I could take out Geese right now. What should I do? It was one hundred percent a trap. What sort of trap? Right now, I could attack. What could he do? Was there some advantage he got by making me attack? Let’s say that whoever was over there looked like Geese but was actually someone else. Could they be one of my friends or family? No way. That was impossible. Up until yesterday, it had only been the two of them. They couldn’t have brought someone along out of nowhere.
In which case, was this an opening? Up until now, I’d been focused on buying time and hadn’t been actively attacking. They’d made rapid progress from the port town to here.
After a leisurely journey with Badigadi, maybe he was cocky about an easy victory. Couldn’t it be that he’d let his guard down and revealed himself to us? It’d be the easiest thing to attack, and the risk was low. No reason not to, right? It was also possible he’d somehow placed someone there who I didn’t want to see die. Strategically, what would the point of that be? What was the point of my not attacking now?
I was getting muddled. It felt like a trap, but even so, I couldn’t think of any downsides to attacking.
All right, let’s fire at him. Maybe it’s a trap, but there’s no downside to just shooting him.
If he responded, he responded.
“I’m going to attack,” I said.
“Understood.”
I concentrated magic in my right hand. I was more interested in accuracy than speed and power. I still couldn’t see Geese with the Eye of Distant Sight, but I used it to project the landscape while flicking the mana for the Eye of Foresight, predicting where my shot would land. In case it went wide, I decided to use Blast Cannon.
I hesitated before I fired, just for a moment. That moment passed and a Stone Cannon burst from my fingers, hurtling towards the other side of the ravine on a dead straight trajectory.
There was no sound. As it impacted, the figure on the other side collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, then was still.
The shot had hit, and it had gotten results. Time passed. It was surreal, like nothing had happened. The fallen figure didn’t move. In the light of the morning, all I could hear was the quiet rustling of the forest. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. I wasn’t keeping track of the exact time, but it kept on slipping away.
A feeling took root within me. I wanted to know. Whatever was lying on the ground over there after I’d hit it, I wanted to know what it was. Was it Geese, or something else? Was it alive or dead? I could hop on down there and be back again in a jiffy. Surely that would be fine.
But as that idea came to me, I realized what was going on. This was the trap. Geese’s plan wasn’t to make me attack but to make me feel what I felt now.
Maybe whoever lay down there really was Geese, on the verge of death, and all I had to do to win was strike the final blow. Maybe it was Sylphie—they’d captured her at some point, then come up with some way to deceive Ruijerd’s eye, and if I didn’t go to her aid right now she’d die. Even if either of those were true, if I went to look, the Fighting God would appear, and I’d die. I couldn’t go.
An hour passed. I was on edge. Had I made some irreversible mistake? Should I not have shot the figure after all? Was their aim in making me shoot it to keep me locked down here?
What if, even now, they were crossing the ravine at another point? Okay, no, I did have the Superd warriors guarding the ravine at least. I had to trust them.
Two hours passed. Should I have gone to check after all? Might going down to check give me a clue as to Geese’s next move? Was I just avoiding finding out the truth for some reason?
Three hours passed. Nothing moved. All sorts of patterns floated in and out of my mind. This wondering was starting to wear me out. If Geese’s plan was to make me exhausted, he was succeeding.
After four hours, I was certain. That was a corpse. It hadn’t moved for four hours, so it had to be a body. But whose? Was it really plausible that Geese was dead, and Badigadi hadn’t done anything? If Roxy were here, she might have had something constructive to say. When I asked Cliff, he just frowned and shook his head.
Six hours passed. I ate a quick lunch, then returned to watching the corpse. It didn’t move.
Eight hours passed. The afternoon was wearing on, and the sun was growing steadily lower in the sky. Maybe because I’d been on constant alert, I was only getting more tired. If the sun set below the horizon and still nothing happened, I’d go have a look.
When the tenth hour had passed, Ruijerd said abruptly, “Rudeus. He’s here.”
With a start, I looked to the forest, just in time to see the shining golden armor step out from the trees. When the armor drew near, the corpse slowly got up. It put its face up to the armor for a while, as though it was saying something, then turned to look our way. I saw the shrug. That was Geese’s shrug, no doubt about it. Without any further fanfare, the two of them retreated into the depths of the forest. Silence fell once more.
“Whew…”
It had been a trap. The figure was Geese, but he had used himself as bait to try and lure me out. I’d been close to falling for it.
Night was about to fall. I’d leave the Superd warriors on guard and catch a bit of sleep. My mind was fried. They might come back as the sun set, but I’d settle for just a nap.
“I’m taking a break,” I said. I curled up in a blanket.
The third day ended.