Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 21 - Chapter 1

Chapter One: The Siltran Situation

I gave orders for everyone to get back to work after the training exercise, and then we took a portal to the castle town in Siltran to see how things were going. “Castle town” might have sounded quite grand, but Siltran was just a small country with some pretty dated architecture. The town was also currently undergoing some serious renovation work. We’d deployed the skillful lumo therianthropes from our village in order to help out.

“Raph!” Raph-chan, who had been helping Keel and the others out, pointed in our direction—with a plate on her head, of all things—to let everyone know we were coming.

“Hey, Bubba!” Keel, in her dog form, waved at us from a stall selling food. We weren’t running the stalls to make money, but rather to help out with Siltran’s recovery, so the prices were set nice and low. Keel was the one drawing in the crowds, mainly using body language because she couldn’t speak the Siltran language—and it seemed to be working, because the stalls were doing well. I was overseeing the cooking, so the food was good, which also had to help. We were also using defeated monsters as ingredients and welcomed people bringing in their own food.

“How’s it going? Those frenzied gestures you were bragging about actually do seem to be working,” I commented. Just looking at the crowds and the smiles on their faces told me things were going well.

“You bet they are! I’m starting to pick up the lingo too! I can say ‘good morning,’ ‘hello,’ and all the good stuff!” Keel yapped, happily wagging her tail. It was hard to keep Keel down, that was for sure, and the way she eagerly interacted with everyone around her probably kept the customers entertained. She was also strong enough to fight off anyone looking to cause some trouble. I’d heard urgent circumstances could help you learn a language faster. We’d been here in the past for a while now, and she had to be exposed to the language all day long, meaning she would surely pick up some everyday phrases.

Siltran apparently used an old dialect of the demi-human nation. Other than the heroes, those who had learned the language in Siltvelt were helping Keel and the others out with translation, but sometimes they still came across words they didn’t know. Even in Japan, I’d heard about differences in the language that different people couldn’t understand, like the classical Japanese we learned in school.

“Bubba?” Keel inquired.

“It’s nothing. Just glad how well things are going,” I told her. Keel’s development—her speed at learning—always seemed to outpace my expectations. In a month she might be fluent in the Siltran language.

“Me too!” she yapped happily. Then I noticed that Raph-chan was taking orders. She was a monster, supposedly removed from language completely. There were also some filolials—those capable of interacting with customers—dashing around between the stalls. They had to be useful in keeping things moving briskly along. I took a moment longer to watch the system in action.

“Ah . . .” That was when my eyes met unexpectedly with someone hiding in the shadow of a nearby pillar. It was a child called Cian, if I recalled correctly—one of the kids Mamoru looked after. A demi-human with ears like a cat. She had a bit of a shy personality, but my Shield Hero predecessor Mamoru claimed she had taken quite a shining to me.

The kids who Mamoru was looking after, like Cian, were also coming to help out at the stalls. Food supplies in Siltran were low too, and this was a place anyone could eat their fill and help the children learn some independence at the same time—two birds with one stone.

It looked like Cian was helping out by washing dishes. I didn’t want to give her too much attention, and there didn’t seem to be any need to go over there right now.

“Have you had any trouble here at the stalls?” I asked.

“Nothing at all. Sometimes some shifty-looking adventurer types show up, but if they make a scene, we toss them right out. And anyone looking suspicious gets the stink eye from everyone else,” Keel reported. I nodded. It sounded like everything was going well.

Siltran was a nation founded by races with little prowess in combat, and among them, low levels didn’t help with an aptitude for battle. I wasn’t looking to generalize too much, but to say how many demi-humans and therianthropes they had here, many of them were the smaller, grass-eating types. This had led to their nation being targeted by the far larger Piensa, getting caught up in a conflict and suffering all of these damages as a result. Waves were occurring here and yet some people still wanted to wage war—I couldn’t understand it. People never changed. That was the sorry lesson I was taking away from all this.

Just after we arrived, Piensa had attacked Siltran with their powerful Dragon Battalion—all in the name of world peace, of course. So we had joined forces with Mamoru and driven them back. We had faced issues with fighting strength and numbers, but I had gathered up a horde of wild monsters and crashed them into Piensa’s dragons, causing massive damage and allowing us to capture their commander and force them to flee. Our experts in information warfare—Melty, Ruft, and the Shadow—had also played their part. As a result, we had won the day, and that victory now meant the situation was leaning in our direction on the whole. Piensa wasn’t expected to make any big moves for a while, but I wasn’t too sure about that assessment. At the very least, I hoped they would keep it in their pants until we returned to our time; then they could go at it all they liked, while we were safely in the future again.

In any case, Siltran was putting us up and so we were helping them recover while also continuing the search for a way to get home.

“Bubba, Bubba! Now you’re here, will you cook for us?” Keel and the others were all looking at me with sparkling excitement in their eyes. As it turned out, I was a pretty good cook, and so everyone always wanted to eat my cooking. They loved it when I cooked for them.

“I need to go and talk with Mamoru, Melty, and the others in the castle first. If I have some time after that, I’ll come and help out,” I told her. This promise was met with shouts of enthusiasm. “You have to get plenty of ingredients ready for me to cook though, okay?” I continued.

“You bet! Everyone! We need to get a pile of stuff to cook!” Keel yipped. The others all shouted their agreement. Siltran was currently suffering a shortage of raw materials, including stuff for cooking. We had the village bioplants turning out vegetables, and we were defeating wild monsters to use as meat, but every day still saw shortages. It felt like our emphasis was still mainly on helping them rebuild, but of course it would’ve been useful for us to have some money too. We were still gathering more building materials than hard cash, but as long as restoration work continued, it was good.

The feeling I was really struggling with was that of being stuck here in the past, dragging our feet, when what we really needed to do was get back to our own time.

“Keel and the others looked so alive, didn’t they?” Raphtalia said as we headed from the stalls up toward the castle.

“Keel is a ball of energy, you know that,” I replied.

“That’s true, but it might also be the reason she ended up tagging along this time,” Raphtalia mused.

“A pretty rough bargain, if that’s the reason she got dragged into all this,” I replied. We often ended up leaving Keel at home. She was badly injured during the incident with the Spirit Tortoise, preventing her from visiting Kizuna’s world, and we’d also left her in the village when we went to earn some cash to buy slaves at the Zeltoble coliseum. She actually did help out quite a lot, but we’d never taken her along when going out into the unknown. “The way she keeps her spirits high at all times really helps relax the tension of everyone around her. That’s a big help, I admit.”

“Indeed. I feel better with her around too. That is a big help,” Raphtalia replied. When serious stuff was happening, panic was the biggest threat. Having party members like Filo and Keel around could certainly be an effective remedy to tension mounting too high.

As we chatted, we finally reached the castle. S’yne greeted us—the girl who was normally found directly behind me—standing in the castle courtyard, learning a new technique from R’yne, the Sewing Kit Hero from this world.

“That’s it. That’s the way,” R’yne encouraged. This was a special technique unique to their race—the ability to sprout wings, something lost in S’yne’s time. If she could get the hang of it, then she would be looking at a considerable power-up, and so she was working on it quite enthusiastically. However, just like learning life force, it was proving a difficult technique to master. R’yne herself, it seemed, was an ancestor of S’yne’s. She had apparently come here from S’yne’s world, which in our time had already been wiped out. This was the kind of coincidental meeting in the past that was made possible by waves that also occurred back here in the past.

What was less exciting about this situation was that R’yne seemed to have a pretty one-track mind—and that track was sex. She rarely missed a chance to drop some harassment on me and—unlike the style I was accustomed to from the likes of Sadeena—R’yne played fastball. I really had to keep an eye on her. One of her most sparkling gems had been to question whether sex with me would feel painful or not due to my lack of attack power. I was never going to forgive her for going there, that much was for sure.

“Hey, Naofumi. You here to see Mamoru?” R’yne asked.

“Yeah,” I replied briefly.

“He’s with Melty and Ruft, deciding on what kind of action we should take next,” she replied.

“Okay,” I said. That meant they would be in the castle’s meeting room. No problem dropping in on them there. “R’yne. How are things going with teaching that technique to S’yne?”

“Hmmm . . . pretty good, I guess?” That pause, that spoken question mark at the end, was her clearly trying to avoid hurting S’yne’s feelings. S’yne still turned away upon hearing this. I decided not to say anything. If I praised her too much, it might just end up hurting her more in the long run. “It involves taking your magic and circling it through your body as pure power, but that’s easier said than done. Some people need to add a magical attribute or the wings won’t pop,” R’yne explained.

“There are all sorts of types of magic,” I said. “I can see how it might be hard.”

“Indeed. It’s even harder if you don’t have a complete grasp of the magic from our world,” R’yne continued. I had to admit, I’d never really seen S’yne use anything resembling magic. Her sister had made a much bigger impression in that department.

“Was that magic your sister used from your world, S’yne?” I asked her. She shook her head. It seemed not—which meant S’yne’s sister had also learned magic from another world. From among my crew, that would be like how Shildina had learned magic from Kizuna’s world. Sadeena and I had also gained access to it by such means as using the Way of the Dragon Vein on gemstones. So there were ways it could be done.

“I do understand that it can be better to rely on weapon skills rather than casting magic,” R’yne sympathized, raising her arms in an exaggerated fashion as she tried to give S’yne an out on not using much magic. “I tend to only use it for a little spice here and there.” If neither of them were magic specialists, it would definitely make it harder to learn it now. It sounded like what we needed was a specialist from R’yne’s world to come and help out, but whether that would even be possible, because it was long gone in our time, was another point of concern.

“Well, just do what you can,” I told them. “Worst case scenario, we’ll have to think up some clever twist.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll do my best,” S’yne said, raring to go, her attention fixed on R’yne.

“We need to keep Naofumi happy, don’t we! We’ll keep going!” R’yne replied cheerfully, and they started practicing again right away. We’d only get in the way if we hung around chatting any longer. I signaled Raphtalia with my eyes and we headed further into the castle.

“Is this the place?” I asked. Led by some of the castle servants, we arrived in front of the meeting room where Melty and others were having their talks. I could already hear voices from inside. I gave a light knock on the door and it fell silent inside, so I proceeded to open them.

Inside I saw Mamoru and then Melty, Ruft, and other key figures from Siltran. Everyone looked in our direction.

“Ah, Naofumi. Now you are here, I think we can really get down to business,” Mamoru said.

“You’ve been having a nice long meeting without me from the look of it. Anything I should know about?” I asked.

“Not really,” Melty retorted. “We were mainly assessing the damages from the recent fighting and checking on how recovery is going in each region.”

“That’s about it—along with the report on the torture of that magic user you captured, Naofumi,” Ruft added.

“Dafu!” Raph-chan II added. None of that really sounded like information I wanted to hear, but I needed to hear it nonetheless. I was sure Melty and Ruft could provide a simple breakdown later if I asked them to.

Dafu-chan—that was Raph-chan II—was sitting up on Ruft’s shoulder. She looked like she was helping out. Those two really did get along well.

We bickered a bit, but the truth was, Melty was the queen of Melromarc back in our time, the largest nation in the future, and Ruft was working as an aide to the rulers of that nation, Trash and Melty. Not to mention, Ruft was royalty himself as the former Heavenly Emperor of Q’ten Lo. They were both young for the positions of power they held, but they were doing fine work in key positions of authority. Even here in the past, those talents were being put to good use.

“The main issues are just coming to the table now, so you had better hear this,” Melty said.

“Okay. I guess you’d better make some room for us,” I replied. I looked over at Mamoru, and he was already indicating two empty seats. Raphtalia and I sat down there, next to each other.

“First things first . . . domestic recovery is going well, thanks largely to the trade you and the others from the village have been promoting, Naofumi. Public safety is also being restored,” Melty reported.

“Driving off Piensa in that conflict has had a powerful ripple effect. Those who saw us as weaker nation, a nation to prey on, are having second thoughts now,” Mamoru added, with some noticeable satisfaction. Siltran had been close to collapse upon our arrival, with prolific raiders from other nations coming unannounced to attack. We had observed these issues when we were conducting trade and squashed most of those who tried to cause trouble. “One of the reasons Piensa sped up their attack was because of all the agents they had been sending in to cause trouble had been captured.”

“The prisoner told you that?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Mamoru confirmed. “The fact that Siltran had started to recover quickly was also a factor.” So it was the trading, spearheaded by the filolials and Raph species, that had triggered the attack. I’d known it in my heart, but it still hurt to hear that we were to blame. It was stifling to know that another wrong move on our part could trigger further attacks.

“Having laid waste to the Piensa Dragon Battalion has really hurt them. A report from Shadow has made that clear,” Melty continued.

“It seems swiftly getting those rumors out there was really effective,” Ruft commented. Melty and he had made this suggestion, letting all the neighboring nations know that justice had been on the side of Siltran when they defeated Piensa. The victors wrote the history, after all. Having been forced to retreat, anything the Piensa forces had to say would only sound like sour grapes from the losing side.

“That’s not to say Piensa isn’t fighting back,” Melty said. “They’re claiming that Siltran only achieved this victory because they called in heroes from another world.”

“I guess it depends on which way public opinion goes, but don’t they see that spreading such information may simply be shooting themselves in the foot?” Raphtalia said.

“You think they might be going for the religious angle?” I pondered. “Getting everyone together to defeat the cowardly Siltran who has sent heroes into war?”

“That might be the case,” Raphtalia replied, “but do you think their allies will accept that after such a defeat?” That was true. We could easily claim that Siltran had come together and won because of one of Mamoru’s strategies, a victory for the unified people of the nation without any cooperation from us. We got our information out first, meaning some cracks had surely formed in the alliance that Piensa led. What they needed right now was trust in each other, and that meant confirming the truth—which meant they were in their own struggle, and that suited us.

“If they try to convince everyone to come together and defeat Siltran at a time like this, I don’t think it will go well for them,” Melty said. I had to agree—it would be the height of foolishness to try and launch another assault with all this confusing information circling in the air. The other surrounding nations had to know that too.

“Which means the wind is blowing in our direction,” I said.

“It might be, just a little . . . but this has raised the issue of whether we should be getting involved in things any more than we already are. That’s the issue we’ve been discussing with Mamoru and these others,” Melty explained. Mamoru nodded, looking over at his subordinates. None of them looked that good in a scrap, to be honest, and they didn’t look very comfortable here either. They were likely getting a bit carried away now that they glimpsed the chance to back a winning horse for once. This whole situation had come around due to their cooperation with us, and so the idea that maybe now we shouldn’t fight was causing some friction.

“This started out as a battle that we had to resolve for ourselves,” Mamoru said. “It was a mistake to try and have you resolve it, Naofumi.”

“I do see your point,” I admitted. The battle had been triggered by us turning up here, and we’d helped Mamoru and his forces because our village was positioned to get caught up in the fighting. Getting involved any further probably wasn’t a good idea. “What they seem likely to do in this situation is send in spies or deploy a new hero.” Information was important. I could imagine a wave of spies coming in, seeking to determine the truth. The Bow Hero, who for now was siding with them, might also show his face. Why was it that the Bow Hero always seemed to play the neutral ground, the even hand of justice?

“We’ve been thinking about that too, but it seems pointless to have you hide now,” Mamoru said.

“If word gets out that Siltran is hosting multiple heroes from another world, it should hold Piensa back and make it harder for them to sway public opinion,” I said. There was no reason for us to attack them, and they already knew that attacking us would give them a bloody nose—or worse. The situation was nicely balanced to prevent any further violence.

“You need to be careful of offers trying to tempt you over to their side, or even attempts at kidnapping you,” Mamoru warned.

“Indeed. You should be especially careful, Melty,” I said.

“Me, kidnapped? Underestimate me at your peril! That’s a task that would at least take their Bow Hero to pull off!” Melty exclaimed. She wasn’t wrong. She had been spending a lot of time helping Filo level up, which had boosted her own level considerably, and she’d also undergone the physical enhancements from Fitoria . . . what was likely the same kind of power-up method as the Whip, which had really raised her basic abilities. Only one with the protection of the heroes would be able to kidnap Melty; I had to agree with that. She had plenty of protection around herself too.

“I’m protecting her too, Naofumi. No need to worry,” Ruft assured me.

“And they might come after you too, Ruft. You need to be careful,” I warned him.

“I know,” he replied. Ruft had high-level illusion magic at his command and was becoming so strong that even if he was captured he’d probably saunter back to us before too long, having turned the tables on his captors. He was Raphtalia’s cousin and received the blessings of the Raph species. Like Keel, he seemed to have an affinity for his therianthrope form, because that was what he spent most of his time in. It was funny to see Raphtalia struggling to work out how to talk to him when he was in his demi-human form, that was for sure. During the recent fighting he had aided me in place of Raphtalia and had looked pretty brave doing it as he swung around a massive axe stolen from the enemy.

“In regard to deployment of the heroes, Mamoru made it sound like the Bow Hero on their side wasn’t all that keen on the idea. I think we’ll be okay for a while,” Melty said.

“Any chance he might switch sides completely?” I asked Mamoru, but he shook his head from side to side.

“It’s not as simple as that. He has people he wants to protect too,” Mamoru explained.

“Hmmm. Our guy in the future was a stick-in-the-mud as well, but we eventually convinced him,” I said. Not only Itsuki, but Ren and Motoyasu too—we’d scrapped with them all, and convincing them to team up had been a pain, but things had worked out in the end.

“Whatever you may think, Naofumi, people can’t just cast their affiliated kingdom aside if they have family or other people there to protect. That’s exactly the tactic used everywhere to get heroes on their side,” Melty told me.

“Oh boy,” I replied. I knew what this was. I hadn’t been caught up in it myself, but this seemed like a standard tactic for countries from other worlds in forcing heroes to work with them.

“Getting a hero to change sides would be very difficult. Think about yourself, Naofumi. Would you betray Melromarc and the people of your village to go off and join another nation?” Melty asked pointedly.

“Nope, not going to happen,” I admitted.

“There you go then,” she replied.

“So what you’re telling me is that Melromarc was probably doing all sorts of stuff to the other three heroes in order to bind them to the nation, back in our time? I’m just hoping we don’t face an enemy in the future holding one of their kids hostage, then! Could you fight that?” I asked.

“Considering the events until you met my mother . . . the Spear Hero had my sister at his side the whole time. What about the Sword Hero and Bow Hero? Who do you think they could have been with?” Melty asked.

No need to even mention Motoyasu, really. With Bitch around, anyone or anything that might threaten her position would have been wiped out or horribly hurt. Lyno was a good example. She had been put through hell right behind Motoyasu’s back with him none the wiser. As for Ren and Itsuki . . . I felt they would need a closer bond than that before they started fooling around. If it looked like they were being tricked or forced into anything, I could easily see them sensing the danger and making a break for it—and if they were just propositioned normally, they would probably just turn it down.

“It could be said,” Melty continued, “that we managed to make them our allies so easily for the very reason that they avoided such machinations and remained single heroes in the first place.” The issue might have come up if they had shacked up with someone while they were still out of control. But I didn’t really suspect them to turn on us at this point—at least I hoped not.

“I think in our case they were just a little too wild right from the start,” I mused.

“Right. In fact, from among our four heroes, I think you are the one least likely to be able to leave Melromarc now, Naofumi,” Melty observed. She had a point. But if Melty and Trash started acting like they could control me at will, I would have to put them in their place. But then again, there were no signs of that at the moment. In the case of the queen, we had made use of each other with a mutual understanding. In that light, she had left Melty and Trash quite the inheritance.

“In any case, luring over the Bow Hero in this time is going to be too much of a challenge,” I stated.

“That’s the short of it,” Melty agreed. The future we knew about from this point told us that Piensa was going to eventually get wiped out, while Siltran would become Siltvelt. I wondered what that meant for the Bow Hero. There was Faubrey to consider though, which was a country that collected the bloodlines for the heroes. So maybe after the worlds were fused, the Bow Hero ended up working with them. That seemed like one possibility. He might have defected or slipped away to another nation.

Any information we had on those details was basically little more than fairy tales according to Melty and the others from the future, meaning they couldn’t be trusted to represent reality. Even the reasons Piensa collapsed might not have been imparted accurately. Different materials on the same topic even said different things, such as Siltran wiping them out prior to becoming Siltvelt or that the Shield Demon King used his mighty power to eradicate them in a single night.

“The Bow Hero in this time at least seems willing to listen to reason though, right?” I said. He didn’t seem as hard-headed as Itsuki had once been, for example.

“That’s true. If we can present a logical argument, he may lend us an ear. Based on this defeat, I wouldn’t be surprised if he cautioned Piensa about further action,” Mamoru replied. We just had to hope that he had the influence inside Piensa to cool off anyone who was pissed with us for kicking their collective asses.

“If Piensa really is trying to take over the world while keeping the Bow Hero’s family hostage, then we just need to bring his entire family under our control instead,” I said. I gave an evil chuckle for good measure. If Piensa could do that, then we could play them at their own game.

“Oh wow . . . Naofumi, you look so alive right now. Not that I’d expect any less than this from you,” Melty quipped.

“He did seem to have something weighing on his mind when I met him. If that’s the case, we can make use of it ourselves,” Mamoru agreed with me.

“Which means we need to wait to hear the report from Shadow,” Melty said. As it turned out, Shadow had been among those who ended up getting dragged to the past with us. He had fallen in with the Raph species and picked up the techniques of the Q’ten Lo ninja, making him handy to have around when it came to gathering intel. In fact, I couldn’t think of anyone better. Raphtalia and Ruft had abilities that suited them to infiltration too, but they were too important in other ways to risk on such missions.

“Mamoru, I don’t think we should get any more involved than this,” I concluded. “If you want to persuade the Bow Hero, you can handle that yourself.”

“Okay. You’ve been a big help already, in so many ways. I don’t expect there to be any fighting anytime soon either,” Mamoru replied.

“Good. Next issue,” I said.

“Let’s move on to a detailed report on the recovery in each region, along with what we have learned from the robbers and spies we have captured so far. There are issues of taxation to discuss too,” Melty continued. It all sounded like bags of fun, and the meeting continued for a while longer after that.

I was impressed by Melty and Ruft though, handling the running of a nation so competently at such young ages. Maybe this was also the result of watching Trash firsthand for so long. Melty had been educated since a young age to take the throne, and while Ruft was a bit more of a hothouse plant in terms of his upbringing, he was still a member of Raphtalia’s family and possessed exceptional strategical thinking. Just having the two of them involved was sure to push the situation in Siltran in a far better direction. That’s the impression I was left with once the overly long meeting finally ended, and then we headed away from that stuffy chamber of discussion.

The discussions, however, did not end.

“Our primary goal is to get back to our own time,” Melty said, “but at the same time we need to prepare under the assumption that our enemies will be waiting for us when we return.”

“I agree,” I said.

“That’s why I’d like for you and the others, Naofumi, to continue the trading while also getting in some fights with powerful monsters. I’ve set up a number of patrol routes, so if you could divide them up between the heroes . . .” Melty rattled on. I wondered for a moment if she should be making every single decision. Back home we’d get Sadeena and a crew together and go to the oceans to level up, maybe using the whip power-up method. I wondered if maybe there was something we could do with the mirror one—but the holy weapons offered better modifiers, to be honest, so the shield would be more effective in the end.

“Okay. This era is facing the issue of the waves as well, and that’s something we do need to be involved with. Let’s go to Keel and help out with the stalls a little, and we can decide who to take along from there,” I suggested. If Ren and I were going to take two slots for the four heroes, then put in two seven star weapon or vassal weapon heroes . . . and fill out the rest with villagers, that should allow us to do some hunting without completely decimating the local ecosystem. “Experience from the sea is better, is it?” I asked Mamoru. We probably should consider some ocean time if we could get it in. But the issue was that Siltran wasn’t that close to the water.

“Is that the case in the future? I don’t think we’ve ever really felt a difference between the land and the sea,” Mamoru replied. I thought about that for a moment. It sounded like there was no difference in experience here in the past. When we killed those balloon snakes, which were like a subspecies of the balloon, we’d earned a lot more experience than normal balloons. So that was true too. They didn’t feel any stronger, so I’d thought maybe they had some additional experience for some reason. It was hard to compare them though, due to the snakes being a subspecies. I didn’t have the mental capacity to remember everything, after all. I didn’t need to get lumped in with Raphtalia and her perfect recall of everyone’s names or Ruft and his perfect recall of all of Trash’s strategies.

But I also remembered Ren saying that Q’ten Lo had offered more experience. Maybe there was a reason for all this. It felt like the one behind the waves—the one who assumed the name of god—had a hand in all of this. They were definitely sending in the resurrected, destroying all sorts of important materials, really causing a mess for us.

“Mamoru, if you’ve got the time, maybe you could join us. Raise your crew a bit? Do you want to tag along?” I asked him.

“Yeah, that sounds good. I’m looking forward to it already,” Mamoru replied.

“Okay, let’s go back to the stall where Keel and the others are. You haven’t had any lunch yet, what with the meeting, right? So get some food too,” I said.

“Off you go, Naofumi. We’ve got some materials we need to finish up with, so we’re heading back to the castle,” Melty said.

“You’re no fun, Melty. You’re going with ‘bossy’ here, Ruft?” I asked.

“Yep. I’ve got a lunchbox ready, so I’ll be fine,” Ruft replied. Of course he did. He was always well-prepared.

“Okay. I know things aren’t easy for you, Melty, Ruft, but thanks for all your hard work,” I told them.

“No problem. You do your bit too, Naofumi,” Melty replied.

“Sure thing,” I replied—even though I said it a little noncommittally. And so the rest of us returned to Keel’s stall and helped out with the cooking. Once I took up my spot in the kitchen, however, the seats filled up with more villagers than usual, and our overall working speed actually slowed down. That was definitely something I should have seen coming.