Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 20 - Chapter 4.7

7

As we moved along the path through the thicket, we once again found a leather curtain blocking our way.

The entire interior of the tent should have been a circular space only about twenty meters in diameter, but it felt like we had walked quite a long way by this point. Following such a dark trail really did seem to throw off my sense of both time and distance.

Since we didn’t have anyone guiding us, we just went ahead and pulled back the curtain, only to unexpectedly find the thicket continuing on endlessly past that point. However, there were curtains to the left and right stretching out ahead of us, making a path through the thicket around five meters wide. None of the curtains had windows in them, as usual, leaving the path dimly lit by the hanging lanterns placed at long intervals.

“Someone seems to be hiding nearby.” Ai Fa quietly stated.

Thanks to all the trees, there were plenty of blind spots. What sort of performance would we be seeing next, and from whom?

Just then, I heard a beast growl, “Grrr...” from overhead. Did they have another animal in addition to the black ape, silver lion, and leopard?

The beast tamer, Shantu, had to have been in the previous location looking after the black ape. But he had previously left the tent for a little while to visit our stalls, so maybe the beasts could still manage to perform a little bit even without the old man around.

While I was considering that possibility, Darmu Ruu uttered a tense, “Hmm...”

From the treetops above, a pair of golden eyes were staring down at us, no less intimidating than those of the black ape and silver lion. The beast’s fur might have been the same color as the darkness, as I still couldn’t make it out.

“What is that thing?” Ludo Ruu asked, his voice tense. The look in Ai Fa’s eyes was more intense than ever before too. Was this ferocious beast even more dangerous than the black ape?

It was then that something truly shocking happened.

The growling beast suddenly started speaking to us.

“The Gamley Troupe...welcomes you...” It was a hoarse, scratchy voice. However, that was undeniably proper human speech. “I am...Zetta... I will guide you to...our leader, Gamley...”

I had heard the name Zetta from Pino. Just like the troupe leader, Gamley, he supposedly spent the day sleeping. However, I just couldn’t sense any human intelligence behind those eyes that flickered like will-o’-the-wisps. And yet, he was still speaking human words.

Maybe he’s a beast who memorized human words, like a parrot? His eyes were just so beastly that I couldn’t help but think so.

Then, out of nowhere, something abruptly changed. Ai Fa suddenly grabbed me by the head and forced me to the ground. In the same instant, I noticed a drawn blade shining in the dark of night. Ai Fa had brandished the knife at her hip.

“Aah!” Yun Sudra shrieked and crouched down beside me. Looking up, I saw Ai Fa facing to the left, back-to-back with Giran Ririn, who had also drawn his knife.

“Asuta, no matter what happens, don’t lift your head. There are villains about.”

“V-Villains?”

Ai Fa’s eyes had become blue infernos. For the first time in a while, they had the light of a hunter in them.

It was then that I finally noticed a strange object on the ground by my hand. It was the top half of an arrow that had been snapped in half.

“So they’re firing arrows from above, over the curtains? Looks like there’s quite a few of them, and they seem to be approaching us,” I heard Dan Rutim remark with a daring laugh. Though I couldn’t see well from my position, the hunters must have been protecting the women they were paired with.

I looked up in a fluster, but unsurprisingly, I couldn’t spy anything out of place. All I could see above the two-meter-high inner curtains of the tent was complete darkness.

“This is bad. It’s too dangerous here,” Ai Fa said as she grabbed my arm. “Keep moving and keep your head down. Bandits are approaching from behind us as well.”

I didn’t exactly have any time to respond. Ai Fa and I moved alongside Yun Sudra in the dark. I had no grasp of what everyone else was doing at all.

Before we had even made it more than a few meters, my arm was pulled to the right. With a disturbing ripping sound, the curtain to our left was torn open and some shadowy figures leaped out.

Ai Fa silently swung her knife, and there was a clanging sound like she had hit something tough, along with a man’s voice grunting, “Urgh!” My clan head had repelled a slash coming at her from the side. Even though she only had a knife while the other guy had a huge bastard sword, he was the one to get forced backward. Ai Fa continued to draw away from him, putting her back up against a nearby tree trunk. Since she was still pulling my arm, I did the same.

There looked to be five of those shadowy figures, but since the closest lantern was pretty far away from us, I couldn’t properly make out their appearances.

“Asuta,” Ai Fa said as she suddenly wrapped her left arm around my body. Her right hand was still brandishing the knife.

“A-Ai Fa, what’s...?” I started to ask, only to be cut off by the sound of her knife deflecting something.

The sound of rustling footsteps around us grew quieter. Another arrow had been fired, and Ai Fa had struck it down.

“Don’t leave my side. It’s taking all I have at the moment to maintain this distance.”

Ai Fa was currently still injured. Even as I felt the warmth of her body up against mine, I started to panic.

“Die already!” a hoarse voice shouted out as one of the men slashed at us again with his sword. Before Ai Fa could even react, though, another blade swept in from the side to deflect it. At the same time, our attacker was lifted up into the air and flew in an arc before slamming into the ground. As the bandit let out a groan, the figure who had driven him back stood in front of us.

“What is going on here? I can’t recall us doing anything that would make these people want to point their blades at us,” Giran Ririn’s voice calmly stated.

The other men who had appeared through the ripped curtain crept our way bit by bit with their weapons held at the ready. Then even more new enemies appeared—three men who roughly pulled open the hanging curtain we had passed through.

“Tch, not here either! Hey, where’d that bastard go?!”

The men were all holding torches, so I was finally able to see them clearly. I spotted the original five, plus the three newcomers. Our attackers were wearing shabby cloth attire with leather breastplates and bracers. It looked like they were westerners. All of them were equipped with blades and bows.

“Who are you people?” Darmu Ruu questioned from the direction we were heading toward.

When I looked at him, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. Our companions from the forest’s edge were standing there not far from us, and I could see the eyes of the hunters burning brightly in the darkness. Aside from our two pairs, everyone else had formed a circle around the women. I could see Darmu Ruu and Dan Rutim facing our way.

As the bandits looked between our two groups, one of them let out a throaty, “Huh?! That’s what we want to ask! What, are you friends with those performers?”

“Who cares who they are? We need to kill every last person here!” a voice chimed in with repulsive joy as one of the men tossed his torch right into the thicket. The grass on the ground sputtered, and smoke started rising into the air, along with a concerning smell.

“So you intend to point your blades at us no matter what? In that case, we will follow our laws and take your right arms,” Darmu Ruu stated forcefully.

Ai Fa finally let go of me. She pushed off from the tree trunk and faced the bandits with Giran Ririn at her side. Then, from her spot crouched down behind the Ririn clan head, Yun Sudra reached out and clung to me with trembling fingers. I whispered to her, “It’s going to be okay. There’s no way a group of hunters from the forest’s edge would lose against an equal number of enemies. We all just need to take care not to get in their way.”

“R-Right...”

It was then that a beastly roar erupted from overhead.

The mysterious being with the golden eyes had jumped down on top of the bandits from the treetops. The criminals must not have even noticed his presence. I could hear a man shout, “Gyah!” in confusion, and a number of them fell clumsily to the ground.

I stared in amazement. Even seeing him properly, I still couldn’t actually grasp what he was. His whole body was coated in jet-black hair, which kind of reminded me of the black ape. However, he was much smaller than that beast, only looking to be around Ludo Ruu’s size.

Since he had a longer coat than the black ape, I couldn’t make out his figure very well, but he didn’t look to be especially bulky or thin. He just seemed to be built like an average human being. In spite of that, he had bright, fiery golden eyes, visible fangs in his mouth that was hanging wide open, and a roar like thunder.

His first blow sent one of the men flying, and as soon as he landed on the ground, he leaped toward his next prey. His movements were as agile as any beast.

With sharp nails, he dug into two faces, causing another pair of our attackers to collapse to the ground.

A third man swung his blade with a look of terror on his face. Dodging out of the way, the beastman swung his right leg. The guy’s legs were swept out from under him and he tumbled to the ground. Then the beastman swiftly leaped out of the range of his enemies’ blades.

“Y-You damn monster!” one of the men shouted as he let loose an arrow from point-blank range.

The beastman’s right arm casually flicked out, deflecting the arrow so that it embedded itself deep into a tree trunk.

“Dear guests, please run... I will punish these scoundrels...” the beastman, Zetta, growled.

That only seemed to cause the men to panic further.

“Hmm. What a truly surprising appearance! Like one of the rumored savages of Morga, but a bit more human!” Dan Rutim said with a chuckle. “However, it seems there’s some sort of commotion up ahead as well. Should we stop here, or continue onward?”

The beastman, Zetta, was silent, looking bewildered. Another voice answered Dan Rutim’s question in his place. “In that case, go ahead and stay right there! Since you came all this way, I’d like to show you my performance before you leave!”

Both the bandits and I all turned in that direction at once.

The curtain behind me and Ai Fa opened wide, and a new figure stepped forward from inside.

“Really, what a boorish lot! Even nobles aren’t permitted to set foot here in the Gamley Troupe’s tent without paying any coins, you know,” the man said as he strode our way without any hesitation. After passing between us and Darmu Ruu’s group, he faced the bandits.

His appearance was definitely strange. He was a tall man with long curly blackish-brown hair, and wore what looked like a red turban wrapped around his head. He had an unusually prominent aquiline nose, sunken eyes, thin cheeks, and a pointed lower jaw with a long beard like that of a goat. His right eye was a perfectly normal shade of brown, but his left one was hidden under an eye patch.

His tall figure was clothed in a bright-red double-breasted top, below which he wore a black vest and balloon pants. The long coat he also had on was embroidered with golden thread in a complex pattern, and his neck and arm were adorned with a number of showy accessories.

There was just one more point of note about the man: his left arm was missing.

“You... You’re Gamley! Don’t try to tell me you’ve forgotten my face!” one of the men shouted as he stepped forward, brandishing his blade.

The one-eyed, one-armed man, Gamley, turned toward him with a smile.

“Unfortunately, I can’t say that I recognize you. I offered one of my eyes to the fire god, so I can only remember half of what there is to see here in this world.”

“We’re the Blue Beards, and you stole a bunch of valuables from us! We’re getting revenge for our leader, here and now!”

“Can’t say I recognize that name either. But it’s not like I go around memorizing the names of bandit groups anyway,” Gamley replied while stroking his long beard in a way that made it seem like he was looking down on them. In the meantime, we went ahead and joined Darmu Ruu’s group.

The hunters all watched over the proceedings with great attentiveness, Ai Fa foremost among them. If there were bandits waiting ahead as well, then the only option would be to see how things played out here.

With the flames from the torch now beginning to spread across the ground between them, the strange fellow stood facing the bandits.

“And if you say we stole something from you, then you must be some real good-for-nothing bandits. Don’t worry, I assure you we returned it all to its rightful owners. After all, we swore an oath to only ever earn our keep through performing.”

“Bastard!”

“I have to say, you’ve got quite a grandiose name for such a worthless gaggle of bandits. If you actually have any sort of association with the Red Beards, you should really have more dignity than that,” Gamley stated, then pointed down at the blazing torch by his feet. “Also, don’t you know that starting a fire in town is an even more serious crime than murder? I’ve personally built up some debt to the castle and the land of Genos for that sort of thing, so I know there’s no way the guards would overlook such lawlessness.”

“Enough talking! Slaughter them already!”

The bandit who had been speaking held his sword up high and swung it at Gamley. Calmly, the troupe leader held out his right palm toward the man. An instant later, my field of view was dyed deep crimson.

I had no idea what had just happened, but when my vision cleared, I saw that the man from before had dropped his blade and was screaming in anguish. His face was wrapped in flames, and the unpleasant smell of burning hair was drifting over to us.

“I need to be quite careful while I perform my act, you see. If I make even a small mistake, I could be arrested as an arsonist,” Gamley said, and then he gave an affected bow our way. “Well then, dear guests, please watch carefully as I, the leader of the Gamley Troupe, put on a show for you.”

Gamley’s right arm once again swung through the air, and something unbelievable happened. Fire stretched out like a snake from the torch burning in the middle of the thicket, slithering directly toward the bandits. A fresh round of screams rang out as two of the men were ensnared by the flames.

“Th-This guy’s a monster too!” one of the men shouted out as he pulled back his bow with trembling fingers, only for Gamley to swing his arm a third time. A ball of flame formed in the air, and the unleashed arrow flew off in a random direction.

“Now then, we must pay attention to our feet as well.” Gamley bent down and made a motion with his right hand like he was scratching the ground. The flames raced across the ground as if they were alive, and rushed in to burn the men’s feet.

“How about I make some flaming flowers bloom in the air next?” Once again, Gamley swung his arm. With a pleasant popping sound, red, blue, and green sparks crackled in midair around the now panicking men.

By now, it was like we were watching some poor souls crying out in terror, having been confronted with the flames of hell.

If it wasn’t magic, then it must have been some kind of sleight of hand using inflammable oil or gunpowder. But I didn’t feel like I had any chance of seeing through the trick.

“Well then, let’s move along to the final part of our performance.”

With the roaring flames casting deep shadows on his face, Gamley looked like some sort of devil. His hand suddenly flew up to the patch over his left eye and tore it away, revealing a jewel as red as flame embedded in his eye socket.

“Vairus, god of fire, grant just a single droplet of your blessing upon your faithful child.” Gamley then grabbed the hem of the crimson coat he wore and swung it down in a fanning motion. With far more intensity than the sparks before, whirling flames in three colors wrapped around the men, earning even further screams.

The flames danced about wildly in a stunning display. With each popping sound, a blazing flower of some color or another bloomed and then vanished. Even from our position a fair distance away, we could still feel the oppressive heat. It was a frightening, and yet truly beautiful sight. However, at this rate those men would surely burn to death.

Just as that thought crossed my mind, though, my field of vision suddenly went black. I had completely forgotten about the beastman, Zetta, by this point, but now he was pouring the contents of a large vase he had gotten from somewhere over the men. The stuff gave off a sap-like smell, and was quickly seeping into the dirt. As it coated the ground, the flames that had just been raging so fiercely vanished in an instant, leaving just the sight of the cowering, whimpering bandits.

“Oh, you’ve dealt with things over here too?” Pino’s voice suddenly called out. It had come from the other side of the curtain on the opposite end of the tent from where Ai Fa and I had moved. “I hurried on over, but it looks like I needn’t have bothered. Well, as long as nobody got hurt, that’s what matters most.”

Dan Rutim’s huge figure towered over us from behind, but sure enough, I was able to see Pino there over his shoulder, thanks to the fact that she had shown up riding on the shoulders of a creature even bigger than the former Rutim clan head, the black vamda ape.

The various hunters of the forest’s edge made way while still guarding the women they were paired with, and I saw that the black ape held an utterly defeated man in each of its huge hands.

“We handled all the ones that came our way too. It seems there was someone keeping watch outside of the tent, but old man Shantu managed to deal with him as well.”

“I see. What an uncivilized band,” Gamley muttered before offering us another affected bow. “Well then, that concludes my performance. You have my deepest thanks for coming out tonight.”

Then Gamley slowly lifted his head, showing us the shining gemstone in his left eye socket and a beaming smile.