Nozomanu Fushi no Boukensha (LN) - Volume 10 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: A Token of Thanks from the Village Girl

Augurey returned late that night and told us how it’d taken some time to clear up a misunderstanding with Ferrici’s parents. Considering how unusual our circumstances were, I wasn’t too surprised to hear this. Regardless, we would have to properly execute the job tomorrow—technically today.

Augurey went off to bed shortly after coming back to the inn, so we never conducted our prep meeting. I wasn’t too worried about it, though. We’d already decided on how to take care of the request before we arrived at the village, and the only thing I had in mind for the meeting’s agenda was to review our plan.

They weren’t easy jobs, and we’d probably fail if we underestimated the difficulty, but neither Augurey nor Lorraine would do that. For example, Augurey hadn’t rushed off to bed because he was lazy. He wanted to get enough rest so his performance wouldn’t be affected tomorrow. Lorraine quickly followed suit for the same reason.

I’d already gotten enough sleep, so I was left with nothing to do but kill time until the sun came up. I could go to sleep if I really wanted to, but there wasn’t much use in it. Sometimes that would make me more tired than staying up.

My body came with a few perks, but the loneliness at night wasn’t one of them. No pain, no gain, they said. In exchange for blissful sleep, I gained the chance to reach Mithril-class. I couldn’t complain, all things considered. Nonetheless, I still wanted to be human again. If only I could be a human and maintain these powers. That was me being too greedy, I guessed. One day, I’d have to choose; I just had a feeling that would be the case. I’d have to really think it over.

It seemed I was always brooding about something when I was alone. I wished the sun would rise already.

◆◇◆◇◆

“Let’s get going,” Lorraine said.

The three of us were standing outside the inn. After Lorraine’s and Augurey’s power naps, morning had come. Even after everything that had happened, the innkeeper graciously cooked us breakfast, which we had graciously accepted.

The three of us were all prepped and dressed for the job. We were wearing our armor and carrying our weapons and the necessary tools. We’d stored our travel wear in a magic bag so we wouldn’t be leaving any luggage in our rooms. We had some trust in the innkeeper and the other villagers, but none for Goblin or Siren. Better safe than sorry, we’d decided.

“I think we’re ready. Do you remember our objective?” Augurey asked, double-checking.

“Of course,” I answered. “Capture an aqua hathur alive, gather the mud or clay of a luteum golem, and gather some wyvern elata.”

Augurey nodded. “And how will we do that?”

Lorraine took over. “We need to locate the aqua hathur first. It’s been spotted around Lake Petorama, but this monster is practically a fae. As long as we can find it, I’ll take care of it with magic.”

“Right. We’re counting on you, Lorraine. Rentt and I aren’t going to be much help.”

You might think it was presumptuous that Augurey included me in his comment, but he was absolutely correct. I couldn’t make many adjustments to the few spells I could cast, and none of them were high-level magic. Augurey didn’t fare much better in the spellcasting department; the sword was his method of choice. He had a little bit of magic up his sleeve, much like I’d had before turning into a monster. Most of those spells were used to improve quality of life, like starting a fire or securing some drinking water.

Lorraine shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that. The plan is for me to cast the net and for you two to chase them into it. You’re in for more work than I am.”

“All we got is physical endurance. Much easier than magic.”

“You said it.”

Augurey and I puffed out our chests—to Lorraine’s exasperation. She didn’t disagree, though.

“I can’t argue that I don’t have the endurance,” Lorraine said. “Let’s just say we put ourselves in the right roles. As for the mud or clay of a luteum golem...”

“It’s tricky,” Augurey replied. “Taking down the golems is one thing, but we need to get our hands on what they’re made out of.”

“It’s a coin toss whether or not we get a mud-based or clay-based golem, depending on how much moisture is in them. Let’s hope for clay.”

A luteum golem could be a slimy blob of mud or a solid structure of clay. Both were considered to be the same monster, despite their difference in form. I could think of a few choice words to share with whoever the researcher was who’d decided this, but the nature of the luteum golem’s mana, as well as the material they were composed of, were apparently near identical. Drying out a mud-based golem would turn it into a clay one, and adding water to the clay-based variant would turn it into a mud one.

The material you could dig out of the earth in this area was clearly distinct from mud and clay, so there was more to their composition than met the eye. That was why our job called for either a clay or a mud golem. Our research told us that both variants had been spotted around Lake Petorama, which left our prospective encounter up to chance. If we hadn’t needed to complete our three jobs by the end of the day, we could’ve hung around and waited for a clay-based golem, but instead, we’d have to take the first encounter we could get. Clay made the collection easier and less messy, so fingers crossed.

◆◇◆◇◆

Lorraine grunted, her arms crossed. “There’s the wyvern elata.” Her concern lay more with the effort than the difficulty that the job required.

“Going through the front door... We have to keep our head in the game. We need to deal with this to get to our other materials, anyway,” Augurey stated.

Our only way in was straight through the mime wyvern mating grounds. They were considered relatively peaceful any other time of the year, but during their mating season, going anywhere near them would most likely trigger them to attack. Making our way through their mating grounds meant that we would have to go through hundreds, maybe thousands of wyverns. I couldn’t think of a more time-consuming task at the moment.

“Well, we knew what we signed up for,” I said. “We just have to keep our guard up and march through. If we’re lucky, they’ll stay away once we knock out a few of them, right?”

“There’s no guarantee, but let’s hope so. We can’t do anything until we get there, at least.” Lorraine sighed and began to trod reluctantly, solely driven by professional obligation.

Just as Augurey and I moved to follow her, I heard a voice calling from the great beyond. “Wait!” More accurately, the familiar voice had called from down the street.

“There’s Ferrici,” Augurey observed.

It was Ferrici, sure enough, holding something in her hand.

She eventually reached us, out of breath. In contrast to the thick skirt suited for village living that she’d been wearing at the bar, her outfit was more formfitting, allowing for ease of movement.

“What is it? Did something happen?” I asked. We still didn’t know where Goblin’s other accomplice was or what they were up to. I was concerned that they’d attacked Ferrici, her family, or others in the village, somehow.

Ferrici shook her head. “Oh, no. I just wanted to... Here.” She produced a basket woven out of dried vegetation.

Augurey accepted it, and peeked inside. “You packed us lunch? It looks amazing.” He turned to us. “Look.”

Lorraine and I leaned in to see an array of fresh food we wouldn’t have dreamed to take on our long expedition: roasted ham and cheese sandwiches, a salad of vegetables so fresh they must have been picked that morning, and some perfectly ripe fruit. We did have a decent ration of food with us already, but the majority of it was preserved. We couldn’t keep fresh food in our packs for days on end. Some of it was fresh, but we always underestimated the quantity we’d need because we never wanted to waste food. Once those ran out, we exclusively ate preserved foods. They tasted decent with a little bit of cooking, and a little foraging in the forest earned us edible greens. At this point, we still had a sliver of perishable food with us, but it was nothing compared to a basket full of freshly prepared food.

“Are you sure this is for us?” Augurey asked.

It obviously was, but Ferrici hadn’t said so explicitly. The chance that she had just showed us the food to make us jealous was, well, zero. She’d have to be one vindictive lady to do that.

Ferrici answered, “Of course. My parents put it together. As thanks.”

Augurey chuckled and muttered, “I told them they didn’t have to do anything.”

“Should I not have brought it?”

“No, I love it. Right, guys?” Augurey prompted.

“We would’ve had to settle for wyvern stew without it. Thanks,” I said.

“It doesn’t taste too bad,” Lorraine explained, “but it can get too greasy, so it’s not my cup of tea. We rarely have the luxury of enjoying our meal while on a job. Thank you so much, Ferrici. Please give our thanks to your parents as well.” Her grandiose speech of gratitude was probably more genuine than it sounded, given how she had a surprisingly large appetite.

“Please...” Ferrici shook her head. “It was nothing.”

I turned to Augurey. “I’ll hold on to that. I’d feel bad if we fought with it in our hands and shook it all up.”

“Your magic bag’s a little bigger than ours, isn’t it? I’ll take you up on that,” Augurey responded.

With a little bit of finesse, my bag would fit a tarasque, so the basket didn’t pose a problem. I held the basket to the opening of the bag, and it slipped inside, much to Ferrici’s amazement. I didn’t expect her to have seen something like this before in her remote village; it cost over two thousand gold coins, after all. You could buy a house for that much money.

“We should get going,” Augurey said to Ferrici, but she took him by his sleeve.

“One more thing!”

We stopped, and Augurey asked for all of us, “Yes? What is it?”

Ferrici hung her head for a moment, hesitating, but then she spoke with determination. Well, she mostly spoke to Augurey, but whatever.

“You want to know how to get past the mime wyvern mating grounds, right? I want to tell you how to do it.”

Her offer came as a surprise. We knew that she most likely had this information, but we just didn’t think she’d be willing to share it because of the importance and the potential danger of that information. Now it seemed she’d changed her mind. This was very good news for us—too good, even.

“You don’t have to share that information with us, Ferrici. Isn’t it a dear secret to you?” Augurey asked with concern.

If we had been a less communicative party, one of us might have felt slighted that he went and ruined our chances of breezing through our job, but we always reached a general consensus when it came to principles like this. If Ferrici didn’t want to talk, we didn’t want to pressure her, so neither Lorraine nor I had a problem with Augurey double-checking with Ferrici.

Ferrici nodded and quietly said, “It is. But, Augurey, you saved my life. Rentt, Lorraine... You didn’t kill anyone from the village either. I know that killing them would’ve been much easier for you than detaining all of us unhurt.”

That was true. Lorraine could have burned the whole village down before the night was out. I supposed I could have drained the blood from every soul around. Augurey would have just killed them one by one, I guessed. Still, he could’ve wiped out the village in less than half a day. We’d have walked away with no loose ends.

We weren’t barbarians, though, and it was doubtful whether that would really leave no loose ends. We could have gotten away with leaving no witnesses if it hadn’t been for Goblin and his crew, but they would have made sure to bring us more trouble than it was worth. In short, leaving the villagers unharmed was largely for our own sake, so we didn’t deserve all this thanks.

Ferrici continued, “That’s why I want to repay you somehow, but I’m not a good cook, and I couldn’t think of anything else. But the way to slip through a mime wyvern mating grounds...”

She must have thought that this was the only token of gratitude she could offer. It was endearing, and she seemed sure of her decision.

Augurey saw the same thing I did. “We’d love to hear it, if you’re sure. We’ll swear that the secret stays between us. Are you really sure?” he asked one more time.

“Yes! I trust you all!” Ferrici said.

◆◇◆◇◆

The mime wyvern mating grounds was on the shore of Lake Petorama.

“There’s a few thousand of them, easy,” I said from behind a bush along the woods near the lake. “Anyone who tries to walk straight through that is dumber than a bag of rocks.”

Lorraine rolled her eyes. “Tell it to the mirror. Although, I agree, for the record. But the view is beautiful. The mime wyverns’ sky-blue color really shines against the deep blue of the lake. And look at that fantastic array of floating stones. The theory is that minute magic crystals in the stones produce this effect.”

Directly above Lake Petorama and in the air around it floated stones of all sizes, from pebbles to boulders. They reminded me of the fourth level of the New Moon Dungeon. That one was as big as a house, and some of them here were as big as it was.

Mime wyverns clung to each floating stone, fashioning nests out of materials like branches, rocks, and what looked like monster bones. There were eggs in many of the nests, no doubt, but I couldn’t get a good look from where we were. I could fly over with my wings and check, but then I’d be swarmed by mime wyverns and crash-land, only to become their snack. No thank you.

The floating stones were a major reason the wyverns chose this area to breed in, in addition to the lake. Every confirmed mime wyvern mating ground had very similar conditions.

“The height of the stones must give their nests protection,” Lorriane posited. “Since they’re floating above ground, nothing can climb up there. You could crawl up the vines that are dangling from them, but then you’d only make it easier for the wyverns to swarm you.”

It was the wisdom of their species. All creatures, from animals to monsters, knew so much without being told. When the cliché thought that the most foolish species must be humans popped into my head, I returned to the matter at hand.

“We would’ve gone on that suicide mission if it wasn’t for you, Ferrici. Are you sure you’ll be safe?” I asked as I turned to my side where Ferrici crouched.

She had followed us this far, despite lacking any combat skills, yet she had done so because the way to sneak through the mime wyvern mating grounds was her.

◆◇◆◇◆

“Yes. I do it all the time. Oh! Make sure to stay close to me,” Ferrici said as she stood and started walking.

The wyverns not only populated the floating stones, but the shores of the lake and the area between the lake and us as well. From what I’d been told, they positioned themselves to make sure they could attack any threats as quickly as possible. We would have been Exhibit A of that theory, except...

“I don’t believe it. It’s like they don’t notice us at all,” Lorraine said, wide-eyed, which was a rare sight indeed.

I shared her sentiment, though. All we were doing was walking closely behind Ferrici, and the mime wyverns were going about what they did with their day as if we weren’t there at all—fluttering their wings, nuzzling up against one another, and the like.

“They’re kind of cute when you see them like this,” said Augurey. “Almost as if they’re normal birds.”

I agreed with that too. I was tempted to reach out and pet one of them, but I definitely wasn’t taking the risk.

“You could touch them gently, but they’re so big that you might get hurt. Well, none of you will, I’m sure,” Ferrici said. Maybe she’d tried petting one of them before.

I hesitated, but then I asked, “Ferrici, you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but why are the wyverns so oblivious? If we’re doing something special to be undetectable, I have no idea what it is.”

“I’m not really sure,” she answered. “I can just tell they won’t attack me. When they’re really angry, I can sense that I’d be attacked if I got close too. But when they all are relaxed like they are now, I can sense that they won’t attack.”

That sounded suspiciously like blind intuition. Did all of our lives hang in the balance of it?

Lorraine interrupted my fatalistic thought with her own assessment. “This must be another example of a special ability, like Goblin’s or Siren’s.”

“What makes you say so?” Augurey asked.

“I have met people who have these kinds of powers, and I have heard stories of more. Many of them describe their powers in a similar manner. That is a major reason why research for the cause of these powers has stalled. People are born with these special abilities, and they’re mostly used intuitively. That’s why they’re less practical than magic. Besides, most of them are useless.”

“What do you mean, ‘useless’?”

“Levitating a pebble for a short amount of time, for example. Magic can replicate the result very easily. On top of that, mastery of theory and technique can improve your spell casting until you can lift a boulder, but that isn’t a guarantee with special abilities. In fact, most powers remain stagnant throughout the user’s life. Some other examples I know of are changing the color of a glass of water, or levitating just a tiny bit...”

I guessed those would be pretty useless, especially if magic could easily substitute for it. If I had to think of an effective use, I’d choose cooking. Changing the color of water (or possibly any food) without any additives would probably be popular among restaurants. Even the power of levitating a pebble could be useful to break eggs while keeping your hands clean. I wondered if anyone used their special ability for cooking. Maybe some did use them for that, but these powers were so rare that there’d be no way of finding them.

“A special ability...” Ferrici muttered. “That’s what this feeling is? I never knew.”

Ferrici looked at Lorraine, clearly moved by her explanation. Her ability had just been clarified and validated by someone else. I knew how that felt. When Lorraine analyzed what I was and how I’d gotten this way, I found it comforting. Not knowing was the scariest thing, especially when it came to your own power.

“Really?” Lorraine asked. “I suppose that’s natural, when these powers are rarely acknowledged even in the capital. I heard that a larger population wielded these powers, back in the day.”

“There aren’t many of them now?” Ferrici asked, leaning forward.

“Not since magic flourished. In fact, there is a theory that defines magic as a system designed from special abilities. It’s not a very popular theory, but some people do manifest magic spells naturally. Nevertheless, special abilities do not utilize mana, but I’m sure there have been many mages who have tried to recreate the effects of various special abilities. The theory that they are two distinct skills is more mainstream.”

“Wow. I feel like a fog has lifted. I’ve wondered so many times how I’m doing this...” Ferrici reminisced, indicating that she didn’t entirely see this power as a blessing. At least now, Lorraine had given her a clear label for it.

“I can’t answer that question either,” Lorraine replied. “These abilities, though, have been around for a long time. They kept humans alive before they started using weapons or magic. Sometimes I hypothesize that the legends of old, which tell of heroes, mages, and gods with powers that far outweigh any human’s abilities today, were based on special abilities. It has also been said that the special abilities manifested in our time pale in comparison to their forms from ages ago. In any case, your power is not a foul one. Case in point, it’s a great help for us now.” Lorraine was trying to quell Ferrici’s doubts in her own way.

“Yes. I feel much better about it. Not that I can proudly tell the whole village about my power.”

“I agree with you there. You should keep your ability a secret,” Lorraine said.

◆◇◆◇◆

“So, one of our jobs is to harvest wyvern elata. How do you usually go about that?” I asked. Those shipments of wyvern elata that came through during mime wyvern mating season must have been Ferrici’s doing.

Here was the conundrum: regardless of Ferrici’s ability to approach the wyverns without being attacked, it still wouldn’t be easy to get to where the elata was. Wyvern elata grew by their nests, which were exclusively on the topside of floating stones. Why were they so inconveniently inaccessible? That was because the plant was said to grow from wyvern droppings, and wyverns only dropped atop of floating stones during mating season.

You could find some wyvern elata in the middle of the woods here and there, but those instances were attributed to wyvern droppings that fell mid-flight and landed away from the floating stone. The elata never grew too impressive in size, but I’d always gathered any I came across. In this area, however, the elata exclusively grew on the floating stones. Other vegetation grew on the stones as well, so climbing up some of the vines could be one way up to our objective, but I doubted Ferrici could pull it off, hence my question.

Ferrici answered, “Usually I pick one to bring them to me.”

“What does that mean?” Lorraine asked, sounding as if she didn’t want to believe what she’d heard.

Ferrici decided to show us what she meant. “Well... That one looks good. Hey!” She waved her hand at a mime wyvern that had been daydreaming, and the creature turned to Ferrici before flying over. It landed next to us and nuzzled at Ferrici’s face.

“Her ability lets her do more than get close to them...” Lorraine muttered.

“She’s a perfect fit for a dragon knight or a wyvern stable keep. I’d hire her on the spot,” Augurey added.

That would be her calling if she could access how a wyvern was doing just by getting close to them and even issue basic commands without so much as training them. Both of the occupations that Augurey had listed came with decently high salaries and status too. Ferrici would be immediately hired for either of those sought-after professions.

“I couldn’t do anything like that,” Ferrici said. “I can just ask them for a little favor. Oh, that one over there looks nice too.” Ferrici soon gathered four wyverns in all. “Now, please ride on their backs. They’ll take us up there.”

She pointed at the largest floating stone we could see, adorned with so much vegetation that it looked like a little forest stood atop it, especially when compared to the other floating stones in the vicinity. We could see mime wyverns flying to and from the stone, so it was a good bet that there was elata on its topside.

“Are you sure we can ride them?” I asked.

Ferrici nodded. “It’s safe. Unless you fly too far from me, but some of my friends from the village have done it before. Do you remember the two girls I was with at the bar?”

“Those two. They’ve ridden a wyvern too?”

That meant they knew about Ferrici’s special ability. I remembered how neither of them had spilled a word about this when we asked them some questions after Ferrici had left the bar. She had good friends.

“Right. And they’ve taken them all the way out to that island. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Turning this offer down would ruin me as an adventurer. Who’d hire an adventurer more cowardly than an average villager girl? Well, I doubted I’d be out of work, but I’d never live it down. Rentt the Coward. Rentt the Scaredy-Cat. I could hear the mocking monikers now, and I wasn’t about to make them a reality.

I bucked up and hopped on the wyvern’s back. It was surprisingly comfortable, and I felt secure. I’d expected wyverns to be more slimy, but I stood corrected. Wyvern skin was dry and smooth to the touch, but not so much that I’d slip off its back. It felt like sitting on a well-made leather sofa.

“This isn’t half bad...” I remarked.

“I’d say,” Augurey agreed.

Lorraine and Augurey both looked as amused as I was.

These wyvern didn’t have any reins on them, of course, so I was wondering where to hold on when Ferrici called, “Everyone! Hold on to their horns so you don’t fall!”

Each mime wyvern did boast sizable horns. The ones on my wyvern were just the right size to grab, unlike the horns on some of the larger wyverns around.

Watching us timidly reach for the wyvern horns, Ferrici smiled and shouted, “Here we go!”

Ferrici’s wyvern leaped up first, and ours followed suit. They didn’t ascend too quickly—a bit slower than me flying with my own wings—but Lorraine and Augurey seemed slightly shocked by the newfound sensation. Still, they were enjoying themselves, just in a different way than I’d expected.

Augurey shouted, “This is awesome!”

“This would be very convenient for cartography,” Lorraine mused.

◆◇◆◇◆

“Here we are...”

After a leisurely flight, we landed on one of the floating stones. By “we,” of course, I meant the mime wyverns. I was the only one among us who could have made a landing unassisted. Well, maybe not.

“What an experience. I never dreamed I’d fly on the back of a wyvern,” Lorraine said, sounding satisfied.

“Will the wyverns wait for us here?” Augurey asked Ferrici, apparently more concerned about our situation than the significance of the experience.

She nodded. “Yes. I just need to ask them to.”

“Good. We won’t have to find our own way back.”

If the wyverns were to ditch us, our only way off the floating stone would be jumping off. Lorraine could feasibly finagle something with magic, but it was reassuring to know that our return trip would be by a familiar method.

“Now that we have our exit plan, let’s get our hands on some wyvern elata. Do you know where they grow?” Lorraine asked Ferrici.

“I do. I’ve gathered it many times. Right this way.”

Ferrici began walking. We rushed after her, knowing full well that, whether we were on or off the floating stone, we’d be swarmed by mime wyverns the second we were too far away from her.

◆◇◆◇◆

“A wyvern nest... I can’t believe we’re close to it,” Lorraine muttered, staring at it with great interest.

The nest, constructed out of branches and monster bones, was large enough for a person or two to lie in it. It even seemed a bit small considering how large mime wyverns could get, but I figured that a larger nest might be troublesome because of how many floating stones were in the area and how many wyverns were congregated here. Maybe nature had a way of maintaining balance with these things.

What was inside the nest piqued our curiosity even more, though.

Lorraine quietly gasped. “Eggs and hatchlings. Now this is a sight I never thought I’d see.”

Within the nest lay unhatched wyvern eggs and wyvern hatchlings that looked only a few days old. Their mother was feeding them mouth-to-mouth like birds. Their appearance was birdlike too, making them look like chicklets smothered in soft, blue feathers. Their size, however, was very distinct from other birds; the hatchlings were already as large as mature chickens. Even the eggs were too large to carry with one arm.

“I’d like to crack one of those eggs over a griddle,” Lorraine quipped.

Ferrici gave her a dirty look. “No, Lorraine.” It was clear that the wyverns meant a lot to her. They’d be important to me too if I could understand their thoughts somewhat and they obeyed my commands.

“I’m sorry, I meant it as a joke,” Lorraine apologized. “Even if I was starving, I couldn’t finish an egg that large.”

Ferrici’s glare became somewhat less severe.

◆◇◆◇◆

“Right around here,” Ferrici informed us.

We had followed her lead past the cluster of mime wyvern nests to a clearing. She’d told us that most wyvern elata could be found some distance away from their nests, and true enough, we let out a collective sigh of amazement as we came to a thicket of more wyvern elata than I’d ever seen.

The proportions of the plants were just as impressive as the quantity before us. They were bulbous, with thick stems and flowers along their tops and sides. Right off the bat, the girth of each elata surprised us; most specimens were considered fully grown if the stem was as thick as a thumb, but each elata we could see had stems several times thicker. While the average height of the plant was about up to my waist, several of these grew above our heads.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lorraine muttered in awe. She turned to Ferrici and asked, “You’ve been selling these? I would expect someone to take notice. Anyone who sees these would ask where they grow, and I’d imagine any herbalist or alchemist would scour for these at all cost.”

Ferrici replied, “I may live in a remote village, but I’ve thought of that much. I always gather and sell ones like those in the corner that are the smallest.” She pointed toward the edge of the thicket where the specimens in question were smaller—like the ones you’d find at a market, or maybe a little smaller.

“How do they grow so much?” Augurey asked.

“I think because the wyverns that nest on this stone only leave their droppings here. I’ve heard that they fertilize the elata, and there are a lot of wyverns on this rock. I’ve checked many of the other floating stones, but none of their stock grows as much as this one.”

Lorraine nodded. “Nature finds a way. The results should be similar in other environments with floating stones of this size. Perhaps I’ll seek out more locations one day,” she muttered, likely serious. Wyvern mating grounds were hard to come by, so the task should prove challenging, to say the least.

“Let’s gather some of them,” I said. “The small, inconspicuous ones, of course. But do you mind if I take a few of the larger ones for personal use?”

“Not at all,” Ferrici answered. “If you can keep a secret.”

◆◇◆◇◆

“Here we go,” I muttered, sounding like an old man getting up from his chair, and dismounted the wyvern.

After harvesting the wyvern elata, we’d walked back to our parked wyverns and ridden them down to ground level.

“Solid ground is reassuring after a while,” Augurey remarked. “Not that we would have died if we fell from there.”

The floating stone we’d harvested the elata from was right above the lake, so we wouldn’t have died from hitting the water. We would’ve been soaked, though, and forced to swim to shore. Moreover, without Ferrici at our side, we could’ve been attacked by wyverns on top of that. A run-of-the-mill adventurer might not have survived such a fate. I could have flown with my own wings, but I’d never tried flying with a swarm of wyverns on my tail. Suffice to say, I was glad we’d made a safe landing.

“One quest down, and it went even more smoothly than we hoped for. What next? Shall we keep up the pace?” I asked.

I’d expected this task to take more time because we would’ve had to dodge angry wyverns and find the elata bushes ourselves. Ferrici getting us past all of that was huge. This had all happened not only because Ferrici lived in this village, but also because Siren had hypnotized those villagers, giving us an opportunity to rescue them, thereby earning Ferrici’s gratitude. Maybe we should’ve been grateful for Goblin and his crew. Considering we’d expected something to go down, it almost felt like we’d fixed the match ourselves. Oh, well.

“We just need to capture an aqua hathur and grab some mud or clay of a luteum golem,” Augurey noted, “but we don’t know where we can find either one. Guess we just have to wander about the lake.”

These creatures, unlike wyverns, had no specific habitat.

“I know where an aqua hathur is,” Ferrici stated.

“What?!” Lorraine cried, surprised that Ferrici had said that so calmly.

Even adventurers had to spend some time hunting for an aqua hathur, and this normal girl from a village just knew where one was? Well, she had her special ability and all, but I believed the descriptor “normal” still applied here. She wasn’t particularly muscular or anything, even though she’d proven on our way here that she had way more endurance than girls from the city.

“It’s not a guarantee,” she added. “I just saw one the other day. It may still be there.”

“That’s vital,” Lorraine replied. “Once an aqua hathur settles at a spot, they won’t stray far from it.”

“Really? I thought feline monsters could travel dozens of kilometers a day,” I asked.

That was the accepted theory and also why alarms were often raised when a feline monster was spotted close to town. They could easily travel from village to village overnight.

Lorraine nodded. “That is true, but an aqua hathur is closer to fae than feline. You know that creatures with the water fae element are drawn to clear water.”

“Right,” Augurey muttered. “Once they find a water source they like, they won’t go far.”

“Yes. That’s why Ferrici’s information is valuable to us. Can you show us the way?”

Lorraine had asked for confirmation because we were about to venture beyond the area where Ferrici’s ability kept her safe from wyvern. As adventurers, we would put Ferrici’s well-being above all else, but not even the best adventurers in the world could guarantee absolute safety, so we couldn’t insist on Ferrici’s cooperation. I figured she’d tell us its general location, and we would go search from there.

“Sure. It’s this way,” Ferrici said and just started walking.

We once again hurried after her.

“Aren’t you concerned about the danger you’re putting yourself in?” Lorraine asked.

“She went there and back just the other day. I think she knows it’s not that dangerous,” I said. It was my best guess.

Augurey chimed in, “That too, but she must trust us. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have agreed without a second thought.”

“We need to protect her if things go south,” I insisted. “Especially after what happened.”

Lorraine agreed. “I’ll set up a strong magic shield. She must remain unharmed, even at the cost of our own safety.”

◆◇◆◇◆

“It’s really here,” I murmured.

There it was—a real-life aqua hathur before my very eyes. Its appearance was that of a transparent cat, its entire body made of water. Behaviorally, it was indistinguishable from an ordinary cat. It was currently washing its face.

What’s more, there were multiple aqua hathurs. They were hanging about a small spring created by a rock formation. It was slightly elevated from the lake, and water seeped out of the cracks. It must have been one of the several bodies of water that fed into the lake.

People who liked cats might have been happy just to watch these liquid felines laze about the spring all day, but we had a job to do. Even if this monster was mostly harmless, we were going to capture one of them. And like I said, they were mostly harmless.

“Let’s get to work, just like we planned,” I suggested.

Augurey pointed to a spot on a map he held in his hand. “We corner them over there.”

“You can do this!” Ferrici cheered as we started toward the aqua hathurs.

◆◇◆◇◆

The aqua hathur sensed our approach and turned to Augurey and me very much like a cat would have. The trouble came with its next move. I sensed the mana in the air contract and saw a thin blade of water form in front of the monster, but not because the aqua hathur was thirsty or anything.

“Augurey!”

“Yep, I know!”

We exchanged looks and dove to the sides. As soon as we did, the blade of water created a chasm across the ground and sliced the trees at the end of it vertically in half before thundering to the ground.

That little projectile of water could have been our guillotine. Humans could cast a spell called Yidle Swiffof that produced a similar effect, just much more slowly and at a much smaller scale. In addition, a human mage would require an interval of anywhere from a few seconds to half a minute in between spells, but an aqua hathur could cast water magic as effortlessly as we used our limbs, allowing them to quickly repeat the spell.

A series of deadly liquid blades flew in our direction. Dodging them all, we gained ground toward the aqua hathur. Luckily for us, it was just a dumb animal. That might sound insensitive, but it wasn’t smart enough to see a directional pattern in our movements and use its spells to block our path. This creature would have been a terrifying foe had it possessed the intelligence of your average human. It was still plenty deadly, though. It was just that, no matter how fatal a spell was, it wouldn’t do any good if it never hit.

“Now! I got it!”

I jumped in front of the aqua hathur before Augurey got a chance and reached out to the little monster. Of course, the aqua hathur was made up of water, so I couldn’t grab it by normal means, but mana held its body together, just like how mana held the bones of a skeleton in place.

As long as you contained the hathur’s mana, you could pick it up—supposedly. A person had once hypothesized and proven this theory long ago, and thanks to their research, we now had magic items that allowed us to touch and interact with less solid monsters like the aqua hathur. Augurey and I each had a pair of the magic items on our hands, courtesy of Lorraine. Our first plan was to wield these and catch the hathur if we could.

“Whoa! No dice!”

I had made a solid grab for it, but the hathur escaped my grasp in a slithery twist. It fled, scampering away somehow and scattering what was a cluster of several hathurs. When our original target bounded past Augurey, he reached for the creature but couldn’t so much as touch it. It wasn’t that Augurey was incompetent either; the aqua hathur was just that quick.

Even on the run, they continued to fire off their water blades. Dodging those and catching a hathur was simply not going to happen. There were some work-arounds to kill the monster, like spells that would target an area rather than a specific monster, but... I guessed that was probably why this job had collected dust until Augurey took it.

Once an adventurer took a job, they were duty bound to see it through. Both Augurey and I had failed to catch an aqua hathur, but this was only our first endeavor. Our best shot was yet to come. We zeroed in on one of them that had fled in the right direction for us to initiate our approach.

◆◇◆◇◆

“What are you doing?” Ferrici asked Lorraine, clearly puzzled by Lorraine’s handiwork.

The two of them were in a dead end formed by rocks, on which Lorraine was drawing magic circles of great intricacy. The way her slender finger magically glowed and flickered across the rocks was like an artist painting a masterpiece. At the moment, though, the magic circles hadn’t taken effect as far as anyone could tell, so it was only natural that Ferrici grew curious.

Lorraine explained, “I’m weaving a net to cast around an aqua hathur. I could conjure up a net with magic alone, but they’d noticed that, and they were going too fast. I might have been able to cast it at the right time, but this is safer. With magic circles, I can set it to activate the moment an aqua hathur passes through here. After I put my mana into these, I might as well take a nap.”

Lorraine’s brazen display of sloth aside, everything she’d told Ferrici was true, even though she’d omitted one thing: she didn’t want to risk creating and controlling a magical net while also casting a shield on Ferrici to protect her for fear of falling short on the latter. And if Lorraine could make her job easier with extra prep work, she chose that option every time rather than waiting around and worrying about what could go wrong.

“That should just about do it,” she said as she stood. “The circles are set. Let’s step back and enjoy the comedy starring Rentt and Augurey.”

If either of them had heard this remark, they might have been outraged by it.

Lorraine and Ferrici moved to a spot some distance away but close enough to observe the trap. Soon after, an aqua hathur bolted into view, followed by a man in a skeleton mask flapping his black robe and another man in a peacock-patterned outfit that hurt your eyes after prolonged exposure.

The aqua hathur wasn’t just running from the pair, but continuously firing water blades to its rear, forcing its pursuers to dodge them.

“Stop right now, you little...!”

“Just give up, already!”

The scene was comical, to say the least. However, the show reached its curtain call when the creature arrived at the dead end where Lorraine had been working. As soon as the aqua hathur stepped foot in the area, the magic circles emitted lights that resembled an electric shock, forming a cage around the elusive water cat. The creature attempted an escape nonetheless and made contact with the electric wire. Lights flashed, and the hathur collapsed on the spot.

The adventurers might have been concerned that it was dead if they hadn’t been aware that aqua hathurs did not retain their shape when they died. When they returned to nature, they simply became a mass of water and seeped into the ground. Consequently, the party could tell that this aqua hathur was unconscious but alive.

“That worked out well. Let’s go join them. Rentt and Augurey can’t do anything without a cage,” Lorraine said, carrying a cage that seemed to have materialized out of thin air. It was clearly intended for the hathur, because it was visibly distinct from a run-of-the-mill cage designed to hold regular animals. The top and bottom were ornately designed, and the bars were not metal but the same electric streaks that had trapped the hathur within the rock formation.

In fact, Lorraine walked right up to the unconscious aqua hathur, grabbed it with her gloved hand, and placed it into the cage. The creature awoke, cried loudly, and charged the electric bars. After a crackling shock, it relented and settled in.

The electricity of the handheld cage was definitely less powerful than that of the trap on the rocks, but the hathur still looked rather pitiful in its current state. Even though the monster had just been unleashing deadly water blades against the party, something about its appearance drew unconditional sympathy.

Lorraine saw it on Ferrici’s face and added, “This aqua hathur will be kept by a noblewoman in the capital. It’ll wear a magical collar that prevents it from casting spells, but it won’t be treated badly. Don’t worry.”

Ferrici looked visibly relieved.