Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Clatter, clatter.
The next day.
I brought my new party member, Yuna, outside the village.
“Today, let’s keep it simple and hunt the monsters around the village.”
“Do we not have to go to the Guild? Don’t you get quests there?”
“You can still get paid for clearing nearby monsters. And first, you need real combat experience. If you fail a quest, there’s a penalty.”
It seemed Yuna really knew nothing about adventuring.
At the word penalty, Yuna looked slightly tense and nodded.
After that, with a single wave of her hand, she summoned a Skeleton.
That was strange.
Back at the Guild, didn’t she mumble something when summoning one?
“The activation phrase?”
“I practiced a few times in my room. Turns out I don’t need it.”
“In your room?”
Yuna nodded.
This crazy woman had actually summoned Skeletons inside the inn.
To be fair, even the Goblins near the village weren’t easy opponents.
If it was just one, I could handle it somehow.
But if they were in a group, running away was the best option.
Still, with Yuna’s Skeleton with us, even four Goblins didn’t seem scary.
…Honestly, that Skeleton could probably take out three Goblins by itself.
Still, it would be good to confirm exactly how strong it was.
Right on cue, I spotted two Goblins wandering at the edge of my vision.
Pointing at them, I asked Yuna,
“Can you make the Skeleton fight those guys?”
Yuna nodded and gestured toward the Goblins.
The Skeleton clattered forward and charged.
The sound alone was unsettling.
It was obviously just bones rattling, but maybe because I’d been beaten by one before, it sounded like a heavily armored knight charging.
And what I saw next left me speechless.
“What the—?!”
“Eek!”
Yuna shut her eyes tightly and crouched down.
The Skeleton swung its sword once—
And both Goblins’ heads flew off in a single strike.
Damn.
That thing was insanely strong.
I rubbed the back of my neck.
If I’d pushed my luck any further yesterday, my head might’ve ended up like that.
I crouched beside Yuna and said,
“To have the subjugation recognized, we need to bring back their right hands.”
Yuna squeezed her eyes shut and shouted from her crouching position,
“Cut their hands off too!”
It didn’t seem like the Skeleton could hear her from that distance, but somehow it followed her order and began cutting off the Goblins’ hands.
When it returned, it dropped the two Goblin hands right in front of Yuna.
And the moment Yuna received them—
She started whimpering and crying.
Oh dear…
After waiting for her to calm down, I gave her some advice.
“The Skeleton’s strong, but… don’t send it too far away. If you do, it can’t protect you.”
Yuna looked back and forth between me and the Skeleton, thinking deeply about something.
Then she nodded.
“That makes sense.”
Uh…
No idea what conclusion she reached, but as long as she understood.
“So don’t let it go too far—”
“You mean I should summon more Skeletons to protect me?”
Huh?
Before I could respond, two more Skeletons popped out.
Turns out I was the dead weight in this party.
…
For the next few days, Yuna and I wiped out every monster around Baron Oton’s territory.
Turns out Yuna could summon more Skeletons at once than I thought.
Usually, three Skeletons spread out to hunt while two stayed close to guard Yuna.
The only thing I did was carry around the huge bags filled with proof of subjugation.
Goblin hands, Thorn Wolf forepaws, things like that.
At least Skeletons couldn’t do that.
Yuna’s profession was already known, sure—
But no matter what, you couldn’t just walk around town with Skeletons out in the open.
In that sense, I was more useful than the Skeletons.
Damn it.
Anyway, thanks to Yuna, the nearby monster population had practically gone extinct.
The other adventurers looked miserable because of it.
But why should I care?
Thanks to Yuna, we were earning an absurd amount of money.
More than my old party ever made.
And with fewer people to split it with.
But even so, our situation wasn’t exactly comfortable.
As ridiculous as our income was, our living expenses were just as ridiculous.
Yuna refused to eat monster meat.
She wouldn’t eat insects either.
She wouldn’t even enter shops that sold those things.
And because of bugs, she even changed inns.
Seriously, what inn doesn’t have bugs?
…Though it turned out expensive inns really did have fewer bugs.
Whenever she spotted one, she’d apparently summon a Skeleton to kill it.
I wished she’d save money a little.
But I wasn’t in a position to say anything.
Most of this money was earned because of her.
Could Yuna actually be a noble?
Her strange aptitude, her weird stories about her past…
It all felt suspicious.
Still, thanks to her, I was enjoying a luxurious lifestyle too.
Though I wouldn’t mind if we had a little more spare money.
The moment I entered the Guild, one of the adventurers shouted at me.
“Hey! The lucky brat living in luxury because of his party member!”
This guy, seriously…
Did he know the stress of traveling around with an unstable Necromancer?
But shouting back would only make things worse.
So I put on the most arrogant expression I could and answered,
“Jealous?”
The adventurer slammed his hand on the table and shouted back bitterly.
“Yeah, I’m jealous! I envy you! I hate you!”
I snorted.
I was getting used to this kind of stupid joking.
When I reached the reception desk, Aira greeted me with the same kind of joke.
“Oh! Luca, living in luxury thanks to your amazing party member!”
“Not you too, Miss Aira.”
“Haha! Just joking. Though it’s not exactly a lie.”
Why did she always have to add that last part?
When I gave her an annoyed look, she smiled and asked,
“So what brings you here at this hour, Luca?”
“Ah, today I want to take an official quest.”
“Really?!”
Aira looked genuinely happy.
And the surrounding adventurers looked happy too.
Lately, Yuna was being treated like an invasive species among adventurers.
The adventurer level in this village wasn’t that high.
Most people here didn’t dare take on actual quests.
So they survived by hunting field monsters.
Even I had only completed two real quests before.
And then Yuna, this foreign species, appeared.
With Skeletons spreading out and hunting Goblins everywhere, it was getting hard for anyone else to even find Goblins.
I’d even heard some adventurer was planning to start Goblin farming.
Of course, he got fined.
What an idiot.
Anyway, Aira, still smiling, pulled out a document.
“As it happens, there’s a dangerous area that needs investigating. We’ve asked several people before, but…”
“But?”
“Some found nothing. And some never came back.”
What kind of explanation was that?
At that point, just call it an extremely dangerous area.
“Uh… do you have something less dangerous?”
“Ah, thanks to previous reports, we have a rough idea of what’s dangerous there now. What I’d like Miss Yuna to do is actually very simple.”
Miss Yuna?
I’m standing right here.
Ignoring me, Aira continued.
“There’s said to be a suspicious tunnel there. We’d like you to send a few familiars inside and observe what happens.”
“Ah… yeah. That really is the perfect job for our party.”
I emphasized our party.
…
After accepting the request, I left the village with Yuna.
After hearing my explanation, Yuna nodded.
“That’s easy. We get thirty silver coins just for doing that?”
“Exactly. It’s good pay because most people can’t do it.”
“Hm. Makes sense.”
Apparently, we didn’t even need to find out what happened inside the tunnel.
They’d promised thirty more silver coins if we could report on the inside too—
But that would mean entering it ourselves.
So forget that.
All we needed to do was confirm whether entering the tunnel really meant death.
That made Yuna, with her summoned familiars, the perfect fit.
Of course, just because someone could control familiars didn’t mean they’d accept this job.
For example, Tamers or Summoners could handle it too.
But they wouldn’t.
Normally, people got attached to the things they controlled.
And someone who could casually send their familiars to certain death probably wouldn’t gain that aptitude in the first place.
But Yuna felt no attachment to her Skeletons.
If anything, she looked at them like they were kind of gross.
Poor Skeletons…
…
Thanks to the map Aira gave us, we found the tunnel quickly.
“This should be it.”
“It’s smaller than I expected.”
I nodded.
It was so narrow you’d have to crawl on your stomach just to get in.
I could probably fit too.
Not that I had even the slightest intention of trying.
Out of curiosity, I peered into it from a safe distance.
But I couldn’t see anything inside.
Yuna then ordered one of the Skeletons guarding her.
“Go in.”
The Skeleton immediately began crawling into the tunnel.
For some reason, I felt nervous.
Carefully, I looked inside again.
It had already gone deep enough that I couldn’t see it anymore.
A little later—
Yuna looked at me with an uneasy expression.
“What is it?”
“…It died.”
“Huh? The Skeleton?”
Yuna nodded.
…Did the tunnel collapse or something?