Chapter 39: Better Next Time (4)

Chapter 39: Better Next Time (4)

All the houses looked mostly the same, but the village chief’s was slightly bigger. The first thing I noticed upon entering was the dragon statues everywhere.

“Those statues...”

“This is the Lord Sea Dragon, the Ruler of the Western Sea.”

“I heard the Sea Dragon is revered in Porsen. It seems to be true.”

“The conditions of the sea change according to its mood, after all. Though... my faith in it is a bit shaky as of late, however....”

They worshiped the Sea Dragon. Was that why people wore carved dragon pendants around their necks and prayed to the Sea Dragon?

In that case, wouldn’t the Inquisitor, who is from the Temple, dislike this belief?

“What's the matter?"

The Inquisitor still looked disapproving but showed no extreme repulsion for the Sea Dragon. It seemed she didn't particularly care about it.

Well, if she were going to get angry about idol worship and the like, she would have been offended by the murals earlier. They boasted their object of worship, after all.

“My apologies, but I have nothing but water to offer you."

“That's fine. It’s not as though we came here to get treated to a lavish meal."

As the table was extremely narrow and there were only a few chairs, I opted to lean against the wall instead of sitting down. I didn't feel too bad about it, as it gave off the impression that I wasn't really part of the group and made me seem cooler. Wahaha.

“The sea started to become strange about a month ago. It looked calm on the surface, but waves thrashed about continuously, and the fish gradually started to disappear."

The village chief calmly explained that if they forced themselves to pull something from the water with their nets, all they would catch were black inedible things, and if they tried other methods, they would just come up with dead clams.

Just listening to her for a bit made it clear that their situation was extremely bad.

“At first, we thought this was happening because Lord Sea Dragon was angry, but rainstorms or tsunamis would usually occur if that were the case. This isn’t anything like that."

“I see. Is there any chance a red tide may have caused this? Your situation seems somewhat similar to the consequences of one."

“I have never heard of a red tide lasting longer than a month. Moreover, if that were the cause, the sea would have turned red, but we haven't witnessed such a phenomenon."L1tLagoon witnessed the first publication of this chapter on Ñøv€l--B1n.

“Huh."

“Then what are those black things that emerge when you throw out your nets?"

“We don't know, either. I've lived by the sea my whole life, but this is my first time seeing anything like this..."

The village chief stood up, saying she wanted to show us something. What she brought back was a wooden bowl containing something.

“...!”

The first to react was the Inquisitor. Her face, which held an uncomfortable expression ever since we entered the village, immediately changed as she accepted the bowl.

“Miss Inquisitor?"

“It's subtle, but I can feel Negative Energy coming from it."

As I thought, my gamer's instinct hadn’t betrayed me. Whatever the cause, unless it were natural, it would lead to the creation of a Quest.

Thinking back... Considering the Sea Dragon’s existence had been highlighted so much in this region, it probably had something to do with this. They wouldn't have made that ruin for nothing, after all.

While only a guess, it was pretty much certain. 'Primordial beasts' like the Sea Dragon, meta-wise, were newly added Raid Bosses with settings such as being corrupted or rampaging.

Urgh. I could still vividly remember spending tons of money to create those endgame items. Corrupted beasts dropped expensive recipes, which were like bait for the players; they were exchanged for a ton of cash.

“You feel Negative Energy?"

“Yes."

However, no matter how I put it, it was just a mere opinion. Until I had proper physical evidence, I should just treat it as a hypothesis.

“Is it Demons?"

As such, I feigned ignorance and simply mentioned the Demons.

The Inquisitor's eyes widened. I knew it had been a while, but seeing her so shaken kind of surprised me.

“I... I don't know. It is certainly negative in nature, but it seems different from Demonic Energy."

“Tsk."

Since her experience as an Inquisitor was quite shallow, it was natural that there were things she didn't know about. She also acknowledged that matter, yet she still mistook me for a Demon back then.

I let go of the sword hilt I had been fiddling with, contempt for her incompetence filling my eyes. The kimchi dumpling became sullen and lowered her head at that sight.

“Hmmm."

The Archmage, on the other hand, carefully examined the contents of the bowl. He picked it up with his hand so I could see it, too. The thing's shape was far too strange. I couldn't even describe it.

Hmm. If I had to, I’d say it looked a bit like a piece of junk. If one burned a piece of meat until it looked like charcoal, it would probably look like that.

“Have you seen something like that before?"

“I don't know what it is, either."

“Could there... Could there be a problem with the Sea Dragon?"

“Wh-what...?!"

“I'm not entirely sure about this, but isn't it the Ruler of the Western Sea? If something strange is happening in the sea and not getting resolved, wouldn't its ruler be the origin?"

The village chief looked almost broken at the Archmage’s cold remark. Anyone would make that kind of face if they heard there might be a problem with their object of faith.

“However, if there really is a problem with the Sea Dragon, wouldn’t the whole Porsen region have been thrown into chaos... There's no way the Temple wouldn't be aware of that. Uhm, have you heard of any other towns or villages having problems?"

Despite seeming to be on the verge of despair, the village chief still responded to our questions. She quietly shook her head, distress apparent on her face.

“As far as I know, no. I did hear their catches have decreased slightly... but not every year can be a good one, right?"

“Is this recent news?"

“It's from fifteen days ago when we collected everything we could sell and headed to the city, Grü Teltz, so we could at least buy some food. It takes about six days to get there, so this news shouldn't be that old."

It took about six days to reach Grü Teltz, so if they had left fifteen days ago, they would have actually arrived about seven days ago.

It was unlikely the city changed much over the past few days. However, someone might be performing a demonic ritual or something.

“Right. Thank you for telling us."

“How couldn't I tell you that much when you are our benefactors."

She spoke quietly, bending forward so that her face almost touched her knees.

“In any case... If this continues, the only thing awaiting us will be death..."

“..."

None of us could offer her any words of comfort.

“But aside from that, isn’t this kind of regrettable for the residents of this village? If they had found this pearl, they wouldn’t have needed to worry about food for those fifteen days. They couldn’t even recognize the treasure sitting right under their noses.”

...But was 1.5 million Gal that much money? There seemed to be about fifty people in the village, so it might not be enough for everyone.

I looked at the pearl peeking from the fabric and put it into my inventory. Since time was basically stopped inside of it, the gem wouldn’t get damaged like this.

I would have even less space in my inventory, but whatever.

It was unexpected, unearned income, after all.

...It could be that the game threw it at me because I obviously wouldn’t be getting anything out of this, even if I managed to complete this quest.

* * *

The pearl was the only unusual thing we could find.

We also searched the surrounding forests and beaches until sunset, but we couldn’t find anything out of the norm. At most, we managed to come across two deer.

“Ah, you’re here.”

“You’re finally here... Oh? Are those deer?”

Ah, I couldn’t just come back empty-handed, so I caught the two deer I found.

“If you got that, come and help me...”

By the way, it was Deb who carried the deer. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help him, but he just took them both, apparently thinking I had no intention of bringing them with me.

It was Deb who misunderstood on his own, but I didn’t bother correcting him. Wahaha.

“Please put them over there.”

“Oh my goodness, two deer...”

The village chief and her son hurriedly took the deer, and Deb immediately sprawled over the floor. While rather small, they were still pretty heavy. It was obvious that he would be exhausted.

“I bet I’ll have muscle pain tomorrow. I definitely will....”

Deb sprawled out on a chair like wet laundry.

Since he’d used his cloak like a bag to drag the deer along, his face was visible in the room’s light. His face, hidden by his hood until now, was younger than I had thought. Really young.

“What are you looking at? Is this your first time seeing a person’s face or something?”

“No... I was just surprised that you seem younger than I expected.”

“Hmph. You’re exhausted from just carrying two deer? How weak.”

“Hey, so you think everyone’s a superhuman like you?”

Because of his facial hair, I thought he had to be in his late twenties, but looking at his soft, unblemished face, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the same age as the Inquisitor.

Of course, it also wasn’t impossible that Deb was just baby-faced... However, watching him fight with the Inquisitor, they were at the same age mentally.

“Your results.”

However, my character wouldn’t care how old Deb was! I was trying to get our conversation, which had gone slightly off course, back on track.

Only then did the Archmage and Inquisitor react.

“The sea was so rough that we couldn’t investigate properly. What about you guys?”

“Have you discovered anything?”

If we had found something, we would have already brought it up.

I simply frowned. I stopped myself from calling him incompetent as we also hadn’t found anything right away.

“It seems you got similar results.”

The Archmage interpreted our silence. He hit the nail on the head.

“Then what should we do now? Are we just going to waste our time like this?”

“That’s why we’ll go out again. We were told the waves are much calmer at dawn. That’s when we’ll go.”

“Hey.”

“However, if we still haven’t found anything by then, we should just go to the city.”

At that moment, she turned to me.

“You should save your stamina.”

Her eyes fell on the people butchering the deer outside of the building.

“The Inquisitor said she saw a sea dragon through the waves.”

“What?”

To these people, the Sea Dragon was an object of faith, so she made sure that none of them heard him. He was quite considerate.

So why didn’t he act that way toward me? Stimulating my chain PTSD just wasn’t cool, okay?

“I may have been mistaken because of the waves, but... it definitely looked like a dragon in my eyes. I could clearly see fins on a long, thin body even though it was already dark... It could only have been a dragon.”

At that moment, the Inquisitor, who made eye contact with the Archmage, calmly explained it to us.

“However... it somehow seemed to be fighting something or going on a rampage. It didn’t look normal at all.”

At her words, Deb jumped right up. It seemed he was so shocked that he even forgot his fatigue.

“It’s very rare for the Sea Dragon to come so close to the coast. Furthermore, if something really did happen to it, as the Inquisitor saw...”

“...No way.”

“We might have to take care of whatever is harming the Sea Dragon, or in the worst-case scenario, we might have to deal with the Sea Dragon itself.”

Deb held his head.

“There’s no way we can do that!”

His remarks were from the perspective of a normal person.

“So, we have to hunt a dragon?”

However, something like shock and surprise didn’t fit me.

“Why are you acting so calm, Mister Knight?!”

I couldn’t help but take note of Deb’s astonishment.

Unlike him, I even held some expectations in my heart.

If it’s a dragon, I could surely get some expensive material, equipment, or something else like that!