The Great Empire of a Distant Land (5)

"Big brother, big brother, foreign big brother, you saved a child on the central island, didn't you? That's right, that's chivalry. I raised your chivalrous spirit myself. Now you're one of the knight-errants, too!"

The next day, at the tavern, Su accosted me with some unfounded accusations, apparently having heard about the disturbance the other day.

No, quite apart from all that talk of chivalry, I had no recollection of being raised by a girl I'd only just met.

And I certainly wasn't interested in joining the knight-errants, some sort of cross between adventurers and yakuza.

When I shook my head, Su looked a little dissatisfied, but soon recovered her good humor and went to collect what she'd ordered.

Besides, that hadn't been an act motivated by anything like chivalry. Probably.

I had simply seen a child about to get hurt and acted on impulse, following a feeling anyone might have, because I happened to possess the power to help.

In other words, it had been an act of self-satisfaction, and it wasn't something I could stylishly call chivalry.

I wondered whether knight-errants were some sort of heroes to Su.

Thinking that, I picked at the grilled river fish with my chopsticks and brought the rice wine to my lips.

It was rice wine, but it was reddish yellow in color and had a distinctive fragrance.

Apparently, if this wine was left to age in a crock, the red would deepen and the fragrance would mellow.

The aged version was a luxury item, and I hadn't tasted it yet, so I didn't know what it actually tasted like.

Well, there were probably all kinds of rice, too.

There were distinctions between glutinous and non-glutinous rice, as well as long-grain and short-grain varieties.

The rice used in this wine wasn't necessarily the same as the kinds I knew, either.

Come to think of it, rice itself was a fairly common food in the eastern part of the continent, and some of the countries south of the Great Grassland, along the coast, apparently produced it alongside wheat.

I hadn't been particularly interested in the southern countries when I was on the Great Grassland, but perhaps I could travel through countries near the sea on my way back to the central region.

Of course, the quickest way would be to take a ship straight back to the Republic of Vilestrika in the central region.

For now, I supposed I could think about the return trip when the time came.

However, if the disturbance the other day had become enough of a rumor for even Su to know about it, ...I might have earned the resentment of the men who had shot arrows at me.

People of that sort hated losing face above all else.

That was because they used authority backed by violence to make others obey them.

If the other party yielded to their authority, they only needed to use enough violence to make a show of it.

But if they lost face and their authority was damaged, they had to make the other party submit through violence itself.

That benefited no one and was a way of making enemies all over the place, so they desperately clung to their authority to protect it.

Though people changed when their surroundings changed, this sort of logic was probably the same in the central region and the east.

In this case, the water-transport guild or the merchants' guild would probably retaliate against me for making them lose face.

...If one of their senior toughs came out and challenged me to a one-on-one bare-knuckle fight, I'd gladly accept.

But judging from the way that conflict had unfolded, I couldn't expect that.

In that case, there was no need to deal with them head-on. Perhaps I should move up my departure.

I considered doing just that.

I had gathered a fair amount of information on the Huanggu Empire, though it could hardly be called complete yet.

White River Province still had four other large cities apart from this one.

I could continue gathering information after reaching another town, if I wanted.

The one thing I regretted was that I'd have to say goodbye to this delicious, laid-back tavern I'd finally found.

Hmm... No, I hadn't even looked in on the blacksmith yet, and I hadn't toured the food stalls. If I started listing things, I had enough unfinished business to go on forever... What should I really do?

It was while I was hesitating like that.

Two men entered the tavern, looked around the whole place, and then came straight over to my table.

Then they sat down without so much as asking and beckoned Su with an upraised index finger, calling her over arrogantly.

"Bring the wine. Quickly."

And then there was the way they spoke.

My impression of them was already nearly as bad as it could get, but I considered myself even-tempered, so this alone still wasn't enough to make me throw a punch.

If I was going to punch someone anyway, I knew it would feel better to let my frustration build as much as possible first.

Just a little longer. Yes, I would endure just a little longer.

"You're the elf archer, aren't you? I heard you picked a fight with the River Gang. Good call. We'll hire you."

But what came out of the men's mouths was so ridiculous that I couldn't help snorting.

The River Gang was another name for the water-transport guild, so apparently those were the people I'd shot at with my arrows.

In that case, the men in front of me must belong to the merchants' guild.

Even so, their manner was plainly not that of people involved in commerce.

As I'd thought, the merchants' guild was a guild in name only, made up of thugs who skimmed profits off the top.

"What? If you're trying to sell yourself for a high price, that attitude isn't smart. But, well, I don't dislike that nerve. Join our assault as an archer, and if you distinguish yourself, we may even give you a gold ingot."

Whatever they had misunderstood, the men continued talking despite my snort.

The fact that they mentioned gold ingots as a reward suggested that the merchants' guild made a considerable amount of money.

But that had nothing to do with me.

"No, you were laughed at. Take the hint and go home. Eating and drinking with you would hardly be enjoyable."

I wasn't an adventurer or a yakuza.

I was even less of a knight-errant.

Fighting or killing for money wasn't my thing at all.

"Ha? You're really not very smart, are you? Are you planning to pick a fight with us as well as the River Gang? That means you don't care if you live or die."

But apparently they couldn't understand how I felt.

The two men's expressions turned menacing, so I promptly pulled a pair of leather gloves from inside my coat and put them on.

I thought it was probably about time I started hitting them.

...But it was then.

Two hands clamped down on the men's shoulders from behind,

"He's a customer at our establishment. If he refuses to share a table with you, find another seat or leave the premises."

and squeezed them hard.

From the tone of his voice, I could tell he wasn't using his full strength; he was holding back plenty.

Yet the two men, whose shoulders were nearly crushed by the inhuman strength of an earthfolk, turned pale and screamed.

The one who intervened before things could turn into a commotion was Jizo, the tavern's bouncer.

Unable even to answer through the pain, the two men were dragged outside and thrown out by him.

The difference in ability was overwhelming.

It wasn't just that his strength was exceptional; he had also seized exactly the spots that would prevent an opponent from moving and concentrated his power there. His skill was on an entirely different level, too.

When I thanked him for, technically speaking, saving me,

"I knew you didn't need help, but if you started a brawl, the disturbance would grow. I was only doing my job."

he said, shaking his head.

His words made me think that, if possible, I'd like to trade blows with Jizo.

Of course, my fists probably wouldn't get through at all against someone whose body was protected by obsidian scales.

But if he used his weapon—the three-pronged, double-edged polearm propped against that wall—it would be nothing but a fight to the death.

By the way, a three-pronged, double-edged polearm was a special kind of long-handled weapon whose tip split into three blades.

If swung with centrifugal force, it had an absurd amount of destructive power, making it impossible to hold back.

I knew such weapons existed because Azvardo, my master in smithing, had told me about them, but I had never seen one in person, so I very much wanted to examine it closely.

Ah, perhaps I didn't actually want to fight or compete with Jizo; perhaps I simply wanted to know him.

Not merely by exchanging words, but by watching him fight and learning what lay in Jizo's heart.

He was a member of a race I'd never seen before, seemed to conceal great strength, and appeared highly skilled as well. I found myself intrigued by him.

I felt something that strongly drew me to him, like what I'd felt when I met Azvardo, Kaeha, and Kaushman.

But putting that aside, Jizo had effectively picked a fight with the merchants' guild in my place.

Would he really be all right?

No, I could tell just by looking that his ability wasn't a concern, but both the water-transport guild and the merchants' guild seemed willing to use any means against their enemies.

...I scrapped the plan to leave immediately and decided it would be better to watch things for a while.

After all, this was a disturbance I'd caused.