NOVEL WEB Book 3: Chapter 4
Approaching Threat
「──Cyclone──」
I unleashed the level 3 Battle Skill of Short Sword Skill, Cyclone at the adventurer guild’s training ground. The surface of the log that became the target was carved apart.
The Battle Skill itself was a non-elemental magic, but this Cyclone was filed with wind element, making it a “wide range attack” that carved apart the radius of one meter at the direction it was unleashed using wind blades.
To be honest its power and ease of use were inferior than level 1 Battle Skill Thrust, but this Battle Skill could be used to disperse flame or wind attribute attack sorcery instantly, and it was very effective against a swarm of small monsters.
I only saw this Battle Skill once when the leader of Mercenary of Dawn Dagget used it.
It was a pain to become able to use it based on seeing it just once, even so I unexpectedly managed it somehow after burning that sight into my eyes and experiencing the skill with my own body.
I swung the black dagger once to brush off the magic power’s heat before sheathing it on my back waist, then there was clapping sound and the receptionist lady approached me the same like before.
「Splendid. Your body seems to have grown from magic power, but for you to reach rank 3 in that age, did you perhaps have someone very famous as your teacher?」
「I guess……」
It seemed that the memory of me coming together with Viro here had been erased from inside the woman’s mind.
I received training from master who was a famous sorcerer in the underworld, but I learned the basic of short sword skill from Feld, learned Battle Skill from Viro, and then got corrected by Sera, but it was mostly from being self-taught in actual battle by scraping off the useless parts in my pursuit for efficiency.
When I tried recalling the short sword skill of Viro and Sera, I noticed that there were diverse forms from various martial art schools.
I wouldn’t say that they were unnecessary, but I who didn’t have the time or experience to become proficient in all of them instead chose to train only in the basic forms to heighten the precision and power of a single attack.
Any living creature would die if they were stabbed with a blade, regardless of what kind of technique was used. It was my pet theory that if a vital spot was stabbed from the perfect angle without even a millimeter of measurement error, the result wouldn’t be inferior to thousands of technique.
Besides the tactic of combining illusion and poison became my basic way of fighting.
「Then please accept this. It’s the “rank 3” tag of adventurer guild.」
「Thank you.」
The common tag of adventurer guild was made from a copper sheet the size of a thumb attached to a thin chain like a pendant. This newly made tag didn’t only show rank 3, it also had magic iron that wouldn’t rust mixed in, so the color was slightly darker.
If I just wanted to become rank 3, I had considered of showing my light magic.
Level 3 light sorcery had two spells. One of them was Remove. Something cursed was required for the spell to be used. The other spell High Heal consumed a lot of magic power to use, but it was a sorcery that could heal and recover in short time with great effect. Just being able to use that would gather a lot of attentions from various places, so I gave up that idea in the end.
I paid three silver coins as the cost for registration update’s fee and returned to the lobby that was still filled with awkward atmosphere. There the siblings from the slum Gil and Shuri were waiting for me.
「Ari……」
Shuri was about to call out to me, so I shook my head to shut her up.
This wasn’t really good……. The adventurers who looked like they might be connected with the underworld had left outside before this so it was alright right now, but although the thief guild of this town said that they weren’t opposing me, it wasn’t something that could be fully trusted.
That was why it was possible that someone could be dragged into trouble later on just because they were my acquaintance.
……Should I crush them now while I could? But that would be no different from Grave who tried to kill me 『just in case』. It rubbed me the wrong was a little. In the first place the difference between Grave and me was in “what we were protecting”, but perhaps his way of thinking and mine weren’t that different from each other. But, we got into a murderous relationship just from that single difference.
Anyway, that was something for later.
I signaled them with only my gaze, then I left the adventurer guild while ignoring them. Once outside, I entered a nearby alley and then Gil and Shuri came following me after a while.
.
「Is it alright with this? A……Aria?」
The big brother Gil called my name while acting suspiciously. He considered me as a rival previously but, the competitiveness had left him the moment he learned that I was a woman.
As expected he must be unable to consider a woman as a rival. Even though he would avert his gaze when his eyes met mine, he kept sending glances at me. He might be angry at me for hiding my gender.
「Yes. It’ll be better if you don’t get involved with me. It’ll bring you a lot of troubles.」
「What do you mean by that……」
「You’re so stupid, Nii-chan. Aria is rank 3 you know? Surely she’s doing an important work, so she can’t tam up with beginners like us. That’s what she’s saying.」
It looked like they wanted to talk to me because they wanted to team up.
「I know that. More importantly, are you alright already Shuri? Even though you looked really down like that-」
「……A lot of things happened, like Aria suddenly getting this big or that she’s actually a woman but, even if she’s a girl, if she’s this pretty and cool than that too might be “fine”……fufufufufufufu」
「No, that’s not fine you know-!?」
Shuri’s laugh seemed unhealthy somehow, but she glared back angrily at Gil for his words.
「……Even though Nii-chan yourself also can’t meet Aria’s eyes now that she’s pretty.」
「Wha-, you-!」
「……Is that all you want to talk with me?」
「Wa, wait a second-!」
The talk was starting to deviate to a strange direction, perhaps because they were getting high-tensioned from the reunion after a long time. When I ended the talk, Gil stopped me with an anxious look.
「We want to team up with you, actually because there’s a place that we want to go to……」
「Nii-chan-」
「Shuri, even you don’t think that things are fine like this right-」
「……You two, talk from the beginning.」
I ended their incomprehensible conversation and made them talked from the start.
「Actually……we, weren’t born in this town. We came from a smaller town at the west.」
Gil and Shuri talked alternately. I consolidated their incoherent talking inside my head.
The two were born in a small town at the west. Their mother died early and their father married another woman several years later, but even their father apparently died from an epidemic several years later.
For a while the two lived with the second wife and a little brother who was born from the second marriage, but as expected they had a difficult life. The second wife wanted to leave the family’s field to her own son instead of the two who weren’t connected by blood with her. She then colluded with her own family to chase away the two and abandoned them in this town.
It seemed I met them right after that happened. It was difficult for two children who had normal life until then to live in the slum where they had no knowledge at all, but surely they made it until now because someone like Victor from the general store watched over them even with all his nagging.
「……It really helped us that time when Aria saved us and even gave us money.」
「Aria was really cool back then, so we also wanted to become strong and now we became an adventurer.」
「I see……」
I didn’t do anything. I only killed an enemy.
「We sold rabbits to the general store’s old man and asked Galbas to sell us weapon-」
「Look, it’s this one-」
The two of them proudly showed a steel short sword and knife to me. Certainly those weapons seemed to be “just right” for them right now.
Even so it wasn’t likely that these two could buy weapons of this quality from selling battered rabbits that they hunted. Surely these were like gifts from those two eccentric old men. ……They were really kindhearted.
After that when Shuri became ten she became an adventurer together with Gil who turned thirteen……or not, they still didn’t have combat type skill right now so it seemed they were earning money by working as baggage carrier for other adventurers.
「There is a senior here who we knew from when we were living in our hometown. We asked him to become baggage carrier for his party.」
「They also teach us how to fight sometimes. They don’t know sorcery at all though!」
And then one day while they were living like that, they heard a strange rumor.
「Orc huh.」
「……Yes.」
Based from what I heard from that receptionist lady, it still hadn’t been announced but, it seemed orcs were forming a settlement at a location slightly to the west from a ruin that was near to the monster habitat.
Furthermore that location seemed to be placed in the middle of the ruin and a human town. Apparently several people had already become victims.
If that was the case I thought that the baron would dispatch soldiers or that town would make a request to the adventurer guild, but when the baron actually requested an adventurer scout to investigate the orc settlement, a terrifying fact came to light.
In the settlement there were more than fifty rank 3 normal orcs.
Four rank 4 orc soldiers.
And then a rank 5 that was commanding them……an orc general was confirmed to be present.
The soldiers of the baron in this town numbered 150. That number would swell into 300 if soldiers from other towns were gathered, but the majority of them were rank 1 or 2. The rank 3 commanding officers only numbered around thirty. Rank 4 knight or soldier numbered very few and they were usually living in the capital or large city in this kingdom.
There was also system of recruiting ordinary people as militia in wartime, but that was if the opponent was human. Even if there was a thousand of them, the possibility was high that they would be massacred if they faced a group of orc with rank 3 strength at the lowest.
It might be possible to fight them with just the soldiers if there were only normal orcs or just the four orc soldiers, but with the presence of just one orc general, it was likely that they would have to sacrifice more than half of the soldiers to win. Furthermore some soldiers had to stay behind to maintain public order. Dispatching one hundred soldiers with ten rank 3 as commanding officers would be the limit. The receptionist lady said that the subjugation force would likely be annihilated with such number.
In that case they should ask for the adventurer guild to take care of it but, it seemed that just to defeat a single orc general would need a party of five where three or more of them needed to be rank 4. And in the end that number was only assuming that the opponent was just the orc general alone.
But, at present there was not a single rank 4 adventurer in this baron territory and the surrounding area. It seemed that right now the guild was planning to call for someone with such qualification and placed them to lead the adventurers, but that plan also couldn’t be approved right now.
The baron hesitated to send out his army fearing that they would be annihilated, while the adventurer guild couldn’t forcefully send out adventurers for this kind of situation, unless it was an emergency like the appearance of a lot of monsters.
Even if the adventurer guild cooperated, there were a lot of things that hadn’t been decided, like whether it was the baron or that town that should pay for the cost, how far should the adventurers deal with the situation, etc. And like that there wasn’t anywhere that could take action.
Right now that town was still holding by using logs to reinforce the fence that had been there from the start to repel monster, but it was assumed that they wouldn’t be able to hold for long if the orcs got serious.
「That town is……our hometown.」
Gil said that while biting his lip. Shuri’s face grimaced beside him.
「……It doesn’t matter what happen to that town. The woman who abandoned us is in that town.」
「Even so, our little brother is also there, and we also have friends there-」
「I don’t remember any friend there anymore. Besides someone like that woman’s son……isn’t my little brother-」
「Shuri-!」
Gil scolded Shuri. But he was at a loss for words, perhaps because he could also understand her feeling. Then he turned toward me.
「Aria……it’s fine if it’s just me. Can you bring me to that town?」
「Nii-chan-, don’t-! Nii-chan might die there-!」
Even though he had no good memory and had bitter experience there, Gil wanted to help his acquaintances.
Although at the inside Shuri loathed to let her stepbrother die, she was more scared of Gil dying.
「You mentioned acquaintances, what about that adventurer who came from that town?」
「It looks like those people are going there. I tried asking them to take me along but, they refused because it’ll be dangerous……」
「Obviously!」
Well of course…….
「I also won’t. I won’t take you two there.」
「Aria-」
Gil took a step forward, but I lightly swept his leg to make him fell. Then I pressed a knife on his neck.
「You two will just die even if you go.」
「……gu」
Gil groaned from being made to realize how powerless he was, to be so easily swept off his feet by a younger woman.
「Besides──」
I threw my pendulum to “there” without even looking. The man who was lurking there jumped out.
I quickly controlled the first pendulum I threw to wrap around the ankle of the man who tried to run away. The second pendulum I threw wrapped around the man’s neck and I pulled him to fall on the ground.
「Thief? Or assassin?」
「N-no-! I was just checking the situation, I’m not going against the guild’s decision-! I also didn’t saw them-, that’s why──」
「Say your excuse at the other side.」
「W-wait」
*Snap……!*
Using the string wrapped around the man’s neck as lever, I twisted and broke the man’s neck to the side.
「I’m being targeted by thief guild and assassin guild. That’s why I won’t take burdens who can’t protect themselves with me.」
「「…………」」
I tossed the corpse of the thief who learned about Gil and Shuri’s existences to a corner that couldn’t be seen from the main street like it was a trash. The two’s complexions worsened seeing that.
Even if we were at the same “place”, the “world” that the two and me were living in were too different.
This was most likely the best way.
It was so that the two who didn’t have sufficient strength to fight would survive.
That was why──
「I’ll go check that town’s situation. I’ll at least help if anyone want to escape from there, so you two, stay in this town.」
「Aria……」
Gil muttered in a daze. Shuri rubbed her eyes with her sleeve.
I walked not toward the main street but toward the dark back alley. Shuri’s small 『Please』 voice reached toward my back as I walked away.