Sieg really hated it when you tried to fuss over him. I got that. He was still young—a time when it made sense to be more critical of others than yourself—and he didn’t discriminate (which isn’t to say he was totally devoid of tact—just that he knew nobody was above criticism). If he was mad, he had a proper reason for it. Plus, the fact that he hadn’t already heaped his lid at me was a sign that something was on his mind. I couldn’t just waltz up to him and ignore the signs. I hoped from our normal conversation that he realized I wasn’t giving him the cold shoulder or anything.
That reminded me. It seemed like Miss Firene had suitably recovered, because she was standing a short distance away, a basket in hand and her eyes fixed on me. I needed to talk to her too. I could understand what Margit had meant when she whispered that I “overdid it” before leaving on her mission...
[Tips] Burials are mainstream in the Empire of Rhine. This is chiefly a matter of economics—it costs too much to supply enough firewood to reduce a body to ashes—and sanitation. Although funeral pyres are rare, they are treated as an honorable way to be delivered to the afterlife by some religious sects.
I suddenly found myself missing the sagas. The bad guys in them were just so simple.
The magus who planned the end of the world wouldn’t budge from their tower. The evil dragon that had hoarded the kingdom’s wealth wouldn’t leave their cavernous lair. The terrifying bandit chief always returned to their hideout in the mountains or some ruins. The foreign general would station themselves in the middle of a camp and even tell the hero where they were based. I envied that simplicity. If you knew where the enemy was, all you needed to do was charge in and take their head.
A key part of our jobs as adventurers was making the trek into enemy territory and taking down our target. It didn’t matter if there was a village plagued by bandits or a new dungeon somewhere, because most times it was obvious who needed killing and where we needed to go to do it. We were the ones who were meant to be surrounding the enemy and setting them ablaze!
“Ugh... I don’t care who it is anymore...someone...bring the fight...” I muttered.
“What’s wrong with you? Did ya finally lose it from too much digging?” Sieg replied.
The lack of an answer or any development had gotten to me. It had been two days since Margit had left, and we were still hard at work digging. This time we had finally gotten around to the trenches. It was a boring job, and I’d started to question what it meant to be an adventurer.
Siegfried, who was digging next to me, had shot me a look as if I had gone truly mad. He wasn’t completely wrong, but were you really meant to look at your comrade the same way you do some guy in the street having an episode?
I tried to explain my position by talking about the difficulties of this battle of attrition. He wiped away the sweat and pulled a difficult expression.
“I get where you’re comin’ from,” he said.
“Right? This kind of work isn’t even suited to adventurers.”
“Hey, this is beyond ‘suitable.’ Who even knows all this stuff about fortress defense? What’s weird is how clued in you are about all this.”
“Huh? Can’t you think of any songs where it comes up?”
“No.”
Siegfried was talking to me, but he was still giving me quite the cold shoulder. I’d seen him talking in small groups with the Fellows, but I didn’t know what exactly had happened. I didn’t want to play the role of the stupid protagonist who had selective hearing; it was clear he had a problem with me. Whatever it was, he was keeping it to himself and putting his energies into his work instead.
To be honest, I could think of a few reasons.
I knew that although Kaya was good at hiding things from our Fellows, there was no way she could hide them from her childhood friend. While she was a mage with knowledge way beyond Sieg’s ken, even he could tell that the terrifying explosion—at least that was how it must have seemed to them—and her intel on zombies were things that a herbalist couldn’t simply pick up along the way.
I had my own personal reasons for hiding the fact that I could use magic. It was my own excitement after chatting with Kaya that had led her to finding out, but I still hadn’t told my comrade. We’d been friends for a long time now, and really mulling over why I had kept this for so long, I couldn’t produce a decent logical reason. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. He wasn’t the sort of guy to tell everyone in earshot about it and I didn’t see him trying to do anything bad with the knowledge. It was just, I dunno, the longer I knew him the more awkward it was to bring up!
I didn’t yet have a decent response prepared for when he’d inevitably corner me and say, “Why did you hide this for years?!” The truth of it was that I’d wanted to gallantly whip out my magic at the exact time the situation called for it, but I could tell he’d rip into me. But wouldn’t it be cool though, comrade? It’d be like witnessing your friend suddenly “awakening” on the battlefield, just as the situation got dire! The problem was that each adventure had put us in situations where I couldn’t call on my magic or that didn’t actually warrant it, meaning I’d missed every chance up until now.
I had hidden this facet of my whole deal for a ridiculous reason, and now I wasn’t sure how I was meant to even approach him about it after all this time. Unless I came up with a decent explanation, there was no doubt I’d end up kissing the pavement.