Toward a Better Tomorrow (4)
Every house in the village was much of a muchness, yet the chief’s dwelling was a little larger than the rest. The moment we stepped inside, the dragon statues scattered about the place leapt out at me.
“These statues…”
“They are of the Sea Dragon. The sovereign of the Western Sea.”
“I’d heard the Porzen region venerates the Sea Dragon. So it was true.”
“The weather at sea changes with His mood, after all. Well… our faith has been rather shaken of late…”
So they worshipped the Sea Dragon. That explained the dragon-carved pendants hanging around people’s necks and the prayers offered up to Him.
But wouldn’t that rub the Inquisitor the wrong way, given her temple origins?
“Is something the matter?”
When I glanced back, her expression was still faintly displeased, yet there was no trace of outright rejection toward the Sea Dragon itself. Apparently it didn’t bother her much.
Fair enough. If she were going to fly into a rage over idolatry, she should have started with those murals earlier. Those usually depicted the object of worship, after all.
“I am ashamed that water is all I can offer you.”
“Think nothing of it. We did not come seeking hospitality.”
The table was cramped and chairs scarce, so I leaned against the wall instead of sitting. It made me look less like one of the party and more stylish by far, so I didn’t mind. Hehaha.
“The sea has been strange for a month now. On the surface it looks calm, yet the waves crash however they please, and the fish have been vanishing one by one.”
Even when they forced themselves to cast nets, only inedible black sludge came up; when they dove, they found nothing but dead shellfish. The chief explained it all with quiet composure.
Even the fragments were enough to paint a grim picture.
“At first we wondered if the Sea Dragon had grown angry. But when He is wrathful, storms and tidal waves lash the shore. It has never been like this.”
“I see. Then could it be a red tide? The situation is somewhat similar.”
“I have never heard of a red tide lasting more than a month. Besides, the sea should turn red if that were the case, and no such phenomenon has been seen.”
“Hmm.”
“What is that black sludge that comes up in the nets?”
“We do not know either. We have lived our whole lives by the sea, yet we have never seen anything like it…”
The chief rose, saying she would show us. Moments later she returned with a wooden bowl in her hands.
“……!”
The Inquisitor reacted first. The sour look she had worn since entering the village vanished at once as she took the bowl.
“Inquisitor?”
“It is faint, but I sense a negative energy.”
A gamer’s instincts never miss. Whatever the cause, so long as it wasn’t natural, it would lead straight into a quest.
And given how relentlessly the Sea Dragon had been spotlighted since we entered this region, we were bound to get tangled up with it. That ruin hadn’t been built for nothing, either.
Just a guess, but I was half-certain. Those “Ancient Beasts” like the Sea Dragon were the sort of things developers slapped “rampage” or “corruption” settings onto so they could drop them as raid bosses. Meta-wise, of course.
Kukuku. I still remembered vividly the endless grind just to craft end-game gear. The corrupted fairies dropped expensive recipes, so people farmed them for profit. Converting that loot into cash had been pretty sweet.
“Negative energy, you say?”
“Yes.”
Still, this was pure circumstantial evidence. Until something solid appeared, it had to stay a hypothesis.
“Demons, then.”
So I casually floated the word “demons” as if I had no idea.
The Inquisitor’s eyes went round. It had been a while since I’d spoken to her, sure, but she looked so startled that even I felt awkward.
“That… I cannot say for certain. It is impure, yet it is different from Demon Energy.”
“Tsk.”
Given how green she still was as an Inquisitor, there were bound to be things she didn’t know. But cutting her slack for that would only get me treated like the demon instead.
I let contempt for her incompetence fill my gaze and released the sword hilt I had been toying with. Kimchi Dumpling’s face fell; she hung her head.
“Hmm.”
The mage, on the other hand, was examining the bowl’s contents with exacting care. Thanks to her lifting a piece, I got a look as well. It was a truly bizarre shape.
Sort of… like dregs? If you charred meat black as coal, it might look a little like that.
“Have you ever seen this?”
“No idea myself, sir.”
“Is that so… Perhaps something has befallen the Sea Dragon.”
“W-what…!”
“I am not certain. But He is the one who governs the Western Sea, is He not? If something is wrong with the sea and it remains unresolved, the swiftest course is to seek the cause with its master.”
At the Archmage’s cold assessment the chief’s face crumpled. Well, anyone would look like that if their object of faith were suddenly in trouble.
“Still, if the Sea Dragon truly were compromised, the entire Porzen region should be in an uproar… The temple could not have remained ignorant. Have you heard any news from the city or other villages?”
Even on the brink of despair the chief answered the question itself. She shook her head slowly, face still shattered.
“Not that I know of. They say the catch has dropped a little… but not every year can be a bumper one.”
“Is that recent news?”
“We gathered everything we could sell and took it to the city—Gryu Telz—to buy food. That was a fortnight ago. The journey takes about six days, so the news is not that old.”
Six days to get there, left a fortnight ago… so they would have arrived in Gryu Telz nine days prior.
And the odds of the city changing drastically in nine days were low. Unless something like a demonic ritual had broken out, of course.
“I see. Thank you for telling us.”
“How could I withhold anything from our benefactors?”
She bent so low her face nearly touched her knees and continued in a small voice.
“In any case… if things stay as they are, only death awaits us…”
“…….”
No one could offer comfort to that.
“…Do not think too bleakly. If the city is unaffected, the cause may not lie with the Sea Dragon.”
“…Whatever the cause, it no longer matters. Starvation or drowning—they are just different names for death. All we can do is hope it is resolved.”
I never much liked heavy atmospheres like this.
Leaning against the wall, I closed my eyes. The usual evasive urge and shallow pity that rose whenever I faced someone else’s despair tickled the palms of my hands.
Honestly, this world was far too much.
“To identify the cause, we will need to investigate separately. It may not be the Sea Dragon at all, but a problem confined to these coastal waters. Would you not agree, Inquisitor?”
“Yes. The Archmage is correct.”
The Inquisitor stared at the pitch-black residue a moment longer, then added:
“Now that impurity has been detected, as a servant of the gods I cannot withdraw.”
∎ Investigate the events unfolding in the sea
A new quest appeared alongside the one telling us to head for Gryu Telz. A side quest.
“Could it be… you intend to resolve this matter…?”
“I cannot give a firm answer.”
“That alone is more than enough… Thank you, thank you…”
But something felt off. Why were you accepting the side quest?
I was going to take it anyway, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but still. I tightened the arms I had crossed. Around the same moment the Archmage posed a final question.
“We may need to remain several days for the investigation. Will that be acceptable?”
“Of course. We could never treat our benefactors poorly… and if this can be resolved, we will cooperate in any way.”
Suddenly the people who had watched us with red-rimmed eyes and dark clothes flashed through my mind.
They hadn’t exactly looked thrilled to see us.
“Then for efficient searching, it would be best to divide our roles.”
Perhaps the roughness on my tongue made my fingers drum restlessly. In an instant the mage assigned everyone’s tasks.
The Inquisitor and Archmage, both gifted at sensing energy, would head out to sea and probe the source of the anomaly.
Dev, sharp-eyed as he was, would gather more detailed accounts from the villagers or check whether any ritual traces lingered nearby.
No one said it aloud, but my role fell into the latter group as well.
True, no Demon Energy had been detected… but you never knew. If a demon contractor was involved, Dev’s combat power alone might prove a bit shaky.
“Aigoo, Young Master’s heading out. I’ll go on ahead then.”
But even if we were doing the same job, I would take the lead myself—I wasn’t about to look like I was following their orders! Haha!
“Go carefully.”
I ignored them, kicked the front door open, and stepped outside. Village or beach—which to investigate? Naturally I chose the latter.
My character concept had no talent for conversation.
Whooosh!
As I crunched across the sand, the sound of the waves welcomed me.
Yet the foam rolling onto the shore looked somehow gray. It stood in sharp contrast to the clear blue of the water itself.
“Whoa. Every last clam is dead.”
Dev, trailing behind me, picked up a conch or two and clicked his tongue. Dead shellfish and whelks with gaping mouths were tossed back onto the beach.
“What do you think the cause is, Young Master?”
Honestly, both the Inquisitor and Dev had some serious grit. I hadn’t answered them for days, yet they kept striking up conversation without getting discouraged.
Ah, of course I liked people like that. Being able to wait for an answer that never came meant you were that much stronger.
“Whatever it is, remove it and the problem’s solved.”
That didn’t mean I answered cooperatively. Getting any answer at all was already something.
“Couldn’t it be a problem that doesn’t even require force? Well, most things in this world tend to work out that way, I suppose.”
Crunch.
While Dev chattered away, something cracked under my foot. Glancing down and lifting my boot, I found a rather oddly shaped clam.
It must have split when I stepped on it; the inside was slightly exposed.
“What’s that?”
Wait. There was something else inside besides clam meat.
After a brief hesitation I nudged the cracked shell aside with my toe. Dev leaned in beside me, craned his neck—then his ears shot straight up and he screamed.
“A pearl!!”
This? Here? Just like that??
“It’s a real pearl!”
I blinked a few times, then understood. In games, jewels weren’t all that rare.
Well, they were valuable, but… how to put it. Most of them were crafting or enhancement materials, so you found them every now and then. In some games they were as common as roadside pebbles.
“And with this size and luster…”
Meanwhile Dev was making a huge fuss as he scooped up the pearl. True to a rogue class, he knew how to handle gems—he even remembered to pick it up with a cloth.
“It’ll fetch at least 1.5 million Gal.”
Dev carefully wrapped the pearl in cloth and held it out to me. I’d expected him to keep it, but apparently he lacked the guts to claim a share right in front of me.
“Lucky break for you, Sir Knight.”
I disliked working for free, but I hadn’t set greed for wealth as part of my character, so I wouldn’t have minded if Dev took it… still, no reason to refuse what was offered.
I snatched the cloth as if reeling it in.
“On a side note, too bad for the villagers, huh? If they’d found this pearl they could’ve fed themselves for at least a fortnight. Treasure right under their noses and they never noticed.”
…But was 1.5 million Gal really worth that much? There looked to be at least fifty people in that village.
I eyed the pearl peeking through the cloth, then slipped it into my inventory. Time stood still in there, so the gem would keep better this way.
My already-tight inventory space grew even tighter, but anyway.
An unexpected windfall.
…Maybe the game was giving me this in advance because it was obvious I wouldn’t get a proper reward even if I cleared the quest.
As it turned out, the pearl was the greatest triumph we managed to unearth.
We scoured the surrounding forest and beach until the sun went down, but nothing else of note turned up. At best we bagged a couple of deer.
“Ah, you’re back.”
“Finally… Oh? Deer?”
Well, we weren’t completely empty-handed. We had hunted both of the deer we found, after all.
“If you know that, help me out a bit…”
For the record, Dev was the one hauling the deer. It wasn’t that I refused to help; he simply never considered that I might carry one and grabbed both himself.
He had been taking every little loss on himself from the start, but I didn’t bother correcting him. Hehaha.
“Hand them over here.”
“Good heavens, two whole deer…”
The chief and her son hurriedly took the animals; Dev collapsed on the spot. Both were yearlings, so they weren’t huge, but weight was still weight. No wonder he was wiped out.
“Tomorrow’s muscle pain is gonna be real. It’s definitely gonna hit…”
Dev flopped across a chair like a wet rag.
He had used his hood as a makeshift sack to drag the deer, so the room’s light finally revealed his face clearly. The features that had been hidden under the hood until now looked younger than I expected. Or rather, downright young.
“What? Why’re you staring? Never seen a person’s face before?”
“No… I was simply surprised you look younger than I thought.”
“Hmph. Going soft over a couple of deer? How pathetic.”
“Hey now. Do I look like some superhuman like you?”
With the beard I’d guessed late twenties, but looking at that soft face he could easily be the Inquisitor’s age.
Of course he might just have a baby face… yet watching him bicker with the Inquisitor, his mental age was definitely around the same.
“Results.”
But my character concept didn’t care how old Dev was! I dragged the wandering topic back on track.
Only then did the Archmage and Inquisitor respond.
“The waves were far too rough for a proper search. How about your side?”
“Did you discover anything?”
If I had, I would have dragged it back immediately.
I merely scowled. I held off on branding anyone incompetent, since I myself had found nothing either.
“Similar situation over there, it seems.”
The Archmage interpreted our silence that way. Accurately.
“So what now? Do we just sit around wasting time?”
“That will not do. I hear the sea calms somewhat before dawn. We have decided to go out again at first light.”
“Heeeh.”
“And if nothing turns up even then, we will have to head for the city.”
At that point she addressed me.
“You should conserve your strength.”
Her gaze drifted to the mother and son dressing the deer outside the building.
“The Inquisitor says she saw the Sea Dragon among the waves.”
“What?”
Since the Sea Dragon was an object of faith to them, she was being considerate so they wouldn’t overhear. What a sweetheart.
But why tell me? My chain-related PTSD still stung a bit.
“I may have mistaken waves or a storm… but to my eyes it was unmistakably a dragon. That long, slender body, those fins that stood out clearly even against the dark sky… only a dragon possesses those.”
Prompted by a glance from the Archmage, the Inquisitor calmly elaborated.
“Yet… its movements looked as if it were fighting something—or thrashing about. It did not seem to be in a normal state.”
At her words Dev finally bounced upright. He must have been shocked enough to forget his exhaustion.
“It is extremely rare for the Sea Dragon to come this close to shore. And if, as the Inquisitor saw, something truly has befallen it…”
“…Don’t tell me.”
“We may have to drive off whatever is tormenting the Sea Dragon… or, in the worst case, confront the Sea Dragon itself.”
Dev clutched his head at last.
“There’s no way that’s possible!”
A thoroughly human perspective, as a bonus.
“Dragon hunting, is it.”
But surprise did not suit me.
“Why are you so calm about this, Sir Knight?!”
I let Dev’s shock slide past me.
If anything, I was a little excited.
A dragon meant expensive materials and gear, after all!