I drag Arako behind me with her ear in my hand. Of course, my friend tries to plead: “Momo, let me keep one! I promise to take care of it… except sexually, I leave that to one of you! I’m also bad at feeding! Despite that, I want one! Please, please, please!”

“No!”

“What about our big talk with everyone, about finding more people to travel safer? We can let them join us!”

Let’s use her prejudices against her here: “So you want to let four human men join us, that see you as a mere elf, some sort of sex doll?”

“…I’m stronger than them, so I’m positive that they’re too afraid to try something. Also, if you and Katarine-san swing your utters enough, you may be able to distract them enough.”

I slightly increase the power of my grip. Alfar have sensitive ears, therefore even a little more force is strong enough to make her squirm for a second. “Arako? Let me be straight: You don’t have a say in that.”

“Let’s ask Kenta-kun then!”

“Alright.” I let go of her ear, because I know his answer anyway. Ken is the most trustless person I’ve ever seen, so he will decline on principle. I also think that he actively hates the Red Stripes. I can’t help but feel similar. They may be older and have more experience in some regards, but strangely enough, they feel even stranger to me than most people I’ve met in this fantasy world so far. Maybe because they’re from a whole other age. They’re also rude and some looked at me and Rine-chan lewdly. Well, these kinds of people are everywhere, full of themselves and the moment it doesn’t work out for them, they start whining…

Why do I feel like this bill also fits Ken? Maybe it’s a male-thing… Let’s be honest, this fits every human, including myself. So it’s a human thing.

I take another look at Arako, who now walks before me, and decide to expand this definition to all living beings. I’m a very open-minded person, after all.

I peek at the copy Arako made from the manual of the Americans. I may have been too confident when I said that I could read it. I mean, I can read English, I just don’t understand many words. Ken is good at English, his score is usually in the upper 90s, so he may… oh god, he will make fun of me for not being able to read it fluently. Well, it has to be a lot of unnecessary gamer-terms and maybe I can use the copies of their status screens to translate several terms.

I should have asked them to read the manuals to us, but I wanted to spend as little time as possible with them.

Our encounters with heroes so far have been unlucky. The first one was the patriarch of the ss’rak, we realized it too late and Ken had to kill him. Second would be Lvo’tjos already, who has fought us. Now those Red Stripes and they had little meaningful to say.

Actually, I should include Teru-chan, Masahiko, and the others also into this equation, though they know less than we know, but they’re also unfortunate encounters. Including Wood-san and Star-san. We really meet too few people.

There they are. Ken lies on the ground, Rine has her hands on him, and from his face and the dirt on his clothes I can tell, he was beaten up once again and Rine used her [Heal] on him. The moment he notices us, he switches from [Pikeman] to [Ranger], losing some of his bulk, and stands up slowly in an attempt to appear somewhat dignified.

My former classmate, and now cursed husband, is still a mystery to me. At least I know now that he’s one, as I used to assume that he’s shallow.

He hates people in general and he trusts almost no-one. Despite that, he recently extended his trust towards me and we decided to restart an attempt to be something like comrades, though it feels weird.

Arako has always had a strange friendship with him and she’s already speaking in an excited voice with him: “Kenta-kun, we decided to let the Red Stripes join us!” Hey, that’s not asking him!

“No,” he answers immediately. Then he looks at me, giving me a gaze saying: ‘Is she serious?’

I smooth back my hair: “She wanted to ask for your opinion, there is nothing decided.”

“Kenta-kun, listen to me. They’re heroes.”

“And?”

“That’s it.”

“You’re finished with your interrogation?”

“Yes.”

“Did you learn something new?”

“Yes, some of it is interesting, as only people with strategies like them can encounter them.”

“Tell me.”

“First, their ranks in their [Abilities] are only around twenty.” As far as I know, ranks tell how good you’re in a specific set of skills and when it’s high enough, you can learn special [Skills]. By the way, some of my [Abilities] have a rank of twenty and more, so it’s rather low, taking into account how long they have been here. “This is part of a greater theme which is put on the hero-system without our knowing.”

“That is?”

“Heroes have to challenge themselves and widen their horizons.”

“I figured it was something like that. You can only use your [Attributes] to their full potential due to practice and improvement, after all. There are also [Class-ups] to consider.”

“Not only that. Keith told me that they change location whenever the monsters are too strong or they don’t yield any XP anymore.”

“…good to know.” This is one of the moments they lose me. Ken and Arako think a lot alike, that’s why sometimes they come to similar conclusions that they don’t verbalize.

I only know what it means because I was with Arako, who asked Keith the following question: ‘Does that mean that when you kill a specific kind of monster too often it doesn’t grant you any XP or is it location based?’

[Class-ups] are location-based, so there is already one system-mechanic that uses this limitation. In this case, however, it’s monster-based. There is no transition, it doesn’t become less XP at any point. It just stops.

Ken smirks, I don’t think he’s capable of a non-malevolent-looking smile. “When I was still solo, I just wanted to level up quickly, and since then I’ve traveled a lot, so I had no chance of learning that. Not tragic, though, as that’s an easy-to-notice issue. Anything else?”

“They had one [Skill] I didn’t know existed. It’s in the [Recreation]-ability and is called [Dad Jokes].”

“…we will never talk about it again.” I agree.

Rine-chan raises the question that neither Ken nor I want to answer: “What is a dad joke?”

I try to explain it: “They’re jokes so bad that they hurt.”

“Can you tell one?”

“…sorry, I lack the imagination to think of something so lame.”

“Ara-san,” Ken brings the conversation back to topic, “something else you found out?”

“The Red Stripes have been summoned along with other people from over a large area in places called North America and Middle America and the thirty-seven people gathered have all been doing the same activity.” In Ken’s and my case, it was a classroom and everyone inside. In Arako’s case, it was a hundred seemingly random people from all over the whole world. Yet there is something special in Keith-san’s case.

“What kind of activity?”

“They went out to buy some so-called cigarettes.”

“…” Ken opens his mouth as if he wanted to say something, then stops for a second and finally finishes with: “OK, that may explain why repeated mass-kidnapping isn’t that well-known at home. Different countries, different circumstances… well, the news should be all about Kyou-san and me, but a bunch of dudes that disappear while buying cigarettes… Phew, even if the governments would know, they can’t do a thing. Let’s assume that nobody made it back so far to tell the story.”

“There have been heroes that fulfilled their divine quest though,” Ara-san says while her ears are standing upright.

“Any human heroes?”

“None that I know about.”

“See? Well, let’s go. The city should be nearby and I’d like to get there soon to get some space back.” During our travels, we cut up monster carcasses. If their meat is edible, it goes to our provisions, but claws, teeth, and many other parts can be sold, which is a good way to earn some money while traveling for us, as we need to fight monsters anyway.

There are some hurdles with it, for example the selling price doesn’t match a monster’s power, the worth of their parts is determined by how useful they are for processing. Hornchaser fur is worth more than the stoneskin of a rocky bear, because hornchaser fur can be made into pelt mantles, while rocky bear skin is basically useless.

Ken has been a hunter for a while and Rine-chan knows a lot about trade, so both of them determine which parts we actually bother with, though both of them need to make many guesses. On the other hand, monster parts become more valuable the further you’re selling them from that monster’s habitat, most likely because of accessibility.

Over the course of time, however, not selling the parts became a problem: Even a magical pocket-dimension like a hero’s [Inventory] has limited space and over the course of months it has filled plenty. We didn’t sell much in Goldbrunn and since then we only collected, especially in the Spirit Swamps, because it harbors monsters that are unique to it and even Ken and Rine-chan could only guess what may be practical in most cases, so we brought more than we most likely need.

You can’t also sell parts everywhere for the full price, and we didn’t have the luck to find a trader for them on our travels. So we wanted to check out the next city. It may also be a chance to join a caravan to Zethtrin.

Ken still doesn’t like the idea, but is more open about it than I expected. We know that Correo-san can track us and that he will decide when he will engage us, so looking for safety in numbers is a valid strategy. We just need to find a good one. One that is gullible, but strong enough to make Correo-san think thrice before bothering us.

Though I wish we had a way to deal with him long-term at some point.

―○●○―

The man called Correo walks into the League hall in Jeira. The servants notice him, but know better than to bother him, Correo has a rather particular reputation in the Merchant’s League. Other than most other merchants, he travels on his own and doesn’t let anyone he doesn’t know take care of him. Still, he’s well-liked because of his dashing personality. “Hello Mariwell,” he says to the reception lady with a rakish smile: “I would like to make another bounty, so would you please make an appointment in two hours?”

“Sure, sir.” Mariwell is good-looking, has a pleasant personality, and is good with people. That’s why she has this job, but she can’t help but sigh languidly and annoyed at the same time. Correo is someone who tugs at women in all kinds of ways. “Please make sure to check your mails.”

“Of course, I will do so immediately.” Correo has an office in this hall, so he heads there and sees that his desk is full of papers and packages. Most of them are just reports of his ongoing efforts, in short how much profit he will make.

After writing some letters to his bookkeepers, delegates, and some business partners, Correo sits down on a couch and relaxes for a minute. Time to speak with the Lady, the deity called Orinaenielle. The merchant swallows a pinch salt-like midnight blue crystals before closing his eyes.

He falls into a semiconscious state, and it feels like his body is floating in a starry night sky, though the star constellations are different from the ones he saw before. He can’t exactly ‘see’ in this state, but he still has an accurate picture of his surroundings.

«There you are, Correo. You seek an audience with Us?» The first thing Correo witnesses are two moons that open in the blackness, then the moons shrink until they’re the size of pupils. With a single step, the deity steps out of the darkness, though the blackness she has instead of eyeballs remains. Other than that, she has midnight blue hair with a stellar-like glow, in addition to feathers instead of ears. The rest is eerily human, though this is a form she only adopted recently, as Correo knows. She looks like a queen, haughty and royal, but while Correo knows too well that kings and queens are also just people, this is something beyond mortality. A goddess.

He imagines himself falling to one knee. He can’t speak, but he still can converse somehow: “My Lady, I’m honored by your visitation.”

«You are. We are curious, as it doesn’t appear that you have secured Katarine von Stolzherz.»

“I made your offer, but she declined and I wasn’t able to muster enough force to bring her with me against her will.”

«So you say that Our heroes weren’t enough?»

“Lent-dono and Star-dono were strong, yet they had an unfortunate encounter with a barbarian. I take full responsibility. Punish me as you deem right.”

«This is the second time you failed Us in this particular task.» The first one would be his failure with the Bloody-Nosed Mercenary Company. They almost got the princess and her companions, but then decided to not follow up because Katsuragi Kenta had become a ranger and their ranger companion didn’t want to pursue a member of his brotherhood.

“I have no excuse.” Still, this was also Correo’s failure, so he has to account for the fact.

«We still desire Katarine von Stolzherz,» the Lady says like in thoughts: «If We don’t get her, another deity might claim her which would be unfortunate. Therefore We expect you to take responsibility for your failure and capture her. If you bring her to Us, We will convince her. The means you use are secondary.»

“My Divinity, I require more blood to serve your needs.” The midnight-blue liquid has special properties that even magic can’t reproduce. It can bridge space, it can create armies, it can enhance the power of an individual, and Correo is sure that there are even more applications.

«We will see to it.» It takes time to produce, but as long as Correo serves the Lady, he always can get his hands on some. The blood is invaluable, and not only for monetary reasons. «We expect you to answer Our expectations, Correo.»

“Yes, my Lady.”

«Rough her up, if needed. Your only concern is to bring her to Us in a state she can recover from.»

“Even this will be difficult, but for my Lady, I will do everything.”

«We know.»

Correo has bought some time for now. There are many moving parts, as the princess is a person of interest for some. The gods know about her existence as a native-born hero, she’s known as the Irregular. Then there are several bounties on her head, though considering the route she’s taking, this will become less of an issue. The real problem is the team Feuerberg sent after her. He has to see an oracle for this.

The moment Correo’s mind returns to his office, he will take care of every other business except the princess’. This way, he can clear his mind to think this problem through.