tutorial and the Labyrinth from dying too easily. Area 31 was different again—you had to travel in the opposite direction from Monus Village, the place we had first emerged, and punch all the way through Area 30 to reach it.
What we were aiming for would most likely only become visible once we got close to Area 30. Investigating the cause… if we could figure out what they were doing with the captured humans, we would probably have a rough answer.
Every so often they came and abducted five or more people. They were not just eating them on the spot. If that were the case, they would kidnap them in droves—there was no reason to snatch them a few at a time, and keep them alive besides. That meant they were taking them somewhere to use them. And when that supply ran short, they kidnapped more—so until their usefulness ran out, the captives were likely being kept alive.
Just what were they using them for? I had not existed in this time period in the past, so I had no way of knowing the reason. For now we were moving according to my memories of the past and the direction the gnolls had fled during the battles we had fought—but no gnoll settlements had appeared yet.
We kept moving until evening before we finally found the first settlement.
"Hyung, over there—I found it."
"So you did. Good. It's late, so let's secure a place to rest first and come back."
As long as you had mana, scouting in the dark was not impossible. And at Ha Yoo-jin's level, I figured he could just stealth in and walk around a settlement of that size in the open and still make it back alive. Gnolls were diurnal anyway. They had heads that looked like some cross between a dog, a wolf, and a hyena, and yet they were active during the day. Goblins were the same, and so were the orcs we would encounter later. Of course, if hunting was not going well, they sometimes shifted to a nocturnal pattern.
I informed the party we had found the first settlement and immediately secured a place to rest. Then, together with the party, I carefully observed the village.
"…There don't appear to be any humans."
"Doesn't look like it. Then again, it's not a particularly large village… they wouldn't be the ones behind the raids."
The settlement—the village—was not particularly large. About three hundred of them? It looked to be ruled by a single hundred-man captain. I considered wiping them out as we passed, then decided it would be a pointless action and withdrew with the party.
An assault would have been nice for the experience, but the investigation came first. If my prediction was right, we would not get results until we reached Area 30, where the Grand Tribe was. Stirring up trouble this early would only be a headache. The quest took priority.
So our first encounter with a village yielded nothing of note. It was the same as we passed through Area 26 and reached Areas 27 and 28. There was no sign of humans, and the settlements only grew larger.
As simply circling around them started to become exhausting, we used the border between the Golden Gnoll tribe and the Black Gnoll tribe, disguising our attacks as Black Gnoll raids, slaughtering the tribes that got in our way as we pushed deeper and deeper in.
And then, Area 29.
There, I confirmed something strange.
In the first cycle, the gnolls' Grand Tribe had existed in Area 30. More precisely, the flag that symbolized the central tribe—the largest and most representative of each color of gnoll tribe—was here. In Area 29.
My memories of the first cycle. They had gone off course.