The Fishmen Who Control Water
The Fishmen Who Control Water
After accepting the escort quest from Bella, I contacted my regular party members that same day to see if they wanted in.
A two-week escort mission, give or take.
Factoring in the round trip from Yoen-su to the port city, that was my rough estimate.
Ever since Kate joined us, my regular party had mostly stuck to quests we could finish in a single day.
This was the first time we'd taken on something that demanded this much time, so coordinating everyone's schedules figured to be a headache.
'Wonder if someone's gonna have to sit this one out.'
But when I actually went and asked my lovers what they thought, every last one of them agreed to come without hesitation.
Turns out they were all strapped for cash at the moment.
Rebecca had a thing for pricey health supplements, and Kate liked blowing her coin on flashy new seasonal outfits.
To get their hands on the things they craved, they both needed money.
The day the escort quest began.
I woke up early and let Brown know ahead of time that I wouldn't be able to do magic shows for a while thanks to the quest.
With me gone for two weeks with no performances, Brown didn't put up much of a fuss about me leaving.
That was because my shows had already pulled in so many customers that the Tabad Inn had been thriving day in and day out.
"Take care of yourself, Luke!"
"Yes, sir."
"You said you're heading to the port city today, right? The fishmen who live there are a notoriously rough-tempered bunch, so you'd best watch yourself. The males are damn prideful — they'll throw a punch before they'll talk things out."
After taking in Brown's advice, I set off for the Adventurer's Guild with Rebecca, who'd been waiting at the inn's entrance.
Unlike our other quests, this time my regular party had one extra member secretly added to the roster.
Whether I should call her "one person" or "one book" was up for debate, though.
"Luke. Why are you lugging around that thick magic book?"
"Brought it along to study."
"Total nerd. Forget the books and let's work out instead. Back home I picked up this thing called yoga. It's great for loosening up — I'll teach you."
"I can read books and exercise at the same time. Or hey, how about you take this chance and pick up a little magic from me?"
"M-me? Learn magic?"
"Yeah."
"Sorry. I just don't really like stuff that makes my head hurt... hehe."
"Why would your head hurt?"
"Magic's complicated, so it makes your head hurt."
I walked through the city with the Magic Tome Rumi in one hand.
Robed up and carrying a spellbook — the picture-perfect mage aesthetic.
The citizens I passed on the street stared at me with gazes caught somewhere between fear and respect.
The reason I was lugging a magic book along even on a quest was so I could take Rumi's lessons a little at a time over the two-week journey.
Better to carry it around and pick up knowledge than to let it rot in my room.
[Thank you for bringing me along, Mage. I, too, prefer seeing the world to being cooped up in a room.]
Luckily, Rumi wasn't the type to hate going outside, either.
Rumi's voice was audible only to me — even when she spoke, Rebecca right next to me couldn't hear a thing.
I figured answering her thanks would just make things awkward, so I kept my mouth shut.
The meeting spot we'd arranged with Bella was in front of the Adventurer's Guild main office.
Rebecca and I got to the guild headquarters first and waited. Kate showed up a step behind us.
Kate had a backpack stuffed with Holy Water slung over her shoulders and a mace strapped to her hip for self-defense.
"Mongma-nim! Rebecca unni! I'm here!"
The moment Kate arrived, she rushed straight up to me and fired off a question out of nowhere.
"Mongma-nim. I'm curious about something — did you bring Crow? You know, the Crow who works as the mascot during the backyard shows."
Crow?
We're about to head out on a quest. Why's she asking about that now?
I gave Kate a baffled look and answered.
"Of course I didn't bring her. Can't just drag her outside the city and let her get hurt for no reason."
"Aaah...!"
As if my answer was deeply lamentable, Kate let out a sigh of pure mourning.
"Mongma-nim's Crow. If you had brought her, I was planning to treat her like a little plaything during the carriage ride. I even packed birdseed in my bag so I could tame her!"
Kate was wildly fond of Crow Bella.
She loved her so much that once, after a show ended, she'd actually clutched Crow Bella in her arms and flat-out refused to let her fly away.
I'd talked her into releasing her, but Kate's affection for Crow was anything but ordinary.
"Hwaaaah! O great Baldur! Please deliver Mongma-nim's Crow right here!"
The moment Kate raised her prayer toward the heavens —
The rear courtyard of the main office was basically a parking lot for the guild's carriages, and from it, a large coach burst out.
"Hyah."
Sitting in the driver's seat and handling the horses was none other than Secretary Hannah.
Hannah spotted us gathered in front of the main office and promptly steered the carriage our way.
"Good to see you, adventurers. Please, climb aboard the cabin. I shall escort Lady Bella and all of you to the port city."
It wasn't just me — my lovers also knew that Hannah was Bella's secretary. In any official setting, Hannah always shadowed Bella like, well, a shadow.
Seeing Hannah here meant we'd probably be meeting her mistress, Bella, shortly.
And sure enough, just as I thought, Bella revealed herself to us right away.
Bella, who had been inside the carriage cabin, flung the window wide open and waved at us.
"Good to see you, Luke. And to Luke's lovers as well. Please take good care of escorting me until we reach the port city."
"Just leave it to us."
The moment I answered as the regular party leader, Kate clicked her tongue beside me.
"I mean, I prayed for Crow to come, so why did a fox-like Vice Guild Master pop out instead? Lord Baldur! You're so cruel to me!"
We called for Crow, and Bella showed up.
If you really thought about it, Crow was basically Bella, so Lord Baldur up in the heavens was probably feeling unjustly blamed right about now.
'Sorry about that, Lord Baldur.'
The guy answered her prayer, and now he was getting chewed out by a nun for it.
I cut Kate off before she could invite divine punishment down on herself.
"Don't give Lord Baldur too much grief. The man's busy. You think a being who's practically a god is gonna grant some little prayer like that?"
"My love for Crow is not some little thing, Mongma-nim."
Kate lifted her head and cried out with an earnest expression.
"Aah, I want to commune with Mongma-nim's Crow!!"
"Don't yell it out loud, you idiot!"
The instant Kate's shout echoed from in front of the guild headquarters, Bella, seated in the carriage, flinched.
Watching Kate rampage around wildly, Bella clenched her fist tight — maybe some old grudge from her Crow-impersonating days had resurfaced.
"Hey. Sister Kate."
"What is it, Vice Guild Master?"
"That Crow you're so desperately calling for. Don't you think the nun's affection might be a little... overwhelming for her?"
"Oh, overwhelming? No way! Whenever I give her a big tight hug, she gets so happy she practically bursts out squirming."
At Kate's blithe boasting, Bella ground her teeth.
Grind!
"That's not happiness...! Did it never cross your mind that it might be a desperate struggle for survival?!"
"Oh, Vice Guild Master. And how exactly would you know that? You've never even seen Mongma-nim's Crow."
"——Khk!"
Bella must have figured that talking any further would blow her cover, because she shut her mouth.
After trembling for a moment, Bella soon gestured at all of us — including Kate — to come aboard the cabin.
"Haah.... Let's set off already. Blocking the path here is a nuisance to the other adventurers. I'll trust that you've packed everything you need."
I took my lovers and climbed into the cabin.
As expected of a carriage carrying the Vice Guild Master, the interior was spacious and stylish beyond compare.
The cabin alone weighed a total of eight tons, and the wide room was outfitted with household facilities powered by magic stones.
A small stove for lighting fires, a sink that dispensed water, a heat regulator for heating and cooling.
The large seats could even recline and convert into beds.
Honestly, it wouldn't be an overstatement to call this the otherworld's version of a camping car.
It didn't seem like we'd feel the slightest discomfort on the journey to the port city.
"Whoa. The cabin's packed with stuff. You could practically live in here like it's a house."
Hearing my exclamation of awe, Bella shrugged her shoulders and answered.
"This was originally the Guild Master's personal carriage. My father used to ride around in it, then passed it down to me. It's enchanted with shrinking magic, so when we all need to disembark, you can transform the carriage into something the size of a little toy. The weight decreases too, so I can even carry it around in my hands."
A carriage that could be shrunk down to toy-size — it was an incredible piece of work in more ways than one.
That meant if we reached somewhere inaccessible, we could just shrink the carriage and carry it along.
This was Gjallarhorn, the greatest adventurer's guild on the Western Continent, after all.
Comparing it to Earth, Bella was basically the daughter of a major corporation's chairman.
Using a high-end carriage like this as her ride was hardly unusual.
With me, my lovers, and Bella included, a total of four people sat down on the cabin seats.
At that moment, Hannah's voice rang out from the driver's seat outside the cabin.
"We're departing!"
Clatter! Clatter!
The large carriage left the Adventurer's Guild behind and raced toward the west gate, where the road connecting to the port city lay.
Once we passed through the west gate, the world beyond the city walls — the world the ramparts couldn't protect — stretched out before us.
The Bellatrix escort quest had officially begun.
*
Three days had passed since we left Yoen-su.
For three days, we had to guard Bella with an ironclad perimeter, but the quest never felt especially difficult.
It was all thanks to a special magic tool installed in the large carriage.
A magic tool called "Claim" had been mounted on the carriage's roof — a handy device that sounded an audible warning whenever an enemy approached.
Its structure worked by detecting hostility from living creatures that entered a certain range and then emitting a sound.
We could prepare for monster attacks in advance, so no urgent situations ever arose during the journey.
Wheeeeeeng—!
Today as well, whenever a monster approached the road the carriage was traveling, Claim sent out its sonic warning to the regular party members.
"Looks like something's coming. Monsters?"
"Let's head out and check."
The things that attacked the carriage today were none other than giant hermit crabs.
Huge carnivorous hermit crabs that inhabited the coastlines of the Western Continent.
Since the carriage was running along the shoreline toward the port city, the hermit crabs spotted us and attacked again and again.
'Man, back in the day, even taking down one of those hermit crabs was a struggle.'
In my Bronze days, they were monsters I could barely kill even one of.
But now that I was Silver, they popped one after another every time I used magic.
Whoooosh—!!
The magic wave I summoned swallowed up the swarming hermit crabs all at once.
In the wake of the wave, nothing remained but corpses whose innards had burst open from the water pressure.
"Hup!"
Rebecca swung her curved blade and cleaved through the few remaining hermit crabs.
The crabs hid inside their shells, but that turned out to be their fatal mistake.
Rebecca's curved blade, infused with monstrous strength, smashed right through those shells.
Crunch!
—Kiiiiiieeeek!
Split clean in half — hermit from crab — the monsters met their end right then and there.
"Mongma-nim! Claim stopped sounding the alarm! Looks like there are no more enemies."
"Before we head out, let's harvest some of that crab meat. Tonight we can boil it all up into spicy fish stew."
"Ugh! Spicy stew?"
The cabin had basic cooking facilities, so preparing meals on the go was possible.
As befitting a luxury cabin, it even came stocked with seasonings like chili powder and salt.
I had the chance to let these otherworlders taste spicy fish stew — the very soul of a Korean.
Bubble, bubble.
"Ugh, it's seriously spicy. Am I the only one who thinks so, unni?"
"It's spicy but pretty tasty, don't you think? The stew Luke made for us, I mean."
"I also think Luke's cooking skills are good. It's weirdly impressive that a man knows how to cook."
Inside the cabin, the group ladled stew into their own bowls and devoured the spicy dish I'd prepared.
"Luke! Give me a little more broth!"
Rebecca must really like spicy food — she'd polished her bowl clean and asked for a second serving.
When I filled her bowl to the brim with stew, Rebecca smiled bashfully with a happy expression.
"Nice and spicy, huh?"
"Love it! But hey, how exactly do you make this spicy stew stuff?"
"I'll give you the recipe later."
It was a historic moment — the day the dish called spicy fish stew began to be known among the people of the otherworld.
Which meant that I, as an Earthling, was slowly carrying out a cultural invasion of this world.
'Glad to see them eating well.'
Filling our stomachs with locally procured ingredients, we pressed onward toward the port city.