Afterward, I tried to warn the children about the dangers of traveling alone, then hightailed it outta there with the Blazing Valkyries. I’d probably failed to convince them, considering a little girl who couldn’t fight at all had been traveling solo without any problems whatsoever. The lord probably hadn’t gotten any useful information from our meeting, and he wouldn’t want to invite over a devil that might entice his children down a dangerous path ever again, so I probably wouldn’t get any more requests for those pointless visits.
That’s one problem out of the way. Good...
As I’d thought...that priestess girl, Miss Edith, was the Angel herself. She’d mentioned getting chased around by monsters and escaping, but there was no way a little girl could escape from monsters with such little legs! And even if she was the daughter of a rich or noble family, she couldn’t possibly go around selling expensive gemstones left and right. Besides, how would a girl with so much money and so many valuables travel by herself without getting attacked by bandits or other travelers and villagers?
A priestess would be less likely to be attacked, but that would only keep her safe for so long. It wasn’t just bandits and thugs around town she had to look out for—a seedy traveler or villager, the merchant to whom she’d sold her gemstones, the clerk who’d watched the transaction, and others would’ve surely followed and robbed her. She would have then been stripped and sold to a slave trader or used for ransom—and it would have happened within a few days of starting her adventure, guaranteed. Yet she’d been keeping up her activities for months on end... Minor blessings from the Goddess wouldn’t have been enough to keep her safe. There was some greater power at work here—she couldn’t possibly be human!
What do I do? Aaah! Aaaaaahhh!
They’re here. Here. We. Go!
An unfamiliar group of men had arrived in town. A lot of them. The group consisted of delinquent hunters, soldiers pretending to be hunters, and plain old thugs. They were the enemies I’d been waiting for.
One might wonder, how could I tell who they really were? I couldn’t, of course, but the ladies of the Blazing Valkyries could. Supposedly, the way they walked, their posture, the way they observed their surroundings, and how they looked at women as they made their way down the street all included habits that were telltale signs of their profession. Soldiers had good posture, and their strides naturally aligned as they walked together. They also had the same swords and footwear, even if they wore different clothes. They wouldn’t feel comfortable going into combat with an unfamiliar weapon or footwear, and they probably couldn’t find boots that were the right fit in time. Such items couldn’t be mass-produced in this world, and expensive leather boots for combat probably had to be specially ordered.
The delinquent hunters and thugs were...well, exactly what they seemed. They hadn’t tried to disguise themselves or anything, unlike the soldiers, who’d be in trouble if word got out that a group of foreign military types had infiltrated this place to kidnap a woman. The hunters and thugs didn’t have to worry about that, though the hunters could still have their licenses revoked. Moreover, all of them could get arrested, after which they might even be sold as criminal slaves.
A group this large would’ve been better off disguising themselves as a trade caravan and its escort, but they would’ve had to prepare a carriage and supplies, and this lot probably wouldn’t have known how to act like merchants. Besides, if they were supposed to be merchants, it would’ve been one thing for them to be carrying something small for self-defense, but such serious weapons could raise suspicions, so maybe that wasn’t an option.
They had all split into smaller parties or were otherwise solo, but they were also still exchanging information with each other, so it was obvious that they were all from the same group. Whoever had hired them must’ve given them directions, but you couldn’t expect much from bottom-of-the-barrel hunters and thugs. I’d hidden in my inn right away, and Chessie, the scout of the group, had gathered a bunch of intel for me. But like I mentioned before...there was a disproportionate burden of responsibility on Chessie! Probably because she was so talented that she could do everything better than the rest of the group. It was a common phenomenon for people to pile work onto capable people, after all. That was why it was best not to tell others about your abilities and qualifications at work unless it was going to lead to promotions and better pay.
According to Chessie, the group had been asking about me at the Hunter’s Guild branch. They hadn’t bothered checking the Commerce Guild, probably because they hadn’t guessed I would’ve made any connections with traders by selling my gemstones there. I’d been helped by Darsen during our last encounter, but the enemy party probably hadn’t known his shop was in this town, so they must’ve thought we were no longer in touch. Besides, hunters, thugs, and soldiers had nothing to do with the Commerce Guild, so they wouldn’t know how to get information out of merchants. Information was the fourth most important thing for merchants after their own lives, money, and reputation, so they wouldn’t have given it away so easily anyway. On the other hand, hunters were generally cooperative with each other, and all you had to do was buy them a drink and they’d gladly give up intel as long as it wouldn’t hurt them to do so. Thugs were generally in the same boat too. And so, they’d tried asking around at the Hunter’s Guild branch, but...
“All of the hunters and staff there shut them out, claiming they didn’t know anything,” Chessie reported.
It seemed hunters protected people who hired them, which I was grateful to find out. Still, I wouldn’t be able to escape my pursuers forever by just staying at the inn. If they went on to question people who didn’t know what was going on, like shop workers, random townsfolk, children, or folks at the orphanage, it wouldn’t take long for them to find out I was staying here. Given that, it would be best for me to strike before they had this place surrounded. They do say “The best defense is a good defense,” after all.
Or so I thought...
“What the hell are you doing here?!”
“We just have business up ahead... Is there a problem?”
“...”
There was a somewhat undignified hunter group of four that wasn’t from around here, and right behind their group was a hunter party of five that was clearly leagues ahead of them in rank. There wasn’t much an outsider could say when challenged by locals like this. Besides, they had to avoid trouble in order to accomplish their mission for their employer, and they wouldn’t walk away unscathed against a local party that outclassed and outnumbered them. And so, the party of outsiders reluctantly backed off.
After some time, the local party finally went in a different direction. Just as the outsiders thought they could resume their investigation, they realized they were being followed by five soldiers who appeared to be local guards.
“What the hell! What did we do?!” one of the outsiders erupted angrily.
“Excuse me? We’re just on patrol. What are you so upset about? Are you up to something that you wouldn’t want seen by guards?” asked one of the soldiers.
“Ugh...”
After the guardsmen left, a group that seemed to be personal guards for a merchant family appeared, followed by a different group of hunters, with someone trailing them one after another.
“What’s going on here?! Forget kidnapping anyone, we won’t even be able to get any intel on people at this rate!” one of the hired hunters complained.
They were indeed hunters, but the Hunter’s Guild obviously didn’t condone such illegal acts, so they’d taken on this mission as freelance work without going through the official channels. Therefore, the strangers had no support from the guild for this gig, and since they were committing a crime, they would be expelled from the guild if caught. But perhaps that wouldn’t be much of an issue, considering that they would be arrested and sold as criminal slaves if they ended up getting exposed.