The next day I put in the early training to get my body used to the new weapon and armor, then went out to the river dungeon.
I reached the entrance to the third basement without any trouble at all. A large part of that was the new mace, which lets me crush a Stone Tortoise shell and all. I’d moved the pack up a grade as well, so there was room in it now even taking every scrap of material. Not that collecting everything down to the fifth floor was ever going to be possible.
Down on the third, the Stone Tortoises started coming three at a time, and that was the whole of the difference. They aren’t opposition any more, so I put them down quickly and went on to the fourth, where the new trash mob appears: ‘Slime.’ Nothing in fantasy is more familiar, but this world’s version was a sagging, half-transparent, shapeless thing, with a brownish core visible somewhere around its middle. Destroy the core and it dies.
The problem is that the core sits inside a body with a lot of give in it. And against the violence that mass and speed produce together, that turned out to count for nothing whatsoever. My mace comes down, the core bursts along with the jelly around it, and the thing is over. An ordinary E-rank adventurer apparently needs some ingenuity to crush a core, but in arm strength alone I seem to be past D-rank, so this is about what it comes to.
Slimes carry poison, incidentally, which ‘Poison Resistance’ takes care of. What they leave is a ‘Slime Core,’ said to be an ingredient in medicine.
The fifth floor was more Slimes and nothing else. I came away with a great many cores, and since they don’t take up room I collected the lot.
And so, at last, my first E-class dungeon boss.
I braced for it, given how often I draw rare bosses and multiple bosses and irregulars generally. And what came out was the ‘Large Slime’ the guide had promised. Three meters across, as advertised, standing about a meter high at the middle, with a core the size of a volleyball in the raised part.
It came edging toward me, putting parts of itself out like tentacles. The way it kills is to catch you, drag you inside the body and suffocate you.
Being caught would be fatal on my own, so I burst the tentacles with counters as they came. A dozen or so of them later I looked up and found the Large Slime had come down to about the size of a Middle Slime. I closed the distance and went on shaving the body away with the mace, and when it had worn thin enough I pulverized the core. Subjugation complete.
There’s a question about whether a boss fight ought to be this easy, but when the opponent is a physical creature, might really is right. My main weapon being a mace was a good match too.
I waited a while, and the skill came.
“‘Brute Strength’… that’s a skill that makes you stronger, isn’t it. What is this, am I being told to play a muscle-brain build?”
It came out of my mouth before I could stop it. More arm strength, for a man whose strength is apparently the problem already—is that all right? A character who breaks through on one stat is the optimal answer in some games, admittedly.
If I really am turning into a physical specialist, I get the feeling I’ll be well and truly stuck before long unless I find some companions and put a party together.
I was thinking about that when I shouldered the pack—noticeably lighter now, thanks to the new skill—and left the dungeon.
“This is a Large Slime core. Am I to take it you killed this alone?”
That was the unfriendly receptionist, when I took the day’s haul in for buyback. The same doubtful look as ever.
“I did. The weapon suited the job, so I managed it.”
“Managed it… I was under the impression you had read the guide thoroughly, Soshi-san.”
“I had, and it made handling its attacks easy. I’m grateful to the Guild for compiling it.”
“…I see. It does not occur to you not to fight alone.”
“Well. I thought I could win.”
I said it with as little swagger in it as I could manage, and she let out a breath and stopped saying anything at all.
“Shall the payment go to the Guild as usual?”
“Yes, please.”
Answering that reminded me of what Gashi had said the night before, about field monsters being on the rise.
“There’s something I wanted to ask, actually. Have subjugation requests been going up lately, as a trend?”
“They have. Up about twenty percent on this time last year, I would say. Will you be taking any?”
“Anything physical attacks work on. Though I’m off to another town tomorrow, so it may have to be after that.”
“Understood.”
“Ah, one more thing. If I happen to kill a monster that has a subjugation request out on it while I’m traveling between towns, is that no subjugation payment, materials purchase only?”
“Yes, that is how it works. In that case, be certain to remember where you killed it. That is what we use to judge whether it was the subject of a request.”
“Understood. I’ll keep it in mind. Thank you.”
I bowed slightly and turned to go, and behind me the receptionist said, almost under her breath, “Take care.”
The next day I worked up a light sweat and went around to the Merchant Guild, where Gashi and Nari were waiting for me. On the outward leg they were carrying household goods to Maneji, so the cart was loaded to the top again.
We joined up and went straight out of Euron and down the highway. There are fields everywhere around the town and the country is thoroughly pastoral to look at. Walking and talking with the pair of them, we made the waypoint village before the light went.
“Be a laugh if another Moon Wolf came out, eh.”
That was Gashi, in the traveler’s hut on the edge of the village.
We had drink in us by then. Nari was lying down and going under by degrees.
“I had a look through the Guild’s subjugation requests. There was nothing posted for this stretch of country.”
“That’s good. Mind, if there was a request out on this road I’d not be coming down it at all.”
“So when there’s a clear monster risk on a route, you wait until it’s dealt with?”
“Normally, yes. Only if there’s a hurry, sometimes you hire adventurers to guard the load and take it through anyway.”
“Ah. I see.”
I’d heard adventurers pick up that kind of work as well as subjugation requests. Guarding nobles seems to be common in particular.
Work like that will only go to adventurers with the connections and the credit for it, naturally.
“Might be I’ll be asking you one of these days, Soshi-san. Any distance and you have to have a guard.”
“I work alone, so I doubt I’m suited to guard work.”
“Course, on a long haul it’s a caravan, so you hire several. Having one along who can put a Moon Wolf down on his own makes a difference all by itself, that does.”
“Does it, now. Well, when the time comes, do ask me.”
I said it, but is a Moon Wolf really rated that highly? The unfriendly receptionist hadn’t reacted that way at all, and the guide carries very little on rare monsters.
Then again, high-rank monsters don’t appear along the highway barring something out of the ordinary, so perhaps that much is simply enough. Taking requests sounds interesting in its own right. Once I have the measure of the risk that comes from people rather than monsters, I may start putting my name down.
The night passed without incident and we left the village early.
We went on down the highway, and around noon a large lake came into view in the distance with a small town on its shore. Maneji makes its living off what the lake produces.
Another hour’s walking brought us in. The town is enclosed by something more like a fence than a wall, though the gate is a solid one with doors on it, which may mean field monsters turn up here from time to time.
I parted from Gashi and Nari inside the gate. They were transferring their cargo and going back to Euron tomorrow; I meant to clear both the E-class and the F-class, which would keep me here four days at the least.
I took a room at the inn Gashi named and went to the Adventurer’s Guild. It runs to about Tolson’s scale, but with fewer adventurers in it. There are fewer dungeons, so that will be the reason.
There was a male clerk on the reception counter. I greeted him and got permission to look at the guide.
Unusually, somebody had gotten to the archive before me. A young woman—or a girl, rather. Since ‘Awakening’ takes people at fifteen to twenty-five for the most part there was nothing odd about it, but her face in profile did not look to me as though it had reached fifteen yet.
Then again, the ‘Awakened’ don’t match their outsides, and if she has a party it’s probably fine. You still can’t help wondering.
“…Hm?”
It was then that I realized I’d seen that profile somewhere before. Where, though.
“Excuse me a moment.”
Still not placing her, I said it to the girl, who was studying the guides on the shelf in earnest, and took a volume down.
“Ah, I am sorry…”
“Not at all. You’re working hard at it.”
At that she looked up at me, warily, as though bracing for something.
Which was when I noticed she was a very pretty girl indeed. Blond hair and blue eyes turn up often enough in this world, but hair tied at both sides without a trace of a wave in it is rare. The features were finely made, doll-like, and the timid set of the eyes belonged to nobody who fights monsters for a living.
She wore what amounted to a plain white dress with a thick vest over it. At a stretch you could read it as mage’s gear.
And at that point it clicked. She was without question the girl I’d seen in the carriage that passed me in Tolson. It had been a fine carriage, so she is not a person of ordinary standing. What is she doing in an Adventurer’s Guild?
The obvious answer is that she ‘Awakened’ too, and became an adventurer. And if so, then for a girl who looks like nothing but the daughter of a good house, that is a fairly cruel piece of luck.
“…Yes. I knew nothing at all about adventurers until now.”
“Forgive the question, but did you ‘Awaken’ only recently?”
“Yes. About three weeks ago. I became an adventurer two days ago.”
Ah. As I thought. Girls like this being picked out at random really is a problem.
“Then you have no party yet? No companions, I mean.”
“No. The people at the Guild have been speaking to others on my behalf, I am told…”
I see. The Guild’s side doesn’t leave her to it, at any rate. Which is more than a man my age gets.
“I’ve only been an adventurer a bit over a month myself, as it happens. Being told to get on with it out of nowhere is difficult, isn’t it.”
“Is that so? And you are alone, even so?”
“I am, and I’m managing for now. I wouldn’t recommend it, mind.”
“No… I had never once thought about fighting monsters. I cannot imagine myself doing it, and I do not know what I ought to do.”
Saying that to a man she has never met means the anxiety is considerable. If this girl is the young lady of a good family she appears to be, then being told to go down into dungeons and kill monsters for a living is not something she can simply do.
Though girls in their late teens are common enough as adventurers, and they may all have come along this same road.
“I understand being frightened, and being anxious. Would you like me to tell you a little about F-class dungeons? It may sit easier than walking into one cold.”
“Oh, that is… very kind of you, but would it not be an imposition?”
“I became an adventurer recently myself, so I know the anxiety. And there are things the guide doesn’t write down.”
It didn’t feel like somebody else’s business, so I told her what I know about F-class dungeons.
I had thought information might take the edge off the fear. Going by the state of her when I finished, what I had actually done was make it worse.
“The more I hear, the more it seems to me I could never do it… I am sorry. After you were kind enough to explain…”
“No, I think being frightened is the reasonable response. People do get used to things eventually, though.”
I could hardly add that you don’t survive unless you do get used to it. But that is what it comes to in the end. Those who can’t live simply die somewhere out of sight. This world is that hard, and I’ve been here long enough to feel it.
After that the girl took a guide down from the shelf and lost herself in it.
There was nothing else worth saying to her, so I read my way through mine and left.
The next morning I finished the usual training outside the town and went straight to the F-class dungeon.
Maneji’s F-class is a boulder dungeon standing in grassland, and near enough identical to Tolson’s. The wandering monsters are the same—goblins, Rock Lizards, Boarwolves—and the boss is the same Bearwolf. I cleared it in about two hours without any trouble, though this one struck me as a shade easier than Tolson’s.
The new skill it gave me was ‘Hallucination Resistance.’ According to the guide there are a great many resistance skills, which put the other way around means a great many monsters that inflict bad statuses. So even the low-rarity skills are worth picking up steadily.
That was all to the good. But coming out of the dungeon I noticed a party of boys and girls making a commotion. The girl from the Guild yesterday was being told something by the rest of them.
Ah, she found a party after all, I thought, and the relief lasted about a second, because the boy who looked like the leader raised his voice half out of temper.
“Look, saying you’re scared and saying you can’t doesn’t fix anything, does it! We got told to go be adventurers out of nowhere, exactly like you did, and we’re doing it! If you’ve got time to whine, go and hit a goblin!”
“I am sorry. I am sorry…”
“Honestly. Sorry, but we’ve got livings riding on this. If you’re not going to do anything, just go home. See you.”
He spat it out, and he and the other two went into the dungeon and left her standing there with her head down.
The girl stayed where she was for a while.
I was still deciding whether to say anything when she began, very faintly, to sob, and that settled it.
“Let’s get you back to the town, for now. I’ll walk you.”
“…Oh. Ah, from yesterday…”
She turned reddened eyes on me, wiped them hurriedly, and gave a small nod.
“I am sorry. Yes, please.”
“Then let’s go together. What you can’t do doesn’t suddenly become what you can, so there’s no sense in agonizing over it.”
Which I said, and which left the fact that this girl has a considerable wall in front of her as an adventurer. I had spoken to her, and having spoken, seeing her right is ordinary human decency. Though on reflection, there is no girl alive who wants a man my age looking after her.
And if I announced I was taking charge of her, the Guild clerks would file me under incident.
Back at the Guild, while I was settling the buyback, I mentioned what I’d seen to the male clerk.
The young man pulled a troubled face.
“Mmm. I did think that was the right fit for a party.”
He looked over at the girl as he said it.
She only made herself smaller. “I’m sorry…”
The Guild has evidently done what it can, and nothing about this was going to resolve itself. So, with no better idea available, I put to the clerk the thing I’d been turning over.
“Would it be possible for me to form a party with her for a while?”
“I’m sorry? Ah… Soshi-san, was it. You would?”
His face went straight to suspicion. Which is fair. A man my age announcing he’ll take care of a beautiful girl is about as suspect as it gets.
“I am E-rank, for what that’s worth, and I could coach her at least until she’s used to an F-class dungeon. When that point comes, you put her into another party. How would that be?”
“Well, put like that there’s no problem as such… No. If adventurers agree between themselves to form a party, the Guild has nothing to say about it.”
“Understood.”
I left him looking as though he had more he wanted to say, and turned to the girl.
“Here’s the proposal. I teach you until you can hold your own in a dungeon like anyone else. What do you think?”
“Yes. I— what?”
Her eyes went wide and stayed on my face; then she bowed her head and said, “Thank you. Please look after me.”
Quick decision, for all that she had no other option. She had been crying a few minutes earlier, so perhaps she is the sort who rights herself fast.
“That’s the arrangement, then. Thank you.”
I said it to the clerk, who was still making a face, and the two of us left the Guild together.
The girl’s name was Freinil.
In this country, as it turns out, the length of a name tells you the standing of the house you were born into. Which puts Freinil, like ‘Crimson Anatoria,’ unmistakably where she looks: a good family.
She plainly didn’t want to talk about where she came from, though. Being awkward about questions on the past is a condition I share, so I didn’t press.
She had the bare minimum of equipment and was short of a good deal else, so I bought what she needed and we went back to the inn. I took an extra room for her, and while we were eating together in the dining hall, Freinil asked me, with some trepidation:
“Um… Soshi-sama, why is it that you are helping me?”
“There isn’t any particular reason. Helping is the normal thing as far as I’m concerned, so I help. That’s the whole of it.”
“Because it is normal… Is that a teaching of the Ashuram faith?”
“The Ashuram faith?”
“You do not know of it?”
“I’m poorly informed about that sort of thing.”
Come to think of it, Tolson and Euron and Maneji all have buildings about them that look like churches. Obviously enough, this world has religion in it too. A month and a bit is not long enough to have widened my knowledge that far.
“The Ashuram faith is a religion whose purpose is to live rightly under the teachings of the chief god Ashuram. Do you believe in a different god, Soshi-sama?”
“Something along those lines, I suppose. And there may well be a side of it where I’m trying to help you in line with that teaching.”
Freinil gave a small nod at that, with the look of someone who has had a thing explained. This girl leans on the Ashuram faith for her footing, to some degree. So when religion sits at the core of what a person does, it drops into place for her without effort.
“Then I understand. I am sorry. I said something that doubted your good will, Soshi-sama.”
“No. Checking what you don’t understand is important. Ah, while I think of it. I’m going to be teaching you how to fight, among other things, and the training is hard, so be ready for that. You need proper conditioning before you go into a dungeon. As long as you’re in a party with me, there are no days off.”
“Yes. I understand. I will apply myself, so that I can answer Soshi-sama’s kindness.”
Yes, this girl really is from a very good house. Which makes her precarious with it, and that may be another thing I’ll have to teach her in time.
The next morning we left the inn before the sun came up and went out beyond the town, to the edge of the highway.
To train, of course. I can’t let my own conditioning slide either, so I had Freinil do the same work I do, with the loads lightened.
She is ‘Awakened,’ so her physical ability is already above an ordinary adult’s. Her body is still growing, though, which means the training has to center on skills. I had her keep ‘Strength,’ ‘Stamina,’ ‘Running,’ ‘Vision’ and ‘Kinetic Vision’ in mind and work at them, and the work is repetition, fundamentally. That kind of thing seems not to trouble her; Freinil went through the movements she was given without a word.
“There, the weapon suddenly got easier to handle, didn’t it?”
“Yes. It is a strange feeling. I have never done anything of this sort before…”
What I gave Freinil was a spear a little under two meters. A mace like mine would have served, but I balked at putting a girl in close to trade blows with monsters.
A bow would be the sensible answer, really, except that some instinct tells me she will turn out a mage in the end. Freinil is a slender girl, and it would be the natural shape for the character—which is an idiot’s reasoning and nothing more.
Either way, if that happens she’ll be carrying a staff, and spear skill is the less wasted of the two. That was the judgment.
For the moment she wears light protective armor over that plain white dress of hers. Fitting the armor established something, incidentally: the breastplate looked distinctly tight, there being a part of her figure not at all in keeping with her age. Not that this leads anywhere.
We trained the whole day and she did not once complain. She did widen her eyes at the sight of me swinging a Dark Metal rod beside her.
At any rate I think she picked up a full set of the ordinary skills I carry. When I called it at evening, Freinil looked up at me, pleased.
“After only one day of training, my body moves as though it belonged to someone else. Soshi-sama, your knowledge is remarkable.”
“I’m only doing what I learned from other people. And this kind of training lives on daily repetition, so we do it every day as a rule.”
“Yes. Soshi-sama went to the trouble of teaching me, so I will work at getting even a little stronger.”
Freinil’s face is a great deal brighter than it was in the archive. Today was nothing but physical work, but it seems to have done something for the rest of her as well. Confidence will change how the dungeon feels to her, and in her case that is where it has to start.
The next day went the same way.
Freinil’s skills all came up a stage, and it looked as though we could go to the dungeon tomorrow. The question was whether she could put a spear into a monster, and for that I decided on rough treatment.
“Right. Thrust.”
“But—”
I stood in front of Freinil and her spear with my armor off and my feet planted, entirely undefended. Nothing complicated about it: she thrusts, thinking of me as a monster.
There’s no point unless she thrusts meaning to kill, of course, and I told her so firmly. I had already told her ‘Steel Body’ means it won’t land. So this is mental training more than anything.
Freinil couldn’t bring herself to commit, so I broke it into stages.
“Then start light. Just enough for the tip to touch. You can manage that much, can’t you?”
“Y-yes. I will try.”
Freinil put the spear out, timidly. The trembling point touched my stomach and was turned aside by ‘Steel Body.’
“That’s incredible… you’re like iron.”
“That’s what a skill does. Go on. Now you know it doesn’t land, a little harder.”
“Yes. Here I go…”
We worked up by degrees like that, and by the end she could thrust with everything she had. A full-strength thrust does put the point in about a centimeter, and of course it ‘Regenerates’ straight away.
Freinil watched the wound close at speed, and her eyes lit.
“The wound heals immediately. It is almost like magic…”
“It is magic, near enough. And there are skills that let you use actual magic, of course.”
“What!? How does one acquire those?”
“You kill a dungeon boss. That earns you one special skill, and with luck it turns out to be magic.”
“And Soshi-sama?”
“Sadly, I don’t have a single skill to do with magic. The god of magic has taken against me, I expect.”
I made a show of sulking about it, and Freinil laughed—a small, soft one. She has room in her now.
“My instinct says you’ll end up able to use magic, Freinil. So how about it, shall we go into the dungeon together tomorrow? We’ll make it the goal to kill the boss and take a special skill.”
“Truly…? If Soshi-sama says so, then I will come.”
“You’ll be fine as you are now. Get used to it and you’ll be killing bosses too. I’ll be helping.”
“Yes. I will work at it.”
There was something in Freinil’s face as she set herself to it that I hadn’t seen there before: a kind of vitality. It may be that the training gave her a mental skill of some sort, ‘Bravery’ or the like. Things of that order are usually hard to solve, so if a skill makes it easier, I’ll take it and be glad.