“Wait, Druid, where are you going? We needed to talk to you,” Egar protested.
“I know,” I said with a nod.
I could just tell them I’m going to introduce them to my master, but they’d probably run if I did. Hmm…yeah. I’ll just take them there without saying anything.
“This way.”
“Hey, are you listening?! We need to talk.”
Lange sounded a bit peeved. I beckoned with a chuckle, and they both stared uncomfortably back at me.
“We’re here.”
When we arrived at the house where my master was staying, I opened the door without knocking.
“Helloooo.”
If I didn’t at least announce my presence, there was no telling what his buddy Marual would do to me. Once I was inside the house, I turned around and looked at Egar and Lange. They were stuck at the front door, nervously looking around. They were probably trying to figure out what sort of house this was.
“Egar, Lange, over here.”
They both frowned dubiously. It was funny how they often behaved in the same way.
“Is this your house, Druid? Wait, no, you wouldn’t call out hello if it was. So whose house is it?” Egar pressed me quickly.
“Easy, easy, just follow me.”
Egar realized from my tone that I wasn’t going to answer him, and his brows formed a stern crease. For an assassin, he sure was overly expressive. He probably didn’t realize it, though.
“I’ve come to visit, and I’ve brought guests.”
I stepped inside the room where my master was and found that Tombas was also there. He waved casually when he saw me.
“What’s up?” my master asked.
“I had a little request to run by you, Master. This is Egar and Lange. So, don’t freak out, but I forged a controversial contract with them…”
I pulled the contract out of my magic bag and handed it to my master. When he read its contents, his eyes widened ever so slightly. Then he looked at me, and I tensed for a second, worried he was going to yell at me.
“Pfft! Ahh ha ha ha ha! Kee hee hee! Ah ha ha ha ha!”
Arrrgh… That’s my master for you. Yeah, only he would laugh like a madman at the sight of this contract…
“Druid…what a funny thing you’ve picked up on the road.”
“I assure you I didn’t just pick it up. Uhh, anyway, I’ve got a job to do…”
Through the window, I caught a glimpse of Gotos coming toward the house. I had to find an escape route.
“You take care of the rest, okay?”
With a quick glance at Egar and Lange, I left the room. They looked dumbstruck, but I trusted my master to take good care of them.
I slipped out of the house before Gotos could see me, then headed straight for the adventurer guild, since I really did have a job. (It just had a very flexible deadline.)
Then I gasped quietly—I saw my mother in the distance.
She’s with someone… I think that’s her best friend. I wonder what happened? They both look so grim.
“No, Druid, you should stay away,” I muttered.
I ducked onto a side street before my mother saw me. It would take me longer to reach the adventurer guild this way, but I didn’t mind.
I arrived at the adventurer guild and reported that I was about to start my job. I was on a subjugation task force to take down some monsters that were rampaging deep in the forest. The size of the task force always depended on the number of monsters; this time there were only two, which meant I could do it alone.
“Good luck out there,” the clerk said.
“Thank you,” I replied as I left for the forest.
The sun’s still high, so I can take down the monsters tomorrow if I’m lucky. If not, I’ll have to camp for a few days in the forest.
When I reached the spot where the monsters were seen, I checked the ground and trees nearby. We were dealing with gashlass this time. They were fast monsters who body-slammed their prey, so I had to keep my senses honed for sudden attacks.
I listened to the sounds of the forest and noted the direction of the wind as I slowly made my way through the trees, looking for gashlass tracks. I heard the faint trickle of water, so I headed in that direction. I found a small river and checked for monster tracks on the banks.
“Affirmative.”
I found gashlass tracks there and started a more thorough search of the area. “How strange. Based on these tracks, it looks like there’s more than two of them.”
That wasn’t what the witness had said. An investigation was always carried out before a subjugation force was sent out—maybe they had overlooked it?
Rustle, rustle, rustle.
A monster was coming. I glanced around, spotted the tallest tree, and shimmied up it.
I looked at the monster who’d come to have a drink, and it was not the gashlass monster I’d been tasked to take down.
“This one seems very anxious… Something’s off.”
As the monster drank, it kept looking up, scanning its surroundings.
Rustle, rustle.
The monster looked up from its drink again at the sound of the rustling trees. Then, a moment later, a gashlass appeared from the brush behind it.
“Huh?”
I hid myself behind the tree when I saw how the gashlass was moving.
This is bad. That gashlass isn’t normal.
“It can’t be!”
I grabbed the tree’s branches to move along it, quickly scanning the area with my eyes. Then, when I saw something between the trees, I sighed.
“I knew it.”
Keeping a mindful eye on the gashlass, I slid down the tree, ran toward the object, and came upon a pile of trash hidden between the trees.
“An illegal dump.”
And it’s way too full. Have adventurers been dumping their trash here for a long time? Or have a lot of adventurers been using it?
“But what’s a dump doing in a place like this?”
I pulled my map out of my magic bag and checked where I was.
“Yeah, this is the place…and there’s nothing else here.”
According to the map, there was nothing in this area that ought to attract adventurers. I looked at the pile of trash, which had a disproportionally high concentration of magic items as well as tools for splitting rocks. It contained everything you needed for a cave expedition.
“Did somebody discover a cave nearby?”