Chapter 14.2

“My, looks like we owe Mr. Bertram a big one for this. When are you returning to your hometown? If you’re not going back immediately today, eat dinner with us. I’ll pay.”

“For the time being, I plan to stay in this town… No, this city.”

“You’re not going to sneakily follow us back again, right? Then Carla is going to scold me.”

“….”

“….You were thinking of that?”

“….Let us eat dinner first. Sir, do you have a restaurant you recommend?”

As soon as talk of food came up, the village chief flew through the alleyways and headed towards one shop. They entered an ordinary restaurant with lots of ordinary folks. However, Lara attached herself to Anna’s side, nervous.

“Anna, I’ve never been to a restaurant before! It feels weird to pay to eat food. What a waste of money.”

“Is our place not a restaurant?”

“Isn’t that more like a cafeteria than a restaurant? Whoa, they wrote down what they can make for you on this paper separately. We don’t have to eat all of this, right?”

“Please ask me this quietly on the side!”

Anna looked as if she wanted the earth to swallow her up on the spot.

The customers on the nearby tables were also glancing at Lara and Anna with curiosity, though they did quickly look away once their eyes landed on Bertram’s stone-like face.

The village chief did not care for any of this and drank up his beer instead.

“Hoooo—! This is what I’m talking about. Are you up for a drink, too?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Tsk, even though alcohol tastes best when it’s drunk together.”

Lara’s eyes began sparkling before her cheeks were grabbed by Anna. The village chief pretended not to have seen and continued speaking.

“My boy. Where is your hometown?”

“That would be Schleisen.”

Even the chief, who had expected Bertram had come from a good family, wriggled his eyebrows at those words.

Schleisen was the capital of this country. If he used to be a military officer and had lived in Schleisen…. That meant that at the very least, this man was the son of a noble, a far-reaching merchant, or someone with a high position.

The chief summarized his assumption into one line.

“You’ve come from afar. Do you have the money to take you back? You won’t be able to walk back, I’m sure.”

“I do not. Could you perhaps lend me some?”

“Don’t try to do something so glaringly obvious! If I did, you are using that as an excuse to come back to our village, aren’t you?”

“…..”

“If you can’t lie, then at least acknowledge it honestly! It’ll frustrate me either way, anyway!”

At that moment, Lara pointed to something that was pasted on the wall of the restaurant.

“If you don’t have money, how about that?”

[Answer to the challenge! Feast of the Black Pig!

Opening soon during the village festival.

To the first person who reaches the destination avoiding all boars, we give you five golders and the fattest black pig as a prize!]

“And the festival happens to be tomorrow, too. Anna, how much does one pig cost?”

“It depends on its weight, but one pig goes from about 8 to 10 golders, maybe?”

“Is that cheap, or is that a lot?”

“We should start by re-teaching you the reality of economics.”

The village chief shook his head slowly, as if to say that he did not have the energy to even laugh at that.

“Don’t involve yourselves in useless….. wait. Why are you looking at the poster!”

“I am confirming the time and location.”

“Are you going to participate? More importantly, even if you win, where would you go with a fully grown pig? You’ll be as good as tied up to this place. You can’t even get travel expenses from selling it! To be frank, if the butcheries here all got together to buy it for no more than 1 golder, what are you going to do?”

“Then—”

“And don’t you dare say any nonsense about coming to share it with our village.”

“Are you not interested in the experience of roasting an entire pig skewered over a fire in the middle of the village square?”

Anna’s and Lara’s eyes flashed simultaneously.

Only the village chief continued shouting alone.

“I said don’t!”

But he was also beginning to drool.

***

While Bertram was announcing his grand aspirations, the patrol guards at the city gates were also speaking of Bertram.

“The bear-like guy who came back today. I heard he caught a human trafficking ring.”

“What? He had enough sense to do something like that?”

“Apparently, there’s a clear-thinking person among the countryside girls who came with him. Do you remember the small one with the big eyes?”

“How would I remember everyone who passes by? Unless they’re as huge as the bear guy with as odd a personality as his.”

“That’s true.”

Not long ago, that dark man had burst into the city’s only bookstore, saying that he was ‘here to repay his debts’ as soon as he came into the city. He’d borrowed the books during the war to use as fuel for fire, or something.

As the books he’d borrowed were all burnt up and thus couldn’t be returned, he had asked what books he could repay his debts with, but the bookstore owner had already withered away and died after the war ended. The son and his wife were throwing away the books so they could open another business in place of the bookstore.

If they were to gain some books now, it meant nothing to them but more firewood.

“How’d that end again? Did the bookstore con him?”

“Yeah. They laid out some kind of nonsense about a really precious book that can’t be repaid through money, and I think they ripped off the bear for his horse? Even though it was a really good horse. That bear guy really is a bear. Giving that away and he himself walks.”

“True. I thought he’d surely meet a wolf while he crossed the wilderness and die. But now he comes back on some country village chief’s wagon.”

“The bookstore must be biting their nails in anxiety.”

The patrol guards chortled to themselves.

However, their time of leisure was cut short by a certain dignified voice.

“Is there a foreigner who is causing anxiety in the city?”

The guards lifted their heads.

A young man of blond hair was looking down at them atop a horse. Behind him were four armed men on horses.

As the guards straightened into proper postures almost unconsciously—

The young man, who must most certainly be a knight, questioned them with a cold voice.

“I am a knight from the capital, Franz Gerhart. I am searching for someone under His Majesty’s orders. Will you tell me more about what you were talking about earlier?”

Actually, that was a command.