Epilogue
“Well, well. That was a fair-sized job.”
Zeal of ‘Fortuner’ gave my shoulder a light slap. I put my cup of drink out and knocked it against his. The manners of a toast are the same in this world as well.
The tavern near Euron’s Adventurer’s Guild was holding the celebration for the mass subjugation mission.
The boss had been upper B-rank, which made it a mission of comparatively high difficulty, but the losses on our side were light: several dozen injured, apparently, and nobody killed.
A decent amount of it all was recovered, apparently—the magic stones and drops off the bosses, the ‘Headless Adept’ and the ‘Headless Swordsmen,’ and the Terror Knight stones too—so on the balance sheet it will certainly not come out ahead, though it should not come out badly behind either. That is Zeal’s reading of it.
“Still, I can’t see you as E-rank, Soshi. Stopping a Sordier’s sword head on, that’s quite something.”
“Stopping it was all I could do, though. You can’t win if you can’t hit back.”
“That’s what a party’s for. That young lady’s magic, though: first time I’d seen it, and it’s powerful. If it makes a C-rank monster weaker, there’s real use in that.”
The ‘young lady’ means Freinil. Anatoria herself acknowledged what ‘Divine Halo’ did, so a report will most likely end up going to Viscount Barius.
“That magic has saved us. Though it seems she can’t fire it off in a string, mind.”
I played it as ordinary as I could manage. Trying to hide a thing clumsily only invites more questions.
“Users of ‘Holy Attribute Magic’ are scarce. The church will snap one up as a paladin candidate, so look after her or she’ll be taken.”
“Yes, that is the intention. She’s a member the party couldn’t do without.”
Freinil, for the record, looked thoroughly uncomfortable at a drinking party, so I had her go back to the inn with Rani. Young girls should not be made to deal with a room full of men with drink in them. Though there are plenty of women here as well, making just as much of the noise.
“‘Fortuner’ really are a different thing, though. There’s a steadiness in how you fight as a party, and it’s the shape I’d want for us.”
“Appreciated. If you want steady, it starts with defense. Having Dorno is a big part of what we’ve got.”
Zeal slapped the big man Dorno’s shoulder as he said it. Dorno is a man of few words, and the corners of his eyes softened at being valued by his leader.
“I did feel it this time. Having a shield on my arm is why I could deal with a Sordier at all. Which suggests specializing on the defending side might suit me.”
“Leader as the shield isn’t something you hear much, but I’d say it works. In your party at least, nobody but you could play shield anyway, I’d think.”
He is probably right about that. On build and on ability alike, if anyone is playing shield it is me. The party already has Rani for the attacking, so training toward holding the line does look like the way. With arm strength behind me I should be able to carry a large shield too.
I was working out my own development plan when Zeal’s drunk face went slightly serious.
“That reminds me, Soshi. Did you hear two adventurers turned up dead near the castle afterward?”
“What?”
“Seems nobody had seen them since the night the zombies attacked, and they found the two bodies in the wreckage after the castle came down.”
“You mean they were caught in the collapse?”
“Probably. Though some are saying there were signs of poison taken, as well. Doesn’t that strike you as a bit fishy?”
“Extremely suspicious.”
“Right?”
So that’s how that ended. Did they take their own lives before they could be caught, I wonder. It’s not a story I can easily believe.
What stays with me is the word Anatoria let out when the two of them came up: ‘Mekarinan.’ I asked Freinil afterward and it is the name of the neighboring country. Once it is an international matter, there is even less of a place in it for an ordinary adventurer.
Feeling the mood had cooled a little, perhaps, Zeal threw back his drink and this time grinned.
“Serious talk aside, Soshi, how did you come to know those pretty young ladies of yours? Our Leila says she wants to hear that part too.”
“Zeal, there’s no need to go saying that part out loud!”
Leila the woman mage rapped Zeal on the head with her staff and turned an embarrassed face toward me.
“Ah, don’t worry about it. I think it looks suspicious myself. Let’s see, starting with Freinil, then…”
I talked my way through my own innocence along those lines, and the hours of the party went by. I stayed with the noise about two more hours after that and then slipped quietly back to the inn.
I looked in on Freinil and Rani’s room and the two of them were still up. Freinil had been sitting on the bed, and seeing my face she stood and came over.
“Soshi-sama. Welcome home.”
“Ah… yes. I’m back. You’re still awake, then.”
Freinil’s ‘welcome home’ threw me a little, which may be because it brought back a bit of my former life.
“Is the celebration still going on?”
“They all seem to mean to keep it up until morning. There’ll be bodies everywhere by first light, I expect.”
“Soshi-sama has had enough of it, then.”
“Making noise that late isn’t really for me. And I don’t have the stamina—”
I was partway through saying it when I remembered that I now have stamina enough to sit up a whole night without trouble. What my body can do really has changed since I became an adventurer.
I was scratching my head when Rani, who had been lying on the bed, sat up.
“Hey, Soshi. Did anybody explain this whole business?”
“No. It didn’t sound as though Zeal had heard anything either. Does it bother you?”
“Of course it bothers me. An undead castle going up like that hardly ever happens. And you heard a suspicious voice, didn’t you? There’s the business with those two, as well.”
“Those two, apparently, were crushed under the castle when it came down.”
“What!?”
Freinil’s eyes went round along with Rani’s.
“Then does that mean nothing is ever going to be known about those two?”
“That’s how it looks. We never saw what they were doing, and it doesn’t look like a thing we can settle here. Though the chance that something—or someone—is behind this whole affair is high, I’d say.”
“Right? Getting mixed up in a plot like that is proper adventuring, though, isn’t it?”
Rani’s ears twitched and her whole face lit up. Freinil’s expression, on the other side, was uneasy; in that respect the two of them seem to be opposites.
“It might be, at that. We did fight monsters well above us this time. But as a rule I’d rather not put my head into that kind of irregular business.”
“Ehhh? It sounds like fun to me.”
“We are still E-rank, and I believe it is as Soshi-sama thinks: we should not be exposing ourselves to danger of our own accord.”
“Mm, Freinil’s right on that one. We need to get strong and get the rank up, fast. My attacks weren’t doing anything to that C-rank undead this time.”
Which is the truth of it, exactly as Freinil and Rani say. We are still well short of what we need. And the party wants one more member: a rear-liner specialized for attack.
“Tomorrow we rest the whole day, and then we go back to plain steady work as adventurers. We should think about the dungeons in other towns as well.”
“You’re planning on taking in one more or so, right?”
“Of course. Though in our case the people we can invite are limited, so it doesn’t look like being simple.”
“It has to be someone who can train properly and go into a dungeon every day. I’d rather have a girl, if we can. What do you think, Freinil?”
“I do not mind either way… So long as Soshi-sama is here.”
“Ahh, so that means you don’t need me?”
Rani made a show of sulking, and Freinil shook her head in a hurry.
“No, that is not what I meant. I meant that as far as men are concerned, Soshi-sama is enough—”
“Frei likes Soshi, is the thing. Anyway, that settles it, let’s make the next one a girl too. It’s easier that way.”
“Have you got some bad memory of men?”
“In the last party and the one before it there was somebody sidling up, and it was a nuisance. And Freinil is extremely pretty and seems the quiet sort with it, so bring in the wrong one and I think you’d be in for trouble.”
“Ah, I see. You may well be right about that. I’ll be careful.”
Partly because of the gap in our ages, I don’t see either Freinil or Rani as women, but both of them are pretty enough that plenty of young men would come after them. Groups falling apart over who is involved with whom was a common enough story in my former life, so as leader that may be one more thing I have to keep an eye on.
Then again, what about my being the only man among them? Leading nobody but girls of that age looks likely to bring its own share of things to be careful about…
With that unease sitting in me, the night in Euron deepened around us.