Heading to the City
No matter what anyone said, Elisa loved her bow.
Elves were a people of the forest. Living in harmony with nature, they had chosen the bow as their weapon of self-defense. For striking from ambush while hidden among countless trees, nothing else came close.
Come to think of it, it's been a while since I last practiced my shooting.
Through battle after battle her skill had improved dramatically — yet she had stopped practicing against targets altogether.
Was it after she watched dazzling magic scatter entire enemy ranks? Or after Sloan boldly stepped forward and took a Demon King's head?
Or maybe after she witnessed the miracle of an arm being severed and healed almost instantly. Even she herself couldn't pin down the reason.
No.
The reason she had chosen to become a scout ran deeper than that.
On that fateful day — early morning — Elisa had found suspicious tracks.
Dozens of footprints stamped clearly into the dirt. Anyone could have seen they belonged to a moving force of soldiers, but the Elisa of that time dismissed them as nothing more than a herd of animals on the move.
The result: her homeland burned. That was also the reason she had thrown herself into learning tracking techniques and how to use her senses as if her life depended on it.
...How irritating.
She had loosed arrow after arrow into the advancing Demon King's army, but tips of mere stone or wood couldn't even pierce their hide.
Once even an elf's greatest strength proved useless, the tragedy began. The village burned… and the flesh of neighbors she had greeted only the day before was torn apart.
War had always felt so distant — until it drove itself into her life. Close her eyes, and the carnage of that day still remained.
That was why she had come to hate the bow. The bow she inherited from her mother upon reaching adulthood — she had grown to despise it.
What the hell does he even know about me, running his mouth like that. Weak, and with nothing but some shady ability to his name…
On an instinctive level, Elisa hated Vali. And of course she did — an elf's senses could probe the essence of things in a way no other race could.
Vali's essence was fouler than anything else in this world. Like a monster's… and so it was nothing but repulsive.
Though his build and face did fall somewhat within her range of taste.
Back to practice.
Elisa had only one path left. She would cast aside the useless techniques that only fed her inferiority, and hone a craft so fast, so strong, that no one could ever stop her.
That dog of a bastard. Short little shit… Fine. I'll do it your way.
Training the very thing the man who had grated on her from their first meeting had praised still sat poorly with her — but she resolved to accept it willingly.
I'll get stronger… and make that dog of a man kneel in front of me and apologize.
Suddenly Elisa found herself imagining him submitting before her.
That small man, trembling, watching her every expression.
Elisa looking down on him, sneering. Stepping on his face with her foot. Making him whimper as he took her toes into his…!
"Ahem."
She had admitted many things today — but there was one truth she refused to acknowledge.
That every time she thought of Vali, she ended up fantasizing about him kneeling naked before her, offering sexual service.
The Demon King's curse had already begun.
Once morning came, I had no choice but to endure Camilla's hands invading every corner of me.
Why isn't anyone stopping her!
She openly started at the nape of my neck, then worked her way down my back, my ass — everywhere. Camilla's hands were strangely cold, so every sudden touch made me jump.
"You're seriously so soft. You're not actually a guy, are you?"
"I—I am a guy."
"Then why are you this soft?"
"You can't just say things like that…"
"Ah-ah! Stay still. Ssshh. I'm concentrating."
Then her hand reached the area around my thighs, and Camilla's pretty brow furrowed.
"This is getting in the way… Can't you just walk around naked?"
"Then what am I supposed to wear when we fight?"
"What do you need all that wrapping for? Show some leg."
"Ugh…"
The only escape from the endless sexual harassment and groping came after we finally left the village.
I used the excuse of scouting ahead to check the path and put some distance between us.
But maybe yesterday's words had left a deep impression — Elisa no longer took the lead. Instead she stayed behind, inspecting her bow and glaring at me the whole time.
Still giving me that look, huh.
I had no idea what she was thinking. Elisa just stared. Fixedly… At this rate she was going to bore a hole through the back of my head.
Anyway, past the forest connected to the village, a mountain range opened up before us.
"Hmm."
That aside — something felt off. My sharp instincts were warning me. That path was dangerous.
Ah, I see. The dirt over there is a different color. They dug a pit trap into the ground.
Once I spotted the trap ahead, other details started to surface.
The underbrush swayed ever so slightly, as if something was hiding in it. And something like a caterpillar was trying to crawl out into the open.
Clear evidence of an ambush. My own kin's forces? No — I would have sensed them already. Those were… humans.
"Talk about a brain full of rocks."
I turned and looked back at the party. At my signal, they all shifted into combat readiness at once.
"With camouflage that sloppy, even a passing child would notice."
"Wha— How the hell did you know?"
"…You stuffed that many people into a patch of grass. It'd be stranger if I didn't notice."
More straightforward than I expected. Several bandits in battered armor came pouring out. About twelve of them. Deserters, no doubt — their gear was too decent for ordinary outlaws.
"Wait — there seems to be a misunderstanding. We aren't your typical bandits. Crude as we may look, we understand business."
The bandit muttered like some kind of merchant.
"Uh… and what exactly do you deal in?"
"Peace and love."
"?"
The woman who seemed to be the bandit chief raised a chipped axe and declared:
"You lot need to buy love and peace from us. Not bad, right? Love and peace. Nothing else in this world carries that kind of value."
"How much?"
"How much do you have?"
"Uh… about twenty gold coins? We've got some silver too."
"Since you're our first customers of the day, half off — ten gold. Fair trade, wouldn't you say? You won't find a price like this anywhere else."
They had a conscience, at least. They weren't just stabbing people and taking the money outright.
"Certainly a conscientious price."
"Right? Other places take your money and kill you anyway. Unprofessional. If you strip every traveler bare, we all end up on the road to ruin."
I sighed, drew a dagger, and flung it forward. Thud! It buried itself cleanly between the eyes of the bandit standing at the front.
"Ghk—"
A corpse appeared in an instant, and the bandits' faces went deathly pale. They had felt the difference in power.
"Wait, hold on. Uh… is there anything we can buy from you?"
"Hmm. Ah! There is one thing."
"Hm? My life, by any chance…? I don't have much on me. If you could just knock a little off the price—!"
The bandit chief's body trembled. Sloan answered with the smile of an innocent child.
"Nope! Not that. You don't need to pay any money."
"Then…?"
Sloan stepped forward with a grin and swung her blade without a shred of mercy. No reason to hold back.
Villages that had suffered because of deserters-turned-bandits were far from few. As a Hero, she had every reason to cut them down.
"Express pass to the gods — sold!"
I was starting to notice it more and more: Sloan had a lot of strange sides to her. You'd expect a Hero to overflow with mercy — but the moment someone was confirmed as an enemy… she just killed them.
So if my identity ever gets exposed, that's what happens to me.
A slight shiver ran through me. Not a single mistake would be tolerated.
Still — if the difficulty wasn't at least this high, what was the point of infiltrating in the first place? Of course. Absolutely.
…Probably.
"Aaaagh! Isn't this way too cruel? This is…"
"Want to bury the bodies?"
"No, not that. I can't touch corpses."
"Then leave them. Wild animals will eat them. Ah — wait, that's not great either. Beasts shouldn't get a taste for human flesh. Let's just burn them."
Personally, I thought we should just leave. We didn't have the time.
"Look over there. A group is coming this way. About five of them."
"Huh? More bandits? Today's body count of humans is getting high. Hmm. Leaves a bad aftertaste. Don't like it."
Sloan drew her holy sword. Blood still clung to the blade and dripped off in fat drops. A straight-up murderer, this one.
"Alright! You people need to buy something from me!"
"Uh… excuse me? Are you a bandit? You really don't look like one."
"I'm not. I'm a Hero."
"Ah? Ah, well, understood. First of all, we aren't thieves or anything of the sort."
They definitely weren't thieves. Adventurers — a sort of distant cousin to the profession. More than anything, killers always carried a thick reek of blood, and these women smelled of nothing but monsters.
"I see. Did you come to kill those bandits?"
"Yes, that's right, but… how did you kill all of them? They outnumbered you two to one."
"With a sword. They cut pretty well, actually."
"I see."
The adventurers didn't look entirely convinced. Twelve people cut down in an instant would do that.
Judging by this, word that Sloan was the Hero still hadn't spread. Why? This was a woman who had carved through so many of my kin.
Humans… what the hell are you thinking? Having someone like Sloan around should raise morale just by existing.
At any rate, it was clear there was a city nearby. Bandits meant a well-traveled road.
"Seems there's a city in the area."
"Yes, that's right."
"Oh — but looking at your gear, you don't seem to be soldiers."
"Ah, as I said earlier, we aren't bandits. We're adventurers who took a guild request to deal with these scum. We even have our badges."
"Adventurers!"
Adventurers, huh… I didn't particularly care, but Sloan clearly did. The way those dark eyes sparkled, she probably wanted to become one herself.
"Where can I do that?"
"Pardon? Ah — we're affiliated with Verokia. First you register with the guild, then complete a few assignments."
"Then that's where we're going!"
She bounced on her feet. What was with her? It was like watching a cat. Completely unreadable…
"Sloan! We're on a journey to get stronger! We don't have time for side jobs! We need to take down as many Demon Kings as we can!"
"Huh? What are you talking about! There are plenty of people around here who need our help!"
"Well, that's true, but…"
"Enough noise! Let's go already! Once you're a Hero, you can't just walk past this kind of thing!"
Changing the party's entire travel route over a whim? We were already pressed for time hunting the next Demon King — what was this nonsense?
There was no beating Sloan's stubbornness, so Camilla eventually heaved a long sigh and gave in. Apparently this wasn't the first or second time Sloan had pulled something like this.
It's fine. I'll give you exactly what you want.
Let's see… maybe I should call in a few of the older brothers I know. They should be more than enough to put a "Hero" through her paces.
All of this was for my sake. I might not look like much now — but soon enough, I'd shine.
"Eep!"
"I told you to wear those shorts I bought you. That's it. You're sharing the bed with me again tonight."
…I should deal with the trial already in front of me first. If I didn't do something about the hands slipping between my clothes, things were going to get very bad.