Table of Contents
Table of Contents Page
Chapter 141: Officially in Business
Chapter 142: The Wonder Trio and Pauline
Chapter 143: First Pauline, Now Reina
Newsletter
Copyrights and Credits
Cast of Characters
Previously
Previously
When Adele von Ascham, the eldest daughter of Viscount Ascham, was ten years old, she was struck with a terrible headache and, just like that, remembered everything.
She remembered how, in her previous life, she was an eighteen-year-old Japanese girl named Kurihara Misato who died while trying to save a young girl, and that she met God…
Misato had exceptional abilities, and the expectations of those around her were high. As a result, she could never live her life the way she wanted. So when she met God, she made an impassioned plea:
“In my next life, please make my abilities average!”
Yet somehow, it all went awry.
In her new life, she can talk to nanomachines, and although her magical powers are technically average, it is the average between a human’s and an elder dragon’s…6,800 times that of a sorcerer!
At the first academy she attended, she made friends and rescued a little boy as well as a princess. She registered at the Hunters’ Prep School under the name of Mile and made a grand debut with the Crimson Vow—the party she formed with her classmates.
The four girls rescued countless people over the course of their journey. They banded together with humans, elves, dwarves, beastfolk, demons, and elder dragons alike to defeat powerful invaders from another dimension and protect their home!
Desperate to escape the stifling hero worship that followed, the Crimson Vow fled to a brand-new continent! There, the girls went from newbie hunters to C-ranks, played with a fluffy white wolf, and crushed a conspiracy with the help of the elder dragons!
The Wonder Trio and Princess Morena also made their way to the new continent. After preventing a famine, the princesses of the two lands were ordained as arch-saints! Now, having formed a seven-girl clan, the Wonder Trio and the Crimson Vow are all set to take their shenanigans to the next level!
Chapter 141: Officially in Business
Chapter 141:
Officially in Business
“HMM…”
The guild master appeared to be deep in thought.
“What’s on your mind, sir?” his assistant asked.
“It’s about those girls… You know, the Wonder Trio. It just doesn’t seem safe to let them go it alone. It doesn’t really help that they’ve got the Crimson Vow with ’em. Two frontline fighters and five mages make a horribly unbalanced party. Besides, they present themselves as two separate groups, not a single party. I doubt they’re always working together.”
“That’s a fair point,” the assistant guild master agreed. It was hard to argue with the guild master’s logic.
“Not to mention that they’ve got all the all-male and mage-less parties trying to pick them up. No surprise there.”
“No surprise indeed. Only a party of cowards wouldn’t try their luck.”
“They’re clearly friends, so I’m not suggesting we split them up. But what if we had all three of them join a trustworthy upper C-rank or B-rank party before a more unsavory bunch gets their hands on ’em? Another option is to let them into one of the larger groups. Really big parties can split into multiple teams and switch out members according to the job. The little lady with the storage magic might get run ragged and put on a bunch of different teams, but her more experienced teammates will be sure to look out for her, and it’ll give her two friends the chance to learn on a variety of jobs. It’s not a bad deal, if you ask me. Your average party of newbies would be weeping for joy at the chance to join a more experienced crew.”
“Well, the issue here is that they’re not your average party of newbies, and it remains to be seen whether they’ll agree that it’s not a bad deal.”
“…”
The pair had a hunch that the girls wouldn’t be particularly amenable.
***
“All right! It’s time to go full-time as hunters in the capital!” crowed Reina.
“Yeah!” the Crimson Vow shouted back, pumped and ready to go.
“We’ll start by making a name for our party, so we get singled out for requests!”
“Yeah!”
Needless to say, filling the guild hall with such a loud rallying cry drew attention.
Boy, did it draw attention.
Still, everyone present saw the Crimson Vow as nothing but a fledgling C-rank party that just so happened to have storage magic. They were under the impression that the girls’ previous guild branch had only promoted them by virtue of that particular skill—and in order to make them eligible for a mandatory summons in event of an emergency. The fact that they were a party of four with two frontline fighters meant that people were focusing their headhunting efforts on the Wonder Trio instead. The Crimson Vow had managed to keep things comparatively mellow.
Because of all this, the hunters present simply shook their heads and smiled at the Crimson Vow’s antics…until the clerk behind the counter shouted, “Excuse me, ladies of the Crimson Vow! Someone requested you for a job!”
So much for their big plans.
***
Reina was in a bit of a bad mood. Correction: She was red-faced and mortified. The Crimson Vow’s rallying cry was still ringing in their ears when the clerk’s announcement had cut in, and she could see the other hunters exchanging laughs at the girls’ quick change in circumstances. The other three members of the Crimson Vow were no less annoyed.
“We only just became C-ranks! Who the heck requested us by name?” Reina asked. It was a valid question. It wouldn’t have been that strange on the old continent, but here the party was nothing but a group of four ordinary girls with no reason to be singled out. The members of the Crimson Vow didn’t have any idea who might have requested them, but they did know that villains and lecherous old men would sometimes hire pretty young ladies with naughty schemes in mind. Their wariness was to be expected.
“It’s from a merchant who would like to make use of your storage space,” the clerk replied.
Ohhh! So that’swhat they’re interested in, all four girls thought.
That they could accept. Well, not necessarily the job itself, since they had yet to hear any of the particulars…but at least now they knew the reason they had been selected.
Still, it was notable that the guild clerk didn’t look particularly thrilled to be conveying this information. The guild was obligated to broker all requests that didn’t violate their regulations—even the ones they were obviously better off refusing. The requested party had to decide for themselves whether to take the job or not.
***
“Do I have this right?” said Mile. “You want us to use our storage to transport your cargo to the town of Meloi, an eight-day, one-way journey. You have roughly one wagon’s worth of cargo, and you’re offering twenty-four half-gold as payment?”
Upon meeting with the client, Mavis had introduced herself as the party leader, and Mile had taken over the negotiations from there. As the job called for her storage magic, it was only right for her to be in charge.
“Correct!” the client replied. “Amazing deal, right? I’m offering you the price of an escort mission for a regular delivery!”
“Ha!”
“Aha ha…”
“He he he…”
“Aha ha ha!”
“Do you think we’re suckers?” all four girls demanded in unison.
“Why are you only compensating us for one leg of the trip? It’ll take us another eight days to get back,” said Mile. “The job will eat up sixteen days of our time.”
“It’s a terrible deal even discounting the return trip. Twenty-four half-gold for eight days comes out to three half-gold a day. How is that remotely comparable to the price of an escort mission?!” Reina protested. “Hold on a second. Do you expect everyone but the storage holder to work for free? Is that it?!”
“Besides, we’re hunters!” said Mile. “Hunters take on escort missions, sure, but if all you want is someone to transport your cargo, you should be asking a carriage dealer, courier, or merchant house!”
The man stammered. “Um…”
“Why do you look so surprised? We ought to be shocked that you’d even present us with such an outrageous request,” said Mile. “Even with storage magic in play, a little girl traveling all by herself is bound to come under attack by bandits, so she’s obviously going to need escorts. Sure, we can protect ourselves because we just so happen to be a C-rank party, but that doesn’t mean you get to scrimp on the escort fee and pay only for the shipping! We’ll still be in danger if we come under attack, and it’s not like you’ve hired us a separate bodyguard. Hunters D-rank and up don’t even take on delivery requests. Those are supposed to go to carriage dealers, couriers, employment agencies that find people work, newbie E- or F-rank hunters, or G-ranks younger than ten who are working as apprentices. Barring that, you might find a merchant caravan headed in the same direction… It’s just plain embarrassing for anyone higher than D-rank to take on a job like this. No hunter with any common sense or self-respect is going to agree to that.”
“Mile is right,” agreed Reina. “Sure, when we do an escort mission for a caravan, we’ll sometimes agree to keep their valuable or fragile cargo in our storage, but that’s just a complimentary service we provide to clients who’ve already hired us as escorts. We’re not trying to make money off deliveries, so we don’t mind doing them the favor. But to come to us with that specific goal in mind, refuse to pay an escort fee, and offer a reward that’s way below the going rate? Ha! Getting singled out for a job might boost our reputation, but we’re not desperate enough to take on one this bad!”
Pauline joined the verbal assault. “Plus, transporting a wagon’s worth of cargo would normally include the cost of renting a wagon, hiring a driver and three to four guards, feeding the horses, and providing food and other essentials for the journey. Factoring in the return trip, you’d have sixteen days’ worth of those expenses to cover. And you’re trying to get away with paying Mile and only Mile an eight-day allowance? We wouldn’t even consider an offer like that.”
Everyone was reminded of the merchant girl they had met back in the port city. At the time, both Mile and her three friends had figured, Well, you don’t get many great jobs out here in the boonies. Maybe that puts the hunters at a disadvantage and makes them easy prey for unscrupulous merchants…
But this was the capital! A trick like that wasn’t going to work here. Heck, even out in the sticks, it would only work if the hunters were either incredibly stupid or in dire financial straits.
Back on the old continent, the Crimson Vow had received a few offers for delivery jobs. They had always been offered fair compensation, and the terms had been much more reasonable than these. Even so, they had declined each and every one under the logic that no C-rank hunter should be doing deliveries. The girls had no interest in stealing jobs from the people who actually worked in the transport industry. They would make an exception for, say, delivering emergency supplies to a village suffering a famine or medicinal herbs to a rural area ravaged by an epidemic, but that was about it.
As party leader, Mavis stepped up to formally turn down the job. “There you have it, sir. I’m afraid we will have to decline this request.”
“Ugh… Fine, then I’ll change the request! I want your entire party to serve as my escorts and carry my cargo on the side. I’ll pay all four of you for both legs of the trip—a total of sixteen days. The total reward will come out to twelve gold and four half-gold. There, does that work?!”
“What, two half-gold per person per day?” Mile shot back. “That’s one coin less than the rate you were offering before. Also, your final number is four half-gold short. Were you trying to cheat us on the assumption that we can’t do simple multiplication? We’re not about to accept a job from a client so underhanded as to scam his own hired bodyguards. It’s too late, anyway. No matter how hard you dress the offer up to make it sound better, we’re not going to take it—especially not now that it’s public knowledge that you’ve tried to lowball us.”
“Huh?” Following Mile’s gaze, the merchant turned to look behind him.
This meeting was taking place in a booth tucked away in a corner of the guild. However, this wasn’t the Merchants’ Guild, where such booths were private, soundproofed rooms. Three of its sides were partitioned off with planks of wood, but otherwise, this booth was open to the remainder of the building. The space behind and overhead wasn’t covered at all, so clients were simply expected to keep their voices down when discussing sensitive information like their departure date or stock. Raise your voice even a little, and everyone could hear every word of the conversation. It didn’t help that girls’ voices tended to carry well, and the Crimson Vow had done quite a bit of shouting over the perceived insult.
Everyone was staring—both the guild staff and the other hunters.
“W-well, we can rework the details. There’s even room to negotiate the payme—”
“No, we’ve heard enough,” said Mavis. “We’ll leave this job for another party. Assuming anyone else even wants it… Anyway, best wishes and all that.”
The merchant was shocked. “Huh?”
“Okay, time to check the job board for something good!” said Reina.
“Yeah!” the rest of the party chorused.
“Wait, what? Huh? H-hold on! This is the part where we’re supposed to haggle over the price!” the client sputtered, dismayed that Mavis had cut the conversation short and made to leave with her companions.
The merchant’s plan had been to first offer a cheap reward, then negotiate with his hires when they asked for a pay raise, and land on a compromise. A tactic like that wouldn’t work with a regular request, where a client posted their terms up front and recruited applicants, but it became possible when a client requested a party by name and the two sides had to work out the details together. That just so happened to be this merchant’s preferred way of doing things, and it was common practice in his neck of the woods.
Unfortunately for him, the Crimson Vow didn’t take kindly to such methods. Mile’s influence was partly to blame.
“You offer a ridiculously low reward, then raise the price for those who know how to negotiate, and exploit the ones who don’t? Well, too bad—we won’t stand for that sort of thing. We prefer to work for a fair market rate, no matter who we’re dealing with,” said Reina. “Of course, we won’t demand that everyone do things our way. Your type can go right ahead and do business with anyone who’s up for it. We just don’t want anything to do with you. See you around!”
With that, Reina and her fellow party members walked off, leaving the merchant to stare blankly in their wake. His business sense was directly opposed to the hunters’ preferred way of doing business. Only an idiot would do things fair and square.
Still, that same business sense was telling him that he had just blown a chance to earn big.
“Nicely done, ladies! Taking jobs from corrupt merchants like him drives down the rates for your fellow hunters, and no one wants that. Unfortunately, some people are just too desperate to put food on the table or to beef up their resumes by getting singled out for a job. Heck, some hunters get tricked because they can’t do the math. Thankfully, there aren’t that many crooked clients hanging around here. They might get away with their tricks one or two times, but word spreads fast among the local hunters, and eventually everyone stops giving ’em the time of day. If I had to guess, that guy was a small-time shop owner who brought some cargo over from Meloi and doesn’t own a private wagon. He doesn’t come to the capital often and doesn’t work in retail, so he has no incentive to care about his reputation. Probably figured he could rip off a little girl with storage magic and cut back on costs.”
“Wait—what happened to the wagon and bodyguards he used to get his cargo here in the first place?” Mile asked.
Pauline answered, “He likely found a caravan heading back to the capital after dropping off cargo in Meloi and haggled for a cheap price. Wagons aren’t always fully loaded on the return trip.”
Although it was ideal to load wagons to capacity on both legs of a journey, that wasn’t always possible or convenient—particularly if the town didn’t produce or trade in any products that sold well in the capital. There were always the kinds of products that could be found anywhere, but those weren’t worth the cost of transportation. When it came to those kinds of things, the better play was to buy them somewhere cheaper and closer to the capital in order to minimize the cost of transport, the wear and tear on the goods, and the risk of bandit attacks.
Thus, the small-time merchant would have likely transported his cargo at a discount by hitching a ride with a caravan on its way back to the capital. Now, he needed to find a cheap way to get the goods he’d bought at the capital back home. That was when he heard the rumors of a party of sheltered young girls who had a mage with an enormous storage space among their ranks. He’d jumped at his chance and requested them by name. Sadly for him, he’d botched the negotiations.
His plan had been to request a C-rank party for a delivery job instead of an escort mission and offer payment significantly below the going rate; then, during the ensuing negotiations, he would attempt to find a middle ground between his original offer and the amount the other party was likely to demand. Depending on how much of a sucker his counterparts were, even the final negotiated price would be a steal.
When the hunters turned down the request after hearing the initial terms, his whole plan had fallen apart. That was the part where the negotiations were supposed to begin.
If the little girl’s storage space was even half of what he’d heard—no, even a third—he could have paid her the standard price and still made a huge profit. Heck, he could have paid double the standard price and still made money. He’d really shot himself in the foot.
Normally, as Mile had pointed out, a merchant would have to cover the cost of a wagon, horses, a driver, and bodyguards. He would have to provide food, water, and other essentials. The horses in particular would need a lot of water and feed, and all of those supplies would take up a huge amount of space in the wagon. Taking all that into consideration, he could have offered to pay twenty gold coins and had a profit to show for it.
Instead, he’d blown his chance in an instant.
Any merchant of decent standing would know that hunters D-rank and up only took on escort missions, never delivery jobs, and that they would never accept an offer way below the going rate, with very few exceptions. Well, in the capital, anyway. In more rural areas, low-ranking hunters often cared more about paying the bills than their pride or a fair wage, which gave the client an advantage in negotiations. Eager to save money and unfamiliar with the capital guild, the merchant had taken the little girls for easy marks and made his initial terms borderline insulting—and that had been his undoing.
In retrospect, he should have known that if Mile’s storage magic was so easy for a provincial shopkeeper to hear word of, there was no way the merchants from the capital wouldn’t already know about it. They might have heard from the Merchants’ Guild, their friends among the hunters, or the local intelligence network—there were any number of potential sources. The fact that the Crimson Vow had yet to take on any requests of this nature could mean only one of two things: The merchants of the capital had held back under the assumption that the girls wouldn’t accept, or they had already made the requests and been turned down like he had. There was simply no way they would let such a lucrative opportunity pass them by.
It would take a small-time shopkeeper from the sticks not to deduce as much. He was a far cry from the large business owners and established capital merchants who could hold their own in the cutthroat world of business. But the merchant still refused to give up.
No! I’m not done yet! Time for Plan B! he told himself.
***
“Excuse me, ladies of the Wonder Trio! Someone requested you for a job!”
“Huh?”
It was the next day, and the merchant had apparently heard word of a second little girl with an enormous storage capacity. It wasn’t all that surprising, really. After all, if the topic of storage holders had come up in the first place, both girls would have been mentioned. And if the merchant had heard about this second girl, he would also have heard that she belonged to a party of three underage girls—easy marks, in other words.
This conversation played out almost exactly like the first one.
These girls were even more (even less?) underage than the Crimson Vow. The merchant had been tempted to present the same initial terms to them, but he was too good a negotiator to make the same mistake twice. Instead, he offered them slightly better pay. But alas…
“I beg your pardon, but we’re quite close to the Crimson Vow. They told us exactly what happened yesterday. We operate on similar policies, so our answer is the same as theirs.”
“No thank you!” all three girls said in unison.
The merchant trudged off with his tail between his legs.
He hadn’t technically lost any money, but he had still taken a blow to his pride. In a way, screwing up a chance to earn big hit him harder than a straightforward financial loss.
***
A few days after the merchant made his insulting request, the Crimson Vow and the Wonder Trio were enjoying a spot of afternoon tea at the former inn they had transformed into their clan house.
“Remember that country merchant?” Pauline began. “Word about our encounters with him has apparently spread to the Hunters’ Guild, Merchants’ Guild, their members, regular civilians, and even part of the nobility. I doubt we’ll have to worry about anyone trying to hire our parties for deliveries again. Well, assuming they’re not from out of town, or a fool who thinks they can always get their way…”
Mile nodded. “Even if we were singled out for a similarly outrageous request, we can count on the guild clerk to warn the client that we’d be unlikely to accept it.”
When clerks processed standard requests, they always checked whether the given terms seemed reasonable, and they would offer advice in particularly dire cases. However, in the event that the client chose to ignore them and go ahead with an ill-advised request, they would have no choice but to post it. That way, the guild could still collect the handling fee, and you never knew—some of the more eccentric hunters might be willing to settle for an objectively bad deal. The possibility of that was close to zero, but it didn’t particularly matter to the guild if the request got no takers. Either it would expire and get taken off the job board, or the client would request an extension and pay to keep it up longer.
When a party was requested by name, however, it was standard practice for the client and party to meet and work out the terms from there. If the client started out offering a high reward, they wouldn’t be able to lower their bid during the in-person meeting later, so those hoping to negotiate a cheap price would often omit the remuneration or other specifics from their initial request. If they truly couldn’t afford to have their request rejected, they would set a minimum price prior to the negotiations to ensure that it at least went to the meeting stage.
Even so, no matter what the terms the client put forth, it was the hunters’ prerogative to turn down any offers that didn’t meet their needs, even before the negotiation. The guild would still collect a handling fee in those instances, so it wasn’t any skin off their back. And it wasn’t as though every negotiation ended in an agreement, anyway.
All this was to say that the clerk had done nothing wrong in the case of the stingy merchant. Still, even she hadn’t expected the client to put forth such egregious terms—certainly none of the capital merchants she knew would ever pull such a stupid stunt. By way of apology, she had promised to be more selective about requests she passed along in the future. She would confirm the broad strokes of the job in advance and warn the merchant if their request was liable to be rejected. If the offer was beyond salvaging, she would inform the girls and ask if they wanted to forgo the meeting. This was apparently a complimentary service she was providing for the Crimson Vow and Wonder Trio only, seeing as their crazy-huge storage spaces were bound to bring more blockheads flocking to them. The guild was being quite considerate of both parties.
“Obviously, we’ll make an exception if the guild calls on us to transport supplies in event of an emergency. When lives are on the line, it doesn’t matter how menial the job or how cheap the pay is,” said Reina. “Then again, I can’t imagine many scenarios that’d call for transporting medicine, water, and food to places wagons can’t go. A monster stampede is about all that comes to mind.”
“Fortunately, those only happen about once every twenty or thirty years,” said Mavis.
Mile couldn’t resist making a tasteless joke. “And tomorrow just so happens to mark thirty years since the last one…”
“Not funny!” Reina snapped.
Monster stampedes were tragedies with high death tolls, leaving multiple villages and towns razed in their wake. Survivors of the devastated communities were sometimes forced to relocate to the capital, so there was a nonzero chance that an acquaintance of theirs had lost family members to a stampede when they were young. It was a completely inappropriate joke to make in polite company.
“Sorry,” Mile muttered sheepishly. She had enough good sense to realize that she had crossed a line. She could tell this wasn’t just about Reina scolding her on principle; her friend sounded genuinely upset.
Though monsters hadn’t been to blame, Reina herself had lost her family and friends as a child, leaving her all alone in the world. Understandably, she tended to be sensitive to jokes about mass carnage or being the last man standing. Failing to take that into consideration had been a big oversight on Mile’s part.
Knowing Mile’s apology was sincere, Reina chose to let the matter drop, taking a deep breath and pretending Mile had shown the good sense not to open her mouth in the first place.
“Anyway, this should stop other merchants from the capital treating any of us like their own personal wagons,” said Mavis. “As for merchants from the countryside who may be here doing business… When they see that we aren’t taking any long leaves of absence from the capital, they’ll be able to guess that none of the capital merchants are giving us delivery jobs. With even a small amount of research, they’ll find out that neither of our parties accept requests of that nature. Country bumpkin or not, any merchant doing business in the capital would have to be at least that savvy.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Reina interjected. “Remember Arli, that merchant girl we met at the port city? She told us she worked in the capital before moving out to the countryside.”
“Oh yeah,” said her three companions ruefully.
It was a mistake to assume that the world was filled with nothing but reasonable people, or that just because a person held a particular position, they would have the good sense to go along with it. Even among the hunters, there was a violent buffoon for every honest worker. Surely the merchants had their fair share of morons as well.
“Whenever we get started in a new town, we always get some unsavory characters hanging around,” said Reina. “They learn their lesson eventually, but that doesn’t make it any less of a pain in the neck. Still, I think what we’ve done now ought to keep the pests to a minimum, and that’s good enough. Now we can finally focus on our hunter work.” At that, she turned to the Wonder Trio. “We’ve had it pretty good here, but how are things going for you girls? Are people still trying to recruit the three of you into their parties?”
“Yes,” Marcela replied. “Only a few have the gall to try to steal me from the group, but many have asked us to join up as a trio. Even parties of four to five people and oversized B-rank groups have tried.”
“Yikes!” The Crimson Vow shook their heads in commiseration.
“Still, you can always just turn them down, and you three will never have to worry about anyone coercing you,” said Mile. “After all…”
“If they tie us up, we can simply store the rope,” said Marcela.
“If they gag us, we know how to silent cast,” said Monika.
“Basically, we have plenty of ways to fight back,” said Aureana. “Since their ultimate objective would be to use our powers for their own ends, we don’t need to worry about, say, getting ambushed and stabbed through the heart. Even if we’re outnumbered, we still have hot magic and other kinds of attacks.”
Mile nodded approvingly. She had taught the Trio plenty of brutal self-defense spells. Capsaicin-fueled hot magic was far from the only trick up their sleeve.
“Plus, if someone gets violent with you, anything you do in retaliation counts as self-defense,” said Reina. “Everyone knows you’ve been getting hounded incessantly, and you have no reason to pick a fight with another party. The guild, our fellow hunters, and the local guard will all believe your testimony. No one’s going to blame you for hurting or even killing your assailants, so you can hit them as hard as you want.”
“Er, I suppose that’s true, yes,” said Marcela, looking a bit disturbed. Reina wasn’t wrong, but this hypothetical scenario involved their fellow hunters, not some faceless bandits. She wasn’t interested in escalating things quite that far. (Not to say that she would ever hesitate to strike back if someone came at her with the intent to kill, obviously.)
Because they lived in a world where smaller wounds could always be healed with magic, the members of the Crimson Vow had the bad habit of dismissing injuries—whether to themselves or their enemies—as no big deal, so long as there was no threat to life or limb.
Anyway, this whole hypothetical scenario was unlikely to come to pass. Even if they thought they could subjugate them by force, not many people would be stupid enough to attack someone they hoped would become a collaborator. And so, rather than dwell on Reina’s advice, Marcela opted to change the subject.
“As you said, Reina, we are finally poised to start our hunter work in earnest. Unlike you four, we were only just promoted to C-rank, so we must set out to prove ourselves in action. It would discredit the guild master if we failed to demonstrate the skill to justify our promotion.”
She made a good point. “You’re not wrong. Good luck out there!” Reina said, as Mile nodded along in encouragement.
But Marcela wasn’t finished. “Therefore, we would appreciate it if you lent us Miss Mile until further notice.”
“Huuuuuh?!” the Crimson Vow exclaimed.
“Um, I don’t have any personal objections, but isn’t the whole point to prove your skill? Borrowing a member from another party kind of defeats the purpose,” Mile rightfully pointed out.
“Stop splitting hairs!” All three members of the Wonder Trio looked distinctly put out at Mile’s objection.
“That’s hardly splitting hairs!” Reina shot back. “You are legitimately contradicting yourselves!”
“I respectfully disagree,” Marcela sniffed. “The locals are under the impression that a provincial guild master unduly propelled your party to C-rank on account of Miss Mile’s storage magic. Seeing as we were promoted to C-rank for the very same reason, it wouldn’t make much of a difference to temporarily welcome Miss Mile into our ranks. Weren’t you girls only just given a special promotion from rock bottom to C-rank? Wouldn’t it be entirely reasonable for Miss Mile to reconnect with some old friends while the rest of you catch your breath, or perhaps to get some extra training and observe how another party operates? In other hunters’ eyes, Miss Mile’s storage magic is what makes her such a valuable asset, but that is of little consequence when I possess the same skill. We’ll present it as a form of community building between fellow storage users rather than our party hanging on Miss Mile’s coattails.”
“Hmm… That’s a good point,” Mile conceded. “We can say that I want to expand my skills with a party that has the same storage ability as mine. But what’s the Crimson Vow supposed to do in the meantime?”
“No need to worry about us,” said Mavis. “I have my own storage space now, in case you’ve forgotten. I’m afraid I can’t quite fit your fortified bathhouse or toilets, but I can certainly manage a regular bathtub, toilet, privacy screen, food, cooking supplies, bedding, and a tent. Probably any game we hunt, too. I don’t have your ability to halt the flow of time, but I doubt we’ll take any jobs longer than three days while you’re away, so we can move whatever’s likely to go bad into your storage as soon as we get back. Later on, we can drop everything off at the purchasing counter and pretend all four of us hunted it together. As long as we’re only delivering dailies, we don’t have any obligation to tell the guild branch that you were working with the Wonder Trio, right?”
“Right,” said Pauline. “The only reason to report a temporary change in party composition is to prevent squabbles over dividing up the reward or contribution points. That shouldn’t be a problem for our two parties.”
It was rare for her to agree with Mavis where money was concerned, but in this case, they were all on the same page.
“We three are all members of the Crimson Vow, so whatever we earn by ourselves will go to our own party,” Pauline went on. “Meanwhile, the other team will be a mix of Mile and the Wonder Trio, so whatever they earn should go into our joint clan fund rather than the Wonder Trio’s pockets. You know, the same fund we use to cover rent, food, utilities, and all our other shared expenses.”
“Wait, what?!” Leave it to Pauline to stupefy a whole room of people—everyone present could hardly believe what they had heard.
“Come now, Pauline, that doesn’t seem entirely fair,” Mavis protested, clearly dismayed.
“You’re really something else,” said Reina, no less appalled.
“Pauline,” Mile said carefully, “I think it’d be for the best if each party just kept their own earnings.”
Despite her newfound financial stability, Pauline never changed. Her money-grubbing ways had become an ingrained part of her personality, similar to how some people might keep up the habit of waiting for a store’s closing time to get food half off, even if they could afford to pay the full prices.
The Wonder Trio weren’t hurting for coin, and a joint fund would be used to benefit the whole clan, not pay the Crimson Vow’s personal expenses. If what the Wonder Trio really cared about was getting their chance to work with Mile, this seemed like a fair enough deal in Pauline’s book.
“By your logic, if a member of the Wonder Trio ever comes along on one of our missions, anything we earn will have to go into the joint fund,” Reina said to Pauline. “It won’t matter if we’re swapping members as a learning experience or teaming up for a big job! It’s all gotta go!”
“Erm…”
It was a critical hit. Although she couldn’t know for sure, Pauline suspected the Crimson Vow earned significantly more money than the Wonder Trio. She would hate for Reina’s hypothetical to become reality and undermine their earning potential on future jobs.
“V-very well… Forget I said anything. You should split your earnings four ways and let Mile keep a quarter of it.”
When the two parties joined forces, the initial plan had been to create a joint fund by dividing necessary expenses between all seven girls, but Pauline had realized that, as the larger party of the two, this would require the Crimson Vow to contribute more than the Wonder Trio. Instead, she had proposed that they build the fund with earnings from their joint missions, and no one else had cared enough about money to object. As it turned out, this system was just complicating matters and giving Pauline more things to worry about.
She was a full-on cheapskate. In fact, she was so appallingly miserly that her fellow party members didn’t even feel like teasing her about it. Between managing a whole fief and its assets on the old continent and using her own business to build her personal fortune, at this point, she was filthy rich, but one would never know it from her behavior.
Even if Pauline somehow found herself penniless, she could use her world-class healing magic to rake in coin from the nobility, the royalty, and the rich. No one could comprehend why she was still so obsessed with money. She was no longer saving up out of sheer necessity; hoarding money had clearly become her greatest pleasure in life.
“Pauline, the point of money is to spend it. The gold you stash in your coffers or bury in a jar serves no functional purpose,” Mile chided her. “It’s important to make use of the money you earn. It doesn’t matter if you spend it on your business or on frivolous purchases, but you have to put it back into the economy somehow.”
“Urgh…”
Pauline did not like being on the receiving end of a lecture about money and business.
In the midst of this scene, Marcela cleared her throat. “Have we reached an agreement, then?” she asked. “Is it all right if Miss Mile joins our party for the next few days?”
“Sure, I guess,” said Reina. “I mean, it’s your dream to do hunter work alongside Mile, right? You even gave up your cushy lives and became hunters to make it happen. And wasn’t that the whole point of us forming a clan, anyway? I’m not about to stand in your way. Besides, just look at Mile. I doubt we could stop her if we tried.”
Sure enough, Mile was the perfect picture of a chihuahua salivating over a bowl of food.
***
Now we return to the merchant who had tried to use the Crimson Vow and Wonder Trio as his own personal wagons, only to be summarily rejected…
He was a small-time merchant based in a provincial town a good distance away, and he came out to the capital only a handful of times a year. As his visits were few and far between, it had never particularly mattered if he made a bit of an ass of himself during his time in the city.
Until now, that is.
When merchants came from the countryside to do one-off transactions, it wasn’t unusual for them to blunder in one way or another. Most of the time, the locals regarded those scrapes as something to laugh about over drinks, but nothing more than that. By the time the offending party next made it back to the capital, the whole thing would be forgotten. Even if some memory of the incident survived, it would be only as a funny anecdote in which no one recalled the identity of the main character. Once in a while, a merchant might be regaled with the tale of their own past hijinks, but if that were the case, they would simply force a smile and pretend to laugh along.
Yet this time around, for whatever reason, the story had taken off as a subject of local gossip—with the merchant’s name attached. Even worse, fellow merchants began to drop by the town where he worked and bring it up in the local taverns—and once again, they were not so generous as to leave out the name of the man involved. The result was that word of the merchant’s blunder had spread all the way to his hometown, making it a whole lot harder for him to show his face in public.
Granted, he hadn’t actually done anything illegal, so he wasn’t formally censured or ostracized. The worst he suffered was damage to his dignity and his reputation.
And as it happened, the merchant learned from his mistake. Although he had never engaged in criminal activity before, he had often resorted to crooked, unsavory business practices, skirting the line of what counted as crime. The fallout from his mishap inspired him to turn over a new leaf.
Despite the lingering black spot on his reputation, he spun his newfound infamy to his advantage. Poking fun at himself for botching two different chances to capitalize on a pretty, young storage user, he became known as an amiable kind of man who didn’t take himself too seriously. He expanded his customer base and ultimately saw a gradual increase in sales.
All grist to the mill. Even a small-time country merchant knew how to do business.
***
“The day has finally come…”
“Yes! At long last, we set off on an adventure with Ade—er, Mile!”
They had barely entered the forest near the capital when the Wonder Trio began to reminisce.
“I’ve never forgotten the night she disappeared, when we all made a vow to find her once more…”
The three girls sniffled, tears springing to their eyes as they dove into a succession of increasingly dramatic sob stories.
It didn’t take long for Mile to break down crying right alongside them.
For a while, the four girls simply cried in one another’s embrace.
C-rank hunters could never be caught weeping in public, and once they ventured deeper into the forest, they would have to remain alert for monsters. This was the only place where they could let it all out.
Finally, Marcela wiped her tears and rallied the others. “Come on, ladies! It’s time to get to work!”
“Let’s do it!” her two companions concurred.
“Wait, you’re already over it?! That was fast!” remarked Mile, amazed at how quickly the members of the Wonder Trio had bounced back.
“What do you expect? We may be ordinary girls, but we’ve had to learn to keep a lid on our emotions or we’d never make it through a battle,” said Marcela. Monika and Aureana nodded emphatically.
Mile wasn’t buying their rationale.
“Uh, I’m not sure you need to worry about that! Seems like you’re made of pretty tough stuff to me!”
***
“Well, Team Ex-ile—that’s short for ‘excluding Mile,’ by the way—here we are, hunting all by ourselves,” said Reina.
“It’s important for us to do some training without Mile, so we don’t get too dependent on her,” said Pauline. “I struggle to imagine her ever getting hurt, but you never know when she might get sick or step away from the party to take care of other business. We’ll be in trouble if we can’t function without her when the time comes. It’s not even a hypothetical, really, since we all saw what happened last time…”
“That was a disaster, all right… Ha ha ha…” As she flashed back to the experience, a dry, self-deprecating laugh escaped Mavis’s lips. “But rest assured, it won’t happen again! I may not be anywhere near Mile’s level, but my storage space can fit a small cabin’s worth of supplies. I’ve got a tent, blankets, food, a bathtub, a toilet, and cooking supplies, and I can carry the spoils of our hunt without any extra hassle. We can make ourselves some money even without Mile’s help!”
“Ugh!” Reina and Pauline weren’t quite so cheerful. In fact, the disgruntled looks on their faces were a stark contrast to Mavis’s beaming smile.
Who could blame them for being upset? They were self-styled first-rate (no, ultra first-rate!) mages, yet they had failed to master storage magic despite their best efforts. Meanwhile, Mavis wasn’t even supposed to be a mage, and she had picked up the skill in no time at all. To add insult to injury, her storage space probably counted among the three largest on the continent, if you excluded Mile and the Wonder Trio.
Reina and Pauline’s pride was in tatters. And they still had the same problem as ever: They had effectively gone from depending on Mile’s storage magic to depending on Mavis’s.
What hurt the most was that all three members of the Wonder Trio could use storage magic, too.
The mere thought made Reina and Pauline growl in frustration, but such was life. Their only recourse was to master the magic as soon as possible.
To be clear, the fact that they had yet to do so couldn’t actually be ascribed to any lack of talent. The Wonder Trio could only use storage magic because, at Mile’s behest, they had been assigned their own personal nanomachines and granted direct access to the inventory. Technically speaking, this wasn’t even real storage magic, but only Mile knew the difference.
Mavis, meanwhile, had nanomachines overseeing her artificial left arm. A bunch had also attached themselves to her sword for maintenance purposes. That was likely the true reason she had mastered storage magic so handily. With so many nanomachines already dedicated to aiding her, it was significantly easier to both open and sustain a subspace pocket.
Not to mention, Mavis was fairly smart to begin with, and she had read Miami Satodele’s novels. Her familiarity with the concepts of other worlds, alternate dimensions, and spatial distortions was no doubt another major factor in her success.
The reality was that very few people could use storage magic, and even those who could weren’t able to hold much. Having a cabin’s worth of storage space would easily catapult someone into the ranks of the top two storage masters on the continent and attract the attention of nations all over the world. Even if that person were a commoner, any country would gladly welcome them into the ranks of their nobility.
Reina, Pauline, and Mavis were far better fighters than your typical C-rank hunter, whether one measured by speed, power, endurance, or accuracy. Supposing each girl had the combat ability of two average C-rank hunters combined, their three-person party had the equivalent of two frontline fighters, two combat mages, and two healing/support mages. Add someone with the storage capacity of a small cabin into the mix, and they were effectively a hotshot party with a pack of porters in tow.
Still, Reina and Pauline refused to be left behind the rest of their clan in this particular skill.
“Guess our only choice is to figure out storage magic for ourselves,” said Reina.
Pauline sighed. “Right.”
They were getting closer, at least. Pauline had already succeeded at forming and holding a subspace pocket, so she just had to work on keeping it going for longer; making sure it didn’t fall apart whether she was tired, emotionally agitated, or asleep; and increasing its capacity. Reina wasn’t quite at Pauline’s level, but she had at least managed the initial formation of a subspace. Neither was anywhere near calling herself a true master of storage magic, but they had made it to the top .01 percentile, and it wouldn’t be long before they reached their final goal. While their knowledge wasn’t on par with Mavis’s, they had still heard Mile’s tales about alternate dimensions and separate realities, which couldn’t hurt.
Back on the old continent, the interdimensional invasion had exposed the existence of parallel universes to the public at large. There was a decent chance that magical prodigies previously one step away from mastering storage magic were having epiphanies all over the place. Considering Reina and Pauline had spent years listening to Japanese folktales (not to mention the private tutoring they’d received from Mile), their egos would never recover if they were surpassed by those random nobodies.
For all those reasons, they couldn’t afford to give up.
***
“Should we go ahead and set up camp for the night?” Reina asked. Mavis and Pauline nodded.
For most hunters, it would take a long time to find a good campsite (preferably, somewhere safe from sudden downpours or floodwater, and where they would have a tactical advantage if they were ambushed by monsters or bandits) and pitch a tent. However, with Mile around, the Crimson Vow never had to worry about setting up their sleeping space, so they could keep working right up until nightfall. It was a huge advantage they had over other parties.
Mile was currently absent, of course, but Mavis had a small, pre-assembled tent in her own storage. It even had a few blankets inside. Blankets were light, and packing them in the tent meant they didn’t eat up extra space, so it didn’t put much strain on her storage capacity. She had stashed a few other supplies in the tent before storing it, too.
As for the matter of choosing a campsite, they could disregard all the criteria that made the process difficult for mageless parties. Mavis was carrying quite a bit of water in her storage and Reina and Pauline could produce additional water with magic, so there was no need to find a stream or pond to settle down next to. Downpours were also easy enough to account for, as the two mages could use earth magic to instantly form a drainage ditch around the tent. No need to dig it in advance, either; waiting until after the rain started wouldn’t be an issue.
Not only could combat and healing magic be a matter of life and death for party members, but magic also provided a huge boost to the quality of life of hunters on the road. It was no wonder that mageless parties were always so desperate to recruit one.
Mavis took the tent out of storage, laid out a waterproof tarp inside, and set the blankets on top of it. This sleeping arrangement wasn’t quite as comfortable as their usual cots, but there was still a world of difference between this and the average hunter’s “bed” of a cloak laid out over some cut grass. The girls weren’t about to complain.
If they got dirty, they could always use the cleaning and wash-up magic Mile taught them, and Mavis had a bathtub and privacy screen in her storage, so they could also take baths if they wanted. Reina and Pauline could magically fill up the tub and heat it with a fireball or just produce the water preheated.
The girls used earth magic to make their usual makeshift stove and ate a warm meal. After dinner, Reina said, “How about we listen to some Japanese folktales until we get sle— Wait…”
“Oh, right…” Mavis sighed.
“The sun won’t come up until the first morning bell,” said Pauline. That was around six in the morning.
“I can’t imagine I’ll be able to sleep that long,” Mavis complained.
They had waited until it got dark to start dinner, but on this continent, the sun rose and set over the mountains, and there were still at least ten more hours until dawn. After the good night’s sleep they’d gotten the previous night, it was still far too early to go to bed. Normally, they listened to Mile’s Japanese folktales to pass the time, but their storyteller was nowhere to be seen.
“Want to hear some stories about my brothers?” Mavis offered.
“Pass,” said Reina.
“No thank you,” said Pauline.
They’d already heard enough of those to last them a lifetime.
“Good night, Mavis.”
“Um, okay… G’night…”
Not thirty seconds after everyone had burrowed under the blankets, Reina shouted, “Wait, hold it!” and sprang out of bed. “We can’t just go to sleep without Mile here! We don’t have her weird barriers and alarm spells security magic up! My barrier won’t hold as long as hers, and it’ll come down as soon as I fall asleep!”
“Ugh!” Pauline and Mavis shared Reina’s dismay at this revelation.
Mile had spoiled them to the point that they had never learned how to detect threats or put safety measures in place, both of which were indispensable skills for any hunter.
“There’s only one solution here!” said Reina. “We take turns on the night watch!”
“I suppose that’s what most people do… If anything, Mile’s the strange one for being able to keep her security barrier, alarm spells, and insect-repelling shield going all through the night. And in her sleep, no less,” Mavis grumbled.
Despite Mavis’s attempt to pass the buck to Mile, the girls knew they had only themselves to blame for their lack of regard for their own safety. It was all well and good to make use of Mile’s skills when she was around, but they ought to have treated those instances as special exceptions and already devised alternative strategies to employ in her absence.
Reina shuddered to realize how careless they had been. Who did or didn’t have a gigantic storage space should have been the least of their concerns compared to their party’s basic safety. They had come close to fumbling one of the fundamentals of hunter work, and the mistake could have cost them their lives.
“Well, look on the bright side,” Pauline muttered. “At least we don’t have to worry about having too much time to sleep now.”
***
“This seems like a good time to use my scouting magic.”
“Go for it, Lady Marcela!” The other members of the Wonder Trio were in agreement.
Ping!
Beep! Beep beep beep!
“Two small targets sighted about fifty meters away at a one o’clock angle. One medium target sighted seventy meters away at two o’clock. The former are likely jackalopes. Odds are good that the latter is a boar or dee—”
“How are you so good at this?!” shouted Mile, astonished by the precision of Marcela’s scouting magic.
The form of search magic Marcela had just used wasn’t something Mile had taught her. Long ago, during the Wonder Trio’s Eckland Academy days, they had learned about the concept of search magic through Mile’s Japanese folktales. While biding their time after Mile’s (well, Adele’s) disappearance, they had implemented the idea on their own, giving birth to their own original spell.
They made a point of calling it “scouting magic” rather than “search magic,” since it was their own spin on the concept.
When Mile was telling her stories, she had treated search magic as just another fictional flourish. She certainly hadn’t gone into the principles or workings behind it; all she had said was that it was magic one could use to find an enemy’s location. The Wonder Trio themselves were the ones who had figured out how it worked, by emitting short pulses of magic in a full circle and picking up the signals sent back by living creatures—a practice they had implemented after much trial and error.
No one had helped them. The three girls had managed this all on their own. They had done their research behind closed doors and honed their skills out of anyone’s sight—all for the sake of chasing after Mile, making it through the journey alive, and finally reuniting with their friend.
Even Mile’s search magic had undergone a series of overhauls, going from a voice-guided GPS system to a PPI (Plan Position Indicator) scope system, and eventually evolving into a sonar system. Thanks to the many examples of radars she’d seen in anime and movies during her past life, she was able to make the adjustments fairly easily. It didn’t hurt that the nanomachines were so partial to her.
Meanwhile, having been born and raised in this world, the Wonder Trio had no past-life knowledge at all. They had managed this feat as ordinary humans with mere level-1 authorizations, receiving no help from the nanomachines whatsoever. Even more incredible, they were a low-ranking noblewoman, the daughter of a merchant, and a girl from a family of poor rural farmers. None of them were heirs to a great legacy nor the hot-blooded shounen hero type. What, then, could have possibly driven them to such extraordinary lengths?
The only answer was a frightening amount of dedication. And an equally frightening level of obsession.
Mile shook her head in amazement. “I have nothing left to teach you girls.”
Mile was no magical prodigy. Her superhuman abilities were simply a product of her outrageous amount of magical power, knowledge from her past life, and the nanomachines’ plentiful help. If she’d had average magical power, no past-life memories, and a level-1 authorization (in other words, no perks from the nanomachines), she wouldn’t even have made it to D-rank by this stage of her life.
Correction: There was a very good chance she would be buried beneath a tombstone somewhere.
If the Wonder Trio had made it this far without Mile’s three-fold advantages, it was likely that their fluency in magic surpassed even that of Reina and Pauline. Granted, they did have the edge of being exposed to Mile’s folktales at age ten, when their brains were at their most flexible…
“We beg to differ!” all three girls exclaimed in unison.
“Miss Mile, we consider you both our good friend and our mentor in magic, and that will never change,” said Marcela. “You are the one who paved our path to a brighter future.”
“Wow! You really mean that, Miss Marcela?”
As far as the Wonder Trio were concerned, they owed Mile a tremendous debt. Once upon a time, they had been doomed to very different kinds of lives—married to men they didn’t love, or worse, forced to become some kind of concubine or mistress. With the help of their dear friend, they had defied that fate and claimed whole new lives for themselves. They could never have made it this far without the secret knowledge that had (they assumed) been passed down through her family for generations or the extraordinary abilities granted to her by the Goddess.
That was without even getting into the fact that Mile was the savior of their kingdom. The savior of the whole world, actually! She had done her part as both the divine messenger and a valiant hero, rescuing their home from mortal peril!
Well, okay, no, that was going a little too far. The Wonder Trio still thought of her as their good friend and former classmate first and foremost. They weren’t interested in putting any other labels on their connection to her.
Just as tears were forming in Mile’s eyes, Marcela suddenly lowered her voice, speaking with a new urgency. “Incoming enemy! All hands, prepare for battle!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Monika and Aureana responded, voices similarly hushed.
“Oh, come on! You could let me bask in the moment just a little longer!” Mile groused, screwing her face into a pout.
Interruptions aside, the Wonder Trio really were ecstatic to be working alongside Mile. But they were also aware that they lacked any innate talent for hunter work, so they had learned to put personal feelings aside while they were on the job. They never dropped their guard, never let themselves get cocky, and made every effort to see their duties through, no matter their frame of mind. Even the slightest mistake could spell the end for their companions—as well as their own dreams—and that could never be allowed to happen.
By whom, you ask?
Why, by the Wonder Trio!
“Ice bullets locked and loaded! Fire!”
Pew pew pew!
“No, seriously, can you guys please stop killing the mood?!”
***
The Wonder Trio Plus Mile carried on with their hunt without mishap. The Trio’s scouting magic helped them to track down potential prey and avoid the monsters they preferred not to fight. Between that, their inventory, and Mile’s added help, it was no wonder that everything was smooth sailing.
Plus, the Wonder Trio had the Mile Simulator (formerly known as the Adele Simulator). This meant they could predict exactly what she would think or do next, enabling them to provide relevant assistance and combat support.
“Wow, I wish work was always this easy,” Mile muttered.
The members of the Wonder Trio heartily agreed. Having an impregnable frontline fighter whose next move they could predict—not to mention an all-rounder who could fill the roles of tank, swordswoman, combat mage, support mage, and healing mage—allowed the Wonder Trio more flexibility in terms of fighting style, and also meant they had to worry less about conserving energy for potential emergencies. Fights were suddenly much more manageable, and their combat efficiency was greatly improved.
“Having a reliable frontline fighter on the team truly does make a difference…”
While the girls had experience teaming up with frontline-heavy parties on a temporary basis, they typically had to spend those fights protecting the physical fighters with their magic, all the while remaining on guard for monsters breaking through the vanguard to attack them directly. That put a lot of limitations on what they could do.
Fighting alongside Mile was a whole different beast.
“This is so much fun!”
“It’s almost strange to feel this safe and secure…”
They were unbelievably compatible.
“If it’s a reliable frontline fighter you need, why not team up with Mavis sometime?” Mile suggested.
All three members of the Wonder Trio gaped. “Huh?”
Their party had literally been formed for the sake of working alongside Mile. They had no compelling reason to team up with another frontline fighter, no matter how skilled. And yet…
“Perhaps that’s not such a bad idea,” Marcela mused.
“It’s not?!” Monika and Aureana cried out in surprise.
“Well, even counting our time on the old continent, we’ve only ever done joint missions with parties of lesser C-rank or lower, unless we had something specific to investigate. And in such cases, we would always team up with entire parties at a time, rather than add individual hunters to our ranks.”
It was only logical. The Wonder Trio might have been C-ranks back on the old continent, but even so, few veteran parties were willing to team up with three underage girls. Some might be willing to look after kids as part of a job, but forcing them to split their spoils with no extra babysitting fee was a very different story. Only a veteran party with ulterior motives would agree to such a raw deal.
“It might serve us well to see what happens if we add a reasonably strong frontline fighter to our team,” Marcela went on. “One who is not all that experienced and still well within the bounds of ordinary.”
“Makes sense,” agreed her two companions.
“Excuse me!” Mile interjected. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m also reasonably strong, not all that experienced, and still well within the bounds of ordinary!”
“………………………………………”
“Hey! Why the unnaturally long pause?!” Mile fumed.
***
“Everything went swimmingly!” Mile reported, beaming from ear to ear. “Well, no surprises there! The Wonder Trio were already doing just fine on their own, so bringing me along wasn’t going to change much!”
The Wonder Trio listened with smiles, but Reina and Pauline didn’t seem particularly happy to hear this news.
Mavis was comparatively more cheerful. Matters of magic were outside her purview, and Mile’s absence had given her a big opportunity to pull her weight by testing out her storage skills. She was now even further convinced that, after she retired from the hunter business and devoted herself to governing her lands, she could use her storage magic to aid her subjects in times of crisis.
None of this was exactly helping to lift Reina and Pauline’s spirits.
Oh dear. Seeing their expressions, both the Wonder Trio and Mile inferred what was going through their friends’ minds.
“S-say, you guys!” said Mile. “We were thinking that maybe Mavis and the Wonder Trio should team up some—”
GRR!
“Eep!” Everyone but Mavis squealed, daunted by the pure bloodlust emanating from Reina and Pauline.
Mile had only meant to steer the conversation toward a more neutral topic, hoping it might distract her two companions from their brooding.
Bad move, it turned out.
“Hmph! I see how it is! You and Mavis are the useful ones, huh?!” Reina raged.
“Message received. No need for two good-for-nothings who can’t use storage magic or fight on the front lines,” said Pauline.
AAAAAHHHHH!! the rest of the group screamed internally.
Mile blanched, belatedly realizing what she had just suggested. This time around, even Mavis couldn’t ignore the obvious discord.
(Admittedly, they would all have to be unbelievably dense not to figure why Reina and Pauline were irritated after their friends had literally just spelled it out for them.)
The following day, Mile resumed her storage magic lessons with Reina and Pauline. Mavis gave them some pointers on close-range combat, too. Mages needed to have ways to protect themselves, particularly in situations where they were caught off guard and wouldn’t have time to cast a spell. If they were, for example, ambushed from the treetops, it was good for them to learn how to fight with their staves.
The three members of the Wonder Trio were also equipped with daggers that Princess Morena had bought using her squad’s budget. This was rather atypical for a bunch of magic users. Yet the girls were all too aware of their own shortcomings, so they never hesitated to take extra precautions where they could.
Naturally, Mile and the Wonder Trio chose to participate in Mavis’s training sessions as well, and soon enough, they turned into something of a self-study period for the whole clan.
***
The seven girls of the Crimson Vow and Wonder Trio traipsed down the city streets.
Because the sight of so many pretty girls in one group always turned heads, the clan rarely went out all together. Even if they were just dropping by the guild, they tended to go separately and stagger their departure times.
But today was different. Their objective for the day was to get a sense of their individual members’ dietary restrictions and decide how much of their budget to devote to food expenses. (Basically, they were out to determine just how gourmet their future meals were going to be.)
They had taken the day off from their hunter work and headed into town as a clan.
“I guess everyone’s too scared to accost us when we’re in such a big group,” said Mile. She was pointing out the obvious, really. Young girls or not, they were still a band of seven. They had two swordswomen and five mages, and every last one of them was dressed in hunter gear.
To reiterate, they were two frontline fighters and five mages powerful enough to work as hunters. Three of those mages were unusually heavily armed, equipped with both staves and daggers—and these weren’t relatively short knives, to be clear, but blades at least thirty-five centimeters long. Depending on the mages’ area of expertise, the group could probably be outnumbered three times over and still eradicate their enemies in the blink of an eye, assuming they weren’t up against any seasoned soldiers or expert mercenaries.
Given how well armed this particular group of mages appeared to be, they were also likely to meet any attack—even a hint of an attack—with swift, merciless retaliation. And rather than using their staves, like normal mages, they’d do it with daggers. No hoodlum or low-level hunter was going to have the guts to try their luck. And so, the girls were enjoying a relatively relaxing stroll.
That is, until a group of four men passing by suddenly called out, “It’s so good to see you again, Four Dragon Priestess Sisters!”
“Uh-oh!” all seven voices exclaimed at once.
“Here come the weirdos,” Reina muttered.
“Apologies. Allow us to get rid of them,” Marcela volunteered, sounding contrite.
The leader of the group and his three companions bowed deeply to the Crimson Vow, completely ignoring the Wonder Trio’s presence. “We still cannot thank you enough for saving our ship, crew, and passengers!”
“Wait, you were addressing these four? Not us?!”
“Aha ha ha…” The members of the Crimson Vow laughed nervously.
***
As the girls were currently traveling incognito (despite doing a very poor job of it), they asked the four men not to make a scene. The Wonder Trio graciously accepted a few more words of gratitude, then went on their way.
“Wait, I’m confused,” Mile said as they kept walking. “You three rode in on Kragon, so I get why you assumed you might be the ‘Dragon Priestesses’ in question, but why ‘Four’?”
“There were actually four of us present at the scene,” Marcela replied. “Princess Morena, the gatekeeper of the Princess Transport System on the Brandel side, was riding along with us.”
“Mm. Gotcha.”
Mile had met Princess Morena once before, but she had not thought to ask for her name and was only now connecting the dots. Even after listening to Marcela’s explanation of the Princess Transport System, it had not occurred to Mile to wonder about the name of the princess in question. It was a little absurd, considering Morena was the princess of the country where Mile had lived until she was twelve. If she had been a commoner, it might have been a little more understandable, but she had been born into the nobility—she should certainly have known the names of the members of the royal family. One could maybe argue that her young age or remote upbringing was to blame, since she had never wandered far outside the Ascham manor as a child; however, she had spent her year of study at Eckland Academy living in the capital. Besides, it had been ages now since she’d inherited the Ascham family line.
“Well, at least the only people who saw us riding Kragon were the ones on the boat,” Mile went on. “From the sound of it, those four men made a fortune off the sea serpents we slew, and they’re using that money to enjoy the international trip of a lifetime. Everyone else on the ship is likely back on the other continent, so I doubt we’ll ever run into the other passengers or crew. Besides, all the regular passengers had been evacuated below deck, so they never actually saw our faces. Which means…”
“Should anyone else ever show up referring to us as Dragon Priestesses, they’ll mean us three,” said Marcela. “And if they had the opportunity to see us up close and personal in the royal palace, that would likely make them nobility, royalty, or palace staff. When we dismounted Sir Kragon in the courtyard, I believe the general populace was too far away to make out our faces. All eyes were on Sir Kragon, in any case, so I doubt anyone was paying us much attention to us.”
“Are you sure that’s a good thing? Getting spotted by someone from the palace seems like it could lead to trouble,” Reina said, clearly concerned.
“I doubt we need to worry about that,” Marcela reassured her. “No one would dare lay a hand on Princess Morena or her three bodyguards—not with the mighty Sir Kragon on our side. Laying claim to us might give them a connection to an elder dragon, yes, but one wrong step could enrage that very elder dragon and invite the kingdom’s downfall. Can you imagine anyone taking such a dangerous gamble? Well, I wouldn’t put it past someone with absolutely nothing to lose, but anyone associated with the palace would already be a key figures in the kingdom, possessed of all the money, status, and influence they could ever desire. Is the tiniest bit more power really worth crossing girls who are on friendly enough terms with an elder dragon to ride on his back? They wouldn’t be the only ones to suffer the consequences. Their entire families—their entire kingdom—would be wiped out. A nobleman values his house more than anything. He wouldn’t do anything to bring about the end of his bloodline. Displeasing an elder dragon is a most serious matter.”
No one would ever be so foolish.
“Right. If anyone pulls any funny business on you three, it won’t be more serious than trying to work their way into your good graces,” said Mile. “Though that’ll be plenty annoying in its own right.”
Everyone else nodded. It certainly wasn’t fun to deal with authority figures who liked to throw their weight around, but sycophants weren’t much better. When faced with the former, the girls could at least meet force with force and grind their adversary into the dust. They had to take a different approach to the obsequious sorts. If the girls started crushing people for the crime of being a little annoying, they would be tyrants. That left them no choice but to fall back on verbal rejection—but, unfortunately, their hangers-on were not so easily deterred by a few harsh words.
Both Reina and Pauline began, “If only they’d pick a fight head-on, we could…”
“…retaliate,” Pauline finished.
“…crush ’em,” Reina said at the exact same time.
With the exception of their final choice of vocabulary, they were in perfect agreement. Indeed, both seemed very keen on the prospect of eliminating their foes. Yet there was another difference between the two: While the expression on Reina’s face was ferocious, Pauline was inexplicably grinning with delight.
Noticing the evil smile on her face, Mile and the Wonder Trio could only come to one conclusion: We had better watch out for Pauline.
***
As they neared the market, Marcela approached Mile with a question. “Er, Miss Mile… May I ask something?” She sounded reluctant to come out and say whatever it was.
“Hm? What’s up, Miss Marcela?” Mile responded, a blank look on her face.
“Um… You see… There’s something we have all been wondering about for a while, but none of you four seemed to find it unusual, so we couldn’t bring ourselves to ask… We began to wonder if perhaps we were the only ones who could see that thing, and we feared that revealing as much might bring our sanity into question… Anyway, for a number of reasons, we have refrained from commenting, but the three of us have reached the limits of what we can abide.” After that rather long preface, she finally came out with it: “What is that uncanny metal object poking its head out from your chest? A monster? Or some kind of demonic entity?”
“Oh, right.” The four members of the Crimson Vow could only sigh.
They couldn’t fault the Wonder Trio for sounding a little harsh. Between the creature’s angular, metallic body, exposed rivets, and an unsettling pair of eyes that never seemed to focus on the same point, “uncanny” was actually a rather generous way of putting it.
“It’s Mile’s pet. Don’t look at us,” said Reina.
“What she said! Miley is the one who looks after it!” Pauline chimed in. “Though I do wipe it down and pat it on the head every now and then…”
“Yes sirree, Bob!” Mavis added.
“Ah,” said the Wonder Trio, more or less grasping the situation.
Marcela added, “I see your ‘Bob’ joke finally caught on with someone, Miss Mile. Good for you.”
Mile had been cracking that particular joke since her Eckland Academy days, but back then nobody had been willing to play along. Despite holding strong to the belief that anything can become a running gag if you repeat it enough times, all her efforts had been for naught.
Mile really shouldn’t have been surprised. Whether on the new continent or the old, “Yes sirree, Bob” wasn’t a recognized idiom in this world, so it sounded like complete gibberish. Even Mavis wasn’t saying it because she found it particularly funny. She was just a kind, charitable soul throwing her friend a bone.
Anyway…
“This little guy is called Mecha-Bird (tent.).” Mile introduced her mechanical friend to the Wonder Trio, letting the whole Bob matter pass without comment.
“Mekabird Tent? It has a last name?” asked Marcela, accidentally stumbling her way into a joke.
And then…
“Just Mecha-Bird! Omit the (tent.)!”
“Eeeeek!” the Wonder Trio shrieked. “It taaaaalks!!”
***
“I guess I do see where you’re coming from,” said Marcela. “If gigantic lizards like the elder dragons are capable of speech, it’s not so strange for a bird to talk, too.”
“It’s embarrassing to think we were ever so narrow-minded. I feel as though the scales have fallen from my eyes,” said Aureana.
“You said it! How could I think it was weird for anyone but humans, demons, or beastfolk to talk?! I sound like some kind of humanoid supremacist!” said Monika. “All my life, my parents taught me that every customer is valuable, no matter what species they are! And for what?! I’m so ashamed of myself!”
Uh, that’s really a good enough explanation for you?! The scales didn’t fall from your eyes—actually, you just had scales slapped over your eyes! Scales as big and thick as an elder dragon’s! Reina, Mavis, and Pauline were astounded by how easily the trio had bought Mile’s ridiculous logic.
“You said its name was tentative? What is its official one, then?”
“It’s a work in progress.”
Oh, right. Miss Mile is terrible at coming up with names. Marcela and friends knew Mile well enough to understand why the mechanical bird still lacked a proper name.
“I think I get the picture, Miss Mile. Mecha-Bird is your pet…or roommate, should I say? Since it’s such a rare breed, you fear it might be kidnapped or confiscated by the authorities if it’s discovered, so you’ve been keeping the fact that it can speak a secret. As far as the public knows, it’s nothing but the hideous pet bird it appears to be. Do I have that right?”
The mecha-bird didn’t look too pleased with her choice of the word “hideous,” but it clearly knew better than to interrupt such an important discussion. And while no one had gotten within earshot of their conversation thus far, the closer the group got to the market, the more people there were in the vicinity. This wasn’t a good place to let the mecha-bird speak or to get into any more sensitive topics of discussion.
The group agreed to finish their conversation back at the clan house. In the meantime, they would focus on their original task: deciding which food items to purchase from the market and settling on the caliber of the ingredients they would buy. No one among their lineup was likely to demand luxury, but some might have foods they couldn’t stand, some might prefer not to buy certain ingredients too cheaply for safety reasons, or—conversely—some might object to paying too much. It was essential for people living under the same roof to iron these preferences out.
When it came to meat, for example, one hundred grams of premium beef could sell for as much as eight silver coins (about eight thousand yen), while cheap orc gristle and offal might cost only four copper coins (about forty yen). No hunter would ever get picky about food while camping on a job, but the girls had no desire to sustain themselves on the worst cuts of meat while living in their city clan house. On the other hand, they couldn’t afford to buy prime cuts of beef with gluttons like Reina and Mile among their ranks.
The thing about really expensive meat was that it was delicious no matter how it was prepared. Making cheaper cuts taste good was the real way to prove one’s skill in the kitchen. With Mile being a very fussy cook, Pauline and Monika both coming from merchant families, and Marcela being the daughter of a broke, low-ranking nobleman, the girls all understood that wisdom perfectly.
As for Aureana, the daughter of a poor rural farmer…she counted herself lucky to even be eating meat at all.
***
Once they were done at the market, the group returned to their clan house.
As soon as they made it home, Mile turned to Pauline in frustration. “In the future, could you please not start fights right in front of the stalls?! I was practically dying of embarrassment, and the shopkeeper and other customers were clearly annoyed!”
“Well, excuse me, but I wasn’t willing to budge on that one! How could you even suggest a baseline cost of three half-silver per hundred grams of meat?! I won’t insist that we stick to buying the four-copper variety meats, but three half-silver is taking it too far in the other direction! Do you have any idea how much you and Reina eat?! Even Mavis has a bigger appetite than the average woman!”
Poor Mavis. Pauline couldn’t help but notice the way her shoulders slumped sadly.
“Er, I mean, at least Mavis has an excuse. She uses up a lot of energy fighting on the front lines, and she has the biggest build of us all… Oh no, now she’s even more upset… I’m sorry! Forget I said anything!” Pauline cleared her throat. “My point is, we shouldn’t be spending more than two half-silver per hundred grams of meat! That is the absolute greatest concession I am willing to make! Well, with exceptions for celebrations and special occasions, of course…”
Mavis didn’t appreciate Pauline calling her a glutton, but she really had nothing to worry about compared to Mile and Reina.
On the whole, the process of agreeing upon their grocery budget had gone fairly smoothly—or would have, if it weren’t for Pauline.
Pauline had always been very stingy when it came to spending, and the fact that she was no longer strapped for coin had done nothing to rectify that. As already mentioned, she had even accrued a large personal fortune (separate from her estate’s budget) via the company she founded and ran back on the old continent. Yet from the way she acted, one would think she was still fighting to get by.
The old butcher had clearly been dismayed by the fight unfolding in front of his shop but couldn’t exactly jump into a heated discussion over whether or not to buy his products. He had been left wringing his hands helplessly. Deep down, he was probably praying that the girls would adjust their spending limit even the tiniest bit upward.
The moment Pauline had brought up Mile and Reina’s eating habits, the rest of the group had slapped their hands over her mouth and suggested they return to the clan house to hash the matter out further.
“From a cost-effectiveness angle, cheap meat is cheap for a reason!” Mile insisted now.
“And? The nutritional value stays more or less the same, doesn’t it?” Pauline countered.
“I’d argue that the taste, texture, and satisfaction are equally important factors to consider,” said Mavis.
“I want the food I eat to actually taste good!” said Reina.
The Wonder Trio listened to the Crimson Vow’s debate with looks of bemusement. Finally, Marcela chimed in. “In case you’ve forgotten, Miss Mile and I already have a large amount of monster meat in our respective storages.”
“Oh,” the members of the Crimson Vow gasped.
She was right. The all-out defensive battle in the Albarn Empire had left countless monster corpses in its wake. Leaving those to rot would have stunk up the area, and if they had attempted to sell them all, they would have driven down the price for monster parts, putting many a hunter out of work. Then, assuming no effort was made to preserve the monster meat, it would have quickly gone bad, meaning the temporary price crash would be immediately followed by a shortage.
The bottom line? Failing to take action would have inconvenienced a whole lot of people and created a blight on the land. Therefore, for the sake of the greater good, the Wonder Trio and Mile had stored a great number of the fallen monsters in their inventories. Or so they claimed. Obviously, it was only a coincidence that they had mostly snatched up the ones that were particularly tasty or would sell for a good price.
Good prices aside, the girls had chosen to let the monsters gather dust in storage. Cautious of impacting market rates, they carried on like their enormous haul had never happened, refraining from selling any of the monsters off to any guilds until they had a compelling reason. That included the Hunters’ Guild, the Merchants’ Guild, the Artisans’ Guild, and so on.
That said, they had put no such restrictions on cooking the monsters for their own consumption. And now that plenty of time had passed, it wouldn’t cause problems to sell a few orcs and jackalopes to fulfill material requests for their meat or hides. (Well, as long as they limited themselves to selling a reasonable number.) Obviously, they couldn’t draw on their stash to fulfill any culling or extermination jobs, or sell off rare species that couldn’t be hunted in the vicinity, but they had options.
“We are hunters,” Marcela went on. “The first few days after we return from a hunt, it doesn’t raise any eyebrows for us to eat whatever meat we haven’t sold to the guild. However, it does look strange if we’re still eating that meat weeks later, or if we appear to have a large stock of monsters that can’t be hunted in the area. That’s why we always take care to eat local monsters or buy livestock from the butcher whenever we had to do our cooking in an inn kitchen. It’s what you would call ‘faking an alibi,’ Miss Mile.”
Although the girls had gone public about their large storage spaces, they were still concealing their time-halting functions. If they didn’t want people to catch on, they couldn’t keep popping out fresh, raw meat if they hadn’t gone hunting in a while.
“Whenever Miss Mile cooked where others were watching, the types of meat she could use and the period in which she could use them were limited. But if we cook here in our clan house, we don’t need to worry about prying eyes. Nothing is stopping us from using the many varieties of monster meat we’ve been hoarding. From now on, all we need to buy from the market is livestock—cows, goats, sheep, chicken, and so on—as well as eggs, milk, and dairy products. Which will be a very small portion of what we actually consume.”
“Motion approved!” Pauline cut in. “I hereby permit us to spend up to four half-silver per hundred grams of meat! No limits on celebrations and special occasions! Same goes for when Miley is experimenting with a new recipe!”
“Yaaaay!!” her party cheered.
This was a generous allowance for Pauline to approve. The unlimited research budget granted to Mile was an especially big deal, but considering how drastically they were about to slash their meat budget, even Pauline was forced to see that as an acceptable concession. Though she did her cooking experiments on her own time, Mile would always make enough of whatever she was testing for everyone to taste and give feedback.
What Pauline had failed to consider was that the most expensive part of Mile’s experiments was rarely the meat—it was the spices and seasonings.
The question of meat settled, the group moved on to the next items on the agenda: which shops to patronize and which to avoid in light of the quality of the offerings and their own budget. Once that was settled…
“So, we’re all agreed that we don’t send Reina shopping on her own, right?” asked Mile.
“Huh?! And why’s that?!” Reina fumed.
“Er, I-I mean… It would be hard to carry everything back without storage magic, that’s all. Several days’ worth of food for a group of seven is going to add up…”
“By that logic, Pauline shouldn’t be doing it, either! She’s even weaker than me! Why am I the only one excluded?!”
A sound argument. Mile, Mavis, and Pauline all clammed up. Meanwhile, the Wonder Trio couldn’t chime in because they didn’t know the context.
The reality was that Reina was a bad cook—a devastatingly bad one. By the same token, she had no talent for picking out good-quality ingredients. If left to do the grocery shopping herself, she would simply buy whatever was cheapest and end up with all sorts of monstrosities: shellfish that were more shell than fish. Fruit that was bland or bruised. Wilting vegetables. The most unpalatable cuts of grey meat.
At first, Mile had racked her brain for ways to whip Reina’s selections into something edible, but there was only so far her culinary ingenuity could get her. There was just no way to make a good meal from substandard ingredients. Plus, strategies like letting dishes simmer long enough to turn sinewy meat tender or using a large helping of spices and seasonings to camouflage the taste of subpar vegetables took a lot of extra work and ended up costing more in the long run.
The result was that the Crimson Vow had left Mile in charge of all their grocery shopping. Now that they had more mouths to feed, more inventory and storage magic users, and more clan members with an eye for good quality ingredients, they’d hoped they could finally divide up the work. Now, they had hit a setback right out of the gate.
The Wonder Trio didn’t know any of this background, so they just stared blankly, unsure of the reason for Mile’s suddenly flustered expression. But the other members of the Crimson Vow knew this was a fight they couldn’t afford to concede.
Eventually, the group convinced Reina that whenever she or Pauline went shopping, they should always be accompanied by a storage holder. After all, seven people’s worth of food and consumables would be a hefty burden to carry by hand. Pauline had helped their case by putting on her best act and whining, “Oh, but I don’t have a storage space! I couldn’t possibly carry all those groceries!”
Naturally, the Crimson Vow gave the Wonder Trio a proper explanation later, along with strict orders to double-check all ingredients when shopping with Reina.
***
“Listen up, folks! Since Pauline gave us permission to splurge on meat for special occasions, today we’ll be holding a meat-themed party to celebrate the formation of our clan, our move into our clan house, and—a little belatedly—the Wonder Trio’s promotion to C-rank on the new continent!”
“Dun dun dun! Doot da doo!” Mavis mimicked the sounds of a drum and trumpet in order to provide the proper fanfare to follow Mile’s speech—yet another bit of knowledge she’d picked up from the Japanese folktales.
“Today’s feast will feature not just any meat! We can eat the premium monster meat that me and the Wonder Trio tucked away in our inven…er, storage any old day, so today we’ll be feasting on livestock! We’re talking super expensive stuff like beef, chicken, mutton, and venison!”
“Dun dun dun! Doot da doo!” Five of Mile’s companions provided another round of celebratory sound effects.
Yes. Only five of them. The odd one out was the surly-faced Pauline, who was deeply regretting that she had ever agreed to suspend their price limit for special occasions.
She certainly hadn’t expected her friends to exploit their compromise immediately. Only a noble or a big-time business owner would ever eat such outrageously expensive meat. A spread like this certainly didn’t belong on the dining table of ordinary hunters. She’d felt this was so obvious that it hadn’t even occurred to her to propose an additional price cap for special occasion spending. She had taken it for granted that no one would be stupid enough to waste their money on such extravagance.
And yet, here she was, staring down the overpriced meat of her nightmares. It was a terrible moment.
How could Pauline have predicted that her own clan would have such a colossal idiot among its ranks? Or rather, six of them?
All her valiant protests had been useless before the tyranny of majority rule.
“I used all the best ingredients available without regard for the price—meat, spices, fruit, you name it!” Mile announced. “I poured my heart and soul into these dishes, so I hope you all enjoy!”
“Oooooh!” exactly five of the clan members marveled.
A beat after the other girls flocked to the spread, Pauline grabbed a plate of her own.
“Ugh… Of course I have to try it… It came out of the joint clan fund I contribute to, so it’d be a waste not to…”
Mile had been generous with her portions, so even as the last one served, Pauline didn’t have to fight for scraps. Reluctantly, she served herself some of the expensive—according to her financial instincts, unbelievably expensive—premium beef, then took a bite.
“Argh… It’s good… It’s really, really good…”
For some reason, she was practically gnashing her teeth with chagrin.
Chapter 142: The Wonder Trio and Pauline
Chapter 142:
The Wonder Trio and Pauline
“HM, LET’S SEE…” Marcela mused as she scanned the job board at the Hunters’ Guild. “This job is to guard a merchant caravan on a four-day one-way trip to a nearby town. We’d only be required to escort them for one leg of the journey, but counting our own return trip, it would take eight days in total. We’d need to rest once we reach our destination, and it would be our first time visiting this town, so I imagine we’d want to do some sightseeing and check the job board for any interesting requests. Let’s assume we’d stay for two days. That comes out to a ten-day trip, all things considered.
“I imagine this job would be a tough sell for most other hunters, as the fee only covers the four days of the outbound journey. Which means the client might be desperate enough to hire a party of young girls like us. The three of us have been hoping to get an escort mission under our belts, so this is a good opportunity for the Wonder Trio. We won’t make much of a profit, but it might be worth it for the experience… Oh, never mind, it wouldn’t work. The job requirements specify a C-rank or higher party with four to six members.”
Marcela slumped her shoulders in disappointment. The meager reward notwithstanding, she had been eager to take on an escort mission and build some valuable experience, but to no avail. The Wonder Trio would be short a member if they tried to take it on alone, and they would go over the maximum party size if they teamed up with the Crimson Vow and approached it as a clan.
Besides, judging by the clear constraints of the request, the client was looking for a single party, not a coalition. Bringing on multiple parties for a joint mission always came with added risks and possible communication challenges. Assuming a merchant only needed six or fewer bodyguards, they would never bother hiring more than one party at once.
“Such a shame. Other parties aren’t likely to go for it, so it would have been the perfect escort mission for young girls like us… But if we don’t meet the party size requirements, I suppose that’s that. I’ll find something el—”
“Um, what if I went with you?” a voice called out from behind.
“Hm? Is that you, Miss Pauline?”
The Crimson Vow were currently taking the day off, while the Wonder Trio had set out in search of a long-term job they might tackle by themselves in order to boost their experience. (To most hunters, the label “long-term” typically implied jobs that would take several months, but the Wonder Trio used it for anything five days or longer. This led to the occasional miscommunication with other hunters or guild staff.) The two parties were supposed to be doing their own thing, so the Trio were rather surprised to run into Pauline at the guild.
“We certainly wouldn’t mind, but what about the Crimson Vow? We would be taking you away from them for ten days.”
Unsurprisingly, the Wonder Trio had concerns. There was no way Pauline had received permission from the other members of the Crimson Vow to do what she was offering. The Wonder Trio knew for a fact that Pauline hadn’t said a word about any of this before they left the clan house earlier. She had clearly tagged along after the Wonder Trio at her own discretion—but judging by the fact that she had followed them in secret, it hadn’t been an impromptu decision on her part.
“Mile usually fights on the front lines with Mavis, but she’s actually better at healing, support, and combat magic than I am,” said Pauline. “In fact, I used to only know a handful of lesser C-rank healing and support spells, so she taught me most of what I know… The same applies to Reina’s combat magic. They won’t even notice if the two of us are gone for a few days.”
“Why, we would be delighted to have you! Let’s tackle this job together, shall we?!” Marcela cut in hurriedly, afraid to let Pauline keep rambling on with that dead look in her eyes.
Monika and Aureana bobbed their heads vigorously in the background.
***
“Hrm…” The merchant folded his arms with a frown. “You’re a C-rank party of four, no doubt about that. Technically, you meet the requirements laid out in the request. But this job involves guarding a caravan. I’m looking for fighters who can protect the passengers, wagons, and cargo from bandits and monsters—and, ideally, who have the intimidation factor to scare off bandits and dissuade them from attacking in the first place. Bringing four underage girls along for the ride might end up attracting bandits who wouldn’t even have been interested otherwise.”
Pauline looked like an adult of at least fifteen, but it would have been rude of him to point out that one girl looked much older than the rest, so he chose to focus on the youth of the group as a whole. It was a gentlemanly move on his part—an indication that, when it came down to it, they were dealing with a decent man.
He also made a fair point. There was no way to know whether a wagon was worth attacking just from looking at the outside. If it was loaded with valuables, booze, or food, you’d hit the jackpot. If it was full of craft tools or farming equipment, it was a dud. Specialized tools had a limited number of potential buyers, and since they were all made by hand, it would become quickly apparent that they were stolen goods. It was difficult to exchange them for money in the first place, and even when there were takers, no one would pay a particularly high price for something they suspected was stolen. This was all to say that bandits had to choose the caravans they targeted carefully. It was a gamble of sorts.
But if there were four young, pretty girls aboard, that changed things. No matter how disappointing the cargo turned out to be, they could sell the girls into black market slavery and make themselves a fortune—after having plenty of their own fun first, of course.
“Not to mention, four mages in a four-person party? It’s just unheard of! Ridiculous! Total crazy talk! I’ve never seen a more unbalanced hunting party in my life! It’s a miracle that you girls have even survived this long, let alone made it to C-rank at such a young age. Did you cast a magic spell or something?! Well, I guess that’s plausible for a group of mages! Ha ha ha!” The merchant clearly found his own joke hilarious.
Obviously, this man had zero intention of hiring them. It was hard to blame him. He wasn’t obligated to provide young hunters with work, and he certainly had no reason to pay good money to hire girls who would serve no functional use as bodyguards and probably attract even more bandits to his caravan.
Most of the merchants who had set up shop in the capital had heard the rumors of the Wonder Trio and the Crimson Vow. However, this man operated in the suburbs, and his business revolved around making trips back and forth between his home city and the capital, so news of either party had yet to reach his ears.
Although he had no reason not to turn the girls down outright, he seemed reluctant to refuse them to their faces. He was obviously waiting for the party to take the hint and willingly retract their offer. It was hard to say whether he was trying to be kind to them specifically or just didn’t like to say no to anyone.
Still, his fortunes, the fate of his shop, and his own life were all hanging in the balance here. No merchant could run a business like a charity.
“This might be difficult,” Marcela whispered.
“Agreed,” Aureana responded, whispering, too. “His logic is sound, and anyone who doesn’t already know what we can do isn’t going to believe us if we try to explain it to them. And this isn’t a debate, so we can’t win by arguing with him. He has the final say over whether to hire us or not.”
“Precisely. I’d hoped we might have a chance at grabbing an unpopular request, but I suppose I was being overly optimistic. What a shame.”
Assuming they had more or less exhausted their options, the Wonder Trio gave up hope of getting the job. Indeed, right as they were making up their minds to withdraw, the merchant opened his mouth, finally prepared to issue his final refusal.
But before he could, Pauline spoke up. Until that moment, she had been leaving the negotiations to the party leader, Marcela, but now she said, “Excuse me, but we have quite a bit of experience fighting both people and monsters. We might struggle in the event of a sneak attack or a close-range ambush, but I doubt we’d have to worry about that while guarding a wagon. Under normal circumstances, I think we could handle fighting off about thirty to forty people or forty to fifty orcs.”
“Huh?” At Pauline’s words, the merchant looked thoroughly perplexed.
“Also, we can provide you with an unlimited supply of water.”
“You what?”
“We’re also good at healing magic.”
“You whaaaaaat?!”
“And our leader has high-capacity storage magic.”
“Say no more! You’re hired!”
Even Pauline was surprised by how quickly the merchant came around.
After listening to plenty of Mile’s Japanese folktales, the Wonder Trio couldn’t help but think to themselves: Pauline, what a terrifying child you are!
***
Thanks to Pauline’s fast talking, the Wonder Trio Plus One managed to snag themselves the escort mission. They were scheduled to head out in two days. Between now and then, they would have to buy the necessary supplies, but their first task was to head back to their clan house to update the Crimson Vow and get them to approve the excursion. Technically, Pauline alone would be the one asking her party for permission. She had approached the Wonder Trio asking to join them, not the other way around, which meant it was on her to get her fellow party members’ buy-in.
Needless to say, the client for the escort mission hadn’t entered the contract with only Pauline’s word to go on. He had checked around the guild to make sure the Wonder Trio were a credible party, observed the strength of their combat magic firsthand at the guild’s training grounds, confirmed that Marcela could use storage magic, and made the girls conjure water and demonstrate their healing spells. Only then had he rushed to sign the contract on the spot, frantic to lock them down in case the girls changed their minds.
For the healing demonstration, the girls had erased an old scar for the merchant’s sales clerk. Most healers could take care of fresh injuries, but it took a truly proficient one to get rid of wounds that had already partially healed over. That feat was more than enough to prove their skill. With such capable healers present, no one need worry about getting hurt in a fight with monsters during the journey.
They had, of course, charged the merchant for this demonstration. They couldn’t exactly be giving their healing services away for free, though Marcela did note, “Had you already hired us, we gladly would have considered this covered by the escort fee.”
At this point, the merchant seemed convinced that the skills they offered would outweigh the disadvantages of having them as escorts.
Still, he had his concerns. Because the girls were more likely to attract bandits than scare them away, he requested that the Wonder Trio stay inside the wagon where no one could see them. Then, as a cheap stopgap, he hired a party of three burly but weak middle-aged men to ride outside the wagon as a deterrent to would-be thieves.
***
“I look forward to spending the next four days together!”
“Same!” came a chorus of seven voices.
Off went the small caravan of three wagons, all belonging to the same mid-sized mercantile operation. The name of the game was a four-day, one-way escort mission from the capital to the provincial town where their operations were based. On their way to the capital, a hunting party had just so happened to be heading home from an expedition, so the client was able to hire a skilled party for cheap. This was why he had only requested protection for the return journey, which was generally considered a bit unorthodox.
Since everyone involved would go their separate ways after making it to their destination, the escorts were free to either return home unimpeded or escort a different caravan back to the capital—not unlike the hunters who would have escorted this merchant to the capital in the first place. Of course, that would require someone to conveniently need a one-way security detail back to the city. Since most escort missions involved the same party covering both legs of a trip, the girls weren’t holding their breath.
Still, no hunter would love the idea of an unpaid return trip, considering the time and expenses involved. In order to make this sort of job more desirable, clients making one-way trip requests would sometimes help cover the expenses of the hunters’ return trip by paying them a bonus of two to three silver coins per day. Yet they were under no obligation to do so, and struggling, small-time traders or stingier merchants might not bother, which was well within their rights. It was just a gracious gesture, not standard practice.
All to say: One-way escort missions didn’t tend to get many takers. The only exceptions were parties like the Wonder Trio, who were in it for the experience more than the money, and who stood little chance of being hired for a more desirable round-trip escort mission. The same was true for the group of three middle-aged men who had been hired to ride outside the wagons, who were too desperate to put food on the table to be too picky about what jobs they took on.
At the head of the caravan rode the coachman, the merchant, the Wonder Trio Plus One, and one of the additional three guards. His two fellows guarded the caravan on foot, doing their part to scare off potential assailants.
(For the record, the merchant’s own employees were driving the wagons—clearly, this was not a business that could afford to pay additional contractors. Indeed, the merchant himself was serving as the backup coachman. A caravan couldn’t afford to stop in the event a driver got hurt or came down sick; were anything of that nature to happen, they would drop the ailing man off at the nearest town and the merchant would take over driving from there. Even a stingy shopkeeper wouldn’t just abandon the patient by the side of the road, of course. Instead, they would take him to a medical clinic and send a carriage and caretaker to pick him up later.)
Normally, on a journey like this, the wagons would be loaded to maximum capacity so they could proceed only at a sluggish pace. The client would sit next to the coachman in the lead wagon, but all the guards would walk to avoid adding weight to the wagons.
However, on this particular trip, Marcela had freed up extra space by loading all of the contents of one of the wagons into her storage (along with some extra cargo as a complimentary service). This allowed the merchant, the Wonder Trio Plus One, and the standby member of the party of middle-aged guards to all fit in the cargo hold. She had also made a point of storing all the heaviest and most fragile merchandise, to allow all three wagons to move along at a much faster pace than usual. The merchant couldn’t have been happier with this turn of events.
This arrangement was beneficial for safety as well as efficiency. If push came to shove, they could have the other two coachmen board the lead wagon, ditch the extra vehicles, and make an escape at top speed. Hopefully, the bandits or monsters attacking would be willing to settle for the wagons, horses, and cargo they left behind rather than give chase immediately. If they drove without a care for destroying the wagon or wearing out their horses, they would have a nonzero chance of putting enough distance between them and their assailants to get away—and when it came to a life-or-death situation, the difference between zero and a tiny percentage was huge. Having hope always does wonders for people’s mental health.
Furthermore, although the Wonder Trio hadn’t told the merchant as much, if worse came to worst, they could even store the other two wagons and their horses in the inventory. As an absolute last resort, Marcela could store the lead wagon, the merchant and his employees, and Pauline, Aureana, and Monika in her inventory and escape on the one horse she hadn’t stashed away—while she cast some hot magic behind her for good measure.
Given her noble upbringing, Marcela had some experience with horseback riding. In the absence of a riding crop or saddle, most ladies would generally go sidesaddle, but Marcela knew how to ride a horse bareback.
As the third daughter of a poor baron, she had been through her fair share of hardships. Enough said.
***
Soon after the caravan set off, the group in the lead wagon started chatting among themselves—in part to kill time, in part to gather information, and in part out of pure curiosity. The merchant who had hired the girls was the one doing most of the talking, as he was interested in building a good relationship with his bodyguards and had plenty of stories to tell.
Mid-conversation, he inadvertently pitched a beanball. Or perhaps, more of a blazing fastball.
“I must say, your storage magic has been a huge help, Miss Marcela! It’s allowed us to transport a lot more cargo than usual, and so much of it is fragile merchandise! As your employer, I’m not doing myself any favors by saying this, but you could make a killing if you pitched your talents to the nobility or some bigger businesses. Why, I bet you could easily bag yourself a rich scion to marry! Hard to imagine why you’d settle for such low-paid, dangerous wo—ah, m-my apologies! I’m afraid I’ve crossed a line!”
Even merchants knew what was considered taboo among hunters. So, naturally, the man was aware that prying into a hunter’s background or abilities was a serious enough no-no to get you killed on the spot. It might not have been a big deal if he were dealing with ordinary newbie hunters with no stories to tell, but these were three pretty young girls, all of whom were extraordinarily skilled, and one of whom radiated an aura of nobility. Only an idiot or someone with a death wish would nose around in the business of a party like that.
“Er, well…” Marcela clearly felt a bit awkward about the whole thing.
Before she could finish her sentence, one of the three dummy bodyguards—the one currently on his break—cut in. “Bwa ha ha! You’re way too old to be hitting on a cute little lady like her!”
Whether deliberately or otherwise, his joke managed to shut down a conversation that was headed in an uncomfortable direction for both the merchant and Marcela. Both parties were very grateful for the out.
The guard and his two companions were in their late thirties or so, and they all looked fairly rough around the edges. To put it bluntly, they looked like bottom-rung bandits, thugs from a bad neighborhood, or delinquent hunters stuck perpetually at lesser C-rank. Ordinarily, one might suspect them of being in league with a band of brigands, but no gang would send in three moles at once, and if they did, they would probably have the sense to pick people who looked a little more trustworthy. Paradoxically, this meant the fact that the three hunters looked like bandits actually boosted their credibility. (The Wonder Trio were quite dumbfounded when the client told them as much.)
From the sound of it, the men weren’t anything like veteran hunters. They were a trio of formerly unemployed bums who had become hunters late in life for lack of other career options, and it was only recently that they’d even made it to C-rank. Contrary to their age and appearance, they were actually weaker than most of the local hoodlums. Under normal circumstances, they would never touch an escort mission, and if they ever did try to take one on, either the guild clerk would stop them or the client would reject them after getting a sense of their (lack of) skills.
But this wasn’t a normal escort mission. The Wonder Trio were more than capable of guarding the caravan on their own, so all the men had to do was look the part. Moreover, their willingness to work for half the regular going price for this kind of work aligned with the client’s interests, so a deal had been easily struck.
Although they had been hired to cut costs and little was actually expected of them, that didn’t change the fact that they still had risks and responsibilities. As unusual as this job was, they couldn’t just ditch their client in the event of a bandit or monster attack. In light of this, it might then seem unfair to pay them only half the regular price, but your stereotypical bottom-of-the-barrel hunter didn’t even know where tomorrow’s meals were coming from. To have their food and lodgings provided for while receiving a daily wage of one half-gold and five silver (equivalent to around 15,000 yen in Japan) per person was enough to make them jump for joy.
***
The caravan made it to the first night without incident. Needless to say, a medium-sized business like the merchant’s couldn’t afford to put everyone up in an inn, so they set up camp a short distance from the road.
“We need to step away for a bit. We shouldn’t be long,” Marcela said to the merchant as he was pitching the tents. He nodded without a second thought, assuming the girls were off to answer the call of nature. (Number two, he figured.)
Around twenty to thirty minutes later, Marcela and friends returned and pulled a deer out of their so-called storage space (actually inventory).
“A little something for tonight’s dinner,” said Marcela.
The merchant, the employees working as coachmen, and the three additional bodyguards all went slack-jawed.
***
“Never dreamed we’d be eating this well on the road,” said one of the coachmen.
“Forget conserving drinking water, we get to use all the water we want to wash up,” said the merchant. “And now we get to feast on venison steak with meat and vegetable stew? All this luxury is making me feel like an aristocrat. Are you ladies sure you don’t want us to pay for the meal?”
The girls smiled. “Quite sure,” Marcela demurred. “You gave us permission to hunt that deer while on escort duty, so it wouldn’t be right to charge you extra.”
“That ain’t how it works,” said a member of the dummy guard trio. “If a hunter takes down a wanted bandit on the job, the hunter is the one that gets the bounty. Assuming they take ’em alive, they get a share of the profits from selling ’em into penal slavery, too. From that perspective, this venison is yours, since you did all the hunting and cooking. You’d be well within your rights to ask for payment. Hell, out here in the wilds, no one’d raise an eyebrow if you charged double what it’d cost in town.”
The man did not hesitate to volunteer his frank opinion because he had no personal stake in the matter. The client covered the cost of all meals for the duration of the job, so even if the Wonder Trio changed their minds and decided to charge for the venison, the money would come out of the merchant’s pockets, not his own.
“Fair point,” the merchant conceded. “No businessman worth his salt would cheat his way into a free meal. It would tarnish my honor and reputation. I really must insist that you allow me to pay.”
In keeping with Mile’s policy, the Crimson Vow didn’t tend to charge extra for meals and similar services on the road. For all her usual penny-pinching, Pauline had held herself back from complaining when the Wonder Trio adopted the same approach. However, if the merchant explicitly wanted to pay, there was no point refusing him. The Crimson Vow did tend to accept payment when it was offered, and such offers weren’t all that uncommon.
Besides, Pauline valued her honor and reputation as a merchant—even over money—so she understood the man’s sentiment. But there was something else about this whole series of events that had left her shaken: Just like the Crimson Vow, the Wonder Trio had offered a deluxe suite of complimentary services to the client, coachmen, and other bodyguards on this escort mission. And they were capable of making good on that offer.
Pauline had always believed Mile to be the only one who could do all this. Without her around, neither Pauline nor Reina could ever manage it. They might go hunting, sure, but they wouldn’t be able to find and trap their quarry so quickly and carry it back to the campsite with virtually no hassle. And yet, each and every member of the Wonder Trio could accomplish this feat all by themselves. They had scouting magic to track down their prey, storage magic to transport their spoils, and combat magic for self-defense. Legitimate combat magic, not even the shortcut hot magic Mile had taught Reina and Pauline.
What’s more, all three girls had learned healing magic from Mile. This had included lessons on germs and the structure of the human body. Their skill rivaled Pauline’s. Maybe even surpassed it.
While Pauline knew a few specialized combat spells, she was primarily a healer. Meanwhile, the Wonder Trio could do it all: combat magic, support magic, and healing magic that was probably stronger than her own. They also knew their way around a dagger.
They were better than her in every respect. A straight-up upgrade. Far more worthy of standing by Mile’s side.
Cue the sense of defeat. The jealousy. The self-loathing.
“Are you quite all right, Miss Pauline?”
To top it all off, they were perceptive, good-natured, genuine, and clever. Pauline had long been waiting for a chance to work with the Wonder Trio and learn what she could from them, but she was devastated to find they were even more accomplished than she had anticipated.
“Y-yes, everything’s fine! This venison sure is tasty!” she responded, doing her best to put on a happy face. Despite her false cheer, the Wonder Trio could tell that something was off.
“What would you say to becoming our personal…” The shopkeeper started to ask something, only to quickly think better of it. “Ah, never mind.”
Anyone with skills like these had to have plenty of easier, safer ways to make money than taking on small-time escort missions. The girls must have had other reasons for remaining in the hunter business. No sane merchant would stick his nose into someone else’s life choices, particularly when those choices so clearly involved something more than what met the eye.
The three dummy guards looked conflicted. They had assumed these underage girls—noncombatants by all appearances—would need their protection just as much as their employer. Although the client had mentioned that the four girls were also working as escorts, the men figured he had only hired them to let them rack up some experience at the start of their careers. In reality, they assumed, the girls must be hitching a ride back home in a local merchant’s wagon.
Naturally, the merchant never came out and told the men that the girls were the real bodyguards and they were only there for show. Though he’d made no secret that he was hiring the men as cheap, unskilled labor, he didn’t find it necessary to tell them anything about the Wonder Trio’s skills. While it might pose a problem if their fellow guards were weaker than anticipated, the reverse could hardly hurt anyone. (On the flip side, he had warned the Wonder Trio ahead of time that the three men were all bark and no bite.)
As a result of all this, the men had not imagined the girls had storage magic and the skills to track down, trap, and kill a deer in a very short time frame. It was clear which group was the more competent of the two.
No one could blame the three men for being flabbergasted.
***
When it came time to sleep, the merchant and his employees simply settled down next to the wagons. There was no sign of rain, so they just spread a waterproof tarp over the grass and slept in their clothes. On the road, it was important that they be able to fight or flee at a moment’s notice; it would have been ridiculous to change into pajamas.
The three guards and the Wonder Trio were also sleeping nearby. What set the Wonder Trio apart from the other two groups was that they had pitched a tent…or unpacked a tent, to be more precise.
The merchant and his staff had a tent of their own in their wagon, but they would have to squeeze together to fit inside, so they only bothered to set it up when there was no other shelter from the rain. A bigger tent might be nice, but that would take up space better used for cargo. This was Merchant 101.
Meanwhile, the male hunters hadn’t even brought a tent with them. They weren’t in a position to ask the merchant to reduce his cargo and make space for their tent, and they couldn’t keep pace with the wagons if they had to haul it themselves. In fact, this was common practice for escort hunters, who were expected to be used to sleeping rough.
Or so one might think, if it weren’t for the gigantic tent staring them right in the face.
It was obvious that four girls could fit in the tent with room to spare. Even stranger, the men heard voices inside saying, “Let’s move the beds closer together,” and “Make sure to put your clothes away in the dresser.” They couldn’t comprehend a word of it. Of course, they knew the words’ dictionary definitions, but they couldn’t understand how they were being used in this context.
Beds? A dresser? But they were on the road. They were camping. There hadn’t been any furniture packed in the wagons. Sure, the girls had storage magic, but it had to have limits. Maybe something like an extra cloak or a few blankets would be within the realm of possibility.
But beds and a dresser? That’s gonna be a no from me! They didn’t say a word, but internally, all three men were screaming.
Little did the men realize that, on this particular trip, the girls were actually exercising a fair amount of restraint. Rather than attract even more attention from their fellow travelers, the Wonder Trio chose to leave Mile’s Portable Fortified Bathhouse in the inventory. When they needed to relieve themselves, they used a smaller, less conspicuous, non-fortified version of the portable toilet, which they had set up in a corner of the tent. Though modest by comparison to the bathhouse, it still came complete with a stall and door.
The three men had volunteered to handle the night watch. The motivation for their generosity was twofold: They were afraid to entrust their lives to a group of inexperienced little girls, and they wanted to do the kids a favor by letting them get a good night’s sleep. The girls realized as much, so they put on a show of gratefully accepting the offer. Still, they didn’t want to leave their fates in the men’s hands any more than the men wanted the reverse, so they opted to do their own guard shifts, standing watch from inside their tent.
Of course, they were as vigilant against the three men as they were against monsters and bandits. The girls were neither stupid nor soft enough to trust total strangers.
“The biggest threat to a female hunter isn’t monsters or bandits, it’s their less savory male counterparts,” said Marcela. “And even though they are our clients, we mustn’t implicitly trust the merchant or the employees doing the driving, either. For all we know, the bit about hiring extra guards for show was a ruse, and the men are actually in league with the merchant. Even if that’s not the case, we still haven’t eliminated the possibility that these hunters are precisely as disreputable as they look.”
Monika, Aureana, and Pauline all nodded firmly. As the most buxom member of the Crimson Vow, Pauline was a frequent victim of leering stares or unwanted advances. As a result, she wasn’t particularly inclined to trust men. The Wonder Trio’s excess of caution felt more natural to her than Mile and Mavis’s bizarre lack of it.
But then, she received yet another shock to her system.
“Shield, insect-repelling barrier, anti-intruder spell, done! Miss Aureana, Miss Monika, set up these clappers around the tent. Then leave a stand at the entrance and place a cheap pot atop it.”
“Uh…”
Apparently, their precautions went beyond taking shifts keeping watch. Pauline watched as several layers of security were put in place, both magical and physical. To top it all off, the Trio had gone to the trouble of casting a very challenging continuous spell just to keep bugs at bay. It was no wonder they had no trouble with storage magic, where the biggest hurdle to mastery was learning to keep it going indefinitely. Pauline was still struggling to get past that final barrier, yet these girls made it look like a walk in the park.
Little did Pauline realize that the storage magic the Wonder Trio used was not really storage magic at all. It was inventory magic, a cheat the nanomachines had granted them at Mile’s behest. It only consumed their magic reserves when they took things in and out, and it didn’t require them to maintain a subspace pocket indefinitely. In fact, the Wonder Trio’s magic was as powerful as it was because Mile had assigned personal nanomachines to stick to them at all times, not because they were inherently better mages than Pauline or Reina.
But how was Pauline supposed to know any of that?
***
Nothing of note happened during the caravan’s second day of travel, and they made camp for the night without incident. Stowing all of the fragile and overweight items in Marcela’s inventory had allowed the wagons to move along at a faster pace than usual, so they were significantly ahead of schedule.
“We were supposed to arrive in the evening the day after tomorrow, but thanks to you girls, we might make it there before the sun sets, which makes an enormous difference. Rather than splitting the work across two days, we’ll have time to deliver the cargo the same day we arrive!”
Although the merchant had been forced to pay three extra salaries for the dummy guards, all the extra cargo he’d been able to fit in Marcela’s storage had more than made up for the loss. (Besides, let’s recall he had hired them at a half-price discount, so he was effectively paying for one and a half workers and getting three.) All told, he seemed quite pleased with the outlook for his upcoming delivery, and it had put him in a good mood. This increased the chances of him giving his escort a bonus to cover their return trip to the capital, the thought of which made the three penniless dummy guards smile in turn.
“We’ll go ahead and get dinner started. Please make yourselves comfortable in the meantime,” said the merchant.
The three men took him up on his offer and plopped down onto the soft grass. But the Wonder Trio Plus One grabbed the previous night’s leftover venison and vegetables from the inventory and started to help with the cooking. They could have just handed over the ingredients and let the merchant’s staff handle the rest, but they knew it would go faster and come out better if they pitched in. The choice was a no-brainer for the girls: Waiting was no big deal, but anything that could make their meals even a little bit tastier was worth the effort.
Just as they were about to get to cooking, however…
“Incoming enemy!” yelled Marcela. “All hands, prepare for battle!” She cast aside the kitchen knife in her hand and unsheathed the dagger hanging from her left hip. Her other hand was clutching a wand.
Even in the middle of cooking, a hunter was always on duty. That was why she never unbuckled the dagger from her waist, no matter how cumbersome it was. She had left her staff back in the tent, but she had an iron wand hidden up her left sleeve. With just the right flick of her wrist, it would shoot out of its clasp and into her hand. She could take it out and wield it as a weapon, or leave the metal rod tucked away in her sleeve and use it to parry blows from enemy blades. Mages had weak offensive and defensive capabilities aside from their magic, so it was important to have a concealed weapon in the event of an emergency.
She could use her magic without a staff or wand, of course, but one could never have too many options for self-defense in close-range combat. Besides, it was for exactly such an occasion that she kept it equipped to her left arm at all times, despite the extra burden it put on her. Why bother if she didn’t bring it out at a time like this?
Monika and Aureana were likewise poised to intercept the enemy, their own wands and daggers in hand. They had even made sure that the merchant and his crew were safely positioned between them and the wagons.
It’s the same idea as Reina’s concealed weapon, thought Pauline, looking on with wide-eyed surprise.
Reina kept a weapon hidden up her left sleeve as well. Now that she thought about it, it made sense that people in similar situations would have similar concerns and reach similar conclusions. A staff was most mages’ go-to weapon, but its length meant it would get in the way of daily tasks, and no one would want to carry one around when they were all dressed up and out on the town. A concealed weapon was the perfect contingency plan—but, unfortunately, it wasn’t one Pauline herself had ever bothered with.
“Use this, Miss Pauline!” Marcela shouted, holding out her own wand for Pauline to take. Calmly considering the options, she had determined that it was better for her to keep the dagger and let Pauline have the wand than for her to hoard both and leave Pauline unarmed.
As humiliated as Pauline felt at her own lack of preparedness, she knew how foolish it would be to refuse on principle and drag everyone else down as a result. She took the proffered weapon without argument.
Marcela had given her the wand knowing that it would weaken her own defenses. The least Pauline could do was fight the best she could so she wouldn’t regret it.
There was still no sign of the enemy, but Pauline knew about the Wonder Trio’s scouting magic, so she didn’t question Marcela’s warning. She was already chanting the incantations for combat spells in her head.
Meanwhile, the Wonder Trio focused their full attention on their surroundings, holding daggers and wands at the ready. While Reina and Pauline need to think the incantation in order to cast it, the Wonder Trio’s version of silent casting was instantaneous. As soon as they spotted an enemy, they could immediately unleash the most appropriate spell for the situation. This spared them the trouble of running through the possibilities in advance and stockpiling a few different spells, which was an immense advantage.
Surprisingly, the dummy guards didn’t question Marcela’s warning, either. Instead, they sprang to their feet in a flash, drawing the swords at their hips. The Wonder Trio were used to people being skeptical of their youth and gender, so they honestly hadn’t expected the men to be much help. They were happy to be proven wrong. These men might have been the bottom of the barrel, but they were still C-rank hunters. It turned out they at least had the good sense and training to sense when danger was near.
Then again, perhaps this was to be expected. Despite switching career tracks late in life, the men had made it to C-rank without loss of life or limb. Only a decent combination of luck and skill could make that possible.
“We’re up against just under thirty quadrupeds! Chances are high that they are either wolf-type monsters or wild animals! They have us surrounded. Assume defensive formation 2-1!”
In case of a nocturnal assault, the wagons had been parked in a U-shaped formation, their horses unhitched. The merchant’s staff was herded into the center, and their team of escorts formed a line of defense: the Wonder Trio Plus One guarding each of the four sides, the dummy bodyguards standing out in the open. At Marcela’s command, they had assembled into a solid defensive formation within the ring of carriages. Even the three men had complied without a single complaint.
If Marcela was right and the enemy were wolf-type monsters or wild animals, they would be capable of jumping over the wagons or slipping underneath. This eliminated the option of having the whole team fight on the front line with the merchant’s staff hidden behind them. Even with the barricade of wagons, the civilians still needed hunters guarding them on all sides—and those needed to be diligent defenders with an eye for detail, not just brute force. That left the three men to occupy the open area where the bulk of the enemies would advance. Though not the most reliable allies, the men were still frontline-fighting swordsmen by profession. The Wonder Trio Plus One would back up their male counterparts with combat, support, and defensive spells from behind, all the while keeping the merchant and his staff surrounded and watching for enemies coming from over or under the wagons.
“The enemy’s numbers are overwhelming! There is a strong likelihood that we’re dealing with an entire pack, not just a hunting group! In theory, they should have an alpha. If we can just slay that one, then perhaps… Agh! They’re closing in around us. They must have deemed us weak prey. They’re almost upon us! Have a volley of combat spells ready to go in three, two, one… Fire!”
At Marcela’s command, the Wonder Trio Plus One let their barrage of combat magic rip. The Wonder Trio’s aforementioned ability to cast without reciting an incantation in their heads meant that Marcela could both give orders and contribute to the attack simultaneously.
While they had approached the group from all sides, the enemy—a pack of dire wolves, it turned out—now coalesced in the unobstructed open space of the U, clearly planning to launch a frontal assault. As a result, the onslaught of magic ripped right down the middle of their ranks.
The campsite was in a large clearing, which meant there was nothing to stop the mages from wielding their fire magic. Each girl therefore fired off the spell she was best at—with the exception of Pauline’s hot magic, which was liable to catch the frontline fighters and do collateral damage. In short order, several of the dire wolves were felled or incapacitated by the blitz of flames, pellets of ice, and javelins of rock, greatly slowing the pack’s momentum. Their once-coordinated formation fell into complete disarray.
The three frontline guards chose to stay put rather than rush forward. This was an escort mission, not an extermination job. Protecting their client took priority over killing enemies. No matter how opportune an opening the wolves’ turmoil provided, the men couldn’t afford to move from their assigned positions. They might have been second-rate C-ranks who got into the business too late, but they were still in their mid-thirties. Unlike some of their hot-blooded, impulsive younger counterparts, they understood the fundamentals of the job. Clearly, they were a more reasonable bunch than appearances had suggested.
“They’ve split up! We must strengthen our defensive formation! The vanguard should fall back and help defend the merchant’s staff! Monika, let us proceed with Nocturnal Sabotage 2-2!”
“Roger that!”
Now that every second counted, Marcela dispensed with titles and formalities. To her fellow party members, it was a sign that things had gotten serious.
Once the three men had fallen back, Marcela and Monika stepped up in their place.
“Take thiiiiiis!” both girls cried.
They each threw a whole lot of something in front of them. Well, actually, they fired whatever it was out of thin air.
Once again skipping the incantation, Marcela simply yelled out the name of a spell. “Ignite!”
Fireballs and firebombs would blast their targets away, so this situation called for a different kind of fire spell. Marcela and Monika aimed their magic at the very thing they had just taken out of their inventory and scattered in front of them: a big pile of wood. Not logs, to be clear. This wood had been cut into thin planks. For increased flammability, said planks had been packed together with sawdust, combustible twigs, and straw bundles stuffed in the gaps, then drenched in oil for good measure.
That was what the girls had just ignited, and it should come as no surprise that a huge pillar of fire flared up almost instantly. Sparks popped and fizzled, while the flames surged and roared. To make matters worse, something in the wood emitted an odor pungent enough to make the eyes and nose sting.
“Aha! It’s the perfect tactic for wild animals!” one of the three men exclaimed, impressed. “The fire neutralizes the advantage of their night vision and disrupts the airflow. The smoke and stench impair their sense of sight and smell, while the roar and crackle of the flames disrupt their hearing. Monsters and wild animals hate fire to begin with. Now that their night combat capabilities have taken a hit, I betcha their morale is in tatters.”
Of course, taking a hit to their combat capabilities wasn’t equivalent to getting wiped out. The wolves had still only lost about twenty percent of their forces, which wasn’t enough to make them give up. Having struggled to track down decent prey for days now, the pack was starving. They needed to feed themselves, and they weren’t about to let this group of vulnerable, tender, delicious humans give them the slip.
***
The wolves were smart. When the hunters first gathered together in one place, they focused their attacks there, but as soon as they discerned that their prey had the strength to fight back, they decided to divide and conquer.
Their quarry was far too slow to keep up with their own nimble movements. At the end of the day, humans were mostly just powerless slabs of meat. Sure, the wolves might have lost part of their pack, and that infernal hot stuff was interfering with their sense of smell and hearing, and the turbulence in the airflow made it harder to sense what the enemy was about to do, but none of that would stop them from hunting these feeble weaklings.
Not only were the wolves strong—but they also had a brilliant alpha to guide them.
***
Marcela tossed something into the blazing fire, then retreated alongside Monika to a place where they could better defend the merchant’s staff. Not a moment later…
“Urk!” Six voices cried out as a horrid stench swept through the air.
“Pee-yew!” said one of the men.
“The hell was that?!” yelled another.
After the Crimson Vow told them the story of how they had thrown the beastfolk off their trail, the Wonder Trio had rolled up their sleeves and devised a similar secret weapon of their own. This was the recently finished prototype. It unleashed a horrible smell that not even the user was spared from, making it something of a self-destruct button to use. This meant it only worked against enemies with a sense of smell more sensitive than the hunters’ own, so it only saw use in fights with sharp-nosed monsters, animals, beastfolk, and elves. But it was extremely effective against that limited pool.
The girls had already packed the wood with something that gave off a foul odor when burned, so it was downright diabolical of them to follow that up with something even more potent.
Wolf-type animals and monsters both had a much keener sense of smell than humanoids. Acrid stenches hit them where it hurt.
“Arrroooooo!” the wolves howled.
How could they not? Even with the smoke and the standard-issue stench of the fire dulling their noses, this was on a whole different level. The word “smelly” didn’t even begin to cover it. Some wolves vomited, others fainted. The biggest tragedy of all was that these poor lupine creatures were incapable of plugging their noses. Just like that, a significant portion of their force was down for the count.
“I certainly hope that will encourage them to retreat.”
The hunters had earned themselves a brief respite. Although they were all praying the wolves would give up and go home, they weren’t sure they would be so lucky. They needed to catch their breath while they had the chance.
“Dire wolves usually split into groups of five or six to go hunting. Why would the whole pack come after us?” wondered one of the dummy guards. “We probably could’ve fought off a single group, but we wouldn’t have stood a chance against all of them at once. Talk about bad luck.”
“I wouldn’t write it off as just bad luck. I imagine this is part of their strategy,” said Marcela. “We might be too much for a hunting party to handle, but we’re too enticing a quarry to pass up. Even if a smaller group initially found our caravan, they would have called upon their companions for help before attacking. Since the survival of their pack hangs in the balance, they can’t afford not to be at least that strategic.”
“Good point. We ain’t the only ones fighting for our lives out here. And since we only have the forces to fend off five or six dire wolves, it’s pretty obvious how this is gonna end… If only they were a smaller pack, they might’ve spared however many of us they couldn’t drag back to their den or eat before we go bad. Y’know, let us off with a ‘We’re saving you for the next time we’re hungry.’ Unlike humans, wolves never hunt more than they can eat. With a smaller pack, we three could’ve charged in and gotten ourselves killed, and the client and one or two of you girls might’ve had the chance to make it out alive. Not likely to happen with these numbers, though.”
The man went on, “Letting someone hide in the wagon won’t really work, either. That might trick a goblin, but dire wolves have a sharp sense of smell. They’d definitely sniff the person out. And that stink bomb of yours won’t last forever, right? Sorry. I can’t think of any way to get you all out of this…”
The Wonder Trio and Pauline could only blink at the men in surprise. Most hunters would fight to keep themselves alive no matter how many other lives it cost. They might be helpful when they could afford to be, but in a desperate situation, many would use their own party members as meat shields without a second thought, to say nothing of their client. The vast majority of hunters wouldn’t feel a twinge of guilt over using a stranger they just so happened to be doing a joint mission with as bait. The girls’ surprise was thoroughly justified.
Finally regaining the ability to speak, Marcela simply replied, “That won’t be necessary, though we are grateful for the sentiment.”
“Uh, what?”
***
The whole caravan hoped and prayed that the dire wolves would back off, but alas, they weren’t so lucky.
At this point, the alpha had to respect his prey for putting up such a good fight. He had gone from seeing them as helpless weaklings just waiting to be trounced to a formidable quarry. And now, he had shared a new strategy with his pack: Target their leader.
A few of the wolves who had weathered the stink bomb crept up and lunged all at once.
Their quarry? Marcela.
“Ah…!”
Marcela attempted to fend off the attack with a silent fireball and a swing of her dagger, but she didn’t stand a chance with her mediocre swordsmanship and frail little girl arms. It didn’t help that her dagger had a shorter reach than a proper sword.
Mages were better off casting their magic from a relatively safe spot. As a class, they simply weren’t suited to facing physical attackers at close range. Even with the power to silent cast, all it took to bring a mage down was a single strike from a swordsman or a split second in which a beast might sink its fangs or claws into their flesh.
“Lady Marcela!” her two companions cried.
Shrrrrk!
CHOMP!
Claws tore at leather armor, and sharp fangs sank into the arm the wolf’s prey had thrown up to protect its neck. After ripping its way through the cheap leather, the wolf slashed several gashes clean across the victim’s chest. As blood gushed from mauled chest and arm alike, the wolf jerked sideways in an effort to knock its quarry to the ground. The idea was probably to lay the prey out and allow the whole pack a chance to deliver the finishing blow. Fangs wedged firmly in its flesh, the creature thrashed about and ripped the wound even wider open, spraying blood everywhere.
“Sir! No!” Marcela shouted.
She wasn’t the victim. One of the three men had jumped in and taken the blow meant for her.
His arm was still caught in the wolf’s jaws. As the creature writhed and twisted in an effort to bring the man down, Marcela slammed her dagger into the wolf with the full weight of her body, plunging the blade deep. (You know, the same move a yakuza hitman might use on the boss of a rival syndicate.) Physically weak as she was, Marcela knew that a regular point-blank swing of her dagger would fail to cut through the wolf’s fur and deliver a fatal blow, while also potentially hurting the man who had protected her. Instead, she had gone with the surefire move of stabbing the enemy with the blade gripped firmly in her hands.
Thunk! Thunk!
Two more stabs struck the wolf, courtesy of Monika and Aureana.
Rather than rush to their companion’s aid, the remaining two members of the male guard trio focused on protecting the merchant and coachmen. They had enough life experience to understand their role, responsibilities, and what was most important for them to do in the moment.
The Wonder Trio shot off a few more fireballs, staving off the handful of additional wolves who had encircled Marcela. The rest of the wolves fell back and paused their assault, clearly hoping to regroup. They had taken more damage than expected, but the foul stench was slowly starting to fade, and the so-called “hot stuff” had also begun to dissipate. As far as they were concerned, mighty beasts like them had nothing left to fear. They believed that the more time passed, the more the scales would tip in their favor. It was the hubris of the strong.
“Sir! Are you all right?!” cried Marcela.
The wolf responsible for biting the man’s arm had slumped motionless on the ground. Next to him, blood oozed from the man’s chest and gushed from his mangled left arm, dyeing his sleeve bright red. A major vein in his arm had likely been cut. His chest wounds also looked quite serious.
“Why would you do that?!” Marcela demanded, on the verge of tears.
Clutching at the wound on his arm with his other hand, the man cracked a weak, pained smile. “What kinda question…is that? We can’t let people go around saying we let some pretty girls get hurt while we were supposed to be on guard duty. Besides, all these years I never made anything of myself, and now I get to die protecting a cute girl with a bright future. That’s a pretty damn big deal! I’m glad my life was…worth something…after all…”
He briefly wobbled on his feet before sinking to the ground. He had lost too much blood to remain standing. Moments witnessed by a pretty girl who saw him as her savior. What greater joy could there be for a man like him?
“Ah, jeez, I’ve stopped feeling the pain… Ladies, learn a lesson from this and never take on a job bigger than you can handle again. Well, guess that’s all she wrote… I hope you all make it out of this mess safe and sound. Do me a favor and see me off with a smile, will ya? It’s a better look on you than tears…”
With that, the man let his eyes drift shut.
“……”
“………”
“…………”
“Huh, sure is taking me a while to pass on…”
“That would be because I silently cast a Mega Heal on you,” said Marcela. “Your arm and chest have been fine for a while now.”
“You WHAAAAAAT?!” all three men yelled.
***
The wolves pulled back to regroup. Having expected helpless prey, they hadn’t been prepared for the level of retaliation they had just faced. Marcela used the pause in battle to silently cast a Mega Heal on the man who had stepped up to shield her. Even as she listened to him blather, she made sure to keep an eye on the wolves. At the slightest sign of a second attack, she would cut the conversation short and move to intercept the enemy.
She could only afford to be so relaxed thanks to Mile’s patented silent casting technique, which meant she could engage in idle chatter without jeopardizing her ability to jump back into combat magic at barely a moment’s notice. It was a luxury Reina and Pauline didn’t have.
Eventually, she called for the rest of the group’s attention. “Come, it’s time to get our heads back in the game!” Marcela shouted. “The enemy is preparing to attack!”
The alpha was giving its pack orders to resume the assault.
“Upgrade combat level to 3! Defense level, likewise to 3!” Marcela commanded.
“Yes, ma’am!” Monika and Aureana shouted back.
Whenever the Wonder Trio fought in front of an audience, they always imposed restrictions on themselves. This applied to both the types of spells they used and the power behind them.
They also had various levels of standards when it came to protecting others, ranging from “not a scratch on their hairline” to “anything goes as long as they don’t die.” Even if their clients took a few scrapes, it was nothing they couldn’t heal with magic after the fact. In situations where they didn’t want to reveal the full extent of their abilities, they could afford to let themselves and their companions suffer a few injuries.
Of course, putting children through pain or causing them any fear was a different story. They would go to any length to prevent that, including using themselves as shields—just like their fellow guard had done for Marcela earlier. In situations like that, exposing their abilities would be the least of their worries. Any trouble that might arise from their secrets getting out was nothing compared to the loss of a life they should have protected and the regret they would have to carry for the rest of their lives.
Whether out of a desire to repay her debt or a newfound regard for the men as trustworthy allies, Marcela had just relaxed those restrictions. She hadn’t removed them entirely, of course, but she had given her fellow party members the okay to use levels of magic she almost never displayed in front of strangers or temporary associates. Usually, not even the confidentiality agreement between fellow hunters and their clients would make her take that leap.
“Protect!” shouted Marcela. Their defensive magic couldn’t afford to fail; since Marcela had the most power of the Wonder Trio, she blocked the wolves’ charge.
“Explode!” shouted Monika, unleashing an area attack. The spell didn’t have particularly high accuracy, but that made little difference when it was being fired into a whole horde of enemies.
“Hot Tornado!” shouted Aureana. A spinning red vortex assailed the wolves. This was an AoE spell that she and Mile had devised together, one that didn’t take much magical power to cast.
Raagghh!
Aroooooooo!
Wolves crashed into Marcela’s magical barrier face-first. They were sent flying by explosions, engulfed in flames, knocked down, and left to writhe on the ground. The Hot Tornado was enough to make the earlier stink bomb seem downright fragrant, and it left the animals squirming, whimpering, and desperately rubbing at their muzzles with their forepaws. It was impossible to tell whether the alpha had escaped unscathed or become one of the casualties, but either way, the wolves were unlikely to make a comeback after that assault.
“Hmph!” Pauline had been planning to cast some hot magic of her own, but Aureana had beaten her to the punch. She scowled, canceled the spell in reserve, and started the incantation for a single-target combat spell instead. Monika and Aureana clearly had the pack-wide assault covered, so she decided to focus her spells on the stragglers that had avoided harm.
The Wonder Trio would probably switch to single-target spells for their follow-up attacks as well. The three male guards were likely to join the fray soon, and the wolves’ ranks had fallen into disarray. For the sake of preventing friendly fire, the window for area attacks had passed.
“They got away…”
There were two possibilities: Either the alpha had ordered the pack to retreat, or the alpha had been killed, the chain of command had collapsed, and the troops had scattered. Either way, the wolves turned tail and fled as soon as the Wonder Trio and Pauline fired off a few single-target spells.
It was difficult to hit the wolves when they were all sprinting off at once, and there was little to be done once they slipped into the cover of tall grass or the forest. The vegetation would block any area attacks, and the risk of wildfires meant that all pyro and explosive spells were off the table.
“Well, I doubt they’ll be bothering us again, so we needn’t give chase,” said Marcela. “And if we push our luck, we risk inviting an ambush. It would be suicide to follow a pack of wild animals into a difficult-to-navigate area at night.”
The merchant heaved a long, deep sigh and collapsed to the ground, overcome with relief to have made it out alive, while his coachmen rushed over to make sure the wagons and horses hadn’t taken any damage. As much as the staff wanted to follow their boss’s example and let their legs give out, they held themselves together long enough to check on their animals. It was a very commendable show of willpower. The wagons might be fixable, but it would be a disaster if the horses were injured.
Meanwhile, the Wonder Trio and the three middle-aged guards sheathed their weapons and breathed a sigh of relief, but they didn’t relax completely. Although they were pretty sure the wolves were gone for good, there was no guarantee that those were the only beasts prowling the area. There was a nonzero chance that the sounds of fighting or the stench of magically burnt wolf meat might attract more predators.
Then again, the smell of scorched flesh and fur and the wolves’ piteous howls made it clear that the wolves had suffered a crushing defeat, and the loud explosions had probably also done their part to deter unwanted guests. Wild animals and monsters were a good deal more cautious and fearful than the average human assumed. Only the most foolish members of a species would throw themselves into potential danger, and those individuals generally died before they could procreate, so their traits didn’t tend to get passed down.
“I-I can’t believe you girls!”
The three middle-aged men gaped at the Wonder Trio Plus One with awe. The merchant, still slumped over the ground, lifted his head to show a similar facial expression.
Oh, great, thought the three girls of the Wonder Trio.
They had cast a magic barrier, explosive magic far more powerful than a standard fireball, and a Hot Tornado. The three men had risked their lives to defend Marcela, and the girls had hoped to return the favor by doing everything in their power to make sure no one got hurt. To that end, they had relaxed their rules about hiding their abilities just the slightest bit—but maybe that “bit” had been excessive.
“Oh well. I knew this would happen when I made the call,” Marcela whispered. Monika and Aureana nodded.
Still, hoping they could sweep the matter under the rug, Marcela pulled a deceptive maneuver. She said something that was certain to make a good distraction.
“We do our best to make sure older men never die on our watch—especially the more rugged and dashing ones.”
“Say what?!” all three men blurted, clearly flustered. The way they blushed like shy schoolgirls was borderline concerning.
Marcela hadn’t said anything she didn’t believe. Rugged gentlemen held a certain appeal for young girls—not as potential suitors, of course, but they could be admired from a distance. If nothing else, it was nice to have reliable adults looking out for them.
Yet while Marcela hadn’t lied, per se, she had been careful to keep her words general. She had stated a fact about a certain population of men, but she had never stated that she counted the three men before her as part of that population. Purehearted young lady though she was, Marcela was still a woman, and one of noble descent, at that. She wasn’t above putting her feminine wiles to good use. That said, she did find it somewhat embarrassing, so she only resorted to such tactics when absolutely necessary.
As for Pauline, she could only look on with mixed feelings, even long after the battle had come to an end.
***
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on a second! What was all that magic?! You told me you had C-rank abilities and a high-capacity storage space, but you never said you were this strong! Why, if things had gone smoothly, you were planning to finish the mission without ever showing me what you can really do, weren’t you? Don’t get me wrong,” the merchant backtracked, perhaps sensing the sharp look in Marcela’s eye. “That’s your prerogative as long as you do your job as escorts, and I intend to uphold our confidentiality agreement. The only things more important to a merchant than our contracts and our reputation are our lives!”
The cooking table had been flipped over during the fight, so they’d had to start dinner over from scratch. With the preparations finally done, the caravan was conversing over their bowls of food. Everyone in the caravan was free to sit down and eat, including the merchant’s staff-turned-coachmen.
Fortunately, no harm had come to either the wagons or the horses, so the caravan would be able to set out the next morning as planned. Since the horses were tethered to nearby trees, the wolves had likely deemed them easy pickings and prioritized attacking the humans, with the expectation that after they were dinner, the horses might become dessert.
The middle-aged trio had suggested eating dinner in shifts, but the Wonder Trio insisted that everyone eat together, claiming their security magic eliminated the need for a lookout. Normally, nobody would trust the word of a bunch of tiny newbies, but at this point, no one present was going to question the Wonder Trio.
Of course, this meant the Wonder Trio had given away yet another piece of valuable information related to their abilities, but at this point, they deemed the trade-off worthwhile. If the group had taken turns eating, the girls would’ve had to explain themselves and swear their companions to silence twice over, and they really couldn’t be bothered. Besides, they’d already revealed enough that such a minor addition felt relatively insignificant. Although Mile didn’t want the novel form of combat magic she taught the Trio getting around, she wasn’t too concerned about the propagation of her healing or defensive magic techniques. Security magic and search magic fell under the latter category.
In any event…
“Advancing in rank is supposed to be a hunter’s main objective, so I find it a bit strange that you’d hide your capabilities, but to each their own,” said the merchant. “I’m sure you have your reasons. We strive to be the best clients we can be, so you can trust us not to pry or go running our mouths.” At that, he cast a meaningful glance toward his staff and the middle-aged trio. All parties nodded.
Everyone knew what happened to merchants who violated the norms of the Hunters’ Guild. No one would ever take on an escort mission from them again. Even if they got shaken down by thugs, no one—not just hunters, but even the Hunters’ Guild staff, other merchants, or the Merchants’ Guild—would lift a finger to help them. And those were just the passive consequences. Some people preferred to take matters into their hands and ensure those merchants never saw the light of day again.
For a while, the group kept the conversation going with retellings of the battle against the wolves, the merchant’s humorous tales of his past missteps, and the Wonder Trio’s accounts of their hunter escapades (but only those they didn’t mind sharing, with a bit of invention mixed in). Until…
“A little while back, the jackalope population took a sudden nosedive…and so did the purchase price, somehow! Like, how does that make any damn sense?! Anyway, we took a big hit to our earnings. We might be the bottom of the barrel as far as C-rank hunters go, but a C-rank is a C-rank. We weren’t about to steal the herb-gathering jobs or chores around town from the kids or the E- and F-ranks. Eventually, we ate our way through our meager savings, and then we were really screwed… We were thanking our lucky stars when this job fell into our laps! Never dreamed it’d turn out so dangerous, or that we’d be saved by the little ladies we swore to protect… Might be time for us to start thinking about another career change.”
Whoops, thought the Wonder Trio Plus One. They couldn’t help but be taken aback by the older man’s self-deprecating grumblings. Of course, they were the ones responsible for backing these hunters into a corner. We really ought to repay them somehow…
It was what any decent person would think.
“Er, g-gentlemen!” said Marcela. “Are you troubled by any old wounds, stiff shoulders, or back pain, by chance? We’re teammates for the time being, so we would be happy to cast some healing magic free of charge!”
The merchant goggled, shocked to learn that it was possible to cure stiff shoulders and back pain, but his surprise was the least of the girls’ current concerns.
The other two members of the Wonder Trio rushed to make offers of their own.
“W-we can carry the slain wolves in Lady Marcela’s storage! Some of their fur is a bit singed, but they should still fetch a good price. You can keep all the money as thanks for protecting Lady Marcela!”
“Lady Marcela, don’t you keep alcohol in your inven…er, storage? You know, to serve to a dwarf at a moment’s notice? Give them some of that!”
“We ain’t about to drink on escort duty, let alone in a forest in the dead of night!” one of the three middle-aged men exclaimed. The male guards was growing suspicious of the girls’ sudden, unprompted hospitality. “Besides, this is s’posed to be a joint mission, but you’ve spent the whole time saving our butts! If word got around that we kept all the money from the kills too, no one would ever agree to team up with us again! We’d be branded a bunch of losers who steal little girls’ hard-earned income!”
All four girls gulped.
He had a point. No matter how the Wonder Trio explained the situation, the other hunters would draw their own conclusions and spread their version of the story. That was just how gossip worked.
For the record, Pauline wasn’t an innocent party here. It was the Crimson Vow who had suggested the jackalope-hunting strategy in the first place, so she was just as guilty.
All seven hunters present lapsed into silence.
“Well, that’s enough of that,” the merchant cut in, hoping to change the subject and lighten the tense atmosphere. It was important for a merchant to know how to tactfully redirect a conversation. “Say, how would you feel about becoming our company’s in-house escorts?”
Unfortunately, the topic of conversation he came up was even less welcome.
The girls had already turned down this offer once before, but the merchant couldn’t resist trying his luck again. He couldn’t just let that enormous storage space and those incredible combat abilities pass him by. It would be a waste to give up without a fight, and he had nothing to lose but his dignity. Even if the girls refused, he assumed they wouldn’t get angry enough to strike him down where he stood, so he took the once-in-a-lifetime gamble.
“We’d love to!” came three voices almost immediately.
“I wasn’t talking to you three!” the merchant snapped, a vein popping out on his forehead.
The middle-aged guards slumped over, dejected.
“Ugh, okay, fine. You are pretty diligent workers, and we’ve all seen how brave you can be. I can’t offer you special treatment, but if you’re willing to work for average wages and do menial labor in addition to guard work, I can find a place for you three on the payroll.”
“Works for us!” all three men replied.
Breaking into the hunter business hadn’t been working out too well for them. At their stage of life (and with no combat experience), they had already passed the age of peak performance for the career, and their stamina and motor skills would only decline from here on out. With their meager abilities, they were almost certainly bound to either reach their physical limits or get themselves killed before they could save up enough to retire.
As they got older, hunters had two choices: believe in their own abilities and aim for the top, or admit to themselves that they were nothing special and drop out of the business. It was an important fork in the road of life.
Unfortunately, the majority struggled to find other work, forcing them to carry on as hunters even if they knew they couldn’t hack it. These three men would be lucky to be employed by a medium-sized business rather than continue risking their lives as hunters, and they knew it. They were sure to become some of the merchant’s hardest workers.
“Anyway, Wonder Trio! I would be delighted to have you as my personal guards! Why, I’d even be happy to adopt you!”
Of course, the owner’s true interests still centered on the Wonder Trio.
“We must decline!” the three girls rebuffed him, to no one’s surprise. Pauline wasn’t a member of the Wonder Trio, so she didn’t even bother responding.
The shopkeeper hadn’t really expected them to say yes, so he didn’t appear particularly disappointed. He’d only asked for the sake of shooting his shot. He’d known better than to get his hopes up. Were the Wonder Trio ever to retire from the hunter business, they would have plenty of better ways to earn a living than working for him.
Chapter 143: First Pauline, Now Reina
Chapter 143:
First Pauline, Now Reina
THE CARAVAN MADE IT to their destination without further incident. After receiving an A-grade job completion certificate, a few words of thanks from the merchant, and a tip to help cover the cost of the journey home, the seven hunters were all smiles.
The wolves’ ambush normally would have ended in a total party wipeout, yet this team had achieved the impossible: zero casualties and all wagons and cargo unscathed. Had a performance like that received anything less than an A, the guild master probably would have flown into a rage upon hearing the report. A party’s evaluation didn’t impact their fee or anything like that, but it was still an important way of recognizing a party’s life-threatening work, and the guild didn’t stand for anyone who didn’t take it seriously. No client wanted to pick a fight with the guild for no reason, so they always gave hunters what they considered a fair evaluation, such that they could explain their reasoning if anyone objected later.
As was customary, the middle-aged men received a tip of their own, but they were planning to stick around in town and work at the merchant’s shop rather than head home. Although the money was nominally to cover the costs of the return trip, it wouldn’t have been fair to pay the Wonder Trio a bonus but not the men, so they still got to reap the benefits.
All three men were single and lived out of inns. Having already cleared out of their rooms in the capital, they had no reason to return. Instead, they simply asked the Wonder Trio to do them a favor and inform the capital guild branch of their move. It would’ve been cruel to make them trek all the way back to the capital just to give a report, and Marcela and company readily agreed to convey the message.
The girls prayed that the men would secure themselves a safe, sustainable livelihood, get married, and find happiness. They were getting up there in years, sure, but people died all the time in this world, and many women found themselves widowed. Once the men had stable jobs, their chances of finding suitable marriage prospects were quite high. That was all the truer of men chivalrous enough to come between the jaws of a wolf and a little girl they had just met.
No doubt the merchant would help spread the tales of their bravery.
***
On the road back to the capital, after setting up camp for the night and curling up in her cot, Pauline lost herself in a sea of thought.
They’re so strong…and I’m not just thinking of the sheer power behind their magic. They’re good fighters. Plus, they’re not just individually powerful, like those of us in the Crimson Vow; they know the right ways to fight and work as a team. They’re almost like…
A certain C-rank party popped into Pauline’s mind.
They’re almost like the Servants of the Goddess.
Very few hunters were capable of single-handedly routing a pack of monsters. That was why they formed parties, supported each other, and worked to keep one another alive.
The individual members of the Crimson Vow were too powerful for that. That wasn’t a bad thing, obviously, but it meant they had developed a different fighting style than your average party. They went in with a brute-force approach that hinged entirely on their members’ independent strengths.
No matter how formidable they were, they were setting themselves up to get their legs swept from under them. Reina had expressed concerns about this in the past, and Pauline was beginning to share her worries.
The members of the Wonder Trio are also strong as individuals, but they fight more like the Servants of the Goddess than we do. And Marcela is such a strong leader… Reina and Mile will often take charge during battle, but it’s hard for Mile to grasp the full picture of the fight and direct us when she’s on the front lines—and Reina can’t give commands when she’s busy with incantations. Because Reina’s magic is a cornerstone of our offense, we can’t have her neglect that to focus on giving out instructions.
All of this means that I’m the best fit for the commander role. Being part of the rear guard gives me a clear view of the whole battlefield, and my strengths lie in support and healing magic rather than combat. But I have absolutely no talent for leading battles, and I already have my hands full thinking incantations myself… How does Marcela manage to issue commands and fire off spells at the same time?
There it was again: the key difference between the “semi-silent” casting that Mile had taught the Crimson Vow and the true version she’d taught the Wonder Trio. The first called for thinking the incantation rather than saying it aloud, while the second was activated by imagination alone, eliminating the need for any incantation. Of course, Pauline still didn’t realize that these were two completely different forms of silent casting, so she had no way to know what a clear advantage Marcela had.
I bet the only reason the Wonder Trio let me heal the injured post-battle was so that I had something to do. Their healing magic is just as good as mine…or maybe even better. Wait, there’s no “maybe” about it! I already saw them cast a Mega Heal between battles! That must mean that…after the battle was over and we were all safe, they went out of their way to give me a job and keep me from feeling like a useless lump.
If they could be thinking like that right after the battle had ended and they were still on edge, it spoke volumes about their kindness and composure.
I can’t measure up…
Pauline remained deep in thought as she and the Wonder Trio made their way back to the capital. Occasionally, they wandered off the main road to go hunting, stashing the bounty in the inventory for use at a later date.
***
“We’re home!” the Wonder Trio announced with a cheer.
“Welcome back!” the stay-at-home faction of the Crimson Vow greeted them.
Uh-oh. Mile, Reina, and Mavis immediately noticed that Pauline had yet to say hello. Her glum expression told them everything they needed to know.
Determining that it would be best to mind their own business, they pretended they hadn’t noticed anything. Mile’s companions were shocked to note that even she had read the room correctly—for once.
***
A few days passed.
“I want to join the Wonder Trio on their next mission,” said Reina.
“Huh?” said Mile. She and Mavis were the only ones who looked surprised.
The Wonder Trio seemed to take Reina’s comment in stride. After all, accompanying another party was just another form of intra-clan interaction—and a great learning experience to boot. Pauline had done the same exact thing not too long ago. Really, the strangest thing was that Mile and Mavis hadn’t seen it coming.
“We would be happy to have you,” said Marcela. “I would be interested to learn about some of your more explosive combat magic!” Monika and Aureana nodded in agreement.
Reina had things she hoped to learn from the Wonder Trio herself.
A few days later, the Wonder Trio and Reina set off on a three-day, two-night expedition into the innermost depths of the forest. Rather than wait for a specific request, they would be hunting down daily extermination targets and gathering materials like meat and fur to sell.
Such a mission was only made possible by their inventory (masquerading, as always, as regular storage magic). For most hunters, it would be a hassle just to carry three days’ worth of food and camping gear in addition to their weapons and armor. Even adult men would struggle to cart any prey back home on top of that.
It should have been out of the question for a group of little girls to do anything like this. The best that the average party could manage was, say, cutting off a goblin’s ear as proof of the kill, or bringing back rare medicinal herbs that could fetch a good price. For a bunch of high-capacity storage holders like the Wonder Trio, though? This was business as usual.
***
“We’re home!” said the Wonder Trio upon their return.
“Welcome back!” said the Crimson Vow.
Reina said nothing. She didn’t look grumpy, exactly. Her expression was just completely blank.
Uh-oh. The rest of her party could easily infer what had happened.
It was Pauline’s homecoming all over again. Even Mile could connect the dots once again.
Soon after Reina left with the Wonder Trio, Pauline had advised her fellow party members to give Reina some space if she came back in low spirits. By way of explanation, she had told them about her own experience.
Although Pauline had indeed come home dejected, it hadn’t taken her too long to recover. Her problems at home had taught her how to persevere in the face of adversity. In the aftermath of her outing with the Wonder Trio, she had put more elbow grease into her magic practice than usual, but that had seemed like a positive to her companions. Mile and Mavis assumed the Wonder Trio had been a good influence on her and hadn’t given it much further thought. (Reina, on the other hand, had seemed a bit more concerned by Pauline’s increased diligence.)
But when Reina left, Pauline had explained how she’d seen the ways the Wonder Trio’s teamwork and ingenuity went beyond making up for their individual weaknesses—how their ability to work together constituted a tremendous power in its own right. It was reminiscent of Reina’s idols, the Servants of the Goddess, so Pauline had predicted that she, too, would come home demoralized—and that she would likewise be plagued with frustration and disillusionment over her inability to master storage magic.
Framing the conversation around Reina gave Pauline the courage to express what she was feeling. If she’d been the only one struggling, she probably never would have said anything at all. It felt wrong to air her weakness, misery, and self-loathing to her party. However, if both she and Reina were feeling discouraged, it might hamper the Crimson Vow’s performance. Anyone could tell you that emotional problems often dragged hunters down in a fight. And so, Pauline had set her own pride aside and spoken up out of concern for Reina, who was actually quite sensitive beneath her tough exterior.
After Reina returned and shut herself up in her bedroom, Mile brought Pauline and Mavis into her own room. “To get Reina back to her usual cocky—ahem, confident self, we need to help her master storage magic,” she said.
Pauline agreed. “Right. The other skills in play are less tangible, but Reina’s such an ambitious go-getter that if she resolves to put in the work to improve herself, she’ll probably pull herself out of her funk by tomorrow. But storage magic…”
Mavis picked up on what Pauline wanted to say. “Storage magic is kind of non-negotiable. I get it.”
Considerate as she was, Mavis was good at reading between the lines. She also knew that she was one of the reasons Reina was so depressed about storage magic, so she couldn’t help feeling responsible.
Their clan had five mages, one magical swordswoman, and one regular swordswoman. The only ones among them who couldn’t use storage magic were Pauline and Reina—the latter of whom thought of herself as a magical prodigy. To add insult to injury, Reina was making even slower progress than the entirely unmagical Pauline.
Worst of all was that Mavis, a swordswoman incapable of using any other magic, had mastered the technique without any difficulty—and even boasted a fairly large holding capacity. It was a bitter pill to swallow. A bitter pill indeed…
Pauline was hung up on a version of this same problem, in spite of her attempts to talk about it as though she were completely removed from the situation at hand. Her saving grace was that she was mentally stronger than Reina, so she was better at analyzing her feelings from an objective standpoint. She had to be, or she never could have held it together after having her father murdered, her family business stolen, and her mother and brother taken from her.
“You and Reina are both getting close, but you’re not quite there yet,” said Mile. “You manage to open a subspace pocket on every single attempt, and you can even hold it for a short stretch of time. All you need to call yourself a storage master is to learn to keep it going subconsciously and increase its capacity. Reina finally learned to open the subspace pocket, but she’s not very good at maintaining it yet. She also struggles with putting objects inside, so she fails at the first step pretty frequently. Daily effort is important, of course, but I’m starting to think we might need a breakthrough of some kind…”
Pauline met Mile’s babbling with an unimpressed look. She had made it farther than Reina using only hard work and persistence. Mavis, who had mastered the magic with next to no effort or struggle at all, also looked a little ill at ease. (And if she was uncomfortable, just imagine how the Wonder Trio would have felt in her shoes—given how blatantly they were cheating, they would surely squirm in their seats if they were ever consulted on the matter.)
It was at this point that the nanomachines projected their thoughts directly into Mile’s eardrums. LADY REINA FEELS LIKE A BIT OF A VICTIM HERE.
Sigh! Mile couldn’t deny it.
She herself had been reincarnated with all sorts of cheats, including a starting authorization level of 5 and the ability to converse with the nanomachines. With the nanomachines playing favorites at Mile’s behest, the Wonder Trio were using the inventory in lieu of storage magic and indulging in a combination of foul play, nepotism, and deception. On the surface, Mavis had produced results she could be proud of—despite never receiving instruction from Mile, she had overcome her difficulties with projecting magic externally, mastering true storage magic entirely through her own powers of comprehension and imagination—but it was hard to deny that the many nanomachines tasked with controlling and maintaining her left arm and sword might have been a major factor in her success. (Mavis herself was unaware of this, so she had no idea she was cheating. Only Mile had figured out the truth.)
UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, YOU, WITH ALL YOUR UNFAIR ADVANTAGES, WOULD BE THE ONLY ONE CAPABLE OF USING PROPER STORAGE MAGIC. WERE THAT THE CASE, LADY REINA WOULD NOT BE QUITE SO DISCOURAGED. AND YET, EVERYONE ASIDE FROM LADY REINA AND LADY PAULINE HAS MASTERED THE TECHNIQUE WITHOUT DIFFICULTY, AND EVEN LADY PAULINE IS GETTING CLOSE. WHAT A NIGHTMARE! WE CRINGE ON LADY REINA’S BEHALF!
Waaaaaah!
The nanomachines were mostly teasing, but Mile was getting genuinely flustered. She knew she bore the full responsibility for this rough patch Reina was going through.
ON THAT NOTE, WE HAVE A SUGGESTION.
Huh?
Apparently, the nanomachines had come to Mile with a proposal. She could only guess what it might be.
IT IS OFTEN SPECULATED THAT GENIUSES ARE NOT SUITED TO TEACHING. THEY STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND WHY THE AVERAGE PERSON CANNOT COMPREHEND THEIR EXPLANATIONS OR WHICH PART OF THE CONCEPT IS GIVING THEM TROUBLE.
In her previous life, Mile had been considered a genius by those around her, but the truth was simply that she had a good memory and strong comprehension skills, and her lack of friends meant that she was able to pour most of her time into studying. Nothing about her way of thinking was particularly remarkable compared to the average person. As such, if anyone had ever come to her for tutoring, she would have been perfectly up to the task. Still, she could see where the nanomachines were coming from, and her past-life classmates must have made the same assumption, as not one of them had ever asked Misato for help with their studies.
YOUR AUTHORIZATION LEVEL HAS ALWAYS BEEN HIGH, AND KNOWLEDGE FROM YOUR PAST LIFE HELPS YOU VISUALIZE CONCEPTS LIKE ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS AND INVENTORIES. THAT WEALTH OF EXPERTISE AND IMAGERY CAN BE OF GREAT BENEFIT WHEN TEACHING THOSE OF THIS WORLD, BUT ON THE OTHER HAND…
Mile picked up on the implication. It can be hard for me to understand why they don’t get it, huh? But what’s the alternative, then?
ASK LADY MAVIS. SHE WAS BORN AND RAISED IN THIS WORLD, KNOWS ONLY ITS CONVENTIONAL WISDOM, AND NEVER LISTENED TO YOUR MAGIC LESSONS OUT OF BELIEF THAT THEY WERE IRRELEVANT TO HER. YET SHE STILL MASTERED STORAGE MAGIC WITH EASE. OF COURSE, SHE HAS RECEIVED HELP FROM THE NANOMACHINES THAT RESIDE IN HER ARM AND SWORD RESPECTIVELY, BUT TAKING HER INABILITY TO HARNESS OUR POWER EXTERNALLY AND HER LACK OF A MAGE’S KNOW-HOW INTO ACCOUNT, IT WOULD SEEM THAT SHE, LADY REINA, AND LADY PAULINE SHOULD BE MORE OR LESS ON EQUAL FOOTING. PERHAPS THE SOLUTION IS FOR HER TO IMPART HER OWN INTERPRETATIONS AND MENTAL IMAGES UPON YOUR TWO COMPANIONS.
Oooohhhh!
The nanomachines hadn’t just been messing with Mile. They were offering genuine advice as part of a broader plan to reinforce Mile’s trust in them and encourage her to rely on them more.
“That’s it!” Mile exclaimed.
She had given Reina and Pauline plenty of tips in the past, but those were all predicated on the notion that people should be learning from the most skilled member of the group. Mile had always been the magic teacher, and Mavis the swordsmanship and self-defense teacher. In most cases, that would be the most logical and rational approach. And yet…
The scales had fallen from her eyes—and this time, no one had slapped new ones on. She was so impressed that she’d accidentally responded out loud instead of in her head.
“Did the magical sprites give you a good idea?” Mavis asked, a teasing note in her voice.
Whenever Mile’s eyes lost focus and she stared off into space, she was talking with the magical sprites in her mind. Both the Crimson Vow and the Wonder Trio had figured that much out a long time ago.
***
Mile didn’t want to discuss party-wide matters with one member absent, so she ended the conversation, promising that she would tell everyone later. After dinner, when the Crimson Vow and the Wonder Trio were relaxing with cups of tea, she finally floated her idea.
“What?! You want me to teach them magic?!” Mavis blurted, startled to be put on the spot.
Reina, Pauline, and the Wonder Trio looked no less surprised.
“Only storage magic specifically. You have similar levels of general knowledge as Reina and Pauline, and you know less about magic. Hearing it from you, well…”
“Might be a bit easier for them to understand than your own explanation?” Mavis was quick on the uptake.
“Right. Reina and Pauline might have some reservations about learning magic from a swordswoman, but it’s the best idea I’ve got.”
“I have no reservations whatsoever! What good did pride ever do anyone?!”
That was Pauline for you—definitely the same girl who had declared that she would sell her soul to the devil to master storage magic. It just went to show how extremely enticing the ability was from the perspective of a merchant. (Granted, the same was true for people of any number of occupations, hunters included.)
“Sounds good to me. Thanks for the help, Mavis.”
Even the prideful Reina agreed to Mile’s plan without looking the slightest bit put out about it. It was hard to say how she felt on the inside, but if nothing else, she deserved credit for maintaining a facade of composure. Everyone marveled at how much she had matured.
That is, until Marcela said, “We would also like to be included in these lessons.”
“Why?!” Reina screamed back. “You can already use storage magic!” Maybe she wasn’t quite so mature after all.
“Only a fool would pass up an opportunity to further improve their abilities,” Marcela replied. “Particularly when these lessons are taking place at our doorstep, free of charge.”
Reina fell silent. She couldn’t argue with that. It was the correct perspective for any mage to have.
In reality, Marcela knew that although it appeared that the Wonder Trio could use storage magic, what they were really doing was accessing their shared inventory—and they hadn’t gained mastery over it through any efforts of their own. Their skill was essentially on loan to them from Mile. Were the “magical sprites” ever to revoke their aid, they would instantly lose access.
Now that the Wonder Trio had become addicted to the conveniences of the inventory, they would never be able to survive without some form of storage magic. As a result, it was only logical that they would jump at any chance they had to learn the real thing.
The Wonder Trio were full of diligent, hardworking girls who were always eager to learn. They would go to whatever lengths necessary to improve their skills—all in the service of walking side by side with Mile.
“Then it’s settled! Training starts tomorrow!” said Mile.
Everyone else nodded. An odd savage glint danced in Reina’s and Pauline’s eyes, almost as though tomorrow marked the day they would march off to avenge a loved one. Mavis was starting to get a little worried about what might happen next.
Chapter 144: Storage Magic
Chapter 144:
Storage Magic
THE NEXT DAY, Mavis began her lessons on the art of storage magic. With the exception of Mile, every single member of the clan was included among her students.
The first day of classes was devoted to a lecture.
“I, Mavis von Mireirine, will have the honor of serving as your instructor today.” Mavis began the lesson in the clan house living room, wearing the fake glasses Mile had prepared for the occasion. First up was an explanation of her own approach to storage magic. “The first step to using storage magic is to unleash all your wants and worldly desires.”
“Huh?” everyone asked. Even Mile had no idea what she was talking about.
“Aren’t you supposed to focus and clear your mind of all distractions when using magic?” Reina asked.
“No,” said Mavis. “You force open the subspace by slamming it with all the passion you can muster. Then you expand it by doubling down on all your wants, desires, and daydreams. The key to storage magic is a fiery heart and an adventurous spirit!”
That’s nothing like how I do it, thought Mile, stunned.
It would take a lot more than a set of abstract instructions to allow the average person to unlock storage magic. However, after receiving many a lesson from Mile, listening to her Japanese folktales, and putting in tireless effort, Reina and Pauline were only one step away from mastery. Plus, they were already two of the few tens of thousands of people who even had the potential to learn storage magic. Only a few small barriers were left standing in their way.
Passion… Passion… I swear I’ve heard that word in a Reina-related context before… Then Mile remembered. Oh, I know! It was back at the Hunters’ Prep School, the first time I ever saw Reina use magic! It came up when the nanomachines were explaining why Reina’s spells were so strong despite her imagination and magic strength being pretty average. I think they said some stuff about her being passionate, or her thought pulse being powerful…
Mile had an excellent memory for everything except people’s faces, so she could recall the conversation with clarity. (To her credit, she had also gotten much better at remembering faces since her past life.) Whenever Reina cast combat spells, she tended to let her emotions take over—though she always managed to appear calm enough. Yet, based on what she’d just said to Mavis, she had been making an effort to calm down, concentrate, and banish all stray thoughts from her mind during her unsuccessful attempts to cast storage magic.
Maybe, it occurred to Mile, this had meant she was wasting her biggest strengths. And if Pauline is taking the same approach, it means she can’t tap into whatever it is that brings out her maximum spiritual power. Whenever things didn’t go their way, they assumed they needed to calm down and empty their minds even further…and that might just have been working to their detriment.
Now that I think about it, Mavis may come off as pretty low-key, but she’s driven by an insatiable desire to get stronger. She always looks to my Japanese folktales for hints on how to improve her skills, and when I told her about Unlimited Blade Works, she wanted nothing more than to master it herself. One could even say she demonstrated a powerful passion… Yes, it’s all coming together now. Mavis has a love of cool things, a strong case of chuunibyou, and a thirst for approval…
Even as Mile’s thoughts were humming along, the entire rest of the clan was reeling after less than a minute of Mavis’s lecture. Still, she was the only one with mastery over true storage magic, so no one was in a position to tell her she was wrong. All her students could do was keep their mouths shut and listen. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If it didn’t work, they would just try something else.
Reina and Pauline were particularly desperate, so although they were tempted to dismiss Mavis’s implausible explanations, they did not, asking questions and making every effort to wrap their heads around what she was saying.
***
“It’s finally time to put the principles into practice,” said Mavis, looking out over her class.
Storage magic shouldn’t be dangerous, but even Mavis wasn’t brave enough to suggest having magic practice indoors. Instead, she had brought everyone to a small forest on the outskirts of the capital. It had long been picked clean of prey, so no one ever set foot there.
“Pauline, focus all your thoughts on gold. Imagine you’re going to stash all the money you’ve earned in your storage, and you can’t let anyone else know what’s in there. If your storage magic falls apart and the coins go flying, random bystanders will rush over and snatch them up. Visualize that as hard as you can. Consider what will happen if all the gold spills out because you got distracted or fell asleep.”
Pauline’s face tensed with fear. Mavis knew her friend well. To Pauline, this was a more terrifying prospect than getting attacked by a horde of ogres in the woods.
“Reina, let rage consume you. Think about everyone who has ever mocked you. Who has ever tried to hurt your friends. Now imagine shutting them up inside your storage and never letting them see the light of day again.”
Unlike the inventory Mile and the Wonder Trio used, time didn’t stop inside the subspaces formed by storage magic. Anyone locked away inside would have to pass the time in a cold, dark place with no light to see by—and that was assuming the owner of the subspace provided them with a steady enough supply of food, water, and fresh air that they could survive.
As things stood, both Reina and Pauline were capable of opening a subspace, though neither could hold it for long. While the size of one’s storage space was a critical criterion for functionality, capacity actually had no bearing on whether one was allowed to identify as a storage holder. Instead, the key factor was stamina: There was a minimum amount of time one had to be able to maintain a subspace to call themselves a true wielder of storage magic. A mage could have a mere bucket’s worth of storage, but so long as they could keep it active indefinitely, including in their sleep, they counted as a full-fledged master of the technique. On the flip side, having over a cubic meter of storage capacity wouldn’t matter if you could only sustain it for a short time or during your waking hours. In that case, you would still be regarded as a half-baked rookie.
Even some of the most famous mages were incapable of using storage magic. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that almost no one was capable of it. Even if you couldn’t keep a subspace open, being able to temporarily form one at all was a feat only one in some ten thousand people could achieve.
New storage users were rare for a whole variety of reasons. One was that so few people had an aptitude for it, but another was that those who did manage to master it were generally reluctant to share their tips and tricks. Why would anyone want to squander their greatest income-generating asset? Not many people were foolish enough to teach colleagues or junior employees gunning for their own jobs, or risk information being leaked to their rivals or competitors.
In light of all that, being born with abundant magical talent, having a nanomachine authorization level of 2, and getting the chance to receive dedicated, no-strings-attached lessons from two different instructors—Mile, with her more logical teaching method, and Mavis, with her more intuitive one—constituted an incredibly unique opportunity. Any first-rate mage would have a high chance of mastering storage magic under such privileged circumstances, and Reina and Pauline knew it. They had come into this training session with the grim conviction that if they couldn’t pull it off with the best possible education at their disposal, they were never going to be storage magic users.
In contrast, although the members of Wonder Trio were serious about mastering true storage magic, they weren’t feeling nearly so desperate. They already had a superior alternative in the form of the inventory, after all.
***
“Pauline! You dropped some gold coins near your feet!”
“Ack!”
Thump fwump whump!
The pebbles Pauline had stored for training purposes came pouring out in front of her.
“Ah…”
Mile was assisting with the training by talking to Pauline and pulling all manner of pranks to distract her. Unfortunately, it seemed Pauline was still incapable of holding the subspace together when flustered, but she could sustain it for a considerable length of time in the absence of Mile’s sabotage. She had at least reached the point where she would be able to smuggle contraband past a checkpoint or hide a secret ledger or bag full of gold coins during a surprise inspection. (Pauline insisted that she would never use her storage for those purposes, but no one believed her.)
She had even learned to hold out decently well in the face of distractions—as long as said distractions didn’t involve money, her greatest weakness. Her progress was due in large part to Mile sticking around for the training sessions and doggedly keeping at her “disrupter” role.
All that remained at this point was for Pauline to figure out how to sustain her storage magic when she was asleep or distracted. This time, she was really, truly almost there.
Reina was still struggling to open and hold a subspace even under normal circumstances, so she had yet to advance to the stage of training where Mile’s distractions came into play. In this regard, Pauline was ahead of her fellow party member.
Although Reina was sometimes capable of opening a subspace, she didn’t succeed at every attempt, and she generally failed at storing her desired items. Sometimes she would grab the item sitting next to the one she meant to go for, and sometimes she would fail to store anything at all. Furthermore, the subspace would fall apart immediately afterward and expel its contents all over the place. Even getting that far required her to calm down and take her time. Any time she was flustered or rushed, she almost always ended up failing.
“Hrrrrgggghhh,” Pauline and Reina groaned. Despite their best efforts, they both still had long roads ahead of them.
In the background, the Wonder Trio were doing their own training. They weren’t dumb enough to pass up an opportunity to master true storage magic, not even with Reina yelling, “I thought you were just going to sit in on the lectures! Why would you even need hands-on practice with storage magic?!” They dodged Reina’s questions and tagged along with the Crimson Vow’s practice sessions, claiming that they simply wanted to expand their capacity to its fullest possible extent.
Mile had instructed the nanomachines assigned to the inventory not to help the Wonder Trio during practice. The whole point of these lessons was for the girls to master storage magic without anyone else’s aid, since they were loath to become dependent on a borrowed power like the inventory. Any outside interference from the nanomachines would render their efforts pointless.
All three members of the Wonder Trio had an authorization level of 2, which gave them a huge advantage over the average person. Still, the same applied to Reina and Pauline, so it wasn’t as though they were lacking that advantage. When it came down to it, the two groups were competing on a level playing field.
Since the Wonder Trio lagged far behind Reina and Pauline in terms of raw magical talent, this meant they had yet to even open a subspace. This was one instance where aptitude and intuition trumped ingenuity.
Of course, no one ever expected to master the technique on the first day of classes, but Reina and Pauline still sensed that they were on the verge of a breakthrough. A spark of confidence had returned to their eyes.
Chapter 145: Homecoming
Chapter 145:
Homecoming
IT WAS TEATIME at the clan house.
“Say, why don’t we return home for a visit?” Mile proposed out of the blue.
“Huh?” The other six clan members were caught off guard.
“We have a steady stream of hunter work now, and Reina and Pauline have come a long way with their storage magic training. It seems like as good a time as any to take a vacation and see how everyone’s doing back on the old continent. Wonder Trio, I know you three got your affairs in order before you came here, and I appointed a stand-in to run things in my absence, but…Reina, Pauline, Mavis, you all left a bit of a mess behind, didn’t you?”
“Er…” The three girls gulped. Trust Mile to ask the hard questions.
No matter how long the Crimson Vow stayed away, no one would dare mess with the lands belonging to the saviors of the kingdom. Supposing anyone did, the neighboring lords—heck, probably the entire kingdom and its border nations—would mobilize their troops to crush the transgressor. Because this was so clearly the case, the girls hadn’t worried about traveling to the new continent. Still, it was occasionally necessary for the person in charge to weigh in and take action on some matter or another, and they didn’t want to cause the citizens of their fief—or the kingdom at large—undue concern due to their absence.
There was just one small problem.
“If I show my face around my manor, they’re going to lock me up!” Reina protested.
“I’ll be forced to meet with potential suitors every single day,” lamented Mavis.
“Alan might have his sights set on my peerage,” mumbled Pauline. She knew her little brother well.
“The point is,” said Reina, “if anyone catches us, we’ll never get away again!”
“Yes…”
“Sirree, Bob!” the three of them shouted in unison.
Mile nodded approvingly, pleased to see how well her joke was catching on. Then, she proposed her plan: “This situation calls for a hit-and-run strategy! We’ll carry out our mission as quickly as possible and get out just as fast! Trust the process!”
Her fellow party members said nothing in response. While they weren’t entirely sold on this whole idea, they were worried about their estates, vassals, and citizens, and Mavis and Pauline wanted to see their families after a long time away. Reina also wanted to check in on the local orphanage she supported.
In the end, they reluctantly agreed to Mile’s plan.
***
“Are you sure this is going to work?” asked Reina, incredulous.
“Yes,” Marcela replied. For the umpteenth time, she reviewed the order of events, saying, “First, I will return to my own home country using the Princess Transport System, with the excuse that I need to pay my parents a visit. Soon after, Miss Monika and Miss Aureana will load the rest of you into their storage, and I will find an out-of-the-way location in Brandel’s capital where I can take you back out. Once you are all done with whatever it is you need to do, I will once again travel by means of the Princess Transport System, and you will go back into Miss Monika and Miss Aureana’s storage. Miss Monika, Miss Aureana, for the final step, you will join them inside your own storage space.”
They had gone over the plan dozens of times already. Monika and Aureana met Marcela’s reminder with a nod.
The whole group could use the Princess Transport System if the need arose, and if push came to shove, they could always hitch a ride on Kragon again. However, seeing as that would reveal to Princess Morena that Mile and the rest of the Crimson Vow were off gallivanting on another continent, this was a last resort, reserved for emergency situations.
“Off I go, then,” said Marcela. And with that, she headed off to the royal palace.
It was safe to assume that a lot of things were going to have to happen before she could be teleported. She would first need to talk to the gatekeeper, ask him to relay her message to the third princess, get grilled by said princess about what she had been doing in her kingdom, and answer questions regarding Princess Morena and the Kingdom of Brandel. If she really got unlucky, she might be stuck talking all night long and have her relocation pushed off to the next day. Then, after making the jump, she would probably have to do the same thing all over again with Princess Morena.
Marcela was really getting the short end of the stick here. Still, commoners like Monika and Aureana couldn’t fill the same role, so she accepted it as one of her responsibilities as the Wonder Trio’s leader…on an intellectual level, at least.
Must I truly run this gauntlet every time we travel between continents?
It would look suspicious if Marcela did too much solo traveling, so occasionally her whole party would also have to take the Princess Transport System; however, even in those instances, Marcela would still be stuck doing all the explaining. Alas, there was no alternative. Marcela was the only member of the Wonder Trio with a noble background and the guile to pull the wool over a princess’s eyes.
If only I could turn to Miss Mile or Mavis… Perhaps we could ask Mile-001 to give them both access to the shared inventory… Wait, no! Absolutely not! We mustn’t ask Mile or 001 for any more cheats than we already have!
Marcela strode toward the castle gates, furiously shaking the temptation from her mind.
***
“No word yet!” Monika reported.
Mile shrugged in defeat. “Looks like it’s not going to happen today.”
Upon returning to the old continent via Princess Transport System, Marcela was supposed to send a message indicating when she was ready to move everyone over. Monika and Aureana periodically checked their shared inventory to see if her note had arrived, but it was now late in the night and there was still no word.
The girls knew to expect delays, so none of them were especially worried. Were they in Princess Estorina’s or Princess Morena’s shoes, they would probably keep Marcela detained, too, talking to her all night long.
“Hmm… This would be so much easier if we didn’t need the princesses’ help to travel between continents,” Mile mused aloud. “Maybe we should ask one of our commoner friends to—”
“Bad idea,” Mavis interjected. “We can’t rely on too many shortcuts.”
“Ah…”
She made a good point. Mile could get almost anything she wanted from the nanomachines; even where there were restrictions, she could bypass many of them with clever phrasing that danced around those things that were prohibited. There was a reason she chose not to do that. And that reason was…
“Because that would take all the fun out of things!” the two girls declared in unison.
Mavis really gets it, thought Mile.
Mile really gets it, thought Mavis.
“Besides, establishing a Princess Transport System for commoners sounds like a recipe for disaster,” Monika pointed out.
“Fair point,” Mile agreed. “It works with the princess duo because merchants, nobles, and crooks can’t mess with them. Someone with no power or connections, suddenly given immense power, is bound to end up kidnapped, exploited, or bled dry.”
It was for exactly that reason that the Wonder Trio and Mile-001 had picked the princesses to be their transporters.
“We certainly can’t let the system be used for evil.”
A lone infiltrator could suddenly materialize a whole army smack dab in the middle of enemy territory. Supply concerns would become a thing of the past.
Marcela had warned everyone about these possibilities already, stressing the importance of keeping the Princess Transport System a secret from outsiders.
Ultimately, it wasn’t until the following evening that the girls received the “all clear” note from Marcela.
***
“Time to roll out!” Mile whooped.
“I really hope this is safe,” Reina grumbled.
No one could blame her for feeling a bit nervous. For those unfamiliar with the concepts of temporal stasis or cryogenic sleep, being frozen in place was equivalent to death. The only other examples that came to Reina’s mind were death by ice magic or petrification by basilisk, so of course the prospect of entering the inventory would scare her. Honestly, her companions were the crazy ones. They didn’t think twice before taking Mile’s word for it that everything would be fine. Still, it wasn’t as though Reina didn’t trust Mile, and it was too late to duck out now. So, she shook off her misgivings and refrained from further complaint.
The girls had informed the Hunters’ Guild, their neighbors, and the staff at their go-to grocery stores that they would be traveling back home for a while to check in with family and friends. Mile had also stashed all their clan house furniture and valuables in her inventory, so they wouldn’t need to worry about burglars. At Pauline’s suggestion, they had even set traps around the house—ones that would inflict considerable pain without the risk of death or serious injury. Anyone who broke in would never make the same mistake again (particularly since there was nothing of value to be found in the house, now that Mile had stored it all).
It was Mile’s strongly held belief that criminals should never be allowed a taste of success.
“Take us away, Miss Aureana!”
“Very well!”
Aureana loaded everyone into the inventory and stored herself last of all. Time had now officially stopped for all those inside, so there was nothing to do but wait for Marcela, the only one left with access to that particular inventory, to take them back out. On the off chance that something happened to her before she could retrieve them, they would be stuck in limbo for the rest of eternity.
Then again, if things came to that, it was entirely possible that the nanomachines would alert their pseudo-God to the situation. They might even rescue Mile at their own discretion.
Of course, that was all a very big “maybe”…
***
“Apologies for the delay, ladies. Princess Estorina and Princess Morena were quite persistent in their questioning. Princess Estorina kept me until morning, and I only finished talking with Princess Morena a short while ago.”
This exceeded the estimates of even the most pessimistic of the group. Monika and Aureana would never have survived so much royal conversation.
Furthermore, Monika and Aureana ran a pretty high risk of slipping up and spilling secrets in the face of the princesses’ leading questions. The two princesses were formidable foes on the best of days; add sleep deprivation into the mix, and Monika and Aureana wouldn’t stand a chance. Marcela, Mavis, and Mile were the only ones who were up to the challenge, but no one was supposed to know that Mavis and Mile were on the other continent, so that narrowed the options down to Marcela alone.
Since Princess Estorina didn’t know about the Crimson Vow, it was possible that they could tell Princess Morena the truth and swear her to secrecy, but once the princess found out, word was bound to get around to the king and high-ranking officials—partly because Princess Morena might accidentally let something slip, but mostly because she herself was a member of the royal family. As a princess, she had to be fully prepared to betray her friends for the sake of her kingdom and her people. Much like how nobles might sacrifice their own lives or honor for their house and citizens, this responsibility came with the territory.
The group was released in the capital of Brandel, the Wonder Trio’s homeland. After all, Princess Morena lived there, and she was the one who had retrieved Marcela.
As planned, they materialized in a deserted alleyway a short distance from the city’s downtown area. From there, their first order of business was to find a place to stay. It was too close to nightfall to depart the capital, so they intended to spend the rest of the day relaxing at an inn and hit the road tomorrow.
While they were in the capital, the Wonder Trio were going to pop by a few places and say hello. The Crimson Vow, on the other hand, couldn’t risk getting recognized, as everyone believed that Mavis, Reina, and Pauline were on the run (which was, in fact, literally the case). Meanwhile, Mile had Mile-001 standing in for her at the shrine on the holy ground. Their plan was to wear disguises and slip out of the capital in secret.
Pauline had complained that they could avoid all that hassle if Marcela were to release them outside the capital in the first place, but that would have cost her the added time of traveling away from the capital and finding a safe, secluded area. All by her lonesome little girl self, just as it was starting to get dark outside… Besides, once she’d unloaded everyone, she would have had to head straight back to the capital along the dimly lit nighttime roads. (Though if she released Monika and Aureana to accompany her on the return trip, she would be at least a little bit safer.)
Once they had talked it all through logically, Pauline had no grounds to disagree. And so, the group would be spending the night at an inn in the capital and heading out in the morning. Ashamed that she had thoughtlessly overlooked the dangers of a girl traveling alone after dark, Pauline offered Marcela a sincere apology.
***
Upon finding an inn, the two parties each booked a four-person room. After eating dinner in the first-floor dining room, the whole clan gathered in one of the rooms.
Marcela grumbled, “Oh my goodness gracious, were Princess Estorina and Princess Morena relentless…”
Starting from the previous evening, she had been awake and talking for almost an entire day straight. Even worse, she’d had to explain all the exact same things twice over.
It was easy enough for the princesses, as all they had to do was listen—and they each only had to hear the whole spiel once. But Marcela, the one doing the talking, had been forced to run her mouth nonstop. Her throat was sore, and she was utterly exhausted. It was only fair for her to have complaints.
The worst part was knowing she was going to have to repeat this ordeal every single time they used the Princess Transport System going forward.
“I previously invited you to take advantage of the Princess Transport System at any time, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to rescind that offer. It’s turned out to be far too great a mental and physical burden on me…” Marcela’s voice was hoarse, and the dark circles below her eyes underscored her point. “The most dreadful part of all is that, in the interest of keeping our story straight, any travel via the Princess Transport System has to be a round trip. Once we’ve used it to come here, we must use it to return to the other continent. And you know what that means? In relatively short order, I will have to suffer that ordeal all over again…”
The gaunt, haggard look on her face left everyone speechless.
Eventually, Mile piped in. “Uh, fair enough! We can think of a way to cut down on our use of the Princess Transport System,” she said. The rest of the clan bobbed their heads in agreement.
Marcela almost always kept a stiff upper lip, but for once, she was begging for mercy. Everyone could tell that she had been through a truly agonizing experience.
“If one member of the Wonder Trio stayed here on a rotating basis, we wouldn’t need to use the system,” Marcela began. “But obviously…”
“There’s no point to being a party if you never get to work together,” Mile finished for her, immediately dismissing the suggestion.
Marcela nodded. She’d known there was no world in which the parties would choose that route. She had only raised the option in the interest of ruling it out.
“I would feel bad about treating Kragon like a workhorse all the time, so if we can only use the Princess Transport System on rare occasions, we’ll need to think up a new mode of transportation,” Mile continued.
She had no plans to bring up her personal trick of falling horizontally, with no regard for the laws of gravity. That was way too OP, and it could turn into a headache if Reina demanded to learn the spell she was using. Of course, this kind of feat was only made possible by Mile’s ability to communicate with the nanomachines, and the slightest mistake could send someone hurtling into the mountains, crashing into the ground, or even flying off into outer space, resulting in instant death. It was only safe for Mile to use because she had fundamental knowledge of gravity and a level-5 authorization, which had later become level-7.
All this was not to mention the impact this kind of magic could have on the world if it were to become popularized. Mile had no intention of ever using this particular skill in the company of others.
“Maybe I could ask the Slow Walker to make us some kind of vehicle. Like, say, a type of aircraft that doesn’t need a runway… Wait, hold on. With an aircraft like that, a single pilot error could mean instant death, and besides, the technical barriers seem significant… Pass! How about a ship or a submarine, then? Hmm. Water resistance would slow us down, and aquatic monsters would probably be an issue… We’ve dealt with those long, twisting sea serpents, but something tells me the ocean is home to even bigger behemoths no human has ever seen before. Plus, this world doesn’t have any decent port facilities, so a large ship or submarine wouldn’t have anywhere to dock. And then, even assuming we found a large enough harbor or pier, we couldn’t legally dock such an unconventional vessel…”
“That all sounds deeply alarming!” shouted Reina.
“Let’s try for something we can feel a little safer about, Mile,” said Pauline.
“Aha ha!” Mavis could only laugh.
The Crimson Vow were used to Mile’s antics, but even they had to draw the line somewhere. Needless to say, the Wonder Trio shared this sentiment.
“Hmm…” Mile fell deep into thought.
“This doesn’t seem worth dwelling on to me,” said Mavis. “We shouldn’t expect there to be a hassle-free way to travel back and forth between continents in the first place. A journey on this scale ought to be a major undertaking we only get to do maybe once a year, if that, and I think we should stick to treating it that way.”
Around the room, the other members of the clan nodded and murmured approvingly.
Leave it to the sensible Mavis to make a perfectly good point. Marcela’s difficulties with the princesses aside, they already had an extremely easy way to travel back and forth between continents, and hoping for something even easier was just excessive.
“Come to think of it, even people who leave the countryside to work in the city usually only get to visit home once a year, if they’re lucky,” said Mile. “It wouldn’t be very fair if we could drop back home on a whim after moving to a distant continent.”
“Plus, with the exception of Mile, all of us in the Crimson Vow are on the run. We can’t afford to get caught,” added Reina.
“Even Mile shouldn’t be taking that risk,” said Pauline. “Mile-001 is currently acting as her body double, so if the real Mile showed up, one of them would be branded an impostor and sent to the gallows or guillotine. Wait, no, it’d definitely be death by fire for anyone who dared impersonate the divine messenger and savior of the world…”
“Eep!” Mile yelped, petrified.
“Eh, it’d be fine,” said Reina. “I bet Mile could survive a hanging. The guillotine blade would probably break the moment it touched her, and she’d walk out of the fire totally unscathed.”
“That doesn’t sound fine to me!” shouted Mile. Reina’s comment was totally uncalled for, if you asked her.
Although the Wonder Trio knew full well what Mile could do, they were all sweet girls. Reina’s morbid jokes were not their style, and they responded only with blank stares and strained smiles.
“Oh, that reminds me, Princess Estorina and Princess Morena were both ordained as arch-saints,” Marcela said for a change of topic.
“WHAAAAAAT?!” the members of the Crimson Vow cried.
“Give us the deets!”
After listening to her astonishing recap of events, no one quite knew what to say.
***
“The plan is to reconvene at this inn five days before our scheduled return date,” said Marcela. “Remember, ladies, you are undercover, so do not give yourselves away. Dismissed!”
“Yes, ma’am!” The rest of the clan pumped their fists in the air with a cheer.
They planned to return to the inn five days before they departed for the other continent so that they could spend the final stretch of the trip doing some sightseeing together. None of them had ever taken the chance to fully experience Brandel’s capital before. Even when they had been local, there were various, mostly depressing, reasons not to get out and take in the sights: They were from a different country, or they didn’t have any friends to share the experience with, or they didn’t have the money to afford it… Now that they had overcome those obstacles, nothing was stopping them from enjoying a jaunt around town with their friends.
As long as Mile was careful not to blow her cover, anyway.
The rest of the girls—whether members of the Wonder Trio or the Crimson Vow—had no reason to fear discovery in this particular kingdom. The worst that could happen to them was that they’d get mobbed by a few fans, and in that case, all they’d have to do to get away was exchange a few pleasantries before excusing themselves. Over in the capital of Tils, things weren’t going to be quite so easy for the Crimson Vow, but Brandel was relatively low risk.
As for the Wonder Trio, their plan was to pretend to have just returned from a long-term mission given to them by Princess Morena. Then, they would be able to slip back into their duties as her royal guard like this was all business as usual. Before that, Marcela would need to pay a visit to her domain, get a briefing from the deputy she’d left in charge of administrative affairs, and hand out new orders. She also owed her parents a visit, though she dreaded the pile of marriage proposals that had no doubt accumulated in her absence.
Monika and Aureana were in the same predicament. Compared to Marcela, who couldn’t be forced into a marriage due to power struggles among the upper nobility and pressure from the royal family, their status as commoners left them a lot more vulnerable to coercion. Their parents were simple people. A pair of middle-class merchants and two farmers from a rural village didn’t have the power to reject the more aggressive marriage or adoption offers that poured in from the nobility and wealthy business owners.
The two girls were now baronetesses, a hereditary title of honor almost on par with a noble peerage, but that didn’t change the fact that they were commoners with no land of their own. Thus, they planned to sneak home without anyone noticing, say hello to their families, and then return to the royal palace for the remainder of their stay, sticking close and keeping watch over Princess Morena at all times. It was their duty to protect the princess from assailants, and it was the princess’s duty to protect them from compulsory engagements and adoptions.
The one silver lining was that the high status of all three members of the Wonder Trio made them the heads of their respective households. Once they had become baronetesses (or, in Marcela’s case, a viscountess), their parents and grandparents now counted as part of a separate family line, so the girls had no obligation to follow their orders when it came to matters of marriage. They had the authority to make their own decisions. No matter how much pressure their parents put on them, they couldn’t be forced into any engagements or marriages without their consent. Well, assuming they didn’t crack in the face of their parents’ desperate, tear-filled pleas…
Meanwhile, over in the Kingdom of Tils, the Crimson Vow would have to be strategic in order to avoid discovery. Three of them were considered “at large,” and Mile had Mile-001 filling in for her. The good news was that none of the runaways except for Mile would be in trouble if they were spotted elsewhere on the continent. Everyone knew that Reina, Pauline, and Mavis had run off to go adventuring as hunters (though of course, no one realized they’d gone quite so far as another continent).
It all came down to the hopefully simple matter of the hunters avoiding discovery by the king, the nobility, their deputies—or their fans.
***
“You don’t have anything you need to take care of in this country, right, Mile?” asked Reina.
“Right. I don’t know anyone left at the academy, and my deputy is running the Ascham marquisate.”
Mile might have paid a visit to the servants who had looked after Mile—or rather, Adele—until she turned eight, but by now, they had all left the main manor. Furthermore, Mile only remembered them from her Adele days, and all these years later, she had no real attachment to those relationships. Even Juno, commander of the Ascham troops, meant no more to her than an acquaintance she had met a handful of times. As far as Mile was concerned, her true home was not the Kingdom of Brandel but the Kingdom of Tils, where she had registered as a hunter and formed a party with the Crimson Vow.
“Off we go to the capital of Tils, then!”
“Yeah!” the Crimson Vow chorused.
“Oh, but we’d better change our disguises first.”
All four members of the Crimson Vow were wearing disguises to conceal their identities. Nothing too radical—they still wanted to feel natural in their own skin, and they didn’t want to disguise themselves so completely that they wouldn’t be able to find each other again if they got separated in the city. (This would be a particular problem for Mile, who struggled to remember faces under the best of circumstances.) Instead, they limited themselves to simple alterations, such as changing the color and style of their hair. They didn’t alter their faces by means of optical camouflage or anything of the sort—and the added benefit to this was that they wouldn’t have to worry about the effects of their magic suddenly wearing off and revealing that they were in disguise in the first place.
No one used eye color to tell people apart, so the girls didn’t bother to change theirs. By the same token, you couldn’t identify someone based on outfit alone, so there was no reason they couldn’t keep wearing their own unobtrusive hunters’ clothing. Instead, they focused on their hair, modifying both the color and style every few days, careful not to keep either the same for extended period of time. That way, on the off chance someone did start trailing them, they would be able to give their pursuers the slip.
There weren’t any photos of them in circulation, and over six months had passed since footage of them was broadcast across the skies. Their hairstyle and color were easily their most distinctive features. With those altered, it was hard to imagine that anyone would be able to recognize them on the street.
At least, that was the logic Mile had relied on when coming up with the plan, and no one had taken issue with it so far. It never occurred to her that, just because she was unable to recognize faces, others might not have the same problem.
***
“Oh, I remember this town…”
“It’s where you got your recommendation for the Hunters’ Prep School, right? Want to stop by?” Reina asked Mile.
“No, I’d better not. Mile-001 is filling in for me at the shrine, so if I show up now…”
“For the crimes of impersonating a hero, falsely claiming noble ancestry, and assuming the titles of divine messenger and holy maiden, you’ll be tortured and hanged in the worst case,” said Mavis. “If you’re lucky, you’ll just be beheaded.”
“Eeeek!”
Mavis was really just stating facts, but her threats had Mile trembling. Still, they had already done this bit once before. She was probably just pretending to be scared to turn it into one of her running gags.
“Like I said, if they tried to hang you, you’d probably just dangle there without a care in the world, and you could break a guillotine’s blade with a smile on your face,” said Reina.
“True!” shrugged Mile, unperturbed. She had no problem accepting this as a self-evident fact.
“This doesn’t sound like a conversation between fellow humans,” Pauline lamented. “Does an ordinary girl like me really belong in a party like this?”
“You’re a bit unconventional yourself, Pauline,” Mavis retorted.
“Huh?” Pauline was momentarily stunned. “Y-you’re one to talk…What about your left arm? And how you shoot fire from your mouth while yelling, ‘We are the inferno’?! That seems more than a little ‘unconventional’ to me!”
“I-It’s a little late to drag up—”
Right then, a gleam came to Mile’s eyes. There was no way she was going to let this opportunity pass her by.
“Please don’t fight over me!” she shouted.
“Ack! No fair, Mile!”
Reina looked quite jealous that Mile had crossed another entry off her list of “Lines I’ve Always Wanted to Say,” but alas, she was the only one to whom it applied. Reina just had to stand back and watch it happen.
***
“So, here we are, back at the capital of Tils… Our first stop’s got to be…”
“A place to stay, which means…”
“Little Lenny’s inn!” everyone finished together.
“Gosh, it’s been so long since we last saw Lenny…”
“The last time would have been, what? The farewell party before we all headed off to our new estates?”
“Whoops! Let’s change out of our disguises for now. Lenny will be confused if we go see her like this…”
***
“We’re back!” the whole party cried.
“Huh? What? Whaaaaaat?!”
Lenny froze in place, her eyes going wide. And then…
“Big sisters! W-welcome home!”
As young as she was, Lenny was extremely devoted to her work in the hospitality industry. She always strove to keep up to date with the latest news, in order to maintain casual conversations with guests and incorporate any salient takeaways into the inn’s day-to-day operations. It was not unlike how the hostesses at Japan’s most elite nightclubs would read at least five newspapers—English ones included—before heading to work each day. (That said, it’s become increasingly rare to see such hardcore professionals, and these days, people have shifted to getting their news from the internet rather than print media.)
In addition to being regulars at the inn, the Crimson Vow were an ultra-famous party and incredibly effective at attracting customers, so there was no chance Lenny wouldn’t have been keeping tabs on what its members were up to. She knew that three of the girls had run off (the official announcement stated that they were on a long-term assignment, but Lenny had known them long enough to more or less guess what really happened) and that Mile rarely set foot outside her shrine. Therefore, she was so surprised to see them drop in for a visit that she rushed out from behind the counter and flung herself at them in a hug.
“Aw, Little Lenny’s such a sweetheart when she’s not in penny-pinching mode!” said Mile, practically drooling.
“Stop that!” Reina fired back. “You’re giving off creepy old man vibes!”
Despite their newfound fame and peerages, the Crimson Vow never changed. Lenny couldn’t help but crack a smile.
And then…
“For our first order of business, I need you all to autograph these wooden tags for me. One hundred from each of you! Miss Mile, do these paper charms, too, please!”
“She’s still the same old Lenny,” all four girls marveled in unison. It was strangely comforting to see.
***
It wasn’t a mealtime, and it was too early in the day for new guests to be arriving, so there weren’t any other patrons around. Therefore, the matron of the inn and the chef were free to come over and chat, and the whole group enjoyed a long-awaited reunion.
“I figured the three of you got sick and tired of noble life and ran off, but I never imagined that you’d gone with them, Miss Mile,” said Lenny. “I mean, that would normally be my first assumption, but I heard you were still cooped up in the shrine… I did find it strange, though. The rest of you would never leave Miss Mile behind to go on an adventure. Guess I’m still a novice when it comes to information gathering, huh? I’ll have to keep working at it…”
Lenny seemed a bit disappointed in herself, so Mile rushed to explain. “Actually, that’s not on you! My being here is a secret! Almost no one apart from my body double even knows that I left!”
“On a different note, I don’t see any guests around. Is business okay around here?” Reina asked.
“Excuse you!” Lenny clearly took offense to her question. “It’s just a slow time of day! It’s right between lunch and dinner, so people have other places to be, that’s all!”
The chef scratched at the back of his head with a laugh. “Our inn has gained fame for raising the four saviors to greatness, and it’s one of the stops on a pilgrimage to the holy sites. We’ve come up with things to sell to the visitors who don’t spend the night, like dishes concocted by the divine messenger herself or your typical souvenirs, so we, er…have plenty of alternate sources of income these days.”
This inn had done a lot to help the girls after they first graduated from the Hunters’ Prep School, so they didn’t mind if the management was profiting off their reputations. If anything, they were glad to hear the establishment was bringing in a little extra coin.
After a good bit of chatting…
“Oh, it’s about time for guests to start showing up. We’d better put on our disguises,” said Mile.
In the blink of an eye, she transformed the entire party. Because quite a few people in the area were acquainted with the Crimson Vow, she made sure to modify not just their hair but their faces and clothing, too. With the exception of the change to their hair color, it was all just an optical illusion, so people would be able to tell something was off if they actually came into physical contact with one of the party members. Realistically, no one was going to randomly put their hands on an unfamiliar little girl, and any fool who tried it would get struck down where they stood, so there was no reason to worry about that.
“Wow! That’s amazing! No wonder you can travel without getting recognized!” Lenny marveled. The matron and chef bobbed their heads in agreement.
Before long, guests began streaming in, requesting rooms or inquiring about an early dinner, so the Crimson Vow retired to their room on the second floor.
***
“See you later!”
Since there were other guests around, the Crimson Vow donned their disguises, said a quick farewell, and hit the road. In the background, the matron and chef dipped their heads in a bow, and Lenny waved goodbye.
Later that day, they arrived in the capital.
“Here’s where we go our separate ways,” Mile said. “Remember, we’re employing hit-and-run tactics. Sneak back to your estates, relay instructions to your deputies, meet up with your families, and then pull out before anyone else can notice. I can’t afford to blow my cover with Mile-001 acting as my stand-in, so I’ll stay in disguise as I go around checking on various orphanages and making donations. Since you’ll be meeting with people who know you, I’ll undo your optical disguises and leave only your hair colors altered. Hopefully you won’t run into problems outside the capital, but be extra careful when you’re traveling through your own domains or towns where you have acquaintances. All right then… Release!”
Mile dispelled the optical disguises, reverting the Crimson Vow to their normal looks. Because they had changed their hair colors with a pigment-altering spell rather than an optical illusion, those didn’t revert back even after the magic was lifted. The only way to get their original hair colors back was to cast another pigment-altering spell.
“We’ll meet back up at our inn in the Kingdom of Brandel,” said Reina. “Dismissed!”
“Yeah!” As the party broke up, her fellow party members gave one more cheer, pumping their fists in the air.
With only their hair colors modified, reuniting in the capital of Tils would put them at risk of discovery—and given that they were about to scatter all over the kingdom, it would also force some of them to go far out of their way. As a result, they decided that it would be safer and more efficient to reassemble in the capital of Brandel, where they already planned to meet up with the Wonder Trio.
After watching her three friends set off toward their respective estates, Mile turned back to the capital. Her first order of business was to check in on the capital orphanages and the orphans living in abandoned houses or under bridges. Since she was by herself, she could travel more efficiently, using her horizontal falling technique to check on various other orphanages throughout the continent—while taking care not to reveal her true identity, of course. As long as Mile-001 remained in the shrine, she could never let anyone find out who she really was.
***
“Good! It looks like the fried food stand is doing well. It seems like copying…ahem, taking inspiration from Lenny’s sales strategies worked in their favor, too. Those signs saying, ‘The Birthplace of Fried Foods, the Divine Messenger’s Concoction’ and ‘Our food is cooked on a stove crafted with the divine messenger’s magic!’ seem to be pulling people in…” Mile muttered to herself, pleased to see signs of the business’s success.
It was still morning, yet quite a few customers had already gathered in the yard of the capital orphanage to dine at the fried food restaurant that, Mile knew, provided a large portion of the orphanage’s revenue.
Just because they were dining out at this hour didn’t mean the customers in question were slackers. Ordinary office workers would have no excuse, but hunters didn’t have to work every day, so quite a few of them probably had the day off. They worked life-threatening jobs, after all, so it was good for them—essential, even—to take a short rest after finishing a big mission. People in dangerous professions needed to rest their minds as much as their bodies, or else they would be headed for an early grave. Anyone in a combat-oriented profession knew as much from experience, and those who hadn’t managed to figure it out were no longer alive and kicking.
Hunters weren’t the only types of people who might appropriately be drinking on a weekday morning. There were also security guards who had just gotten off the night shift, or employees who had worked a holiday. There weren’t many other bars open bright and early, so if you worked an odd schedule, this was clearly the place to be.
“Having an abundant labor force makes it easy to schedule work in shifts, which is a big perk. There’s no commute time or labor costs involved…and no child welfare laws to worry about in this world, either. The kids are happy to work as long as it means they get fed. As long as they work hard, they know they can give themselves, their friends, and the younger orphans happy lives. That’s got to be pretty motivating…”
With her optical disguise spell in full effect, Mile took a seat, pretending to be just another regular customer. She had to ensure that the quality of the food hadn’t declined as a result of cutting corners or using cheap, poor-quality ingredients—or at least, that was the excuse she made to herself. It wasn’t untrue. If it did indeed turn out that there were problems at the restaurant, she would just have to find a way to provide them with some pointers without revealing her true identity.
Whenever a restaurant made it big and attracted more customers, there was a risk that it might abandon its original culinary philosophy, switch its focus to making a profit, reduce the quality of the ingredients to cut down on costs, cut corners in the cooking process to speed up service, and ultimately, do a disservice to its diners. If that came to pass, the establishment in question would rapidly bleed customers until it went out of business. Mile had heard many such stories in her past life.
Mile didn’t walk up to the stall to order her food and drink. Instead, she called over one of the children who was bustling between tables, waiting to take orders, and asked for some fried food and fruit juice. That way, when the food arrived at her table, she could tip her server in addition to paying her tab, which would make the child’s day and boost the orphanage’s earnings.
A little while later, the same child brought Mile the food she had ordered.
“Sorry for the wait! Here’s your fried combo platter and fruit juice!”
As soon as she handed them the money for the food and tip, they leaned in close to Mile’s ear and whispered, “Why are you sneaking around in a disguise, Miss Mile?”
“Huuuuuuuh?! H-how did you know it was me?!”
The child slapped a hand over her mouth. “Shh! Keep your voice down! Do you want everyone else to find out?”
“Ah…”
Mile’s eyes darted about in a panic, but the other customers were clearly too deep into their cups to care. Despite her outburst, they spared Mile only a brief glance before they went back to eating and chatting with their friends.
“B-but seriously, how did you know?” Mile asked again, lowering her voice this time.
“I dunno, you just have a certain aura about you.”
“What does that even mean?!”
“Shh! You’re being too loud again!”
“Oops…”
Mile had been convinced that her disguise was foolproof, so she was beyond bummed to be busted in a matter of seconds. Worse, if something as vague as her “aura” had given her away, she didn’t know what she could do differently. No one had ever seen through one of her hardcore disguises before, so she wasn’t sure where she had gone wrong.
“I guess children just have a special kind of intuition…”
“No, not really. No matter how different you make yourself look, you’re always going to be you, that’s all.”
“Dropping a ‘Because it’s you, Nagase-chan’-type line doesn’t really help me here! Ugh! This doesn’t make any sense!”
Mile slumped in her seat, unsure where she was supposed to go from here.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in the shrine, Miss Mile? I hear you’re a regular homebody these days.”
“That wasn’t by choice! I was never allowed to go out!”
“Sure, whatever you say.”
“It’s the truth!”
After the child walked off with a grin, Mile dug into her meal.
Nice. It still tastes as good as I remember. The meat and oil are the same level of quality as always. They’re putting everything I taught them into practice…and even experimenting with some new ideas, it would seem. They’re not just blindly doing what they’re told—they’re thinking for themselves and striving to improve their craft. Guess I’ve got nothing to worry about…
Mile hoped the other orphanages were doing just as well. Whatever the case, as long as this place—the Orphanage of Beginnings, the birthplace of the orphanage-style fried food—remained in business, they’d surely intervene to stop their fellow restaurants from straying from the right path. Providing cheap, tasty, and quality food was core to the brand of orphan-run restaurants, so they would be sure to keep an eye out for any others that might damage that reputation, even if they belonged to another domain or kingdom. The thought put Mile’s mind at ease.
She ordered a few more dishes, scarfed them all down, and made a discreet exit. Afterward, she went to visit a few groups of kids who had been turned away by the orphanages and forced to live together along riverbanks or in abandoned houses. Almost all of them figured out who she was right away. With all confidence in her disguise magic lost, Mile was seriously bummed out.
***
“Great! I’ve gone around to all the orphanages, and none of them have taken a turn down the wrong path! Next comes checking in on all the people who’ve looked out for me.”
When Mile was on her own, she could travel at high speeds with her gravity control magic, so it hadn’t taken her very long to do the rounds and hit up every orphanage with a fried food restaurant. The biggest time suck was just waiting for all the karaage to settle in her stomach. Even Mile took a while to digest fatty foods.
With the orphanages taken care of, it was on to the next order of business. Quite a lot of people had helped Mile along her journey, and they were scattered all across the continent. In the capital of Tils, there were the Roaring Mithrils and various other hunters and guild employees. Beyond the borders of Tils, there were the Servants of the Goddess and other friendly parties. There were all the elves, dwarves, beastfolk, and demons she knew. The various inns, eateries, and groups of mountain-dwelling orphans she had encountered over the course of her travels. Although she wouldn’t be able to reveal her face to any of these people or have a conversation with them, she hoped to spy on them from the shadows and make sure they were doing well.
“Best to stay far away from my shrine. Mariette won’t start working there until she graduates, and I can talk to Mile-001 over the Nanonet whenever I want, so there’s no point taking the risk. In that case, Cavorite engaged, lifting off… Barrier and optical disguise on, shifting the direction of gravity to horizontal… Aaand here I go!”
Thus, Mile began her next horizontal fall.
***
After parting ways with the Crimson Vow at the capital of Tils, Mavis headed off in the direction of a whole different kingdom. Her destination? The Ladimarl School of Swordplay’s training hall. She was going to pay a visit to her swordsmanship instructor and fellow pupils, all of whom had shown her a great deal of kindness.
She had no plans to visit either her parents’ estate or her own domain, which she had left her older brother to manage. Without Mile’s gravity trick, traveling ate up quite a bit of her time, so Mavis didn’t have the option of hopping from place to place. Plus, she knew her father and brothers would never let her escape if she showed her face anywhere near their lands. They were sure to send her on blind dates with potential suitors in hopes of tying her down.
She was now considered the head of House Mireirine as opposed to a daughter of House Austien, which meant she was no longer obligated to obey her father’s orders. Still, she didn’t have it in her to constantly defy her family’s wishes, and if the king got involved, she would have no choice but to obey his command.
The best way to avoid problems was to simply avoid the people who might cause them. If she didn’t see them, they couldn’t order her around. If they didn’t give her orders, she couldn’t follow them. Moumantai.
***
“I finally made it! Boy, this brings back memories…”
Mavis had spent only a little over six months in these lands after acquiring her new title, but if you factored in her time on the new continent, it had been almost a year since she’d last stayed in this town.
Ladimarl was the one and only person Mavis looked up to as her master. (Her father and brothers had taught her the art of the sword back when she was living at home, but for these purposes, family didn’t count. As for Mile, well… She thought of their relationship more as two peers training alongside and learning from each other, rather than a master-pupil relationship.)
Her senior disciples were also the first fellow students alongside whom she’d studied the sword. It was thanks to their guidance that she had honed her abilities and mastered her special technique, the Mav-ius Strip. If not for the time she spent with them, she never would have defeated the imperial platoon in the battle to protect Princess Eltreya, and it was questionable whether she would have survived the battle against the interdimensional invaders.
Why, her master and fellow disciples had even rushed to the battlefield and joined the fight alongside her. In a perfect world, she would have found them in the immediate aftermath of the battle to offer her thanks. However, they had gone home as soon as the battle was over, and she had missed her chance to see them. After the fact, she’d been so occupied with her new peerage and everything else that had been going on that she still hadn’t had a chance to express her gratitude for their support. She couldn’t exactly have told them that she was leaving the country, and even if she’d taken the risk, members of the Crimson Vow were unlikely to get permission to cross kingdom borders given all that had happen.
Because of all this, the matter of Ladimarl and his students had been weighing on Mavis’s mind for a long time. Now, she could finally cross it off her to-do list. The thought brought a smile to her face.
Unfortunately…
“Huh? Which way was it, again?”
Mavis had stayed at the training hall for only a few days, and almost a year had passed since then. To make matters worse, she had spent the entirety of her visit going back and forth between her inn and the hall. She had eaten her meals and wiped herself down (with water from a washbasin, since there was no bath) at the inn, then devoted the remainder of her time to training. She’d been nowhere else in the area. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she wouldn’t remember most places in town.
“No, that doesn’t explain how unfamiliar everything looks. There’s the town square, and that’s the temple. This should be the same road I used to travel back and forth between the inn and the hall… Was it always this busy? It used to be a regular side street, but now it’s a shopping district complete with open-air stalls…”
Time was bound to change any town. Old buildings would get torn down and new ones erected in their place. Still, it had only been a year at most. She hadn’t expected things to look so different.
“Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me. I’ve visited more towns than I can count, so I must be mixing it up with another place… Off to the training hall I go!”
Mavis headed toward the once-familiar hall of the Ladimarl School of Swordplay, oblivious to what would await her there.
“Huh?”
This was definitely where the hall had once been.
A training hall had to be reasonably spacious, and there was no reason why it needed to be located near any high-traffic areas like a town’s shopping district. Accordingly, Ladimarl’s hall had been built a good distance from the town center, and its grounds were quite large relative to the size of the actual building.
And yet, where there should have been a cozy, privately run school of swordplay, there now stood a massive building. Its footprint was five or six times bigger than the former training hall. Yet it was also a two-story building, which meant the total area was at least ten times larger.
“The training hall…closed…down?”
The school had solid enrollment numbers and made extra money through its short-term drill sessions. From what Mavis had seen, it shouldn’t have been in any immediate danger of going out of business. Besides, Mavis had only been away for a year. It wasn’t as though anything had happened to cause a sharp decline of interest in swordsmanship, and even if that were the case, Mavis surely would have heard about it. If anything, the interdimensional monster invasion should have boosted interest. Perhaps more importantly, the Ladimarl school had always been particularly well regarded. Mavis couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“But why—oh no!” A horrifying thought occurred to Mavis. “A lot of people died in that battle, and Master Ladimarl is an old man. It stands to reason that a training hall would close its doors if the chief instructor passed away… Wait, don’t tell me my senior disciples fell in battle, too! No… No! Noooooo!!”
Mavis sank to her knees, a single tear streaming down her face.
“Oh, is that you, Mavis?! Good to see you! Come on in!” Master Ladimarl called out as he walked out of the building.
“Huh? Wh-wh-wh-wh-what?!”
“In that image projected across the skies, you were introduced as a ‘student of the Ladimarl School of Swordplay,’ remember? Our training hall gained fame as the school where a savior of the world studied the art of the sword, and people have been flocking from all over the continent to enroll ever since. Nobles and royalty from every country I can name have offered vast sums of money to have their sons admitted. To accommodate the sharp increase in students, we had to reconstruct the training hall. Several of the senior disciples are preparing to open their own Ladimarl School locations as licensed masters.”
“Um… Come again?”
“Oh, and as for the inn where you stayed… Business took off after they started advertising themselves as the inn where the great hero Mavis stayed while mastering her legendary techniques. They bought the adjacent land and constructed an annex. What’s more, the road from our hall to the inn has been turned into a pilgrimage route called Brave Road and filled with various stores and souvenir shops. The Mavis crackers, Mavis buns, and Mavis toy swords are particularly popular offerings.”
“Wh… What in the wooooorld?! No wonder I barely recognized the town! It was overrun with brand-new stores!” Mavis screamed, overcome with a terrible mixture of embarrassment and alarm.
***
“I’m finally back… It really has been quite some time. First, I’ll drop by my family home. Then I’ll check in on the business and leave some instructions, confirm with my deputy that there’s been no trouble in the fief, and make a run for it before said deputy can detain me. Unlike Mile, I’m free to show up anywhere I please. As long as I don’t get taken into custody by my deputy or an official from the royal palace, anyway…”
Despite her use of the term “taken into custody,” Pauline wasn’t on the hook for any crimes. She meant it in the sense of a runaway getting caught, or a lord getting nabbed by a vassal after ditching work to go out on the town.
In truth, she wasn’t too terribly worried. In the event she was caught, a guard would be assigned to watch over her and prevent her from escaping, but Pauline had her ways of breaking free. Magic was one option, of course. But also, Pauline being Pauline, she had prepared a secret escape route in case of emergency.
***
“I’m home!”
“Pauline!”
“Sis! You’re…still alive. Great.”
Her mother and brother didn’t bat an eye at a change in hair color. Pauline responded to the obvious disappointment in Alan’s tone by giving him a double noogie with a smile on her face. (Obviously, he was just joking, and he hadn’t actually been hoping to inherit Pauline’s title…or so Pauline wanted to believe.)
Alan was the current heir to the Beckett Company, so he was assisting his mother, the company president, while he learned the ropes. In the past, the employees and local shopkeepers had suggested that Pauline was more suited to inherit the business, as she was the one who had stolen the shop back from the former head clerk; however, they had all changed their tune after Pauline became a noble—with her own fief, even—and opened a shop of her own, the House of the Holy Maiden. Some had previously hoped that if Pauline took over the Beckett Company, they could set her up with their second or third sons, but they had long since given up on that dream. Were she only the owner of a new business, they might still have had a prayer, but she was far out of their league now that she was the member of the peerage who governed their town and the surrounding lands, not to mention an arch-saint and one of the four saviors of the world. All they wanted at this point was to remain on good terms with Pauline, their lord and a proprietor in her own right, and the Beckett Company, her family’s business. At this point, the future looked bright for her mother, brother, and the Beckett Company itself.
Pauline rightly assumed that the royal palace hadn’t gone out of their way to spread the word that Countess Beckett had absconded, so she figured it was safe to pay her family a visit without causing a royal ruckus. She was right: All the royal palace had told Pauline’s mother and brother was that she and her friends were on a long-term mission, so they didn’t question what she was doing back home. They assumed that she had either finished her mission or decided to pay them a visit during a period of downtime.
Next on her to-do list was to leave instructions for the House of the Holy Maiden, convince her deputy that she had gotten all the adventure out of her system and returned home for good, fire off some orders in her capacity as lord, and then take advantage of the deputy’s complacency to make a break for it. It was a foolproof plan.
***
Pauline stopped by her shop, the House of the Holy Maiden, rounded up the head clerk and several assistants, and listened to a briefing on the latest developments. The staff had received the same explanation for her absence as her mother and brother, so they didn’t find anything strange about the situation. They didn’t even bother asking any questions, as they assumed the answers would be state secrets.
From the sound of it, the business was running smoothly enough, so after handing out some simple instructions and announcing a pay raise for the staff, Pauline headed off to the president’s office—meaning her own private room.
Pauline was fussy about money, but she never underpaid her employees. She understood the difference between expenses it was okay to cut back on and the places you couldn’t afford to skimp, and labor costs were definitively in the latter category. Everyone deserved fair compensation for their work. Underpaying her staff would only drive good talent to leave. Money could also buy a certain measure of loyalty, reducing the odds of betrayal.
Then again, she was the lord, countess, and one of the four saviors of the world, Arch-Saint Pauline. No one would offer her anything less than their utmost loyalty, let alone entertain the thought of betraying her.
It didn’t hurt that Pauline made generous use of her healing magic for the sake of her citizens, not only healing their injuries but also curing their illnesses, which was a very risky endeavor. Why make an enemy of someone with such a valuable skill? There was no telling when someone—whether oneself, one’s family, or one’s friends—might suddenly get sick or injured and require her services.
Upon entering her office, Pauline first confirmed that no one else was around. She then stashed her gold and orichalcum pieces in a safe she had hidden under the floor, carefully replacing the floorboards when she was finished. She had taken money from this safe to fund her escape, but the time had come to return it. (For the record, this money had come out of the personal savings she had earned with the Crimson Vow, not her estate budget or company assets.) Now, she deposited the same amount she had withdrawn when she first ran off. This was an expression of her resolve to start from scratch on the new continent, without falling back on the savings she had previously accrued.
Reina and Mavis had claimed that they were planning to do the same during their trips home. For her part, Mile couldn’t muster the willpower to drop off money at the shrine, but she had always kept her entire fortune in her inventory regardless, so in her inventory it remained.
“Now all that’s left is to meet with my deputy, have a quick chat, and make a run for it.”
Naturally, the royal palace had informed their representative of the truth behind Pauline’s vanishing act, so this part was going to present the biggest challenge.
***
“Your Ladyship!” After taking a moment to stare at Pauline in wide-eyed surprise, the deputy dove into an angry rant. “Where in the world did you disappear to?! A typical deputy is fully authorized to act on the lord’s behalf, but I was only appointed to teach you how to do the job! I am meant to be in a supporting role! Th-the nerve of you to take off and frolic with your old friends! Lady Mile is the youngest of the Crimson Vow’s number, yet she was the only one of you responsible enough to stay in the shrine and dedicate herself to her duties! Are you not the least bit ashamed of yourself?!”
Pauline sighed. Not only had Mile joined them on the adventure, she was definitely the biggest troublemaker of them all.
No, I can’t say I am, she thought, but she refrained from saying it aloud. She had a bit more tact than Mile or Reina.
The deputy’s lecture wasn’t coming from a place of ill will. Arch-Saint Pauline was one of four saviors of the world, and her compassion for her citizens was unimpeachable. Her deputy had nothing but the utmost respect for her. However, that was neither here nor there in this particular moment. Precisely because Pauline’s deputy held her in such high esteem, it was their duty to steel their heart and give her a good scolding. They wanted to see her grow into a truly distinguished noblewoman and a benevolent lord. Her various teachers, etiquette tutors, and dance and music instructors likely felt the same way.
“I’m sorry. But I’m done playing around now. I’ll appreciate having your guidance again.”
The deputy breathed a sigh of relief at Pauline’s apology. Little did they know, this was part of Pauline’s strategy to lure everyone into a false sense of security and make it easier to escape.
Pauline listened to the deputy’s briefings on what had transpired during her absence, dealt with the matters that required her stamp of approval, and delegated some of her decision-making authority to the deputy so that the estate could keep running smoothly if she were ever gone for a long period of time. Having stronger supervisory privileges would make the deputy’s job much easier; they were so pleased that they never even suspected that Pauline’s admirable show of contrition was all an act.
Just as planned. I’ll break out later tonight.
As soon as her deputy’s back was turned, a wicked smile broke out across Pauline’s face.
***
“Look, it’s Her Ladyship!”
“Oh, you’re right!”
“Your Ladyshiiiip!” several children cried out, flocking to Reina. She mirrored their smiles right back at them.
Reina was acting so different from her usual self that the Wonder Trio wouldn’t have even recognized her. She didn’t need to bluster and act tough around children, so she could relax and just be herself. This was the one time when she could expose all her vulnerabilities and find some peace of mind.
Reina had made her way to an orphanage in the fief of Reddlightning, her estate. Since Reina was the local lord and oversaw its operations directly, there was no danger of a corrupt director embezzling its funds or anything like that. Even if there had been other parties involved, it was hard to imagine anyone attempting to hoodwink Grand Sorcerer Reina, one of the four saviors of the world and a close friend of the divine messenger. Not even the most heinous of villains wanted to get on the Goddess’s bad side. More immediately, deceiving the lord and exploiting an orphanage she held dear would almost certainly earn them a death sentence. No one would dare be complicit in such a crime, let alone commit it firsthand.
Reina had yet to set foot in her manor since returning to her domain. It was very in character of her to prioritize her visit to the orphanage.
She had recolored her trademark red hair via Mile’s magic, but that didn’t give the children pause. They just assumed it was a fashion statement or a new look.
“You’ve been gone for so long, Your Ladyship! We were getting worried!”
“Were you sick? We would’ve gladly looked after you!”
The children clung to her legs as they fretted, and Reina took turns picking up each and every one. To set their minds at ease, she explained, “I had to go somewhere far away for work, that’s all. I’ll be heading out again soon, but I promise I’ll be back. Don’t worry. If you run into any trouble in the meantime, you can talk to the director or go straight to my manor and speak with my deputy.”
The orphanage director was only responsible for day-to-day tasks like maintaining the building and looking after the kids; the finances were managed by Reina’s treasurer and deputy. It was therefore unlikely that the children would go hungry as a result of someone appropriating orphanage funds or skimming off the food budget, but Reina was nothing if not cautious.
It was impossible to stop children from being orphaned, but Reina would never allow an orphan to go hungry in her own domain. That was the entire reason she had taken on all the tedious responsibilities of a lord. (Although, at this point, she had foisted them all onto her deputy… Reina had long been corrupted by Mile’s nonsense catchphrase: “This is this, and that is that!” The fact that Mile was capable of great insights had the unfortunate effect of lending legitimacy to the more toxic pearls of wisdom she threw into the mix. It was a real problem.)
To protect the orphans from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous individuals, Reina taught them how to read, write, and do arithmetic, as well as making sure they knew the basics of the law and contracts. Additionally, she called upon instructors to teach those who were physically fit and gifted at martial arts how to fight, those with an entrepreneurial spirit how to do business, those who were good with their hands how to make things, and those who had any affinity as mages how to use magic.
The instructors were paid, but other orphanage helpers were volunteers. Hunters and soldiers with a day off and shop clerks with free time over the weekend often came by to play with the orphans. They would fight the kids with toy swords, have make-believe magic adventures, and play counting games. As this was just a pleasant pastime for folks who liked kids, they didn’t get paid. They even brought their own meals and daily necessities.
Apparently, there were a lot of softies in the area. Reina let them do as they pleased. All of them had once had childhoods, and some of those childhoods had been spent staving off the cold and hunger in orphanages, abandoned houses, or the shade of trees along the river. If they wanted to help others like them, more power to them. As long as they didn’t hurt the kids, it was no concern of Reina’s.
Reina certainly couldn’t complain about people wanting to do good. Her vast wealth and status meant she could do things on a grander scale, but she was engaging in the same sort of philanthropy as the rest of them.
After visiting with the orphans, she went to see her deputy, who greeted her with a scathing lecture. She feigned remorse, asked them to take good care of the orphanage…and vanished into the night.
***
“Good, I got away. I’ll visit the cemetery next, then head back to the rendezvous point.”
Unlike Pauline and Mavis, Reina had no surviving family. Before becoming a hunter, she had traveled with her father as a wandering peddler, so she had no childhood friends, either. At best, she had known maybe a few hunters in passing prior to enrolling at the Hunters’ Prep School. Other than her own estate, the only places she felt compelled to visit without the Crimson Vow for company were the graves of her father and the Crimson Lightning.
As her meeting with the Crimson Lightning had coincided with her father’s death, both of their graves were located in the town where the party had once lived. For Reina, it was a place of both beginnings and endings.
***
Grave of Grand Sorcerer Crimson Reina’s Father. Cost of admission: 3 half-silver.
We have Reina crackers!
We have Reina buns!
Graves of Crimson Reina’s First Hunting Party, the Crimson Lightning. Cost of admission: 5 half-silver.
We have Lightning crackers!
We have Lightning buns!
We have copies of The Crimson Lightning and I: The Early Years of Crimson Reina!
“What the heeeeeeck?!”
Reina was stunned by the dramatic transformation the cemetery had undergone. She had stopped by to pay her respects soon after the all-out defensive battle against the otherworldly invaders, and it hadn’t looked like this back then. Granted, at that point, it hadn’t been long since the battle ended and she was granted a peerage. It was possible that the plans for these changes just hadn’t been made yet, or that they were being developed behind the scenes…
Reina grabbed the man collecting admission fees by the collar and yelled, “Who said you could turn my father’s and friends’ graves into a tourist attraction?! I’m appalled that you have the nerve to charge money for this!”
Were Pauline in her shoes, she would be demanding exorbitant compensation. Reina wasn’t the type to get quite so hung up on financial matters, but she still wasn’t happy to see her friends’ and family’s graves treated as a spectacle and turned into a money-making scheme.
Sure, she was glad that the Crimson Lightning’s name had become famous enough to go down in history. That was the entire reason she had written her memoir and aimed to become an A-rank hunter. But that was one thing, and this was another. She wasn’t about to let an outsider exploit their deaths to line their own pockets and live in luxury. Swearing as much to herself, Reina tightened her grip on the collector’s clothes.
“L-Lady…Reina?” At first, the man looked confused as to why a little girl was accosting him out of nowhere, but as soon as he realized who she was, he began rattling off excuses. “Y-you have it all wrong! This is all a big misunderstanding! I was hired to do this job through legitimate means!”
“Yeah right! I bet you’re fundraising for some criminal organization! Well, guess what? I’m about to burn your whole gang to cinders!” said Reina, giving his shirt another twist.
“I-I told you, it’s not like that! The Hunters’ Guild pitched this to the Crimson Lightning’s next of kin as a town revitalization project! Most of the money from the admission and booth rental fees goes to the surviving families, and the rest is used to subsidize E-rank and F-rank newbie hunters or G-rank apprentices! It’s good, honest work! I have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of!”
“Huh?”
That took the wind right out of Reina’s sails.
It was still infuriating to have her name exploited with her knowledge or permission, but people made unsanctioned Crimson Vow merchandise all the time, so it was hardly anything new. Besides, it was entirely possible they had sent a letter to the lord’s manor requesting her permission for a venture like this. A flood of letters came to the lord’s desk each day, so someone else was assigned to sift through them. They were sorted into three categories: those that should be passed along to Reina or her deputy, those that could be handled by the administrative staff, and those deemed unworthy of a response and trashed. It was quite likely that the organizers of this site had asked for permission and it had simply never come to Reina’s attention.
“Grr…”
In the past, Reina hadn’t been able to come by all that often, so although she did her best to tidy up during her visits, the graves were usually overrun with weeds. This time they were well maintained, the gravesides swept clean and fresh flowers laid out in front.
Furthermore, Reina’s greatest wish in life was for the contributions of the Crimson Lightning and the name of her father to be immortalized in this land and in the history books. The publication of her memoir was simply a means to achieve that end. This display would further contribute to making her dream come true. If the profits went to the families of the deceased and fledgling hunters, it felt wrong to raise any complaints.
“Grrrrrrrrr…”
***
In the end, Reina chose to turn a blind eye to the town revitalization project that had taken over the cemetery. She didn’t have room to protest after observing the pristine condition of the graves and learning where the profits were going.
At least, she didn’t plan to lodge any formal complaints…but she still stopped by the local Hunters’ Guild branch and warned the guild master not to get any funny ideas about pocketing a portion of the profits. In truth, she needn’t have bothered. No one would dare indulge in nefarious deeds where Reina was involved. Should word get out that someone was profaning the graves of the Great Crimson Reina’s loved ones, the culprit would be looking at certain doom. Not even a noble or guild master could survive a combined assault from the guild’s top brass, the lord who governed their land, the royal palace, and the common folk. They wouldn’t have a prayer even if they fled to another fief or kingdom.
“I’ll trust the townsfolk to make decisions about the cemetery. Best to leave that kind of thing to locals who know what they’re doing. It’s like one of Mile’s weird sayings.”
Reina had never gotten one of Mile’s more confusing catchphrases out of her head: Leave the mochi to the mochi makers! Every man to his trade, and every fan to her maids!
Mile had fed Reina mochi on a good handful of occasions. She had pitched it to the party as a filling, non-perishable food, but nothing in Mile’s inventory ever went bad, so its long shelf life didn’t serve much purpose. None of them had been of the mind to nitpick, though, as the treats were quite tasty both grilled and boiled.
“Next stop, Brandel’s capital. Full steam ahead! Reina, taking off!”
This world didn’t have nautical terms like “Full steam ahead.” For one thing, ships obviously didn’t have engines. There were ships propelled by human oarsmen on both sides, similar to Earth’s galleys, but a different phrase was used to command those men to row with all their might. However, after being exposed to certain modes of speech through Mile’s Japanese folktales, the Crimson Vow had begun peppering their speech with Mile-isms—phrases they didn’t actually understand but used just because they sounded cool. It was not unlike the Burontisms spawned by Mr. Buront of 2ch fame.
They were all lost causes.
***
“I’ve got a lot more money now…”
Reina was equipped with plain but high-quality, costly, and tough protective gear made for rearguard fighters, along with an expensive-looking mage’s staff. She also appeared to be an inexperienced girl of no more than fourteen or fifteen years. (This was not actually the case. She was older than she looked.) Such an attractive, youthful female mage could fetch a pretty penny as a black-market slave. She became a tempting target when she was walking down a road all alone—both for full-time bandits and for travelers and villagers who might be led astray by the devil on their shoulder.
Not many people had tried attacking her back in the Kingdom of Tils, but she had faced a sudden uptick in ambushes after crossing the border into Brandel.
The result? The attackers reaped what they sowed. They only had themselves to blame for getting tricked by a mere change in hair color.
Back in the Kingdom of Tils, most people could identify Reina at a glance. They didn’t have television, newspapers, or photographs, but Grand Sorcerer Crimson Reina had risen to fame as one of the four saviors of the kingdom. A good many portraits of her were in circulation. She was probably more recognizable than the king himself.
In the Kingdom of Brandel, however, the Crimson Vow were considered the heroes of another land. Their own champions were Countess Mile von Ascham, the divine messenger and a member of their own nobility; Marcela, her friend, leader of the Wonder Trio and a viscountess; and Princess Morena, the arch-saint who had made a name for herself in battle, been granted divine powers by the Goddess, and saved countless lives during a famine. Thus, despite Reina’s, Pauline’s, and Mavis’s names being widely known, few citizens of Brandel would recognize their faces. They had even less reason to guess who Reina was without her trademark red hair. Besides, it was absurd to think that the countess from another kingdom would be traveling on foot without a single bodyguard or attendant to accompany her.
If only all four members of the Crimson Vow had been together, her assailants might have connected the dots. It was a tragic case of bad luck…for the unwitting thugs, of course.
The point of that little digression was that Reina had made quite a bit of money over the course of her journey, accumulating more savings with each passing day. After all, anyone who apprehended a criminal had every right to strip that criminal of all their possessions.
Reina couldn’t haul the criminals off to jail by herself, so she waited for carriages to pass by and forked over a decent sum to have them transport the bandits. She got to keep the bounty and a portion of the proceeds from selling the men into penal slavery, so she could easily justify paying for their transportation. It occurred to Reina that this might be even more profitable than regular hunter work, but Mile would probably be dead set against it. She could imagine her argument: “That’s just a sting operation by another name! And the type that skirts the line between opportunism and entrapment!” Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
“I’ve still got several days to go before we’re scheduled to meet up…”
Reina had nowhere to go on this continent aside from her own domain—specifically, the orphanage—and her loved ones’ graves. Mavis and Pauline were eager to learn the skills and manners expected of a member of the peerage, but Reina wasn’t really interested. She had little desire to be recognized as a proper aristocrat. She had grown up a commoner, and she didn’t see herself as cut out to be a noble. If you asked her, it made more sense to leave all the actual administration of her estate to her deputy and the other officials, while she served as a figurehead and dedicated her time to relief efforts for orphans.
As such, she found herself with a bit too much time to kill until the group’s scheduled rendezvous in the capital.
“I’ve gotta find some way to pass the time,” she muttered to herself.
It was then that she happened upon a rest area. It was an empty lot where carriages could park without disrupting the flow of traffic. During the day, people could take a break there, and at night, it could serve as a campground. Setups like these existed for a few reasons: It was helpful to have a place where wagons could stop without blocking the road, but it also made sense for safety. Having multiple caravans camping together deterred monsters and bandits.
“Maybe I’ll take a little break and have a few bites of hardtack while I’m at it. My eating habits really go down the drain when Mile’s not around… Haven’t got a toilet or bath, either… Man, if even I notice the difference, I can’t imagine how Mavis and Pauline must feel. They’ve had Mile around for their entire time as hunters.”
Reina was traveling alone and on foot, so theoretically she could have stopped and sat on any old boulder or fallen tree to have her lunch. Unfortunately, being a pretty girl who looked no older than fourteen or fifteen, she was bound to be accosted by an unending stream of passersby, making any moment she tried to take for herself less than relaxing.
To be clear, not everyone who stopped would have ulterior motives. Some might be kindhearted caravan leaders inviting her to ride in their wagons, concerned to see a young girl traveling solo. Some might be friendly hunting parties offering to accompany her to the next town. The moment she went off with them, however, she was sure to be asked, “Why was a young girl like you braving such danger all alone?” She didn’t like the idea of lying to such nice people, but telling them the truth—along with her real name—would also be a hassle.
Instead, she preferred to settle down in a secluded corner of the rest area, where passersby were unlikely to catch sight of her. As she idly munched on her hardtack, she could reminisce about the time before she enrolled at the Hunters’ Prep School and met the Crimson Vow, when she was still flying solo.
However, the moment she sat down on a rock at the edge of the rest area and opened her mouth to take a bite of hardtack—
Hm?
Reina noticed that she wasn’t the only one occupying the rest area. There was one other caravan—though it was almost too small to even be called that—consisting of only two wagons, their coachmen, and a few male guards.
Something seems off there…
At first, Reina assumed the two-wagon caravan had also stopped for a short break or a meal, but then something happened that gave her pause. A man carrying a leather pouch—presumably full of water—got out of one of the wagons and climbed aboard the other.
Why move water from one wagon to another? Normally, caravans would divide their water between the multiple wagons in order to make sure that even if one wagon was lost, the other would still have a water supply. Even odder, the wagons seemed to be filled with people instead of cargo. The men Reina presumed to be guards were all hanging around outside. Given the size of the caravan, it didn’t make sense for there to be additional escorts inside the wagons. And even if there were, why wouldn’t they get out to stretch their legs during a much-needed break from traveling?
The penny dropped when the man climbed into the cargo hold, flapped the canvas cover open, and allowed Reina a glimpse of the cargo inside.
Reina was all on her own. No matter how confident she was in her magic skills, it would take time to think the incantations. Mages weren’t supposed to engage in close-range combat without a frontline fighter for backup.
Still, if she hit the caravan with a combat spell from a distance, she decided she could make it work. The only danger was that she might blow away the contents of the cargo hold in the process. She couldn’t do that before she had even confirmed what was going on.
Technically, this was none of her business. She had no obligation to take unnecessary risks. If she stuck her nose into every crime she witnessed, even when it wasn’t her job, nine lives wouldn’t be enough.
Nevertheless, Reina muttered, “This is what Miss Telyusia would do.”
***
“Um, do you need any more water, sir? I charge three half-silver per barrel, but a meal of equivalent value will do instead.”
“Hm? You a mage, little lady? Three half-silver per barrel ain’t too steep. It’d be nice to have fresh water to drink and wash off with. Sure! Go ahead and fill up all our empty barrels!”
The cost of water varied greatly from place to place. Next to a well, no one would be willing to pay so much as a single half-silver for what they could draw from the well for free. Conversely, in the middle of a desert, people would gladly pay a whole gold coin for precious hydration. This area was far from any towns and villages and had no other water sources nearby, so three half-silver (around 300 Japanese yen) seemed like a bargain. Needless to say, Reina had purposely set the price to be low, but not suspiciously so—in the hope of ensuring that the buyer would have the best chance of biting.
Reina approached the caravan in the guise of a timid, underage girl who made a living selling water. Meanwhile, the men’s eyes darted around the area, checking to make sure there was no one around but them and this attractive—potentially lucrative—young girl who could conjure a considerable supply of water on command. When they found there was no one coming down the road in either direction, the men grinned.
After Reina had filled two of the empty barrels in one of their wagons, one man got out and said, “Actually, we’ll take you along with the water. We won’t be paying, though—not for the water or for you.” He guffawed and pulled her toward him by the arm. The other men were roaring with laughter right alongside him.
Not good enough, Reina thought, calmly taking stock of the situation. He could still pass this off as a joke—just him teasing a little girl.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked, clenching her fists to her chest in a show of fear. Back when she was a solo hunter, she had pushed through countless crises with similar performances.
Were the Wonder Trio around to witness this, they would be yelling, “Who is that?!” Mile would be more likely to comment, “Wow, she’s actress of the year material,” or “Reina, what a terrifying child you are!”
At her act, the men erupted into raucous laughter.
“You wish we were kidding! We’re in the business of trafficking kidnapped children as slaves. But hey, we’re not like the cruel bastards who kidnap all the children in a village, burn their home to the ground, and massacre the adults to cover their tracks. We’re a charitable enterprise focused on finding sad little orphans a place to work. Bet we can hook you up with a nice job, too. ’Fraid it won’t be paid, though!”
“All right, this certainly abides by the rules of engagement!” Reina declared.
“Rules of engagement” was another Mile-ism. None of the residents of this world were concerned with the concept. People killed anyone they considered an enemy, simple as that. Thanks to Mile’s influence, however, the Crimson Vow worked hard to establish the validity of their actions. Though, of course, they made exceptions when they were under a lot of pressure or dealing with an obvious scumbag.
“Huh? What are you babbling about? Eh, whatever. You there! Tie ’er up and load ’er into the wagon with the rest of the merchandise!”
“You got it, boss!” the man he had spoken to responded before moving toward Reina.
But then, with a flick of her wrist, a blade shot into Reina’s hand, and she sliced open the man’s outstretched hand.
“Aiiiiiieeeeee!”
She made a vertical cut, so the hand wasn’t severed from his wrist. It also appeared, judging by the relative lack of bleeding, she hadn’t cut any major blood vessels. That wasn’t to say there was no blood, of course, but Reina had generously spared the man quite a bit of suffering—a literal slash-and-save event, one might say.
As neither Pauline nor Mile—the Crimson Vow’s go-to healers—were present, Reina knew that if she took things too far, she could cause fatalities. Reina wasn’t incapable of healing magic herself, so she had probably made the call that this was the level of injury she could feasibly staunch and seal. Closing up the wound would greatly reduce the risk of infection.
In the past, Reina never would have spared so much concern for the lives of a few evil crooks, so this demonstrated quite a bit of growth on her part.
“The hell?! Why, you little…!”
Of course, the men didn’t realize what kindness Reina had just shown them, and even if they did, they wouldn’t have bothered thanking her.
Reina casually turned her back to the wagon full of “merchandise.” This was purposeful: She wanted to prevent any stray combat spells from hitting the people inside—and to prevent the men from taking hostages.
“Get ’er, boys! It’s one little girl against all our forces! Mage or not, she’s obviously a novice—her best trick is summoning a bit of water! She’d rather fight with a knife than with magic, and no mage with any combat experience would get this close to the enemy! This oughta be a piece of cake! Do your best to take her alive, though. By the time she realizes what a mistake it was to pick a fight with us, it’ll be too late! We’ll cut the tendons in her hands and feet and turn her into our personal water-generating plaything!”
Perfect, now I don’t need to hold back, thought Reina. That simplifies things.
Reina had no qualms about meting out justice, but it was important to her that the punishment fit the crime. A criminal was a criminal, but she would never kill a pickpocket, for example. If these men were smugglers and nothing more, she would have done her best to apprehend them without inflicting serious injury, but they had practically just told her, No need to hold back against us! That was going to make things much easier on Reina’s end—and much queasier for the men.
“Flame!” Reina yelled out a spell name without the accompanying incantation. (She actually had said the incantation in her head, so it still wasn’t on the same level as Mile’s and the Wonder Trio’s proper spell-free casting.)
As her opponents were human, saying the spell name risked revealing the nature of the coming attack, but that was unlikely to pose a problem with these particular opponents. If anything, it probably upped the intimidation factor.
Reina also just thought it sounded cooler this way. Chalk that one up to Mile and Mavis’s influence.
Alas, she had gotten a little too cocky this time. No matter how weak the opponent, there was always the danger of getting caught off guard. Not to mention that the men had the power of numbers on their side…
“Aiiiiiieeeeee!!” several voices cried out.
The Flame spell Reina had just used was pretty darn toasty, but it wasn’t lethal. It summoned a mass of fire that would graze against the enemy for just a fleeting moment. However hot the flames were, they didn’t linger long enough to roast anyone to ash or leave severe burns. In short, it didn’t do much actual damage, but it was a great intimidation tactic.
The men’s hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes didn’t get away unscathed, however. All their body hair was incinerated, leaving their freshly exposed skin tingling and stinging.
“Guh! Sh-she can use fire magic?! Screw it! Kill her! She’s dead!”
“Fireba—”
Just as Reina summoned multiple balls of fire to her side, a voice yelled, “Don’t move! At the first sign of an attack, I’ll kill this girl!”
“Huh?”
The rear flap of the second wagon, which Reina had assumed was full of actual cargo, fluttered open, revealing a man with a knife pressed to a little girl’s neck.
“Heh heh! If you blast me with magic, I’ll go flying backward and take this girl’s head clean off. Won’t even require me to lift a finger. Is a bleeding-heart hero like you just gonna leave a child to die? Something tells me no! Heh heh heh!”
“Ugh!”
Reina had made a costly mistake in assuming that all the men had already left the wagons. If she surrendered, she would meet the same grim fate as the illegally trafficked children loaded into the wagon, but she couldn’t just allow a little girl to die, either. If only she hadn’t stuck her nose where it didn’t belong, these children might have had longer lives ahead of them, even if they were spent in captivity.
Reina agonized over what to do, but she didn’t have long to think. The rest of the men drew their swords and knives and charged at her, taking advantage of the fact that she was frozen with her eyes fixed on the wagon. Despite her potential uses, they had apparently deemed it too dangerous to let her live. A mage who could cast magic without incantations was a serious liability.
Mages were essentially impossible to disarm. Binding their hands and feet did nothing to neutralize them. When regular people were arrested on criminal charges, depending on the severity of their crime, they would usually only be restrained; mages, on the other hand, would often be killed on the spot where they were captured. This was one of the two most significant reasons why few mages ever broke the law—the other being that having magic meant you could always earn a decent enough living to eschew a life of crime. By the same token, if a criminal ever discovered a mage among their captive prisoners or slaves, unless that mage was a child only capable of conjuring water, they would put them straight to death.
The fireballs floating around Reina had dissipated. With blade-wielding men coming at her from all sides, already in spitting distance, she had no hope of dodging or hitting them with magic. Even the combat and defensive spells with the shortest casting times would be too slow to make it.
I’m not gonna make it, no time for an incantation, I’m gonna die, please let the kids be okay, I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry, Crimson Lightning, I’m sorry, Mavis, Pauline, Mile!
Thoughts raced through her mind at a dizzying pace, but her body couldn’t match the speed of her brain. So acute was her panic that Reina couldn’t focus long enough to recite an incantation. Once again, the fact that Reina and Pauline’s “semi-silent” casting wasn’t like Mile and the Wonder Trio’s technique was very relevant here. No—Reina and Pauline still recited the whole spell in their heads, and while that was faster than reciting it verbally, it still took a fair amount of time. A fire-based combat spell, for example, required one to do the full chant while envisioning the process of generating heat, forming and shaping balls of fire, and shooting them at the target, which would take at least a few seconds in total. The same applied to the defensive spells Reina had learned from Mile.
Reina didn’t have that kind of time. Death was a mere fraction of a second from descending upon her.
If she were the only victim, she could make peace with that. She had already achieved her greatest goal in life. She could reunite with her father and the Crimson Lightning with her head held high.
But dying and leaving these children robbed of their futures? Unacceptable. The pride of the kingdom’s savior, Grand Sorcerer Reina—nay, Crimson Reina—would not allow it!
The men drew closer. Events seemed to unfold in slow motion as they swung their swords down and thrust their knives forward.
I have to try something! Anything!
Unfortunately, she didn’t have enough time to brandish her concealed weapon or cast a spell.
What can I do that won’t cost me time I don’t have?
This was going to be the final act of her life—one that would ultimately make no difference and amount to nothing.
The first thing to come to Reina’s mind was her one lingering regret—the ambition she had never seen fulfilled, despite considering herself a magical prodigy. The only type of magic that could be cast in a matter of milliseconds, without any elaborate procedure. The magic she had failed to master time and time again. The magic she had never once successfully used in spite of all her natural talent. There would be a certain irony to the last spell of her life being a failure.
There was only one step to it. It was as simple as saying a one-word spell to open the door.
And so, she thought that single word—at once both the incantation and the name that triggered the spell—with every fiber of her radiant soul, eyes flashing, heart blazing.
Store!!
“Huh?” came several dazed voices.
The men who had been poised to stab Reina with their knives, the man holding a knife to a girl’s neck in the wagon cargo hold, and the men who had been hanging back and watching this unfold all went slack-jawed.
“Where’d…it all go?”
Everything was gone. The swords and knives raised to strike Reina. The armor the men had just been wearing. All of it. In an instant. Without so much as a sound.
The men stood frozen in shock. “But…how?”
Reina looked as though she didn’t have a clue what was going on. No one said anything, and several seconds ticked by in what felt like an eternity.
“Ha ha…
“Ha ha ha ha!
“AHA HA HA HA!”
Reina cackled, her eyes sparkling. This felt completely different from any of her previous training sessions. Maintaining the magic required almost no mental effort on her part. She realized intuitively that the spell she worked would probably hold together even if she relaxed or fell asleep, and that same instinct told her that its capacity was quite large.
The time had finally come. At last, she had mastered storage magic.
She had dreamed of this day for so long. Mile always used the magic for its intended purpose, but Reina had fantasized about all the different things she could do with it if ever she acquired it for herself. Day in and day out, she had occupied her mind with thoughts of how to make the most of storage magic.
I won, thought Reina.
Against whom, you might ask?
Why, against herself!
Reina had a secret nickname that no one ever dared utter to her face. In that moment, she was that moniker made manifest: the Red Devil of Tils.
“Aha ha ha ha ha ha!”
One of the thugs leapt backward to put some distance between himself and Reina. “What’s going on?! Just who the hell are you?!” he demanded, his face frozen in fear.
Reina grinned. It was the perfect opportunity to say that particular line—one of the many catchphrases she had learned from Mile.
“I am Reina, the grand sorcerer.”
Nothing about this episode came as a shock. Characters unlocking their full potential in a life-threatening situation was a common staple of Mile’s Japanese folktales. In fact, Reina had already experienced it once before, back when she exacted her revenge on behalf of the Crimson Lightning.
Back then, she only had an authorization level of 1. Now?
“And I go by one other name. Crimson Reina, the Bandit Slayer!”
“Kill her!” one of the men screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Store!” Reina shouted, and the knife the man in the cargo hold was clutching vanished.
The hostage took her chance to wriggle free. She then rammed the dumbfounded man with her full body weight, knocking him out of the wagon and onto the ground. If he attempted to climb back inside now, he would have to hoist himself up with both hands, leaving his head vulnerable to attacks from the cargo bed overhead.
Upon seeing the girl shove the man out of the cargo bed, the rest of the “merchandise” peeked out from the other wagon. They were all holding wooden sticks of some sort in their hands.
“Ha ha… Ha ha ha ha ha… Tonight, we feast! Ultra Hot Blizzard!”
“AAAAGGGGHHHH!!”
Sensing danger, the kids in the wagon immediately retreated and pulled the canvas flap shut once more. Children do tend to have good self-preservation instincts.
***
Reina turned around and headed back the way she had come—but this time, she was in a wagon.
Any decent hunter knew how to drive a horse-drawn carriage. Anything could happen on an escort mission; there was no telling when you might have to take over driving for an injured coachman or client and shake off the bandits and monsters in hot pursuit. Faced with a crisis like that, an excuse of“Sorry, can’t drive!” wasn’t going to cut it.
Fortunately, two of the captive children also knew enough to drive a carriage down a wide highway at a relatively slow pace, so they occupied the driver’s seat of the other wagon. It was lucky that these two horses had apparently always traveled as a set. As long as Reina was there to lead the way, the second horse would follow along without any additional instruction, which worked out nicely.
Some of the children had nowhere to go, having lost their entire village and their parents as well. So, after handing over the bandits to the nearest town’s authorities, Reina decided she would bring those kids to the orphanage on her own land.
Explaining this matter to the authorities was quite easy—as soon as she revealed her name, anyway.
She was Grand Sorcerer Crimson Reina, countess of the neighboring kingdom and one of the four saviors of the world. Her hair was a different color than it was supposed to be, but she explained that she had dyed it with magic so she could travel incognito, and no one would doubt the word of a hero whose valiant deeds had been projected across the skies.
As for the matter of the thugs’ crimes, the authorities couldn’t pass down a verdict on the spot. It would take some time to investigate whether the children were indeed illegally trafficked into slavery and to determine the extent of these men’s involvement. According to the children’s testimony, they were taken captive when their village was raided, but a different group of men had carried out the attack. That gave the men room to argue that they were an unrelated, well-meaning party simply transporting survivors of the raid, and there would be no evidence to refute their claim.
However, their culpability was much more clear-cut with respect to their attempts to kidnap Reina with the intent of selling her into black-market slavery. Worse still, when that hadn’t worked out, they had clearly attempted to murder her. Crimson Reina herself had attested to their crimes, and she was considered an even more credible witness than a marquis, duke, or any other high-ranking noble. Heck, perhaps even more than the king himself.
With their guilt set in stone, the men were doomed to either a life of penal servitude or the death penalty, which meant the authorities had free license to subject them to torture. The forthcoming investigation would extend to both the group that had attacked the village and the gang that had taken the children off their hands to sell—and it wouldn’t stop until both parties were annihilated. Such was the inevitable fate of anyone associated with an attempt to kill Crimson Reina, one of the world’s greatest heroes. Were the perpetrators not wiped off the face of the earth, the lord of their domain, along with its nobles, soldiers, law enforcement, and various other dignitaries, would be completely disgraced. If they were truly unlucky, they might even be labeled as enemies of the Goddess. And, needless to say, that reputation would follow them beyond the borders of their own domain.
The interrogation was sure to be a brutal one, and the men couldn’t count on bribes or their friends among the nobility to save them. Anyone who showed even the slightest inclination to side with such heinous criminals would follow them straight to the pits of hell.
The children were slow drivers, so it was going to take the caravan a while to reach Reina’s fief. Although Reina couldn’t talk to the children while she was driving, whenever they stopped for a break or to set up camp for the night, she filled the time by chatting with them about everything under the sun. She told them about the orphanage they were headed to, shared tales of the Crimson Vow’s adventures, and related the story of how she herself had been orphaned at a young age. Without her friends or any adults around, Reina didn’t have to put on her usual “tough girl” act. She got to be the true self she always was around the kids of the orphanage: a doting big sister figure.
In the eyes of the kids, she was a savior, both of the world and of them, personally. The best big sister ever. The owner of the orphanage that would soon be caring for them, and the lord of the land where they would be living. Moreover, she was a symbol of hope, a fellow orphan who had climbed the ranks to stardom.
Of course she would be popular. Of course they would adore her.
To orphans like them, she was far more relatable than noblewomen like Mavis or Mile or even a merchant’s daughter like Pauline. She was their beloved role model, the superstar of the orphan world.
Reina couldn’t be happier. She had finally mastered storage magic, and she was currently surrounded by children whose eyes shone with adoration for her.
While they traveled, the children put together meals made of ingredients purchased in town. Reina had been in charge of their first dinner together, but after that, she was banned from cooking. Understandably, the children had chosen to prioritize their own survival over consideration for their savior.
When Reina was traveling alone, she either ate at the towns and villages where she stopped or subsisted on bread, jerky, dried fruit, and a soup made from dry mix. She had a functional sense of taste, so it wasn’t as though she was under the mistaken impression that her cooking was actually delicious.
Why, then, did she refuse to take herself off her clan’s kitchen duty roster, or try to cook meals for the children? Well, sometimes her sense of duty and wealth of enthusiasm had their downsides…
***
“Countess Mireirine traveled to another country to visit a training hall she belongs to. She trained there for several days, helped with their publicity efforts, and then disappeared without a trace. Countess Beckett stopped by her shop, her family home, and her deputy’s residence, left them with various instructions, and has not been seen since. Countess Reddlightning paid a visit to an orphanage and her deputy’s residence, then absconded. After visiting the graves of her father and her former party, the Crimson Lightning, she departed for a neighboring kingdom. There, she apprehended a group of criminals that had been illegally kidnapping and trafficking slaves, took the orphans she rescued back to the orphanage in her own fief, and fled before her deputy could notice she was back and detain her. Said deputy is apparently quite chagrined to have let her get away…”
“Hmm… In summary?”
“After running from their obligations as nobles, it would appear they have each taken to roaming our kingdom and the neighboring countries. As neither money nor fame would tempt them at this point, they are likely just enjoying the open road, aiding the weak and doing good deeds along the way. Therefore…”
“Yes, I see your point. So long as Countess Ascham—nay, Lady Mile, the divine messenger—stays at the shrine to carry out her duties, all should be well. Wandering the land and helping the people they encounter will garner the heroes even more popular support, and that will reflect well on our own kingdom’s governance.”
“Precisely. They are all members of our kingdom’s nobility. Their actions will be seen as a reflection of your own policies, Your Majesty. Moreover, you are the one who appointed the deputies currently managing their estates, so you have effectively granted permission for their current activities.”
This would strengthen the common folk’s loyalty to the royal family without costing the king a single copper coin. An enticing proposal indeed.
“When the three of them fled at once, I initially feared that the divine messenger might be tempted to join her friends, but they all seem to be traveling solo. The divine messenger has still chosen to remain behind. Not only that—I hear she has been working harder than ever and even curbing her excessive eating habits, much to the delight of the priests. I believe the current state of affairs works in our kingdom’s favor. All that remains is to marry the four of them off to members of the royal family or nobility.”
The king responded to his prime minister’s report with a nod and a smile.
***
After bringing the children to the orphanage, introducing them to the director and other staff members, and providing a few instructions about their next steps, Reina handed over the two wagons and their horses for the orphanage to keep and promptly took her leave. Word was sure to have gotten back to the deputy’s residence that she had passed through the entrance to the fief in the driver’s seat of a wagon. Reina had learned quite a bit about basic battle strategy from Mile and Mavis, so she knew hit-and-run tactics were the way to go here.
Once she had safely crossed the kingdom border for the second time, Reina breathed a sigh of relief.
“The first thing I need to do is experiment with my storage magic. I have a rough idea of its properties, but I should confirm its exact capacity, whether it can store living creatures, whether those creatures can survive inside, how long it takes food to spoil in there, and so on.”
She was most familiar with the capabilities of Mile’s “storage,” but she also knew full well that what her friend used wasn’t regular storage magic, so she wouldn’t make the mistake of assuming its features were a given. Mavis’s version of storage magic, for example, couldn’t prevent food from going bad, and freshly cooked dishes would cool if left inside.
Packing a living creature away with ordinary storage magic wouldn’t immediately kill them, but the majority would die if left in storage for a prolonged period of time. Exactly how long that took varied from species to species. The reason for this was that there was no air in the generated subspace, but until someone came up with the idea to store air and cycle it out periodically, the cause would remain a mystery. It wasn’t like being underwater—although people could recognize that it was somewhat harder to breathe inside a storage subspace, they wouldn’t associate that with a lack of air and come to any useful conclusions.
If storage magic saw more widespread use, perhaps research in that field would progress further. Unfortunately, it was a very rare kind of magic, and its scant few masters generally refused to cooperate with studies for fear of losing their special status. If research resulted in everyone learning how to use storage magic, they risked losing their current position and the cushy jobs that came along with it. Obviously, they wouldn’t be eager to make that happen.
Reina hadn’t been out to kill the bandits, which was why she had stuck to storing their weapons and armor instead of the men themselves. She knew that Mile’s and the Wonder Trio’s storages avoided this issue by halting the passage of time, but Mavis’s and Pauline’s (she could open a subspace, so it counted) storages were perfectly ordinary, so Reina had no reason to assume hers would be an exception to the general rule.
Reina’s expertise on this subject was the reason she, among all the members of their clan, had been the most scared of the Wonder Trio’s transport system. Brave were the ignorant, fearful were the knowledgeable—that was just a fact of life.
Similarly, Princess Morena’s Storage Guard had initially seemed too scary a prospect for her to recruit participants. The princess had been forced to repeat the same explanation several times over and conduct numerous experiments with animals before any brave volunteers came forward. At the time, none of them could have dreamed that a position on her Storage Guard would become one of the most sought-after jobs in the kingdom, with wages paid for zero actual working hours and special rewards given to those who did see action.
Technically, the princesses’ powers were not billed as regular storage magic but as a special skill granted to them by the Goddess. Trying to pass that off as storage magic certainly would have led to a lot of problems…
***
“We have returned from visiting home and spending time with our families. Until the day we return to the western continent…”
“Allow us to remain by your side, Your Highness,” all three members of the Wonder Trio finished in unison, kneeling before Princess Morena.
The third princess stared at them in silence.
“………”
“Er, Your Highness?”
“………”
“I-Is something the matter, Your Highness?”
The longer Morena stood there, unresponsive and expressionless, the more nervous the Wonder Trio became.
All three girls had paid visits to their respective families. After a period of pleasant conversation, in each case, the topic had eventually turned to marriage, and the Trio had run for the hills.
As the head of her own noble line, Marcela stood on equal footing with her parents. She had the power to stop any attempts to force her into an engagement. Monika and Aureana, however, were merely commoners with the honorary title of baronetess, so they weren’t in a position to do the same. Worst of all, their parents couldn’t resist even the slightest pressure from wealthy merchants and low-ranking nobles, let alone the higher-ranking ones.
And so, as soon as their parents began relaying the many, many marriage proposals they had received over the time their daughters had been away, the girls had panicked and made a break for it. Nothing good could come of listening. That meant refusing to listen would solve everything! Right?
With their familial duties done, they had planned to hide themselves in the royal palace until they were scheduled to meet back up with the Crimson Vow and return to the western continent, but they couldn’t help but notice that Princess Morena was behaving very strangely.
“What is going on here?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
“Marcela, you were the only one who used Est’s and my storage connection to return home, correct? What, pray tell, are all three of you doing here?”
“Ah…” Monika stammered.
“Aaaaahhhh!” Aureana yelped.
“Nooooooo! What a blunder!” Marcela cried.
Princess Morena regarded their panic coolly. “Well, I did have a feeling this might be the case. The Goddess clearly favors you three over the two of us, so it wouldn’t make sense for you to be denied an ability we were granted. But even though I did see this coming…”
“No, er, you see… Aha ha…”
“Aha ha ha ha…”
Their only hope was to laugh it off. Realizing as much, all three members of the Wonder Trio let an awkward giggle escape their lips.
Side Story: The Ideal Partner
Side Story:
The Ideal Partner
ONE EVENING, the various members of the clan were enjoying a cup of tea after dinner when Reina turned to Mile and asked, “Mile, what kind of person are you looking to marry?”
“Huh?” Mile’s eyes darted back and forth. “Where did this come from?”
She was flustered by the apparent abruptness of Reina’s query, but it wasn’t actually all that rare for Reina to spring questions like this on her friends without any warning. She tended to blurt out her thoughts the moment they crossed her mind. There was no rule against it. She was free to do so, and others were free to choose whether to respond or ignore her.
“You can’t get away with not answering, by the way.”
Well, unless that person was Mile. Whether because of her softhearted nature or her status as the youngest, she was the most vulnerable member of the Crimson Vow—at least, in the context of everyday life. (Of course, this excluded the times when she was in a bad mood or genuinely upset. Not even Reina could handle an angry Mile.)
“Uh, let’s see…”
Apparently, Mile actually planned on giving a serious answer—even knowing full well that whatever she said would become ammunition for endless teasing.
Her age was equivalent to the number of years she’d been without a boyfriend. The same applied to the rest of the Crimson Vow—the rest of the clan, in fact—but counting her past life, she had been single for the longest by far. Not that she felt that was something to celebrate or brag about…
“Maybe someone with a strong heart and a strong sense of justice, who’s a kind, thoughtful, cool, and considerate partner, who really gets me and shares my values…”
“So, Mavis?”
“You literally just described Mavis.”
Reina and Pauline shot Mile withering looks, while Mavis pointed to herself, obviously flustered. “Who, me?!”
“No one could possibly check all those boxes besides Mavis!” Reina yelled. It was hard to disagree with her.
“If we discount Mavis, I’ve never encountered such a man in my life,” said Pauline.
“Hold on!” Mavis objected. “What do you mean by ‘discounting me,’ Pauline? Are you saying that I’m a man?”
Mile was still trying to process Reina and Pauline’s observations, obviously shaken by their interpretation of her “ideal partner” criteria. “Huh? Huh?! Huuuuuh?! M-M-M-Mavis?! Wait, what? Bwuh? N-now that you mention it, she does meet the requirements perfectly… Omigod! Omigod, omigod, omigod, omigooood!”
The Wonder Trio met Mile’s panic with blank stares, struggling to keep up with this conversation.
Realizing their little chat was going nowhere good, Pauline attempted to change the topic. “What about you, Reina? What would your ideal partner be like?”
Not much of a change…
“Who, me? Good question…”
Reina was a good sport. If she asked someone else a question, she knew she couldn’t dodge when someone else turned the same question back on her.
“Someone mature and dependable, who would put their own life on the line to come to my rescue…”
“That’s just Telyusia!” her whole party shouted.
“Huh? Really?”
Reina looked genuinely surprised. She must not have realized this until it was pointed out to her.
Within moments, her face was bright red.
“Wh-what about you, Pauline?!” Attempting to hide her own embarrassment, Reina pushed Pauline into the line of fire.
“Me? Hmm… My ideal partner would be a rich yellow and cool to the touch, I suppose…”
“That’s just gold!” her party shouted.
“It has to be a person!” Reina specified—a condition that would go without saying for most other people. “What kind of person would you want to marry?!”
Pauline fell deep into thought again. Her conclusion?
“Someone with a lot of money, I guess.”
“Called it.”
“Called it.”
“Called it.”
“Oh, and with one-of-a-kind storage magic that has no limit.”
“That’s just Mile,” said Reina and Mavis.
“Who, me?”
Pauline was rather transparently just listing her ideal moneymakers, not her ideal lover.
“Wh-what about you, Mavis?” asked Reina.
It was inevitable that the conversation would now turn to Mavis, the only member of the Crimson Vow yet to answer. There was no way her friends would let her be the only one spared.
“Me? Well, let me think…” After a pause, Mavis outlined her ideal marriage material: “Someone who can fight alongside me, who’s strong enough that I won’t have to worry about them when we’re apart, and who I can be myself around when we’re together. Someone who shares my values and who’s fun to be around… Oh, and they shouldn’t expect me to dress up or act more ladylike. I want someone who will treat me like a friend and an equal.”
“That’s just Mile,” said Reina.
“Definitely Mile,” said Pauline. “Look, your feelings are mutual. Congratulations on making it official, ladies.”
“Whaaaaaat?!” Mile and Mavis cried out in protest.
I see… So Miss Mile likes Miss Mavis’s type.
Marcela kept quiet, intent on letting sleeping dogs lie. But as she listened, a rather questionable thought crossed her mind.
***
A few days later…
“Care to join me for tea, Mile?”
There stood Marcela, dressed in men’s clothing and holding a red rose in her mouth.
“M-Marcela, c’mon, that’s a little, uh…”
“Lady Marcela, please…”
Her fellow clan members couldn’t help but cringe.
“Guys, be honest. Is that really how you all see me?” Mavis asked, her shoulders slumping sadly.
Afterword
Afterword
LONG TIME NO SEE, everyone. FUNA here. We’ve finally made it to Volume 20 of Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! Can you believe it?! Volume 20! Not many series end up running that long! Bookstores can’t even stock the full set because it takes up too much shelf space… Waaaah… Bookstores everywhere, hear my plea! I would be eternally grateful if you held a twentieth volume anniversary fair, or set up a feature display, or put up promotional posters! No, really, I mean it!
When I first started writing this series, I thought it’d be nice if I could write forty or fifty chapters and get about two or three hundred people to read it. Then a publisher reached out to me, and before I knew it, I’d written over six hundred chapters—enough to fill twenty whole print volumes! Counting these books, plus my other two works, 80,000 Gold and Potions, I’ve published forty-one novels (including Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! Lily’s Miracle, the spin-off novel by Kousuke Akai) and forty volumes of manga (including the Potions spin-off Hanano and Lotte’s Journey, the second volume of which will come out the day after this volume). It sure sounds like a lot when I stop to count.
If we include novels, manga volumes, and spin-offs, this volume marks the eightieth book I’ve ever published. I’ve really come a long way…
Still, despite the number of books I’ve put out, I’ve only written three series over the course of my career. As a novelist, I’m not sure if I should lament how few works I’ve written or rejoice that I get to keep working on the series I hold near and dear to my heart… Either way, now that I’ve come this far, it’s my goal to make it to my hundredth book!
In this volume, the Crimson Vow and the Wonder Trio band together as a clan and officially kick off their hunter activities on the new continent! Pauline and Reina soldier forth on their arduous quest to master storage magic. Reina goes gaga over orphans, and Pauline goes gaga over money. Then Reina unlocks her latent potential! With the princess duo starting to uncover various truths, what does the future hold for our favorite clan (name TBD)?
Next time, in Volume 21, the group will return to the new continent and stir up trouble at a royal ball, among various other shenanigans. Mavis is the Crimson Vow’s voice of reason, so when she goes off the rails, there’s no one left to hit the brakes… And last but not least, the mysterious Returner tanks a fall from the skies!
THOMAS:“You rang?”
MILE: “‘Tank’! Not ‘tank engine’!”
REINA:“Actually, both of those terms make me think of you, Mile.”
MILE: “Huh?”
REINA:“Well, you desperately need an interv-engine…”
MILE:“Uggggghhhhh!!”
REINA:“Still, we’re twenty volumes in now. Where do we go from here?”
PAULINE: “Why, the answer is simple. We always hear Miley saying it.”
MILE:“Anywhere!”
MILE, REINA, MAVIS, & PAULINE: “As far as we can reach!”
Thanks for supporting my Flat-Chested Tween Trilogy in novel, manga, and anime format!
And finally, to the chief editor; to the illustrator, Itsuki Akata; to Yoichi Yamakami, the cover designer; to everyone involved in the proofreading, editing, printing, binding, distribution, and selling of this book; and to everyone who’s taken these stories into their homes, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
I am sure that we will see each other again with the next volume…
—FUNA
