“No, I should thank you, master, for all the blessings you’ve given me today.”
“Er...you don’t need to thank me every time you sit down to eat a meal, you know.”
“If you order me to stop I will stop, but I will still continue to give thanks in my heart each time. With that said, do you still want me to stop?”
“Mmrgh... For a slave, you’re pretty obstinate, huh?” Oh well, I supposed that was better than when she’d hesitated to sit at the same table as me because “it was far more than a slave like her deserved.” Still, it seemed that she viewed me as some sort of deity. I’m not, honest! I’m just a deity’s disciple, is all!
“I just want you to enjoy this meal. Nothing else.”
“I understand, master. I will enjoy this meal (and give thanks to master in my heart for this blessing).”
It sounded like she added something unnecessary under her breath, but whatever. I suppose it’s fine.
Huh?! Wait, I almost forgot! Remember Shildon’s teachings, Karina! She’s obviously trying to butter you up! No doubt about it—if I’m not careful, I’ll fall into her trap! I mean, I haven’t even done that much to earn her gratitude yet, so isn’t it strange for her to harbor this much loyalty toward me already?!
At any rate, I scooped the stew into my mouth with a wooden spoon. Mmm... It was well seasoned. The carrots were sweet and melted in your mouth too...delicious. I liked the broccoli in there too. The white sauce accentuated the flavor of the vegetables, making the dish even tastier. Ooh, there were big pieces of chicken in there too. Juicy and delectable... What was that, Aishia? This wasn’t chicken? It was frog meat? Well, it was still good. More normal than socks, at least.
“Oh, also, I don’t know if this is related, but apparently there have been some strange goings-on in the monster forest.”
“The monster forest? Would that be the one me and Blade’s group went logging in?” That forest was teeming with monsters, which was why adventurers were permitted to fell trees there. There were even megafrogs, frog monsters as tall as medium-size dogs.
“I heard some people saying they’d seen some megafrogs on the outskirts in the forest, and it had looked like they were fleeing from deeper in,” Aishia reported.
“Oh? In other words, something in the forest’s depths might’ve spooked them and chased them away.” And if so, there was a chance that “something” might’ve been the sacred treasure we were looking for. Is that what you’re suggesting, Aishia?
“That’s right, master. This is just one possible theory, and it might be a foolish notion to begin with, but what if it means that slave trader, Bareas, has the sacred treasure with him and is currently hiding out somewhere deep in the forest?”
Wow, Aishia...you’re a girl of many talents, huh? Impressive deduction work.
“It’s worth checking out, I’d say. I guess I could head to the monster forest today and see.”
“Er, master, this may be rather presumptuous of me to say, but wouldn’t that be dangerous?”
Come to think of it, Aishia hadn’t yet seen how powerful my magic was. Well, she was probably already well aware, since I’d used it to restore her arms, but she had yet to witness its potential in combat.
“Don’t worry, Aishia. I’m super strong.”
“Oh, in that case, I won’t worry!”
Wait, huh? She bought it just like that? Slaves don’t have some curse on them that makes them take their master’s words at face value, right? Well, as long as she understands, I guess.
Anyway, first I went to the Adventurer’s Guild. If I was already going to the forest, I figured I might as well pick up a survey quest to do in the meantime. As I was perusing the bulletin board, Blade called out to me. Come to think of it, you seem to be here a lot, dude. You have a lot of free time on your hands or something?
“Hey, Karina! Perfect timing—I was hoping I’d run into you!”
“Huh? Something up?”
“Let’s go logging, Karina! Logging!”
I tilted my head in puzzlement. Sure, we’d make a killing, but didn’t the guild expressly forbid me from any more logging since I overdid it the first couple of times?
“Oh, c’mon, you must’ve heard by now, right?” Blade said. “About the strange behavior in the forest?”
“Well, yeah, I did hear something about that, but what does that have to do with logging?”
“The lumberjacks—that’s what we call adventurers who specialize in logging—apparently got real banged up because of that weirdness in the forest, and they couldn’t complete the quest they were on. It’ll take some time for them to recover, so just for today, they’ve allowed us to do some logging in their stead.”
Oh, I see. So just for today, our logging privileges have been reinstated.
“If you wanna go, we don’t mind splitting the reward the same way as before. How about it?”
“Sure, why not? I already had some business in that forest anyway, and I was just looking to see if there was some kind of scouting quest I could do while I was at it.”
“Perfect, then, because we just took a scouting quest there. You can just join in! That’ll make us a party of four. They tend to give scouting quests to those with more experience doing it, so now’s as good a time as any to rack some up!”
So Blade’s really planning to profit by taking on a logging quest and a scouting quest at the same time, is he? Clever! Makes me want to learn from him!
“Aren’t you lucky, Blade? She agreed to go with you. Now you can pay Miss Harumikazuchi what you owe her! She’s been nagging you a lot lately, after all,” Shildon said.
“Thanks, Karina. With our cut from the logging, Haru won’t yell at Blade anymore,” Sekko chimed in.
“Hey, I wasn’t even trying to act all cool this time! So what gives, you two?! Well, I won’t deny it. I gotta pay Haru what I owe her, and I’m kinda broke right now.”
“What would happen if you couldn’t pay up? I don’t mind pitching in if it pleases Miss Harumikazuchi in the end, but I’m just curious.” What would they have done if I’d refused? Knowing them, they probably would’ve just endured the fox lady’s wrath and paid as they earned more. I’d personally consider her anger to be a reward, myself. Kind of makes me jealous. Maybe I should drink a bunch there and put it on my tab as well?
At any rate, traveling with this reliable bunch while I went to the forest was convenient for both of us. A win-win, if you will.
“All right! Now that that’s decided, let’s zip right over there and zip right back! C’mon, Karina!”
“Yessir! First we need to rent a wagon, though, right?!”
“Whoa, whoa! Before we do anything, we gotta fill out the paperwork for the quest!”
“Then that’ll be your job, Sekko! We’ll meet you at the town gate! Shildon, get a wagon meant for two people.”
That left me alone with Blade. That was a pretty smooth move, buddy. And if it meant less work for me, I certainly wasn’t gonna complain.
Here we are, in the forest!
“Hmm, yeah, looks like the forest is goin’ nuts,” Blade said immediately.
“How do you know?” I asked. “Could you explain it to me in terms I can understand?”
“Uh, well, it seems like a lot of things have been coming in and going out.”
That vague explanation didn’t really help. Though we’d come across and eliminated a number of goblins on the way here, so there were definitely more monsters in the area.
“Look here, Karina,” Sekko offered, pointing. “There are footprints here, and you can see the branches are all broken around here. These are the things you need to look for. If you look closer, you can see the footprints are fresh, and some of these branches are freshly broken.”
“Oh, I see! That’s our reliable scout Sekko!” I said. Now that he’d brought it to my attention, I also noticed that the footprints were smaller, like a child’s. The branches that had been snapped off were also at a lower height, and there were quite a lot of them. Some looked like they’d been that way for some time, while others looked recent.
“Based on what I’ve heard from other adventurers, three orcs have been sighted here. These are probably their tracks.” Sekko pointed to a particularly large set of footprints. Huh, so these were what orc footprints looked like. I’d better remember that.
Blade chuckled. “Scouting skills like these are Sekko’s forte. I can tell these things too, but just on instinct, really. I can’t explain it too well.”
“You do realize that scouting is basically just analyzing those instincts and making their reasoning explicit, right?”
“Well, I tend to leave all that difficult stuff to Sekko. I just bring the muscle! That’s how Sun Bacchus has operated up until now—right, Shildon?”
“Man, you sure are breezy about it. You sure that’s okay? A rookie adventurer is watching, you know.”
“Karina can just follow my example if she ever finds some teammates she can split the work with. Not that it’s exactly easy to find party members you strike a perfect balance with. Even we’re not perfect all the time.”