Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 7.1

Interlude:

Roxy’s Homecoming 

At about the same time Rudeus and his party set sail from Millis, Roxy Migurdia was returning to her hometown for the first time in many years. 

The Migurd village hadn’t changed at all. And everyone she knew there looked pretty much the same as well. There were more residents than before, perhaps, but it was still an eerily quiet place. 

Roxy hadn’t found this silence strange as a child, but now that she’d traveled all around the world, she could say with confidence that it was highly unusual. You wouldn’t hear a single voice speaking in this village. And yet, its people were communicating perfectly. 

When the residents of the village spotted Roxy, they just stood and stared at her. She knew they were attempting to speak to her through telepathy, the unique innate ability that set the Migurd race apart from other demons. But she couldn’t tell what they were saying. All she could make out was a faint sort of buzzing noise. Roxy couldn’t respond to their words. 

After some time, her parents appeared. The years hadn’t changed them, either. They welcomed their daughter with joyful words and asked her if she’d come all this way alone in voices full of concern. 

Elinalise and Talhand had chosen to wait outside the village. Perhaps they’d thought she would rather have some privacy for this. 

Roxy told her parents about her travels in a calm, dispassionate voice. They expressed surprise at her story, and with relief on their faces, told her to stay as long as she liked. 

But Roxy felt like an outsider here—even as she was speaking to her own parents. Their words of concern and welcome were all spoken in a language that was foreign to them. Her people never said anything truly important with their mouths, especially not when they wanted to express love or affection. 

It was entirely possible her parents were sincerely worried about her from the bottom of their hearts, but they had no way to convey that to Roxy. She couldn’t use telepathy, so their messages couldn’t get across to her. 

That made her feel terribly lonely. 

Staying here for any length of time would just be painful. She’d just be rubbing her own nose in the fact that she wasn’t a true part of the Migurd people, so she decided to set out again immediately. 

“You’re really leaving already?” her father asked, his expression concerned. 

“Yes.” 

“Can’t you at least stay a single night?” 

Roxy shook her head expressionlessly. “I’m sorry, but this journey really is an urgent one. I just dropped by since I was in the neighborhood.” 

“When can you come back again, dear?” 

“I don’t know,” Roxy replied honestly. “I might not come back at all.” 

It was her mother’s turn to look concerned now. “Roxy…surely you can make the time to visit us every twenty years or so?” 

“I suppose,” she replied, her tone noncommittal. “Maybe I’ll stop by within the next fifty years, then.” 

“Really? You promise? We’ll be waiting, then.” 

“All right,” said Roxy, nodding ambiguously. 

At this point, she noticed that her mother had quietly begun to cry. “Uh…Mom…?” 

“Oh, I’m sorry. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry, but… I’m sorry, dear…” 

At the sight of those tears, something gave way inside Roxy. Before she knew it, she was hugging her mother tightly, and then her father had wrapped his arms around the both of them. 

In that moment Roxy finally realized that words and language were far from everything. In the end, she stayed in the Migurd village for about three days. And for the first time in ages, she actually managed to relax a little. 

*** 

The “Kennel Master” of Dead End was, in fact, Rudeus Greyrat. 

It had taken some time for Roxy to admit this to herself. 

After reaching the Demon Continent, her party had traveled steadily northward in search of information about Rudeus. The further north they went, the more people recognized his name. 

Roxy was getting closer, but at the same time, it felt like there was something off about this. Everyone who’d seen Rudeus described him in ways that overlapped with the stories about the Dead End impersonators. Several times in the course of their journey, Talhand pointed out that this human boy who could cast spells silently sounded exactly like the Kennel Master from that party. 

In truth, Roxy had realized this herself at an early stage. She just didn’t want to admit to herself that she’d passed her pupil on the road without even realizing it. 

By the time they reached the city of Rikarisu, however, she had no choice but to do so. In that city, she learned of the “Dead End Incident” that took place there two years ago. She also heard the story of a man named Nokopara, whom she’d once been in a party with. Given what her parents had told her when she stopped by their village…all the pieces fit together. Roxy simply had to admit the truth. 

The Kennel Master had to be Rudeus. 

At the moment, Roxy was in a Rikarisu bar with her old comrade Nokopara. 

When she’d asked about Rudeus, he’d been initially hesitant to say much. It seemed he’d taken up a somewhat disrespectable line of work at some point. Roxy wasn’t about to judge him for that, however. On the Demon Continent, you did what you had to if you wanted to survive. 

“I see… So Blaze died on the job, huh…?” 

“Yep. Poor bastard got swallowed whole by a Red-Hood Cobra.” 

It had been years since Roxy left the Demon Continent; the two of them had a lot of catching up to do. And yet, they’d found themselves mostly talking about the old days. 

Closing her eyes, Roxy thought about Blaze. The man had a pig’s face and a filthy mouth; he’d cussed out Roxy every time she messed up. Still, he wasn’t a bad guy deep down, and you couldn’t have asked for a more reliable warrior. 

According to Nokopara, Blaze was the veteran leader of a B-ranked adventuring party at the time of his death. On the Demon Continent, that was no small accomplishment. Roxy was impressed at how far her sharp-tongued old colleague had come. At the same time, though, his party was apparently called Super Blazers. Seriously? The man never was any good at naming things. 

In any case, Nokopara said the monster that wiped out Blaze’s team of veterans was then slain by Rudeus and his group, who’d only just formed their own party. In other words, he’d taken down an A-ranked monster right after becoming an adventurer. 

There wasn’t a chance in hell Roxy could have managed that back in the day. But it did sound like Rudeus, all right. The thought put a small smile on her face. 

Sipping at his drink, a typically strong Demon Continent liquor, Nokopara murmured, “You’ve really changed, Roxy.” 

Roxy looked down at her reflection in her drink and wondered if this was true. “Have I? It’s kind of hard for me to tell.” 

“Yeah. You seem a lot more grown-up than you used to.” 

“What? Are you making fun of me or something?” By the time she started adventuring with Nokopara and Blaze, Roxy had already looked like a full-grown Migurd. Her face and figure hadn’t changed significantly since then. She was perfectly aware that she looked very much the same. 

“Nah, I’m serious! It’s, like, yer general vibe, I guess. Ya used to come off more like a kid, you know?” 

“Well, I’ve put a lot of years behind me since then, you know? Even if it doesn’t look that way.” Roxy shrugged, tossed a handful of roasted snacks into her mouth, and crunched away. These things were actually Stone Treant seeds. She didn’t find them particularly tasty, but for some reason it was hard to stop shoveling them into your mouth once you’d gotten started. 

“This is exactly what I’m talkin’ about, though. Back in the day, you used ta be desperate to get everyone to think of you as a grownup. Ya probably woulda been on cloud nine if I said somethin’ like that.” 

“Is that right…? Yes, I suppose I was like that for a while.” 

That was back when she didn’t properly understand her own skills and limitations. In those days, Roxy had worked furiously to convince people that she was an adult and someone to be taken seriously. She’d bragged of her talents as a magician and her competence with every aspect of magic. She’d insisted she was capable of anything. 

Her opinion of herself had been completely reversed since then, but the reputation she’d built up continued to spread on its own. These days, it felt like people were constantly expecting her to pull off things she couldn’t do. She’d been getting a lot of surprised reactions from people on the Demon Continent when she told them she was Rudeus’ former teacher. For some reason, the boy had been telling everyone that he owed his skills to “the teachings of his master.” Naturally, they’d assumed that Roxy must be capable of silent spellcasting as well, which she most definitely was not. 

Perhaps Roxy’s own master, who once disparaged her in the harshest terms, had experienced feelings similar to these. If that was the case, Roxy felt bad about how she’d responded. It was a hard thing to be the mentor of someone more talented than you. Apparently, you had to experience this for yourself before you truly understood it. 

In Roxy’s case, it was a source of embarrassment as well as pride. She no longer wanted Rudeus to stop calling her his master, but for some reason, the fact that he’d totally ignored her orders on that point made her kind of happy. 

“Anyway, you haven’t changed one bit, Nokopara.” 

“Oh yeah?” 

“Yeah. Except physically, of course.” 

The man had always been greedy for money and had a tendency to prey on the weak, and that was obviously still the case. Back in the day, Roxy had often thought he was the last person she ever wanted to make an enemy of. 

“Hey, what’s that supposed ta mean? Ya implyin’ I’m all old and wrinkly now?” 

“Sure, you could put it that way. You’ve gotten old, Nokopara. And wrinkly.” 

“Hah! Ya got a mouth on ya now, girl!” Nokopara let out a whinny of sarcastic laughter, then sighed. “Man, this really takes me back…” 

“I know what you mean.” 

In the old days, there would have been two others at this table: a boy who was always cursing furiously at Nokopara, and another boy who’d break up their fights with a sigh. Those two were both gone now, leaving only two middle-aged ex-adventurers behind. 

True, one of them hadn’t aged too much due to her race, but the old days were never coming back. That much was for sure. 

The two of them ended up reminiscing in the bar for hours, right up until Nokopara finally drank himself under the table. 

Roxy had seen her parents, and now a very old acquaintance. That alone meant her voyage up here hadn’t been a waste of time. She was truly, deeply happy that she’d come. 

*** 

Had Rudeus already reached Millishion by now? Roxy wondered. 

Assuming they passed each other by at Wind Port, he had likely left this continent a good six months ago. The rainy season had been just about to start, true…but the Holy Sword Highway was a safe, easy road to follow. Unless he’d stopped off at an Elf or Dwarf settlement, his party would surely have made it to the city by now. 

In other words, she didn’t have to search for him in the first place. Just as Paul had assumed in that letter, the boy was fine on his own. He’d forged his way across the entire Demon Continent in no time at all, along with that “Eris” girl he was teleported with. Most travelers would have fallen prey to its dangers or struggled to make progress, but he’d made it look easy. On top of it all, he’d somehow recruited into his party a member of the Superd race Roxy had always feared. 

“Your pupil’s one impressive kid, Roxy.” 

“Indeed. I can hardly believe he’s actually Paul’s son.” 

Elinalise and Talhand were full of compliments as well. 

The way Roxy saw things, though, it didn’t really matter whose pupil or son Rudeus was. The boy had been a prodigy from the get-go. He could have pulled this off just fine even if she’d never even met him. 

But putting all that aside… 

“What shall we do now, then?” 

Roxy paused to consider Elinalise’s question. The initial goal of this journey had been finding Rudeus, but he was probably safe in Millishion by now. Roxy very much wanted to see him, but at the same time, she didn’t want to abandon their broader objective. 

“Let’s search the northwest region of the Demon Continent.” 

They’d tracked down Rudeus, but the other three members of his family were still missing. On the road here, they’d already found a number of displaced humans from the Fittoa region; there were probably some in the northwest as well. 

“Sure you don’t want to go see your pupil?” asked Talhand. 

“Yes, I’m sure,” said Roxy with a slight nod. For one thing, what if he figured out she’d passed him by without even realizing it? That would just be too humiliating. Her standing as his “master” was on shaky enough ground as it was. “There are plenty of cities on the Demon Continent we haven’t checked yet. Let’s keep moving through them one by one, just like we’ve been doing.” 

Talhand and Elinalise just looked at each other and chuckled. 

One way or another, Roxy Migurdia’s voyage wasn’t over yet.