After traveling to the 3 nations of Edou, Osaku, and Kyou, we returned to the village.
“Never would I have imagined that there was such a large city on the side of the mountains!”
“Look there! They’re selling potions so casually!”
“It’s true! Wait, are they selling minotaur meat on a skewer!? Is it really that!?”
We already had merchants from the east going around the village. And most likely, they were Osaku merchants who likely arrived here through the newly made railways. As to be expected I suppose from the nation of commerce, they were quick to adapt.
Unlike Edou and Kyou, Osaku conducted its trade with other nations on a private, civilian level. Through these merchants, in other words. Any merchant authorized to trade were free to do so in any way they wished.
That being said, after a little while, samurais from Edou soon arrived in the village as well. They weren’t here to trade though. Stories about our village having many talented fighters had apparently spread among the samurais, so those who wished not only to test their skills but also to improve it through this journey had come to the village.
“That reminds me, how has Akane-san been doing lately? When Masamine-san visited the other day, she said she was still wasn’t able to face him just yet…”
Akane-san was training in our village without going back home, all so that she could one day accomplish the feat of crossing the monster-infested mountain range all by herself. Given her samurai pride, she likely was training herself hard.
With that motivation and the effect of the village’s training grounds, it shouldn’t be long before she was ready to undertake that challenge again.
“Huh? She’s not here?”
When I took a quick look at the training grounds, I couldn’t find Akane-san anywhere.
I decided to ask the villagers who regularly trained here.
“Is Akane-san taking a break?”
“By Akane, you mean that girl from the east, right? Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen her around here lately. She used to come here so often though.”
“Oh, is that so?”
Maybe she delved into the dungeon so that she could get more combat experience instead?
I thought so and visited the adventurer’s guild who oversaw the adventurers coming and going to the dungeon.
“Akane? Sorry, but we don’t have any records of such a person passing by here recently.”
“Eh? Really? Then, that means she didn’t go into the dungeon, huh…?”
“Yes, most definitely. We check everyone at the entrance to the dungeon, even if they’re not adventurers, after all.”
Even those not registered as adventurers could enter the dungeon, but their entry to the dungeon must be recorded first at the entrance.
“Hmm, then where could she have gone to train? Or has she decided she was ready to undertake the challenge again…? …or has she gone through with disemboweling herself?”
Such a thing was unfortunately not impossible.
It was a very real possibility that she, a girl who was all too eager to disembowel herself, had killed herself in the room that we had lent her.
“I should use the map feature to check her whereabouts.”
As long as she was registered as a villager, I could use the map feature to check where she was. I was hesitant on doing this because it felt like an invasion of privacy, but I saw no other choice.
“Let’s see…search for Akane-san…ah, there she is. This isn’t the residential area though. It’s the district for bars and restaurants…?”
A black dot representing Akane-san was in the area where many restaurants have opened.
“Could it be that she’s just having a meal? But isn’t it still too early in the morning to have lunch…?”
Whatever the case might be, I decided to pay a visit.
“She should be around here, but…”
At that moment, I noticed an especially large woman in front of a certain shop.
That shop was a hamburger shop. A hamburger was a kind of food that didn’t exist in the kingdom before, but after our village made it, it exploded in popularity and there were now so many copycat restaurants across the land.
One could eat inside that particular shop or get takeout. The woman I saw apparently decided to get takeout. In her hands wasn’t one or two burgers though…she had 5 whole hamburgers.
Moreover, looking closely, there was already sauce around her mouth.
So, those 5 are her extra helpings…? And all that in the morning…
That probably explained why she looked easily over 100 kilograms.
The katana on waist almost got hidden by her belly…wait, a katana!?