Chapter 32
"I'm entering it in the contest, but it will probably lose. So he told me to give the sword to you if it does."
"Uncle did? He told you to give this to me? A sword this good."
"Seeing your reaction makes all the work worthwhile."
Bordeaux grinned, baring his teeth.
"But he really is a strange one. I've always marveled at his genius, and I felt the same way when he saw right through the nobles' situations, but I never knew he could take such meticulous care of someone, either. Elena, didn't Eck say a word about this to you?"
"No... Uncle..."
Uncle hadn't said anything.
He had always been like that.
When he could have simply said he wanted to do it for her, he went out of his way to tack on a reason. Even while speaking as if he were threatening her, he secretly helped her behind the scenes.
When she had just become an adventurer and floundered because she didn't know what to do, he taught her how, as well as how to fight, the key points for hunting monsters, and even the traits that would have gotten her hurt if she hadn't known about them.
'Even Ellis had received Uncle's kindness.'
Uncle hadn't said it out loud, but he had actually been helping her with meticulous care.
His words and actions were opposites.
That realization tickled her heart.
"...I had no idea Uncle was preparing something like this for me."
"Eck changed a lot after meeting you. Honestly, that's what surprised me most. Why did he change so much? Hmm... Well, it means I get beaten and fleeced less, so I'm not complaining. This is all thanks to you, Elena. I'll let you have it for exactly 200 gold coins."
"T-two hundred gold coins? Wasn't it free?"
Bordeaux slapped his knee and laughed, clutching his stomach.
"Just kidding, just kidding. Eck has already paid for it, so you only have to wait until the contest is over and then take it."
"Yes..."
Elena lifted the sword, her strength drained.
A black-and-red sword.
It resonated with Elena's mana as if urging her to claim it.
She placed the sword on the anvil.
"Uncle Bordeaux, have you been feeling tired lately or something?"
"What brought that on?"
Bordeaux's expression grew complicated.
He soon folded his arms seriously, stroked his beard, and fell into thought.
"Well, he must be tired. That kid's been running all over the place lately, hasn't he? Back and forth to the Red Forest. I never could have imagined it before he met you."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah. He becomes endlessly lazy when he doesn't like something..... Hmm..... Now that I think about it, has he gone back to when he first started adventuring?"
Bordeaux recalled the time when Eck had been active.
The way he had worked, extorted, and climbed upward more greedily than anyone in his efforts to grow stronger.
He had been violent and threatening, but that too had been a kind of charisma that drew people to him.
Compared to then, he was different in many ways, but perhaps his engine had started up again.
"Anyway, a guy who used to do nothing but guzzle booze suddenly starts working his ass off. Of course he's tired. Even I get aches all over if I rest just one day. I doubt Eck's any different."
"I knew it!"
"W-what is it?"
Elena cheered, delighted that her guess had been right.
"But why are you asking? Did Eck start whining?"
"It's not that. But I'm happy because I heard what I wanted to hear!"
Bordeaux looked blankly at her, not understanding what she meant, then saw her off from the smithy after she bade him farewell.
Elena headed toward Alchemist Street before the sun set.
***
She had been to Alchemist Street before.
At Uncle's suggestion, she had delivered troll materials to an alchemist.
He was highly skilled, but lived in a shabby house for some reason.
When she opened the workshop door, a pungent herbal smell filled the air. Dorea was pouring herbs and water into a huge cauldron while carrying empty bottles back and forth.
Dozens of potion bottles lay scattered everywhere, almost excessively so, and chimed with clear notes at the slightest movement.
"Grandpa."
"Huh? Elena. What brings you here?"
Dorea glanced back, then turned his head toward the cauldron again.
He stirred the bubbling cauldron with a ladle, adjusted the heat at the proper intervals, and poured the liquid into potion bottles.
He stoppered the bottles, finishing their packaging.
Yet dozens of empty bottles remained.
Dorea moved about so frantically that he barely had time to breathe.
She couldn't bring herself to ask about Uncle.
"Why are you making so many potions?"
Dorea straightened his bent back and groaned.
"What do you think? It's all because of your fine protector. I wonder what the hell that bastard plans to do with all these potions. When am I supposed to finish making them all?"
"Uncle?"
Potions weren't used very often, so what did he plan to use them for?
Elena almost never used potions in her party.
Whenever there was a chance someone might be injured, Elena stepped in beforehand and prevented it.
They didn't need nearly that many.
"How many are you making?"
"Thirty thousand. Thirty thousand."
"T-thirty thousand..."
...How many was thirty thousand?
She held up her fingers one by one, but even after raising three fingers, she couldn't grasp the concept of the 'ten-thousand' unit in thirty thousand.
Yet Dorea's fussing conveyed that it was an enormous number so vividly that it made her skin prickle.
Her eyes fell on the bottles stacked in piles of dozens.
But why did he need so many potions?
'Could it be...'
Elena remembered the homework Uncle had given her.
Search the area around the northern mountain range for one month.
A dungeon will appear.
Even a child knew that a dungeon wasn't something a few adventurers could manage.
Adventurers gathered around dungeons, and Reator, which lacked one, was inferior to other cities in both the number and quality of its adventurers.
That was why, Mira had said, potion sales were poor.
Mira had always been the one who kept the party's potions stocked.
A dungeon and potions.
Once she connected the two through the single link of Uncle, she realized his true intention.
'Uncle... is preparing thirty thousand potions because he's worried I might get hurt while exploring the dungeon?'
Unfortunately, her mind couldn't dig any deeper for the answer.
Only the image of Uncle secretly working hard for her remained in her heart.
"Elena, if you have no business here, could you leave now? I'm extremely busy."
"There's something I want to ask."
"What is it? Ask quickly."
She asked where Uncle had gone, but didn't get the answer she wanted.
***
As the sun set, Elena returned home.
The women-only lodging had a retired adventurer at the entrance who visually checked everyone who entered.
When the door opened, she heard someone inside startle and hunch their shoulders.
"Sis?"
"Yeah, Ellis. I'm home."
Her younger sister Ellis threw off the blanket, scampered over, and hugged her.
Elena embraced her little sister's thin body and patted her back.
"Did the sound of the door startle you? I'm sorry."
"Mmm. No. I've been better since we moved here. So don't worry, Sis."
As her sister said that, her back trembled faintly.
Previously, thieves had broken into the house because of Darko's scheme.
After nearly being attacked by a thief while alone, Ellis was left with a horrifying memory.
Ellis said she didn't remember much of that day, but Elena, as her older sister, knew well that it was a lie.
Her heart felt heavy.
She pressed her forehead against Ellis's feverish forehead and reassured her.
"Besides, someone did save me back then, remember?"
Ellis continued, pausing several seconds between words as she spoke slowly.
"He was dependable and wonderful. He appeared when I needed him, saved me, and even covered me with a blanket."
Ellis smiled bashfully, her face flushed with warmth, and squeezed Elena's hand.
"There aren't only bad people in the world. I know that much, too."
"Ellis."
A lump rose in Elena's chest.
The person Ellis was talking about was Uncle.
If Uncle hadn't been there then, Elena didn't know how things would have turned out.
From what Ellis said, if Uncle had arrived even a little later—or rather, if he hadn't been paying attention—her sister would have been defiled by Darko's men.
Elena had worried that Ellis would always suffer something like that if left alone, but had let herself be complacent because the woman next door frequently checked on her and watched over her.
But if she hadn't gone out to earn money, both she and Ellis would have starved.
Faced with that impossible choice, Elena had resigned herself to the possibility of Ellis being attacked.
Uncle had stopped it.
The debt she owed Uncle couldn't be repaid with a word or two.
He was the one who had saved Ellis. She imagined that, once Ellis recovered from her illness, she would stay by Uncle's side and support him, just as he wanted.
"Oh, right."
Ellis picked up something from the table with bleary eyes and brought it over.
"Aunt Hanna gave me this before she left."
"Aunt Hanna did?"
Before they moved, their former next-door neighbor had given them something and left.
It was a potion.
"She said you've been working so hard, so drink this and keep your strength up."
"I see."
She had been indebted to Hanna, too.
In a way, the fact that the home where two girls lived had remained safe was thanks to Hanna.
All Elena felt was gratitude.
After receiving the potion, she tried to open the lid.
But she stopped.
"You're not going to drink it?"
"....I'm not tired yet, so I'll drink it later."
Uncle had told her to be suspicious of this sort of gift first. She was excited to learn what he had been doing behind the scenes, but that didn't change that.
Besides, she had just heard that Uncle had been drugged.
Taking what had happened to Eck as a lesson, Elena became even more vigilant.
She would ask Uncle what kind of potion it was.
She saw Uncle every day, but today she was especially eager to see him again.
***
The next morning.
When I left Fila's workshop, dazzling sunlight pierced my eyelashes.
Morning air filled my lungs.
After being tormented all night, I hadn't slept properly, and every joint ached.
From the direction of the workshop, Fila let out a languid yawn. Her long, tangled pink hair was smeared with ink or dust, but glittered as if aflame in the morning sunlight.
The middle buttons of her robe had come undone, revealing a deep line of cleavage, and I squeezed my eyes shut and looked away.
"Haa~. Thank you so much for yesterday."
She combed her tousled hair with her fingers, her cheeks already flushed with languor.
At first glance, she was a defenseless, vacant-looking, innocent, voluptuous, sensual beauty. Any ordinary man would swallow hard and imagine pushing her down onto the bed.
But I knew the truth, so when my imagination reached the bed, a chill ran down my spine.
"I never imagined the virility potion would help like that. Thanks to you, I got some excellent data. It was amazing."
Fila waved her hand with a silly grin as she saw me off to the guild.
"Let's do it again next time."
"...."
Instead of answering, I waved and turned my back.
On the way back, I raised my arm and sniffed it.
"It's kind of an awkward time to go home."
The wizard's workshop had a rather strong smell.
But it wasn't an unpleasant smell like sweat, so it should be fine.
I headed toward the guild instead of the lodging.