Wandering Through Endless Woods
“I can’t understand this at all.”
How could this possibly be happening?
[What is it this time?]
“I’m a stunning, wealthy, exceptionally talented modern woman of this era, aren’t I?”
[……Ah, yes.]
“Capable, intelligent, with a small but devoted following, and my personality is…… good, too.”
[You hesitated just now, didn’t you?]
Even I have a shred of conscience left.
“Anyway, that’s me. So why! On earth! Am I!”
My conscience and I were on the verge of a stress-induced meltdown.
Actually, I was already in the middle of one.
“Why does someone like me have to wander this godforsaken wilderness for ten whole days? This is a loss for all humanity!”
[Don’t take it out on me.]
“Aaaagh! I’m so sick of rabbit meat!”
[We’re not actually lost, you know? We’re just following where the compass points…….]
“This stupid thing!”
I hurled the compass, which had been pointing in the same direction day and night without any promise of an end, into the grass with all my strength. Rai yelped and quickly scooped it up.
Rai was currently in ogre form.
[Master! Without this, we really will be lost!]
“Who cares!”
[If you’re going to pretend to have a good personality, you should at least follow through…….]
“Shut up! I want a proper meal! I want to sleep in a bed! I need attentive service! I want civilization!”
Sitting on the shoulder of the ogre-transformed Rai, I screamed and threw every tantrum I could think of, but it didn’t change the fact that we were still wandering endlessly through the forest.
Nothing but grass in every direction.
Grass here! Grass there! Forest as far as the eye could see.
How much farther did we have to go before we could escape this cursed woodland?
“When are we going to find any signs of people!”
My fifth outburst seemed to annoy Rai. He openly grumbled while shooting me a reproachful look.
[You should’ve just agreed when I offered to warp us.]
“Do you want me dead?”
[You wouldn’t actually die.]
“You don’t understand my suffering!”
I swung my fist, full of rage, straight at Rai’s head. Ogre skulls were harder than rocks, and I immediately regretted it.
Striking a metal spirit—that was proof I was losing my mind.
My delicate fist throbbed all the way to the bone, but showing pain would have been beneath my noble pride.
“Ughhh.”
[Oh dear, that must hurt.]
“You insolent little brat.”
[What? I didn’t do anything. You always take it out on me, Master!]
“When your master hits you, you’re supposed to soften up on your own!”
[How is metal supposed to soften up?!]
“Why not! You’re a metal spirit! You should figure it out!”
[No, there’s a time and place to ignore your own nature! Why don’t you ask the water spirit to burn some paper while you’re at it!]
Gah!
Ten days since leaving Magi’s lair, the prolonged camping had sharpened my already prickly personality into something positively hedgehog-like.
Fatigue and anxiety kept making me irritable.
Not that I’d ever been particularly nice to begin with.
“This isn’t some personality test. Is that compass even pointing the right way?”
[It does feel endless, but we have no choice but to trust it.]
“What if it’s broken like Tokka’s Globe?”
[Ah! Master, what if that dragon brat is deliberately messing with us because we absorbed too many of his gems?]
For a moment it sounded plausible, but I quickly shook my head.
“No. We got the compass before we…… ahem, received the gems as gifts, so that can’t be it.”
Magi had given me roughly three things as gifts.
A heavenly jewel that was essentially a Dragon Heart—an ocean of mana—and a one-handed sword Magi had personally forged using Rai’s special alloy.
It looked like a fine blade to me, but since Magi had called it a failure and discarded it, I’d picked it up for my future’s sake.
If I presented it to the king as a gift from a dragon symbolizing friendship, he’d probably grin so wide his face would split.
Where else would I find a bribe that good?
“Come to think of it, Magi really was generous with his gifts.”
[He might be an idiot, but he’s a decent enough kid.]
“Yeah. He gave away so many gems.”
[Good grief, why give away so much when he already said it was fine?]
The final gift was a massive quantity of gems I’d received on the day we left.
They were definitely gifts.
Not theft—gifts. I only took what he offered.
Even if it was about two-thirds of the mountain of gems piled in his vault.
“……That was quite a lot, wasn’t it?”
[Yes, quite a lot.]
“The mountain’s gone now.”
Still, I’d left some behind on purpose, worried that taking everything would just make humans come to rob him again.
I really do have excellent foresight. And plenty of consideration, too.
The gems Magi had swept up from the empire had probably gone straight into Rai’s stomach by now.
Anyone who didn’t know better would wonder why Rai was so greedy when he could create gems anytime.
But the difference between having nothing and having something already absorbed was enormous when it came to a spirit’s power.
Of course it was more efficient to regurgitate what had already been absorbed than to create something new.
There was no downside to absorbing plenty in advance.
Unlike before, my own mana reserves had grown, and Rai now had the Dragon Heart’s mana to draw from, so spitting out absorbed materials barely cost any mana at all.
In short, Rai was a walking treasure vault.
And……
“A wild boar!”
He was also my loyal hunter.
“Fetch it, Rai!”
I leapt down from the ogre’s shoulder and pointed in the direction the boar had fled.
Rai instantly transformed into a wolf and shot off like an arrow after our prey.
Rai was becoming more versatile by the day.
A high-class employee, if you were being generous. A jack-of-all-trades if you weren’t.
Maybe he was finally starting to be useful.
***
I gathered dry branches, lit a fire, and sat nearby waiting for Rai to return.
The forest was cold, but the temperature-regulating cloak kept me comfortable.
That cloak had been Magi’s gift too.
I hadn’t asked for it when I left, so it must have been given.
If worst came to worst, I could return it in twenty years. That’s what friends are for.
Our relationship had started with a kidnapping, but somewhere along the way I’d grown oddly fond of him. I didn’t dislike him as much as before.
After feeding Magi, I’d gotten better at hunting and could now do several things I couldn’t before.
For one, I no longer flinched at monster entrails.
Maybe watching him eat everything raw had toughened my stomach.
“By the way, where did that guy go?”
I wouldn’t admit it to Rai, but without him around I felt strangely empty.
Like I was missing a hand.
‘He’s so chatty his presence is impossible to ignore.’
Bored, I picked up a long stick and poked at the campfire while glancing around.
Darkness fell quickly in the forest, and being alone in a place like this was usually suicide.
Deep woods like these were crawling with monsters, not to mention bandits and all sorts of other dangers.
Right now, I’d probably be thrilled to run into even a bandit.
“I’m starving to death.”
When I first left the academy, I never would’ve imagined traveling alone like this. Now it felt almost routine.
Was it because I’d faced the final boss—a dragon?
Ordinary dangers no longer scared me. They barely even registered.
Well, I had gotten pretty strong for a human.
Traveling alone in this world meant you were strong enough to handle it.
The sudden thought of Robenin was unpleasant.
Every now and then I found myself recalling how he’d cut down multiple orcs in an instant, moving like a black wind.
He’d sliced off their heads with perfect precision, not even breathing hard. I could barely follow the afterimages of his sword.
Could I beat Robenin now?
[Huff huff, Master!]
While I was lost in thought, Rai returned with a boar the size of his own body clamped in his jaws. He looked exactly like a real wolf—except for the golden color.
“You’re late.”
[This one was fast! And running through the forest is hard.]
“Good work anyway.”
When Rai was in wolf form and I patted his head, he would close his eyes and fold his ears back, flattening the space between them as wide as possible.
As if asking for more.
Whether snake or ogre, no matter what form he took, Rai was still Rai.
My one and only spirit.
My idiot. My friend.
My number-one subordinate.
***
[Master!]
“Mmm?”
I rubbed my mouth in a hurry, jolted awake.
I’d been riding on Rai’s interlocked hands while he was in ogre form, a method I used when I wanted to sleep during travel.
Only possible because Rai neither slept nor ate.
[I sense a presence.]
“Over there?”
Rubbing my neck to shake off the drowsiness, I looked in the same direction as Rai.
It was the direction the compass pointed.