by Funa
As the girls entered the office, the guild master greeted them with a despondent, almost angry expression.
“I take it you accepted this job knowing full well what wyvern hunting entails…? Did any of the staff at the capital branch properly explain this task to you?”
The girls were somewhat annoyed that the middle-aged guild master had started the conversation this way the very moment they entered the room, without even a greeting. However, there was no particular ill intent behind his words. He probably was merely concerned about these rookie girls doing something so dangerous, so they ignored his tone and continued to listen.
“If I send hunters from the capital off to a pointless death, my reputation will take a huge hit. Worse, if I let four cute young girls get killed, everyone’s going to start talking about me.”
“…………”
Apparently, the only one he was worried about was himself.
“We are a C-rank hunting party, the Crimson Vow, who have accepted the wyvern-hunting job from the capital guild branch.”
As Mavis was still too stunned by the guild master’s words to reply, Reina took the lead.
Compared to her fellow party member, she had a much lower boiling point; however, she was also well aware of the impression her appearance gave. Based on her looks, she knew, people tended not to take her seriously on first meeting her. This particular problem did not anger her.
Or really, that was not fair to say. It was just that she was accustomed to it. That was all.
Besides, this time, Mile was with them. Telling herself that Mile’s presence must be the reason the guild master was looking down on them, Reina’s spirits remained high.
“What? The Crimson Vow, you say?”
The guild master seemed a bit shocked at the introduction.
“You are the ones who…”
It seemed that he had heard rumors of them. Maybe it was about the mock battle at the graduation exam, or about the bandit-slaying, or the wicked merchant… No, actually, that last incident had been handled by the mysterious party, the “Order of the Crimson Blood,” so that couldn’t be it… Anyway, he could have heard about them anywhere.
As far as the merchant incident went, anyway, it would still be some time before rumors about them made it from Talwess to the capital, and then from the capital out into the other regions. Public officials and nobles were one thing, but it took much longer for rumors to reach the ears of the common folk.
“Um, I don’t know what you are insinuating. But, yes, we are the Crimson Vow.”
This time, Mavis was the one to reply. At least for now, she was the party leader. Even though it was easy to forget about that now and then…
“I have heard rumors of you. About the strength of your mages and the skill of your swordswoman… If you’re the ones facing the wyvern, then perhaps there is a chance that you might be able to strike it down and land the finishing blow once it has fallen. However, I’m not confident that you’ll be able to land enough damage to strike down the wyvern in the first place. Don’t you think this might be a pointless venture? Not only might you get hurt, but you’ll have to pay the penalty fee…”
“Even so,” Mile interjected, “we’ve already accepted the job!”
The guild master grimaced, knowing this to be the case.
Finally, recognizing that they were no ordinary rookie hunters, he explained to them the details of the job.
They had already heard the gist of the assignment from the staff at the capital branch, but what had been written on the job-request ticket was a simplified summary to begin with. Moreover, there was new information that had come to light since the job was posted, and there were a number of small details to inquire after.
Usually, this sort of briefing would be the clerk’s job, but in this case, it was an important request, one that had been recirculated all the way from here in Helmont to the capital branch. In short, because the Crimson Vow had been dispatched from the capital to handle a job request at the Helmont branch, this task became the guild master’s personal responsibility.
That said, it was still generally the case that after a brief discussion with the guild master, a clerk would go over the finer details. Yet in this situation, it seemed that the guild master had taken a personal interest in the Crimson Vow, making this an exceptional instance where he himself would explain everything in detail.
Because the contents of this request were of a rather formidable nature, the guild master explained it all to them frankly, holding nothing back. Throughout, the expressions of the Crimson Vow were impassive…
“So, let’s get this sorted.”
After leaving the guild behind, the girls headed to an inn and booked a four-person room, then began their team meeting. As always, Reina was the moderator.
“First of all, our client is the local lord. However, the lord is only paying the reward. He gave the guild free reign to handle the details, so we don’t need to worry about arrangements. There won’t be any need for us to meet with the client, either.”
This much they had heard from the guild master.
It seemed that this lord had no interest in meeting with such lowly creatures as hunters.
This was completely normal. Indeed, times when nobles actually took time to meet with hunters—such as when Count Amroth, the presiding lord from the bandit incident, had met the Crimson Vow—were few and far between.
To tell the truth, all of the Crimson Vow were far more comfortable with it being this way. The only one who wouldn’t be troubled by meeting with a noble was Mavis, who was, of course, accustomed to that sort of thing.
Even for Mile, her experience talking and dining with nobles outside of her family was more or less limited to the time they had spent with Count Amroth. Plus, now that her memories of her previous life had returned, talking with nobles made her very tense. While it would not be outwardly apparent to most, Mile was a bit tense to begin with. Of course, when she was at the academy, she was comfortably conversing normally with a noble classmate, but that was another matter entirely.
“The wyvern has been active across roughly thirty percent of this region. The wyvern’s active area has also included about half of the neighboring region, but that’s a largely uninhabited area, so most of the casualties have actually been from this region. Likely, the lord of that region did nothing about it because they figured it would be handled by the people over here. Honestly, I would do the same in that lord’s shoes. It’s stupid to waste your soldiers and resources on a pointless task,” said Reina.
The other three nodded in agreement. Of course, they had all heard this information from the guild master, but it was important to review everything aloud as a group like this. It would eliminate any miscommunications and make certain that they were all on the same page, smoothing out the proceedings going forward.
“And so, the problem is this.”
With these words, Reina spread the copied materials that they had received from the guild master out across the table.
It was a crude map of this region and the next, with notes marking the towns that the wyvern had attacked, the other places it had been sighted, and the dates and times of these incidents.
The marks were, for the most part, concentrated within a particular radius. This much was fine. This much was completely normal. However…
“How weird…”
“Yeah, that’s a little unnatural.”
“It’s a little different from what we heard in the capital about wyverns’ usual habits…”
Just as Pauline, Mavis, and Mile had all noted, this wyvern’s territory appeared to be in a slightly—no, an incredibly—strange location.
First off, compared to your average wyvern, the apparent scope of this one’s territory was very small. Normally, they hunted across a far wider area. And since wyverns rarely appeared in this area to begin with, it could hardly be the result of a turf war or something similar.
Next, there was the
fact that the reported sightings of the wyvern formed a perfect circle.
Now, that they formed a circle was not all that strange in and of itself. However, the circle that they formed, in this case, was too perfect. Normally, the dots would be a bit more scattered, the sort of shape that was vaguely, mostly a circle. This was far too much like an actual geometric shape.
Yet the clincher was the times and dates of the appearances.
They were precise.
This wyvern appeared systematically in the same key locations at excessively punctual intervals.
The wyvern had chosen when and where to appear as though it had a comprehensive knowledge of the human calendar and the different days of the week.
This was, of course, suspicious. Indubitably so.
However, the wyvern itself was not the only thing that the Crimson Vow found suspicious here.
“Naturally, other hunters have found this strange as well, and countless parties have accepted this job. And yet, they’ve all ended up with casualties and zero results. There’s just a string of red marks. Of course, that isn’t so strange. We could come up with plenty of reasons why that might happen—the hunters weren’t skilled enough, or the wyvern was too strong, things like that. However, if it is relatively easy to encounter…”
“Then,” Pauline muttered, “shouldn’t the regional forces have been deployed?”
Indeed, the primary reason that local armies were not usually deployed for wyvern hunting was that wyverns were relatively difficult to locate. Mobilizing a great number of soldiers for many days required a lot of money. If one were to embark on such an operation fruitlessly, the army’s entire budget could be wasted.
An opponent with an incredibly low encounter rate was not one that a lord would be interested in taking on.
However, if there was a relatively high chance that one would be able to encounter the wyvern, that should be a different story.
Defeating the wyvern would put a stop to further casualties in the region, provide good battle practice for the soldiers, strengthen one’s reputation amongst the other lords, raise one’s standing in the eyes of the Crown, and improve the general morale of the populace. With these aims in mind, it would be worthwhile to spare both a bit of the budget and even a few casualties.
Even if the wyvern escaped after they shot it down, it likely would not appear in that town again, so it would effectively be driven away—another appealing outcome.
If the wyvern was making such regular appearances, why hadn’t the troops been dispatched?
“There must be some reason why they haven’t sent the army out…” said Mavis.
Mile continued: “Or they did send them out, and they were already defeated. And now, they’re just covering that up?”
Silence fell across the room.
The next morning, the four gathered up their things and left the inn, headed for a certain village.
Naturally, the place they were headed was where the wyvern was scheduled to appear tomorrow. There were no carriages that ran there, and it would take half a day to reach on foot, meaning that they would be arriving in the early afternoon.
The Crimson Vow had ridden in their client’s wagons or in a passenger carriage many times, but in truth, this would count as a luxury for most hunters. Barring instances where they had a lot to carry, had injured or otherwise incapacitated party members, or some other limiting circumstance, hunters typically traveled on foot.
As they walked, the girls discussed their current job.
“What’s the story with the lord, do you think?”
“Well, the pay is right. It just seems like, after countless parties were annihilated, there was no one left here to take the job. Eventually, it got transferred to the capital… But as long as we’re involved, that won’t happen again.”
“Yeah. If he were scheming, then he would probably want to meet up with us. If you’re trying to pull the wool over someone’s eyes, it’s important to meet them in the flesh. Conjecturing based only on assumptions is dangerous, but really, I don’t think anything suspicious is happening here.”
Pauline and Mavis agreed with Reina’s assessment. Mile, who was rather removed from the thoughts and motivations of other people, merely nodded in agreement.
“Plus, there is a strong correlation between sending out more soldiers and registering more casualties, isn’t there?”
“That’s true.”
“Indeed, if they took one-sided losses, without conquering or driving the thing away, then they couldn’t possibly approve any more casualties. Losing multiple times would just cause them to lose face… By sending the job to the hunters’ guild, all you lose out on is the payment for the job, and for a lord, it’s much safer to say, ‘I’ll just pay the money, and have someone else take care of it for me.’ They only have to pay for a success, so no matter how many times the mission fails, that’s all they’ll ever lose.”
Leaving Mile in the dust, the other three continued their conversation.
“So then, this begs the question: If everything is normal, and the lord expects that the wyvern can be eliminated, then why hasn’t it been eliminated yet? A wyvern is a dangerous opponent for a normal party, but any party who took on the job would have known at least that much, and only taken it if they felt they had a strong chance of succeeding. Right? As for the soldiers, even if they’ve specialized in fighting other humans, without much experience in beast-hunting, they’re still combat professionals. I’m sure they would have done enough preliminary preparation and planning, most likely with a veteran hunter along to advise them. Which means…”
“Oh oh oh! There’s a lot of the wyverns, or they’re very strong!”
Now that they had finally come upon a topic she understood, Mile chimed in.
She had leapt in at the juiciest moment, but Reina could understand Mile’s desire to contribute to the conversation when it finally came around to something that she understood. Gently, she acknowledged her.
“Well, something like that, yes…”
Such was the way of a leader… not. Mavis was the leader. Even if it was easy to forget that sometimes.
“Anyway, we must assume that our enemy is strong, and proceed with discretion. As Mile told us before, um, yes—‘Life is a precious thing,’” said Reina.
The other three nodded.
“Will we really be all right? It’s not that I don’t believe in everyone’s magic, but if you don’t pull the wyvern down to the ground, I won’t have any way to lend you my strength in the battle, so…”
“It’ll be fine! We’ll figure it out somehow!”
For some reason, Mavis had a bad feeling about Mile’s confidence…
It was already well past noon when they reached their destination. They had taken their time as they walked, discussing not only their job, but other frivolous things, and the journey had stretched on longer than they expected.
The four of them planned to get to bed early that night in preparation for the next day, so on arrival, they decided to go straight into reconnaissance. After that, they would eat their fill at lunch-slash-dinner and head straight to bed.
First, of course, they needed to find an inn. There was only one inn in the village, so there weren’t exactly a lot of choices. They told the innkeepers that they did not need to have dinner provided, and headed out to find an eatery or bar.
In a rural village like this, which was not even big enough to have a guild branch or post office, the best places to gather information were at a bar, the village elder’s house, and the marketplace.
However, in this case, as their job request had not come from this particular village, they did not expect that the village elder would have any pertinent information. Besides, they weren’t looking for any favors, so they decided to skip that step, at least for now.
“Here’s the place.”
After walking around for a bit without finding anywhere that resembled an eatery, they heard from the passersby they ask
ed that the village had but one saloon, which served food as well as drink. However, it wasn’t very well marked…
This was the sort of little village that had very few visitors besides traveling peddlers, who already knew the place well, so there probably wasn’t much need for signage.
Upon entering the building, the girls found ten or so villagers inside.
“Huh?”
The four made a noise of surprise, not expecting the place to be so crowded at such an odd hour. The villagers were just as surprised to see them.
“What? You girls… you’re hunters, aren’t you?”
“Yes. We’ve taken on the job of hunting the wyvern. We’re a hunting party from the capital—the Crimson Vow,” Mavis replied.
The villagers clamored.
“W-w-we’re so grateful that you took on this job,” one of the villagers started in a slightly troubled cadence, then continued mincingly, “but, well…”
This was not an unreasonable response. Within the radius of the wyvern’s attacks, this village was the closest to the regional capital. In other words, most of the parties that had taken on this job had probably tried to use this village as an interception point, and perhaps the local troops had even used it as a temporary base.
This, of course, meant that the villagers knew the results of all these expeditions.
If they had known that the next hunting party to appear would be a group of four young girls, they would have been discouraged, or overtaken by fear. So, the girls did not feel too bad about surprising them.
“Please don’t worry. We are already well aware of the circumstances. Three of us are mages, able to use strong attack magic, and the last is a strong swordswoman, able to defeat even a top knight. We will most definitely take down that wyvern! If you all can tell us everything that you know, our victory will be all the more certain!”
Hearing Pauline’s forceful speech, the villagers raised a cheer of joy, and one after the other came to share what they knew.
It seemed that the reason that so many villagers had gathered while the sun was still high was not only for the food and drink, but also to discuss the wyvern that was due to strike again the next day. In fact, the only things atop the tables were pitchers of water and wooden cups.
