Episode 83: The Second Son of the Impoverished Viscount Household Searches for Eyes 5
*
Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I formed a party.
I pondered this as I swayed in the same carriage as John and Ezz.
If you could call the relationship between a master and disciple a party, then I suppose you could say I was in one, but…
No, calling that an adventurer party is too much of a wild claim.
Looking at the party members I’d be traveling with, even if only for the two days to the next town, I had a thought.
At the very least, they wouldn’t jump off a cliff while carrying me on their shoulder, nor would they try to skewer me along with a Monster just because they “thought I’d obviously dodge.” And that was from behind, mind you.
Incidentally, Erica is my life, or rather, half of my being, so she’s not part of the party.
Do you feel a special sense of camaraderie with your own right leg? You don’t, right? That’s basically what it is.
Also, it seems my life will end in less than one year.
Guh!
*
“Whoa! Shin-san suddenly spat blood!”
At Ezz’s shout, gazes gathered on me. I gave a light wave to show there was no problem.
While healing the inside of my cheek I reflexively bit through, I dispersed the splattered blood with Purification Magic.
Incidentally, Shara is on Erica’s side, so in my book, she doesn’t count.
The only ones who spoke casually to the masked man who suddenly spurted blood were Ezz and his partner, Pal.
From the others, I felt a distance, slightly different from wariness, but more than just the distance one keeps from an outside adventurer they don’t know.
Though perhaps this is a decent level of distance to maintain towards a mysterious masked adventurer—at least, I haven’t given my name.
This is probably also because of how John, the leader of this escort party, introduced me.
This is how John introduced me to the other adventurers:
“This guy is ‘Kind Barbara’s’ disciple.”
The expressions on the adventurers’ faces when I was introduced like that were hard to describe; it seemed like it would have been easier to read a frog’s expression.
Setting aside the adventurers’ reactions, John’s introduction made one thing clear.
That he’s from Faltar.
Knowing about me means just that.
If it were my master or my female disciple, even if they gained renown in other countries, I could accept that as just how things are.
Unfortunately, I haven’t had such brilliant achievements.
Despite having ‘Kind Barbara’ as my master, I was only Rank 4 in Faltar.
Even accounting for the fact I was attending the academy at the time, that’s probably slow.
Though it’s wrong to compare, my female disciple reached Rank 7 long ago.
My female disciple, ‘Elza the Impaler,’ is the genius type, but still, my slowness is nothing but proof of my mediocrity.
So, it was strange to me that John knew about me.
Well, I haven’t given my name, though?
I thought this while looking at John sitting opposite me.
*
The escort party leader, John, had no intention of adding more guards.
He was already looking after two fledgling adventurers, Ezz and Pal, entrusted to him by an acquaintance for this trip, and more importantly, the number of guards was more than sufficient. He was trusted enough by his employer to be given that much discretion.
Furthermore, the one who approached him was a masked adventurer.
Certainly, there is plenty of armor that completely covers the face, but no one goes around wearing a plain white Mask in the middle of town.
Normally, no one would consider letting such an obviously suspicious guy join a merchant caravan’s escort.
But the reason John still added the masked adventurer to the escort was none other than because he was a Longdagger.
He recalled the time when he was still based in Faltar’s Royal Capital.
In Faltar, a place full of crazy people, there was a boy surrounded by the craziest bunch of them all.
Surrounded by the crazy ones who found supreme joy in hunting Monsters solo in Faltar, where stronger Monsters appear more frequently compared to other countries.
The boy, who still had plenty of time to become anything he wanted, was smiling.
To John, who, unable to hold down any job for long, became an adventurer intending to make a living with his somewhat confident physical strength, the boy could only seem insane, or perhaps an incorrigible fool.
When he learned the boy was the disciple of that ‘Kind Barbara,’ he strangely came to understand, thinking, ‘Ah, I see, if he’s truly insane, then he could indeed smile while surrounded by that lot.’
By the time he found out the boy was a member of the nobility, he was hardly surprised by such trivialities anymore.
The boy’s name was Shin Longdagger.
In Faltar, where they say things like “Rank fraud” or “add 2 to a Faltar Adventurer Rank to compare it to other countries,” and even within that, in the Royal Capital’s Adventurers Guild, which was full of monsters.
Despite having only been an adventurer for about one year, the boy stood shoulder-to-shoulder with those monsters.
That was the masked man now sitting before him.
If he was joining the escort, setting aside the Mask issue, his skill was guaranteed.
“Hey, you.”
John waited until the masked man finished cleaning up the blood he’d suddenly spat before speaking.
He couldn’t be bothered dealing with every single one of these guys’ eccentricities.
“Are you really that Longdagger?”
“…I am Jin Goldendagger.”
John snorted at the answer.
He had checked the Guild Certificate when letting him join the escort.
It had been presented with a finger covering the name field so only the ‘dagger’ part was visible, but that was practically synonymous with saying he was Shin Longdagger.
What reason would an adventurer who was ‘Kind Barbara’s’ disciple and held a ‘proper’ Alias have for hiding his identity? While wondering this, he set the question aside.
“You said you’re going as far as the next town, but what are you going there for? What reason does an adventurer like you have for leaving the Demon Realm?”
More than that, yes, more than the fact he was hiding his identity, Shin leaving the City of Hecate was more puzzling for John.
From John’s perspective, it was already questionable that an adventurer like Shin, who had been surrounded by the crazy bunch in Faltar, had left Faltar in the first place.
But if told the Demon Realm itself was the objective, he thought, ‘I see, that’s certainly plausible.’
But now he was leaving Hecate, the very front line of that Demon Realm.
The first thing that came to mind was that perhaps he’d committed some crime in Hecate and was fleeing, but if that were the case, he’d run off on foot instead of using a carriage. An adventurer like Shin would be much faster running on his own feet.
If that wasn’t it…
“Is there something in the next town?”
The masked man hesitated slightly before answering John’s question.
Hearing the answer, John thought, ‘Yep, this guy really is one of those crazy ones after all.’