As a sidenote, even though Herman had been completely unaware of it, he had set his eyes on something truly monumental.
That humble sword had vanquished a multitude of monsters: an ancient dragon, a true giant, an abyss dweller, a mechanical god, and finally, darkness itself. And alongside this was the staff that had aided that sword. It was impossible to put a price on these items, and if they were ever put up for sale, the world’s most powerful nations and greatest temples would be willing to go to war to obtain them. If they were to be given names, they would be the Sword of Ferd the Hero, and the Staff of Elrica the Saint.
Thanks to Herman’s kindness, the pair had gotten a lift to just outside the walls of Lianard. However, it seemed that there was a line waiting to get in—as if it were taking quite a while for the guards to work through the queue.
Ferd popped his head out of the line to see what was ahead. “It seems we’ll be awhile at the gate.”
“Our turn will come eventually,” Elrica replied.
“Mm-hmm.” Ferd agreed with a nod.
A couple in their nineties wouldn’t get irritated by that level of inconvenience at this point, so they just stood still like rocks or trees. If they weren’t standing, people might think they were dead.
Some time later, it was finally Ferd and Elrica’s turn, but the gatekeeper was puzzled to see two solitary old people come forward when he called.
“Next. Hmm? Granny, gramps, where are your companions, and how many of them are there?”
“It’s just my wife and I.”
“We thought we’d come see an old friend’s face before our time was up. We rode here in a carriage,” Ferd explained.
“I understand.”
Ferd’s words worked like magic. Most people would understand if an old man told them he was coming to meet a friend because his end was drawing near.
“You may pass.”
“Thank you very much.”
Ferd and Elrica looked like just an elderly couple to the gatekeeper, so he doubted there would be any problems and simply let them pass.
“Things sure have changed here, honey. Or rather, I suppose they’ve actually gone back to normal,” Elrica said.
“They sure have, dearest,” Ferd replied.
As Ferd and Elrica stepped foot in Lianard, they were dumbfounded by the state of the town. It had once been famous for its distilleries, but once the war hit, the town morphed into a military production facility, churning out medicine and alchemical supplies. Back then, Lianard was filled with shady looking fellows and restless craftsmen with grim looks on their faces.
“Is it true that moonless liquor has arrived?”
“Gimme the whole barrel!”
“Bring the booze out now!”
The town was now just like it had been before the war. The place was lively, with the shouts of merchants and craftsmen that dealt in alcohol echoing all around, and business was thriving. Ferd and Elrica were only familiar with Lianard’s brutal atmosphere during the war, as well as how the town had been when it was just starting to go back to alcohol production right after the war. Thus, they were truly surprised at the vast difference between now and back then. But no matter how one looked at them, they were nothing but an elderly couple that had come from the countryside to turn to their children for help—a pair of complete country bumpkins visiting a big town.
I guess this is fine in its own way. I don’t understand the merits of alcohol one bit, but this is much better than them making drugs that trade away chunks of your lifespan for temporary strength. Ferd recalled a type of powerful drug they used to produce in Lianard. He surveyed the town as he toddled forward.
During the great war, which had been a constant back-and-forth, those who lost their families to the demon army often sought out ways to quickly strengthen themselves in order to take their revenge. In response, a group of eccentric alchemists created an enhancement drug that was manufactured for a time, but the side effects were highly severe, so the alchemists themselves sealed it away.
But that was also a tale of the past. Nowadays, Lianard only drowned itself in booze, not hatred and rabid obsession.
“Now, where could he be?” Ferd rubbed his chin, wondering where Sazaki was.
“I’ll handle this. Excuse me, sir. Have you seen an old man on the ground with a drink in hand?” Elrica called out to a man passing by.
“Oh, you two know that old drunkard? He’s lying down in that back alley.”
Elrica’s outrageous statement made Ferd instinctively move his hand from his chin to his mouth. Was it because he found his wife’s description of Sazaki to be a bit too much? Or because he was about to burst out laughing since the man she’d asked actually understood who she was talking about?
“Dead drunk, as I suspected.”
“Just like usual, I suppose.”
Just as they thought that they might, when Ferd and Elrica arrived in the back alley, they found themselves looking down their noses—not metaphorically, but at the actual ground.
“Hic. Did I drink so much I started hallucinatin’? I could swear I heard Elrica’s voice and maybe that moron Ferd alongside her.”
An old man around the same age as Ferd and Elrica was sprawled out in the alleyway, clearly drunk, with bottles of booze in both hands. With his long white hair tied up in a knot and the smell of alcohol emanating not only from his worn-out, shabby clothes but from his skin as well, he looked like any homeless person. However, the weapon he had on his hip was quite unusual. It was a special weapon known as a katana that had drifted in from Eastern countries and wasn’t the sort of item a homeless man should be carrying.