Chapter 42: Rowene Dungeon(2)

Rowene Village is not that big.

It is an ordinary rural village where most people are farmers.

However, even that rural village is completely different from the pioneer village of Asha.

The fact that there are several stores in the village is almost rude to compare.

On top of that, there are adventurers who arrived to conquer dungeons.

Merchants who came to do business with the adventurers.

The crowd of people, including soldiers dispatched to maintain order, was literally a sea of people.

The visitors had set up tents in a large open space outside Rowene Village.

The place where they had heard the story of the clerk a little while ago was in the center of that open space, and Avalli, who had stopped by to buy food, was looking around for a moment.

“Is East Police like this? I’ve been there before.”

“East Police is bigger. There are more people.”

“Really?” Avalli asked with wide eyes, and Hans nodded calmly.

“Uh. I don’t remember well either, since the last time I went was a few years ago.”

Avalli was inwardly impressed when she heard that.

Rowene Village and this tent village looked like modern-day towns, but they were much larger.

‘Perhaps the lack of content was a story limited to Asha Village.’

Avalli put a warm wheat bread that was just baked into his mouth, slightly upgrading his perception of this world.

Soon enough, the two arrived at the tent where Lucy was waiting.

“We’re late.” Lucy said in a discontented voice inside the tent, her arms folded.

“How long are you going to make me wait? Did you look away again, Avalli?”

“Hehe, Master, it wasn’t me who looked away.”

“Avalli caught me after hearing the storyteller.”

Anyway, let’s start with eating first.

After pitching his tent on the outskirts of the tent village, Lucy didn’t go outside unless it was really necessary.

Rowene Village wasn’t that far from East Police.

There might still be a threat to her life, so she wanted to minimize her embarrassment.

“Did you have any useful news today?”

“No. I heard there was a halfling magic stone craftsman, so I stopped by nearby, but he looked completely different from what Lucy said.”

“… Even races that are usually hard to encounter tend to flock to a dungeon when it opens.”

“I was really surprised when I first saw him.”

Hans and Lucy made strange expressions at Avalli’s words.

“That was too rude of you.”

“That’s right. Avalli was still a child, so it was okay. If he were an adult, there would have been a fight.”

“… I am reflecting on this.”

This happened right after arriving at Rowene Village.

Dwarves, beastmen, fairies, halflings.

Avalli, who had seen races she had only seen in fantasy novels for the first time in her life, could not take her eyes off them.

A cat-man adventurer in a nearby tent asked Avalli, “What are you looking at?” and Avalli hurled, “You’re talking!”, the highest level of insult to beastmen.

The cat-man tried to pick a fight, but Lucy and Hans desperately apologized, so the situation barely passed without incident.

“Still, it was amazing. Hans, isn’t this your first time seeing it?”

“That’s true. But I wasn’t as surprised as you were.”

Avalli thought, “Is this a difference in perception?”

As Hans answered indifferently, the perception of Hans, who was born in this world, and Avalli, who lived in a world where only humans were intelligent, could not be the same.

“But Master, that Catwoman’s party didn’t come back today either.”

“They must be busy exploring the dungeon. Dungeons are a great opportunity for adventurers to make a killing.”

“To get magic stones?”

Lucy nodded.

“It’s usually not that dangerous unless you go deep. Unless you’re an elite adventurer going to subdue the dungeon’s core.”

“Oh, since it’s deep, I heard a story today!”

Avalli told the story of a knight who had been possessed by a mysterious monster and attacked his comrades, something she had heard from a storyteller earlier.

Lucy’s face, which had been listening with interest at first, became strangely distorted towards the end.

“… Is that so? The dungeon raid is going nowhere.”

“If you don’t raid, is there a problem?”

“Of course there is. What kind of idiot are you talking about?”

Hans chided and intervened in their conversation.

“If you don’t remove the dungeon core, the monsters won’t stop appearing. That’s why knights are dispatched straight to the dungeon.”

“But with this many people, there shouldn’t be a problem, right? It seems like no monsters have come out of the dungeon.”

“If there’s only one dungeon, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but what if we just leave it alone and another one appears somewhere else?”

“Oh.”

Then things get complicated.

If you think of a dungeon as a goose that lays golden eggs and leave it alone, there’s a chance that you’ll be buried in the golden eggs and die.

“Hans is surprisingly knowledgeable, isn’t he?”

Lucy looked at Hans with a slightly impressed expression.

She thought he was a physical person because he only swung his sword every day, but after spending a few days with him, he surprisingly had a wealth of common sense.

“I used to read a lot of books. My health wasn’t very good, so there was a time when I was stuck at home for quite some time.”

“You’re so healthy now?”

“I find it strange, too. Master… no, the village chief said that it was most likely a Gift.”

“Gift. That makes sense.”

Lucy, who had been nodding, soon let out a deep sigh.

“By the way, if I can’t find Gail even after searching this much…, no matter how much I think about it, it means he’s in a dungeon.”

“Then, are you going into the dungeon?”

Avalli shouted with a cheerful expression, but Lucy immediately shook her head left and right.

“Don’t be stupid. How can you go into a dungeon with two children?”

“Master and I are about the same height, right?”

“Why are you talking about heights here?”

Lucy glared at Avalli, who had been getting more and more arrogant recently, and continued talking.

“I can get permission from the Adventurer’s Guild if I want. I just have to pass a simple test.”

If she did that, it would obviously cause a huge uproar.

The abilities of the two, who are still just boys and girls, would be revealed to the world.

Still, for Hans, it would end with the appearance of a young swordsman with a ‘gift.’

However, in Avalli’s case…

‘… I don’t even want to imagine it.’

Lucy had declared to Arsene, who was very anxious, that she would go quietly.

Lucy had been a little greedy in coming all the way from Halfling Village to Rowene, so she couldn’t delay any longer.

“It would have been best if she had found Guile, but… if she’s inside a dungeon, there’s nothing she can do. Let’s just go back this time. When I hear that the dungeon has been cleared, it won’t be too late to go back and find Guile.”

“Understood, Master!”

Although she felt regretful inside, Avalli obediently agreed with Lucy’s words.

To be honest, she had wanted to go into a dungeon once, but she had no intention of going against Lucy’s opinion as her master.

Aside from teasing her whenever she had the chance, Avalli had always respected Lucy.

Avalli cherished every single connection she had made in this world.

“Then, should we start preparing to leave?”

Lucy nodded at Hans’ words.

“Yes. The tent is owned by the guild anyway, so just pack your bags and go straight—”

“Let’s leave.”

At that moment, Lucy’s expression distorted pleasantly.

It was because she made eye contact with a blond handsome man waving his hand in the distance.

The man, who was leading a group of girls with sparkling eyes around him, had a name.

“Hey, Lucy!”

Lucy’s fellow Magic Tower student, a close friend with whom she had a deep friendship, and at the same time, the person she had least wanted to meet in recent years.

“Lucy Ignis!”

“…… Ah.”

Gish. Gish Grammon.

The man was running toward her, revealing his pure white teeth.

In an instant, Gish approached, closing the distance between them, lifting the tent and smiling brightly enough to dazzle her eyes.

“I never thought I would run into you here. Lucy, do you know how worried I was? Where on earth did you disappear to without saying a word until now?”

“… That’s because of this and that.”

“Circumstances? What on earth were the circumstances…… Um, no. No matter how precious a friend is, you have to respect their personal life.”

Gish nodded as if he had understood on his own.

“You probably needed magic stones. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to come all the way to Rowene.”

“Magic stones…? Oh, right. That’s right. Magic stones. They’re in short supply these days.”

“I see! By the way, who are the boy and girl here?”

“… The kids in the village where I’m staying now.”

“Ah, it seems you’re aspiring to be an adventurer. A child’s dreams are important. Very good!”

Gish was laughing and talking loudly by himself.

Avalli’s head was filled with the thought of ‘noisy,’ but since he seemed to be an acquaintance of his teacher, Lucy, he didn’t show it on the outside.

“-Now, wait a minute. Senior Gish!”

At that moment, a black-haired girl came running after Gish, panting.

“Who on earth did you see that you were alone—”

The girl, who seemed to be the same age as Avalli or Hans, made eye contact with Lucy in the tent—

“-Huh, Senior Lucy? I thought you had really left.”

She made an expression like a snake that had found its prey and her eyes sparkled.

Immediately afterwards, Lucy’s body also froze like a frog that had met its natural enemy.

And there was one top predator watching the whole situation.

“… What’s this guy?”

Avalli looked at the two faces alternately with a strange expression.