Chapter 19 – Regards
“Whoa…”
After walking for a long time in the heat, Horde let out a hot sigh.
As Lina said, there were many inns, but it was not easy to find a room.
If that was all, it would have been hard on the body, but the problem was the two people behind the Horde.
YuRia and Mirian did not exchange a word with Horde, let alone make eye contact, and this was not unusually uncomfortable.
Of course, when I was looking for an inn, I answered the question of how this inn was, but she was the only one who didn’t share her private words at all.
‘Chew… Didn’t I just say I was going to save it by myself?’
Horde sincerely thought so, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and continuing to visit the inn with the two of them.
After wandering around for a while, we were able to find two rooms, but they were so large that four women could stay in them.
‘Am I sharing the same room as the dragon…’
She wasn’t too comfortable sharing a room with the hero, but she didn’t want to go outside and go through the trouble of finding a room again.
After getting her room, Mirian said to Yuria, who was sweating from exhaustion like Horde.
“Yuria, I’m thinking of going to the forge to find new armor, but what are you going to do?”
“I am… I’m going to take a break and do some magic training.”
“Is it. Then Horde…”
“Huh? Me?”
Rarely, when Mirian called Horde’s name, Horde looked at Mirian with a bright color.
“If you have nothing to do, won’t you wait for us at the place where we decided to wait for the hero? If anything happens, I intend to go…”
The Horde wanted to tell them to kill themselves to go out again in this scorching sun, but here, first, they had to raise their liking.
“I will go and wait.”
Mirian opened her eyes wide as if Horde’s answer was unexpected, but YuRia went into her room silently as if she had no interest.
“Is it… If you wait outside, it will be hot, so try waiting at a nearby store. You must have that much money in your backpack.”
Having said that, she left her inn to get new armor, just like she said earlier.
I don’t know if her last words were out of favor, but hearing her words made Horde feel better.
YuRia went into the room and Mirian left. Horde, who was left alone in the inn, took a hat and some money from his backpack and came out.
Even with the hat on, it was still hot outside, and the heat felt like the Horde knew why the people in this city were so tanned.
‘Money is… Not that many.’
I didn’t have that much money left because I had spent almost all my money when I paid for the room at the inn earlier.
Although the hero received the support money, it was carefully managed with the party’s common funds, and when the funds were used, they were all recorded in the ledger.
‘If only I knew…’
In the past, he had Yuriana and Mirian to tamper with her books and embezzle a little of her support money, but now that is no longer possible.
In the end, Horde, who had been waiting outside, took refuge in a nearby shop as the day became too hot.
However, when the money ran out for a while, he couldn’t win the eyes of the store owner and was kicked out again shortly after.
“Whoa… Fuck.”
I was able to escape the sunlight a little in the shade of the alley, but that didn’t completely go away from the murderous heat.
‘How the hell do those bastards move?’
The Horde was genuinely amazed at the sweaty laborers carrying the load.
Horde was a porter, but the place he worked most of the time wasn’t that hot even in the summer, and more than anything else, when it was too hot, YuRia would periodically cool Horde down.
‘The old days were good…’
The Horde, who was depressed by the old memories for a while, prayed for the hero to come as soon as possible.
However, contrary to the wishes of the Horde, the hero came only when the sun was setting.
*****
“Please be careful.”
Saying that, the hero who received the key given to him by this magazine exclaimed when he saw the key.
The key looked no different from an ordinary key on the outside, but it was a sophisticated magic tool that felt a lot of magical power inside the key.
“This key is a magic tool.”
“Oh! Did you find out? There is a dangerous ore inside that can be exploited by the Demon King’s Army, but it cannot be sealed with an ordinary door!
In addition, this magazine handed over the map of the mine that was recorded in the past to the hero.
While the hero rolled up the map and pinned it to her waist, Lina, who drew her bow before she knew it, said.
“But do you have any information about the town? I’ve heard of a mining town, but is there any other information besides that?”
In this paper, Lina suddenly spoke short and frowned at her moment, but when she saw Lina’s long ears, she quickly relaxed her expression and said,
“Hmm… That information is a bit outdated. The Grid Mall has turned into an adventurer’s town, which mainly focuses on defeating monsters these days.”
In the past, it was possible to mine ore because there were not so many demons in the mine, but at some point, the number of demons increased so much that it became difficult these days.
Every time he swung his pickaxe to dig up ore, monsters flocked to the mine, making it impossible to work as a miner.
The answer that Grid Mall residents came up with, wondering how they would make a living in the future, was to hunt monsters living in the mines.
Most of the villagers were miners, so they had excellent physical abilities, and the by-products of the demons living in the mines were traded at a considerable price.
In that way, the mining town of Grid Mall was reborn as the adventurer’s town of Grid Mall.
“The director of the Lindmell branch lives in a foreign country, so he must have no idea. After all, it’s not even that old.”
“But is it strange? Why did the devil grow so much? Is there anything inside?”
“To be precise, it did not increase. I found out with magic, but in the first place, there were many monsters living deep in the mine.”
“Then would it be right to judge that it was kicked out by something rather than suddenly increased?”
Hearing Lina’s words, the hero thought of Lindmerle’s giant iron mountain bear.
If the monsters who lived underground were driven out by something like the Iron Mountain Bear Incident, it would have been a roughly correct story.
“But that happened, why didn’t the guild investigate?”
“That… I have nothing to say about that.”
Tektis was also a place far away from the front line, so it was the expression of a complacent thought that there was no way there would be an officer of the Demon King’s army nearby.
And above all, the low strength of monsters appearing in the mines contributed to this, and the increase in income from mines, which had been low in income due to the abundance of monsters, was also the cause.
“Therefore… Taxes and adventurer’s guild fees increased due to the monster subjugation, so I just let it go and watched it?”
In response to Lina’s reprimand, the magazine lowered her head as if she had no face.
“… No face. In the first place, the mine was a place where miners could go, since the iron was already mined in the past, and from the perspective of the territory, it was just a bright apricot.”
“Then you just have to subdue the monsters inside and dig them up, right?”
“We’ve thought about that too…”
The mine was so cramped that it was difficult to use magic and difficult for many people to come and go.
In the territory, as the hero said, he tried to subdue the demons in the mine several times, but failed each time.
At one point, there were so many corpses in the mine that even a terrible plague circulated, and after that, Yeongji gave up the mine.
However, even so, the area where the monster did not come out was still full of iron and other ores, so the miners did not leave and settled in the village.
“I wonder if it was connected somewhere else, and it kept popping out no matter how many times I grabbed it…”
“All right. Then I will investigate the mine and let you know the results.”
“Yes. I will pray for the warrior’s luck here.”
After saying that, when the Hero and the others were about to go outside, the head office stopped the Hero and the people who were about to leave and said,
“Ah, warrior! Please wait!”
“Do you have anything else to say?”
“Yes! Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and my memory fluctuates, so I forgot to tell you something important. If there is a spy from the Demon King’s army in that village, you can just kill it!”
“… Yes?”
“Oh that… In case you didn’t know, all the spies and executives of the Demon King’s Army are enchanted to prevent betrayal, so they can’t dig up information. So, you can just kill them!”
Anyone who cooperates with the Demon King’s Army is sentenced to death without trial, regardless of their status.
This was common knowledge that everyone living in this world knew.
The hero was well aware of that fact, and even if he was a human like him, he was prepared to kill him if he surrendered to the demon army.
But when he was told to kill, he became worried that he could really kill people.
The hero has never killed anyone. He was even given a mission to subdue bandits, but he did not kill them all, but captured them alive and handed them over to the judge.
And since the Demon King’s military executive self-destructed, he had never actually killed anyone.
‘When I was dealing with that executive, I was going to kill him, but…’
Hearing those words begging for his life, he hesitated in his heart for a very brief moment.
If something happened to kill someone, he was worried about whether he would be able to kill someone without hesitation.
“Warrior? Why?”
“Yes? Oh no… It’s nothing.”
The warrior, who was deeply immersed in thought, continued to tell the magazine.
“If that happens, I will do as I say.”
“This is so trustworthy! Then I’ll leave it to you.”
The meeting with the guild master ended like that, and the warrior left the room with his shoulders drooping.
“…”
Lina, who was quietly watching her back, patted her hero on the back and said.
“I told you before I came here, but I’ll take care of that, so you don’t have to worry about the hero. Murder is familiar.”
“I will help at least a little bit. You don’t have to worry because I’ve learned how to deal with heretics in the temple!”
“…”
The hero, who could not bear to nod at the words of the two, opened his mouth with determination.
“No… Don’t worry, I’ll do it myself if that happens.”
If I don’t like it, others will hate it too.
As long as the hero was able to do it himself, he couldn’t pass it on to Lina or her other colleagues.
He had to bear the guilt and guilt of killing people himself.
“Um… They’re scum that betrayed humanity in the first place, so there’s no need to worry so much about them.”
“The Lord also said that humans who betrayed mankind are not human beings, so treat them like livestock.”
“… I know, but it just keeps bothering me.”
The hero’s party got out of the guild that way, and the hero changed his subject to change the atmosphere that had become complicated because of him.
“But you know, do I look weak?”
“Huh? What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“No, it seems that whenever I enter a guild in another city, I get attacked a lot for testing my skills.”
“Ah… That… What? It’s not that he looks weak, but should I say he looks kind? It’s a bit lacking in experience.”
“Respected…”
Hearing Lina’s words, the hero recalled an adventurer with scars on his face that he once saw and rubbed the hilt of his sword.
“Then shall we scar the face? Then I’ll stick with the authority…”
“No way!!! I’d rather cut off the arms of those who dare!!”
When Lina suddenly screamed at her, the hero jumped behind her in surprise.
While taking a backward step, the hero who was following right behind collided with Martha, and the hero’s head naturally turned toward Martha.
“… What?!”
Martha, who rarely opened her eyes, met her eyes, and the warrior shrank when she saw those ghostly pupils.
Looking straight into the hero’s eyes, Martha spoke in a voice that felt the chill.
“Even if there is a scar, I will fix it over and over again, so don’t even try to do that.”
“… Yes.”
