The Unwanted Undead Adventurer: Volume 12, page 9
Dorothea realized that Rina was completely right. So long as the culprit remained free, she would keep having to brave the kinds of troubles that had befallen her so many times in the past. But since whoever was behind this apparently wanted to make her quit being a merchant, chances were that if she ceased her business for a time, the harassment would pause too. As such, she could always just sit tight and wait for the culprit to be caught.
However, Dorothea had no intention of doing any such thing.
“I’ll keep going,” she said. “There are so many people out there who would struggle to obtain the daily necessities they need without me. I know I’m just a small-timer, but I still have pride in my work. So...”
So will you protect me? was what she wanted to say, but that was not an easy request to make. An increased risk for Dorothea meant increased risk for Rina too, and the young adventurer had nothing to do with Dorothea’s personal circumstances. Even if she were to increase Rina’s pay, a refusal would be the most likely response. However...
“Okay,” Rina said casually. “In that case, let’s stick to the travel schedule. If anything happens, I’ll keep you safe.” She then bound Guster so that he couldn’t move, tossed him into the wagon, and hopped on. “Let’s go, Dorothea.”
Apparently, Rina didn’t care one whit about Dorothea’s personal circumstances. Upon realizing this, gratitude welled up within the merchant’s heart.
“Right,” she said. “I’m counting on you, Rina.”
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As far as Rina was concerned, her journey with Dorothea was fun. The merchant was well-informed on a diverse range of subjects, so their conversations ensured they never had a boring night together. Furthermore, while she had been a little prickly at the start—just like the guild had said she would be—the more Rina got to know Dorothea, the more she realized that it wasn’t part of the merchant’s fundamental nature at all, but a result of everything she’d suffered while pursuing her chosen profession. In short, Dorothea had been dragged into what would usually be an absurd number of disputes and scams, and she had become convinced that they had arisen from her own inexperience and gender. Who could blame her for becoming more guarded and critical of her surroundings?
And despite everything, Dorothea still hadn’t stopped trying to believe in people—as evidenced by the fact that she had willingly hired Rina, who was but a simple Iron-class adventurer. So while Rina had only taken the commission because she had wanted to gain confidence in herself, she resolved to do her absolute best to repay Dorothea, who had been so kind to her.
Naturally, this repayment involved making use of every skill she had under her belt. Obviously she would be putting her adventuring skills and swordsmanship to work, but Rina also had the magic she’d spent a lot of time honing recently.
Those skills, however, were something that were common across all adventurers. In terms of what the individual known as Rina could offer, well, she did have a few special qualities of her own—the foremost among them being the abilities granted to her by virtue of being a monster.
At first, that had been limited to a simple boost in stamina and mana relative to the amount of human blood or flesh she consumed, allowing her to work for longer periods of time. However, due to the training she’d undertaken at the Latuule estate, the effects of that boost had been improved. She hadn’t trained anywhere where Alize had been able to see, of course—she’d always had her lessons in the middle of the night.
Because of the body Rina now had, sleep was no longer as necessary for her as it used to be, meaning she could remain awake for several days on end without any issues. It also wasn’t a problem for her to spend the time people usually spent asleep to undergo strenuous training. Rina had learned much during her nightly lessons, and one of the nonmonstrous skills she had picked up was how to fight against multiple foes by herself. What she’d gained from those training sessions had helped her greatly when the bandits had attacked her and Dorothea the other day.
As for her training partners, they consisted of the combatan—er, the servants of the Latuule family, Isaac included. Rina shuddered just remembering the intense training sessions—everyone had come at her with lethal force. They hadn’t actually intended to kill her, of course...but at the time, facing down their naked bloodlust, she had been truly convinced that she was going to die.
The servants of the Latuule family were one and all exceedingly capable. If they had fought seriously, Rina was sure that any one of them could’ve ended her life in a heartbeat. They had wielded all manner of weapons with familiarity and cast a vast array of different spells at her, and while any injury they incurred recovered in an instant, they didn’t rely on that. Instead, they simply overwhelmed her with pure fighting skill.
That begged the question of how exactly Rina was ever supposed to win against people like that, but since it was all just training at the end of the day, they had held back enough that she still had a chance—which wasn’t to say she had an easy time of it. Quite the opposite, in fact—they constantly attacked her in ways she could only barely guard against or avoid, and if she let her focus waver for a single moment, they’d deliver the finishing blow.
All in all, her nighttime training at the Latuule estate was the harshest thing Rina had ever experienced in her entire life. Still, Rina had improved by leaps and bounds thanks to it, so facing formidable opponents was no longer enough to make her lose her cool. After all, no matter who she faced, comparing them to Isaac and the rest did wonders for her morale. It was hard to be intimidated by most opponents after what she’d gone through.
Case in point, the bandits from the other night—compared to how well Isaac and the other Latuule servants could hide themselves, the archer in the trees might as well have been out in broad daylight—in more ways than one, since Rina’s eyes allowed her to see clearly in the dark. As for the others, since they’d been fighting in a dark forest, none of them had been able to see as well as she could. It had been like facing opponents who were blindfolded. In the end, she had whittled down their numbers, then incapacitated the one who had looked like their leader with a bite to the back of the neck.
If Rentt had done the same—and done it intentionally—then whether his victim was human or monster, he would have made them his vampiric kin like he’d done to Rina. She was not capable of that quite yet, though she was capable of controlling her victim’s actions to a certain degree—a technique she had learned from Isaac. When he had been teaching it to her, she’d practiced with small animals that he captured; the battle against the bandits was her first time using this technique on a human, but it had gone pleasingly well. Guster had obediently answered all of her questions, and for the next few days he would likely obey Rina’s orders.
So while Rina had told Dorothea that there was nothing more she could do for her, that hadn’t been strictly true—but it wasn’t as though she could tell the merchant about her monstrous abilities. Rina wasn’t sure her plan would bear fruit in any case. Rather than giving Dorothea any cause for premature celebration, Rina figured it would be more beneficial to teach the merchant what she knew about spotting suspicious characters and seeing through fraudsters. Dorothea was by no means negligent in that regard, but as an adventurer Rina was better versed in the ways of ruffians and bandits. If she imparted such knowledge to Dorothea, the merchant would likely run into less trouble in the future—or so Rina hoped.
“Rina, we’re almost there,” called Dorothea from the driver’s seat of the wagon.
“Oh, right!” Rina called back. She was under the shade of the canvas, and she understood Dorothea’s words to mean that they were almost at the next outpost town. With her in the wagon’s interior was a tightly packed array of goods for sale—and Guster, the bandit leader whom she had captured. His eyes were fixed on Rina, but they showed neither resentment nor any indication that he was planning on making a break for it. Since Rina was controlling his mind, he couldn’t have entertained such ideas even if he’d been capable of thinking them up.
“Do your job properly now, okay?” Rina said to him cheerfully, smiling. “I’m expecting big things from you.”
Guster, of course, gave no response.
It was a very bizarre exchange indeed, and if Dorothea were to see it, she would likely shrink back in fear. It was a good thing that Rina had no intention of showing her anytime soon—or at all.
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The guard station in the outpost town that Rina and Dorothea arrived at sported a basement that didn’t match the small building aboveground. It was built from sturdy stone and split off into compartmented segments, some of which had iron bars and served as cells.
A minor outpost town like this one almost never made use of its jail. At most, it served as an overnight holding area for drunk townsfolk to cool their heads after the guards had broken up some inane dispute or other at the tavern.
Today, however, was different. On the guard station’s front doorstep was a genuine ne’er-do-well in the form of Guster, the bandit whom Rina had captured just the other day. After she and Dorothea had arrived in town, they had handed him over to the guards, explained that someone had hired him to attack them, and requested their help in finding the culprit.
Bandit appearances in and of themselves were rare in this region, let alone criminals with such complicated circumstances, so the guards had been rather flustered as they took custody of Guster. In a rather anticlimactic turn of events for them, however, he hadn’t put up any resistance at all.
For all that the countryside was relatively quiet, it still saw bandits or murderers around two or three times a year. Whenever such criminals were handed over to the guards, they were all but certain to resist. Even when they didn’t do so physically, their eyes would clearly burn with anger and defiance.
However, Guster’s eyes were empty—to the point that it was actually scary. Then again, maybe “empty” wasn’t quite the right word. Rather, it was as though they were...focused on some kind of dream.
“He’s like a drug addict...” muttered one of the guards. He had once worked in the city, but after losing his temper with a superior at a drinking party, he’d been sent out to the sticks.
Well, the guard reasoned, at the end of the day Guster was a bandit and a criminal, so it wouldn’t be too surprising if he had dabbled in drugs too. That would be a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything that seemed off.
Satisfied, they took Guster down into a basement cell and proceeded to keep a close eye on him. In this town, bandits and robbers were usually executed by beheading or crucifixion after their crimes had been clearly proven. In towns with better-maintained and established roads, criminals were usually not treated in such a manner—they could be sent to larger settlements to await a sentence from a judge appointed by the local lord.
However, this region was as rural as it got. There was a highway of sorts, but it was hardly safe enough to facilitate the transport of a criminal, something which did not have much practical benefit anyway. As such, the sentencing of criminals—as well as carrying out that sentence—was the responsibility of the individual who held the most authority at the local guard stations, and took place inside the towns themselves.
Given this, Guster usually would have been executed on the spot. However, there were extenuating circumstances. Since he had been working under someone else’s orders, it was necessary to launch an investigation, meaning his sentence was suspended for the time being.
This would go on to serve as the catalyst for the incident which happened to occur that very same night...
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“Ugh...where am I...?”
Guster slowly opened his eyes, blinking away the fog clouding his head. Upon doing so, he saw that he was surrounded by stone walls and iron bars. On the other side of the latter stood a person dressed as a guard, no doubt serving some manner of watch duty.
Why am I here?
Guster thought back to what had happened and was quick to grasp the situation. He was here because he had attacked a traveling merchant, and her bodyguard had turned the tables on him. They must have handed him over to a guard outpost somewhere.
He immediately wondered what had happened to his companions but suspected he knew the answer already. Given their line of work, the rest of his gang must be dead by now. The fact that he was here alone probably meant that everyone else had been abandoned in the forest with debilitating injuries—or worse.
That particular area of the forest served as the stomping grounds for a fair few kinds of monsters, all of which would have been drawn to the heavy stench of blood from a group of injured and incapacitated humans lying on the forest floor. By morning they’d all have been monster food.
Guster hoped that at the very least they had died before being eaten. The thought that they might have been devoured alive sent a shudder down his spine.
He also wondered why he alone had been spared...but thinking back, he remembered that someone had said something just before he’d blacked out: “You look like you’re the leader of this lot.”
In short, they must have kept him alive to get information from him. That explained why he wasn’t in a monster’s belly right now.
Still, this was only a temporary reprieve. Guster knew he was headed for the proverbial gallows regardless. There was a zero percent chance that he’d receive any other sentence—banditry was just that grave a crime. Well, perhaps zero chance wasn’t quite correct—he’d heard that sometimes bandits were sentenced to a life of hard labor mining for ore. Compared to that, maybe dying was preferable—but anything probably beat being eaten alive by monsters, as had been the likely fate of his companions.
That aside...Guster sure was hungry. He really wanted something to eat.
“Hey! Hey!” he shouted, trying to get the attention of the guard beyond the bars. Perhaps his efforts would be in vain, but if he was going to die anyway, why not try? It couldn’t hurt.
“What?” the guard asked warily, turning around.
Guster was puzzled. The guard’s expression wasn’t irritated or displeased like he had expected. Rather, the man looked like he’d seen something peculiar.
Is my face really that strange? Guster had the sort of unshaven, unkempt features that any stereotypical bandit might have, and while he wasn’t conceited enough to consider himself handsome, he didn’t think he was particularly odd-looking either.
Still, he was grateful enough that the guard had seen fit to turn around.
“I’m hungry,” Guster said. “Could you give me something to eat? Oh, and water too, if you have it.”
The guard studied him for a moment. “Seems like you’ve gotten ahold of your senses again. I suppose we do need to have you fit for questioning later, so why not? Here.”
The guard took a hunk of hard-looking bread and a cup of water from the table next to him and passed them through the iron bars of the cell. For a brief moment, Guster considered the idea of grabbing the guard’s hands, snatching the key, and making a break for it...but only for a moment. Even if he were to get out of his cell, he was fairly certain they were underground. He’d only be caught by the guards who were almost definitely stationed up above, and that would be that. There was no sense in doing anything so pointless.
“Thanks, chief,” Guster said. He obediently accepted the bread and water, ate, and drank, figuring that if he could keep his physical strength up, a chance might come along for him to make his escape.
Guster thought about being sentenced to manual labor in the mines...and decided that he probably did prefer that to dying. Turning over a new leaf was an exercise in futility at this point, but he resolved to at least survive for as long as he could manage.
A while after he had finished eating, as he was leaning against the stone wall of his cell to conserve his energy...
“Who are yo— Gack!”
“Get back! Damn it, get— Guh!”
Guster heard yells and shouts coming from above. The guard on watch in the basement heard it too and ran up to investigate, but did not return.
After a short while passed, Guster heard the sound of someone descending the stairs. He wondered briefly whether whoever it was had come to save him before banishing the notion—Guster had nobody who would come to his rescue like that. Nervous, he awaited the intruder in his cell...and was surprised by what he saw.
“Hello. You seem well,” said the man who had hired Guster. There was another person behind him wielding a staff—probably a mage of some sort.
“Why are you here?” Guster growled. “We failed. What’s the use in... Ah. Here to silence me, are you?” The realization made Guster curse his own rotten luck. The man must have been surveilling him and his companions the entire time.
However, the man only tilted his head slightly to the side. “Well...I suppose that is one of my objectives, in a sense. I can’t exactly have you confessing everything, so I did come to prevent that. Having said that, it’s not as though I intend to kill you. I was hoping to have you put in a little more work for me, you see. If you can manage it, I’ll help you escape somewhere nobody will find you. I’ll even throw in a second round of pay.”
Guster was shocked. “That’s not a bad offer, but...’fraid to say that I can’t see myself doing much at the moment. That adventurer was pretty skilled. There were six of us, and she got us all.”
“But ultimately she’s just an Iron-classer, no? My companion here was keeping an eye on your fight, and that adventurer seemed to possess excellent night vision. On the other hand, you and your men were essentially sitting ducks...but the conclusion to be drawn is that she had a magical item. If you fight her during the day, it’s very likely that you’d be able to defeat her with no issue.”
So the mage standing behind the man had been watching the fight? Thinking back, Guster realized that the adventurer girl had moved well and hunted them all down despite the darkness. But while explaining that away with a magical item seemed to make sense, he couldn’t help but feel that something else was at play.
