Volume 1 - CH v1 - ss

「……Aria. There is one thing that I want to say to you.」

「What, Viro?」

Inside a forest at the side of highway, a man and a girl was sitting around a bonfire in their campground. The man said such thing to a girl who was slurping soup from a warped bronze bowl. He was drinking the same soup while making a grimace like he had bitten a sour grape before placing the bowl on the ground where he was sitting cross-legged.

「Weed ain’t food!」

That girl Aria encountered the adventurer Viro in a town of a baron’s territory. Now she accompanied him in order to help with a job that he accepted.

Viro had accepted a job of guarding a noble. His client gave him an additional request to bring a kid who could work. It became an absurdly suspicious job offer where he couldn’t tell about the job’s detail or where it was located because of the sensitivity of the task, but even after hearing that Aria accepted because she thought that the skill of a self-proclaimed rank 4 scout like Viro was something necessary for her.

Even so it didn’t change the fact how suspicious the job offer looked. It couldn’t be helped that Aria was still vaguely looking at him with suspicion.

「Are you listening? ……Wait, you got a really bad look in your eyes Aria.」

「I know.」

Although Aria too wasn’t that overly worried. Even from the perspective of a child, Viro looked like a hopelessly irresponsible and no good adult, but Aria too understood that Viro was unexpectedly good natured and wasn’t a bad person.

「This isn’t weed. Hora grass contained nourishment that can even make great Kalf goat to survive just from eating that even in dry season. There is simply nobody else who will eat it other than goat because it has a lot of fiber and taste bitter.」

「That’s almost no different than weed!」

By the way, there was a record from fifty years ago that in the war against the demon race, some soldiers mixed the grass with wheat porridge and ate it, so it wasn’t inedible for human. Viro had beans and wheat grains stored in his space expanded bag, Aria thought that his diet would be unbalanced with just that and put in the grass without asking.

The street urchin Aria started giving such explanation while flipping the pages of a small book with a scholarly expression. Viro stared at her with a dubious gaze that seemed to say 『What’s with this kid』 while gulping down the remaining porridge in his bronze bowl in one go.

Viro was also an adult male. It was pointless to get irritated against a kid. He changed tack to the method of praising a kid to make them grow.

「Aa……you know, this ingredient is tasty. It feels like, it’s melting in your mouth.」

「Aa, that’s, it’s the larva of black beetle that I found in the hollow of that tree over there……」

「I don’t wanna hear anymore than that!」

The night grew late like that──

「Aria. I decided that I’m going to train you intensely.」

「? Roger.」

The next morning, Viro declared that while standing imposingly with his arms folded. Aria consented to him despite not really understanding what he meant.

In this continent, the culture of eating bug also existed, more or less. People normally ate insects at Melun Confederation at the north and at Carlfan Empire that was in a desert area, but in Claydale where the forest’s blessing was bountiful, eating bug wasn’t common.

Viro explained to Aria about that, but Aria who had strange knowledge lectured about the validity of eating bug using difficult words like nutritional value and the like that the scholars at the capital would use. Viro thought that wasn’t what he meant even while giving up in persuading her.

What he said just now came from the thinking that if he couldn’t persuade her, then he would train her so hard that she wouldn’t even have any energy leftover to cook. This decision was the result of the immaturity of Viro who got too worked up against a child. In addition Viro too needed to train Aria so that she would become useful when they arrived at their destination. Aria herself was also greedily seeking strength, so in the end both of them had no problem with this arrangement.

And so──

「Try hunting a goblin if it comes out.」

「Yes.」

The adult Viro started asking for the unreasonable right off the bat. The kid Aria replied affirmatively to that without any objection.

It was a very strange scene, but in Viro’s thought, if it was only against something like goblin then he could just step in anytime to prevent the worst from happening. Aria herself was also thinking that she wanted to increase her real battle experience, so there was no discord between the perceptions of the two of them.

Goblin wasn’t anything threatening in strength, but they had high reproductive power so they were famous monsters that quite often got witnessed at the countryside highway. But although they were said as weak, if they attacked with weapon or rock then sometimes the average people would lose their life.

However when they actually encountered three goblins in the highway, Aria normally pulled out her knife and challenged them into a fight. It made Viro reflexively grabbed her shoulder to stop her.

「……Those are goblins you know?」

「They are goblins aren’t they?」

「Their combat strength is higher than yours you know?」

「I know.」

「……Well, it’s fine I guess.」

Seeing Aria replying so unconcernedly made Viro somehow felt complicated. He became reckless and told her try hunting them by herself then. For now he would see how it went.

But in fact, Aria managed somehow. As expected she changed her mind seeing that it would be dangerous taking on the three of them simultaneously and finished them off one by one, but what Viro was worried about, that Aria would hesitate to take the life of a living thing didn’t happen. She calmly killed the three goblins under his watch.

「…………」

Viro tried to recall his first time killing. Was he also able to kill his opponents at that time with complete acceptance like this?

Viro became an adventurer when he was ten years old. Both his parents were adventurer. His father a warrior and his mother a scout raised him in this way of life.

He had been travelling to many places since his childhood. His rank 3 mother trained him hard recklessly. He also met his current party leader around that time. That kind of parents told Viro something incomprehensible like 『We’re going to meet a strong guy』 and vanished when he was twelve years old. Since then Viro became a slightly peevish person.

In a sense Viro had grown up with special education as adventurer, even so he remembered feeling extremely nervous when taking life for the first time. How did someone raise a kid to become this kind of 『strange fellow』 like this? It made Viro inadvertently asked his question.

「You, aren’t you scared getting into a fight where you might die?」

Toward that question, Aria wiped the blood from his black knife while muttering dispassionately.

「Fear will make your eyes clouded. I, won’t waste the lives that are making me stronger.」

「Are you man among men huh-!」

What’s with this kid! The thought crossed Viro’s mind, but setting that aside, Viro had been aware from early on that despite how hardboiled she was, Aria was just a girl who was dressing up as boy.

She was just a child so at first even Viro didn’t notice, but commoner children wouldn’t wear something like underwear until they were around ten years old. And so it was pretty easy to find her gender because Aria was walking around with such fluttery outfit.

It was also problematic to always make such small girl with not much stamina camped outside. From how she behaved, Viro guessed that she was around ten years old, but she simply had a small build because she was a street urchin who didn’t have enough food to eat.

Even so only when it came to foods that could be obtained inside the forest, if he let his guard down Aria would pick strange ingredients based on her strange knowledge, so although it wasn’t the main reason, it played a part in his decision to periodically stop by at villages and towns to resupply their food supply and the like.

Viro too, although he was used with camping outside, being used to something and liking it were two different matters.

If possible he wanted to sleep on a bed in an inn. Cooking his own food was also troublesome. He also wanted to drink alcohol and smoke. And if there was good woman to embrace then he wouldn’t have any complaint.

Even so his student (to be) Aria said something fugitive-like that staying inside the forest where there was nobody was more calming for her rather than in the middle of a city. Her attitude was plainly troubling for Viro.

He decided to camp outside most of the time rather than stopping by in human settlement throughout this trip due to various reasons like shortening their travel time, but in part it was because he thought that Aria was a town street urchin and so he would teach her the harshness of being adventurer through this trip. And yet, Aria was too stoic the whole time like a mountain ascetic from somewhere. Because of that right now it felt like it was Viro who was more looking forward to stop by in town or village.

By the way, some villages had inn and some didn’t have. In rough estimate, when a village populace was more than five hundred than most of the times that village would have a bar that doubled as a cheap inn. The village that they stopped by yesterday was a big village with population nearly one thousand and it was ruled by a knight.

Viro recalled the story of the knight that he heard at that time. In some part because of Aria’s behavior at that time too, he was considering making use of what he heard in order to ascertain Aria’s capability soon (because it was getting troublesome for him).

Yesterday afternoon, they stopped by in that village for food resupply and other things like alcohol.

There Viro and Aria parted. Viro would go to the knight’s mansion to obtain information about the surrounding area, while Aria would replenish their food from the village’s merchant.

Viro was uneasy to entrust the food replenishment to Aria, but as expected they couldn’t exchange their roles. Besides as expected even Aria would surely not do something like digging for worm instead of buying dried vegetables and dried meats. He wanted to believe that…….

「……You’ll be fine right?」

「Leave it to me.」

Viro saw off Aria with an expression of a mother asking her small child doing an errand for the first time. Then he asked for a meeting with the knight using his standing as a high ranked adventurer. With that he was able to obtain information about bandits who appeared near here.

It seemed the bandit leader was a former mercenary or soldier with some smart in his brain. It seemed the knight had also tried subjugating the bandits using his servants and the village’s militia, but the bandits had erased their trace skillfully and the subjugation failed.

But, in the first place they should find the bandits’ hideout first if they were going to dispatch a subjugation squad. If the hideout hadn’t been found then the standard practice was making a request to the adventurers, but scout with some skill who could defeat ten or more bandits had mostly headed to the baron territory that was close to the monster habitat, so it seemed that the hideout hadn’t been found yet.

A quest of this difficulty level was something that Viro could clear by himself, but the knight was reluctant to pay the fee to hire a rank 4 adventurer, so while talking about the information of this area, the knight would also send glances at Viro while making small talks like 『It’s really a pinch. What a problem this is』.

None of the information he obtained was interesting and they were insufficient to make Viro took action, but he kept it in mind thinking that perhaps he could use it as Aria’s training and left the knight’s manor.

.

It should be time for Aria to finish shopping soon wasn’t it? It was a large village, but in the end it was just a village, so this place wasn’t selling things like potion or weapon. Aria only went to buy dried vegetables and salt, so there was no way there would be any problem, but Viro got a bad premonition and walked toward the direction of the inn with a fast pace. There as expected, there was some kind of commotion occurring.

The morning of farmer was early. Sometimes there would be also be farmer who finished the manual labor quickly and left the other works like weeding and the like to the children while they went to drink alcohol. When Viro observed the situation, just as he thought, there was a man there who seemed to be drunk already even though it wasn’t evening yet.

「……Ha?」

It seemed there was a drunkard acting violent, but the one who standing in front of a young waitress who got picked on to protect her was a familiar face……or rather, that was definitely Aria.

Viro had warned her to not get involved with trouble, but here she had already poked her nose into something troublesome. He was exasperated with her, even so he wondered if this could also serve as training for her? Thinking that he decided to remain as a spectator, but he changed his mind once more when he saw Aria’s face.

Although the drunkard had no combat skill, his status seemed to be high from doing manual labor every day, so his combat strength surpassed Aria. Normally he would think that this man would serve as a good test for his capable favorite pupil (candidate), but the small Aria showed not a slightest fear even when facing against such large man. Her gaze toward the man was as though she was looking at a goblin. Seeing those eyes, Viro hurriedly cut in between the two because at this rate blood might get spilled.

「You there, wait a second. A large man like you threatening a woman and a kid like this, that’s unsightly yeah.」

Viro rushed in while acting cool. His speech caused the onlookers around them to watch dumbfounded. Aria who should be the one receiving help was looking at him like he was looking at a goblin.

To be honest, the biggest reason for Viro to interfere with this commotion was because the waitress was a beauty. She looked like she was at her early twenty perhaps? She was a beauty with a little strong look that was just how Viro preferred it. It was rare to find a woman like this in a countryside village. If things went well, then perhaps he would be able to make a good memory tonight. Such thought crossed his mind briefly.

Speaking from the result, a drunkard who didn’t even have any combat skill had no way of defeating a rank 4 adventurer. Viro easily beat the man unconscious and entrusted him to a nearby villager before returning to the waitress. There he saw beauty sporting a bright smile and a slight blush on her cheeks.

「Thank you very much.」

The beautiful waitress said that and shook the hand of Aria who was dressed as a male while blushing from her handsome guy action. Viro watched that going on with a dumbfounded look. It was then the beautiful waitress finally noticed him and gave him a wide business smile.

「Allow me to thank you too as the father of this child. I’ll treat both of you with the delicious cooking of my husband in our inn, so please come.」

.

「……I’m still 35 years old.」

「I had heard that before.」

Viro had been complaining the whole time since they left the village. It was unknown whether it was being called a father that bothered him or because he was dejected that the woman how he thought as a waitress was actually a newlywed proprietress. Aria simply replied to him dispassionately without agreeing or disagreeing and also without getting angry or anything. If other people saw this, perhaps they would see a master and disciple with good relationship in a sense. ──Many people would surely get such misunderstanding.

「…………」

From a child’s perspective, this man was really a hopeless adult, but from Aria’s perspective, this didn’t lower her evaluation of Viro.

He wasn’t looking down at her just because she was a kid or a female which was something that an adult tended to do. Viro was interacting with her as a fellow human from equal standpoint. It made Aria respected him.

But telling him that might make him get carried away and acted annoying, so Aria kept it a secret in her heart and lightly patted the shoulder of Viro who was walking trudgingly.

「A human’s life seems short but long. One day the right person will definitely appear for you.」

「O-ou……」

「…………」

For some reason Viro even recalled things that he didn’t want to recall, but considering the information that he heard from the village and the grit that Aria showed him, and then from other things like the battle against the goblins that she showed him just now, it made him say something that would be too reckless if he said it to a normal child.

「The village’s chief told me that there are bandits appearing around here. Tonight we’re going to hunt those bandits for your training!」

「…………」

.

Like that the trip that was full with recklessness where the impromptu master and student were destroying each other common senses continued before Aria arrived at the territory of Margrave Dandall where she would have a fateful encounter.