“Let’s go on an adventure!” Kyoko said.
“Where is this coming from...?” asked Reiko.
“Well, a good merchant should have all sorts of rare products that can fetch a high price, right?”
“Kyoko, didn’t you say you’ve been collecting a bunch of things during our world trip?” I asked.
“Yeah, I gathered things far from human settlements and bought stuff with money I made selling jewelry, but I never hunted monsters on my own,” she answered.
Kyoko wasn’t the animal-hunting type, so she must’ve focused on finding rare items by scanning around with some sort of detector and buying things with money. An ordinary girl would probably get attacked by a bunch of bad guys if she walked around with so much money, but this was Kyoko we were talking about... I hoped whichever thugs messed with her rested in peace.
“So, I’ve been hoping to get some rare monster and animal materials, along with some herbs and stuff...”
Ah... She’s probably not lying about wanting to gather materials, but I get it. She wants to go on a trip as a trio for the first time in a while.
I couldn’t blame her. For me, it felt like five or so years had passed before we were reunited, but it felt like decades for them—and we’d been busy the entire time since. Even when we weren’t putting out fires, we had to take care of the kids, develop our business, and all sorts of other things. Going on a trip together like we did back when we were students didn’t sound bad at all. Plus, Reiko had already crossed the continent on a carriage (with some parts on horseback), and Kyoko had looked really envious when she’d heard about it. The kids would probably be fine on their own for a week or so as long as we explained the situation beforehand, and we could ask the local lord and Hunter’s Guild to keep them safe.
I gave Reiko a look, and she nodded.
Okay, then.
“Let’s do this!” we said in unison.
“Well, we’ll be out for a few days to go gather some materials, so be good while we’re gone. Make sure you contact the guards, Hunter’s Guild, Commerce Guild, or the lord’s manor if anything happens! I’ve already reached out to them, so they’ll come help right away!” I said.
“Okay!” they said at once.
Good. No, we’re off!
“Hold it right there”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!”
Hm?
“We hardly ever get to do anything—you think we’re just gonna let you go on a trip without us?”
“You do realize we’re riding horses, right? Oh, and we can pull a carriage too!”
Oh, it’s Scary and Hang.
They had a point, and I sympathized with them.
“Okay then, let’s go together!” I said.
“Yaaay!” they cheered.
Scary and Hang had been pouting in silence for a while now, the jubilation from earlier now completely gone.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, but I was met with silence.
I had no idea what was going on with them. They’d been in such a good mood when we’d departed from Little Silver with me on Hang and Reiko and Kyoko on Scary. Ever since it’d gotten dark and we all boarded the dinghy, they’d been completely quiet.
I wonder what’s wrong...?
“This is the Western Continent. Looks like the people from our continent haven’t discovered it yet. There are all sorts of cool places here, like the unexplored land near the center of the continent and the Forest of Death near human settlements, where it’s said that those who enter never return,” Kyoko explained.
“Cool places” was an interesting way to describe the areas feared by the locals. I mean, I understood she could just use barriers and shields and shoot beams down from the sky, but still. She’d only been here to gather things when she’d been here solo instead of hunting, so she’d probably used sensors to scan the area, headed straight toward her objective, then put up barriers in the vicinity to search by hand, with a manipulator, or a machine without an ego that just followed orders. Whatever she’d done, it had to be a method that hadn’t exposed her to an ounce of danger. And even on our hunt today, our risk level wasn’t much different.
Damned cheater...
“So, what do we do about this poor victim...?” I asked.
An animal was lying on the ground before us, convulsing. The horn on its head had been cut off, and it looked like it was dying...
“We don’t need its meat or fur, so I guess we can just release it,” Reiko replied.
Kyoko had something to say about that. “That’s cruel! That fine horn was probably its pride as a strong male. It probably won’t be able to attract a mate or protect its herd without it.”
“Oh...” Reiko said.
Kyoko was right. So what were we supposed to do?
“Perfect! Simply perfect!” Kyoko said.
Reiko and I stared in silence.
We were in the infirmary—or more like the operating room—on Kyoko’s mothership. The surgeon was, of course, a fully-automated surgery machine. Although Kyoko knew how to operate all of the machinery on the ship, it wasn’t as if she had any medical knowledge or skills herself. Besides, even if she did, no one would be brave enough to put their lives in her hands if they knew what kind of person she was...
Laid out on the surgery table, knocked out with anesthetics, was the poor unicorn whose precious horn we’d cut off. Now, a replacement horn made of special alloy had been fused into the remaining base—one that would never rust, break, or bend.
Yeah, that looks super cool. I’m sure it’ll get all the ladies now.
The medical robot had claimed the chances of the artificial horn breaking before the creature died of old age was nearly zero, but we’d made it so it would send us a signal if the horn fell off or broke while it was still alive, just in case.
Such flawless care!
Now we just had to put it back where we’d found it and protect it with a barrier until the anesthetics wore off.
The pious unicorn that had offered us its horn awakened, then realized it still had the horn it thought it was missing. It seemed to dismiss the earlier events as a dream, shook its head, then left.
All right, mission complete!
“Off to our next target! Let’s go!”
“Yeah!”
Kyoko pumped her fist, seemingly overjoyed that no animal had fallen victim to our hunt.
Of course, we hadn’t known at the time that after this, that unicorn tore through its enemies with its invincible horn and massively expanded its herd’s territory, causing a surge in the unicorn population as a result...
“Hey, Kaoru... Couldn’t we have just used your potion to regenerate its horn instead of attaching one made of special alloy?”
“Oh...”