Nidoume no Jinsei wo Isekai de - Chapter 8

The sun rose slowly. Step by step the darkness of the night retreated steadily narrowing down its area of influence.

Gazing at the sky which started to be tinted in a red color, Shion had a feeling she saw something she didn’t actually want to see.

It was almost morning, a refreshing one.

If that only was the case it would be nice, Shion thought.

If she tried to accurately describe her mixed up feelings this morning, she wouldn’t be able to do it satisfactorily.

Her whole body felt heavy. She was sore from running around all night. Until now she couldn’t count the times she had to wield her weapon.

Additionally half of that weariness was due to her listless nature.

Here and there she was injured. Because of the bleeding her stamina was depleted which additionally caused an intense exhaustion.

Although she didn’t receive a fatal wound, the deep cuts at who-knows-how-many places took their toll in their own way.

Putting her own affairs aside, the question why they were still alive simply didn’t vanish.

Originally she should rest on a bed or the ground. Her body was entirely wrapped up in bandages. Her wounds had been sewn shut making her appear like an old rag. Had it not been for Rona’s healing magic, she would have used up all her strength midway assuming she was lucky enough to not be killed in battle before that.

Although the medical treatment of her wounds had already finished, replenishing the blood she lost with Healing magic was not an option as curing the wounds of an patient caused twice the exhaustion on the practitioner.

Her feelings were heavy, too

When she closed her eyes, she was vividly reminded of the scene of the approaching horde of goblins emerging from within the darkness which was burned into her sight.

She couldn’t recall just how many of that crowd she had slaughtered. At the beginning she intended to keep count of it, but before long she stopped it as she didn’t comprehend the reason to do it any more.

Brandishing her weapon attempting to strike at the opponent similar to a free-for-all fight, there was no margin left to think about other matters.

The damage sustained by the villagers was severe, too.

After all it was only ten-odd defenders intercepting the charge. It was impossible to restrain the pack of goblins and thus they were allowed to invade the village center.

Villagers who couldn’t fight, locked their houses and secluded themselves in the basement where the crop was stored. The majority escaped the danger. Unfortunately it was discovered that 10 people had become desperate and tried to leave resulting in their death.

As for the villagers who helped as defenders, most of them had died. There were merely two survivors. Those two each lost an arm and had their eyes injured. Returning back to the old life with such injuries wouldn’t be possible any more.

Most likely it has been decided to close down this village temporarily, Shion judged with a gloomy mood.

The workers were almost completely annihilated. Thus it would be unreasonable for the remaining villagers to continue staying here.

Going by the nature of the guild, it was almost certain that the accepted request will be judged as failure as well.

Surviving in perfectly good health was absolutely necessary and only that would be deemed acceptable.

Thinking about the cleanup of the incident, Shion was plunged into a whirl of dark emotions not knowing how deep she would fall.

In the end, the horde of goblins gushing out of the forest approximately exceeded an amount in the three digits by several counts in total.¹

Moving one’s sight from the village towards the forest, the ground up to the forest was turned into an area that was completely covered with innumerable corpses of goblins scattered about.

A figure of a person could be seen weaving through the gaps and slowly walking.

It was Renya.

He walked holding a knife drenched in reddish brown liquid in his left hand and dragging along the corpse of a goblin in his right hand.

If one wondered what he was doing: He was in the process of collecting the magic cores from the defeated goblin’s bodies and gathering the unnecessary corpses in one place.

The magic core was an unusual crystal placed within the body of every monster. Generally it could be found either above the heart or inside the head. The strength of a monster changed depending on the size of the core.

As for goblins, the magic core could be found above their heart, however its size wasn’t very big.

Within that core mana² was stored. It is used for magic crafting and as a power source to use various devices in cities and the like.

Furthermore the different magic cores themselves can be examined to determine from which monster it originated. Thus it also served as proof for subjugation requests of the guild.

Summarized, bringing them back turned them into money.

When Renya was taught this by Shion, he borrowed a knife from her after the battle and began to silently dismantle the corpses that were littering the field.

The corpse which was in the right hand of Renya was thrown away.

The corpses of goblins who had already been dismantled had grown into a hill. But there were still many more untouched corpses. Thus Renya immediately walked towards the next corpse.

Good grief, what kind of stamina does that man have, Shion sighed.

The appearance of the returning Renya shortly before dawn after the battle had ended had been quite terrible.

Most of the leather armor he wore had been destroyed and his upper body was completely naked. The trousers were worn-out and cut in several places.

He had been injured with a countless number of cuts and bruises all over and was also bleeding severely. Furthermore, on top of his body he was covered in the spurts of goblin gore. Basked in blood the rest couldn’t be described as a solid body any more but rather as a lump of blood and flesh taking the shape of an essence resembling a human.

Moreover, because he was basked in the blood and flesh of goblins, he emitted a staggering stench. Shion resigned herself quickly to the task of wiping off the gore with a cloth. Then she dragged him by his hand walking towards the well of the village in order to dump masses of water on him to somehow get rid of the remaining filth.

When the dirt finally came off, Rona ended up screaming at first as she saw his whole body riddled with countless injuries. As soon as she had decided, Rona glossed over the persistently clinging stench with her own personal perfume, while frantically applying healing on his battered body.

The person himself had from the beginning until the end worn an annoyed, not complying expression.

At any rate, how absurd, Shion thought.

Yet, though his charge was extremely reckless and shocked her into astonishment, he not only returned alive but also produced the majority of corpses of the subjugated goblins lying on the battlefield by himself.

Moreover, after receiving treatment he immediately went on to move the corpses of the deceased villagers. And then he started on his operation to collect the magic cores from the dead goblins and to dispose of the dismantled corpses.

If you left the corpse of a monster as is, it would turn into something that is called undead which harms humans.

It was a troublesome being as the evil dwelling within continued to exist resenting humans for its death. But that was inevitable as monsters were such kind of creatures.

Therefore it was a rule that the corpses of subjugated monsters had to properly be disposed of then and there. The predominating method of disposal was to burn the corpses to cinder.

As the amount this time was quite numerous, the chance of a corpse turning undead while the magic cores were collected existed. The unusual and inefficient action of crushing the head, which Renya performed after collecting the magic core and carrying it to the mountain of discarded bodies, was owed to this.

Due to this bloody work, his body became dirty again.

Nevertheless, Shion had a problem with him doing his work in a half-naked state and thus requested a villager to prepare men’s clothing for him to wear.

Renya refused telling her that it would just get dirty again anyway. Thus now he was working being naked above the waist only wearing his torn trousers, which made one shiver considering the coldness of such appearance.

That being said, his judgment was correct though.

Shion firmly made up her mind to make him wear the requested clothes this time after washing off the dirt with water and perfume once his work was finished.

Renya pulled up the corpse of a goblin, gouged out the magic core from its chest and crushed the head with the handle of the knife.

What a tough person, thought Shion.

On top of going through such a long battle, he continued afterwards to do this seemingly endless work. There was no adventurer of his kind to be found in the guild. At least Shion herself had no motivation to stand up and move even one step from the place she was resting at.

Although he said he was a Lost³, it was the first time for Shion to see one herself.

They were ignorant to the common sense of the world, yet they possessed strange knowledge. Furthermore in general they were capable swordsmen, magicians and manufacturers. That was the extent of Shion’s knowledge of the Lost.

Generally they were good people as almost none of them were cruel criminals.

The degree of frequency of their appearance widely varied. Especially if the world was heading towards a crisis, occasionally they would appear in a dashing heroic manner and among them a reasonable number carved their names and deeds into history. It is passed on that those figures were the existences known as the Lost.

In other words, you could say they were an extremely ambiguous existence that couldn’t be called neither a good nor a bad omen.

Even so, Shion had a hunch that Renya was a Lost who in some way differed from the Lost as she had heard in rumors.

The hearsay on the Lost was limited to the knowledge that their common point was them coming from somewhere beyond this world. This pattern was something they left behind as confirmed story after inquiring on it.

However the case of a Lost introducing himself as such was as far as Shion knew something that hadn’t happened in the past.

To begin with, the meaning of the word “Lost” itself wasn’t something a person afflicted by this state should simply know about. Thus calling yourself like this was not possible.

If that’s the case, the only reason Renya knows about the meaning of the word “Lost” was because someone else had taught it to him. However, Renya emerged from that forest. Very likely that was not a lie, Shion asserted.

Although they were associated with each other for only a little while now, Renya didn’t appear to be a person who was good at lying. Incidentally he showed no hesitation when he declared his name either.

Within the forest there is no one who could have taught Renya the word, Shion believed without a doubt.

Then, who the heck taught Renya that word?

“Thinking about it is pointless …” (Shion)

Shion judged that she wouldn’t get an answer to that question.

Renya himself might tell her if she inquired him about it, but Shion hesitated whether it was a good idea to step into the core of the matter to such an extent.

Therefore I will put aside the question concerning such matters for now, thought Shion as she watched Renya continuing his work.

Gradually the corpses which still had to be dealt with started to change into things that were going to become an undead. However, Renya casually crushed them underfoot with hard kicks wearing an annoyed expression while continuing the processing of the corpses.

Putting the various issues that can’t be comprehended aside, that tough and sharp fighting technique is simply amazing. Furthermore not judging Rona as detestable is another big point.

While he was ignorant of this world’s situation, it could be said he was able to accept various instructions and escaped the battle without harm.

After going through the trouble with the soldiers from the mercenary kingdom, Shion now had too many hard feelings towards the various problems that could occur to a party of just two women.

She had decided to choose an additional party member once they returned to town, but one couldn’t make a mistake with such an excellent article before their eyes and thus she wouldn’t let him get away.

Shion was convinced that the degree of persuasion needed wouldn’t be such a troublesome matter either.

However, Renya still held onto that bamboo weapon which the soldiers of the mercenary kingdom mockingly called a stick. As a matter of fact he can be considered stubborn or rather be unyielding at times or more precisely he possessed typically difficult personality traits, she guessed.

So in the situation of only inviting him it was still possible that he would get angry and abandon them by cutting their ties, too.

I’m not a very sociable person, Shion sighed while scratching her head.

It’s alright. I have a feeling that Rona will be able to flawlessly follow-up on me, she decided optimistically.

That Rona was in the midst of her work of throwing firewood and oil one after another on the mountain of goblin corpses that Renya had amassed.

I should help out over there too, Shion sighed while heading over.

“The stench is terrible. You should light the fire already, shouldn’t you?” (Rona)

Rona said when she realized that Shion had come over.

The smell the pile of corpses emitted was certainly unbearable, Shion nodded as she approached.

“To keep the burning fire alive this strange fuel was provided as an addition. We should start the fire, I think.” (Shion)

“Can I ask you to do it?” (Rona)

She pleaded and Shion again nodded her approval.

Although Rona was an apprentice, she was still fairly skilled at using the magic of a priest. However for that reason skills related to different kinds of magic were almost entirely no good to the degree that you could say she was incompetent at it.

Being able to easily use magic of the water system meant that your affinity with magic of the fire system would be a hopelessly bad match. Even simple magic like <Ignition> was impossible to be cast.

Shion herself was no magician and thus she wasn’t able to use magic of a certain degree. However in consideration of the common daily life she had studied elementary magic. Thus it was usually her role to ignite a fire to boil water when they occasionally camped outside.

“In accordance to my authority: Dance, red dwarf!” ⁴ (Shion)

Putting power into the words, a part of the piled mountain is ignited by fire.

<Ignition> could be called the most basic magic spell of the elementary magic in the fire system. It created no more than a tiny spark of magic.

Because it was that convenient, not only adventurers but also common citizens usually utilized it.

As long as one cleared the condition of not having a bad affinity with the system, like Rona had, almost everyone could learn this magic. By just paying a few silver coins, you could learn it in any slightly bigger town.

Being widespread to this degree, one would expect the citizens to gather together and teach the skill to their fellow companions. Strangely though, unless you accepted the teaching by a magician you wouldn’t be able to use it.

While gazing at the flame extending itself along the firewood and oil, Shion judged it absolutely necessary to introduce Renya to a magician once they returned to town.

Translation Notes

¹ 総数にして３桁を超えるくらいの数がいたらしい。 – I think I got it right but it sounds a bit odd. Please correct me, if I am wrong.

² Those who read my notes on Hachinan 26 know what comes next ;) … the author uses the term maryouku which is magic power as per translation. However magic power is a measurement of quality in my eyes and used as such occasionally. To differentiate to the usage as measurement of quantity, in other words magic energy, I will use the term “mana.”

³ Translation would be “person who lost his way/hesitating person” but that seems confusing as it is not the characteristic attribute that’s meant here. Thus I will go with the term “Lost” to reflect towards the fact they were transferred to this world and appear as lost to inhabitants of the world.

⁴ 赤い小人 – red dwarf sounds a bit odd but that’s what the spell incantation is in the end. :)