"But Tenma, are you really okay with that?"
What Branca meant by "okay with that" was the magic cores of the goblins that had attacked that village.
After finishing off the goblins and returning to the village, we went straight to the village chief and the guild master to report that the danger had likely passed, since we'd driven the goblins to a near-annihilation state. The villagers were overjoyed by this, and we were invited to be guests of honor at a village-wide banquet.
"They fed us all kinds of great food, so the goblin magic cores are no big deal. If anything, considering how much Shiromaru and the others ate, I was half-thinking we'd be the ones who owed them money. And they wouldn't even accept the magic cores from the Kings and other high-ranking species."
"Well, when you put it that way... I don't even know how many servings Miss ate herself."
Branca let out a sigh, apparently recalling just how much Amour had put away.
Between Shiromaru, Solomon, and Amour, they'd eaten close to half the food the villagers had put out, or at least it felt that way.
The villagers had watched their ravenous appetites with warm, amused smiles, which was a saving grace—but from Branca's and my perspective, it was a headache-inducing sight. As for Grandpa, he'd gotten into a drinking contest with the villagers and proceeded to floor every single challenger, which was a headache of an entirely different kind. Thanks to the recovery magic I'd cast on the collapsed people after giving them water to drink, nobody ended up with acute alcohol poisoning—but if things had gone even slightly differently, it could have been a disaster.
So as punishment, I had Shiromaru and Solomon watch for the direction the wagon was heading and check for Monsters in the surrounding area, while Grandpa and Amour had to take turns driving all day long.
It wasn't much of a punishment, but we still felt we had to do something or Branca and I wouldn't have been able to let it go. Though I doubt Grandpa and the others would consider it a punishment at all.
"I hope at least a little bit of reflection comes out of today."
"Agreed, even if just a tiny bit—woah!"
The moment Branca was about to agree with me, the wagon's speed suddenly surged. Thanks to the various modifications we'd made, this wagon was designed to absorb most bumps and jolts, so this kind of thing was essentially impossible under normal circumstances.
"Something happened!"
"Grandpa, Amour, what's go—ing on?"
I opened the window behind the driver's seat to ask what was going on, and the words caught in my throat the moment I saw it.
"Hmm, Shiromaru is too fast to keep up with!"
"As expected, even Ryden can't win when the wagon is hitched!"
Unbelievably, those two had started a race with Shiromaru, who was running alongside the wagon. Flat terrain or not, if they kept up this speed, the wagon—especially the wheels—would break apart any minute now.
"We'll settle it on the next downhill slope!"
"Alright, let's go!"
"You two, stop!"
"Whoa—!"
I grabbed Branca and seized the back collars of the two who were about to dash off at full speed, bringing them to a halt. The two of them made a "crap" face as they forced Ryden into a hard brake. The result was...
"Gwaaah!"
"Ooogh!"
Both of them were flung forward out of the wagon. And Branca and I got slammed into the window.
"Ugghhh..."
"Gah!"
Branca and I both held our faces, but Grandpa and Armel took even more damage than we did. The two of them writhed on the ground beside Ryden, clutching their faces.
"Branca."
"Sorry. Much appreciated."
After I cast a healing spell on my own face, I used magic on Branca too. Since both of them only had a nosebleed from a minor bruise, a light cast was enough to fix it up.
"Now then, you two — anything you'd like to say for yourselves? Especially you, Grandpa. You, of all people, should be able to gauge this wagon's structural strength just by looking at it, right?"
"Young lady, this is..."
Once again,
you've gone too far! Is the phrase 'reflect and learn' completely absent from your head?!"
Branca and I made Grandpa and Armel kneel on the ground and chewed them out with everything we had. Even those two could tell that a poor rebuttal would only make things worse, so they stayed silent and obedient to the very end. Although, Armel had gone numb in the legs mid-lecture and was struggling to concentrate, but she managed to tough it out.
"Ah, I can't walk... Shiromaru, stop! Solomon, house!"
Amour, unable to stand properly due to the numbness in her legs, was slowly making her way toward the carriage while using her spear as a makeshift crutch. But Shiromaru and Solomon, mistaking this for play, kept poking at her legs with their noses. To make matters worse, Amour's resistance was weaker than usual, so the two grew bolder. As a result, Amour kept stumbling over and over.
"Hmph, not good enough yet!"
When Grandpa saw Amour like this, he wore a smug expression for some reason and started heading toward the carriage himself. However—
"Shiromaru, Solomon! Grandpa says he'll play with you! And apparently he's got treats too!"
"What are you saying, Tenma?! D-don't come over here! Noooooh!"
I knew the truth. Grandpa's legs were numb too, and he was in no condition to stand properly either. So why hadn't he ended up like Amour? Because Grandpa had been secretly using magic. Moreover, since healing magic would be too obvious, he was levitating just barely above the ground with a levitation spell while casually using his staff to get around.
"Grandpa, that's cheap. If you're going to go that far, you might as well just use healing magic normally."
"I'm reflecting on my sins, so please get these things off meeeee!"
Since there was no point staying here any longer, I lured Shiromaru and Solomon away from Grandpa with food and, while I was at it, cast healing magic on both their legs.
"As punishment, until we reach Viscount Robo's town, you two are on your own as driver and night watch."
From here, it would take about a week to reach the town, so I decided to hand down a fairly harsh punishment.
For an adventurer of Grandpa's caliber, he'd probably been through things like this countless times, but having to support Amour as well would dramatically increase the burden. And for the inexperienced Amour, it went without saying.
"We're sorry…"
Both of them said just that one line, then trudged toward the driver's seat. Shiromaru and Solomon also began moving toward the front of the carriage, so I instructed them that even if Grandpa and Amour tried to race each other, they were to slow down and come back to me. I doubted they'd repeat their antics right after getting chewed out, but it was possible they'd naturally pick up speed in a competitive way, so this was just a precaution.
Three days after that, the carriage came to a sudden stop again. Since then, the two had been careful about safe driving, so maybe this time something had actually happened.
"Grandpa, what's going on?"
"There seems to be an armed group heading our way. They're still pretty far off, so they probably haven't noticed us yet."
Even as he said this, Grandpa was shaping his right hand into something like a telescope and holding it up to one eye, looking off into the distance. It was my first time seeing this spell, but as I'd imagined, it was clearly magic for seeing far away.
I used "Search" to check for myself and found a group of about fifty people roughly three kilometers ahead. I used "Appraisal" on one of them and found they were beastkin soldiers belonging to the target town's official garrison.
"Is there something else visible—wait, teach me that spell."
Since I was keeping "Search" and "Appraisal" a secret, Grandpa's telescope-like spell would serve perfectly as a cover. So if it was easy to learn, I wanted him to teach me right then and there. Though honestly, Grandpa probably already knew I could use "Search" and "Appraisal." He was called a Sage, after all, and those two spells, while extremely rare, were genuine magic that existed in this world. Even so, even with low-precision versions, nearly everyone who could use them supposedly belonged to the nobility or the underworld. Moreover, their existence was almost never publicly acknowledged or disclosed. After all, even low-precision ones could be used for crimes or to leverage weaknesses, so practitioners were either kept secret or eliminated. For the record, I'd used them many times myself, but that was only possible because I had "Concealment." If anyone found out I was using "Search" or "Appraisal," I could end up branded a criminal. Secretly scanning the castle's hidden passages or looking up the royal family's personal information—ages, abilities—without permission was, after all, top-secret material. Well, those particular people might settle for a mild complaint, but everyone else would make a fuss. Especially the Reformist Faction.
I'd gotten a bit sidetracked, but that was why I hadn't told Grandpa about those spells.
"Well, once you get used to it, it's not a difficult spell. In theory, it's something like stretching a barrier across both ends of a tube-shaped gesture with your hands. The real key to it, though, is—"
"Oh, I got it. Thanks, Grandpa."
"What?!"
From Grandpa's explanation, I figured out how to turn a tube made with my hands into a telescope using barriers. To put it simply, I imagined the barrier as something like glass, shaped it into convex and concave lens forms, and fitted them into both ends of the hand-made tube. Since it was my first attempt, the precision was pretty rough, but I fixed that through repeated fine-tuning and magical reinforcement.
"It took me years to master this spell, and you just—"
"I'll hear that story later. Branca, Amour—they're probably acquaintances of both of you."
"Really?"
"Really?"
"I think so. I can see a lot of tiger beastkin, and the armor they're wearing is all uniform. And more importantly, there's a woman near the front who looks a lot like Amour. Could she be Amour's older sister or a relative?"
"Older sister?"
Both of them tilted their heads in unison, so it might just be a passing resemblance. But since "Appraisal" identified them as regular soldiers, I figured it was fine to keep going. Even if we were questioned, I could show them the letter with the crest that Lady Maria had entrusted to me, and they shouldn't be able to do anything rash.
Thinking that, I quickly switched seats with Grandpa to grab the reins of Raiden, ready to produce the letter and my identification at a moment's notice. I'd thought about having Branca sit next to me since she was the same species as the soldiers and would make conversations easier, but Amour stubbornly refused to give up her seat to Branca. So with no other choice, Amour and I sat in the driver's seat and guided Raiden toward the group approaching from ahead.
"You there, in the carriage—halt! Are you people who came through the village up ahead?"
"If so, we have questions about that village."
Two young tiger beastkin broke away from the group that had noticed our approach and came running up to us. They seemed to be here to judge who we were.
"That's right. I'm an adventurer named Tenma Ootori, here on a commission from Seigen on behalf of someone. I need to know your affiliation and would like to speak with whoever's in charge of this unit."
The two beastkin gave me skeptical looks, but when I showed them the Ootori family crest—and, just to be safe, the crests of Duke Sanga and Marquis Samons—one of the beastkin ran off to report to the unit's leader. I'd handed over the Ootori crest but refused to part with the ducal and marquis crests, so the two of them were quite suspicious. The one who stayed behind was obviously wary of us. Still, I noticed he tilted his head when he looked at Amour, which nagged at me.
"Now that I'm seeing them up close, they're pretty imposing."
Ahead of my gaze was a group of beastkin heading our way. Most of them were tiger beastkin, so they were quite an intimidating bunch — the sort of intimidating that would make even underworld figures about to raid a rival organization blanch and step aside.
"So you're the adventurer who calls himself Tenma... This Ootori crest and family name mean nothing to me, so— Huh?"
The tiger beastkin man at the head of the group tossed me the Ootori family crest back, then froze for some reason. His gaze had landed on Amour, who was sticking close to me, and Branca, whose face was peeking out from the window behind me.
"Why are Amour and Branca with this brat? Wait, no — get away from Amour, you brat!"
Seeing the man baring his teeth in anger, Amour pressed even closer to me. I pushed Amour's face and peeled him away, but seeing that, the man now started saying something completely contradictory to before: "What do you have against Amour, you brat!"
"Sorry, Tenma. That's my brother-in-law, Rob — Amour's father. And the person you said was Amour's sister is probably..."
"Get away from him, you braaat!"
Completely unmoved by the plea — in reality, Amour was gripping my clothes and refusing to let go — Viscount Rob had finally reached his limit and lunged at me, when—
"Do be quiet!"
The woman standing behind Viscount Rob struck him on the back of the head... with the spear she was holding, no less.
"Buhwah!"
Smashed from behind, Viscount Rob drove face-first into the ground.
"My apologies."
Seeing the woman bow in apology, the old man who had poked his head out beside Branca asked, "That be Amour's big sister, then?" At that, Branca made an awkward face while Amour burst out laughing.
"Nice one, Gramps!"
Amour gave a thumbs-up through his laughter, and I noticed the woman's expression twitch slightly. Branca noticed the woman gripping her spear tighter and quietly withdrew back into the carriage, but Amour seemed completely oblivious to the atmosphere around him and continued:
"She just looks young for her age. In reality, she's a proper old la—buwagh!"
A razor-sharp strike from the woman's spear sank into Amour's forehead mid-laugh. The strike was so fast that even I, standing right next to Amour, barely managed to move — and that was about all I could tell. If that strike had been aimed at me, I would have taken a spear blow to the forehead just like Amour and smashed the back of my skull against the wall behind me. That's how fearsome it was. The only saving grace was that she struck with the butt cap of the spear and retracted it the instant it hit. Without that, Amour would surely have died without so much as a moment's suffering. Although even so, it was more than enough to crack his skull.
"For now, Amour, I'm going to cast a healing spell on you, so turn your forehead toward me."
"Tenma... kiss it and make it better, wagya!"
Instead of a kiss, I delivered a solid flick to Amour's forehead. Judging by the feel of it, Amour's head hadn't taken too much damage (though the inside seemed about the same as always), so I treated it with an ointment rather than a healing spell.
"Tenma, you're so mean... but I still like you."
"Please, let's just be friends."
"I'm not letting Amour marry anyone, blegh!"
"You two sure are close, huh~"
The suddenly revived Baron Robo had his head stepped on by the woman and was once again driven into the ground. This time, he sank in deeper than before.
"So if this woman isn't Amour's older sister, then could she perhaps be?"
"Amour's mom~!"
"I should have considered the age difference... ah ha!"
"Tch, missed."
From my perspective, Amour's mother's actions felt a bit contrived, but not so much that they were truly jarring. However, for Amour himself—being family—he was apparently filled with enough discomfort that he couldn't help but call her out on it. And then, he immediately tilted his body sideways to dodge, and this time he perfectly evaded that razor-sharp strike.
Because Amour dodged, it may have looked on the surface like no one was hurt, but in fact a victim had very much emerged... Baron Robo was being used as a footstool under Amour's mother's feet. Head first...
"Dad, are you dead?"
"It's just this much, he'll be fine. His greatest asset is being durable, after all."
While Baron Robo sank into the ground, mother and daughter carried on their conversation. In that household, Baron Robo's status was depressingly low.
"Well, putting all that aside, you're the one Amour chose. So then,
let's
have a go, shall we?"
With those words, the woman began her preparations with an inexplicably cheerful look on her face.