She was beautiful and gave off a similar impression to Frau of the Liberion Order. Anyway, enough with the casual observations—she had to be able to handle herself if Joshua was vouching for her.
“Hmm... What interesting equipment,” I muttered without thinking about it.
“Thank you,” she said, her tone exceedingly businesslike. “My primary duty is supporting Master Joshua.”
“I-I see.”
It was like she was intentionally keeping all emotion out of her voice. Being able to do that was probably a requirement for some professions.
My interest was in her weaponry. She had a bow and a quiver of arrows on her back, and a dagger and a whip hanging from her waist. It was quite the rare lineup of weapons. The bow and dagger made sense to me, but not the whip. It was questionable whether you could even call the whip a weapon—in my personal opinion, at least.
Unlike a normal weapon, it was extremely hard to handle, and it had no killing power. It was plenty capable of inflicting pain, though. So if the goal was to make a target feel pain, it was an excellent tool.
However, it was surprisingly difficult to kill an opponent like that. Maybe a human might fall to it, but would it be of any use against a large monster? She’d claimed to be Joshua’s support, so maybe she wasn’t equipped to defeat her opponents. She could have been there to seal an enemy’s movements and throw them off-balance from afar—Joshua would be the one dealing the finishing blow.
It was a fairly interesting approach...but quite difficult to establish a party where you depended entirely on someone else to be able to finish your foes. It would bring up the question of what to do in the event that you were left alone. Well, it would work out one way or another as long as you had the technique to make up for it...but if you did, it made more sense to just equip yourself with gear to fight on your own. I had no intention of butting in on the affairs of people who weren’t even my pupils, so I kept that to myself.
“Ah. Joshua is strong enough that he now has someone completely dedicated to providing him support,” I reasoned, approaching the conversation from a different angle.
It was indeed very specialized equipment, but I could see it from another perspective too—they were able to fight effectively as a team, even with such an extreme setup. Joshua was simply that good.
“Yes. Master Joshua is the black rank of the Salura Zaruk Empire’s adventurer’s guild,” Misty explained.
“A black rank?!”
I shuddered at the thought. Black ranks were the strongest adventurers in the guild. One could easily count how many there were across the entire world, including Surena. It was quite the shock that Joshua had reached such heights too.
That said, this fact guaranteed his skill. He was at least at Surena’s level, which was an extraordinary feat. I was honestly glad to hear it. He had a tendency to take things to an extreme, after all. But this tendency had apparently combined well with his growth in maturity to mellow him out.
“We have only worked together a handful of times, but I can vouch for their abilities,” Surena added.
“Feels nice hearing that from you,” Joshua said. “Anyway, looking forward to working with you all.”
“Y-Yeah, likewise,” I said. “Lucy, let’s move out.”
“Mm, very well.”
We couldn’t afford to waste more time on introductions and idle conversation. Only Lucy knew how far away Id Invicius had gotten in the meantime—the rest of us had no way of telling whether it could still be tracked. Even over just a few minutes, a wild beast could cover a considerable distance, and this was especially true for a large, agile specimen.
“It’s that way,” Lucy directed. “I doubt it’s gotten far. Its territory must have limits.”
“Hmm, you’ve got a point there,” I agreed.
According to Lucy, it was still within our reach. Id Invicius was huge, but its territory couldn’t be endless. After all, a single monster could only claim so much for itself. It would have to communicate to other fauna, “Hey, all of this is mine,” and actually enforce those boundaries.
I doubted Id Invicius would totally abandon its territory and take off on such short notice. Things could change if it got more wary of us, though. I wanted to finish it off for good, and considering our party lineup, I felt like we had a chance. Frankly, it would be impressive if it did manage to outrun us. But if it moved its territory, the investigation would have to start over from square one, and I definitely wanted to avoid that.
“All right, let’s get going...” I said. “Allucia, something wrong?”
“No, it’s nothing. Let’s hurry.”
“I see... Got it.”
She’d been awfully quiet ever since our encounter with Joshua and Misty. He couldn’t really be called my pupil, but nonetheless, her reaction was somewhat unexpected—she was meeting yet another person who’d studied the blade under me, after all.
That said, just as Lucy had told us, now wasn’t exactly the time for chitchat. If Allucia was thinking the same thing, maybe I was reading too much into it. If anything, I could be criticized for stopping to ask her about it.
“We’re the ones tagging along,” Joshua said, “so I suppose we should take on the dangerous vanguard or watch the rear.”
“Handle the rear,” I decided. “Surena and I will take the front.”
“Understood.”
Our new formation was set. Surena and I led the way, Lucy and Allucia took the center, and Joshua and Misty watched the rear. Joshua’s enthusiasm was commendable—since he’d joined our expedition late, he’d offered to take the most dangerous positions. He wasn’t the type to hold back or abandon his allies. On that one point at least, I trusted his personality. Everything else, well...I would just have to reevaluate from scratch.