Chapter 166: of Unknown Promise: Supervising for the first time

After our little talk with Yumias, we went to have dinner. The fish we had bought in the morning had been prepared by Mrs Korwen and some of the other women who knew about preparing fish.

As for our captain, he had been roped in to help as punishment for the shopping spree. There was something about him in an apron that was quite amusing. And the other mercenaries sure let him know they thought it was funny. Well, it was funny. That said, he was a surprisingly… average cook. Neither terrible nor very skilled but at least he knew more than just roasting a piece of meat.

Dinner itself was quite delicious. The wide variety of fish forced me to only eat small portions of them but… most of them were good. Even that large fish, the Red Devil, was quite delicious. It was intimidating to know that it had actually been poisonous, though. There were people falling from their seats but that was probably the alcohol and not dinner…

Once dinner was over, Karen and I went to sleep. It had been a long day after all. And it would continue like this for a good while…

Yeah, this isn’t going to end anytime soon. Definitely not…

“Haaa…”

“Yumi? Something wrong?” asked Karen, who was sitting on my left.

“... Just thinking they’re not making any progress with the trees…”

“Don’t say it like that. They’re making progress. Just very little.”

I sighed again, watching the mercenaries hack away at the trees in a desperate attempt to clear the path. They were using machete-like swords as well as axes to decimate whatever wood got into their way. Then they cleared the path from all the twigs and branches and whatever else they had littered it with before starting anew. And each time they barely made half a step progress, that’s how thick the thicket was.

“We should have insisted on going with the other group to the fort…”

“You know we can’t. Mr Captain gave us a job.”

“Can this really be called a job?”

I furrowed my brows when I heard that. We were literally just sitting on the side on a small log the mercenaries carried here, letting the men do their thing. Officially, our job was to supervise them. No idea how that idea got into Korwen’s head but here we were. He said it’d be easy and I would need to get used to this type of job. Never did I expect to be bored out of my mind.

“If nothing is happening, that’s a good sign.”

“Guess it is…”

We were told that, if there was nobody watching them, they might slack off. In that way, us being present prevented them from doing that. It did make me wonder if they really would slack off, seeing how motivated they were while hacking away.

“Oh well, nothing I can do about this. What is the other group doing?”

“They’re making some progress.”

“Nn?”

I turned around, looking at the group on the opposite end of the road. They were unearthing the old path towards the town, so that it could be used again.

“Oh, wow, they really are making progress. Well, guess that’s to be expected with Ria helping.”

Technically, calling it a group was wrong. It was just Ria working and the others were cheering her on… Okay, that was a little mean, they were cleaning up behind her. The main bulk of the work fell to Ria, though, who was utilising Water Magic to clean the road. She used it like a high-pressure cleaner, which was quite surprising.

“Miss Ria really is amazing. I didn’t know you could use water like that.”

“Nn. I’m surprised, too.“

That said, her progress was still slow. And I had to wonder how long she could keep that up. After all, she was continuously using her magic. She wasn’t even using an elemental stone.

“They still got a long way to go, though…”

Even if Ria continued at this pace until the evening, I seriously doubted that she would even clean up a tenth of the way today.

“They’re still faster than the others.”

“Nn, but I’d be shocked if they weren’t.”

“Well…”

Karen smiled wryly as she returned her gaze towards the front again, looking at the group clearing the forest.

“They’re doing their best. We shouldn’t make fun of them, considering we’re just sitting around.”

“Ugh…”

But sitting around was our job… Oh well… She was right…

“Haa… I wish we could speed this up somehow.”

“Mmm… You could try asking Yumias? She might be able to help.”

“Yumias, huh…”

Just thinking about her made me sigh again. We hadn’t yet talked to her again after our small meeting yesterday. I was quite thankful to that, though, as it gave me time to process everything that we had talked about.

“Sis. What do you think about what she told us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… I mean, about… our future. About what she told us.”

“Ohh…”

Karen’s gaze went upwards, looking at the blue sky.

“I don’t know? It’s something so far off in the future, I can’t imagine it…”

“Ahhh… Nn.”

So, she felt the same as I did.

“But, even if it was something that would be happening very soon, I don’t think I’d mind. I don’t have any intention of leaving you.”

“... I see.”

“Yumi?”

I leaned against her, snuggling close and hiding my flushed face. I was too easily embarrassed, wasn’t I?

“I don’t intend to leave you, either. But there might be a situation where we might be forced apart.”

“Let’s do our best where that won’t happen.”

“Nn.”

Even if it wasn’t for this weird issue about being apart, I would do my utmost to prevent something like that.

“Ah, but I do  wonder what will happen to me. Yumias couldn’t tell us exactly what either, after all,” added Karen.

“I wish she would…”

“It didn’t sound like it would become a problem, at least.”

“... I guess that is a relief, yes.”

I still wasn’t sure if I could trust Yumias. She was troublesome… And even if Karen told me that Yumias seemed to have good intentions, it was still…

But I guess, it is unfair if I only blow up in her face…

Even though she teased me, I shouldn’t have been that mean… Yes, I was reflecting on it.

Okay, I’ll try to be a little nicer to her next time.

Even if she was messing around and teasing me, she had saved me and it was only thanks to her that I had met Karen. Maybe I should show her a little gratitude for once. But only once.

“Yumi, Yumi.”

“Nn?”

“Look over there.”

“Nn? Oh? Oh… Speak of the devil and he shall come…”

Ah, but this devil is female.

Without us noticing, Yumias had actually appeared among the mercenaries clearing the thicket. She was tiptoeing, looking past the mercenaries in an attempt to see what they were doing. Considering how… vertically challenged she was, she probably didn’t see much.

“The heck is she doing?”

“I don’t know.”

Now she was jumping up high, trying to see past the mercenaries. At this point, some of the men had noticed her as well, and were a little confused. Maybe mistaking her for a child, the men in front made some space so she could look… Whatever she was looking at.

Yumias then walked up closer, looking around. After a short while, she started talking with one of the mercenaries. Her expression fell and she looked disappointed, her shoulders slumping.

No, really, what is she doing there?

Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure it out. Once she finished talking with the mercenary, she turned around and left them to their work. Obviously, since we were just behind those men, we immediately entered her field of view as well. Seeing us, she raised her arm and waved energetically. A little surprised, we returned the wave…

Ah, there she comes running… what the fuck she’s fast?!

“Yumi dear!”

“Woah, stop! Stop!”

Responding to my desperate plea, Yumias made a full stop right in front of me… That was close.

“Yumi dear!”

“Ye— Yes?!”

“Where’s the castle?!”

“...”

You kidding me?

That’s what she was after?

“Tell me!”

“... In the forest?”

“Where in the forest?”

“I don’t know?”

“Ahhh!”

She fell to the ground, holding her chest as if someone had just her heart. I couldn’t understand her… I just couldn’t.

“I was looking forward to it. I was looking forward to it!”

“... You could have joined the captain in the morning. He went to the fort.”

“I fear that might not be possible, dear.”

“Huh?”

“That boy, yesterday evening, he drank the alcohol I brought him.”

Ah. I knew where this was going.

“It seems that it wasn’t to his taste. And here I only wanted to do him a favour. Haa…”

She brought a hand to her cheek, shaking her head all the while.

My condolences, captain. May your alcohol rest in peace.

I gave a quick prayer to our captain’s deceased alcohol stash.

“He was really upset, somehow. I hope he is taking care of himself. He’s not the youngest anymore and high blood pressure could be dangerous.”

“...”

I think she should first ask herself why he had high blood pressure in the first place.

“Oh well.”

Yumias stood up again and patted her knees to get off the dirt. Looking at her like this… she really was small. Even as I was sitting, she was only slightly taller standing in front of me. And I was already anything but tall.

“Is something the matter, Yumi dear?”

“... Nothing.”

I wanted to ask her why she stayed this small when we already knew she could make herself taller. But something told me that it was a dangerous question. One I shouldn’t ask. Might be just my imagination but… Better safe than sorry.

“My, are you shy?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Hehehe, sure, sure, dear. Well, I won’t interrupt your work for any longer then. Later then. Mh, I wonder what little Lily is up to.”

“Sure, sure. Un— Huh?”

She was gone. I turned around, looking behind me, but there was no one there.

“... How is she doing that?”

Seriously… It was a mystery.

“I’m not sure, Yumi, but… Maybe she is using that Space magic?”

“... Ahhh, that’s possible.”

It might not be that it simply seemed as if she was teleporting. She might really be. Having seen what the tentacles could do, it was entirely possible she could do the same. No, actually…

“Thinking about it, she can wander into other worlds… Teleporting is probably the last thing I should be surprised about.”

“Now that you say it.”

I never really connected those dots before… but it certainly made sense now.

“Seriously… Why can’t she just teleport into the fort?”

“I think… she just wants to share everyone’s excitement?”

“Nn… Is that it?”

Excitement, huh… It might be…

“I don’t get her.”

I shrugged my shoulders, giving up. For now, we should probably concentrate on our ‘job.’

Karen and I kept watching the mercenaries as they hacked and cut and felled. We didn’t really need to do anything, really. Noon passed, we had a lunch break and then the whole thing continued on. It took until late noon until there was a change.

As the mercenaries kept clearing the path with minimal progress, a large group came from the direction of the town. Burly men with arms as thick as a trunk.

“Sis, those are not our men, are they?”

“I don’t recognise anyone among them so I don’t think so.”

The group approached Ria and her cheerleaders. One of the burly men—judging by his grey hair the oldest one—separated from the group and started talking with one of the mercenaries. After a while, the mercenary pointed him elsewhere. Just this elsewhere was…

“Why is he pointing at us?”

The unknown man turned into our direction. Since I could still see really well from that distance, I saw his expression change into confusion. He turned back to the mercenary, frowning. Only to be once more pointed towards us.

“Yumi.”

“Yes?”

“... We’re the supervisors.”

“Yes?”

“Doesn’t that man want to talk with the people in charge here?”

“...”

Oh fucking hell… I wished he’d send them to Ria, not us.

“He is coming, Yumi.”

“He sure is…”

I repressed a sigh and stood up from our log, patting away the dirt. If he really wanted to talk to us because we were ‘in charge’ then I probably shouldn’t stay seated. Although, we were only technically in charge… Well, time to do my best as the ‘person in charge,’ huh...

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“‘Scuse me, lady. Are you calling the shots here?”

“We are the supervisors, yes.”

The man directly addressed me and not Karen. I was a little surprised that he did, to be honest.

“Great! Glad I got the right people. Ahh, let me introduce myself. I’m Kelrev, chairman of the Craftsmen’s Guild.”

“The Craftsmen’s Guild?”

“Ahh. We’re a guild to support all our local craftsmen in Auria. Small town, so we gotta help each other where we can.”

So, these burly men were all craftsmen?

“I see. And what does the Craftsmen’s Guild need from us?”

“Rather than need, the lord gave us orders to restore the old road. But from the looks of it, you’re already working on that.”

They came for the road? But I thought, if we wanted help from the populace we’d have to pay and hire them ourselves. Or did the road not fall under that?

“I’m sorry, we didn’t expect anyone from town to work on the road and it is a rather high priority.”

“I see. Guess that’s understandable. But this is a bit of a problem...”

He scratched the back of his head before throwing a glance back, towards the road where Ria was still cleaning up..

“Can’t be as efficient as a mage after all.”

No, that was probably just Ria who was way too efficient.

“Even then, the lord gave us the order and the pay. If possible, we’d like to take over.”

“That’s… not something I can decide.”

“Then, who can?”

“The captain or the vice-captain. The captain is currently in the forest and will come back later. The vice-captain is at our camp on the other side of the town.”

“Seriously? Lady, can’t you do something? Come on, give me something to work with.”

“Even if you ask me to, I can’t.”

The man clicked his tongue in annoyance. Not that it’d change anything.

“Got it.”

With that, he went back to his group. He could’ve at least said bye or something… At least, he retreated quickly and didn’t keep going.

“Well, what do we do now?” I asked.

“We should tell the captain when he comes back.”

“Nn…”

The old craftsman was talking to his group and after a short while, the whole lot of them turned back. Glad that got solved quickly but…Wait, the old man stayed behind. He was talking with the mercenary from before.

“What’s going on now?

“Don’t know… Are they arguing?”

The old man was saying something to the mercenary, while the latter just shook his head repeatedly. We watched the two for a while, until the old man stomped the ground and then left, following after his group.

“The heck was that?”

“Don’t know…”

“We probably should ask… don’t we?”

“I think that would be for the best, Yumi.”

“Knew it…”

Sure, just watching the men doing their work was boring but that didn’t mean I wanted problems cropping up…

Karen and I made our way over to the group working on the road. All the while, Ria had continued her work, completely unperturbed by everything happening around her. I was a little jealous, to be honest. Either way, we approached the mercenary and asked him what happened.

“What did that man want?”

“Ma’am!”

Seeing me, the mercenary immediately saluted. I still wasn’t really used to them doing this…

“He demanded to speak with the captain or someone else who could make decisions.”

“I knew it…”

That man wasn’t satisfied with the way things were… Well, it wasn’t like I couldn’t understand that. From how he phrased it, they had already been paid by the lord. If they couldn’t work on the road, what would happen then?

“Did he say anything else?”

“No, ma’am!”

“I see. Good work. Keep it up.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

I nodded in appreciation. Seems they had everything under control then. That said, I had this feeling that it wasn’t the last we heard of them…

Nothing else had happened for the remainder of our job. Karen and I watched the mercenaries, flirted around and stuff like that. Of course, we paid attention even while we were flirting. Really.

At some point, Korwen and the other mercenaries finally returned from their trip to the fort. It also marked the end of our workday. The mercenaries were already cleaning up everything and getting ready to leave. But first, we’d have to report to Korwen what had happened.

“The craftsmen’s guild, you say?”

“Nn.”

“That’s a surprise… Didn’t expect them to show up at all.”

“... Was it all right for us to turn them away?”

I was honestly a little worried we did the right thing there. Not that I even knew what else we could have done.

“It was. It was simply unlucky for them to show up now. Maybe they should have gone to our camp first.”

“Nn…”

“Well, either way… If they offer to unearth the street for nothing, we should take them up on it. Less work for us.”

“Should we say that to them next time they show up?”

“Yes. You… Actually, you won’t get to that.”

“Nn?”

Why wouldn’t we? Oh…

“We’re not supervising tomorrow?”

“That’s right. I got a different job for you two.”

A different one, huh… Well, I wasn’t going to miss this one.

“We made some progress going through the fort, you see.”

“Oh?”

“Remember the blueprints I’ve gotten from Will?”

“The ones back when we were selecting our rooms?”

“Yes, those.”

Was there some problem with them?

“For the most part, they turned out to be accurate. Well, a few parts turned out to be different and there’s a whole section that’s not on them, but that’s something to worry about later.”

“Isn’t that actually important…”

“It is. But we don’t know what’s down there. I’d rather not run a search party that has to go the whole way from our camp to the fort and then down there. So, with that in mind, we’ll be setting up a small camp in the fort. Or really, we’ll just get settled into our new places already a little.”

“... Huh? Wait, we’re moving in already?!”

Wasn’t that way too soon? Just getting there was an ordeal already.

“What exactly we’ll be doing will depend a little. At minimum, we’re just going to move some food over there and sleep on the floor.”

That didn’t sound fun, though.

“At best, we’ll be able to move more things and get settled in properly. Well, most of that is going to depend on you, Yumi.”

“... On me?”

“Yes. I want you to try and use that Space magic. If it works, we should be able to comfortably get into the fort.”

“Oh…”

That didn’t even come into my mind… That might actually work but…

“I don’t know how much mana that’s going to need… Even that one time already took a huge amount...”

“I’ll have Ria help you out. Do you still have mana crystals?”

“Nn, we do.”

Plenty, in fact.

“Good. Don’t worry about using them up this time. We can always get more.”

“Are you sure?”

“We need to test out that magic of yours either way, don’t we? This is a good opportunity to try it out. Even if you mess up, unless you send us into the sky, it’s a distance you can walk.”

A good opportunity… It was, wasn’t it?

“Nn, then I’ll try.”

“Good, good. What exactly do you need to do for that?”

“Well… I don’t quite know? At the very least, I’ll need the tentacle growth at both places.”

“That stuff… Okay, I’ll show you where you can make one in the camp later. Then, we’ll make the other one in the fort tomorrow. We’ll bring food along so if it doesn’t work out, it won’t be a problem.”

“Nn, okay.”

Sounded like a plan to me.

“If that really works out, we can already move everything important into the fort as well. With an easy way inside, we should make far better progress than now.”

Korwen turned to the side, looking at the road. Even he was worried about how slow the progress was, huh?

“Leaving the road to the Craftsmen’s Guild would be quite convenient for us, too. More manpower we can focus on getting the fort back into shape.”

“So, it’ll depend on me…”

“If you mean our course of action, then yes, it’ll depend on you.”

Great… So much responsibility…

“That said, it’s not like we can flaunt that magic of yours. We’ll need to keep it under wraps as much as possible. That’ll limit us a little. I’d rather not have the recruits know about it, for example.”

“The recruits? Why not?”

“Because we won’t know who will even stay with us. They barely have experience with the work of a mercenary nor did they ever kill a person in their life. Most of them will quit.”

“Is that so?”

That was a bit of a surprise.

“It is. But that’s simply how things are. Our job is not something anyone can do. But enough about that.  We’ll have to keep your magic, if it works, hidden from prying eyes. We’ll move whatever we need to conduct a search and also everyone I know can keep their mouth shut. It’ll help us out but it’s not like it’ll change everything. We’ll just have to move in a little later if it doesn’t work out.”

“Nn…”

Was he… trying to put me at ease?

“... I’ll try my best, captain. I can’t promise anything, though.”

“That’s good enough.”

Korwen nodded, satisfied with my answer.

“We’ll discuss the details tomorrow. But don’t stay up too late. We’ll move out early tomorrow morning.”

“Is the search going to be taking that long?”

“... Frankly, I don’t know.”

“... Captain, the hell did you find?”

“An underground basement. We don’t know how large it is but preliminary reconnaissance suggests we won’t be able to get through that in one day.”

So that’s why he wanted to set up camp…

“It might lead to a secret storage room, a prison or maybe just secret exits. We don’t know. It might have been constructed after it was abandoned, too.”

“Afterwards? But why would anyone build that and then leave the fort alone?”

“Good question. That’s what we’re going to try to figure out.”

Korwen shrugged with his shoulders.

“It could be anything for all we know. It might also be just another water canal that got clogged up.”

“That sounds more likely than the other ones, at least…”

Then again, it had been a fort… A secret basement, huh? That… sounded a little cool.

“Well, if it’s a water canal, then that’s that. But if it’s something else, this might be either a problem or a boon. If it’s just a large storage… It’d be the perfect location to keep some things hidden, wouldn’t it?”

Korwen grinned mischievously at me. Did he mean… me?

“Mr Captain, do you want to use that basement for Yumi’s… research?”

“Pretty much. It’d be convenient, wouldn’t it? I was already wondering how we’d deal with that so this could be convenient for us. Depends if it’s really like that, though. And… if it really was a secret storage room… Then what happened to whatever was stored there?”

“Wouldn’t they have taken it with them when they abandoned it?”

“They might have, they might not.”

Once again, Korwen shrugged his shoulders.

“We’ll find out tomorrow, I guess.”

“Nn…”

I glanced upwards at the sky. The sun was already setting. Today had been quite an uneventful day, hadn’t it?

“Oh right. If you do well, you might be able to move into your new room tomorrow.”

“I’ll do my best!”

“Hahaha! Now someone’s motivated!”

Of course, I was. We were looking forward to living in a proper room as well.

“Then, you better keep it up tomorrow.”

“Nn. I will.”

“Good, good!”

Tomorrow was surely going to be a great day. Definitely!

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