Chapter 13
Though we'd been taking our time, we'd gotten this late solely because of the deranged bandits and highwaymen who kept showing up along the way.
After defeating the second group of bandits, I was so angry that I led Chris and Eah toward Shadan by way of a mountain path.
Meeting monsters seemed preferable to running into people like that.
The next ones we ran into were highwaymen.
Seriously? Is this place poorly policed, or am I just unlucky?
Anyway, what should have been a four-day trip took us five days before we finally reached the city.
And that was just before sunset.
"You're all set. Enjoy your stay."
"Excuse me, but where is the Adventurers Guild?"
Feeling my anger ease a little at the guard's unexpectedly friendly attitude, I followed his directions and found the Adventurers Guild.
When we opened the door and went in, it was a little different from the one in Gir, but one side was a pub, and there was a counter like a reception desk. I guess Adventurers Guilds were basically the same everywhere.
As we approached, the woman at the counter greeted us warmly.
"Welcome. How can I help you?"
I quietly showed her my insignia and told her we wanted to stay at the lodging.
"Just a moment... Oh! Miss R—!"
I hurriedly covered the employee's mouth as she began to exclaim loudly, and I felt the attention that had gathered on us gradually disperse.
"Ah, I'm sorry. Here's your key. Please make yourselves comfortable."
I took the key and quietly led Chris and Eah up to the lodging.
When we got to our room, we were surprised by how large it was.
What the heck? Why is the room so huge? Is it really okay for us to stay here?
"Sis... I'm a little scared."
"I'm scared too..."
Chris, by contrast, was calmly checking out the bathroom.
"Oh, there's a bathtub, too."
A bathtub? I hadn't seen one since coming to this world! At the happy news, I dashed straight into the bathroom.
There was a bathtub big enough to fit three people lying side by side with room to spare.
"Then I'll wash up first before dinner!"
I quickly shut the door and started taking off my clothes, when I heard startled voices from outside.
Just then, the door suddenly swung open, and Eah came in.
"Sis! Me too!"
Huh? Eah?
My eyes went wide in alarm.
After arguing back and forth, we promised not to touch each other and then enjoyed a bath together.
After a wonderful bath for the first time in ages, I came out to find food already laid out on the table. Chris must have ordered it while I was bathing.
"It was nice taking a bath in a tub for the first time in a while, huh?"
Since Chris sounded a little sulky because I'd gone first without asking, I did my best to ignore it and answered.
"It was amazing! You should hurry and wash up after dinner too."
"Oh? Food!"
After our baths, we summoned Sylph, the wind spirit, to dry our hair while we ate the food Chris had ordered.
Wow, the food was all delicious, too. Was this really free?
"Must be nice, getting your hair dried while you eat."
I'd asked Sylph to dry my hair carefully without stirring up the air around us, but apparently that was harder than expected.
Apparently, it was because I was exceptionally close with spirits. Chris, on the other hand, didn't just lack affinity with them; the spirits actually disliked him.
Even when I asked the spirits to help someone with no affinity for them, they happily did so, but they didn't even want to go near Chris.
So sometimes Chris looked at me enviously.
It was really awkward in moments like this...
After we finished eating, Chris went to take a bath.
After a meal, you had to surrender yourself to a soft bed.
I dove onto the bigger of the two beds and rolled around.
Ah... This really was the good life. I felt like I was turning into a bear.
Like a baby bird following its mother, Eah followed my example and became one with the bed, too.
Seeing her blissful expression, I realized Eah had the makings of an excellent bear, too.
As Eah and I reveled in the huge, fluffy bed, Chris came out after his bath.
Seeing Chris emerge, Eah suddenly remembered something and spoke to us.
"The guard uncle told me earlier that there's a market today! Let's all go together, okay?"
A market... It'd definitely be packed with people, right? I didn't want to wear my robe again...
"Ah, you thought it was a hassle, didn't you? Am I a hassle?"
It was hard to refuse when Eah put both hands to her mouth and attacked me with those sparkling eyes.
Well, we weren't going to be here long anyway. If anyone found out who we were, we could just leave right away.
"All right, let's go! Chris, you're coming too, right?"
"When has my opinion ever mattered? Let's go."
The market was crowded, as expected.
There was lots of delicious-looking food, and the street performances were more entertaining than I'd expected.
As we looked around, I spotted a vendor selling hats, including some that looked like the beanies I used to wear all the time on Earth.
Huh? With that, I could hide my ears...
"Chris, come over here."
When Chris came over and saw the hat I was looking at, he seemed to have the same thought and immediately picked one out.
"Ma'am, could I get two of these hats?"
"Fifty kuperao for the pair."
We bought the hats, put them on in the alley next door, checked to make sure our ears weren't visible, and came back out.
"Wow, you really can pull off anything... If I'd worn that hat, someone would've reported me as a thief, but you look so pretty."
"Can you see our ears?"
We'd checked a moment ago, but I was still a little worried, so I asked Eah what she thought.
"Hmm... Now that I look, the bulge here does look a little strange, but I don't think anyone would notice otherwise."
Aside from my ears being pressed a little painfully and my head feeling a bit tight, it wasn't uncomfortable.
Happy that I wouldn't have to wear my robe, I roughly stuffed the one in my hand into my inventory.
Honestly, wearing the robe always messed up my hair, and sometimes it blocked my vision on the left or right, making it hard to find my way. Now that I thought I wouldn't have to deal with that anymore, I liked the hat even more.
Feeling more at ease, we wandered around the market, snacking on this and that, browsing shops selling all sorts of things, and watching a puppet show.
After we'd been having fun for a while, I saw the shops starting to close one by one.
"We had a pretty fun time."
There hadn't been much to do until now, so I'd been bored. After enjoying a market I would've hated in the past, we started heading back to the guild.
"You two, could you come over here for a moment?"
Just as we were about to leave, Chris called us over, holding something in his hand.
"Hold on a second."
"What is it?"
Chris went behind us and put necklaces around our necks.
"Huh? These are necklaces."
"Maybe Eah looked a little envious, since we were the only ones wearing hats."
"Hehe... Thanks, big brother."
When had he noticed that? Chris really was the kind of person who looked after everyone.
But I felt a little strange. Eah looked happy wearing the same necklace as me, which was nice, but for some reason my chest felt tight.
"Let's go back to our room now. Tomorrow we need to take an orc extermination request and set out."
Our rank was no longer something we needed to worry about, but we decided to take an orc extermination request to help Eah grow.
Well, when I say help, we wouldn't step in unless it got dangerous.
"Yes, you can accept the request here and settle the reward in another town."
Eah came over to us, waiting, after taking a request that looked suitable from the counter.
I thought the Adventurers Guilds had some kind of communication system for sharing information, but apparently they just recorded it on the insignias and checked them.
They said they recorded completed work and payments, then exchanged information when the guilds met from time to time.
One convenient thing was that you could deposit and withdraw money like at a bank, and you could also check what quests someone had accepted just by looking at their insignia.
The downside was that if you lost it, that was it.
It was enchanted so no one but me could use it, but that didn't mean I could say, "I had a million gold, and now it's gone."
A lot of people knew this, so theft wasn't common, but some people would steal them out of spite and throw them away.
For that reason, I kept Eah's insignia in my inventory too.
Since no one could steal something from my inventory.
Anyone could accept a request.
Most of them were requests from small villages asking for help because monsters had settled nearby.
When monsters were found to have established a home and lived there for a long time, the city itself would put out a request.
Usually, Bronze- and Silver-rank adventurers handled requests from small villages, while those Gold rank or higher took care of city requests.
The request Eah had brought was one posted by the city.
Eah wasn't confident, but with two Masters with her, what was there to worry about? I reassured her that we'd only push her half as hard as Mom pushed me.
"Eek! At that rate, I'll die!"
Apparently, that didn't reassure her.
The orc settlement was closer to the city than I'd expected.
I gathered mana in my eyes and observed them. There were about forty orcs.
Eah was horrified at the number, but we had no intention of throwing her into that crowd.
Originally, we'd planned to kill a reasonable number of orcs and then move on to the next city, but we changed the plan.
We still had two months and five days left, so we'd take our time killing them.
Of course, Eah would be doing it alone.
Thoom.
"Huff, huff..."
"No, Eah. When that happens, don't try to meet strength with strength. Let the attack flow off you, remember?"
I gave some feedback to Eah, who had just taken down an orc.
Eah was more talented than I'd expected and had made rapid progress over the past four days.
Seeing her grow so much in just four days—more than I'd ever imagined—got me excited, and I taught her enthusiastically.
"You call it four days, but you've been pushing her day and night. She's already killed twenty-five on her own."
Chris scolded me for overdoing it, while...
"Sis... I think I'm going to die."
Eah let out a pained groan.
"No, Eah. People don't die as easily as you think. I know from experience, so don't worry."
Chris shook his head as he watched me say that.
"But those things don't have any intelligence. Mom gathered ten Expert-rank elves and had them beat me up for half a year..."
"
You know, what you're saying sounds a lot like the old-timers in the military.
"
"Maybe...?"
"Anyway, this is the end for today. We've killed twenty-five, so they're on guard now and won't even come out of the settlement."
At the words "the end for today," Eah's face brightened.
"We still have time, so let's charge into the settlement. I'll help if things get dangerous."
Her face drained of color again.
When I started toward the settlement, Eah followed me with the expression of an orc being led to the slaughterhouse.
"Mother... I'm not sure it was a good idea for Karin to go out into the human world."
Chris quietly said a prayer for Eah.
"Chris, what are you doing? Hurry up."
We reached the settlement and proceeded as planned, but Eah only managed to take down two orcs.
"Again?"
"Bwaaaah!"
This time, what we encountered was a variant orc with a magic stone embedded in its forehead.
It looked about two meters tall, its arms bulging with rippling muscles and its legs as thick as tree trunks.
I had no choice but to deal with it myself, then used the remaining orcs as practice targets while demonstrating and teaching her.
Eah suddenly seemed curious and asked why Chris wasn't teaching her.
"He's the same type as Mom."
"What does that mean?"
"He's terrible at explaining. I asked him about reaching the intermediate level faster, but he only talked about it in terms of intuition."
"Ah..."
She seemed to have asked because she thought learning from Chris would be less exhausting than learning from me, but...
"Chris sometimes takes your side, but if you actually learn from him, he'll push you even harder."
"I really want to learn from you, Sis!"