“Eep!”
The pack of dogs was ambling around about a meter out from the steps.
When they saw Sarasa’s face, they bared their fangs and growled at her.
“No!”
Still crouched down, Sarasa clung to the woman’s leg.
The redhead made no move to shake Sarasa off, but also offered her no help, instead simply murmuring curiously, “Does this not...bother you?”
“I-It does bother me! Those dogs are scary!”
Fear was stealing her breath away. Sarasa didn’t actually dislike dogs. She typically liked them, in fact. But now that she’d seen these up close, she realized the dogs behind her were far larger than an adult human. Pacing around as they were with their fangs bared, it was hardly the sort of situation where she would be remarking about how cute they were.
“They’re not dogs, they’re mountain wolves. And that’s not what I meant...” The woman put her hand on her head and moved it about awkwardly. “Well, whatever. The door wasn’t locked. Go ahead and come in.”
“Thang you!”
Wait, why am I talking like that? Childlike appearance or not, Sarasa was twenty-seven years old...
She suddenly started shuddering when she realized she wouldn’t be dog food after all, and let go of the woman’s leg, scrambling to her feet and tottering through the open door.
The dogs growled until the woman told them, “Get lost,” and then ran away whimpering.
Of course, it seemed as though she had thrown something at them besides just her words. In any case, the dogs—or rather, the wolves—were now gone.
Sarasa sniffled, tears pouring down her face now that she was able to relax. Part of her was disgusted at herself for behaving like this when she was an adult, but the goddess had told her that she’d made her ten years old again, so Sarasa figured she was allowed a few tears.
“Just sit down wherever.”
“O-Okay.” Sarasa looked for a place to sit down, wiping her tears with her sleeve.
Around her, she saw scattered articles of clothing, a pile of wrinkled pelts, browning apple cores, and some kind of bones. Bones?
“I-I can’t.”
The goddess said she’d be well taken care of... Goddesses were liars.
Seeing the hopelessness on Sarasa’s face, the woman glanced around with some chagrin and cleared some things off of what must have been a chair. “You can sit here.”
As Sarasa stumbled over to the chair, something at her feet snapped, but she decided to pretend she hadn’t heard anything. There was nothing on the chair for the time being. It was a little big for her, so she had to clamber up onto it before sitting down.
The woman pulled another hidden chair out of who-knew-where, sat down on it, and propped her chin onto her hand, asking without preamble, “You’re one of the Invited, aren’t you?”
“Invited?” Sarasa cocked her head. The goddess hadn’t said anything about that. She hadn’t said much of anything, in truth.
“I don’t know if she was a goddess, but a person who looked like one told me I had a body that needed mana and that she’d make it so I could adapt to this world... That’s all I know.” She had said some other things too, but that was all Sarasa could think of at the moment.
“A goddess-like person... This world... Needs mana... You are one of the Invited. It’s no wonder.”
It might have been no wonder to the woman, but Sarasa was completely lost.
Her elbow still resting on the table, the woman drily explained, “People come here from another world sometimes. We call them the Invited. They just show up out of nowhere like you did. They vary in age, but they’re usually young.”
Sarasa recalled the goddess saying she’d brought several people here from Earth already. She’d also said she’d make Sarasa ten years old to adapt to this world, but if there were people who came at different ages, that must not apply to everyone. What else had she said...? Oh, right.
“Umm, I also think she said something about absorbing mana?”
The woman raised an eyebrow in surprise at that. “That’s right. The Invited can absorb mana and make use of any amount of it, so they often make names for themselves as Hunters. They’re in real high demand.”
It was news to her that she could use mana in addition to just absorbing it, but something else caught her attention more than that. “Hunters.” People who hunted animals?
Sarasa recalled what she’d just seen outside. Ridiculously large deer. Even larger birds who caught those deer in their talons. A vicious pack of wolves. People hunted those?
“I can’t be a Hunter...” Sarasa shook her head. There was no way she could hunt such terrifying creatures.
“Yeah, probably not. You chose to get eaten over fighting earlier.” The woman crossed her arms and looked up at the ceiling. “Since you’re a woman, you could marry into the nobility. You’d live in a big mansion, carefully protected, at least as far as I hear.”
“I don’t want to do that either. I mean, I finally came to a world where I don’t have to be tired all the time.”
After being suddenly thrust into a different world and told all she had to do was exist there, acting as a sort of air purifier, there was no way she could know what she wanted to do right away. But she could tell that she wasn’t tired or sluggish at the moment. She would be able to do so much more than she ever could before, so why not live an active life?
Sarasa was feeling rather cheerful now, completely forgetting the fact that her life had been in danger just moments ago. She didn’t need to decide what she wanted to do right away, she supposed.
“Let me ask one more time. Are you really feeling okay?” the woman asked Sarasa.
“I feel great. Better than I ever have before.”
“Hmm. There’s no pressure or anything?”
“No.” Sarasa wasn’t quite sure what the woman was asking. She supposed if she had to name something that was making her a little uncomfortable, it was the messy state of the cottage.
“Okay.” The woman nodded and stood up, evidently satisfied. “In any event, whatever decision you make, you won’t be able to leave here for a while anyway.”
“I can’t leave?” Sarasa was taken aback.
“You saw outside, right? This is the Dark Mountain, in the north. There are wyverns in the air, herds of moose on the ground, and mountain wolves running around everywhere. It would take an adult three days to get to the nearest town on foot. I can make it there in one full day myself, but not if I have a kid with me.”
So the thing Sarasa had seen wasn’t an eagle or a hawk, but a wyvern. No wonder its wings had looked so small. That likewise meant that the “moose” wasn’t an ordinary moose either, Sarasa realized, feeling a little overwhelmed. Yet the woman continued on without a care for Sarasa’s bewilderment.
“In other words...”
“In other words?”
“Until you’re strong enough to leave, you’ll be stuck here at this cottage.”
She’d come to a totally different world, but she was stuck living alone with this woman in this filthy cottage. The thought almost caused Sarasa to lose hope, but she quickly recovered.
Sarasa had always had so little energy that she’d never been able to do any of the things she wanted to, so she had confidence in her ability to manage her own expectations.
She listed out all the good things about her situation. At the very least, the person she’d be living with was another woman—a strong woman, from what she’d seen earlier. It was hard to tell at a glance, but she seemed kind. Even if it was filthy in here. But Sarasa could just do something about that herself.
“I’m Nef... No, Nelly. Call me Nelly.” The woman held out her hand to Sarasa, one side of her mouth quirking up into a tiny smile. Her hand was large and strong, protected by a fingerless black leather glove.
“I’m Sarasa. Ichinokura Sarasa.”
“Ichinok Rasarasa? That’s an odd name. Do I call you Ichinok?”
“No, no, my name is Sarasa.”
“Sara, then.”
This was the first person who’d ever called Sarasa “Sara.” Was there really a need to shorten her name? Her family and friends had all called her Sarasa. But maybe that was fine. This was a new life, after all.
Sarasa wasn’t sure about addressing someone she’d just met by her first name, though. She looked up at the woman called Nelly. She was big. It was hard to tell now that Sarasa was smaller, but Nelly looked like she was over 170 centimeters, and probably the same age Sarasa had been on Earth. In other words, her late twenties, maybe thirty.
She was beautiful. She wore practical, masculine clothing, but with her long, flame-red hair tied up messily behind her head, it was obvious to anyone that she was a beautiful woman. The bright green of her gemstone-like eyes contrasted with her hair. The fact that Sarasa was able to talk normally with someone like this, who would have looked very out of place in Japan, brought it home to her that she really was in a different world.
“Nelly?” She mustered up her courage to call the woman by her name and timidly held out a hand, which Nelly gripped firmly.
For some reason, Nelly closed her eyes for a moment, grimacing. “Nelly, eh?”
Was it too forward of her to call her that?
“That’s nice.”
Apparently, it was nice.
Sarasa couldn’t help supplying the mental commentary. Evidently, the grimace had been her enjoying being called Nelly. Maybe she was actually a pretty funny person.
Nelly opened her eyes and smiled widely this time. Sarasa was shocked, having only paid attention to the color of her hair and eyes until now. When she smiled, she gave off a completely different impression. She was bursting with vigor and truly stunning.
“I’m a Hunter. I act as the caretaker of the Dark Mountain.”
“Okay. I appreciate you letting me stay with you for a while.”
Sarasa had no idea what this Dark Mountain was and what being the caretaker of it entailed, but she accepted the introduction without fuss, figuring she’d work all that out sooner or later. For the time being, she at least had a place to stay.
And that was how Sarasa’s new life started.