Chapter 81 – Village of the Vanished (1/2)

As light crested over the city's walls, I confirmed my little party of spirits was together and started my way to the gates as instructed by the guild master.

Now that I thought about it, he didn't mention how I was supposed to recognize the rest of the investigation members. Then again, it was something that was answered for me when I got there.

The western gates had a group of what obviously looked like adventurers standing around. Some were inspecting their gear, others having a little meal, and yet more were just standing around chatting. There were probably about thirty people in the group, if they could be called such a thing. While they were all similar in the respect that they were adventurers, they had separated themselves into differing clusters. The only reason why anyone could consider them actually a single group was because of a single familiar presence that was overseeing it all: the guild master himself.

”Hey! Over here!”

The guild master somehow spotted me as I approached despite wearing those cloudy fake glasses and called out while waving an arm energetically. Frankly, the way everyone turned to look my way because of him made me want to just want to turn away and pretend that I had nothing to do with the guy, but that wasn't really a choice I had. There were lives at stake.

I quickened my strides and joined the haphazard amalgamation of adventurers.

”Alright, you're the last one.”

The fact that somehow I was last annoyed me a little. The sun hadn't even started directly illuminating any of the buildings in the city and the gates were still clearly closed.

But rather than do anything untoward, I simply swallowed those thoughts and just bowed my head a little.

”Now then, this girl's name is Scarlet. Scarlet, this is Nereus. He's going to be leading the investigation.”

I gave the tall man a curt nod.

Properly looking at him, my first impression was that he was a bit intimidating. He was an entire head taller than the guild master, pretty buff, and even had a stern expression on his face. His armour was made of soft looking leather with metal plates on key areas. Especially his gauntlets and greeves were pretty sturdy looking, but his chest plate didn't look half assed either. For some reason his thighs and upper arms weren't covered in armour. For that matter, his biceps were completely exposed, as well as his undershirt and pants being skintight meant that I could see the curves of his prominent abs and steely thighs.

”Scarlet? Haven't heard of you. You new, or from far?”

My eyes snapped back to the investigation leader when he opened his mouth.

”Ah, both.”

”Both? Hey Pontus. I don't need some newbie dragging us down.”

”Don't worry. Apparently she's real strong despite being new.”

”One of those pretrained guys then?”

”I don't know?”

”Haaa?! You! What's your...?”

As that muscular man reached out to grab my robes I sidestepped to avoid him. Things were already going poorly and being grabbed wasn't exactly something I enjoyed.

His hand grasped nothing but air and he froze for a moment.

”...Alright. Maybe you won't be a burden after all.”

”...huh?”

Before I knew it, the investigation leader turned away and went to talk to one of the people checking his gear.

I wasn't entirely sure what had happened, but I was glad that he didn't try to escalate. Really. I was worried about that stupid cliche bearing its ugly face.

With that, I had a closer look at the people gathered around the city's gates.

The numbers ended up being 29 members including myself, presuming that the guild master wasn't joining us. Of the 29, there was five dwarves, eight beastkin of various types, a single elf who kept glancing my way in between sharpening her knife, and the rest were all human as far as I could tell.

Most of the people where in groups of four or five, and the diversity of their gear suggested that they were actual parties as they covered each others weaknesses properly. There was two parties of four entirely made of humans, one with three humans and one beastkin, all five dwarves made up one party, the elf was together with three beastkin, a party of three humans and two beastkin, the last two beastkin were a single party of two and a final human was standing by himself away from the rest.

There were a pair of horse drawn wagons with their beds covered in bulging tarps standing at the side of the road. A pair of adventurers from different parties hopped on to the driver's seats and their parties moved to flank them on both sides.

”Alright! Gate's opening! Everyone, lets get a move on!”

As I was wondering how I would end up mixed in this weird conglomerate of adventurers, the leader suddenly shouted out to us. It looked like he was a part of the party with three humans and two beastkin, and that group moved up to the city's gates.

A few moments later there was some muffled shouting from near the gates before they started groaning open.

With a simple hand signal, the lead party started moving out, and the rest of us, including the two wagons, followed suit.

My anxiety was growing enough to be be palpable.

I had presumed that it would only take a few hours to reach the target town, but I was horribly wrong. I wasn't sure if it was my naivete or the fact that I wasn't used to the slow pace of travelling by foot that was the cause, but I was starting to really worry that we wouldn't find the captives in time.

While I may have had experience travelling like this before, it wasn't like I was in any hurry at the time nor did I actually pay much attention to the journey itself as I had spent most of the time playing around while leaving a dummy laying on the wagon while it was moving.

The fact that we had made camp for the night wasn't something I had expected we'd do when we were in such a hurry to find the missing villagers.

Each party made their own camp surrounding the wagons and each was preparing their own meals using food that was apparently being hauled by the wagons. While there wasn't any attacks made against the convoy, bandits nor monsters, nobody was taking any chances and each party had someone on lookout.

The party of two teamed up with the solo adventurer to work together for this occasion. They asked me to join as well, but I refused.

”Umm...excuse me.”

I walked over to the team leader to sate my curiosity.

”Make your own food. The wagons have more than enough for everyone.”

Without even turning to face me, the leader simply spat out his response.

”Ah, no. That's not it. Umm...”

”What is it?”

Finally turned to me, but I couldn't help but feel that he was hiding his irritation or something. I might have just been imagining it though.

”How much further is it to the village anyways?”

”Ah. At our pace, I guess we could reach it before nightfall in two days.”

”Two more days?!”

”Yea, but we're gonna make camp before then, so we won't reach it until morning of the fourth day.”

”Four days?!”

I couldn't believe it. This was supposed to be a search and rescue party, yet it was going to take us a total of four days to even start investigating.

I wanted to complain about it, but as I didn't know the nuances of everything around this, I couldn't even come up with an argument which included this world's common sense.

If it was going to take us four days to reach the village, then the person who first reported the missing villages must have taken about three days to reach the city in the first place. By the time we get there, the villagers would have been missing for at least a week!

”You wanna hurry, you can go ahead by yourself.”

The offer was tempting. Incredibly tempting. Even if it was supposed to take another three days to reach the village, I would be able to make the distance overnight easily. But then it would raise quite a bit of suspicion.

That elf hadn't stopped glancing my way the entire time either. It was to the point that her party members had asked her about it. While it was hard to hear from the other side of the convoy, it sounded like she only thought that spirits were hanging around me. It didn't seem like she could actually see them clearly at all, thankfully.

While I was thinking to myself, the team leader turned his back to me and continued his watch.

Not bothering to answer his suggestion I moved to a dark corner a little away from the wagons.

”Will you fly there Master?”

[No. It'll be too suspicious.]

Flying was completely out. Especially with that elf paying so much attention to me, even if I activated [Spirit Form] where she couldn't see, she'd probably notice me taking to the skies. Even if she couldn't tell that it was me, it would be suspicious.

No, even going ahead would be suspicious in general. We were supposed to be an investigation team. Team was the imperative word.

While I was given license to work independently, showing such open disdain to work together with the rest of the team so early on wasn't going to do me any favours. And that was presuming that I could even figure out where the bandits took the villagers on my own in the first place.

My CSI knowledge wasn't very great and I had absolutely no experience in tracking down a food truck, let alone bandit tracks.

[I don't like it, but I'll stay with the group. I don't think I can find the villagers on my own.]

”I'm not very good at finding missing people, but if I get the little guys to look around, maybe we can find some clues on our own? They might even find someone who saw where they went?”

It sounded plausible. Or at least it could send us in the right direction.

[No. I don't want to insult the rest of the team like that. We'll go together, and we can try that if we have trouble finding any clues.]

That plan depended too much on being able to find any fluffballs that actually witnesses where the bandits went. Lesser spirits were pretty jittery little creatures. They tended to run away at at the slightest hint of danger unless if they were with someone that made them feel safe.