“Well, whatever… I never had any obligation to them anyway,” Ginem Bari, exhausted, grumbled in resignation. It sounded like he didn’t really belong to the Paisley Company. In any case, he continued explaining himself, piece by piece. “My client is Branch Manager Spero from the Paisley Company. He hired me to dispose of the wielder of the red-eyed shrine golem and his companions, for a total of three casualties. If possible, he wanted the young girl alive.”
“Huh? No minors? How surprisingly gentlemanly of him.”
“Apparently, they abduct brats for the main office in Kinas to use as bribes for perverted aristocrats—all to influence politics. I don’t know the details; this is just a rumor in the circles I run in. But that’s probably why he wanted the kid.”
“Wh-what the…?” The worst humans imaginable! Return my stolen purity, Paisley!
“I don’t know anything else. Really.”
“You sure?”
“I said ‘really,’” Ginem Bari snapped. Immediately after, he trembled in fear. “Eek! R-really! I swear! Please, no more! I’m just a hired hand. I ain’t one of the Company members! And anyway, I was only told to crush you, the golem wielder. Everything else was on the other guy! I was just in it for the money! The money!”
N-no need to scream. I can hear you…
Nevertheless, I didn’t think he was lying. He just didn’t know that much. Mr. Chotos had been astonished by Ginem Bari’s appearance, which implied he really was a temp hired specifically to be a secret weapon against me, or rather, Gol.
But, well, a crime was a crime.
That “other guy” he mentioned had to be the eye-patched crossbow golem wielder. It appeared he was the barbaric criminal mastermind who had willingly put unarmed civilians in harm’s way just to reach me.
“Does that mean you know that eye-patched fellow?”
“Ah, yeah. I think…unlike us, he’s with the Company. I heard he’s one of the top brass and came from the main office in Kinas.”
“Is that so? Well, that might be a problem.”
Said eye-patched man’s current unconsciousness wasn’t the fault of ever restrained Gol, but poorly controlled amateur me. Furthermore, it had been rather the unexpected incident. As such, he was still thoroughly knocked out, and I had no idea when he would wake up. That once-beautiful man was still lying in the midst of fallen trees, his head bleeding, the white of his eye showing, and his body twitching. There would be no questioning him in that state.
“Well, seeing how this all turned out, I think I believe you…”
Actually, I only had one question about that crossbow golem wielder’s tactics. At the start of the battle, he had lurked in the forest behind and to my right. Usually, that location would have been my natural blind spot. However, during the confrontation, he had kept moving until he finally settled in a spot more directly to my right. In other words, he had abandoned the advantage of my blind spot and opted for a horizontal position.
It was possible he had switched due to some unspoken coordination between the teams. I certainly hadn’t interrogated it too deeply during the fight. However, in the end, he had always intended to fire at me from a distance. So why did he go out of his way to move? That was still a mystery. Even if he had sniped me from his starting position, there had never been any threat that he might hit his allies.
But considering Ginem Bari’s claims that the Paisley Company wanted me and the elders dead so they could kidnap Teru, had the bastard intended to kill Mr. Chotos, the old driver, and me all together in one shot?
Ah. Yes. There it was. He finally stopped moving after I told my three companions to move, and after they had finished moving themselves. In short, Mr. Chotos and the wagon driver hadn’t stumbled into the line of fire, nor had Teru evaded it simply because she was short. No, that man had intended to turn all of us into minced meat while narrowly letting Teru live so he could present her to the Company.
A cold sweat ran down my back. What a disgusting man. Ginem Bari was one thing, but this unnamed, eye-patched man was a fearsome being.
I glanced over my shoulder and shuddered in the direction of the man whom I had inadvertently felled.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Nemaki, are you all right?”
“Hm? Ah, yes, I’m fine.”
For some time now, Mr. Chotos had been checking the rest of us for injuries. He carried an aquamarine mana tool that resembled a flashlight. It could activate a beginner-level healing spell that treated wounds just by being held over them. I guess you could call it this world’s version of a first-aid kit.
You know, I had thought Mr. Chotos made quite the speedy recovery after being beaten half to death by those punks, but now I realized he likely owed his health to this little aquamarine guy. And here I’d assumed he just had high vitality.
Anyway, what a convenient mana tool. If there were more like it back at Mr. Chotos’s shop, I’d have to buy one for myself. My to-buy list of mana tools just kept growing. If I wasn’t careful, I might end up getting distracted and grabbing a bunch of interesting toys. Oh dear. Mana tools could get quite expensive, so if I kept thinking of them that way, I might end up spending my every copper in the blink of an eye.
But…well, even if I did run out of coin, I probably wouldn’t die.
As usual, I had no knack for managing money.
Once Mr. Chotos had confirmed our party was uninjured, he began administering first aid to the injuries on the staff-wielding female spellcaster.
As Gol and I sat together in the wagon, we watched the aquamarine flashlight slowly heal her wounds. It seemed treatment by mana tool took some time. It had already been close to ten minutes. On the other hand, she would be the only one to receive this time-consuming treatment.
Let me explain. First, you casually kill all the male criminals, as well as all the older women, except for the one beautiful young female miscreant; then you use expensive medicine to treat her; finally, as a roundabout way of showing her gratitude, you end up sharing a nice scene…
I kid; this wasn’t some flagrant indulgence in the mental state common to protagonists in harem-centered worlds. In the first place, the one who’d elected to treat her was Mr. Chotos. Also, well, hm, to be clear, of all the injured spellcasters, her wounds were the most severe. Frankly, they were fatal. This was likely due to that inexplicable second bombardment Gol had inflicted upon her.
Basically, if we’d left her alone, she would likely be the sole casualty of our battle. Consequently, she was also the only person in serious need of medical attention.
“Even you can sometimes fail at restraint, huh?” I glanced at my partner. As usual, Gol was stuck to my back, but less usually, her disapproving gaze drilled into Mr. Chotos’s back as he healed the female spellcaster.
No, Gol. If Mr. Chotos can’t heal her, she’ll die. No matter how badly a person misbehaved, I didn’t want anyone to die, especially not if there was a possibility we could save them.
“Hey, Nemaki, I don’t know why your Goretaru’s doing that, but could you curb the weird, menacing aura it’s emitting? It’s making things a lot harder,” Mr. Chotos protested.
Sorry, mister, but even I don’t know what’s up with her.
Speaking of wounds, Ginem Bari’s were strange. At first, I had thought he only took a punch to the face, but when I checked again, it turned out several of the fingers on his right hand had been bent in unnerving directions. I wondered if they had been caught under him when he fell after being punched.
He had my sympathy, but since his life wasn’t in danger, he wouldn’t get any first aid. This was a race against time. We needed to swiftly return to Zibil and lodge our complaints with the so-called branch manager of the Paisley Company. If we waited too long, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t send another assassin after us. Therefore, we needed to sort out this matter as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, we would leave the spellcasters where they lay and take our viable witness, Ginem Bari, with us on the wagon back to Zibil.
Well, there was also another reason we needed to hasten our departure. To tell you the truth, when I wasn’t paying attention, Gol saw a chance and threw a low-blow kick directly into the female spellcaster’s stomach. If we didn’t hurry up and separate Gol from the busty lady, it would get bad. As I thought that, Gol darted over to the busty lady again.
No, stop, Gol! Don’t kick the busty woman! Mr. Chotos’s medical treatment will be all in vain!