Slowly, I stood up. “I was pretty shaken, I’ll admit... but not all hope is lost.”
Gourry just gazed up at me blankly.
I nodded firmly to reassure him—moreover, to reassure myself. “It’s true! Let’s try looking at this differently. After all, we might get to try all kinds of tasty foods we can only find here!”
“Oh!” The light returned to Gourry’s eyes.
“We’ll travel the land sampling new forms of deliciousness! Besides, we can still find a way home! We’ll walk as long as we have ground at our feet, and if we run out of ground, we’ll just find a boat!”
“Great points, all!” Gourry stood up with renewed vigor. He stared straight into my eyes. “And... I’m not alone! Because I have you, Lina!”
“...”
Wait... what the hell is he saying?! I felt my face go hot.
After a moment, he continued, “As long as you’re here, I don’t have to worry about money! Because you’re so reliable about stuff like that! Wait, what’s wrong? Why are you looking at me that way?”
“Oh, uh... right.” That’s what he meant?! I let out a quiet sigh. “Anyhoo! Nothing to it but to do it! Let’s ask around and set a course based on what we learn!”
“Yeah! You handle the asking and the planning!” Gourry proclaimed, happily leaving the hard work to me.
Still, right now, we were all about momentum! Which was why I opted not to yell at him!
And so, after being flung into the outer lands by a tricky jerk, Gourry and I resumed our homeward journey.
Whether in the inner or outer lands, people were still people. They practiced all the same professions. Meaning...
“All right, you lot! Strip down! Leave yer clothes where you’re standin’ and we’ll spare yer lives! Ya got it?”
Yup, bandits who attacked travelers, spitting the same old cliché lines and flashing their swords—there were dudes like that here too. Go figure.
Gourry and I had heard that if we left Latka and followed the main road, we’d make it to the rather large city of Maricida by sunset. We’d set out right away, but not long after beginning our walk down the more-or-less deserted road, we were met by a group of ten or so men.
Mr. Mohawk, naked from the waist up with a tattoo on his cheek, flashed his shortsword and sneered. “Well? What’ll it be?”
Hoo boy. What’ll it be, huh? You guessed it...
“Fireball.”
Kra-koooom! The ball of light I unleashed landed smack in the middle of the bandit gang, exploded, and sent them all flying. (I’d chanted the spell while Mr. Mohawk was running down the same old trite script, see.)
There we go... After making sure all the guys in front of us were down for the count, I turned right around. Not far off was another band of five or six bandits.
Ah, I knew it. Stop your prey in their tracks and drone on to keep their attention while a detachment moves in to pincer them from behind. Theoretically, an effective ambush strategy. But after watching me blow away their main force with a single spell, the flying column wasn’t doing much but standing there in shock. I was about to start another chant, but before I could...
“W-W-Wait a minute!” A member of the detachment, dressed in a bear skin, spoke up hastily. “We’ve seen how powerful you are! We’ll leave you alone! So, please...”
“‘So, please, let us continue our lawless rampage elsewhere’? Is that it?” I pressed him.
Seeming to detect the edge in my tone, he went pale. “I-It’s not like that! It’s not like we wanted to be bandits! I had lousy parents who beat me as a kid—”
“Aha. Now that you mention it, yeah, I’m sure nobody wants to become a bandit.”
“R-Right?!”
“And I am sympathetic to your past.”
“So then...”
“But I don’t feel sorry for anyone who, rather than refusing to be like the people who hurt them, decides to become an abuser instead.”
“Huh?”
I smiled brightly at him, and...
The roar of a second Fireball echoed through the forest.
“Well? What now, Lina?” Gourry asked me over breakfast the next day.
Yet again, however, we’d been unable to find a proper inn. We’d made it to Maricida, and while the place was indeed rather large, it was pretty sleepy. It felt less like a planned city and more like two or three villages pasted together.
After arriving the afternoon prior, we’d done a brief once-around looking for lodging, but unlike cities in the inner lands, there were very few houses here with a second floor, and only a handful of those had any size at all. There were no large shops, just a few stores here and there like what we’d seen in Latka.
But what bothered me the most was that, unlike back home, there just wasn’t much in the way of facilities catering to travelers. The “inn” we’d found in Maricida wasn’t quite as small as the one in Latka—by which I mean that it had a handful of spare rooms instead of just the one. There were no extra amenities, so we’d had to find dinner and breakfast elsewhere.
Having an eatery on the first floor of an inn allowed travelers to go straight to their rooms after dinner, rest up, and grab breakfast the minute they woke up in the morning. I’d grown so accustomed to that setup that the lack of it felt especially frustrating. Fortunately, there were quite a few stalls outside the inn that were open late into the night and early in the morning, so at least we hadn’t starved.
Gourry and I had stopped by one such stall for breakfast, and were currently eating some kind of flat, flour-based noodles topped with a bland, sticky vegetable and finely marbled meat. It didn’t look much like what we were used to, but they called it saury. It had a homey sort of taste to it, but there wasn’t much variation to the menu (it being a stall and all) and the portions were on the small side.
Perched atop the wooden crates left out to serve as seating, Gourry and I sated our growling stomachs with two bowls apiece. Then, at last, it was time to decide our next move.
“Hmm, we have options,” I said, thinking for a moment. “We could get a third bowl, but I think I’d like to hit up a few other stalls first. Fried chicken is always good, but it’s not like I haven’t had it before... so let’s go for foods that look out of the ordinary. Obviously, there’s a chance we’ll find something we don’t like, but we’ll never know unless we try it.”
Okay, don’t laugh about the fact that we were still talking food! Sleeping and eating are the most important elements of survival! When visiting a new place, it’s important to learn about the local cuisine!
The food here was different from back home in all kinds of ways, see, and there were tons of ingredients I’d never seen before. So when Gourry and I inevitably ended up roughing it out on the road, we could easily end up eating poison. If we could more or less stick to what we’d seen for sale at stalls and such, though, I knew we’d be okay. So in order to be able to make the right calls, I had to feel out the local food scene as much as possible.
“But once we’re done with that—” I began before stopping abruptly.
There was a tension in the air. When I realized that and looked in the most likely direction, I saw an armed group walking along the roadside a little ways off.
The town guard, perhaps?
It was a roughly twenty-man force that seemed like a real motley crew. Only five of them looked like real soldiers with proper helmets, armor, and spears. As for the rest, they seemed to just be carrying whatever weapons and armor they could scrounge up. It was clear from the way they comported themselves that they didn’t have any bona fide combat training. Still, their faces were grim and battle-ready.
This is...
“Let’s go, Gourry. We’ll hit up the stalls later.” We’d paid in advance when we put in our order, so Gourry stood up to join me and we quickly began moving in the direction of the armed group.
“This isn’t like you, Lina,” he said. “You don’t usually like sticking your nose into other people’s business.”
“To be clear, I still don’t like it—but it’s best to earn the trust of the locals, right?” My exact involvement would depend on the nature of the conflict, of course. But this was a golden opportunity to break the ice. “Excuse me!” I called as I approached the group.
The men stopped and looked back at us. “What is it?” responded the guy at the lead. He had a red beard and looked around thirty years old.