A Better Tomorrow (3)
“Somehow you managed not to kill them all.”
I twisted the legs of every man who’d surrendered, just to be safe, then scoured the rest of the hideout. By the time I’d finished thrashing everyone who needed thrashing and returned to the cavern, the others arrived not long after. Their reunion was later than I’d expected.
“Can’t you walk any faster?”
Or maybe it wasn’t late at all, seeing as Dev was hauling people in with ropes. He’d even rounded up captives; behind the Inquisitor stood a cluster of people clinging to one another.
I perched on a boulder and only flicked the occasional glance their way.
For reference, the pose I was striking involved sitting with my legs slightly spread, forearms resting on my thighs, and my back bent forward—the classic “brooding atmosphere” crouch.
“But this is…”
More to the point, Archmage. Did you seriously look at the people I left alive before the mural? Isn’t the mural way more eye-catching than a bunch of people? Or maybe the groaning made them stand out more.
“A peculiar mural.”
Anyway, that was the assessment of someone who knew the world far better than I did. I lent an ear and quietly studied the mural with him.
Time had worn the painting badly, yet most of it was still legible.
“A mural about dragons, is it?”
“If it’s a dragon…”
“Most likely the Sea Dragon, the divine beast of the Porzen region.”
“That worm-looking thing?”
“Yes. That worm-looking thing is indeed the Sea Dragon. The horns and elongated body are classic dragon traits.”
For the record, the original work often featured beings called “Ancient Beasts” or “divine beasts”—dragons, fairies, spirits, and the like. They were different from demons… easiest to think of them as entities that had inhabited the continent long before humans appeared. Not quite enemies of mankind, yet not exactly allies either—transcendent beings. In truth they were just capitalist products created to add more raid bosses.
“The image of it floating above the sea and summoning wind and rain is clearly describing the Sea Dragon itself, so we start from there…”
“And beside it?”
“People offering something to the dragon. They were probably trying to soothe its wrath. And the result of that would be the next panel.”
I focused on the painting the mage indicated. Calm seas, nets hauled up brimming with fish.
Even without the explanation it was obvious the people’s rites had worked.
“The next section is too damaged to read… and after that, a dragon and its young?”
In the panel following the erased scene there were two dragons. One was smaller, so it was easy to guess it was a juvenile.
“The next panel is also erased, and the final image shows only a single dragon again.”
Where the young dragon went was anyone’s guess. With the middle panels gone, all we could do was form hypotheses—whether the adult had died and the young one matured, or the young one had perished leaving only the adult, and so on.
“I’d love nothing more than to restore and examine these… but that would be unwise.”
There was no way this ruin existed for nothing. Dig too deep and a quest would almost certainly pop up. Yet as the Archmage said, the main quest took priority. If my concept had been overflowing with curiosity it might have been different, but I was playing a man obsessed with demons.
“I’ll settle for contacting the Magic Tower.”
At that point I finally peeled my rear off the boulder.
The two people absorbed in the mural and Dev busy tying up bandits had left the former captives completely abandoned. They flinched and shrank in on themselves. Looking properly, some of them weren’t merely supporting others—they were carrying limp bodies. The lifeless arms and legs, drained of color, looked already dead.
“More importantly, what do we do with these?”
Dev, having finished binding the bandits, gave them a few kicks as he asked.
“Surely you’re not thinking of letting them—”
“They kidnapped people, worked them like animals, and some even toyed with them until they died. The sentence is death, of course.”
At the Inquisitor’s stern voice the bandits began screaming and begging for their lives. But the Inquisitor was extraordinarily stubborn…
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said.”
Dev showed no intention of objecting this time either.
“Die.”
Right before the victims’ eyes, every last perpetrator’s head was lopped off.
By modern ethics even that might have been violence inflicted on the victims, yet thankfully their expressions weren’t bad. If anything, they looked as if they wanted to tear the bastards apart themselves.
“These aren’t all of them.”
One of them even spoke up after the bandits were dead.
“Men who lived with these scum like brothers are in the valley beyond.”
His eyes were bloodshot, the tiny vessels burst. Clutching the corpse of a man who looked like a sibling—same features, similar age—he spat the words as if chewing them. The grudge was anything but ordinary. Who wouldn’t feel that way after losing blood kin?
“Then we deal with them before we leave.”
The Inquisitor, who had just finished caving in skulls with her mace, wiped away the spattered blood as she spoke.
“The highway we used is traveled by ordinary wayfarers. We cannot simply leave them.”
The Archmage neither agreed nor disagreed. For this matter he would simply follow whatever decision was made.
“Garbage cleanup suits me fine. Leave the guiding to me.”
Even the one who’d been sniping at the Inquisitor earlier was offering full approval, so I had no reason to object either.
I’d take the lead again, same as before.
“We have no further use for this stronghold. You’re free to take the food and goods as well. Just don’t damage the ruins. Rest, then return to your homes.”
“I-is that truly all right…?”
“They mean nothing to us. Isn’t that so?”
As I strode out of the cave first, the Archmage made the offer to the people and then turned the question to us. Of course I didn’t care, so I didn’t even glance back.
“I’m not sure we should leave them alone like that.”
“We haven’t the leisure to worry that far. It can’t be helped.”
“They’re seafolk. Can they not manage to walk down a single mountain? We even gave them food.”
The conversation I overheard on the way out was somewhat unexpected.
For someone who’d shown no mercy at first, the Inquisitor fretted most about the people’s safety, while Dev—who’d earlier run his mouth about saving them—turned out to be surprisingly cold.
“You’re surprisingly strict.”
“I can clear an innocent person’s name, but I can’t take responsibility for their livelihood. Drawing a clear line between what they can and cannot do, and helping only within that, is the easiest way.”
What I gleaned from the eavesdropped talk was that Dev was a man with very clear boundaries. Why a guy like him had joined this journey was still a mystery.
Soon the end of the ruins came into view.
“At last, the end of the mountain range.”
After spending an entire day wiping out every bandit in the mountains, we finally descended. The coastline stretched into the distance.
“Smoke rising—there must be a village.”
It would have been nice if Gryu Telz had appeared right away, but this wasn’t that kind of convenient world.
“Judging by the distance, we’ll need to impose on that village for a night.”
“Hah… finally, a roof over our heads.”
Even to reach Gryu Telz we needed to stop at another village for supplies. Food was fine thanks to what we’d taken from the bandits, but the fatigue from continuous outdoor camping was another matter.
I’d only just realized that stringing nights outdoors together made fatigue stack little by little.
“Let’s hurry.”
We quickened our pace onto the shore.
“That rotten stench…”
“This smell is…”
But an ominous sign appeared long before any village—right from the beach itself. A reek that could rival a Draugr’s rose up.
“Is something wrong?”
Apparently it was her first time by the sea; only the Inquisitor failed to grasp the situation. She remarked that the smell was strange, yet seemed to think this was simply how the ocean smelled.
The three of us who knew better—myself, Dev, and the Archmage—went stiff-faced.
“Did they catch a whale and dump the guts on the beach? Nothing else would make a stench this foul.”
“Hard to say. Whaling is mostly done in the eastern seas.”
“And for a mass die-off, there aren’t any fish in sight…”
High chance a quest was nearby. Main or side, the type where you investigate and resolve the cause!
“Archmage?”
“Ah, Inquisitor. Ordinary seas don’t produce such a stench, so I was merely puzzled.”
“Ah, so not every sea is like this?”
“Correct.”
“Then why…?”
“Who can say. Speaking with the villagers may tell us something. The seafolk climbing all the way into the mountains might have been because of this as well.”
“I see…”
“More importantly, Inquisitor—do you sense any Demon Energy?”
At the Archmage’s question, Kimchi Mandu gave a slight shake of her head.
“Nothing registers on my senses yet.”
“Hmm.”
If no Demon Energy could be felt, then perhaps it wasn’t demon-related. But just like in Somon, there were ways to conceal it. Everything would become clear only after investigation.
And the mere possibility of demons was enough to make my concept go a little feral.
“We’ll know when we get there.”
“Pardon?”
I gave my horse the signal. The mount that had been plodding through the sand with soft thuds snorted and broke into a run.
“Sir Knight really has no brakes, does he?!”
Once I took off, the other three couldn’t very well stay put. The formation flipped in an instant and we thundered forward.
People visible on the village outskirts spotted us and began to bustle about in alarm.
“They’re going to be terrified. Perhaps we should dismount and approach more slowly?”
“Being scared won’t make their mouths disappear.”
“But it might make their willingness to speak disappear.”
It was an argument about efficiency, and a proposal with no reason to refuse. If it had been about personal safety I could have ignored it, but this was about gathering clues more easily.
I clicked my tongue and gradually eased the pace.
“They already look as frightened as they’re going to get.”
“Still better than charging all the way into the village, is it not?”
“True enough.”
From about thirty meters out we approached at a walk. A few people stood in the village center; most others hid inside buildings, only their eyes peeking out.
“……”
“If we get stabbed for this, I’m blaming you, milord.”
In the sour atmosphere the Inquisitor’s face hardened, while Dev cracked that sort of joke. The Inquisitor rolled her eyes as if to ask whether that even counted as a joke, but whatever.
Even so, despite several people entering my thirty-meter radius, my detection skill stayed silent. Depending on the conversation that might change, but right now they didn’t seem hostile.
If anything, their terrified faces suggested they were more worried we might harm them.
“Wait—those people are…?”
“Ah!”
As we stepped into the village under all those stares, we happened—or rather, inevitably—to come face to face with familiar faces.
“Th-those are…!”
“Our benefactors…!”
The same folks we’d parted from yesterday. Somehow they had made it out of the stronghold and back to the village safely.
“You’re unharmed. That’s a relief. But… what brings you to this village…?”
I looked at the people trailing them like a tail.
Mostly young children, brothers and sisters. They hadn’t climbed the mountain for nothing when the fishing failed. With that many mouths to feed, no catch meant they had no choice but to go into the hills.
“What’s going on here?”
Just then someone came running from the beach, hair and clothes still wet from the sea.
“Village chief!”
“The people who helped us are here.”
“These are the ones who rescued us. They even gave us food.”
“They treated our wounds too.”
She listened to the villagers and her eyes went round.
“On behalf of the village, I thank you.”
The chief immediately bowed at the waist, saying she’d heard all about us, then asking what brought us here and so on. She still looked young for the position; that sharp situational awareness and proper courtesy must have been why she held the post.
Her words were neither too long nor too short, delivered with perfect manners in a pleasant voice.
“We’re simply on the road to the city and wondered if we might stay the night.”
“Is that so? You’ve come to the right place. We were fretting over how to repay your kindness.”
Well, dealing with people like her wasn’t my job. While the Archmage handled the negotiations I surveyed the surroundings. Whether because of the chill atmosphere I projected or not, people kept ducking my gaze.
Among them were some dressed in black that looked like mourning clothes.
“They said the sea had gone mad… doesn’t seem like an ordinary affair.”
While I was studying them, Dev—who’d been looking over the village—muttered.
All I could tell was that the people were gaunt and the fishy smell was strong; he seemed to have noticed something more.
“There’ve been unsettling rumors in this region. Related, you think?”
No idea. But my gamer instinct was screaming nearly a hundred percent yes.
“Listen. I heard the sea turned strange so they couldn’t catch fish. And on the way here the ocean smelled nothing like the sea I know.”
Fortunately the Archmage and the chief’s conversation had reached that very topic. Dev, who had been chattering questions that wouldn’t come back to me, clamped his mouth shut.
“Could you tell us the full story?”
“Telling you is no trouble, but… why do you ask…?”
“We wonder whether it might be connected to the matter we’re investigating.”
“In that case… yes. Of course. The tale will run a little long, though—would you come to my house?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Neither do I.”
“I am fine with it as well.”
Dev and the Inquisitor agreed, and at last the party’s gazes settled on me.
What reaction would be best here? After a moment’s thought I crumpled my brow the way one crumples paper.
“Want your eyes gouged out?”
At the savage reply the three of them instantly averted their eyes.
“He says we’re going.”
“Since when did ‘want your eyes gouged out’ become an affirmative…?”
“I didn’t say we weren’t going.”
“You didn’t say we were, either?”
Dev and the Inquisitor fretted a little over my reaction, but the Archmage remained unfazed.
That settled it. The old man had finally figured out how to handle me.