Chapter 15
The street before the city gates.
Morning sunlight was blocked by the fortress walls, casting long shadows across the street.
Carriages belonging to traveling merchants formed a line along the road from outside the city to the gates.
Porters hurried between the carriages, trading goods with the street vendors lining the road before the gates.
The area around the fortress walls had been cleared of trees for visibility, leaving a broad, open plain.
The inside of the walls was too crowded for people to live comfortably, so organizations like adventurer 'clans' gathered outside the city gates.
The adventurers belonging to the clans trained and guzzled liquor in the street before the gates, while merchants clustered around them and formed a 'street market.'
Each clan owned its own parade ground.
Some were military parade grounds, while others belonged to the guild.
Elena arrived at the guild's parade ground.
Her party members were already waiting.
Swordsman Hans, archer Mira, and shield bearer Duke. All three had stiff expressions.
"Am I late?"
"""No!"""
Elena stood before her party members.
With her party members standing ramrod straight, Elena delivered the words she had prepared.
"I'll check everyone's equipment before we leave."
She checked Hans's equipment first.
"Weapon, canteen, and rations. I've got everything."
Hans pointed to each item he had named.
Elena nodded and shifted her gaze to Mira.
"What about your bow and arrows?"
Mira tapped the quiver on her back.
"The bow's fine, and I brought thirty arrows."
"What about potions?"
"Two low-grade healing potions. Here."
Mira opened the potion pouch at her waist and showed it to her.
It contained two potions in flat glass bottles.
"Duke."
"Yes, ma'am."
Duke also pointed to his shield and various supplies as he checked them off.
Elena gave the three of them a quick once-over.
Nothing was missing.
"Looks like we're all set... Let's head out."
Elena awkwardly pointed toward the forest and started walking.
The party members followed behind her.
***
The paved road ended, and a dirt path continued until they soon reached the forest entrance.
Elena took the lead.
She could hear the footsteps of the three party members behind her.
No one said a word.
It was awkward.
She had never led a party before, so she had no idea what she was supposed to do.
Uncle had also told her not to trust her party members, so she had no idea what to say or how to say it.
"Um."
Elena looked back without stopping.
"You can relax."
"......"
The expressions of all three twisted subtly at the same time.
It only became more awkward.
Hans was the first to speak.
"Um... what's your relationship with Eck?"
"Pardon?"
Elena misstepped.
The crack of a branch beneath her foot echoed through the forest.
"W-why are you asking that all of a sudden?"
"Well. Eck is A-rank, right? He's one of Reator's top adventurers, one of the best you can find, but he doesn't belong to any party and has no ties to the nobility. Nobody knew what he was thinking, holed up in the guild all the time, but..."
Hans scratched his head.
"...I mean, it's become pretty rare to see him at the guild since you showed up. He's been really busy this past month."
"He's only teaching me how to be an adventurer."
"Even so. Do you know the equipment you're wearing is made from ogre leather?"
"This is ogre leather?"
"It's from an A-rank monster, and it's so powerful that only A-rank adventurers or wealthy B-rank adventurers can afford to get it."
Elena looked down at the light armor she was wearing.
She had known it was expensive, but this was the first time she had learned that only A-rank adventurers could afford it.
"So I wondered."
"Wondered?"
"Whether you were his lover."
"N-no."
"Really?"
Elena spoke as though making an excuse.
"M-Mister said he needed a ho... someone to look after him after he retired. I guess he thought that if he showed me kindness, I'd repay him for the rest of my life."
Hans blinked.
He turned to Mira and Duke and exchanged glances with them.
He whispered under his breath.
"Even so, he wouldn't give you something that expensive just for that."
"The money he invested in that equipment alone could hire a young maid for life, couldn't it?"
"Mm-hmm."
The party members agreed with Hans.
"Is a relationship like this really strange?"
"Ahem."
Hans recalled his past.
"When I was learning swordsmanship from my father, he used to nag me that, since I was the youngest, I should grow up properly and support my eldest brother."
"Really?"
"Yes. At first, I thought it was unfair, but I only realized after I ran away from home that it had been an excuse to force-feed me a skill I could make a living with for the rest of my life..."
Hans lowered his head as he remembered the past.
"If I had been more patient back then and learned more from my father, my life might be better now."
Whenever he looked at himself scraping by as an F-rank adventurer, he was overcome by regret.
"Could Eck be the same?"
"You mean Uncle is lying to me for my sake?"
"Hmm... Maybe not? Thinking about Eck's usual personality, he might really be trying to make you work as his servant... But even so, he's being incredibly devoted..."
Hans felt a contradiction between the thought he'd come up with and the Eck he knew.
Elena became confused as well.
The forest wind shook the leaves.
Elena's footsteps slowed for a moment.
"It's different from the way your father cared about you, Mr. Hans."
The words slipped out between her lips in a low voice.
"Well, I mean..."
"Then what do you think it is?"
Hans was about to say something, but Mira cut in.
"...I don't know."
Elena couldn't figure out why Uncle treated her well.
"More importantly, get ready now."
Following the map Uncle had given her, she entered the area where orcs had been sighted.
Elena raised a hand and stopped her party members.
Animal bones lay scattered along a game trail marked by signs of trampling in the middle of the forest.
They were deer bones.
She had seen her father bring home deer he had hunted.
Flesh still clung to the bones.
"It hasn't been long since it was eaten."
"I'll scout ahead."
Mira whispered and disappeared into the brush.
She returned almost immediately.
Mira raised an index finger to her lips and pointed in a direction.
Elena's party followed Mira, carefully silencing their footsteps.
"Gakh."
"Gugaga."
They heard voices.
They were orcs.
Beyond the brush, green-skinned humanoid monsters had gathered in front of a cave.
They were larger than adult men and several heads taller than Elena. Their forearms were thicker than her thighs.
They carried crude clubs and rusty axes.
'Two.'
Two orcs stood at the cave entrance like sentries, and the cave was not deep enough to hide what lay inside.
───Squelch. ───Squelch. ───Squelch.
There were two more orcs inside the cave, raping someone.
Orcs were exclusively male.
The answer to who gave birth to them lay deeper inside the cave.
'So this is what Uncle meant by a prime spot on the map?'
There was a location Uncle had marked on the map, and it was one of the easier places to hunt monsters.
The orc patrols that normally moved in groups of four had been cut in half.
Elena called the party members over with a gesture.
"I'll handle one of them. The three of you hold off the other. Just hold out; I'll help you, so you only need to buy time."
Each party member gripped their weapon tightly.
Elena drew her sword as well.
"I'll take the orc on the left. Let's go."
The party followed as close behind as they could.
The instant Elena kicked off from the ground, Mira's arrow came flying at the orc on the right with a thwack!
The arrow sank into the right orc's shoulder.
"Gook?!"
"Gaaak!"
The orcs raised their weapons.
At that moment, Hans charged the orc with his sword, while Duke charged with his shield raised.
When the orc lifted its axe toward Hans, Duke slammed into its torso with his shield, and Hans took advantage of the opening to stab it.
The orc with the arrow in its shoulder could not put up a proper resistance, and it collapsed when Mira's arrow struck it between the eyes.
"Now let's help Ms. Elena..."
"Get ready."
Hans turned to help Elena, but the orc on the left was already down.
Elena was already keeping watch on the orcs by the cave.
***
I tilted my beer mug and counted the days remaining.
Five days remained until the Red Moon rose.
Monsters imbued with the Red Moon's energy could drop rare materials known as red materials.
As a result, the monsters grew stronger and went berserk, but their increased strength wasn't a problem.
The problem was what to hunt first.
Lisette's birthday was almost a year away. But if I wanted the equipment finished before then, it was best to start crafting as early as possible.
'What were Lisette's equipment specs again?'
It wasn't equipment I had used often, so my memory was hazy, but I clearly remembered what the event had told me to collect.
I gulped down my beer.
'I felt it when fighting the ogre too, but I'm strong now.'
Eck was strong.
He possessed abilities befitting an A-rank adventurer.
In terms of physical ability alone, he surpassed Elena in the midgame. Even compared to Elena in the late game, he was outstanding enough to suit an early-game boss monster.
Eck was a tutorial boss designed to force a loss.
Even by the late game, he was at elite-mob level.
'I even remember all the mobs' patterns.'
It was enough to make me mistakenly think I might not even need Elena.
But I needed Elena.
'Gathering materials is easy.'
That was why I was agonizing over it.
Gathering materials was easy, but doing so got in the way of Elena's growth.
The monsters Elena needed to defeat.
Boss monsters necessary for her experiential growth in addition to her physical growth.
Just as boss mobs that had been defeated in the game did not reappear until the next playthrough, only one of each boss mob existed in the world.
"Hmm..."
As expected, the sensible thing was to leave the boss monsters to Elena.
That let me roughly sort out my priorities for what to hunt on the day of the Red Moon.
It was around then.
The guild door opened.
The footsteps approaching me were familiar.
A material pouch was plopped down on the table.
"Uncle, I brought them all back."
Elena, back from hunting, sat down across from me.
I counted the orc molars in the material pouch and took out the silver coins I had prepared.
Thud.
"Twenty-five silver coins for the four orcs. Good work. What was it like leading a party?"
"It was better than I expected."
Elena's eyes remained fixed on the pile of silver coins.
But it wasn't hers alone to keep.
"Don't forget to distribute the party members' shares."
"Ah... then how should I divide it?"
"Why should I decide? That's for you, the party leader, to determine."
Elena looked at Hans, Mira, and Duke.
The novice adventurers froze beneath Elena's gaze.
Before they left, they had been paying attention to me, but now their attention was focused on Elena.
'They were obviously amazed by her skill.'
It was only to be expected.
Elena clutched the silver coins and racked her brain over the arithmetic.
I told her some news.