The Unwanted Undead Adventurer: Volume 12, page 6
Now that she mentioned it, Dorothea couldn’t deny that Rina was a bit on the scrawny side, physically. However, she was still young. Who knew what the future could hold for her? Dorothea was about to tell her that it was early to give up just yet, but Rina spoke before she could.
“Oh, we’ve kind of strayed from the main topic, haven’t we? Um, I came here to discuss the details of the journey we’ll be making. Do you have time right now, Dorothea?”
“S-Sure...” Dorothea replied. She nodded, swept into Rina’s momentum, and the pair sat down at a table.
Dorothea couldn’t get a good read on Rina. At first, she’d thought the girl lacked confidence, but now it seemed that maybe she had the determination to take everything at her own pace. Her intuition, however, did tell her one thing.
Traveling with her seems like it’ll be fun.
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“...And that’s the rough plan for the route we’ll be taking. As for when we depart, I’d like to go as soon as possible. If it’s okay with you, that would be as early as tomorrow.”
After Dorothea finished laying out the plans she had made for their journey, she waited expectantly for Rina to answer her question. After taking a brief moment to think, the girl did just that.
“I don’t mind leaving tomorrow...but I would suggest taking a detour so that we don’t get close to the area around Tute Mountain. Also, I think using the Radha Highway would be better than using the Farga. The rest of the route seems fine though.” She even suggested some route changes for good measure.
For a moment, Dorothea almost lost her cool, wondering what an amateur would know about trade routes. A part of her assumed that Rina was making unnecessary suggestions to try and show off the fact that she was a proper adventurer.
However, when she took a better look at the girl’s expression, she didn’t see a trace of that jumped-up eagerness. Rina was the picture of composure.
The sight cooled the blood rushing to Dorothea’s head, and she decided to first ask Rina for the reasoning behind her suggestions.
“Can I ask why? Both of those routes are the shortest option for where I want to go, and I’ve used them many times before. If we go with your suggestions, it’ll add a whole half day to the journey.”
Dorothea wasn’t exaggerating in order to shoot down an amateur’s opinion either—that was the plain truth. Furthermore, the longer their journey took, the more risk there was of being attacked by monsters or bandits. It was basic practice to make one’s journey as short as possible.
Rina’s response, however, surprised Dorothea. “That was true up until yesterday,” Rina said. “But not anymore. There’s been a report that harpies have come to roost on Tute Mountain. They do this every year, but they’re a month early this time—likely because of the warm weather we’ve been having. I’m afraid to say that you’d only end up as feed for their hatchlings if you went that way, so it’s best to use a different route. As for the Farga Highway, you know about the bridge that it crosses, right? Apparently, it crumbled, so anyone trying to travel along the highway would be forced to turn back and go around instead. I mean, I’d get paid more in that case, so if you want to do that regardless, I guess I wouldn’t stop you...”
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Dorothea was frankly astonished by Rina’s explanation. As for the reason she felt that way...
“It’s not that I doubt you...but is that really true? I thought I’d put quite a lot of effort into keeping up with information about my route, and I didn’t hear anything like that.”
While Dorothea was a minor traveling merchant, the sort that you could find anywhere, she was a legitimate member of the merchant’s guild. As such, she also had access to their information network. On top of that, she always made sure to talk with the other merchants around her about any changes in the local area. And even despite all of this effort, she hadn’t heard anything about the information Rina had just given her.
Rina nodded. “It’s probably because the news hasn’t really spread yet. I mean, I only heard it because I talked to the people who live near those areas.”
“‘Those areas’?”
“Yes. People from villages near Tute Mountain and the Farga Highway.”
“How did you...? Don’t tell me you went to the trouble of going all the way out there already?”
“Oh, no, of course not. It’s just, Maalt’s the biggest town in the region, right? People from smaller villages come here every now and again to pick up daily necessities; especially the villages where merchants like you don’t visit often. I see quite a lot of them whenever I go to the market, and at this point, we’re basically like acquaintances who chat every now and again.”
“I see...”
Indeed, only someone based in this specific town could use such a method of gathering information. While Dorothea could certainly talk to those same people if she went to the market, she wouldn’t know who lived where and how much faith she could put in their words. In the end, she’d only end up with information that was of questionable reliability.
However, since Rina was actually based in Maalt and talked to these acquaintances of hers regularly, she could separate the good information from the bad. It wasn’t foolproof, of course, but then again, neither was the information provided by the merchant’s guild.
As if to prove that point, Dorothea then asked, “Can we trust those reports?”
Rina replied, “I can’t say they’re definitely accurate, but I do think they’re trustworthy, yes. Of course, as I said earlier, I’ll go along with whatever you decide, so...”
So the final decision fell to Dorothea. Likely enough, all Rina wanted to do was share knowledge she thought would be necessary.
Hmm. What should I do?
When it came to your everyday merchant, most of them would probably choose to put their faith in what they’d learned from the merchant’s guild and proceed as they’d initially planned. After all, the guild’s information network was tried and tested, and even though it slipped up every now and again, it was fundamentally trustworthy on the whole.
In comparison, an adventurer’s knowledge of the situation could be suspect—though that was really something that had to be determined on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes trusting an adventurer’s word had led merchants to rare opportunities and massive fortunes. Other times, it had led them to the exact opposite.
In short, it was all or nothing.
Dorothea knew that she in particular was extremely vulnerable to such gambles. However, at the very least...unlike the adventurer she’d hired a month ago, Rina didn’t seem dishonest to her. In fact, if Rina had only wanted to increase her retainer fee, all she would’ve had to do was keep quiet and proceed with Dorothea’s plan. They would have been forced to turn back and take detours, adding even more days to their journey, which she could have used as grounds to ask for a larger payout. Dorothea wouldn’t even have blamed her for that—in fact, she would have agreed to the increased payment. It was only fair, after all.
However, Rina hadn’t done that.
Doesn’t that mean that I can trust her, then?
That didn’t mean that Dorothea could completely place herself in Rina’s hands, of course, but she could at least place her faith in the information she had provided...right?
“Okay...” Dorothea said. “I’m going to trust you. Let’s alter the route. We’ll take a detour around Tute Mountain and use the Radha Highway.”
Rina’s smile was nothing but honest. “Oh, great! I wasn’t sure if I’d be strong enough to keep you completely safe from a whole harpy flock on my own...”
Now that was a scary thought—one that called a question to Dorothea’s mind. “Just asking, but...what would you have done if I’d chosen to go near Tute Mountain and the harpies had attacked us?”
“I would’ve fought to the best of my ability, of course. Well, to begin with, you can pass by harpies without any issue so long as you don’t kick up a particularly loud fuss...but it’s just a problem of numbers, really. When harpies settle in an area to roost, they form flocks in the hundreds, so there’s a limit to how much I could really do against them alone. I probably could have managed to deliver your final mementos to the merchant’s guild though.”
“Meaning...in a scenario like that, I would die?”
“We probably would’ve chosen to turn back once we saw a huge harpy flock, so I don’t think it would ever have reached that point. But if you had insisted on forcing our way through, I can’t say the possibility is exactly low...”
I suppose you never know where a pitfall might be waiting for you...
Dorothea knew that Rina had nothing to do with that, of course—in fact, it seemed like she would have done her absolute best to protect her. Regardless, Dorothea was certain that if she had run into a flock of harpies, she would have turned back just as Rina had said, so it never would have come to that anyway.
There were merchants out there who would have tried to force their way through, however, which is why Rina had said what she did. The young adventurer knew that there was really nothing to be done for clients like that.
Still, hearing about the possibility of her own death spoken about so casually by a girl who looked like she would never even harm a fly made Dorothea feel as though she had caught a glimpse of what made Rina a true adventurer—someone who was constantly fighting alongside the looming specter of death.
Then, a sudden question occurred to Dorothea. “Come to think of it, when you say you would have delivered my final mementos...were you implying that you were confident you wouldn’t have died?” Taking Rina’s words at face value, that would seem to have been what she was saying.
“I suppose so...” Rina replied. “Yeah, I don’t think I would have died.”
Her casual tone had to imply that she trusted in her own capabilities. If she could be so confident against monsters, then even if she was an Iron-class adventurer...
Well, maybe the guild had sent Dorothea the perfect candidate for her needs after all.
“I see,” she said. “I’m glad we were able to have this discussion. I get the feeling that I’m quite lucky you were the one who accepted my commission.”
“Does that mean...?”
“Yes, consider yourself formally hired. I’m counting on you.”
“Of course! I’ll do my absolute best!”
Intermission: Lorraine’s Choice
“You picked up an unusual magical item?”
I, Lorraine Vivie, found my curiosity piqued by the words that Rentt had just uttered after returning home.
Naturally, being an adventurer who made a living from delving dungeons, Rentt came across magical items on a daily basis. However, the only dungeons he could challenge around these parts were the Water Moon Dungeon and the New Moon Dungeon, and the varieties of magical items that could be found in those were long since fully documented.
Rentt was more or less capable of identifying such trinkets, and even if he wasn’t, he could always bring it to the guild, where they could identify most things that he couldn’t.
However, he sometimes ran into some exceptions—and today appeared to be one such occasion.
“Yeah. Here, take a look. Well, I said it was unusual, but it just looks like a regular ‘Mirror of Youth.’”
Rentt turned the mirror to me, whereupon I saw myself of ten years ago looking back at me. That really took me back—I’d only just come to Maalt around that time.
“It looks like one to me,” I said. “Is there something strange about it?”
Rentt shuffled over, and his reflection joined mine in the mirror. It wasn’t his monster self, of course, but the Rentt of ten years ago, back when he’d still been human. When I turned aside to look at the real thing however, I still saw a man in a skull mask.
Mirrors of Youth did not actually return a person’s youth. This was all they did: show you a reflection of your younger days. It was interesting as curiosity, but since there were married noblewomen out there who could become obsessed with the mirrors—or distressed by them—they were considered items to be handled carefully.
“Keep looking. It should happen soon enough,” Rentt said. “Oh, there it goes!”
I turned my gaze back to the mirror. “Wow. What? But I’m not moving...”
My younger self was waving her hand, and so was the younger Rentt. However, neither the real Rentt nor I were moving.
“I’m not wrong about this, am I?” Rentt asked. “The guild’s appraiser said it was a regular Mirror of Youth, but it can’t be...right?”
“Of course it isn’t. Those only show you your past self; the reflections in them definitely don’t move on their own. Where did you get this...?”
“Just on one of my regular trips to the Water Moon Dungeon. I fought a pack of goblins, and one of them dropped it. I know Mirrors of Youth don’t fetch much, but I brought it back anyway thinking I could trade it in for a silver...and that happened when I was looking at it on the way home. Talk about a surprise.”
“The Water Moon Dungeon, huh? If that’s where you found it, I suppose it’s not all that weird...”
The mysterious person Rentt had once encountered was based there, after all. It was also in the Water Moon Dungeon that Rentt had obtained his powerful robe and the Map of Akasha which wrote itself. Consequently, it would make sense to find other unusual items lying about in there.
“That’s what I figured,” Rentt agreed. “Anyway, I brought it here hoping you could look into it, as well as tell me how much I could sell it for.”
“I don’t mind having a look, but as for the price...I’ve never even heard of an item like this. I suspect you could sell it for a fortune, but if you want an exact figure, I couldn’t—wha?!”
Something absolutely shocking occurred right in the midst of our conversation: the Rentt in the mirror had gotten closer...and reached his hands out of the mirror to grab us.
“What in the—?!”
“Hey, isn’t this kind of a bad sign...?”
The very moment that Rentt and I uttered those inane lines, we were pulled completely into the mirror.
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“Ow...”
I shook my head and looked around. I must have bumped it on something, because it hurt slightly—but it didn’t seem that serious, so I let it be while I took in my surroundings. Or at least, that had been my intention...
“There’s nobody here...not even Rentt. In fact, there’s nothing around at all...”
I was surrounded by a completely empty void. Yet for some reason, I could still put my feet on the “ground,” as well as see myself with no issues.
I didn’t know what was going on, but I began to chant a light spell, hoping to make use of a little illumination before I tried anything else. However, the magic fizzled out.
“What...?” I mumbled to myself, confused.
Then, I heard voices echoing from out of the darkness.
“I told you, that’s wrong!”
“How should I make it, then?! This is perfect!”
It sounded like an argument. When I turned my gaze in the direction of the voices, I noticed I could see into a room that hadn’t been there before. The room was spacious, as though it belonged in a mansion, and it contained an enormous number of books—as well as two individuals who were facing each other. One appeared to be an elderly mage, while the other...
“That’s...me. When I was younger...”
It looked like my seven- or eight-year-old self. But though I could see the resemblance, her expression was rather cheeky, as though she was fully convinced that she was a hundred percent in the right at all times.
I suppose I was like that back then, wasn’t I?
I remembered the elderly gentleman—it was my old mentor, under whose tutelage I had learned all things magical and academic. In other words, someone deserving of my respect...not that I had shown an ounce of it at the time. I wondered what he was up to these days. I assumed he was still alive somewhere, at any rate. He wasn’t the type to just keel over and die.
As for what he and my younger self were arguing about...
“If I remember right...we were arguing over how I’d made my wand. And next, I...”
“Stupid, stubborn old man!”
My younger self hurled the wand at the old man. The next moment, he focused a dense swirl of mana into his hand and launched it back toward her as a spell. It was unbelievably quick work—almost superhuman—and I doubted that I would be capable of it even today.
I wanted to tell him not to cast such a spell at a child, but there was no point. It grazed my younger self’s ear, and she passed out as the spell pierced the wall behind her.
“Which one of us is really the stubborn one here? Good grief, child...”
After gently checking that she was not seriously harmed, my old mentor repaired the hole in the wall and used a spell to carelessly hurl my younger self onto a bed.
“I think it’s both of us, honestly...” I muttered, unable to hold myself back.
The next moment, the view changed. This time, it was...
“The administration office in the First University...”
Now, it was the place where I used to work.
I saw myself sitting in my old chair, looking bored. Scholars came and went constantly, giving me reports that I had somehow dredged up the motivation to listen to. However, their faces were utterly featureless. No matter how hard I tried to recall what they looked like, I couldn’t remember.
I supposed that meant that these scenes were based on my memories—the things I didn’t remember were vague and unclear.
I approached my younger self to get a better look at her desk and saw a number of reports, the details of each of which were clear and precise. In conclusion, I definitely remembered those.
Back then, I hadn’t looked at people. I’d only had eyes for knowledge.
Now that I was aware of that fact, it felt like I was being confronted with exactly how blind I’d been to my surroundings back then.
Things were different these days, though—and that was because I knew that being confronted with my past didn’t have much of an effect on me.
