“We only have a few days left until the wave of destruction,” Father said. “At the very least, I’d like to discredit Melromarc’s false rumors and try to stop any war.”
“Agreed on all accounts, Father.”
“And I know this is more about what happened after we have to deal with that Takt guy, but how on earth can we stop full-out war from happening?”
Our largest challenge lay there. Since I have no ability to identify pigs, if we were to defeat Takt, the best I could do would be to count how many allies he had. The soundest course would be simply to kill every last one of them.
If we moved forward in such a manner, when Takt tried to catch us in a trap, I’d turn the tables on him by killing them all in one fell swoop, fleeing the country, and hence avoiding war. The other option would be to try following what Father did in the first go-around and publicly execute Takt.
I’m sure there were other ways to proceed, but we hardly had the time to test them out.
Regardless, if we spent too much time in Siltvelt, war was practically guaranteed.
I also wasn’t sure whether or not we should expose the Claw Hero as an imposter. The best-case scenario would be to do nothing and not have to worry about it. As much as possible, I wanted to take advantage of being able to go to Siltvelt without actually visiting the castle. By this point, the Siltvelt brass probably knew that Father had been there a few times. We just didn’t want any strange encounters. And if they tried to force us to come, then we could just flee.
Since our objective was taking out Melromarc, Siltvelt’s long-time enemy, I felt fairly confident that Siltvelt’s leaders would ultimately let us do what we wanted.
“We just need to make sure that we’re well trained for when we do have to head to Siltvelt castle,” Father said.
“Right as always!”
And we spent the day planning and discussing in such a manner.
With three days left until the wave of destruction, we headed to the Melromarc castle town in need of supplies.
With the money we had earned from our peddling, we went to the familiar weapon shop. Lazy Pig and Kou watched the carriage for us in the meantime.
“Hey, you kids are back! How’re ya doing?” It was the old guy.
“Same as ever,” Father said. “We need some new equipment.”
“Hey, Mister!” said Keel, running up to the old guy, eyes full of pride. “Spear Bro finally started understanding what I’m saying!”
The old guy looked Keel up and down. “By that voice, you must be the slave . . . You’re Keel, right? Congratulations! You’ve become a fine therianthrope!”
“How about it? I look pretty cool, right?”
“More like an adorable pet!”
“Whaaaat? Get out of here. I’m a cool kid!” Keel grunted in frustration and Father patted her on the head. She really was a puppy, I say.
“Come on bro, don’t treat me like a baby.” Keel broke away from Father.
“All right, all right. We all know you’re cool, Keel,” Father cooed.
“Whatever.”
“Just have fun with who you are!” the old guy said to Keel. He turned to Father. “So what can I do for you this time?”
“Well, we came to a weapons shop, so I’d say we’re after weapons,” Father said.
“Naturally. So what do you want and for what price? We could also trade in your old ones for something.”
“Well, to start off, we could sell you these weapons that we stole from a thief way back when we started peddling.”
“I could also create some order-made weapons for you if you have good materials.”
“Wow, you do that too?” Father asked with a surprised smile.
“Now that’s a happy smile, kiddo,” the old guy said.
“Yeah, that’s great. I mean, to have something made out of the raw materials that you collected, wouldn’t you be bound to grow attached to it?”
“I certainly know the feeling.”
“Although, now that I think about it, we might not have much left out of what we collected in between peddling . . .” Father trailed off. He showed the old guy the ingredients we had collected and still had left in his bag.
“Hmm, I think I can do something with this,” the old guy said. “In fact, good stuff, better than your average equipment.”
“That would be wonderful.”
“No problem. So weapons or armor, which are you doing?”
“We should probably strengthen Keel and Sakura’s equipment,” Father said.
“What do you mean?”
“I want something sharp! Like the ones in Siltvelt—” Keel started to exclaim.
“Keel, zip it,” Father advised. He was right, as always. We couldn’t tell anyone we were fighting over in Siltvelt while we were here. Father and I were purposefully making sure to use different weapons in each country, using weapons we found as drop items over in Siltvelt. They had great attacking power, so I understood why Keel wanted to bring it up here. But if we disclosed that in Melromarc, they might send assassins after us or try to pull something weird.
“So for now, strengthen the weapons for Keel and the young lady?”
Father turned to me. “Motoyasu, are Yuki and Kou really fine as is?”
“Yuki and Kou have a monster fighting style,” I told Father. “I’ll get some equipment for them from the monster trainer.”
“So we’ll go there later?”
Excellent question, Father. I wouldn’t say the situation for Yuki or Kou was particularly urgent. It would be good to get some monster claws, but we had to strengthen the equipment for Father and the others. Worst-case scenario, I could probably use a claw or two from the drop items I collected.
“No need to worry about it now, I say.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely not, Father.”
I’d rate the necessity of claws for Yuki and Kou as precisely zero, in fact. If we were going to head someplace where they might need weapons to fight stronger enemies, I’d be able to take care of things regardless. After all, we were trying to stay out of dangerous situations in Melromarc, and it’d be good to have a bit more money to spare. So we didn’t need any weapons for Yuki or Kou after all! They had their claws and their beaks, as good as any weapon a human could ever wield!
“What would you like, young lady?” the old guy asked Sakura.