Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 13 - Chapter 1

1. Dreams, Freedom, and Borders

Beneath the scorching heat of the sun, the darkly tanned crew of the ship lowered a ladder down onto the pier.

Ginzy, the captain of the Mantis-go, stood on the bridge, looking on arrogantly with his arms crossed.

When Haruhiro waved, Ginzy raised his jaw, making his fish-like face (because what was he if not a fish?) twist.

Was that a smile? Or a smirk, perhaps? It was hard to tell.

The voyage had taken five days, including the day of departure and arrival, but even now, at the end of it, Haruhiro still didn’t like that man. Of course, he’d never had any desire to make friends with the man in the first place, so he didn’t feel particularly disappointed by that.

Despite being captain, Ginzy wasn’t just disliked by his crew; they hated him. They seemed to hold him in contempt. He was utterly lacking in personal virtue, and had no manners or charm whatsoever. Why had the K&K Pirate Company made that damn sahuagin the captain of the Mantis-go?

Ginzy and the founder of K&K, Kisaragi, were best buds, so it might have been an example of cronyism, so to speak. There was something to be said for not letting personal feelings get too involved in staffing decisions.

Not that it mattered.

...Well, maybe it did.

Anyway, with the ladder before him, Haruhiro looked to the faces of each of his comrades.

Kuzaku was here. Big as always, of course. He wasn’t going to be getting any smaller.

Having gone through a bad case of seasickness again, Shihoru looked like she wasn’t doing so well. Merry was sticking close by her, a look of concern on her face.

Setora was here, too. The gray nyaa, Kiichi, was with her.

That was all. Yume had decided to stay with Momohina, K&K’s KMW, for a while.

Incidentally, that title, KMW, was short for “Kung-fu master Mage Woman,” or something like that. A little ridiculous, no?

Regardless, because of that, they couldn’t cut ties with K&K. Not until Yume came back, at least.

Still, to be honest, it felt off somehow, not having Yume with them.

I want to get stronger, Yume had said.

It wasn’t hard to understand that. Haruhiro would like to be stronger, too, if he could. However, Haruhiro had no such hopes for himself, so he tended to focus on raising the overall level of the party. Unlike Haruhiro, Yume probably felt she could still keep going, that there was room for her to improve.

In point of fact, Yume hadn’t been using all of her undiscovered potential. Haruhiro agreed she had room to grow. But still... did it have to have been now?

She was a hunter, so what was becoming a kung-fulier supposed to do?

Besides, what was a kung-fulier anyway?

Even setting that aside, he’d have liked her to at least talk to him about it first. Either way, if Yume had insisted, Haruhiro might not have stopped her. But shouldn’t she have given him time to get ready to accept it? It was a lot to process, you know?

During the rocky voyage, he had contemplated what their battle tactics might look like without Yume, but he couldn’t help but feel uneasy. It was huge, the hole she was leaving behind. Unbelievably huge.

Yume wasn’t good at thinking things through logically, but she had an animal-like, instinctive sort of perception. Perhaps she’d had a strong sense that her comrades would be in trouble without her, and that was why she hadn’t been able to tell them what she wanted to do. But, after agonizing over it for a long time, she’d suddenly made the call. That was very like Yume.

Haruhiro didn’t have any intention of blaming her for it, but her absence was, in many ways, really going to hurt. As the leader, he couldn’t let that show in front of the rest of their comrades, which made it all the worse.

He wished Yume being gone was just a dream.

Perhaps that sounded like a pun, since her name literally meant “dream,” but that was honestly and truly how he felt. They couldn’t turn back to the Emerald Archipelago to drag her back now, though, so he was just going to have to accept reality.

Fortunately, Yume would be rejoining the party eventually. She wouldn’t break her promise. Haruhiro tended to be a pessimist, but he could take an optimistic view on that one point. He just needed to be patient for half a year, until Yume was back. He just needed to hold out until then. He’d manage, somehow.

...Or so he hoped.

No, no matter what happened, he’d have to manage somehow.

Once he descended the ladder from the ship to the pier, he wasn’t exactly sure how, he felt a sudden, drastic change in the atmosphere around him.

“It’s probably just in my head...” he murmured, looking around.

Haruhiro looked out over the famous free city of Vele. The pirate town of Roronea had been raucously busy, and even after the dragon attacks, the port had been bustling with many pirate ships. But the scale of Vele was different. It was on a whole other level.

Who knew how many piers the port of Vele had, or how many ships were moored there? There were too many to even begin to count.

There was a vast number of laborers carrying cargo up and down the wharves and piers, an unending number of sailors working on and around their ships, and shouting and laughter carried from every which where.

There were well-dressed men and women riding in litters and rickshaws to be seen here and there, too, but who were they?

Naturally, there were humans like Haruhiro and the party, but there were also burly, green-skinned orcs, too. There were also pointy-eared elves, bearded dwarves built like barrels, undead who looked far too sickly, and goblins and kobolds.

“Hey, that’s...” Setora’s eyes went wide as she looked at one of the laborers.

At some point, Kiichi had gotten up on Setora’s shoulders—no, he had wrapped himself around her neck. He was one gutsy nyaa, but maybe all the noise had gotten to him.

The laborer in question had a great amount of luggage on his back. However, that back was the lower half of him. In other words, it wasn’t his back at all. The man, incredibly, had four legs. The upper half was human, but the lower half was equine. He even had a tail.

“A centaur,” Merry whispered.

“Ohh, so that’s one...” Haruhiro answered.

He had heard of them before. The half-human, half-horse centaurs. If he was recalling correctly, they might be residents of the Quickwind Plains. This might be the first time he’d seen one.

“The guy’s big. I bet he’s got some serious horsepower.” Kuzaku grinned. “You know, because he’s a horse?”

“Not funny.” Setora rejected the joke.

Kuzaku arched his eyebrows as if hurt. “No way. That one was no good?”

“Your sense of humor lacks any taste whatsoever.”

“Nah. I don’t want to hear that from you, Setora-san.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked indignantly.

As they emerged from the port, the city of Vele quickly began to give off an air of elegance.

The buildings of Alterna were what one might call simple and rugged, if one was feeling kind; they were just solid, not fashionable. Wood or stone, the buildings were left the color of whatever they were built with.

But in Vele, white walls were the default, and the roofs were brilliant colors. There were many sculpted pillars and doors, and even the windows and door frames had some small amount of molding. Glass windows weren’t uncommon, either.

Maybe it was because they were walking down the main street, but there were an awful lot of people and carts traveling back and forth.

“Man, Vele’s so urban,” Kuzaku said with a sigh in the middle of all the noise.

“Eek...!” Shihoru was nearly bowled over by a passerby.

Kuzaku went, “Hey, wait!” and tried to object.

The guy stopped and turned around. His neck and arms were so thick, you had to laugh, and his shoulders were built up to the point it was ridiculous. He even looked taller than the already-tall Kuzaku.

He sure is green, Haruhiro thought.

He just couldn’t get used to seeing that green skin. No matter how you looked at him, the guy was an orc.

“Wazza. Danaggwa!” the passing orc shouted.

“...No. I don’t understand what you’re saying, okay?”

Kuzaku was picking a fight with the passing orc. Surprisingly, he could be really aggressive about things like this.

Haruhiro placed a subtle hand on Kuzaku’s hip. “What’re you picking a fight for? Apologize.”

“But this ass, you saw what he did to Shihoru.”

“Um... Kuzaku-kun.” Shihoru tried to smile while Merry supported her. “It’s because I wasn’t watching where I was going well enough...”

“Well, if that’s what you say, then fine...” Kuzaku muttered.

“Ganna! Nndegan!” Spittle flew from the passing orc’s mouth as he closed in on Kuzaku.

“No, listen!” Having gotten a face full of spit, Kuzaku snapped. “I told you, I don’t understand! How about speaking a language I know, huh?!”

“Fuck! You!”

“Whoa, buddy, I think you’re looking for trouble, huh?!” Kuzaku yelled. “I’ll sell you some at a discount!”

“Whoa! I said, cut it out!” Haruhiro quickly got between the passing orc and Kuzaku. He didn’t know orcish, but when he desperately explained the situation, along with some pantomime, the passing orc left easily enough, which was a relief.

That said, they hadn’t started to attract a crowd, which meant incidents like this had to be a daily occurrence in Vele, so maybe the orc hadn’t been that angry, either.

“Don’t scare me like that,” Haruhiro snapped, looking at Kuzaku.

“Sorry.”

The quick apology was fine, but Kuzaku was wearing a wry smile.

I can tell you aren’t repenting at all, man, Haruhiro fumed. I’m gonna have to knock some sense into you later. Not going to physically knock you around, though. Maybe a little lecture, I guess...

“What were you getting so fired up over nothing for?” Setora demanded. “What are you, an idiot?”

Setora, who was less forgiving than Haruhiro, was clearly exasperated, and there was blatant disdain in her eyes.

Kuzaku seemed to finally realize the depth of his mistake, and began scratching his head and making excuses. “He was a really orc-y orc, so I couldn’t help myself. Like, I have a hard time not seeing them as enemies.”

“There are even more orcs here than in Roronea, you realize,” Setora said coldly.

“Yeah, you’re right... I know that, but... it just feels weird.” Kuzaku had a look like he couldn’t quite accept it.

Thinking back, they had gone into the Dusk Realm from the Wonder Hole, and then wandered into Darunggar and spent over two hundred days there. When they had finally managed to return to Grimgar, they’d arrived in Thousand Valley, a long, long way from Alterna.

Far too much had happened to them since then, and while they’d somehow made it to Vele, it had been a long trip. It was hard to imagine that it had been less than a year since they’d left Alterna.

Had they grown? There was no question that physically, and mentally, they had all changed. They had more experience, and had learned new things. Perhaps they had learned some things they didn’t need to, or things they were better off not knowing.

It was true that orcs were the enemy. That was true now, just as it had been back then, but there was something Haruhiro knew now.

Orcs were the enemy of the human race, but before that, they were living beings, just like Haruhiro and the rest. If humans and orcs just shared a common language, they could talk together, and maybe even come to an understanding.

Even with the undead, who he had though of as no more than intelligent zombies, there were men like Section Head Jimmy of K&K. Jimmy was someone they could absolutely get along with, and while they didn’t have any orc acquaintances yet, they might find one they could be friends with someday.

Naturally, if they were enemies and it was necessary, he’d take the lives of orcs, or even humans, if he had to. Haruhiro had dirtied his hands before, so he wasn’t about to talk about feeling guilty. If he had to, he’d kill without hesitation. It was kill or be killed.

But was it really necessary?

Were they really an enemy he absolutely had to fight?

The world wasn’t big enough for both of them, and they had to kill one another. He had believed that all this time, but maybe... maybe that wasn’t true.