CH 5

Chapter 5 – Encounter

Now that I really think about what I did, I realize it was pretty reckless.

I don’t know what would’ve happened to those two if I did nothing, but I’ve been warned before that stepping in and taking others’ prey can cause problems, so I should be careful about that.

Did I overstep my boundaries in a way?

“Sorry.”

I guess I should just apologize.

The twin swords user looks a bit surprised, but awkwardly laughs after realizing what I’m talking about.

“You saved us when we were in a pinch. Don’t worry about it.”

Now that things have calmed down, I realize she’s a girl.

She has evenly cut silver hair that reaches down to her shoulders, and her red eyes are looking at me with interest.

But I’m a guy, so my eyes naturally go a bit below her face, even though I was trying not to let them do that.

The adventurer holding a staff is also a girl. The face I see as she takes off her hood seems young, especially with her blond twintails flowing in the wind.

Her body is small, and she looks like she has a great future ahead of her.

“Thank you.”

She speaks like she’s whispering, and bows.

“How do you divide the spoils in a situation like this? I’m a new adventurer, so I don’t really know the rules very well.”

They look surprised. Why is that?

“It’s pretty hard for a novice to take down a wolf. And you did it so easily too.”

“I’ve actually only been an adventurer for ten days. I’m only here for a quest to collect medicinal herbs. I think I only took it down because my weapon is good.”

The sword pierced the wolf without much resistance. Thank you for the good weapon, old man.

Thinking back to the feeling of the sword piercing the meat makes my hands shake. It was a monster, but I did kill a living being.

“Are you all right?”

Suddenly, I realize the twintails are swaying right in front of me.

I look down, and my eyes meet their owner’s.

The surprise makes me take a step back, and I try to disguise how flustered that made me.

“What do we do with this? I’ve never taken apart a wolf or anything.”

I know the necessary parts and materials, because I looked over some documents.

I’m pretty sure I remember how they’re supposed to be taken apart too. But even though they’re monsters, taking them apart might make me throw up.

Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, it’s hard to even look at blood, because I’m not used to it.

“Of course we will take them apart. We don’t want to throw money away. I can teach you if want.”

She says with a grin, like she saw right through me.

I might as well do it. It will tell me if I can do this sort of thing from now on too.

But first, we introduce ourselves.

The twin swords user’s name is Rurika, and the magic user with the staff introduces herself as Chris.

I don’t know if she’s reserved or wary, but she’s standing a step further away than Rurika.

But apparently, sometimes she does things without even thinking. Before, when she suddenly approached me, it was probably because her concern surpassed her wariness. At least that’s what Rurika tells me.

“Rurika, go rest for a bit. You haven’t recovered your magic energy yet, have you?”

Chris sits down and tries to compose her breath, just like Rurika says.

And then she suddenly pulls her hood over her head, like she just remembered it.

“She had to push herself too much when we were running. There are probably a lot more dead wolves in the forest. It looks like we have to give up on this one.”

We chat while she tells me how to take the wolves apart.

They’re a D ranked adventurer duo that accepted a quest to retrieve some killer bee honey, but encountered a pack of wolves on the way.

They managed to throw the whole pack into disarray with magic, but some left the others to chase them. Chris managed to take some down with magic as they ran, but ran out of magic energy, so they ended up leading the wolves here.

I ask if it wouldn’t be worse to take them on in an open space like this, and she says she was planning to hang on until Chris recovered some magic energy.

She also tells me that fighting wolves in the forest is actually tougher.

She’s more than good enough to take on a wolf if it’s alone, even if they’re in the forest, but it’s different if several attack at the same time. They use the trees well to attack.

“It looks like our honey quest is a failure. We can’t get it with a pack of wolves nearby. Ah… But is the guild going to let it go without a penalty? And we’re so close to rank C too…”

Apparently, depending on the scale, dealing with a pack of wolves can be a rank B job. When they form packs, there’s even a small chance that a unique variant will be born, and if that happens, the difficulty level shoots up.

“And I guess this is more or less how you take wolves apart…”

I did a good job, not throwing up.

Let’s just not talk about how it turned out. There’s a first time for everyone.