We spent the rest of the day resting, and the next morning, we went to the guild office to take on some work. As soon as we entered, the clerk stood up and called out to us.

"Apologies, but please! Can you deliver some letters today as well?"

Natsuki frowned. "What's with the postal service around here, that you can't just send them your letters?"

The clerk turned her eyes, away from Natsuki, to a wall that had nothing of interest on it. "I hate to say this, but this is not a problem with the post office. The problem is that the paperwork the Guild was supposed to finish last month has only finished today, on the day that it needs to be delivered. The post office generally has a day or two's turnaround."

She stacked pile of letters, much larger than the one we had delivered the day before, on the counter. "We have several other adventurers on this today as well. This is about 10% of the total quantity."

Natsuki frowned again. "So you want us to wipe the Guild's ass?"

"You will be paid well, so I would not call it..." The clerk also frowned, and surrounded by frowns I frowned too. "...I am not allowed to curse while on the clock."

Natsuki sighed, and pushed the letters into her bag. "Okay. Fine. Let's go wipe some ass, Yuki."

---

This time, we had enough letters to deliver that we didn't have to think twice about interrupting our work for lunch. It was some time after lunch— at that time not long after true noon, when the sun had dipped from its greatest height and yet the temperature had not yet reached it— that we ran into a little problem.

I rolled open the street map between my outstretched arms and looked for our next destination. And... I couldn't find it.

I looked again, and I still couldn't find it.

"Um, Natsuki, I can't find this address..."

She circled around behind me, and, wrapping one arm around my chest, dragged the other's fingers across the map. "Hmm... isn't it right here? Across the buildings on our left? If we cross the alleyways, it'll only be a few minutes."

"Huh, I didn't see it there before..."

"It's magic!" she giggled. And then she released me, and wandered off towards the alleyways. I, of course, followed.

—In advance, let me justify my decision by stating that this is the first town I've been to where the paths between buildings are long and complex enough to be called alleyways.

When a shadowy figure appeared on the other end of the alley, I was genuinely surprised. I, in fact, did not even know such a thing was possible.

It happened when we were about halfway through the alleyway. Natsuki grabbed my arm and stopped in her tracks.

"Yuki, that shadow over there. Is that a person?"

I looked closer. "It's a person. With a sword." A glint of light flashed off the shadow, and a glint of fear struck my chest. "Unsheathed."

"Unsheathed?" She bit down on her lip. "Let's turn around. Quickly."

We turned, and in the gap through which we had entered the alley, another shadow appeared.

"Axe," I reported.

The reason I was surprised was not because I had no conception of what could happen to people in dark alleyways. I had heard stories of people being assaulted by bandits or mugged by thieves in such alleyways, but at the same time, I was taught that no such thing could possibly occur in Legoria, because bandits and thieves could not exist in a land as bountiful and as peaceful as the one ruled by the God-Emperor. I have heard that in the other nearby countries, people do not go outside after dusk, even within their towns, for fear of running into criminals. But it is said that in Legoria, the only thing you have to fear at night within a town is tripping over your own feet. It is said...

Natsuki closed her eyes and scrunched up her face, and I waited for her words to determine how scared I should be.

"Yuki. These alleyways are fairly complex. There's a thin passageway heading left around five meters ahead. If we follow it, we should be able to get to an exit about two hundred meters left of here. Okay?"

"You know the alleyways?"

"I remember the map. Follow me."

Natsuki grabbed my hand and ran, and I wasn't scared.

We quickly lost sight of the entrance we'd used and the exit we'd planned to use, and I lost my sense of direction among the contorting path. It was a contorting path littered with trash bins and trash bags and cardboard boxes full of what some people would consider trash, things people are wont to keep behind buildings. At first we jumped and dodged to the side, but soon enough we were faced with a chest-high wall of trash. Natsuki pulled her wand out of her bag, flicked it upwards, and the wall jumped over the two of us.

"Yuki. Right behind that dark green trash can, there should be a passage to the left. That'll open into the exit."

We turned sharply into a passageway that you could not see except on a map. It was a hundred-meter long stretch of earth that was not tread often, and at its end was— a wall.

A wall, where there must be an exit.

Natsuki grimaced, and hung her head in her hands. "I screwed up... shit...! Did I remember incorrectly? It was supposed to be here..."

No! There's no way that Natsuki could be wrong! Natsuki is always right! If something's wrong here... it must be this wall!

I pressed my hand against the wall, and felt mana circulating around it. I opened my eyes, and saw the wires of coffee-colored mana knotted up and down the length of the wall, and only on the wall standing where the exit should be.

"Natsuki!" I cried. "It's a barrier! I can't undo it, but... you can undo it, right?"

"What?!" She rushed over to the wall and lightly touched her fingers to it. "You're right. It's a barrier. They must have put it up ahead of time... so this was premeditated..."

Premeditated. Given that this was premeditated, it was almost certain, and I am certain that Natsuki understood this just as well, that those people had been sent by the priests, though at this point, it was not certain whether they had done so as a simple threat, or as something more.

"Twenty minutes." Natsuki muttered. "I'd need about twenty minutes to untie these knots. But—"

"But you don't have twenty minutes, do you?"

From around the corner we had just turned, the bandit holding the axe slowly emerged, smirking lopsidedly and walking with a gait halfway between a limp and a shuffle.