Chapter 230:
Goal Reached!
“So sorry we had to bring you up here like this.”
We were sitting in a private room on the second floor of the merchant guild. A bespectacled man named Agilk set some tea on the table in front of us. He was quite the gentleman.
“Oh, no worries.”
The man sitting on the sofa across from us was Drough, the head appraiser here. He was about fifty years old with a bit of a belly…and, for some reason, he’d been sniffing erratically through his nose ever since we got up here.
“So, how—sniff!—did you come across these minerals?!” Drough demanded, leaning forward eagerly.
“Eep!” I squealed, almost dropping the teacup I was about to grab. My tiny shriek even made Druid jump in his seat beside me. He gave my head a few gentle pats to calm me down. I looked at him and saw that he was unabashedly glaring at Drough as thick creases formed between his eyebrows.
“Drough! Don’t scare our guests!” Agilk snapped, giving Drough’s head a hard whack. It made quite the noise and sounded like it hurt. “So sorry about that,” he apologized to us.
“Yeah, sorry,” Drough echoed. “I got a bit carried away.”
“It’s all right. So, which minerals are we talking about, exactly?”
I admired Druid for staying calm in the face of such a rabid man. Still, his voice was a lot deeper than usual. He sounded a bit angry.
“These four types here…” Agilk lined the stones up on the table. We’d found each of them in the cave deep in the forest. One of them was yellow, another was a mixture of light blue and brown, the third was flecked with green, and the fourth looked like an ordinary rock at first sight.
“Could you please explain why you called us up here to drill us about these four stones?” Druid asked stiffly. As a former adventurer, he really knew how to sound intimidating. Even Drough flinched a little at the sound of his voice.
“Well, it’s like this, you see…”
“It’s all your fault, Drough. You scared his poor daughter.”
Meaning me? Oh, I just realized I’m still clinging onto Druid’s arm. I sheepishly changed my sitting position.
“Are you okay?” Druid asked me.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
My answer filled Agilk’s and Druid’s faces with relief.
“Okay, about these four minerals…they can only be found on the sacred ground where the guardian deity of Hatow Village lives.”
Yikes…we sure brought in some ridiculously rare gems. And did he say “sacred ground where the deity lives”? Is that what that cave deep in the forest was? If he’s right, that means we entered without permission. But Snakey didn’t look angry about it…
“I’m sorry, but we don’t know much about this village’s guardian deity. Is its sacred ground a cave, by any chance?”
Agilk nodded. “That’s right. It’s supposed to lie deep in the forest. We’ve searched for it many times, but there were always too many monsters for us to get close enough.”
Was our cave really that deep in the forest? I didn’t remember—I was too focused on watching my footing. And there were monsters? I suppose there were, but Ciel got rid of them all for us, so I didn’t even know what kind of monsters they were.
“Now I see…” Druid murmured cryptically in reply. I wondered what he was going to say. We both knew he had to choose his words carefully.
“I’m terribly sorry, but even I do not know where that cave is,” Druid finally said.
“Oh? But those gems…”
“We got lost along our way, and we sort of arrived at the cave by accident.”
I should probably keep my mouth shut… I don’t really understand where Druid is trying to go with this. I’ll just try to keep my face as neutral as possible. I’d hate for my expression to expose Druid’s lie.
“You got lost?”
“Yes… We dropped our compass.”
A compass was one of the most important things a traveler could carry…except I didn’t have one. Druid showed me his compass once, but we didn’t use it at all on our way to Hatow. We just followed Ciel, so we had no need for it.
“You dropped your compass? Well, that must have been terrible.”
“It was. We wandered off the village road to pick some herbs, and then we got lost…”
The part about picking herbs was true, though it was Ciel who had led us there. I remembered how we lost track of time picking all the rare herbs deep in the forest. We dried about half of them to use in cooking. Oh, right! We still have some herbs that I was going to sell to the guild. I completely forgot about that.
“Since Ivy was with me, I really panicked. And after wandering lost for about six days in the forest, we finally found that cave.”
“Six whole days! Well, you must have been terribly worried.”
“I was. I had no idea where we were.”
Wow, Druid’s a good actor.
“So, you stumbled upon a cave and found these gems inside?”
“Of course not! Caves are far too dangerous to just walk into. We made camp near the cave entrance and happened to find some stones on the ground there. These are the stones we found.”
Actually, they were stuck into the walls deep inside the cave. Ciel had led us through the cave, and Sora and Flame had their own little expedition on the way. Druid only told me later that caves were normally considered quite dangerous and you should never just wander into one freely. Sora, Ciel, and I were all pretty surprised by what Druid had to say, and Druid hung his head and groaned when he saw how surprised we were.
“Then how—sniff!—did you ever make it to this village?!” Drough snapped, getting excited again. He really was kind of scary.
“We found the tracks of a large animal or monster near the cave. So we followed those tracks, thinking they were our last hope. And when they ended, we found ourselves back on the road, right between Oll and Hatow. You can’t imagine how relieved I felt in that moment.”
Animal tracks? That’s right, the adventurers did mention that their guardian deity left big tracks. So that’s where he got that from. I’m impressed.
“Wait a minute…you found tracks going from a cave to the village road?”
“No,” Agilk snapped at Drough.
“Why not?” Drough pouted. “We finally have a chance to find our guardian deity’s sacred ground!”
“This year’s winter is far too dangerous. Some people have already died from the cold.”
What?! People died? Well, it really has been unusually cold.
“—Sniff!—Yes, but the tracks might disappear.”
“They’ve probably already disappeared, as I’m sure you’re well aware,” Agilk said with a tired sigh.
The tracks have disappeared? But if Druid’s story were true, I don’t think enough time would have passed for the tracks to go away. Sometimes tracks can last for months. Then again, his story’s fake and so are the tracks.
“Why wouldn’t there be tracks? They could easily still be there.” Druid sounded just as perplexed as I was.
“The guardian deity’s tracks disappear after a couple of days.”
A couple of days? Huh.
“Oh, really? Then I guess we just had a spell of good luck.”
“Yes, I suppose you did.”
“By the way, would it be possible for the guild to buy our gems?”
Oh, right! If they came from sacred ground, maybe we can’t sell them after all? If we can’t, that really throws a wrench in our plans.
“Oh, we’ll buy them!” Drough shouted, slamming his hands on the table. “Actually, if you still have more of them, please let us buy all of them from you.” He bowed sharply. That guy sure seemed to make everything overly dramatic.
“Err…I think we have a few more.” Druid seemed a bit uncomfortable with Drough’s eager intensity, the complete opposite of his earlier behavior.
“Thank you very much. How many more do you have? Oh, how lovely!—sniff!—I’ll get to feast my eyes—sniff!—on such gems again!” Drough had reached peak levels of excitement. His face was bright red.
“Before we show you, could you please break down the prices of each gem?”
“Hm? Oh, yes, well, from right to left, we have two radal, one radal, one radal, and three radal.”
We definitely should have brought only two of each instead of five of each. The yellow gems were two radal each, the blue and brown mix were one radal each, the green speckled gems were one radal each, and the ones that looked like ordinary rocks were the most expensive at three radal each. And since we had five of each, that made thirty-five radal in all. It looked like we’d reached our financial goal much faster than we’d anticipated.
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