“This seems like the place.”
After nearly four hours of running, with some breaks, we arrived at the village in question.
Huffing, Ashley hung her head and braced her hands on her knees. Her shoulders rose up and down with her heaving breaths. Filia, slightly out of breath herself, gave Ashley a worried look.
“Are you all right, Ashley?”
“Y-yeah, I’m okay.”
“That’s why I offered to carry ya,” I said.
“I don’t…need…your help!”
“Gotta say, I admire your willpower.” If you want to get stronger, after all, it’s better to be competitive. Feeling that “Aw, damn it, come on!” moment is surprisingly important. It’s good motivation!
“It’s not like I want your approval or anything. I just wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for giving up halfway through and relying on someone else…” Ashley looked up at me. “But we’re late because of me. I really am sorry for that.”
It was certainly true that Ashley had slowed us down a little. Even so, it must have been really hard for her, since she didn’t usually rush. For the whole trip, she never once complained. Deep down, I was also seeing her in a better light.
“Ashley, you really gave it your all, didn’t you?” said Filia.
“Yep!” Ashley replied as Filia cast recovery magic on her. A light white enveloped Ashley’s form. “Oh! I feel so much better now! Thank you, Big Sis!”
“You’re welcome.” Filia bent down and smiled, making eye contact with Ashley.
After we took a short break for Ashley’s sake, we headed into the village. It really was the quintessential village, being so rural. The fields covered a wide expanse of the local territory; I could definitely see how vermin would be a serious problem if left unchecked. We explained to some nearby villagers that we’d come to answer their request, and they led us to the village chief’s house.
“Oh, thank you for coming.” The village chief, a seemingly good-natured man, looked to be in his seventies. We sat down and started off with some small talk. I typically left that stuff to Filia, but since Ashley was also engaging in small talk this time too, I felt a little alienated. If the topic had been muscles, I could definitely have jumped in, but alas.
Unfortunately, topics like “How can I build up even more beautiful muscles?” didn’t often come up in everyday conversation. Why weren’t more people worried about that? What a strange world we lived in.
Finally, the pleasantries ended, and the topic shifted to the actual matter of the request.
“How often do the gorillalas come to this village?” asked Filia.
“They come every night,” the chief replied. “Ten of them. They’ve been devastating the village’s crops…”
Every night? That sounded awful. But we were gonna stop it right away! “Is there someplace in particular where they show up often?” I asked.
“Indeed.”
We asked the village chief to show us the spot, then took up position at the edge of the fields. There, we waited until nightfall…
“Ook! Ook!”
Multiple low, deep animal cries overlapped one another in the dark of night. Then, under the light of a full moon, the beast appeared. It looked like a gorilla combined with another gorilla. Basically, it was twice the size of a regular gorilla, hence the name: the gorillala was two gorillas put together. I could get behind that kinda logic.
“They finally showed up.” I was feeling pretty relieved about that. They’d come much later in the night than expected, and I’d even started to fear they weren’t coming.
“I was getting really tired of waiting,” said Ashley.
“I know, I was gonna start yawning any second. Right, Filia?”
“You two sure are energetic…” Filia said sleepily. I knew Filia was the sort who needed a lot of sleep, but I couldn’t help but wonder who was the weird one here. I mean, Ashley was so lively and Filia looked like a limp noodle.
Wasn’t important. We had gorillalas to deal with.
“Six, eight…ten,” I counted. “Just like the chief said.”
“They seem to be quite capable at commanding illusions,” said Filia, a serious look on her face.
“Illusions? What kind of illusions?” I asked.
I hadn’t noticed any such thing at all. If they were able to use illusions that even I couldn’t notice, I’d really have to brace myself.
“They’re turning into you, Yuri,” said Filia seriously. “Their illusions are so incredibly elaborate. I can’t even tell you apart…”
“Uh, what do they look like?” I asked.
“Gorillas.”
“That’s not an illusion. That’s real.” Plus, my muscles were many, many times more beautiful than the ones on these guys. The difference was obvious!
“It’s a preemptive strike!” shouted Ashley, firing off a flaming arrow. “Just because you look like Yuri doesn’t mean that I’m gonna go easy on you!”
The arrow pierced one of the gorillalas and the thing went limp.
A gorillala that, by the way, looked absolutely nothing like me. Okay? Okay?
“Ook!”
The gorillalas got all worked up now that one of their friends had been killed, and they started blasting us with earth magic. Earthen bullets erupted from their mouths.
“Not a chance!” Ashley shouted, summoning a wall of flame in front of herself. The earthen bullets collided with the roaring flames and instantly turned to black carbon, crumbling and falling to the ground in pieces. Good stuff. Just what you’d expect from an S-Rank.
Beside her, Filia had finally snapped out of her sleepiness. She called the Wind God to chop the earthen bullets to crumbs with incredibly deft maneuvers. She was getting even better at handling that ability.
Wait, I couldn’t just watch them fight!
“Hmph!” I repelled the earthen bullets with my fist, knocking them back at the gorillalas. One of them fell to the ground.