Once again, I stopped an inch from the ground, just before certain death...! Even knowing I probably wasn’t actually going to die this time, it was no less terrifying! I don’t wanna do that again!
“Gaaah! My arm...my arm!” one man cried.
“Oh, whoops, my bad. Looks like I misjudged my timing a little. Let me fix that right up for you.”
“Gyaaah, aaahhh, the pain! Aaah... Huh?”
“There you go, good as new. Oh, but I won’t be able to fix you guys forever, and I can’t guarantee I won’t mess up again, so you’d better hope all of you repent before my magic runs out!”
Oh. Apparently I wasn’t guaranteed to be safe during this forced freefall “punishment” after all.
“I-I repent! I’ll turn myself in, I promise!” I said.
“M-Me too! Just make it stop!”
“Oh, looks like we have some obedient children after all! But since some of you have yet to speak up, we’re going another round! Let’s take it from the top!” the insane girl shouted, and we all launched back up into the air once again.
“Nooo! Not agaaain!”
“Mooommmmmyyy, save meeeeee!”
“...”
“H-Hey, did that guy over there pass out?!”
“Looks like it! Wait, didn’t she say this was gonna last until we all repented? Then that means—”
“If someone faints before they can repent, this’ll go on forever?! Nooo!”
For the rest of the night, until sunrise came and we were finally all able to promise in unison to repent and turn ourselves in (if any of our timing was even a little off, she’d send us back up for yet another drop), our hellish repeated skydive without parachutes continued. We’d all pissed and shit ourselves multiple times and were in miserable states, but in the end, there were no deaths or casualties among us.
“Good, good, looks like you all repented! Perfect timing too—it’s morning now and I’m getting tired. Truth be told, I was getting so sleepy I almost accidentally let you all hit the ground, so I’m glad you saved me the trouble!”
She’s seriously terrifying. No sooner than I’d thought that, I found myself collapsed on the ground along with the other men just outside Solasidore’s gates.
“By the way, don’t breathe a word about me or what happened here,” the girl said. “I’ve memorized all your faces, just in case! All right, dismissed!”
Feeling like we’d been released from years of torture, we all cried tears of relief.
“Or maybe we should do one more, just for good measure?”
“We all repent! We promise to turn ourselves in!”
We all raised our hands and shouted in perfect unison.
“Tch. Well, I guess you’ve gotten the point now. You’re dismissed for real this time. But just take heed: If you don’t actually turn yourselves in, or if you leave out a single one of your crimes in your confession, I’ll hunt you down. Then I’ll expose not just your crimes, but all the crimes that I’m aware of that were committed by your gang and its affiliates. Got it?”
After that click of her tongue and one last reminder, she disappeared.
It went without saying, but afterward we all went straight to turn ourselves in to the guards, practically beating down the door of the guardroom to get in and even forgetting to clean ourselves up first. If one of us had tried to escape, we were all prepared to grab him and drag him here, but fortunately, we didn’t have to. We all happened to be of the same mind.
#Side: END
I was exhausted after staying up all night, so I passed out as soon as I got back to my base and slept until noon. Aishia was still in my bed, so I ended up sleeping next to her. However...
“Good morning, master!”
“Morning, Aishia.”
When I woke up, she was there observing my sleeping face once again. Well, it’s true I haven’t assigned her any tasks yet, so she probably just has nothing better to do. All I’ve ordered her to do so far is put socks on, after all.
“Here, master. Your breakfast.”
“Mm, thanks.”
She’d handed me an apple. It was one of the apples I’d copied to make the fragrance with. I’d set a bunch aside in case I ever needed a snack in the future.
“You know, I’m getting a little tired of eating apples—aren’t you?” I said. “We should go to the market and buy some actual groceries.”
“Actually, if I had the ingredients and cooking utensils, I could cook some proper meals for you.”
“Oh? You can cook, Aishia?”
“If it’s just simple homemade meals, I can manage. My family taught me the basics, and as a traveling minstrel I would often have to cook for myself. I can at least guarantee it’d be edible.”
You don’t say... I kinda want to try her cooking. In that case, let’s make today a shopping day—while I’m at it, I’d also like to make her her own room. I could make the entrance like Doraemon’s “everywhere door,” where she can enter her own personal space just by passing through it. Oh, but I should put a lock on it somehow so not just anyone can go in. Privacy and security and the like are important, after all. I should make a bathroom too, while I’m at it.
Come to think of it, I wonder what those delinquents I spent all last night threatening are up to? I checked their current locations. Last night I’d marked them using spatial magic so I could track their whereabouts. I’d planned to make good on my threat and send them up for one more skydiving session if one of them had decided to make a run for it, but it looked like they were all gathered at the guardhouse. Guess they really did turn themselves in, like good children. Excellent. I rewarded their honesty with my own generosity by dispelling their trackers, removing the spatial magic I’d planted on them.
“Now then, that only leaves the main dish—the slave trader. I gotta go there today too and collect my money... Actually, I should go see Blade first, so he won’t think I kicked the bucket or something.” I felt a little bad about worrying him the other day, so I headed to the guild to tell him I’d taken care of the delinquents.
“And so, I took care of the wallets.”
“Wallets? You seriously only saw those guys as money in your pocket? Well, never mind that for now. What happened after that?”
“I went through all their territories, taking the money inside those wallets, and it only came out to five measly silvers in the end! Can you believe that?! I mean, I could’ve made way more money sticking to logging!” I grumbled to my senior adventurer buddy. “Aren’t villains supposed to have oodles of cash stashed away or something?”
“You really did take their money too, then.” He sighed. “Well, they usually use whatever they manage to extort that day on various pleasures, so they probably run off to spend it as soon as they get it. That’s why they weren’t carrying large amounts of cash.”
“Come to think of it, that makes sense. What are you, a fount of wisdom or something?” Yeah, even if they did have money saved up, it’d be at their houses or at a bank. A bank... Right, a bank!
“Anyway, so after this I was going to head to the bank—er, I mean, the slave trader’s—to get myself an actually decent sum of money,” I said with a grin. “Wanna come with?”
Blade just gave me a look of pity, like he was dealing with a hopeless child. “Karina...”
“Oh, c’mon, what’s that look for? You use magic for all sorts of things too, right?”
“No, that’s not the issue here. You see, I’d kind of already guessed you were the one behind it, but... How can I say this...?”
“If you’ve got something you wanna say, don’t beat around the bush! Just tell me!”
He shrugged. “All right, if you say so. Actually, the authorities already came around and destroyed that slave trader’s facility.”
Ex...cuse me?
“Wait! What about my money?! They can’t just do that out of the blue before I get my money!”
“Yeah, once you started talking about money, I realized you were probably the reason the slave trader got shut down, and it looks like I was right... Hey, Karina, you had those delinquents turn themselves in too, didn’t you?”
“Sure did. I’m surprised you learned about that so quickly.”
“Well, the guardhouse is close to where I live, and those delinquents were shouting out their confessions so loudly, I couldn’t help but overhear. So that really was your doing, then.”
I see. Sounds like they went to turn themselves in first thing in the morning and kept the whole neighborhood up in the process.
“Anyway, thanks to their testimonies, the authorities went straight to the slave trader’s. So their prey wouldn’t have time to flee, that is.”
“Oh. In other words...” While I was snoozing away, the guards were busy seizing my bank and everything in it? C’mon! Why do the police have to be so competent now, of all times? I guess I picked a bad time to sleep in! Sob... “My money...”
“Well, look on the bright side. At least their quick response saved a lot of people who needed saving, right?”
“Dammit, Blade, you’re too good of a person!”
What’s more, apparently the authorities had given the money they’d confiscated back to the injured victims, so now I couldn’t even take it back from the guards! And this’ll make it harder for me to steal money from bad people from now on! Curses!
“Come to think of it, how’d you pull all that off, anyway?” Blade asked. “The delinquents in this town aren’t exactly wimps, so normally they’d never be threatened into turning themselves in.”
“Oh, nothing really. I just did some things here and there. With magic.”
“I see. Well, I wasn’t worried that they’d kill you or anything, but... Yeah, I guess magic really is more powerful than I thought.”
I thought I heard him mutter “You think you could teach me some of that?” But I pretended not to hear him. He’s not favored by the Goddess like I am, so he’d never be able to reach my level anyway.
“Well, looks like my plan blew up in my face, so back to the drawing board,” I said with a sigh.
“Gonna take on some more quests? I’ll join you if you want.”
“I could, but since I’m banned from logging for now, I’ve got some other things I want to take care of first. Later.”
“O-Oh, okay. Well, regardless, the town’s a little safer now thanks to your efforts. So thanks for that.”
Yeah, yeah. You’re welcome. I guess.
Anyway, because I’d talked to Blade and learned what happened, my schedule had suddenly opened up. In that case, maybe I’ll go report to the Goddess, since I’ve got some socks for her.