The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 4 - Chapter 219

Chapter 219:

Halfway Point

“Ooh, I see a road.”

This was our seventh day of traveling since we left the cave deep in the forest, and at long last the road was in sight. Druid looked quite pleased about that. I supposed the forest had made him quite anxious.

“Okay, first we’ll have to try to find out where we are.” Druid took the map out of his magic bag.

“I’ll look to see if I can find a landmark.”

“Thanks.”

Whenever you wanted to figure out where you were on a map, you always had to find a landmark of some sort. Something like a big boulder, a river, or a lake would be ideal. Aside from that, you could also use giant trees that grew rare fruits and nuts.

I checked our surroundings, looking to see if anything stood out. I scanned the area over and over but found nothing. Maybe there was nothing?

“Mr. Druid, I’m not seeing anything.”

“Okay.”

This response took me a little by surprise. From our current lack of information, it was pretty clear we weren’t going to be able to pinpoint where we were on the map, but Druid didn’t show any signs of panic or frustration. I wondered why that was.

“Are we here? No… Here? No… Maybe we’re too far away where we’re at right now?”

Wow…just from my meager information, he’s already narrowed our spot down to a few locations. I looked at the map as Druid’s finger pointed at three different places. He was mumbling something under his breath. Hmm…he’s too quiet. I can’t make out what he’s saying.

I looked at the spots he was pointing at, but nothing seemed to be remarkable about them. Not a word was written down about any boulders or rivers that one could use as landmarks. Oh, now I get it… He was looking for spots without landmarks.

“So I’ve narrowed it down to two spots, but I’m not sure which one it is.”

How did he get it down to just two?

“I think we’re probably on the side of the village road closer to Oll. Based on how far we’ve traveled so far, it would be pretty hard for us to have made it to the farther point.”

I found the town of Oll on the map, then checked the two locations Druid was pointing at. The village road that was closer to Oll would be a very easy destination for us to have reached by now, while the other one was a pretty difficult distance to travel in that time.

“Well, either way, we’re sure to find a landmark if we walk a little while,” I said. The village road closer to Oll had a river, and the one farther away had some mysterious flowers that grew year-round. “So let’s just walk on the road until we hit a landmark.”

“Good idea. I definitely want to figure out where we are as soon as possible, so let’s do that,” Druid said, stashing the map away in his bag. “Okay, let’s go.”

At Druid’s command, Ciel shapeshifted from its adandara form into a slime. We’d asked it to do that as a precaution whenever there was a chance it might be seen.

“Thanks, Ciel.”

Mrrrow, the slime trilled in the cute voice of an adandara. It still felt a little off.

I searched for auras and found clear indications of monsters, but no humans. That meant I wouldn’t need to put the slimes in their bag. I told Sora and Ciel as much, then Druid and I set off toward the village road. When we got there, we did another survey of our surroundings. And, as expected, we found nothing that would serve as a landmark.

We set off toward Hatow Village—and boy, were proper roads easier to walk on. Sora and Ciel had an easier time bouncing, too. They were playing chase with each other the whole way. I tried waking Flame up, but it just fell right back to sleep after a few big yawns. I hope the lack of exercise wouldn’t make Flame ill. It worried me a little.

After we’d been walking on the village road for about three hours, just when it was starting to get dark, we came upon a giant tree. And it had flowers we’d never seen blooming on it.

“So, it’s not the river…it’s flowers.”

“Yeah…how the heck did we cover that much ground in such a short time?”

Considering the detour we’d taken, we should have needed about twenty-five days to reach the giant flowering tree, but today was only our eighteenth day on the road.

“Well…at least we found out where we are,” I said.

“True.”

We were right at the halfway point between Oll and Hatow. Halfway through our trek.

“Okay, we should start looking for a place to sleep,” Druid said. Sora wiggled happily in reply atop his head. “Sora, don’t wiggle. You’ll fall.”

Sora stopped wiggling and jumped off his head. The slime then began bouncing around us in circles. It was in a very good mood.

“Sora, can you find us a place to sleep?”

“Pu! Pu, puuu,” Sora sang, cheerfully bounding away to find a place to make camp. As usual, it was quite confident.

“We’d better hurry before we lose sight of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

We followed the excessively cheerful Sora as it bounced off with extra vigor. Sometimes it bounced so excitedly that it slammed into trees… Is it going to be okay?

“Hm? Sora, stop! I see a dump.”

Druid’s voice prompted me to shift my gaze from Sora to the direction he was looking, where there was indeed a rather large dump.

“Looks like this was made by adventurers, the stupid fools.” Druid sighed loudly.

“I’ve seen a lot of dumps in the forest, though. Is something wrong with them, sir?” I guess it was probably wrong to dump trash just anywhere without permission…

“Yeah, it’s completely wrong. You’re only supposed to make dumps close to towns or villages. It’s a very important rule.”

Come to think of it, I did seem to find a lot of adventurer-made dumps near towns and villages, though I’d also encountered others in completely different locations.

“People throw away all sorts of things in dumps, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

We approached the dump and surveyed the trash. There was indeed a variety of discarded items in there. Well, adventurers’ dumps far away from towns and villages did tend to have a much larger amount of trash.

“Do you know what that is?”

I looked at where Druid was pointing. It was a ripped magic bag. “A magic bag?”

“Correct. Now, there isn’t much, but it’s got magic woven into its threads.”

Magic was the power source of magic items—that was a tidbit of information you were sure to hear if you were on the road any length of time.

“Yes, I know.”

“But even when the bag is ripped, its magic is still there.”

I guess it would be, since the magic was infused into the fibers.

“And a monster can suck up that magic.”

A monster that sucks up magic? What’s he talking about? “But don’t all monsters suck up magic, sir?”

“Hm? Oh, you mean, like gurbars?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, that dragon corpse was filled with a lot of magic, so any monster could have sucked it up. But if there isn’t much residual magic left, ordinary monsters can’t consume it.”

Oh, that’s interesting. There’s still so much I don’t know.

“Now, if they just sucked up the magic, that wouldn’t be a problem. But sometimes they go berserk or go through sudden mutations.”

“They go berserk? You mean like the gurbars? And they ­mutate, too?” That’s terrifying.

“Yeah, and the mutating is the scariest part of all. Here’s this monster you think you know, except it might be much more powerful, its magic might have changed… It takes much longer to deal with that sort of mutant.”

“I didn’t realize discarded magic bags were so powerful…”

“Well, I doubt a monster would mutate just from one magic bag, but garbage does pile up.”

Going berserk…mutating…I guess both of those things take a lot of magic.

“That’s why unsupervised dumps like this are pretty dangerous.”

This dump did have an awful lot of trash. If every item in here contained just a little magic, a monster could get quite a hefty portion from sucking up all of it.

“About how much magic would one of those monsters need to mutate?”

“People are doing research on that, but nobody has any solid answers yet, so the guilds keep close watch on the dumps, too. There’s a record of a monster mutating and wiping out an entire village many centuries ago.”

Wow, that’s intense.

“Whenever you register with the adventurer guild, they’re supposed to explain all of this very clearly to you,” Druid sighed.

Whenever someone thinks they’re not being watched, they’ll do whatever is the easiest for them. That was why there was a dump here. As I hadn’t known the rules before, even I had thrown away some items in adventurer-made dumps like this, so from now on I would need to be more mindful.

“Ivy, do you see anything that could serve as a landmark? I want to report this dump to the guild in Hatow Village.”

After some searching, I found a river relatively close by. Druid was already writing a note about the dump on his map.

“There’s a river just a little bit away, sir.”

“Thanks. Hm? Oh, I think Sora’s doing its part to clean up the dump.”

I followed Druid’s gaze…and there was Sora, gleefully devouring a sword. As usual, the slime looked like it had a blade sticking into its head.

“Okay, I’ve written it down. Now let’s collect some food for the slimes.”

“Yes, sir.”