The second day passed as smoothly as the first for the party, and by the third night, they’d all gained a thorough understanding of Shiori’s abilities. It was precisely because they were all seasoned adventurers, who had completed countless quests and evaded death any number of times, that they could see exactly what a treasure she was.
If camping for a long period was required to fulfill a client’s request, that alone was enough to render the difficulty level high. Poor meals of preserved foods, sleeping in uncomfortable conditions, and the feeling of growing dirtier by the day—no matter how accustomed to it a person might be, over time, such things chip away at both body and spirit. Fatigue builds up, little by little, dulling both movement and judgment. Once that happens, it becomes difficult to utilize one’s true abilities, and that directly affects the outcome of the job—its success or failure. At times, it even puts lives at risk.
But what if, amidst all of that, there were someone who would monitor everyone’s conditions and look after them—what then?
As Alec sipped his post-meal restorative herb tea within the comfortable confines of the camp’s barrier, he watched Shiori diligently and efficiently completing her work.
“Hey,” said Alec. “You seem to be working as a solo-type. Aren’t you going to join a party? With how hard you work, there must be no shortage of demand for you.”
“Alec!” Clemens hurriedly shouted an admonition. The relaxed atmosphere of the camp had frozen over with Alec’s casual words. Shiori’s gentle expression grew strained.
Blast. Was this something he shouldn’t have brought up?
“Everyone treats me very kindly,” said Shiori, “but I am just a low-level mage. If I stayed anywhere for too long, I would only prove to be a hindrance.”
There was a trace of bitterness to her words. Sensing something very like pain, Alec silently chided himself. He’d been tactless. Everyone had something they didn’t want others to touch on. That included himself.
After a pause, Shiori spoke, averting her eyes. “I’ll go have my bath now.”
Perhaps feeling like she couldn’t stay there another moment, Shiori turned and slipped into the bathing tent as though she were running away. Rurii bounced once in a manner that seemed reproachful, then followed after its master.
The tension in the air slackened a little, and someone let out a sigh.
Alec hesitated. “Sorry. I’ve made things uncomfortable.”
“You couldn’t help it,” said Ellen, casting a worried glance toward the tent. “You didn’t know.”
There was a brief silence, and then...
“She was...” Linus spoke in short, quiet bursts, “abandoned...by her last party.”
Alec paused before asking, “Abandoned?”
It wasn’t a pleasant subject, but it was common in the world of adventurers. The weak were cast aside. No matter how much you’d been through together, if a person proved to be too much of a burden, that person would be urged to withdraw from the party.
Almost as though he’d guessed Alec’s line of thought, Linus’s usually good-natured expression twisted with bitterness.
“I don’t mean that figuratively,” he said. “I mean that they literally abandoned her.”
About four years earlier, when Zack was still active as an adventurer, he’d taken an Eastern woman under his care while on a job. He’d found her collapsed and unconscious in a forest. When she regained consciousness, those who had taken care of her were baffled. They couldn’t understand each other’s languages. When they finally managed to communicate somewhat, through gestures and body language, all they were able to learn was that her name was Shiori. Being that she was from a different ethnic group, and the fact that she was clearly in some kind of unusual situation, she was too much for them to handle. However, they couldn’t just leave an unknown woman on her own, so they entrusted her to the Guild.
After some time had passed and she had learned enough to be able to have ordinary conversations, everyone was surprised to learn that the person they had assumed to be a girl in her early teens from her appearance, was actually a full-grown woman who had already passed her mid-twenties. However, while it was good that they were able to learn her age and the name of the nation she had come from, no country matching that name appeared on their maps. Perhaps it was a country so small it didn’t appear on a map. Or else she might be from some as-yet undiscovered tribe. Opinions within the Guild were split, but no conclusion was ever reached. She didn’t even know why she had collapsed in that place, or how and from whence she had gotten there.
Shiori herself appeared to give up the idea of returning to her homeland.
That aside, as she was a grown woman, she needed to secure work to provide a living for herself. To start off, she began helping at the Guild. While doing chores and odd jobs in the dining hall and for the clerical staff, she studied language, history, and culture. Perhaps because she was desperate to survive, she absorbed everything very quickly, and she learned everything she might need to assuage that hunger.
Though it had been thought that Shiori might have come from some remote tribe, by the time she was able to live on her own, there were very few people who still believed that. Her deportment, the way she thought about things, the way she learned, the way she made use of her knowledge—it was clear from all and any of these things that she had been raised in a highly sophisticated culture.
That said, there weren’t any places that would hire an Easterner, already so rarely encountered, and one with unusual circumstances at that. In the end, Shiori decided to go ahead and register as an adventurer. The Adventurers’ Guild served, in part, as a repository for people with complicated situations, so even someone with circumstances like hers would be accepted with no issues so long as she passed the test.
She passed the examination without difficulty, and proved positive for magical power in the aptitude test. However, the amount of magical power she possessed was extraordinarily low, rendering it uncertain whether she would be able to perform the work of an average mage. Shiori chose that path anyway. She said that she didn’t mind because she wasn’t looking to be very successful, merely for a way to make a living.