“Mother, is there anything I could be helping with right now?”
I asked this before leaving her room.
If possible, since I was back in the territory for a change, I wanted to be of help.
“Let’s see ..”
While Mother was in thought mumbling ‘was there anything like that?’ the sound of a knock could be heard revebrating through the room.
“It’s Salie. May I disturb you, Madam?”
“Ara, Salie. It’s fine, please enter.”
Saying ‘Excuse me’ Salie entered the room.
“What happened? You seem unusually fl.u.s.tered.”
“Yes, truth be told, a messenger just arrived stating that monsters have appeared near Nan village and a number of villagers have sustained injuries. Around 20 monsters have been sighted, it seems.”
“Near Nan village .. if I’m right there shouldn’t have been any monster sightings around there for several years already. The inhabitants must have been surprised since they hadn’t encountered any for so long, I’m sure. We have to immediately gather and dispatch a subjugation party. As for the groups that can be moved right now .. that would be Thoma’s unit.”
“Mother! Please let me go as well!”
I immediately requested of her.
“Ririina .. true. We need every single person more that can head out right now. But it has been a while since you went to subjugate monsters so will you be fine?”
“Yes! Because of the fight with those masked men I have a grasp on how well I can currently move. Furthermore, if there are injured every helping hand should be necessary. I won’t forget to bring the medicine either.”
“In that case I’ll ask you to act with Thoma’s unit, please. And don’t do anything too reckless, you hear.”
“Yes, understood! By the way, where is Thoma currently?”
Upon those words Salie answered me.
“Ririinsama, if it’s about Thoma he is currently getting called by Sana. They should be arriving here any moment now.”
Just as she said a knock resounded from the door.
From outside the door a voice ‘It’s Thoma’ could be heard.
“Come in please”, anwered Mother.
“Excuse me!”
“Thoma, you have heard the story from Sana I take it? I want you to head out for Nan village right away. Ririina will be accompanying you as well.”
Thoma mumbled as if surprised ‘Ririina .. sama will?’.
Towards Thoma I declared.
“Thoma, you should know about my abilities very well, shouldn’t you? In any case, having more people help should be better.”
“That’s true, isn’t it. I understand. Ririinsama, please help us out. Just, please be careful not to do anything too reckless.”
Why would he worry about the same thing Mother did?
Being reckless or such I wouldn’t do, I’m just doing what I can while I can.
And so it’s been decided that me and Thoma, as well as Thoma’s unit would be heading out straight away.
When I met them it turned out that the people of his unit were all people I had previously in the past fought side by side with.
So despite being surprised when they first saw me, for some reason they all went ‘after all, Ririinsama stays Ririinsama’ when they were told that we would be going on this monster hunt together.
Somehow I can’t accept this.
In any case, it’s true that it made things easier with them all being aquaintances.
We quickly prepared everything we needed, mounted the horses and departed.
Nan village was about 30 minutes from here on horse back.
All in all our troop heading towards it consisted of 10 people.
All that said, for there to be a sighting of as many as 20 monsters, it was greater number than we had heard of in recent times I think.
For there to be so many in a single location, it was similar to the encounter size of the outbreak back then.
Since the sighting alone told of around 20 there was a change that there would actually be more monsters than that so we would have to brace ourselfs for that.
In the meantime we arrived at the village.
The village’s gate was closed tightly.
We gave a signal to the surveillance guard at the top of the gate.
With that they swiftly opened the gate for us.
We quickly pa.s.sed through the gap that appeared and entered the village.
The guard run over to us.
“You are the reinforcements from the Lord, aren’t you? Thank you for coming all this way! You’ll hear the detailed circ.u.mstances at the village chief’s.”
We were guided by the guard and headed to the house of the village chief.
“Ooh~ you’ve done well to come! Thank you very much. Since it was the first encounter with monsters in a long time our reactions were too slow and there were some injured. Truly, I must apologize.”
“Not at all, you sent out a messanger to the Lord right away which is why we could be here so quickly. On that note, what is the damage report?”
Is what Thoma inquired.
“Yes, thankfully, while we have some injured people, those injuries are light. But beyond repelling the monsters from inside the village we didn’t manage to defeat them at all. There had been 7 monsters who had entered the village. As for the one’s we saw outside around 20 were sighted.”
Nh? Meaning there would be around 30 overall, wouldn’t there ..
That’s quite a number.
As I was thinking so the village chief said to me.
“Nh? Perhaps, could it be the one over there is Ririinsama? Ooh~ it is Ririinsama after all! When the village got attacked by monsters in the past it was also you who had come to save us then. Even this time Ririinsama personally came for us ..”
For some reason the village chief seemed emotionally moved.
Come to think of it, when I was working hard at subjugating monsters in the past there was a time where I came here as well, wasn’t there.
And come to think of it, even back then it was pretty much the same mood.
“Chief, for now let us return to the topic of the monsters, shall we?”
“Ooh~ right, right. The monsters are eyeing us out from the nearby forest, it seems. So we’re troubled because we can’t enter that forest now. This time’s monsters consist of monkey-types and wolf-types.”
Monkey and wolf-types, huh.
Either of which are speedy, agile types.
“Well then chief, we will now be going to subjugate those monsters in the forest which is why please make sure that no one leaves the village in the meantime. All, prepare yourselfs, we are heading out!”
Upon Thoma’s words we quickly prepared and headed for the forest.
When we entered the forest I could feel many presences that were peeking at us from all around.
And right away there was a monster jumping our at us from a tree.
This reminds me of Brother in the past ..
At that time I parried him with my sword, but this time I won’t show restraint!
I slashed through the monkey-type monster before it could touch the ground.
My comrades seeing that figure of mine went ‘as expected, even if she’s grown up Ririinsama is still Ririinsama’.
What does that mean?
Seeing how their kin got done in the other monkey-types all jumped out at us at once.
They were descending from the trees, falling from the trees.
As expected of everyone, they were used to battles as well and were reliably bringing down one monster at a time.
I too continued to slash away at the monkey-types that undauntingly descented from above.
Looking around it seems we had defeated around 15 of them already.
However, we hadn’t encountered even a single one of the wolf-types that we had been informed about.
They were probably still deeper in the forest.
At that time something could be heard from deeper within.