I’d gotten information from Allucia and negotiated with Nidus, all within the span of a few hours. Despite my impatience, time didn’t go by particularly fast—nor did it go slowly. The next day, I explained things to Mewi and went to see Lucy.
And then, the day of my departure dawned. I awoke early, met up with my hired guides outside the guild, and left Baltrain.
The trip took about a week, and then finally, my destination was in sight.
“There it is. That’s one of Vesparta’s gates.”
“Ooh, it’s huge...”
“It’s the major city...entrusted with the west...”
My guides had been very accommodating during the journey. I’d also been quite unreasonable. When I’d arrived at the guild for our departure, horses had been prepared for me and my guides. I’d had no idea how far Vesparta was from Baltrain, but either way, lounging around in a carriage had never been an option—there simply hadn’t been time. If we’d dallied in the carriage, we wouldn’t have reached Vesparta until everything was over. I have no idea whether it would’ve been a good end or a bad one, though.
I’d planned to borrow some horses anyway, but I hadn’t expected the guild to have prepared everything in advance. I owed Nidus another debt. We’d spurred our horses on, switching out for new ones along the way. Those, I’d paid for out of my own pocket. There was a limit to how far a horse was capable of traveling while carrying someone. So, to get to our destination as fast as possible, it’d been absolutely necessary to get fresh mounts.
We’d rested at villages and towns along the way only when possible, making this quite the forced march all the way to Vesparta. Even then, it had taken a whole week. This gamble was already pretty bad, but there wasn’t much more we could’ve done about the travel time. Plenty of people probably fantasized about how much easier things would be if we could instantly arrive at any destination, but I’d personally never lamented the lack of such technology as much as I did now.
“At any rate, you seem to be in quite the hurry, Mr. Gardenant,” one of the adventurers remarked.
“Yeah. Someone’s waiting for me in Vesparta, so I wanted to get here quickly.”
“I see.”
This wasn’t necessarily a lie. But it wasn’t entirely the truth either. I’d had to come up with some excuse, though—it was unnatural for me to be in such a rush when my goal was sightseeing. Maybe I could’ve gotten away with saying that I wanted to see the sights of Vesparta as soon as possible, but there was nothing to gain from making things even more unnatural. In hindsight, maybe there was no need for such excuses...
“Thanks for getting me here, Porta,” I said.
“It was nothing! I’m just glad we were able to help you.”
Yes, the adventurer who served as my guide was the same one Surena and I had supervised one year ago.
“We, um...hoped you could see how we’ve grown a little...”
“We’ve...ranked up too...”
I smiled. “Ha ha, thanks to you too, Needry, Sarlikatz.”
Porta’s group was a team of three. His partners, Needry and Sarlikatz, were in good health. As Sarlikatz had said, Porta and Needry were now silver rank, while Sarlikatz was a step ahead at gold. Porta had wanted to catch up, but he’d been injured during the fight with Zeno Grable, so he’d needed to take time off to recover. There’s not much that could be done about that.
By all rights, silver ranks weren’t suited for a long-distance escort mission. Sarlikatz would just barely qualify as a candidate. An adventurer’s rank had a pretty direct correlation to their combat abilities, after all.
However, this was an escort mission only on paper. All I had really needed were guides who were somewhat used to traveling and capable enough to protect themselves. To put it bluntly, I was stronger than these three put together. There’s no telling how things’ll be in ten years, though. Still, when it came to planning the journey and stuff like that, their preparations were impressive.
I could’ve probably reached Vesparta on my own, but could I have made it without hitting any delays? I wasn’t sure. This was an adverse effect of having spent my whole life in the countryside—I lacked experience at such things. And before this situation, that hadn’t seemed like such a bad thing. I wasn’t denying the importance of the time I’d spent with my mom, dad, and pupils. But when faced with a situation that I couldn’t solve on my own, I couldn’t help but lament my ignorance.
With Vesparta in sight, I felt myself relax a little. Swept up by that mood, I turned things in a more casual direction.
“What will you three do once we’re in the city?” I asked.
“I guess we’ll get some rest, then see if there are any jobs we can take at the guild there,” Porta answered. “It’ll be nice if there’s an escort mission going back to Baltrain.”
“Oh? There’s a guild hall here too?”
“There is. It’s not as big as Baltrain’s, though.”
“Hmmm.”
I hadn’t known about that. But now that I thought about it, Nidus had introduced himself as the master of Liberis’s branch when we first met. He hadn’t called it Baltrain’s branch. I wonder if that means there are guild facilities all over the kingdom. I hadn’t expected to call up the adventurer’s guild, so I’d never considered it. But now that I was involved with them, maybe it was best to learn a bit more.
Allucia had also mentioned that the guild was forming a search party and sending out liaisons. If these were all being dispatched from Baltrain...they would arrive too late to help Surena. It only made sense for there to be guild members stationed all over the place, including Vesparta.
It was a bit of a pain point that I couldn’t really rely on that network right now. There was no telling how certain connections could come in handy in the future. For example, my current circumstances had all started with Allucia taking me out of Beaden. I really should’ve gotten used to this stuff earlier. This was only something I could consider after all this time had passed, though.