Chapter 18
“Mr. Nord, is there something you dislike about your weapon?”
Francesca asked. Perhaps because they were talking about weapons, she was unusually eager. As expected of someone with dwarven blood.
“It’s not really anything as grand as saying I dislike it. If I think about it, maybe it’s simply because my skill is still lacking.”
Didn’t some Mohican commie bastard from somewhere say that too? That once you became a master, the type of weapon didn’t matter.
Surely the shortcomings of a sword were something I could overcome eventually.
But I didn’t think there was anything wrong with considering whether there might be a weapon better suited to me. Spending real money until you found a deck or character you liked was a gamer’s virtue.
“There are hardly any adventurers who are highly skilled right from Iron class, are there? Everyone is a little lacking at first.”
“Yes. That’s why I’m currently searching for a weapon that fits my hand. The minor problem is that I can’t afford to acquire several weapons.”
I did have some savings set aside. I just didn’t want to waste them.
Once my savings ran dry, I’d really have to live relying only on the academic salary that came in every month. Then, if I got kicked out of my degree program and lost that salary too, my mayfly adventurer life would begin.
“Well, what can you do? Poor adventurers like us just have to get by using whatever weapon we have. Before long, you get used to it.”
Est said it in a tone suggesting I was making too much of the matter.
“Is that so? I suppose you may be right.”
Maybe I was only worrying more because I had choices. No weapon in the world was perfect. Ultimately, a weapon’s strengths and weaknesses depended on the time, place, and user’s skill.
“By the way, that magic lasts quite a long time, doesn’t it? Haven’t you used it more than earlier?”
Francesca looked enviously at my mana fur. The mana coating didn’t even look like fur, so it shouldn’t have looked warm at all from the outside. What exactly was she envious of?
“It seems to use less because I’m not moving. More importantly, this magic is definitely warm, but does it really look that way from the outside?”
“Dwarves can roughly estimate temperature just by eye.”
“By eye? That’s amazing.”
Did dwarves have pit organs or something? The more I looked, the more amazing their race seemed. They could endure for a long time even when they couldn’t breathe, had sturdy bodies and great strength, and even their eyes were like post-Sharingan.
What a fucking cheat-code race. Or was it a fantasy rule that only humans were useless? Good thing I’d changed class to Earth Warrior Werebear.
“Ah…. The sun has set.”
Francesca murmured. We followed her gaze up to the hole in the ceiling. The red sunset disappeared, and darkness covered the cave of ruins.
The light from the leather lantern was our only solace.
***
After a long, cold night, morning dawned.
“Chirp chirp! (Sex!)”
“Chirp chirp! (Sex!)”
“Fuck.”
Once again, I woke to the bullshit of the flying sex birds.
The fatigue from standing watch still weighed on me, making my eyes heavy. Since we had no clock and couldn’t divide our sleep time precisely among us, I was even more tired.
“I should buy a clock or something.”
There’s probably no need to say much about the watch Paragon and I stood last night.
Anyone curious what standing watch beside a bunch of men is like, I recommend enlisting. Go to the army and spend two years as a private, then come back.
“Ugh, I’m freezing to death.”
Est, who had been on watch until just before, said.
Since we ultimately failed to light a campfire, last night felt almost like arctic winter training without heat packs. I also woke up when Beast Regression shut off midway through my sleep.
“At least the rain has stopped.”
Francesca said. Raindrops were still falling from the cave ceiling, but bright sunlight shone in from the sky.
I frowned at the ruins, which had been rained on all night beneath that hole.
“The ruins are a complete mess. The guild people are going to chew us out.”
“I’ll just take a little scolding. Is bad weather really something low-level adventurers like us can handle?”
“You’re a priest of the God of Abundance. Wasn’t manipulating the weather a specialty of followers of the Sky God and the God of Abundance?”
“That’s only when we’re praying to the gods for rain.”
Paragon said that. Mages could recreate weather phenomena locally, but a spell that cleared the dark clouds from the sky was Mithril-class in adventurer terms.
If that fake monk had been skilled enough to use such a spell, he would have burned the firewood with Fireball first.
“The rain has stopped, so let’s go gather firewood now.”
Just then, Francesca folded the blanket and put it in her bag as she spoke. For a moment, I thought I’d misheard her.
“Firewood? It’ll be wet and unusable anyway.”
“No. Wood won’t get wet all the way to its core unless it’s been soaked for an extremely long time. If we scrape off just the outer layer with a knife or axe, it should burn well enough.”
Francesca said that while taking a utility knife from her bag. Est’s mouth fell open.
“Wait. If that’s the case, why didn’t we light a fire yesterday?”
“Because it was raining. When it rains, visibility gets worse, so finding firewood isn’t easy either. If we’d gone out carelessly, we might have come back empty-handed and soaked through.”
“Ah─ I get it now.”
Est accepted that. Thinking back to last night’s cold, I understood what she meant. If we’d gotten wet in that cold, hypothermia would have taken us out in an instant.
“Ms. Francesca, you really do have everything planned. As expected of the party leader.”
“Hehe. Ah, which brings me to the point. Is anyone willing to go gather firewood with me? I only need one person.”
Francesca swept her eyes over the party. That was why I brushed off my knees and stood.
“In that case, I’ll go. I’m still sleepy, so I could use the walk to wake up.”
There was nothing else to do here, so it would be a decent way to kill time. I couldn’t do Professor Brammathon’s daily morning workout during a request, after all.
“Yes. Then I’ll be counting on you.”
Francesca bowed and went outside, leading the way.
Chirrrrr.
Chirrrrrr─.
When we went outside, we heard forest insects. Were those bastards also chanting sex-sex from the morning, like birds? My mood suddenly soured, so I kicked the katydid at my feet.
“Mmm…! Phew!”
Francesca came beside me and stretched. Her large breasts bounced like basketballs, with impressive flair.
“Ah, we dumped the goblin corpses in that direction. Let’s look for firewood in the opposite direction.”
“Yes. What kind of firewood should we look for?”
When I was at Carmine University, I never had a chance to help prepare firewood. Adventurers hired with money would gather it, or we’d simply buy firewood and bring it along. I was busy helping with other odd jobs back then.
Francesca said that while resting her chin on the hand she had raised to her chest.
“Hmm─. Bigger firewood is best, after all. If it’s too big for the fire to catch, we can split it.”
“Understood. We should find the biggest logs possible. We have to shave off the wet outer parts too.”
“Yes. Let’s do our best together.”
Francesca said that and smiled. This dwarf smiled a lot for someone from another world.
“How about we just break off one of those thick branches over there? If you lend me a hammer, I think it’s worth a try.”
I pointed to a living tree while walking around nearby.
If I turned on Beast Regression, climbed up, and pounded it a few times, I could probably snap it with a crack. I’d made even kindergarten-sized goblins into go/blins, after all.
But Francesca shook her head.
“Green wood doesn’t catch fire well. It holds the moisture absorbed through its roots.”
“Ah, right. I remember.”
The green flesh visible after peeling the bark is usually full of moisture. Sap also flows through green wood. It would be hard to set alight.
Firewood that had fallen into a puddle was also a no-go. It would have absorbed loads of moisture overnight and become soggy, like a Cuckoo Dac biscuit pulled out and forgotten.
‘So in the end, we have to rummage through the ground.’
I didn’t want to dig through damp leaf litter with my hands. As a compromise, I decided to swish it around with my toes.
Swish, swish.
When I rummaged around like that, bare soil appeared. Let’s poke around here and there like this.
But what if a snake bit me? If I asked that bastard Paragon to use a detoxification spell, wouldn’t he just say, What is that? and pull this crap?
Should I carry not only a lantern but also an entrenching shovel? Fuck. If my weapon were a sturdy, all-purpose knife like a kukri, I could have used it to stir through the ground too.
“Heave-ho.”
While I was doing that, Francesca stuck something into the ground. It was a simple trap. It wasn’t big enough to catch even a kobold. Still, it seemed capable of catching a rabbit or small animal.
I was startled by her skill—she had made it in a flash while my attention was elsewhere—and asked:
“Wait, did you make a trap too in that short time?”
“I saw some decent materials and a good location, so I gave it a try.”
By now, I couldn’t tell whether she was a half-dwarf or half-elf. Seriously, what kind of dwarf was this good at working in a forest? Did all rogues know the basics at this level?
“It would be nice if something were caught while we’re looking for firewood.”
Francesca said that while dusting off her hands. Without hiding my admiration, I agreed.
“I’m sure something will be caught by the time we’ve finished lighting the campfire.”
“Yes. Wet firewood makes a lot of smoke, but we should be able to cook something simple on skewers.”
I had a feeling breakfast was about to become much more substantial. I’d been planning to get by on boiled water and dried rations, so this was a hopeful prospect.
Rustle-rustle.
We walked along, picking up and carrying firewood. Unlike me, who foolishly had come out carrying only my weapon, Francesca had brought the blanket she’d folded earlier. We loaded the firewood onto it and carried it.
Francesca carried the load. I considered carrying it instead, like a macho man, but considering that I’d need to fight if something happened, it was better for me to have both hands free.
“Huh?”
“What is it?”
While we were moving like that, Francesca tilted her head.
“No. Something about the path… It looks different from an ordinary forest.”
“Different? Like a dungeon or maze, perhaps?”
Fuck, had I fallen into the Forest of Delusion this time after coming out to gather firewood? How much more twisted was my life planning to get? With this kind of rotten luck, even if I’d stayed at Carmine University, I’d probably have died from overwork while being a slave.
“It doesn’t feel magical like a dungeon… Look over there.”
Francesca, holding firewood in her arms, pointed at part of the forest.
“The bushes have been torn up and crushed. Those look like tracks left by something other than a wild animal….”
We went near the bushes. Then we immediately noticed the blatantly obvious footprints. No, damn it, if they were tiny footprints from something that walked barefoot, there was only one possibility.
“Don’t tell me these are goblins again?”
“Probably.”
As shitty as it was, we reached the same conclusion: even though rain had poured all night, goblin footprints remained beneath the bushes.
“Why are so many goblins wandering around like this… Ah, hell. The dungeon!”
Before coming here, Dorka had said that two dungeons besides the ruins had been discovered nearby.
One of them was a goblin lair, and Dorka had also said:
─Anyway, they say the ruins aren’t anything special, but the dungeon is dangerous. Both have lots of monsters, and apparently the monsters in one of them are even trying to get outside.
“A dungeon…? Ah, you mean the goblin lair the other guild discovered?”
“You heard the news. That’s right. I heard that in one of the dungeons discovered, the monsters inside come out into the open. I suppose those must have been the goblins.”
Cockroaches belong in kitchen cupboards, and goblins in caves. A textbook layout for pest habitats in this world.
“The goblins that appeared yesterday….”
I was about to say that the goblins we’d caught then had called it a ‘nest,’ but hurriedly corrected myself.
“They were a straggler group that escaped from that dungeon.”
“Ah….”
Damn it. What kind of cleanup was this? If this had been CESCO, I’d have filed a hell of a complaint and gone to headquarters. They’d cleared the lair, but the pests inside had escaped and moved somewhere else.
I thought of the hardships faced by herbalists and woodcutters who had visited this forest yesterday and today, and my heart grew heavy. Because of the untimely outbreak of escaped brats, innocent bystanders were going to have their lives picked clean, like children having their New Year’s cash snatched away.
The reason our party hadn’t encountered a single monster while heading to the ruins was simply that we’d been lucky.
No, come to think of it, since escaped goblins had appeared not long after we entered the cave, it was hard to call us lucky.
“Ms. Francesca, let’s return to the ruins. We’ll be ambushed by goblins while gathering firewood.”
“Yes.”
At my suggestion, Francesca drooped with a regretful expression.
“I suppose we won’t be able to light a campfire. Unlike wild animals, goblins will see the smoke and come looking for us in the cave instead.”
“Oh, damn. Is that how it works?”
Those freezing-to-death brats. Because of them, my breakfast today had become lukewarm water and hard bread. We couldn’t bring ourselves to throw away the firewood we’d worked so hard to gather, so we returned to the cave containing the ruins.
But fuck, they say even a tiger comes when you mention its name.
“Kyak?”
‘Fuck.’
On our way back to the cave, we ran straight into the goblins.