Chapter 6
In this world, there are creatures known as monsters.
Although they are divided into various categories in precise academic terms, there is also a tendency to lump together any creature harmful to humans as a ‘monster,’ much as people call spiders insects.
These monsters are also the main reason there is supply and demand for the profession of adventurer.
Monsters are the creatures that come as standard options whenever you enter a dungeon or ruin, like a pharmacy's licorice root, convenience-store triangle kimbap, or a graduate student's dark circles.
Thus, adventurers killing and dismantling monsters to sell their teeth and other parts was perfectly ordinary.
Even the sight of the cutest girl in the world, with a face that looked as if she'd never caught a bug, stabbing a knife into a kobold's eye and happily plucking teeth from its dead body to tuck into her arms—
was merely a scene from peaceful everyday life in this other world.
“Hryaaaah!!!”
It was inevitable that the people living in such a world would be brutally savage and uncivilized.
I was even impressed by the group taking full swings at the kobolds' heads as if they were competing over them.
“What a fucking mess.”
Semmus, who had rushed out first, was already at the front of the formation, harvesting kobold heads. Every time his blunt double-edged sword swung, furry heads that looked half rat and half dog went flying through the air.
“Are you planning to join in?”
Someone spoke to me from above my head. The skinny old man had somehow retrieved the bow he'd left in the luggage compartment and climbed onto the carriage roof.
The carriage was high enough to provide an ideal vantage point for shooting monsters, and adventurers belonging to the caravan were standing there with bows as well. They must have already discussed it, because they didn't try to stop us even when they saw a passenger fighting.
“Yes. I thought they'd make good practice.”
“Practice? You don't seem to have much experience fighting.”
“That's right. I obviously don't look like much of a fighting expert.”
“I wondered because of your build.”
As he answered, the old man loosed an arrow that pierced a kobold's shoulder. The kobold that had been aiming for Semmus's side collapsed, pretending to die of pleasure from the one-sided SM session.
“Tsk.”
But judging from the skinny old man's brief click of his tongue, it seemed he had been aiming for the head and missed. He wasn't so skilled that he could afford to criticize others, either.
“Hryaah!!”
Semmus, who was letting out shrill Kkiyoyot cries at the very front, was impressive by contrast.
After his spectacular performance, he was treated as an ace rather than a passenger, and the nearby adventurers switched to supporting him. It seemed the reputation of the Ulsterians' fighting ability was no exaggeration at all.
At that level, he might even be able to hold his own against the Silver-class adventurers I'd seen.
The people Yerna hired to explore ruins were usually Silver- to Bronze-class adventurers, and they felt to me roughly like YouTubers with anywhere from 100,000 to a million subscribers.
In other words, Semmus was a small-time streamer showing the potential of a million-subscriber YouTuber from the very start of his career.
Rather than dismissing him as some red-skinned migrant-worker bastard, I should get acquainted with him. Maybe I could ask him to carry me as far as Bronze class—no more, no less?
“Aren't you going? Didn't you come here to fight?”
“Oops. Right.”
At the skinny old man's reminder, I drew my sword and stepped forward.
Low-tier monsters like kobolds have simple behavioral principles.
1. It is difficult to defeat an opponent larger than oneself.
2. Enemies greater in number than oneself are frightening.
Normally, they lived with only these two thoughts in their heads, eating bugs and small animals. Then, after breeding and multiplying until they began to imagine they had grown stronger, they attacked passing humans.
“Krek?!”
And most of them died after being counterattacked.
I swung my sword at a kobold that came running toward the carriage. Professor Brammathon's basic physical training had included exercises where we swung iron rods, so the trajectory of my sword was fairly clean.
“Kyarraaaak!!”
But fuck, I hadn't practiced actually hitting anything.
I had aimed for its neck, but the blade only sliced halfway through the kobold's jaw. Along with its horrifying scream, a grotesque sight burned itself into my eyes.
“Get lost, bastard!”
“Gyaak!”
It was disgusting, but I was past the point of being upset over something like this. The kobold hit by my second attack spewed blood and collapsed, never to rise again.
Kobolds weren't intelligent enough to use weapons, so they weren't opponents I had much trouble killing. They were even smaller than dwarves.
“Rat bastard, cut.”
Thanks to my increased strength, a kobold's small body was no match for a single cut. My sword didn't even get stuck in the corpse and leave me grunting as I pulled; I moved straight on to my next prey.
Whoosh─ Thud!
“Kyaaaak!!”
An arrow flying in from far away struck the one on the left of the two nearby kobolds.
I silenced the one flailing its arms with a single slash. I kicked down the one charging me and drove my sword into it.
“Heh heh.”
It wasn't difficult.
No, it was actually easy.
That was partly because my opponents were weak, but my experience suffering while following that damned bitch Yerna was also a major factor. After seeing monsters die over and over in dungeons and ruins, I had gradually grown accustomed even to bloody fights.
[Is that all? Good work, Yellowie.]
Semmus approached me after finishing the battle.
Semmus handed me the cloth he had used to wipe his sword. Was that his way of showing affection?
[Thank you.]
I quickly accepted the scrap of cloth and tried to wipe my sword, only to frown. My sword was covered in kobold blood and fat.
[Your swordsmanship is a complete mess.]
[…I suppose it is.]
Semmus's sword had nothing on it but blood, whereas mine looked as if I'd butchered a whole pig's hind leg. The blood-red fat was stuck all over it, and I had no idea how I was supposed to wipe it clean.
[I'll give you the cloth. It's only a rag anyway. Use it to wipe the sword.]
[I'd need water to clean it properly.]
[Remove the fat and shake off the moisture. You can't clean it every time on a battlefield. It is enough if you remember to sharpen and oil it later.]
Semmus said as he returned the bloodstained sword to its sheath.
[But, Yellowie. You are not a warrior.]
[Not yet.]
I'd been treated like a weakling, so it would have been understandable if my pride were hurt. But why did the Yellowie comment piss me off even more?
Was it because the fact that I wasn't a veteran warrior dealt zero damage, while the Yellowie comment was racial discrimination that dealt piercing damage?
[A sword is a difficult weapon to handle for someone without the knack.]
[Yes. I'd heard that, but it's worse than I expected.]
Characters in novels and movies often went around saying that swords were consumables. In reality, unless it was a lightsaber, fighting living creatures would inevitably get blood and fat on a sword.
A sword whose blade had lost its sharpness was nothing more than a club.
You couldn't claim that a one- or two-kilogram iron club wasn't a weapon if it hit you, but by that logic, it would be better to carry a club from the start. A baseball bat was unquestionably a weapon, too.
[Would it be better to switch weapons?]
I asked Semmus. As a barbarian who did nothing but eat, shit, fight, have sex, and die, he was the perfect person to ask a question like this. Besides, it was unfair that I was always the one answering questions.
[Either get more real combat experience or use a spear.]
[Isn't a spear difficult to use in narrow spaces?]
[Its advantages and disadvantages ultimately come down to getting used to it. No matter what weapon you use.]
Semmus glanced around and spoke with a wise gleam in his eyes.
[Only training and real combat provide the answer. Once you reach the realm of a master, you can defeat a spear with your bare fists.]
The words of a man who had cut down more than a dozen kobolds in three minutes certainly carried weight.
***
“You're finally back! Come on in!”
After laboriously cleaning my sword, I returned to the carriage with Semmus, and the potbellied old man waiting inside cried out happily.
“I've been waiting for you, Mr. Nord. We can't continue the conversation while leaving one person out.”
I wondered why he was so pleased, but Jorma explained.
They could have continued without me. Semmus, who had come back in with me, didn't seem particularly interested in hearing about his homeland, either.
─Hiiiiiiing!!
Anyway, once we returned, the carriage set off again, and Jorma resumed telling his stories.
“Hmm. Now, where was I?”
“You got as far as saying you didn't recommend visiting the Ulsterians' village. So? What exactly is the reason?”
The potbellied old man asked while casually wiping sweat on his trousers.
“Yes. Unfortunately, the reason is that the moment they heard rumors I had arrived, all the women vanished from the village~ That's what happened.”
Jorma naturally swept his gaze over everyone's faces, then drooped his shoulders with an expression so sad it looked as if he were about to pound the ground. Semmus nodded with an expression that said it was only natural.
“Merchant. You are lucky that was all that happened to you.”
“It really was just as you say. Especially if I openly stared at a married woman, I got into serious trouble.”
“Hey, you idiot. Isn't that only natural?”
NTR freaks deserve to die.
Had this bastard been into that sort of thing despite acting so affably? Fuck, now that I looked at him, he even had the appearance of a blond delinquent.
Wouldn't killing this kind of bastard here contribute to world peace?
“Whoa, don't misunderstand! I didn't do it on purpose!”
Jorma protested indignantly.
“They say you can distinguish married women by the patterns of paint they wear on their bodies. Is that really something easy for outsiders like us to do? I suffered quite a bit because of it, too!”
“Paint? Weren't the Ulsterians tattooed?”
The skinny old man, who had once again been listening while pretending not to, slipped in a question. Jorma slapped his knee at that.
“Tattoos! Yes. You have to be careful with those tattoos, too.”
“Tattoos? Why?”
“From what I've heard, only outstanding warriors and druids can have tattoos, rather than merely painting their bodies. So if you look at a tattooed woman the wrong way, you may never be allowed back into the village.”
“…Like a village chief—or a noble?”
Semmus answered the skinny old man's question.
“Tattoos drawn with mana are the greatest honor. No one but a great warrior or great shaman may have them.”
“I see. If being rude to someone of high status only got you exiled, that's actually merciful.”
The skinny old man seemed satisfied, but Jorma drooped his shoulders with a sad expression.
“That is exactly right, but there are quite a few things to be careful about in the land of the Ulsterians. Make one careless mistake, and you can get badly burned. So I would have to say it isn't the dreamlike place the rumors make it out to be.”
“Hmm. Is that so….”
The old men, having had their subtle romantic fantasies denied, grew dejected. They looked like middle schoolers whose sexual fantasy of Japan as the world's most sexually liberated country had just been denied.
“But… did you know this?”
At that moment, Jorma smiled as if he had been waiting for exactly that reaction.
“There is a country where women expose just as much bare skin as the Ulsterians, yet instead of hating men's gazes, they return them with smiles.”
“What? Is that really true?”
At Jorma's words, the old men brightened like sunflowers receiving rain for the first time in a week. I wished they'd show a little more dignity.
“Hehehe. It is, indeed. Have you never heard of the desert nation of Narmer-Nile?”
“Of course I have. Isn't it the adventurers' golden land, incomparable even to Sargadis?”
“I've heard of it too. The land of sand seas where ruins sleep, a nation of merchants and warriors who gather around the Yatrau River and its oases.”
The two old men each flaunted their knowledge. In this other world, people's tier pride often extended to pride in obscure trivia as well.
[Yellowie. Where is Narmer-Nile?]
Semmus asked me about it, sounding curious at their display of knowledge.
[…It's a desert nation close to Britannia. It's also a place adventurers flock to because it has many ruins of ancient civilizations.]
I answered halfheartedly. Earlier, I'd considered becoming friends with this bastard, but seeing how he couldn't speak without tacking Yellowie onto every sentence had completely killed that thought.
Even if I treated this bastard like a fucking human being, he'd probably say something like, “It's only natural for a Yellowie bastard to serve white people.”
“There are sects worshipping the sun god Atum in Iunu, the capital of Narmer-Nile, and Inebe, its temple city.”
While we were talking, Jorma's story was gaining momentum. In place of us uninterested listeners, he had chosen the two old men as his targets and was explaining things with growing enthusiasm.
“And the important thing! The female devotees of this sect! Actually! Don't wear clothes even in their daily lives!”
“Ooh!”
Jorma, who had completely captured the old men's attention by then, clenched his fists as he shouted.
“The Narmerians live mixed together, with people of brown skin and people of white skin! But the most impressive ones were the brown-skinned female devotees!”
“Brown skin? Like dark elves?”
“Something like that. Instead of clothes that cover their bodies, those female devotees wear jewelry or wrap themselves in sheer cloth as they walk around inside the temple. Their oiled brown skin peeking through the gauzy fabric was truly… ngh!”
Men's dirty jokes were quite explicit in this world, too. When Jorma blatantly mimed a woman's curves in front of his chest, the potbellied old man stamped his foot as if he could no longer stand it.
“Good heavens, such a wonderful country exists! Why did I only learn of Narmer-Nile's greatness at my age? If I'd known when I was a sailor, I would have sailed there to see it!”
“Hehe. You are still in fine health. Life doesn't end while one is still alive. Who knows? Perhaps one day you, Mr. Aron, will make it to the land of those Ulsterians—or the golden land.”
“Ugh…. Yes. Taking one more journey before I die might not be so bad.”
That seemed awfully worldly for a journey taken before death. Jorma, however, spread both arms at the potbellied old man's words.
“Exactly! Opportunities come to those who dare! To support you in your journey, Mr. Aron, let me recommend a fine product!”
“A product?”
“Yes! It's the accessory Narmerian young ladies favor most! It's extremely popular because it's difficult to obtain in that country despite its very low price.”
“Oh!”
The two old men stared, as if enchanted, at the commercially made accessories Jorma pulled from inside his clothing. They were ornaments made by twisting copper wire.
Had that entire story been buildup for selling a product? This bastard sure knew how to run his mouth. I was secretly impressed by how smoothly Jorma shifted into advertising his wares.
“Hehehe. Since meeting like this must be fate, I'll let you have it for less than the average price. Twenty coppers, please.”
“Twenty coppers? Isn't that a little expensive?”
The potbellied old man frowned slightly. Twenty coppers was roughly 200,000 won. For ordinary people like us, that was enough to live on for a month.
“Now, now. You absolutely can't get an item like this anywhere else at this price.”
Jorma spoke with an attitude that allowed not the slightest room for negotiation when it came to the price.
“As for this accessory, the design is popular not only in Narmer-Nile but among the women of this country as well. Keep it on you, and it will be your secret weapon for whenever you have the good fortune to meet someone.”
“No, but twenty coppers is still a bit….”
“For your information, I spent a passionate night with a female devotee of Atum thanks to this accessory.”
“I'll take two.”
“Why, thank you. I'll take them out of my luggage during the break.”
The two old men couldn't hold out any longer and bought the accessories. Men were pitiful creatures whose dicks could take control of their brains like this.
“Mr. Nord, don't you need one?”
“Me? No thanks.”
I firmly refused the accessory. Had anyone ever seen a young person from the advertising-flooded twenty-first century buy something from a peddler on the subway? There was no way I would buy something whose effectiveness wasn't even certain.
“Merchant. I will buy one too.”
But apparently this red-skinned bastard wasn't immune.
Semmus pulled a pouch from beneath his robe. The skinny old man, who had been counting the coins in his wallet, let out an incredulous chuckle at the sight.
“There must be plenty of beautiful women among your people. Why are you interested in women from such a distant land?”
Semmus answered with a deeply serious expression.
“I came here to find a wife. Women in tribe won't marry me.”
“…Ahem. I understand. Everyone has their own circumstances.”
The old men fell silent with solemn expressions, as if they had glimpsed the sorrow of a migrant laborer.
In every era and every world, migrant laborers were people who left their countries because they could not show their abilities there.
And so, after spending roughly a night traveling by carriage to pass the time.
The next day, we arrived at our destination, Sargadis.