Chapter 8

Chapter 8. "The Thing Bought from Them with Money." (2)

She turned right around, wrapped her arms around me, and began kissing me deeply. By the time my mind had nearly melted away, she finally pulled her lips from mine and stepped back.

Rene's lips glistened, slick with the saliva we had shared. My lips probably looked the same right now. She curved those shining lips into a smile and said,

"For the next two days, we will not be able to kiss whenever we please."

"Ah? I-Is that so?"

I was still unable to recover from the shock of what had just happened, so my voice came out somewhat vacant, and Rene bared her white teeth as she agreed with me.

"Th-that-is right. Come, let us go."

Then she took two longswords and a pair of gauntlets from the wardrobe, came over to me while I still stood there blankly, hooked her arm through mine, and led me out to where Exel was waiting outside. (She led me, but I was basically being dragged.)

When she guided me out into the hall, Exel greeted us with a bored look, having already finished off a cup of tea and now slaughtering the cookies Rene had baked this morning to call him over. Holding a half-vanished cookie in one hand and propping his chin up with the other arm, he said,

"Can we depart before the day is over?"

"I am sorry. We kept you waiting a long time, did we not?"

At Rene's words, Exel tossed the cookie in his hand into his mouth, rose from his seat, and showed us the completely empty cookie basket, which drew bitter smiles from both Rene and me. He lifted the backpack he had set beneath the table and slung it over his shoulder, then asked,

"Have you packed everything?"

"Yes."

As she answered, Rene showed him the large backpack strapped to my back, and Exel nodded before asking again,

"And your weapons?"

At those words, Rene showed him the two longswords hanging at either side of her waist, and I opened both hands in their gauntlets and showed them to him.
Exel nodded at the sight of Rene's equipment, but when he looked at me, he frowned slightly and said,

"That is all?"

"Mmm. What about you, then?"

Shrugging at my question, Exel picked up the sword leaning against the chair, one that looked rather like a bastard sword, and showed it to me.

It was a strange blade. The edge was split into two, and mounted on the guard above the hilt was an odd cylinder about the size of an ordinary man's fist.

Between the two divided blades, a hexagonal iron rod rose up from one side of that cylinder and crossed through the middle.

Rene gave her impression of the sword he was holding.

"That is a very interesting-looking sword. I do not know much about weapons, but what is that attached to the guard?"

"I will show you when we get into a real fight."

That was all Exel said as he simply fastened the sword to his backpack with a leather belt, and Rene gave a faint, wry smile and nodded.

She was probably hoping we would not run into any monsters. Well, of course she was. She was an elf.

But, my dear, you really should give up on that hope. This was the Forsaken Land, where every monster with nowhere else to go ended up gathering.

Rather than hoping not to meet any at all, it would be better to hope we did not meet too many.

Once he had strapped the sword to his pack, Exel tied back his long silver hair tightly with a leather cord and said,

"Well then, it seems preparations are finally complete. Let us depart. No objections, I trust?"

Rene and I answered his words with small smiles. Exel nodded once, opened the door, and stepped outside. At that moment, Rene, standing beside me, slipped her arm through mine and said,

"Come. Let us go."

"All right."

When we went outside, Exel was waiting some distance away. Looking back at us, he asked,

"Are you not locking the door?"

"So no one will come in?"

At that, Exel gave a short laugh and said,

"Fair enough. It is a house that has never once been attacked by monsters, after all."

I turned to Rene and smiled, and Rene smiled sweetly at the roses surrounding the house. The rosebushes: There is an elf here.

Any who seek help, come. The kobold group from before, and the Lizard Men as well, had seen those rosebushes and chosen not to attack.

In any case, that was how we left the house.

"Uwaaaahhh!!"

KABOOOM!!

CRAAACK! THUD!!

"Reed! What are you doing!? Run!"

Ahead of me, Exel shouted as he counterattacked the ogres charging from behind me with his sword.

KABOOOM! "Krrk!"

KABOOOM! "Kuhek!"

KABOOOM! "Ker...."

One of the charging creatures lost an arm, then a leg, then its head in sequence, smashed bodily into a nearby tree, and collapsed.

At that, the rest of them fixed their bloodshot eyes on me, the one lagging farthest behind the group, and came charging.

Damn it! I had thought I had blocked their vision by knocking down that tree a moment ago, but they had simply kicked it aside and kept coming.

Left with no choice, I ran for my life until I had opened a decent gap between us, then hoisted up a nearby rock and shouted,

"Rene! I am counting on you! Hyaaah!!"

The rock I hurled flew, slow yet swift enough, toward the one in the lead. When that leading brute saw the rock growing larger and larger, it simply stretched out an arm and shattered it midair, roaring as it did.

BAM!! KWA-BOOOOM!!

"Qwerelelelelelek!!"

As stone dust and dirt flew everywhere, Rene's clear voice rang out from above, where she had already run ahead, climbed a tall tree, and begun casting.

"One Time Blind!"

"Keeek?!"

The ogre that had charged first and smashed my rock with a single blow suddenly clutched both hands over its eyes and bowed its head.

At that instant, Exel, who was running ahead of me, raised his sword and aimed at its thigh.

KABOOOM!!! "Kuhek!!"

Blinded in an instant, blood gushing from its thigh, the creature running in front fell straight to the ground.

The others charging behind it shrieked strangely and twisted their bodies aside to avoid it, but perhaps because of their speed, they crashed into the fallen brute before they could fully turn and tumbled together in a heap, rolling toward us at terrifying speed.

Exel and I clenched our mouths shut and kept running straight ahead without once looking back. Up ahead, Rene leaped down from the tree in haste and shouted,

"Do not look back! Just run!"

"Kyaruk, kyaaaaaaak!!"

CRUNCH! CRACK, RRRRIP!!

A moment later, when we finally reached where Rene was, she suddenly changed direction and said,

"To the side!!"

Aaaah! Exel and I glanced briefly at each other, then veered sideways at once. The mass of rolling ogres behind us barreled straight ahead and only stopped after slamming into a massive tree. But we kept running all the same. Ogres were such a nuisance to deal with because they were simply too large, and we had no desire to fight them anyway. We would be the ones to lose out.

And if they were roaming in packs like that, it meant they had some kind of nest nearby where they lived as a group, which in turn meant reinforcements would come swarming soon. So we had to get out of there as quickly as possible.

How long had we run? About ten minutes of sprinting at full speed, perhaps, when Rene, who had been springing from treetop to treetop ahead of us, turned her head and shouted,

"Be careful! There is a gargoyle about thirty meters ahead to the right!"

"Has it seen us!?"

Exel shouted back, almost more a roar than a question, and soon Rene's answer came.

"No! It has not noticed us yet!"

"Good! Then let us strike first! I will go in ahead! Miss Tarsis, wait, then come with Reed!"

At that, Rene stopped atop a tree, and Exel and I ran on ahead. Sure enough, after a little while, I saw a gargoyle crouched on the ground with its long wings folded like a bat's.

It seemed to be asleep; its eyes were partly shut. But that made no difference to us. Exel charged first, dashed like an arrow before its face, and pressed his sword toward its head.

KABOOOM! "Kkueeeeeek?!"

There was an enormous explosion and a spray of sparks, but the creature was not wounded. Apparently startled, it jerked up its head, screamed, and began flapping its wings as it tried to rise, and at the same moment, Rene and I, now both on the ground, rushed it.

Rene moved first. She ran forward and swung the longsword she was holding, sheath and all, slamming it into the creature's face. It was in the middle of shrieking, but its neck snapped to the side.

THWACK! "Kkueeeee... kwek?!"

After smashing the gargoyle across the face like that, Rene immediately ran past it. The creature almost toppled over, then twisted itself back upright and whipped its head toward me.

With a stupid, dazed look on its face, it stared at me as I came running, and before it could fully regain its senses, I used the momentum of my sprint, leaped up from directly beneath its head, and kicked it hard in the jaw.

"Kkuee...."

The creature collapsed limply and did not move again. Had it fainted?

Whatever. We had to get out of here quickly. Thinking that, the moment I landed, I ran straight for where Rene was without even glancing back.

After running a bit farther, I saw Exel and Rene waiting for me ahead.

"So, you finally made it?"

"Yeah."

"Are you all right? I was worried."

Rene spoke with a somewhat dark look on her face, and I looked at her with an apologetic expression.

"Sorry for making you worry."

At my words, Rene shook her head, came closer, and said,

"It is all right. You must be able to overcome at least this much hardship if you are to be called my husband, must you not?"

I gave her a small smile at that, and she stood beside me smiling back. Then Exel, who had been sitting against a boulder and listening closely to the conversation between husband and wife, said,

"All right, all right. Let us rest here for a while before moving on. There is a man-eating flower called Big Flower nearby, so most monsters do not come close."

"Ah, all right."

Plant-type monsters were not very mobile, so it should be fine for us to rest a little. We took a short break to catch our breath.

As I accepted the cup of water Rene handed me, Exel began maintaining the sword he was holding. I watched it closely for a while, then said to him,

"That... is a gun blade, is it not?"

"You knew?"

"I just remembered."

"That is right. It is a gun blade."

He nodded and admitted it, and I looked at the sword with interest. The blade Exel was carrying was something I had once heard about only in rumors when I visited a village: the so-called gun blade. There were only two in this world. One was owned by the daughter of some marquis house, and the other....

"KABOOOOOM!!!"

CRAAAACK~~~ RRRRUMBLE!! THUD!!

"...Kkwek?!"

...was in Exel's hands.

Exel, while tending to his sword, casually used it as a kind of warning toward an orc hiding behind a tree and watching us in silence.

When the tree shielding its body suddenly vanished, the orc stared blankly for a moment, then fled with its brow twitching.

From what I had heard, the gun blade was a sword that, by means of some peculiar mechanism, could spew fire with a tremendous roar and snipe a distant target. No one yet knew the principle behind how it worked.

When I looked to the side, I saw Rene covering her ears and frowning slightly. Exel apologized to her in a contrite tone.

"My apologies. I should have warned you first."

"It is all right. But that truly is an extraordinary sword, is it not?"

Exel lowered his arm and rubbed at his wrist a little as he said,

"Ah, yes. Aside from the fact that my wrist starts aching after I use it, it is a fairly serviceable sword."

"Really? But how does it spew fire and smash trees apart like that?"

When I asked that with a curious look, Exel gathered his things again, then pointed with his chin toward Rene, who was sitting quietly beside me, and said,

"Ask Miss Tarsis about it later. It seems she has already figured it out."

I turned my head and glanced at Rene, and she smiled brightly and waved a hand at me. So she knew? Well, I would ask her whenever I found the time.

Exel lifted the backpack he had tossed on the ground and slung it over his shoulder, then somehow flipped open the strange cylinder attached to the guard of the gun blade in his hand and shook out several little pieces of metal the size of a man's thumb.

Then he took identical pieces from his pocket and inserted them one by one into the cylinder, spun it once, and struck it with his hand.

The rotating cylinder clicked neatly back into the guard. What a strange construction. So were the pieces that had fallen out simply discarded?

With the gun blade slung over his shoulder, Exel gazed lazily toward the place where the orc had fled and said,

"From here on out, there will be fewer monsters. Let us break through in one push and reach the village before sunset."

Rene nodded at his words, then looked at me and said,

"Han. Shall we race to see who is faster? The finish line is Wolf Rock."

"Ah, all right."

"I am going first."

Exel, who had been listening quietly to our conversation, said that and sprang forward, kicking up a little dust.

After watching his retreating back for a moment, Rene and I looked once at each other's faces and immediately set off as well.