Chapter 43
At the foot of a mountain in the Northern Mountains.
At my feet, a gigantic Mithril Centipede lay sprawled across the grass in pieces.
The A-rank monster, the Mithril Centipede, fed on magic metal to reinforce its shell.
The presence of a Mithril Centipede meant there was a mithril mine nearby.
Once the monster wave erupted, it would be a nuisance at the front line, dealing considerable damage to the city's walls, and its very existence would stir human greed.
'So I'll take care of it in advance.'
Mithril was a vital strategic resource.
Three times stronger than steel, three times lighter, and compatible with mana, it could be called the nobles' steel.
There was no point in letting the existence of the mithril mine become known now; it would only cause trouble.
Or it could become a useful way to identify someone I could trust.
"Keep it a secret."
Elena's party members nodded as they looked at the Mithril Centipede collapsed at my feet.
Mithril was a material that was nice to have, but not having it made no difference to me.
If I could filter out someone suitable to serve as Elena's henchman, it was worth the price. A single trustworthy person who wasn't swayed by money was worth more than a stake of several tens of percent in a mithril mine.
I left the party members to dispose of the Mithril Centipede.
I told them to hide it where no one could see, so they dug a pit and buried the Mithril Centipede's corpse.
I looked across the vast plain with its unobstructed view.
The central region of the Northern Mountains stretched out into a flat grassland.
For now, grass swaying in the wind rippled fresh and green, but that empty field would soon become the stage upon which a massive dungeon would rise.
I frowned against the sunlight.
'By now, she must have met Roen.'
I had given Elena the salt statue.
Elena would show it to Roen, and Roen would be horrified. Roen was the one who had told Elena to bring back the salt statue, after all.
Roen was an obnoxious bastard, but this one thing was something I could trust him with.
'A virginity freak.'
A hopeless fanatic obsessed with purity and virginity, babbling about being the goddess's representative.
A madman with a twisted ideology who had encountered an adult game based on medieval Christianity and accepted virginity as a major tenet of faith.
That was why, when I left Ellis in Roen's care, I could trust him to keep her safer than anyone.
'Ellis was able to protect her virginity thanks to Roen and Hannah, too.'
Roen was a man, but that fellow offered up a man's member as proof of faith.
That was the sort of group he belonged to.
There was no way they could be normal.
'I can guess exactly how this will turn out.'
The more extreme someone was, the easier they were to predict.
***
I crossed the plain with Elena's party members.
The wind swept across the plain and brushed over my body.
The grass blades brushed against one another, their rustling carried away by the wind.
There was nothing in the middle of the field.
No trace of a dungeon, nor any ripple of mana.
'Not yet.'
A dungeon should appear around here.
I traced the monster wave's route in my head, following this path in that direction.
"M-Mr. Eck, how much longer do we have to bury these?"
"Bury them all."
We buried the low-grade potions along the route.
If a monster stepped on a potion buried halfway, it would leak. When the concentrated mana reacted with the soil, the grass would grow explosively.
The moment the monster horde surging in during the monster wave stepped on them, the grass bursting from the ground would tangle together and seize their legs.
The tough, luxuriant stalks would be enough to bind the ankles of low-level monsters, and a wall of low-level monsters would pile up and block even higher-level ones.
Since monster waves were recurring events, every possible method of slowing their advance had been studied.
Hans and Duke wiped the sweat from their foreheads.
"We buried everything as you instructed."
By the time the sun reached its zenith and began to descend,
I had planted all the potions we'd brought.
"From now on, focus on this work even when you come with Elena."
"""Yes!"""
There were still plenty of potions.
Thirty thousand would be enough both to plant some in the ground and to leave enough for adventurers to use.
We gathered our equipment and returned to the city.
***
When we returned to the guild, Elena was waiting in her assigned seat.
She had been propping her chin on the table and staring blankly toward the door, but she straightened when I entered.
"Uncle!"
She came running over.
When her party members followed her inside, she gave them a casual wave, then came straight over to me.
"Ellis is doing better."
"Really?"
"Yes. After I fed her what you gave me, Uncle, she was able to walk around by herself. Before, she had trouble even sitting up."
It was good news.
Mana grass was a mana-infused herb, but it had taken effect because it was compatible with Ellis's wavelength.
The more mana grass she ate, the more the potion's recovery increased.
But mana grass could only bolster Ellis's ability to handle mana; the fundamental solution lay elsewhere.
"What about the statue?"
"Oh, that... I think the doctor took it. Maybe he's making the medicine."
Roen had told her to bring back the salt statue and said it was an ingredient for the cure.
Until now, Elena had not suspected Roen in the slightest, since he had cared for Ellis's illness without ever laying a hand on her.
'I'll need decisive evidence to make her suspicious.'
Although Elena followed me obediently now, telling her to suspect Roen would not make her suspect him at face value; it would only squander my credibility.
At the very least, I would need to present evidence that could serve as grounds for suspicion if I wanted her to suspect him without losing anything.
Elena pulled a rolled-up piece of parchment from inside her clothes.
"Oh, and the doctor left this behind. He, um, said he found the location of the statue."
Elena spoke carefully as she handed me the parchment.
When I unrolled it, it was a map.
'Potion Enhancement Tutorial.'
The fact that this was starting now meant the time had finally come.
"Can I come along this time, too?"
"You want to come?"
"Yes. I want to go with you, Uncle."
Elena's eyes sparkled.
The excitement written across her face was less about the relic than about the thrill of accompanying me.
"All right. Let's go."
"Really?!"
"But before that."
I indicated Elena's party members with a jerk of my chin.
"Finish the mission you're currently working on. The search comes first."
"Yes..."
Elena's lips pushed into a pout.
Disappointment spread across her face, but she nodded without complaint.
"Okay. I hope it comes soon."
"It won't be long."
The distance on the map was roughly a day's journey.
Two days round trip.
The dungeon would appear at least two days from now.
When I went to my seat and sat down, Elena and her party members took their own seats as well.
Then Jaina, who had been cautiously watching us from the counter, brought over some liquor.
Jaina's hand was still trembling slightly as she set down the glass.
"No need for the liquor. Take it back and bring me a meal instead."
"Y-yes?"
Jaina started in surprise.
For a moment, Jaina went rigid.
"Uncle told you to take it back."
"Yes..."
Jaina took the glass and returned to the kitchen.
Elena glared at her.
"Uncle."
"What?"
"Why are you keeping that woman around? The kids say that if you were the old Uncle, you would've already gotten rid of her."
"Who says that?"
"The kids."
When I looked over at Elena's party members, they flinched, their shoulders twitching beneath my gaze.
They were right.
It would not have been strange for Eck to throw Jaina into a monster lair.
She was an NPC who had never been mentioned in the game, so I had to rely entirely on Eck's memories.
"She's the former guildmaster's daughter."
"The former guildmaster?"
"She's Rebecca's younger sister, too."
Elena's eyes widened.
"The former guildmaster was a commoner like us, yet he acted like a noble. Jaina was raised under him and grew up loved and spoiled. What do you think her attitude was like? She was exactly like her father, looking down her nose at adventurers and treating them like dogs."
"But why..."
"Rebecca begged me to spare her. She was her younger sister, after all. She said we should let her live once if she repented."
Once.
That one reprieve was all it took.
Jaina survived, and thanks to that request, Rebecca left Eck.
I got Rebecca a job as a guild employee, and she ended up where she was now, suffering the humiliation she had inflicted on adventurers in reverse so she could repent.
'Her entire carefully built image was destroyed when she drugged someone, though.'
Rebecca's doing had been both a warning aimed at me and a way to keep Jaina in line.
That attitude and nervousness reminded me of Jaina when she had first become an employee.
"Then... what about Rebecca?"
Her voice was cautious.
"How do you know Rebecca? It makes sense that you'd know her as a guildmaster and an A-rank adventurer, but it seems like there was more to it than that."
Sharp girl.
It really hadn't been intentional.
"She was my fiancée."
"......What?"
Elena's hand stopped.
"The former guildmaster forced us together. If an A-rank adventurer became engaged to his daughter, he could gain influence and keep an A-rank asset tied to the guild."
"...."
But Elena opened her mouth as if she had noticed something strange.
"Then why did her younger sister Jaina become a guild employee while Rebecca became the guildmaster?"
"Rebecca was his unwanted child. He practically threw her at me, saying she was only fit for a filthy adventurer."
I clicked my tongue.
I formed a party with Rebecca, and she followed me everywhere, saying she would faithfully fulfill her role.
Eck, driven to the brink by stress, threw Rebecca into a monster lair.
Eck was furious at the former guildmaster for forcing Rebecca on him.
"Then what happened to the former guildmaster?"
"Who knows? He died in an accident."
Elena's breath caught for a moment.
Of course, Eck had killed him.
Eck took the former guildmaster into the forest and killed him after the man grew arrogant over securing an A-rank asset and acquiring a difficult-to-handle talent in Eck.
It was an open secret that Eck had killed him, but no one pointed it out.
No, they couldn't.
Only another A-rank could stand up to an A-rank.
Given Eck's personality, no one short of a noble could stop him.
'He acted like a thug, but submitted to anyone clearly stronger than him.'
Eck had the typical personality of someone who bullied the weak and cowered before the strong. It only looked as though he picked fights with everyone because of his violent temper.
In any case, Rebecca gained her freedom from that incident and took the position of guildmaster.
"So that's why Rebecca likes you, Uncle."
"Did it look that way to you?"
"Isn't that right?"
"She isn't right in the head. She's trying to repay her debt to me, and she sees no reason to change the attitude she had when she was my fiancée, so she maintains it."
Her deeply ingrained masochistic tendencies played a part, too.
"Don't ever mention her name in front of me again. She gives me the creeps."
"Yes..."
The tension drained from Elena's shoulders.
Jaina brought the meal,
After finishing the meal, I rose from the table.
"Let's let our food settle and check your skills. It's been a while."
"Huh? Is that okay?"
"What do you mean?"
Elena's eyes widened, then she averted her gaze.
It was obvious what she was thinking.
I tousled her hair and motioned for her to come out to the guild's backyard.
Elena promptly got to her feet and followed close behind me.