The Struggle in Spider Forest
Back in the village, Lawrence and Rapfield disposed of the Forest Spider byproducts.
The legs, just as the man had said, fetched fifty cooper apiece.
The ones exposed to Shadow Spear, however, were in such poor condition that they couldn’t be sold for full price.
“Hey. Hey. Come on, now. I’m asking you nicely here.”
“We still have to make a profit. No matter how much you ask, I can’t do that.”
“Come on. Don’t you remember what you said when my wife died? You told me I had to harden my heart from then on. Back then, I thought you were a true friend, so I even bought you drinks....”
“Fine, fine! You win, damn it. Ease up a little. What kind of man drags up another man’s dead wife over something like this?”
In the end, thanks to Rapfield’s skillful haggling, it looked like they hadn’t taken a loss.
There were sixteen teeth in all.
Four of them were especially large fangs, and those brought a higher price.
One of the spiders had its head smashed to pieces, so they couldn’t recover anything from it.
There were also two paralytic stingers.
One of those, too, had been too badly damaged in the body to salvage.
Lawrence gave up on the rest.
Compared to the risks mercenaries took, this was nothing.
Just the byproducts they’d managed to bring back already made a huge difference.
The legs alone came to two silver and fifty cooper.
The teeth brought in two silver, and the stingers another two silver.
For a single extermination, they’d earned a full six silver and fifty cooper.
Staring at the clinking silver, Lawrence was momentarily at a loss for words.
It was the kind of money that made it feel perfectly reasonable to get a knife in the back at any moment.
He paid Rapfield extra for handling the dismantling and sale.
Altogether, including the value of the legs, he gave him one silver.
It was more than he needed to.
Consider it a payment for keeping quiet, too.
“Thank you so much! If you ever need anything dismantled again, please call me. I’ll do my absolute best, for your sake and for mine!”
Rapfield thanked him so profusely it looked like his back might snap in two.
As one could see, Horos Village was the kind of place where the only real environment around was forest.
Logging had only become active recently because of the extermination work.
Before that, there hadn’t been many decent jobs to speak of.
There still wasn’t a sawmill, and logging crews were always fully booked, so if someone needed cash in a hurry, that money inevitably led back to Spider Forest.
“If the opportunity comes up next time, would you like to have a meal together? I feel like I ought to do something for you, at least for my own dignity.”
“I’ll think about it later.”
After turning Rapfield down, Lawrence returned to the inn.
He took out the day’s earnings and laid them on the table with the broken leg.
A full five silver and fifty cooper.
That meant little in the abstract, but if he pictured five hundred and fifty oat breads sitting on the table, he couldn’t help shaking his head.
It was even more than the escort job he’d completed at the beginning.
And the effort it had taken? Just a few hours.
If money could be made this way, then becoming rich didn’t seem like a dream at all.
No. That judgment was too hasty.
There was no way to know whether tomorrow would go as smoothly as today.
At the very least, the mercenaries who had been there all knew that the Forest Spider byproducts were valuable.
And since they knew Lawrence had made a tidy fortune, there was no doubt some jealous, envious mercenaries would soon start picking fights.
At first it might only be a few sharp words.
But once resentment started to take root, it wasn’t hard to imagine the whole thing spiraling into disaster.
Am I overthinking this?
No, he wasn’t.
People couldn’t be trusted too easily.
He had seen more than once how someone who had been a friend yesterday could commit murder over money today.
In the back alleys, that kind of thing was routine.
People would even draw knives over a few cooper.
At stakes this high, it was only natural to feel uneasy about what might happen.
What should he do?
Would it be better to get acquainted with a mercenary he could trust?
Someone like that red-haired mercenary, for instance....
No. That was a foolish thought.
To be afraid of mercenaries and then entrust his back to one?
That was too short-sighted to be called thinking.
Watching his own back alone wasn’t feasible either.
At the very least, Lawrence was defenseless while casting magic.
With Fire Tail, he might still be able to keep an eye on his surroundings.
But with Shadow Spear, his main offensive spell, that was impossible.
The instant he began casting, if someone stabbed him from behind, it would be over.
Maybe it was different for a knight from those songs, who valued honor above all else.
But how could he trust mercenaries who put money first?
No matter how much he thought about it, no answer came.
For now, the best thing was to keep as clear of mercenaries as possible and stay quiet.
Even the money he’d earned today would cover months at the inn.
Once he grew a little more skilled in magic, he might also learn to keep a better watch on his surroundings.
For the moment, though, his immediate task was Fire Tail.
He also needed to shorten the casting time of Shadow Spear.
Once he had a goal, the tightness in his chest eased a little.
Lawrence got out of bed, took his money, and headed downstairs.
It was a memorable day, one worth celebrating: the first successful real fight he’d finished in a long time.
As a reward to himself, he ought to eat something good.
* * *
“You’re serious? A mage?”
“I’m telling you, yes! If you’d seen it, you’d have cursed out loud too. It was some magic that summoned this huge spear, just like that. The spider bastard died in one hit!”
“Damn. Magic’s really that strong?”
“Maybe even stronger. It was insane.”
The dining hall was full of excited mercenary voices.
Only a day had passed since Lawrence had used magic.
For a small place, word seemed to have spread quickly from one end of the village to the other.
“So what did this mage look like?”
“Huh? I think he was wearing a robe and had his hood pulled low?”
“Ah, so he looked exactly like a mage, then.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t have a staff.”
“So you didn’t even see his face? I knew it, you idiot. If you had, that mage would probably be traveling with us right now.”
“No, damn it. This bastard really—listen to yourself. Am I supposed to know a mage’s face too? If he’s a mage, isn’t it enough that he can use magic well? Right?”
At least the good news was that he’d kept his hood pulled low.
It was a precaution Lawrence had taken just in case.
And it looked like that precaution had worked, which made him breathe a quiet sigh of relief.
“Another glass of milk, please.”
“You really do like milk, don’t you?”
“Yes. Well, it tastes good, and it’s a flavor I miss.”
Horos Village was the sort of place crowded with mercenaries.
Normally, when people ordered a drink, they ordered liquor or honey water. There weren’t any oddballs around who ordered milk.
“Milk’s good for the body. Better than liquor, at least, which ruins it. Since you’re drinking it anyway, order it often. It’s a bit pricey, and it doesn’t sell fast.”
“Just keep enough on hand. I’ll be ordering it.”
After finishing his meal, Lawrence left the inn behind.
He wasn’t heading for Spider Forest.
Today, as he had in Redantus, he intended to look for a place suitable for training.
First of all, getting away from the village was a given.
Even if it was a little far, he wanted somewhere that saw little human traffic.
He also wanted to avoid anything too close to the forest if possible.
Going near the forest was an act of suicide. So long as Spider Forest lay nearby, there was no telling where a Forest Spider might leap out from.
He searched the surrounding area for a suitable place, but by the time noon rolled around, he still hadn’t found one.
Most of all, there were too many mercenaries.
Wherever a place looked even remotely acceptable, mercenaries were always gathered there, puffing away on their cigarettes.
Never mind the places close by.
The areas farther from the village were mostly forest, and that made them even less appealing.
After returning to the village and eating lunch, Lawrence fell into thought.
This was bad.
The situation was different from Redantus.
The spaces carved out beyond the village had mostly been expanded by hunting Forest Spiders.
That meant the surrounding land was closely tied to Spider Forest, and it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that one wrong step could lead straight to death.
This time, he headed toward the opposite side of the village.
More precisely, he took the road he’d traveled with Lionel.
But here, too, things were no better.
The moment he left the road, goblins and Under Wolfs were everywhere.
There were hardly any open clearings to be found.
And because monsters appeared so often, it wasn’t a place where he could concentrate on training.
Too many. Way too many.
Thinking over why there were so many monsters here, he finally arrived at the conclusion that it must be because of Spider Forest.
After all, these creatures were the Forest Spider’s prey.
If the goblins and Under Wolfs had fled their natural predator and come to the other side of the forest, then the whole situation made sense.
In the end, unable to find a place to train, Lawrence trudged back to the village only when evening was nearly upon him.
By then, a full week had passed since he had begun searching for a training spot.
Unfortunately, he still hadn’t managed to produce any meaningful results and was wandering the forest yet again.
Still, it hadn’t been a total waste.
He had at least found a few places off the road.
But even those were hard to call safe.
When he wasn’t tired, they were fine enough.
After all, the monsters that lived there were only Under Wolfs and goblins.
But if he were exhausted and they came at him, he had no proper way to deal with them.
The surrounding forest was another problem.
His field of vision was inevitably narrow there, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that by the time he noticed a sneak attack, it would already be too late.
Even if he grew used to it, monsters were still monsters.
He would never underestimate a Forest Spider just because it died from a single Shadow Spear.
And that was true even beyond Forest Spiders.
A human being died if stabbed by a blade.
A human being died if even a claw or fang from an Under Wolf so much as grazed them.
Even with proper armor, surviving a fatal wound was difficult.
Monsters, by contrast, endured it with their tenacious life force.
It was outrageously unfair.
Humans died from the slightest touch, while monsters did not.
Thinking about it that way made the mercenaries who hunted such monsters and earned money from it seem downright insane.
Lawrence had something to fall back on, but they were literally staking their lives on the work.
And if they died, that was it.
No one would remember them, and even their equipment and belongings would end up in other mercenaries’ hands.
...That was truly no way for a sane person to live.
If there weren’t a reliable way to make money, would anyone have chosen this path at all?
Perhaps because he had spent the day moving restlessly through the woods, hunger had begun to rise slowly in his stomach.
Looking up through the branches at the sky, he saw that a fair amount of time had passed.
He should head back to the inn.
When he was hungry, his head didn’t work properly either.
It was fortunate that the inn’s cooking suited his taste.
In the past, he’d thought it was enough if it simply filled his stomach.
But now that his pockets had a little room in them, he could afford to enjoy the flavor, too.
What should he order today?
With that small pleasure in mind, he turned to leave, but then an odd sensation brushed against him.
A sticky, clinging feeling.
At first, he thought it might be an Under Wolf or a goblin.
But no matter how far he kept walking, it stuck to him all the same.
It wasn’t a monster.
This is.... A human gaze.
The instant he realized that, Lawrence’s thoughts surged forward.
Why? Who?
He had been careful.
After that day, he’d only practiced magic in his room.
He hadn’t done anything suspicious outside.
In fact, in order not to stand out, he’d even gone about without his hood.
He looked like the other mercenaries now, with a robe thrown over leather armor.
And yet, why had he been found out?
Was it the money after all?
No. Put the question aside for now.
What mattered was that the thing he’d feared had actually happened.
He changed direction.
If he were ambushed on this open road, he wouldn’t be able to respond.
He knew better than most what kind of force a crossbow could unleash.
Leather armor was practically nothing before a quarrel.
Turning his steps toward the forest, Lawrence bit his lower lip.
It wasn’t gone.
Instead, it was following him.
As if the boy were its prey.
He changed his mind.
He wouldn’t head for the clearing he’d scouted earlier.
He would enter the forest he’d avoided because it seemed dangerous.
It was fine.
Spider Forest lay on the opposite side of here.
No matter what, a Forest Spider wouldn’t appear.
It wasn’t as though he hadn’t considered the worst-case scenario.
And yet, as time passed, tension gathered in Lawrence’s fists.
He wasn’t afraid.
This sensation, as if a burning coal had lodged itself in his chest....
It was anger.
They had the audacity to target a mage.
They knew what a mage was, and they still went after him.
It wasn’t just that he was being underestimated; the magecraft itself was being looked down on, and the boy could feel his chest staining with fury at the thought.
He would make them regret it.
He would make them pay for daring to despise a mage.
Even if they cried and begged, he had no intention of forgiving them now.
Once he had gone some distance into the forest, Lawrence broke into a run.
He could feel another presence around him, one that wasn’t human, but he had no time to care about that.
He ran and ran without looking back.
Just as his breath rose up under his throat, he slipped behind a giant tree and hid.
First, he needed to count the enemy.
There was no way he could devise a response if he didn’t even know how many were after him.
Holding his rough breaths in check, he peeked out to see whether the pursuers would show themselves.
How much time had passed?
After a long, long instant, a group finally appeared.
“Damn it. Where the hell did that bastard go?”
“Looks like he noticed and ran.”
“Haha. A mage really does know everything, huh.”
It was the mercenaries spitting out curses.
The number of them was....
Roughly more than twenty.
At that number, Lawrence’s mind blanked for an instant.
Too many.
He had known there were a lot of people following him, but this was beyond anything he’d imagined.
“More importantly, this is real, right? We get our share too?”
“I told you, didn’t I? Mage corpses sell for a hell of a lot.”
“Didn’t know the black market handled that sort of thing too.”
“Makes sense. I heard that by chance, too. Seems mages study other mages’ corpses. Something about mana and all that. Honestly, every one of them’s a total lunatic.”