Chapter 5 – Staffing
“Warrior. We are almost there.”
Horde, who was driving the wagon, swapped seats with the hero again and said so.
When the village was close enough to be seen with the naked eye, the warrior confirmed that the village was safe and let out a sigh of relief.
Ever since I heard the news of the iron mountain bear, I had been worried about the village, but when I saw the wooden fence in the village, I was finally relieved.
“Hi-yi-ing!”
Upon arriving at the village, the carriage stopped near a barley field with the sound of horses neighing.
The first warrior to get off the wagon asked a farmer who was trimming barley in the barley field.
“Wait, can I ask you something when you have time?”
The peasant stopped what he was doing and scratched his head when the hero suddenly spoke to him.
“Yes? Well, I’m not busy, so tell me.”
“We are adventurers from the fortress city around here. Do you know where the chief is?”
“A city? Ah, what kind of mushrooms did you come to collect? The chief is probably in the big house on the hill over there.”
The hero bowed his head to the farmer and immediately headed up the hill as the farmer had instructed him.
On the hill was a house slightly larger than the others in the farmhouse. A woman in her late 50s was hanging out the laundry, and next to it was an elderly village chief chopping firewood.
The village chief took the ax that was holding the firewood straight into the tree stump and spoke to the hero.
“Who are you?”
“We are adventurers from the fortress city.”
As the hero explained the whole story of how he had come this far, the village chief’s face began to blur.
Suddenly, the village chief’s face darkened, and the hero guessing what had happened asked the village chief.
“Why is that?”
“My, my grandson went to play in the woods with his friends!”
“To the forest?!”
When a strong monster appeared, the beasts or monsters that originally lived there were bound to move their territory away from the strong monster.
“Let’s get our party going quickly.”
“I… Of course, the request fee…”
“People might be in danger, but it’s not too late to talk about money later.”
After saying that, the hero quickly descended the steep hill and returned to the party members.
“I’m here? Shall we go right in?”
When the hero returned to the wagon, all party members, including Lina, were ready to rush into the forest.
“Huh. But before that, I need to take a look around here. The chief said that some children from this village went into the forest.”
Noticing the hero’s concern, all the party members nodded, and Hero’s party went into the forest.
“Look here. There are tread marks on the grass. It wasn’t too long ago.”
Since he was just playing around here in the first place, there was no way he had gone that far.
‘I’m kind of anxious…’
The other party members were optimistic about what might have happened in that short amount of time, but the hero couldn’t shake off the unknown anxiety.
“Warrior…”
“… Huh.”
Not long after, the hero’s party found traces of the new children.
Looking at the place Lina pointed at, there was a bloody piece of cloth that had been torn with a sharp object.
In front of the piece of cloth, there were a few bloodstains and many footprints that looked like those of wild dogs.
“Mr Horde. Sorry. We must go first.”
The Hero party, who had not been speeding up in consideration of the Horde, immediately strengthened their bodies with their own means and rushed in the direction of the footprints.
And within a few minutes, they climbed up a tree to escape the wild dogs and found children shouting for help.
“I will… !”
The warrior, who jumped forward faster than Lina could put an arrow on her bowstring, cut the throats of three wild dogs with her hand snatch without drawing out her sword.
-Pushuuuuuk!
Blood spurted from the clean cut and the dogs’ heads fluttered in the air.
The children, who were watching the scene from the top of the tree with frightened expressions, could not even utter exclamations of exclamation and were just blankly opening their mouths.
“I’m fine now, come down!”
Perhaps it was because the shock from a while ago hadn’t gone away, the children listened to the hero’s words and remained in a daze for a while, then carefully came down from the tree one by one.
“Martha. Please.”
“Yes.”
Martha, who stood before the warriors, treated the wounds of children who had been scratched or bitten by wild dogs.
Perhaps because the pain had stopped, the children who hadn’t said a word, as if they had aphasia, began to open their mouths one by one.
“Go, thank you…”
“Okay… I heard about the village chief. You said you heard it together, but are there any other children besides the ones here?”
At the warrior’s question, the children looked at each other’s faces and said to the warrior.
“Are you okay! I have everything.”
“Okay? Thank god…”
“Hero!!”
At the time when the hero breathed a sigh of relief, the Horde, which had been lagging behind from afar, came running.
“Mr Horde… I’m sorry I left you. One o’clock was in a hurry.”
“Oh, no. It’s okay…”
Turning his head back from the Horde to the children, the warrior bent down on his knees to meet his children before speaking.
“Then… Hey guys. I’ll send you home now let’s hurry.”
“Yes!!”
While sending the children back to the village, the warrior heard many stories from the children.
Originally, only small animals such as rabbits appeared in this area at most.
And that I hadn’t seen an adventurer come out a few days ago.
The latter has never been reported missing separately, so it could be the children’s misunderstanding, but it was just in case you didn’t know.
After seeing the children off to the village, the Hero group returned to the forest and opened the map.
“Looking at the topography and the road, maybe our location is near this corner.”
The place Lina pointed to was not far from the location where the footprints of the iron mountain bear were first discovered.
“If you take the closest route from here and go inside, it will be difficult to get there even when the night is over. What should I do? Would you like to go back today?”
It was just after lunch and the day was still bright, but it was clear that the day would set soon if we continued on the route to the end.
“… If he installs more, this time it might not be as strong as a wild dog, but a strong witch beast might come down deep in the forest.”
If the roads diverged and the Witchbeast came down tomorrow while Hero and the others were out exploring, the village’s fence wouldn’t be able to withstand it.
“For now, let’s go like this, close our eyes for a while when it gets dark, and let’s leave early in the morning.”
In the eyes of the hero who said that, anger was burning towards the Witchbeast and the Demon King’s army executives who did not know if they were still there.
He thought so even though he hadn’t run into those children, but he couldn’t overlook them either.
In addition to the previous village, there are many small villages and hunter’s huts near this forest.
It was necessary to subdue Iron Mountain Bear as soon as possible before more beasts or beasts were kicked out.
“Warrior…”
Seeing the warrior’s hand tremble with rage, Martha took it gently and said,
“I understand the hero’s anger, but you shouldn’t lose your cool.”
“… Huh.”
As Martha continued to hold his hand, the hero reluctantly let go of his fist.
Watching her, Yuria pressed her hat even deeper to hide her distorted expression.
Mi An didn’t even hide her displeasure by frowning at her.
However, both of them knew their situation better than anyone else, so they couldn’t stop Martha or hold the warrior’s hand like Martha did.
He had no choice but to turn away from the reality in front of him or stare at it as if nothing had happened.
Rina, who was watching over Yuria and Mirian, burst into laughter inside herself when she saw the two jealous of Marta even in this situation.
‘Under! This is so…’
Funnily speaking, it was even funnier than when I heard about the Horde’s stupid plan before leaving the inn.
Horde looked at Horde, wanting to know what else he was doing, and Horde felt jealous of the hero when he saw that the two still had lingering attachments to the hero.
What could be more comedy than this?
Even in her long, long years of life, Lina could count on one hand more absurd situations than this.
“Uh? Why is everyone… ?”
When the hero noticed that the atmosphere had become strange and asked, everyone shook their heads saying it was nothing with different thoughts.
“Huh… ! Ah, nothing…”
“… No big deal.”
“Puww… !! I just thought of a funny story…”
“… It’s nothing.”
“I don’t know what… Is there any problem anyway? Then let’s go quickly. Take the lead Lina.”
“Okay!”
The hero who handed over her map to Lina entrusted her guide to Lina, her scout.
With Lina’s experience as a scout for hundreds of years and her natural intuition, Hero’s party safely arrived at the place where they first discovered the trail of the Iron Mountain Bear.
The iron mountain bear’s footprints were so huge that I wondered if there really was such a creature.
“I think it’s been a few days since the footprints appeared… But is it a bit strange? Why are the footprints so sparse?”
In fact, the discomfort Lina was feeling right now was what she felt from the moment she looked at the map.
‘There are footsteps that have moved forward, but they are cut off in the middle…’
There was a trace of moving about seven steps forward of the first step, but after that, the footprints were cut off, as if they had sunk to the ground or soared into the sky.
“Lina, is there something strange about it?”
“Huh… If it was this huge, the traces would have remained much clearer, but it was completely cut off from here.”
“Surely…”
After that, I went to other places where there were traces, and there was not much difference from the first traces I found.
To put it bluntly, if the first trace was cut off at 7 steps, the next trace was 10 steps, the next one was 12 steps, and so on.
With no clue whatsoever, I went to the place where the most recent footprints were at the point of grabbing the straw for the last time…
“This… ?”
At the end of the footprint of 30 steps, I found a trace of a prostrate bear that was twice the size of an ordinary cheolsan bear.
“It’s big for a normal iron mountain bear, but… It’s a bit small to be the owner of this footprint.”
“… For now, since this is the only clue, let’s investigate.”
As they all investigated the ruins, the warrior soon found the hard and sharp fur of a Iron Mountain Bear in a nearby bush.
“I found something!”
“Huh? Give me that quickly!”
Lina, who took over the iron mountain bear’s hair from the hero, opened the witch’s compass and put the iron mountain bear’s hair in it.
Then the compass began to glow, and the red needle of the compass began to point deep into the forest.
“This direction… It’s pretty much like this route on the map.”
The only thing the routes have in common is that they are all connected to the deep forest inside the forest, and the detailed roads to get there are different.
The route Lina pointed out was a route that went straight through the river and into the forest.
He probably made this move with the intention of disrupting it, but thanks to the excellent scouting of the guild, all of his superficial thoughts were exposed.
“First… There should be a riverside… Shall we camp there tonight?”
“OK. I will have to sleep and eat first.”
After that, Hero’s group headed to the riverside and arrived at the riverside almost at night.
He took out tools such as bales and knives needed for meal preparation from Horde’s backpack and handed them to the women, while Horde and the warriors took charge of the tent.
“Ah… Come to think of it, maybe it’s okay to change the personnel arrangements.”
While setting up the tent, the warrior suddenly remembered and spoke to Horde.
“Yes? What is that, warrior? ?”
“There is nothing to hide anymore. Wait, kids! Would you like to look at this?!”
Hearing the hero’s call, the three people who were preparing the ingredients looked back at the hero at the same time.
“What’s the matter?”
When YuRia, who was closest to him, asked, the hero pointed to Horde and said.
“That’s about the staffing of the tent, would you like Horde, Yuria, and Mirian to be in the same tent? Oh, if Lina wants to, use it too.”
To Be Continued
