Chapter 45: Journey
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
Having prepared the holy water, and gathered together all our goods, it’s the day after we completed our preparations for departure.
We were trudging along on foot toward our target village.
If it was just me and Master, then we could have flown, but Amy and Kevin are here this time, so we take our time and walk there.
“This is tiring chief, I can’t just fly on my own, can I~?”
“Nope, no flying.”
“Cheapskate~”
We’ll be walking for two days, so Yig is quite indisposed about it.
Walking on a path through the forest toward the village feels a lot like we’re on a hike, so I’m enjoying it though.
Plus being deep in the woods reminds me of my home on the mountain, and that feeling isn’t bad.
“Yig, do you not like hiking?”
“Hmm? Walking with you is fun, chief~”
Mrgh, what a cute thing to say. I give Yig’s small body a big hug.
She rubs her cheeks on my chest in return, so her fluffy hair reaches my nose and gives off a pleasant smell.
This girl is constantly going to the hot springs, so there’s an earthy odor mixed in. It all makes for an excessively inviting sense of relaxation.
“Ahh, my goodness! These girls are so cute it’s unfair! Let me in on this—! Fuguh?!”
Amy came hurtling toward us shouting some nonsense, so I throw an attack at her and render her powerless.
Does she think we’re stuffed animals or something?
On that note, carrying her while she’s knocked out is Kevin’s job. Unlike me she’s well-padded, so carrying her on his back puts a pleased look on him.
“You lot… err, actually it’s no big deal, really.”
“Well, Kevin does get some side benefits from this. Her breasts are big, after all.”
“Her personality is way too awful!”
“Come on, she’s easy to get along with.”
“Do you want someone with a big chest too, Master Rimuru?”
He’s always telling me I’m thin, or that I’m not plump enough, so I thought that might be the case.
When he hears my downhearted voice, he hurriedly shakes his hands in denial.
“It doesn’t matter whether you have them or not. You have your own good points, Eir!”
“For example?”
“… Like how you’re crazy powerful?”
“That supposed to be a compliment to a woman?”
“Shut up! Then you try complimenting her, Kevin!”
Master flares up at Kevin for criticizing him.
Kevin looks my way, and tilts his head…
“Mm, you’re mercilessly strong.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It’s the first thing you notice about her. What do you expect?”
“Kgh, am I so lacking in feminine qualities…?”
“Rather than masculine or feminine, I’d say you fall under the childlike category, chief~”
“Can it.”
To turn my eyes away from Yig’s relentless evaluation, I stare at the path in front of us.
Trees lining the path form a tunnel with their branches, shrouding the sky, and not letting much light in. But the frequent foot traffic hardened the ground, making an easy to walk trail.
Far ahead is our destination, a village where bone wolves are appearing in this otherwise peaceful forest.
“Master Rimuru, what are bone wolves exactly?”
“They’re exactly as we talked about the other day.”
Evil spirits possessing the bones of dead bodies, turned into dog shapes that attack humans.
But bone wolves are supposed to require a whole lot of evil spirits to be there. Enough of them suddenly appearing in the middle of the forest… that thought made me feel that something is out of place.
“To begin with, bone wolves don’t usually appear alone. If there are enough spirits for undead to appear, then it being enough for exactly one of them practically never happens. You have to be ready for for multiple opponents. Like how in this case there are four of them.”
“That many corpses and spirits appearing is strange.”
“Suppose so. If you think about it, magic beast carcasses are often fully processed when they’re stripped of materials, and people get memorial services of course. Bone wolves appearing near a human settlement is, itself, rare.”
There are actually few undead in the world.
Of course that doesn’t mean they’re nonexistent, but like Master said, magic beast corpses are processed, and human bodies are buried. There aren’t many vessels for the undead with things being as they are.
In the first place, the souls that would turn into evil spirits are fundamentally absorbed altogether into the World Tree. Souls that manage to escape the World Tree’s grasp are scarce.
There are places where undead are likely to appear. Where adventurer parties died at the end of their journey, a savage area called the barbaric lands in the north, or battle sites of wars have the most potential.
The barbaric lands are an area that makes up the north half of the continent, where no countries hold power. A land where magic beasts, demons, vampires and the like run rampant.
This area only ever unified once temporarily, when the Demon King appeared long ago. It’s the world’s most lawless area.
Undead are born there daily it seems, but for anywhere that humans regularly manage, like the middle and southern parts of the continent, such cases are rare.
“There may be some other cause to this.”
“Hey now… you better not be telling me there’s more to this than bone wolves.”
“We weren’t tasked with handling the cause of it, so we can ignore it if you want?”
“As if I can ignore it after hearing that.”
Kevin looks astonished as he responds to Master’s suggestion.
“Not planning on acting like an ally of justice, but I’m still an adventurer. ‘I’ll just do what you mentioned, and I don’t care about the rest’ ain’t gonna fly.”
“Oh? You don’t want to bring shame to your reputation then. Half a year ago you would have said, ‘I don’t give a damn’ I’m pretty sure.”
“Don’t dig up the past! A lot’s happened since then. They wouldn’t let me do anything other than carry baggage even though I became an adventurer.”
“You said you defeated a goblin.”
Thinking back, I think Kevin said he killed a goblin on his first quest, and became a promising new face.
He turned into a braggart because of it though.
“Yeah, my first quest was letter delivery. When I left the town, goblins attacked, and I sent ’em packing.”
“That’s quite a win. You were a beginner, or rather practically an amateur at the time.”
“All they could do was use brute force too after all. It was a favorable match up. Hell, all that crap doesn’t even matter.”
“Ahh, yeah. Well in any case, we won’t know much until we get there.”
“Of course.”
Something is causing it at the village. Noticing that alone is probably a good thing.
If we just got rid of them and left without realizing, then more bone wolves would appear.
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
~*~
We continued our journey, and on the evening of our second day, the forest opened up to a small village.
This must be our destination.
A wood fence surrounds it, and armed guards can be spotted all over.
There’s no foot traffic on the roads, and it gives off a completely desolate air.
“They really look like they’re under attack.”
“Of course they do.”
“No bone wolves.”
“Couldn’t be this carefree if they were here, chief.”
“It might have been easier on us if they were here though.”
As we got close at our leisurely pace, the guards pointed their spears at us.
Their spears aren’t the well-made kind you might find at a weapon store, but crude ones carved from wood with their tips fastened on.
On closer inspection, the guards are also quite old, and they have scratch marks left here and there too.
It’s amazing they managed to defend the village from bone wolves in this state.
“Halt, where are you all from?”
“From Raum, the capital. We came to exterminate bone wolves as per a guild quest.”
“You did? You’re all just kids.”
“Well, Eir and Yig certainly look that way, but they’re plenty strong I’ll have you know?”
He’s treating us like we’re kids, but even though Master is saying that himself, he’s the youngest boy in the group.
Although he’s tall for his age, he’s also scrawny. He’s not solidly built like Kevin, so he probably doesn’t look reliable as an adventurer.
By the way, the oldest one of us is Yig of course, but next is Amy at seventeen, and then Kevin at fifteen.
I’m next at thirteen, and Master is twelve.
By appearance though, Kevin looks the oldest, then next is Amy. After that is Master, then me and Yig.
“The guild is being reckless… I can’t believe they’d send kids to take out bone wolves.”
“Wait, like I was saying, we’re plenty strong.”
“This is no time to be cocky! It’s really dangerous here.”
I know they’re worrying for us, but it seems like they aren’t willing to listen to us at all.
Master also seemed to think we weren’t going to make progress, and gave Yig an order.
“Yig, go punch the ground over there a bit.”
“Mmm, you sure?”
“It’s not a problem. Give them a nice show.”
“Okay~”
With a light reply, she takes some distance with a single leap.
“Ei~”
And just like that, with her unfocused shout, her slender, noodlefish-like hand came crashing down.
Immediately a thunderous roar, loud enough to make the ground shake, reverberates as the ground shakes exactly like an earthquake.
A dense cloud of dust rises up, blocking our view. Once it cleared up, a crater of several meters had been made.
“Wha?!”
“Amazing, right?”
“By the way, the girl over here is stronger than that.”
Saying so, Master points at me.
Pointing at people is bad manners.
“No way, stronger than that?!”
“Hmph, you shouldn’t call people ‘that’~”
“Going even further, the man over here is famed across the world as stronger than her.”
“Even stronger you say?! What an incredibly tough warrior!”
“Hey, cut it out already?!”
The next to be pointed at, Kevin, raises his voice, bordering on a scream. It’s true that Kevin is known across the land to be stronger than me, so Master isn’t actually lying.
Kevin has genuinely started going past the strength of an ordinary person, so nobody has caught on to Master’s boasting.
“Destructive power surpassing even this, you say. Truly, in that case you can probably purge those undead in one fell swoop.”
“Wait, that’s impossible for me, but—“
“If the bone wolves come after the disaster beast killer Kevin, they better be coming at him all at once.”
Cutting off Kevin’s denial, Master delivers the finishing stab.
At the words “disaster beast killer,” the eyes of the guard open wide in astonishment.
“The one from the rumors! I heard he was young, but this young?! So strong he sent Fafnir away with its tail between its legs, isn’t that right?”
“Right, right, it was a-mazing I’m telling you~. One swing of his axe smashed the dragon’s scales to pieces, see~“
Saying that, Yig takes out a claw fragment.
It’s one from when I was trimming her claws the other day. She set it aside then, so I was wondering what she would use it for…
“Ooh, this is…”
“A raging dragon’s claw. I mean, you know about that tyrant rhino that got near the capital?”
“Ah, from about two months ago? We were advised to evacuate even out here at the time. The one from then?”
“Yeah, yeah. Look, here’s what it does to iron!”
Yig takes her own claw fragment, and drags it lightly across the tip of the spear the guard is holding.
That was all it took for scraps of iron to fall cleanly off the spearhead.
Where it was cut is so smooth it’s reflecting light like a mirror.
“Hey, cut it out. Seriously. Gonna cry if ya don’t end this.”
“Amazing, this is definitely the real deal. I understand, I’ll contact the village chief immediately.”
Seemingly not hearing a word Kevin is saying, the guard rushes into the village.
“Hey, listen! Why are you only ignoring the very subject of your conversation?!”
“People are creatures that only believe what they want to believe—“
“Stop talking like there’s some deeper meaning here. It’s your fault they’re getting carried away like that!”
Yig’s flashy performance built the ‘this is no ordinary person’ foundation upon which he was placed.
With her simple personality, they’re unlikely to doubt her either.
And like that Kevin’s fame was used to gain us a warm welcome into the village.
Chapter 45: Journey
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
Having prepared the holy water, and gathered together all our goods, it’s the day after we completed our preparations for departure.
We were trudging along on foot toward our target village.
If it was just me and Master, then we could have flown, but Amy and Kevin are here this time, so we take our time and walk there.
“This is tiring chief, I can’t just fly on my own, can I~?”
“Nope, no flying.”
“Cheapskate~”
We’ll be walking for two days, so Yig is quite indisposed about it.
Walking on a path through the forest toward the village feels a lot like we’re on a hike, so I’m enjoying it though.
Plus being deep in the woods reminds me of my home on the mountain, and that feeling isn’t bad.
“Yig, do you not like hiking?”
“Hmm? Walking with you is fun, chief~”
Mrgh, what a cute thing to say. I give Yig’s small body a big hug.
She rubs her cheeks on my chest in return, so her fluffy hair reaches my nose and gives off a pleasant smell.
This girl is constantly going to the hot springs, so there’s an earthy odor mixed in. It all makes for an excessively inviting sense of relaxation.
“Ahh, my goodness! These girls are so cute it’s unfair! Let me in on this—! Fuguh?!”
Amy came hurtling toward us shouting some nonsense, so I throw an attack at her and render her powerless.
Does she think we’re stuffed animals or something?
On that note, carrying her while she’s knocked out is Kevin’s job. Unlike me she’s well-padded, so carrying her on his back puts a pleased look on him.
“You lot… err, actually it’s no big deal, really.”
“Well, Kevin does get some side benefits from this. Her breasts are big, after all.”
“Her personality is way too awful!”
“Come on, she’s easy to get along with.”
“Do you want someone with a big chest too, Master Rimuru?”
He’s always telling me I’m thin, or that I’m not plump enough, so I thought that might be the case.
When he hears my downhearted voice, he hurriedly shakes his hands in denial.
“It doesn’t matter whether you have them or not. You have your own good points, Eir!”
“For example?”
“… Like how you’re crazy powerful?”
“That supposed to be a compliment to a woman?”
“Shut up! Then you try complimenting her, Kevin!”
Master flares up at Kevin for criticizing him.
Kevin looks my way, and tilts his head…
“Mm, you’re mercilessly strong.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It’s the first thing you notice about her. What do you expect?”
“Kgh, am I so lacking in feminine qualities…?”
“Rather than masculine or feminine, I’d say you fall under the childlike category, chief~”
“Can it.”
To turn my eyes away from Yig’s relentless evaluation, I stare at the path in front of us.
Trees lining the path form a tunnel with their branches, shrouding the sky, and not letting much light in. But the frequent foot traffic hardened the ground, making an easy to walk trail.
Far ahead is our destination, a village where bone wolves are appearing in this otherwise peaceful forest.
“Master Rimuru, what are bone wolves exactly?”
“They’re exactly as we talked about the other day.”
Evil spirits possessing the bones of dead bodies, turned into dog shapes that attack humans.
But bone wolves are supposed to require a whole lot of evil spirits to be there. Enough of them suddenly appearing in the middle of the forest… that thought made me feel that something is out of place.
“To begin with, bone wolves don’t usually appear alone. If there are enough spirits for undead to appear, then it being enough for exactly one of them practically never happens. You have to be ready for for multiple opponents. Like how in this case there are four of them.”
“That many corpses and spirits appearing is strange.”
“Suppose so. If you think about it, magic beast carcasses are often fully processed when they’re stripped of materials, and people get memorial services of course. Bone wolves appearing near a human settlement is, itself, rare.”
There are actually few undead in the world.
Of course that doesn’t mean they’re nonexistent, but like Master said, magic beast corpses are processed, and human bodies are buried. There aren’t many vessels for the undead with things being as they are.
In the first place, the souls that would turn into evil spirits are fundamentally absorbed altogether into the World Tree. Souls that manage to escape the World Tree’s grasp are scarce.
There are places where undead are likely to appear. Where adventurer parties died at the end of their journey, a savage area called the barbaric lands in the north, or battle sites of wars have the most potential.
The barbaric lands are an area that makes up the north half of the continent, where no countries hold power. A land where magic beasts, demons, vampires and the like run rampant.
This area only ever unified once temporarily, when the Demon King appeared long ago. It’s the world’s most lawless area.
Undead are born there daily it seems, but for anywhere that humans regularly manage, like the middle and southern parts of the continent, such cases are rare.
“There may be some other cause to this.”
“Hey now… you better not be telling me there’s more to this than bone wolves.”
“We weren’t tasked with handling the cause of it, so we can ignore it if you want?”
“As if I can ignore it after hearing that.”
Kevin looks astonished as he responds to Master’s suggestion.
“Not planning on acting like an ally of justice, but I’m still an adventurer. ‘I’ll just do what you mentioned, and I don’t care about the rest’ ain’t gonna fly.”
“Oh? You don’t want to bring shame to your reputation then. Half a year ago you would have said, ‘I don’t give a damn’ I’m pretty sure.”
“Don’t dig up the past! A lot’s happened since then. They wouldn’t let me do anything other than carry baggage even though I became an adventurer.”
“You said you defeated a goblin.”
Thinking back, I think Kevin said he killed a goblin on his first quest, and became a promising new face.
He turned into a braggart because of it though.
“Yeah, my first quest was letter delivery. When I left the town, goblins attacked, and I sent ’em packing.”
“That’s quite a win. You were a beginner, or rather practically an amateur at the time.”
“All they could do was use brute force too after all. It was a favorable match up. Hell, all that crap doesn’t even matter.”
“Ahh, yeah. Well in any case, we won’t know much until we get there.”
“Of course.”
Something is causing it at the village. Noticing that alone is probably a good thing.
If we just got rid of them and left without realizing, then more bone wolves would appear.
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
~*~
We continued our journey, and on the evening of our second day, the forest opened up to a small village.
This must be our destination.
A wood fence surrounds it, and armed guards can be spotted all over.
There’s no foot traffic on the roads, and it gives off a completely desolate air.
“They really look like they’re under attack.”
“Of course they do.”
“No bone wolves.”
“Couldn’t be this carefree if they were here, chief.”
“It might have been easier on us if they were here though.”
As we got close at our leisurely pace, the guards pointed their spears at us.
Their spears aren’t the well-made kind you might find at a weapon store, but crude ones carved from wood with their tips fastened on.
On closer inspection, the guards are also quite old, and they have scratch marks left here and there too.
It’s amazing they managed to defend the village from bone wolves in this state.
“Halt, where are you all from?”
“From Raum, the capital. We came to exterminate bone wolves as per a guild quest.”
“You did? You’re all just kids.”
“Well, Eir and Yig certainly look that way, but they’re plenty strong I’ll have you know?”
He’s treating us like we’re kids, but even though Master is saying that himself, he’s the youngest boy in the group.
Although he’s tall for his age, he’s also scrawny. He’s not solidly built like Kevin, so he probably doesn’t look reliable as an adventurer.
By the way, the oldest one of us is Yig of course, but next is Amy at seventeen, and then Kevin at fifteen.
I’m next at thirteen, and Master is twelve.
By appearance though, Kevin looks the oldest, then next is Amy. After that is Master, then me and Yig.
“The guild is being reckless… I can’t believe they’d send kids to take out bone wolves.”
“Wait, like I was saying, we’re plenty strong.”
“This is no time to be cocky! It’s really dangerous here.”
I know they’re worrying for us, but it seems like they aren’t willing to listen to us at all.
Master also seemed to think we weren’t going to make progress, and gave Yig an order.
“Yig, go punch the ground over there a bit.”
“Mmm, you sure?”
“It’s not a problem. Give them a nice show.”
“Okay~”
With a light reply, she takes some distance with a single leap.
“Ei~”
And just like that, with her unfocused shout, her slender, noodlefish-like hand came crashing down.
Immediately a thunderous roar, loud enough to make the ground shake, reverberates as the ground shakes exactly like an earthquake.
A dense cloud of dust rises up, blocking our view. Once it cleared up, a crater of several meters had been made.
“Wha?!”
“Amazing, right?”
“By the way, the girl over here is stronger than that.”
Saying so, Master points at me.
Pointing at people is bad manners.
“No way, stronger than that?!”
“Hmph, you shouldn’t call people ‘that’~”
“Going even further, the man over here is famed across the world as stronger than her.”
“Even stronger you say?! What an incredibly tough warrior!”
“Hey, cut it out already?!”
The next to be pointed at, Kevin, raises his voice, bordering on a scream. It’s true that Kevin is known across the land to be stronger than me, so Master isn’t actually lying.
Kevin has genuinely started going past the strength of an ordinary person, so nobody has caught on to Master’s boasting.
“Destructive power surpassing even this, you say. Truly, in that case you can probably purge those undead in one fell swoop.”
“Wait, that’s impossible for me, but—“
“If the bone wolves come after the disaster beast killer Kevin, they better be coming at him all at once.”
Cutting off Kevin’s denial, Master delivers the finishing stab.
At the words “disaster beast killer,” the eyes of the guard open wide in astonishment.
“The one from the rumors! I heard he was young, but this young?! So strong he sent Fafnir away with its tail between its legs, isn’t that right?”
“Right, right, it was a-mazing I’m telling you~. One swing of his axe smashed the dragon’s scales to pieces, see~“
Saying that, Yig takes out a claw fragment.
It’s one from when I was trimming her claws the other day. She set it aside then, so I was wondering what she would use it for…
“Ooh, this is…”
“A raging dragon’s claw. I mean, you know about that tyrant rhino that got near the capital?”
“Ah, from about two months ago? We were advised to evacuate even out here at the time. The one from then?”
“Yeah, yeah. Look, here’s what it does to iron!”
Yig takes her own claw fragment, and drags it lightly across the tip of the spear the guard is holding.
That was all it took for scraps of iron to fall cleanly off the spearhead.
Where it was cut is so smooth it’s reflecting light like a mirror.
“Hey, cut it out. Seriously. Gonna cry if ya don’t end this.”
“Amazing, this is definitely the real deal. I understand, I’ll contact the village chief immediately.”
Seemingly not hearing a word Kevin is saying, the guard rushes into the village.
“Hey, listen! Why are you only ignoring the very subject of your conversation?!”
“People are creatures that only believe what they want to believe—“
“Stop talking like there’s some deeper meaning here. It’s your fault they’re getting carried away like that!”
Yig’s flashy performance built the ‘this is no ordinary person’ foundation upon which he was placed.
With her simple personality, they’re unlikely to doubt her either.
And like that Kevin’s fame was used to gain us a warm welcome into the village.
