Chapter 385 |
An Adventure That Could Happen Anywhere (1)
A noisy tavern. Two people sat together at one table. The adventurers gathered there were rowdy enough, but every so often their eyes drifted to that particular corner, and the reason was simple.
Those two were a little too striking to be sitting in a place like this. The man looked like the sort who had already broken more than a few hearts, and the woman needed no explanation. The rookie adventurers who got caught staring at her soon found themselves on the receiving end of a smack from their seniors.
"Wake up, kid."
"Ow! Why'd you hit me, hyung?!"
"Take a look at your own face. Now look at the guy sitting across from her. What do you think?"
"......"
"Not a chance, right?"
Knocking some reality into starry-eyed rookies had always been a senior's job. Still, more than a few adventurers kept sneaking glances, unable to look away. The woman herself paid none of it any mind.
"So I'm looking for treasure."
"Treasure, you say?"
"Yeah. There's a story that's been passed down in my family for generations. We're completely ruined now, just me left, but apparently our ancestor was someone pretty famous."
Merlin chewed on a snack as she talked.
"The legendary adventurer Derrick! An explorer who travelled the whole continent collecting every treasure in existence. You know the name?"
Najin didn't personally, but in this world it was common knowledge, so the information surfaced easily enough. He nodded.
"Any adventurer would know it. So Derrick is your ancestor?"
"No. If he were, there's no way our family would have fallen apart."
"Then?"
"Our ancestor was Derrick's guide. His closest companion, apparently. And because of that, Derrick only ever told our ancestor where his Treasure Vault was hidden."
She pulled a map out from inside her coat and gave it a little shake.
"The map to its location is right here."
"Should you really be telling me that so easily? What if I just took it from you?"
"Take it if you want. You wouldn't be able to read it anyway. Only I can."
Merlin shrugged.
"So, Najin. Help me find it? If we do, I'll give you a clean twenty percent."
"Only twenty? Come on, a little more than that."
"Thirty! That's the absolute limit."
"Forty and I'll think about it."
She stuck out her lip, sighed, and nodded. Fine. Forty. Not a single point more.
"So where is this treasure?"
"The Barkilid Mountain Range!"
A place buried in snow and ice. Vast snow-capped peaks and an endless frozen plain, the kind of brutal terrain where even Veteran Adventurers lost their way and got stranded. Najin took that in and nodded without much fuss.
"When do we leave?"
"Sooner is better, right? Why not tomorrow?"
"Works for me. See you tomorrow, then."
They fixed the date, and the following day set off toward the Barkilid Mountain Range with nothing but a few basic camping tools between them. They made it as far as the foot of the snowfield before they stopped.
...Even deeply committed to their roles as they were, there was one thing the two of them had completely overlooked.
One of them had lived a thousand years as a Transcendent. The other had, since pulling out Excalibur, developed regenerative ability and adaptability that put him somewhere just beyond human. They were, by any measure, beings separated from common sense by an astronomical distance.
For people like that, the basic fact that cold places could kill you had quietly stopped registering.
Clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter.
Their teeth were chattering from the very edge of the range. They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
Of all things. Not the Outland where temperatures dropped to hundreds below zero,just an ordinary snow-covered mountain,and apparently people could still die here? Just how fragile was a human body?
"This isn't going to work, is it."
"No. We definitely underestimated the snowfield."
It sounded like a perfectly normal exchange, except that the chattering of teeth interrupted nearly every other word. The two of them promptly turned their backs on the snow and fled.
First Barkilid Mountain Range Expedition: Failed.
"You want to explore the Barkilid Mountain Range? I've seen some crazy people in my time. Listen, that place is a death trap where even Veteran Adventurers lose their way. You could kit yourself out with the most eye-wateringly expensive cold-weather gear money can buy and still freeze to death out there."
After their failed expedition they went to ask the senior adventurers for advice. The seniors clicked their tongues and shook their heads.
"The most famous adventurer at the Guild won't go anywhere near the Barkilid side. When a quest comes in from that direction, he just tells the client to go to hell. So dream on, rookies."
Right. Crystal clear.
"So what you're saying is, if we kit ourselves out with that eye-wateringly expensive cold-weather gear and get good enough to rank as Veteran Adventurers, we can explore the snowfield."
"That's, well, yes, but hold on... what? Did you actually hear what I was saying?"
"Yes. Perfectly clear."
Najin nodded. Merlin sneezed,achoo,and rubbed the tip of her nose, looking like she'd caught a cold just from their brief visit to the snowfield. She nodded too.
"We have our goal, then. Merlin."
"Yeah. Perfect plan."
The goal: Veteran Adventurer rank.
And expensive cold-weather gear. To get there, what did they need to do? Accept quests, gain experience, earn money.
The two of them stood in front of the quest board.
A board plastered with requests. The sight of it brought Cambria, City of Opportunity, to mind, and Najin let himself drift into the memory for a moment. Come to think of it, it had felt exactly like this back then, hadn't it? But there was one difference from before.
"How about this one? Doesn't this look fun?"
There was someone adventuring alongside him.
Not a phantom visible only to Najin, but a real, tangible companion who was there with him. He watched Merlin stroking her chin, mulling it over with complete seriousness, and smiled.
First objective: earn enough money for proper gear.
Najin and Merlin tore a quest notice off the board.
2.
In this world, Najin was not a knight. Not a swordsman either. If a label had to be put on it, he was a Rogue. Picking locks, dismantling traps, handling the odd jobs of an adventure.
Did that role bother him?
Najin shook his head.
"This is actually fun."
Click! He popped a lock open in an instant and threw back the lid of the chest. There was something satisfying about the snap of a latch giving way. While Najin worked through the chest, Merlin was busy beating enemies over the head with her staff.
"When, exactly, are you done?!"
"Chest is open, just give me a second. There's gold coins in here."
"Can you please hurry up? I'm struggling here...?!"
Merlin was a Mage. Specifically, a Mage limited to three spells per day. Her total mana pool was so pitifully small that once she cast three times, she had to resort to close-range combat with her staff.
And she was, grudgingly, decent at it.
While Merlin shrieked and beat a goblin with her staff, Najin swept the gold coins out of the chest. He filled his pockets and kicked off the ground.
"Merlin!"
"Got it!"
Merlin swung her staff wide and jumped. Najin caught her cleanly, tucked her under his arm, and started running. Steal cleanly and bolt cleanly,that was the thief's creed. Najin was an excellent thief.
"Run, run!"
"Merlin, stop waving your arms around. I can't keep my balance."
"Okay!"
Merlin threw her arms around Najin's neck and grinned. Having successfully raided the goblins' hoard, they shook off the pursuers and made it back to town.
Goblin Vault Raid: Quest Complete!
That was more or less how their adventures went.
It was different from Najin's usual approach of sweeping everything in sight or charging straight at a problem head-on. It was different from Merlin's way of finding a shortcut in a single stroke, too.
"What's this thing?"
"Oh, if you press that..."
"AAAAAAAHH!"
Merlin took wrong turns constantly and tripped traps at every opportunity, getting snared in nets and left dangling in midair screaming. Every single time, Najin had to grunt his way through cutting her down.
"Enemies ahead."
"Enemies."
"Should we run?"
"Let's."
Rather than charging in and cutting enemies down, Najin chose to use traps or simply flee. As rogues generally did.
"There's enemies everywhere. I'm out of spells."
"Hmm. What about this, then. We lure them over here, raid the storage while they're busy, then let the traps handle them?"
"Not bad. Who does the luring?"
"Who do you think?"
"......"
"......"
"Don't tell me you're putting that on me?"
Najin wrapped a rope around Merlin and flung her. She screamed. Najin made a run for the storage. A thief's virtue is in the stealing and the running. Najin was an excellent thief.
"Hwa, HWAAAAAAAAAH!"
Monsters leaping and scrambling to grab Merlin as she dangled in midair, Merlin's voice screeching "I am going to get you for this, I swear!" providing the background music, Najin cleaned out the storage.
"All done. Let's go."
"Snff, you, you..."
He hoisted the rope-bound Merlin up above his head and ran.
This was clearly not the adventure Merlin had imagined. She muttered something like "this isn't right, something's off" under her breath, but that was not Najin's problem.
Quest Complete!
They kept completing quests and kept earning money. People at the tavern started recognizing them. A few adventurers even showed up hoping to join as frontliners, but the two of them shook their heads.
No need for frontliners.
Why fight at all when running away was an option?
There was no reason to actually defeat enemies, and a frontliner would only get in the way when it was time to bolt. Differently wired from the start, the two of them kept going as a pair.
"Half-pint Mage on one side."
"Expert escape artist Rogue on the other."
A Rogue and a Mage, the most absurd party combination imaginable, somehow thrived. Two perfectly ordinary people went on adventures that were ordinary but also, somehow, not ordinary at all.
"Look at this, Najin. Doesn't this look fun?"
"Yeah, it does. Want to make this the next one?"
"Then we need to gear up. We'll need a torch to explore that place, and potions, and an oil flask! An oil flask and some rope and we should be fine, right?"
Before each adventure they went shopping together, scouted the area and put together a rough plan, then tackled dungeons and caves in ways nobody could have anticipated.
Two people who could erase a city with a gesture were running from low-level monsters screaming, fleeing in a cold sweat.
"Haah, HAAH! We barely made it. Why are those things so persistent? How far are they going to chase us, seriously."
"I know. They really don't want to lose this, I think."
"Huh? What's that you've got?"
"The gemstone they had stashed away."
"......That explains the chase."
Getting lost, making mistakes, wandering, falling into traps in the most embarrassing ways, landing in danger, then getting out of it in ways nobody could have predicted...
Through all of it, Merlin kept bursting into laughter at random moments, grumbling at others, jumping up and cheering in place.
When she had first entered the Eternal City, her smiles had been fragile. Now she laughed with real pleasure. They had been adventuring together for some time when she brought it up one evening, almost offhand.
"Should we get a place?"
Merlin floated the idea.
"We're both just renting separate rooms at the tavern, right. That adds up. We've made decent money by now, so why not just get somewhere of our own."
It was a sensible suggestion. Paying for lodging night after night was probably more expensive in the long run than simply renting a place. And Najin had no real objection. He and Merlin had spent every waking hour together already.
"Sure, let's do it."
3.
They found a small cottage on the edge of town. After moving in, they planned the next day's adventure and each fell asleep in their own bed.
Merlin fell asleep. Najin did not.
He lay looking up at the cottage ceiling, his mind drifting elsewhere, when a sound from nearby made him turn his head. Merlin, whom he had thought asleep, was curled in on herself, shoulders shaking.
Najin narrowed his eyes.
...By nature, a Night Fairy like Merlin had no need to sleep, and no reason to have nightmares. She had complete control over her own dreams.
But the Merlin right now had bound herself into an ordinary human body. She slept like other people did, had bad dreams, and tossed and turned in the night.
She jolted upright.
Her eyes trembled as she scanned the room. Then she saw Najin there across from her, and a long, slow breath left her. She exhaled that relief, then looked away.
"...What, you're still awake?"
"About to sleep."
"Oh. Right."
Merlin lay back down, turning slightly toward him. Only once she had confirmed Najin was there did she finally manage to drift off.
...So that was why she had suddenly suggested getting a place.
Najin thought he understood the reason.
