After being seen off by the mayor and townspeople, they departed from Gra.
The carriage carried the members who had been seriously injured in the previous battle, and the remaining three of Arnold's group—minus the driver—walked alongside, guarding from the outside.
The newly prepared carriage was custom-ordered, one size larger than the one Arnold's group had been using until now, with enough room for even the large-framed Arnold to ride comfortably. The horses had been well-bred too, and since they'd purchased them alongside the base change, the carriage was a step up in quality from their previous one.
The brash young Hunter—Gilbert—said admiringly: "Man, at Level 7, you really do get to use a fancy carriage."
Hunters rarely used fancy carriages. The more you spent, the more comfortable the ride, but carriages were prone to breakage, and replacing an expensive one was a serious financial burden. For Hunters who burned through money on potions and weapons, the cost of a carriage was always a headache.
Behind Arnold's carriage followed a smaller, plainer one—Gilbert's party's carriage, brought along by Ei.
Arnold glanced back at the young Hunters nervously guarding the carriages and furrowed his brow.
He'd heard the reasons. He could guess why Ei had brought Gilbert and the others along. Insurance.
It was a decision made with the Party's best interests in mind, and Arnold had no intention of complaining. But the very fact that insurance was necessary was what irked him.
After a full two-day break, the injured members had recovered to some extent, and the fatigue had eased somewhat, but Arnold's mood hadn't cleared one bit. Every time he closed his eyes, the taunting smirk that Peerless Shadow had flashed at their parting surfaced in his mind.
"So, old man—is it true you've killed a dragon? How tough are dragons, really?"
"Hey, Gilbert! S-sorry, he doesn't mean any harm..."
Compared to that, Gilbert's words were almost endearing. Arnold had seen plenty of fearless, energetic youngsters before.
Watching Gilbert's companion rush over and put him in a headlock, Arnold snorted.
If they were mocking him, that'd be one thing, but he wasn't bored enough to intimidate someone just for speaking a little roughly.
At that moment, Ei slipped in with a grin plastered across his face.
"Sure. Even an ordinary dragon is a formidable opponent—but what we fought wasn't an ordinary dragon. The Thunder Dragon of Nebulnes was a beast that repelled an army of a thousand. The orc horde we fought this time was pretty sizable too, and the leader was strong, but compared to that Thunder Dragon, it was nothing."
"I see... dragons really are something else. Dragon Slayer... I'll become one someday, for sure. I swear on my sword!"
Gilbert drew the sword from his hip and declared with boundless confidence, and even Ei couldn't help but let a look of exasperation cross his face.
"You can't kill a dragon with just a sword. If it's a ground dragon that can't fly, there's still a chance... but first you've got to drag it down from the sky. Otherwise, there's no fight to be had."
"Is that so... but if the sword can't reach, can't you just jump to where it can?"
"Well, sure, you might reach it if you jump... but how exactly do you plan to dodge the breath attack in midair..."
The subjugation of the Thunder Dragon. That was both the source of confidence and the pride of the Thunder Dragon of the Mist.
The dragon's roar. The flashing lightning, the battle cries. The scorching heat that made his body tremble, and the sight of the dragon finally falling—all of it, Arnold could still recall as though it had happened just moments ago.
No matter how powerful the enemy, Arnold—who had slain a dragon that could topple a kingdom—would not back down.
Perhaps exasperated by words so far beyond the speaker's weight class, Ei changed the subject.
"Oh, by the way—we haven't been in this country long, so we don't know much, but... what kind of Party is the Mourning Specter? If you know anything, could you fill us in...?"
He'd had intelligence gathered, but almost nothing useful had turned up. In particular, the information on the Thousand Transformations—the ones he'd focused on researching—was virtually nonexistent.
They were undoubtedly strong at Level 8, and since they operated out of the Imperial Capital, Hunters there might know something.
At Ei's words, Gilbert puffed out his chest and spoke with a hint of pride—while his companions rolled their shoulders with faint exasperation.
"Well, I've already looked into every strong Party out there. They're my targets to surpass someday. ...Though, detailed info was hard to come by, and the only ones I've actually met are the Thousand Transformations and the Peerless Shadow, but—"
Gilbert began talking eagerly, but nothing in his account held anything particularly new.
It was about the same as what Ei had found through his own research upon arriving in the Imperial Capital, unaccustomed as he was to the city.
A swordsman and a Guardian Knight. A Mage, an Alchemist, and two Thieves. And then—Thousand Transformations, whose combat techniques and everything else were completely unknown.
The presence of an Alchemist was unusual, but the overall composition wasn't especially noteworthy. You could also call it a formation with no openings.
Every piece of information pointed to Arnold's disadvantage.
They didn't seem to have the best reputation, but their track record was solid.
Most of their members seemed to be absent at the moment, but a confrontation was inevitable eventually.
"Since I'm a swordsman, the one I've got my eye on is Luke of the Thousand Swords. He's a famous genius swordsman out of Zebuldia—traveled to every dojo across the country, mastered every school of swordsmanship, and when none of them suited him, he ended up creating his own techniques."
"...A self-taught style, huh."
Arnold was a swordsman too. But strictly in terms of technical skill, his swordsmanship was probably "decent."
For Hunters, who needed to master a wide range of abilities, swordsmanship was merely one component of overall strength.
Besides, swordsmanship duels were fundamentally designed for swordsman-versus-swordsman combat, but a Hunter's opponents were Monsters and Phantoms. Delving too deeply into it could actually lead to misjudgments in real combat.
A genius swordsman. Normally, that'd be a term you'd dismiss with a laugh, but when someone carried it as an actual epithet as a Hunter, the story was different. His swordsmanship was a given, but his overall strength must be considerable as well.
A smile naturally crept onto Arnold's face at the intelligence about a powerful enemy. Before anything about revenge, learning about a strong opponent and wanting to cross blades—that was the nature of a Hunter.
After several hours of travel along the road, Arnold stopped the carriage in the middle of a sparsely wooded plain.
Gilbert's carriage, which had been following behind, stopped as well.
The reason Arnold had stopped was the tracks in the ground.
Branching off from the well-trodden road, a fresh set of tracks continued onward.
"Hm? Um... is something wrong?"
"They've left the road. Ei."
"...No mistake. Not much time has passed. A day, maybe?"
Ei raised his head with a serious expression and looked in the direction the tracks led.
If they were heading for town, they should have followed the road. That was Arnold's plan, and any reasonable person would take the safer highway.
That was exactly why the off-road tracks stood out. The wheel impressions crushing the soft grass were subtle, but Arnold's eyes weren't so soft they could be fooled by something like that.
The tracks headed in the direction of the Garest Mountains, where numerous Monsters were said to dwell.
"Nine times out of ten, it's them. I doubt ordinary travelers—having heard Monsters roam there—would choose to cross."
Choosing a mountain pass was something only those with considerable confidence in their abilities would do. Not only were there Monsters, but bandits as well. Even the most thick-skinned merchant wouldn't take that route.
The timing was too perfect to be a coincidence. Considering when the Thousand Transformations had left town, the tracks were obviously theirs.
"They're planning to cross the mountain? They must be in quite a hurry... No—"
If their destination was Gradius territory, crossing the mountain wouldn't provide much of a shortcut. Factoring in time spent fighting Monsters, it was an option only someone very confident in their combat abilities would choose.
And the fact that the Thousand Transformations had deliberately left these tracks behind—was self-evident.
If it wasn't intentional and they actually thought Arnold's group would overlook tracks this obvious, then they were being made a fool of.
Considering Peerless Shadow's provocation at their parting, the conclusion was clear.
Arnold clenched his teeth and glared at the tracks stretching into the distance.
"Is this supposed to be an invitation? Is this all you've got? Come and get me—is that it... Thousand Transformations!"
"...What shall we do?"
"...Hey, Gilbert. Let me ask you something. Does that man—fear a horde of Monsters?"
At Arnold's strained voice, Gilbert tilted his head in a moment of contemplation, then immediately spoke up in a loud voice.
"He doesn't. A Level 8 man—a man who didn't even draw his weapon in front of a Phantom—there's no way he's afraid. Are you afraid, old man?"
"!?"
Ruda tried to intervene, but it was too late. Arnold's decision had been made long before he'd even thought to ask Gilbert.
"...We're going. Over the mountains."
§ The old path through the Garest Mountains was just barely wide enough for their newly acquired carriage.
Dense trees pressed in on both sides, narrowing their field of vision, and the cries of Monsters echoed from no particular direction from time to time.
But what truly left Arnold's group speechless was—the abandoned carcasses of Monsters.
Scattered regardless of species, the remains were clearly fresh, and considering that some had been partially devoured by beasts and other Monsters, there were far too many of them.
Whether it was Gilbert and Ruda—the younger Hunters—or even Ei, who had witnessed countless brutal battlefields, all of them grimaced at the sight.
"This—all done by the Thousand Transformations...?"
"...Mountains are supposed to have a lot of Monsters, but this is absurdly many. Did something happen...?"
Monster carcasses could be sold. With this many, it would have been a small fortune, but the complete absence of any signs that they'd been collected suggested it was simply a matter of sparing the effort.
What compounded the unsettling feeling was that virtually no Monsters had attacked Arnold's group.
With this much blood and flesh scattered about, it wouldn't be strange for scavenging Monsters to swarm, yet not a single one was in sight—as if every last one had fled somewhere.
Mountains were supposed to have plenty of low-intelligence Monsters too... Had they all fled from the Thousand Transformations? Had they sensed their power?
Arnold couldn't make sense of the situation. A bad feeling crept over him.
There were many Monsters, but few large ones. Arnold's group could probably create this kind of scene themselves if they wanted to.
But doing so would require the prerequisite of being attacked by a massive number of Monsters.
The memory of being ambushed by the orc horde flashed through his mind.
The situation was reversed this time—it was the Thousand Transformations who had been attacked—but the creeping dread was equally strong.
"What did you do... Thousand Transformations. No—why did they choose this road in the first place?"
Was it really just to provoke them?
"Arnold... should we turn back?"
Having been thinking the same thing, Ei asked in a quiet voice.
Arnold looked up at the trail of carcasses stretching into the distance and shook his head silently.