Vol 1 Chapter 17 (1/2)

VOLUME 1-2

Chapter 17

The two of them s.n.a.t.c.hed up their equipment and began chasing after the girl and the pack of wolves.

As they walked, Homura hit Touya’s shoulder and let loose complaints.

“Why didn’t you come with us!? You just jumped in on your own! Right in the middle of that huge pack!”

“I just thought that I had to lure them away somehow. Otherwise, they might have taken us all out at once by throwing one of those bomb blasts into the bas.e.m.e.nt.”

“B-But you repelled one, didn’t you!?”

“I just did that on the spur of the moment and… d.a.m.n it.”

Touya gritted his teeth.

“Yeah, I was wrong. It’s just as you say, Hinooka. I should have gone straight to the bas.e.m.e.nt with you both.”

Without slowing his walking pace, Touya bowed his head.

“I’m sorry.”

“…No, I’m just glad that you’re unhurt after all that.”

“You too, Hinooka.”

Letting out a small chuckle even while sinking in regret, Touya seemed even more adult-like than usual. He was gazing down the path through the woods, still besides himself with worry for the injured Misasagi-senpai.

“The wolves didn’t come at me seriously. It was like they were just buying time by keeping me there. They were aiming for senpai from the beginning.”

“No way. Why?”

Touya shook his head.

They cautiously surveyed their surroundings and searched for tracks left by the wolves.

The natural and gently curving path through the valley was flanked by the river and mountains on each side, and as long as they didn’t try to suddenly cross through the mountains, the terrain didn’t open up except towards the south. If they tried crossing the river for the opposite sh.o.r.e, they should be able to expand their range of sight.

However, at the end of the valley was nothing but a stretch of trees, and the two of them couldn’t figure out how best to chase after them.

Fortunately, Homura was able to keep pace with Touya without running out of breath.

“More importantly, that child. Should we call her the wolf girl for now? Anyway, you said she was a missing child, but…”

“You doubt me? It’s not just the bracelet; when I looked at her closely, she had the same face as the baby in that picture. It’s definitely her.”

“Even if she came to Nutella three years ago, she should, at the very least, be over eighteen years old by now. The numbers don’t add up.”

“Ugh, that’s… maybe there was a problem with her physical growth or something…”

“But, certainly, it’s more believable than her being a Nutellan. After all, we could understand each other’s words. She even used j.a.panese.”

Homura noticed that for the first time now that Touya pointed it out.

“Yeah! She did! But it seemed like she was using a very old dialect. Her clothes too—I’ve never seen clothes like those.”

“……”

As Touya was silently thinking over the range of possibilities, Homura questioned him nervously.

“If we don’t catch up to senpai, are we going to be stuck here on Nutella and die by the roadside?”

“No…”

Touya reluctantly shook his head.

“We can just go to Hiyos.h.i.+zaka High’s base camp. It’s quite far, but I know its location. If we don’t return on schedule, Mori-chan will send out a rescue request and help will come. We’d have to wait several days until Hiyos.h.i.+zaka High’s club members finish preparing and come here, but we won’t die. We have food supplies too.”

“Ah… I see. There’s that option too.”

Homura’s expression brightened for an instant, but then immediately clouded over again.

“But then, senpai will—”

“We might end up leaving her behind. But she has the Transport Ring.”

“…Yeah. If she can just regain consciousness, she should be able to immediately return to Earth.”

Homura nodded with hope.

They cut through the forest and arrived at a river.

The flow was slow and gentle here, with several rocks amid the river to act as footholds, and Homura and Touya had already experienced river crossing during their last mission.

After diligently looking over the soft dirt along the riverside, Touya found what he was looking for there.

“Footprints. They’re heading north!”

There were still wet tracks left on the rocks jutting out from the surface of the river as well.

After picking back up his baggage, Touya glared at the opposite sh.o.r.e of the river.

“Wait, Touya-kun!”

Just as Touya stepped into the river shallows, Homura called out to stop him.

“Look at these…”

She held out her hands, and grasped in them were the mini-bag with multiple tools and the folding knife that senpai had been carrying.

“They were all abandoned on the ground over there. And…”

With a trembling voice, she held out a silver ring between her fingers.

“This is the Transport Ring…!”

“……!”

It was definitely the Transport Ring that Misasagi-senpai had been wearing on her finger.

They didn’t know why it had been dropped here.

Even though it was their most important tool and indispensable means of escape, it was the thing that Touya least wanted to see right now. His anguished expression clearly conveyed that.

After a heavy silence, Touya finally spoke, squeezing out the words from between clenched teeth.

“We’re going back.”

“…Back where?”

“Our base camp, obviously. We can get there quick if we run.”

“Eh… What about senpai?”

“Hurry up. Or it’ll be too late.”

Touya turned on his heels and began to retrace their path, while Homura was dumbfounded as she watched him.

“Why? Why are we going back?”

“We can’t afford for the transport to fail in this situation, regardless of how low the chances are. We have to go back to the bas.e.m.e.nt.”

“I’m asking what we’re going to do about senpai!”

“There’s nothing we can do for her by ourselves! We have to go and get help from Koma-senpai and the others!”

In a daze, Homura turned around and looked at the faint footprints that were being gradually washed away by the river at her feet and the slowly drying wolf tracks on top of the rocks.

“…But we don’t know where senpai was taken. We can’t just leave her alone on this huge planet all by herself.”

“The only thing we can do is believe in senpai.”

“…No. I can’t do that. Senpai was hurt. We have to go rescue her…!”

Touya held back an agitated breath and spoke to Homura as if to admonish her.

“Please understand, Hinooka. You pointed it out to me just now, remember? Inexperienced chicks like us who don’t know anything about Nutella or any survival techniques would just get full of ourselves and jump in recklessly, merely increasing the number of victims.”

In her head, Homura understood that what Touya said was correct. Even so, Homura wasn’t one to back down.

“…Stop acting like senpai!”

Homura struck Touya’s chest and let out her anger.

“Do you feel responsible just because you invited me to the Exploration Club? You think you’re my guardian? We’re the same age! You entered the club just a month before me!”

“Ah? What’d you say?”

Touya glared back at her, but even though she was intimidated, she ignored it and let her feelings explode out.

Homura had always been relying on the serious and diligent Touya and had never been a match for him, but something in her heart was shouting that she couldn’t yield and pull back on this matter.

“Touya-kun… aren’t you worried about Senpai? If we leave now, when do you think we’ll come back?”

“That’s… we’ll need to call an emergency summons of club members and make preparations for a search… The shortest time would be eight hours. On Earth, that is.”

“Forty-eight hours will pa.s.s on Nutella during that time! What if it rains? What if the trail is covered up by other animals? We’ll no longer be able to find even the few remaining clues to where senpai was taken! And most of all, there’s no proof that senpai is safe…!”

Paying no heed to the tears streaming down her cheeks, Homura pleaded to Touya as she pressed her fists, clenched in frustration, against his chest.

“We might not be able to come back to Nutella, right? If we leave, we’ll use up all the charged magic energy in this Transport Ring! We’ll have to leave the rest to Koma-senpai and the others afterwards. Are you okay with that!?”

“…It can’t be helped.”

This was hard for Touya too. Homura understood that. But even so.

Wiping away her tears, Homura asked him one more question.

“Touya-kun, if you were alone in this situation, what would you do?”

“……”

“Answer me honestly—”

Touya looked back at Homura with a mortified expression.

Eventually, he sighed and spoke.

“I would chase after senpai. No matter what anyone would tell me afterwards.”

Homura smiled and nodded. Their feelings were the same.

“Let’s go. As far as we can.”

After saying that, Homura picked back up her baggage.

Touya took out the map and scratched his hair.

“If we can’t follow their tracks at any point, we’re going to do an emergency withdrawal right then and there, okay?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

They were well aware that this was a reckless gamble.

First, the two of them sorted through their baggage and kept only the bare minimum in necessary equipment.

They had no idea how many rough spots they would encounter during their pursuit. Since they were inexperienced with Nutella’s natural environment, they prioritized tools for aiding in climbing or going through marshland in order to avoid as much danger as possible.

Their food supplies consisted of twelve meals’ worth of food divided between the two of them. It was originally a single person’s portion for this mission. From what they knew of wolves, this amount was nowhere near enough to compensate for the wolves’ range of actions. Even if the preserved food was made compact and portable, it still took up a majority of their baggage s.p.a.ce.

It was implicitly agreed between them that this would be their food supplies for a one-way trip. If they greatly lost sight of their target during pursuit, it would be difficult to stay here any further timewise.

The birds also seemed noisy in the direction through the forest that the pack of wolves had pa.s.sed through.

“Wouldn’t things be easier if we had transmitters or a radar?”

“But we don’t. And no talking from here on out.”

“……”

Homura responded by closing her mouth with a “hmph” and straining her ears with an exaggerated gesture.

The two of them focused their senses as they began to proceed through the forest at a jogging pace.

Many clear traces of the large wolves pa.s.sing through were left behind, more than they’d expected.

Not only were there footprints carved into the soft soil of the forest, there were also traces like snapped branches and distinct tuffs of grey fur visible. Even p.o.o.p sometimes.

Though they lost sight of the tracks when they cut off at several points, they always managed to find new traces each time, seeming to cultivate their vague instincts for finding which paths the wolves like as they did so.

In particular, Touya demonstrated an extraordinary sense of smell and saw through trackless paths one after another, impressing Homura.

Within a high thicket that made it impossible to see ahead with human sight, they pa.s.sed through an animal path that acted like a tunnel and crossed a gorge between cliffs that would make any human hesitate, and they finally found new wolf traces again on the other side.

“Amazing, Touya-kun. You always find their tracks every time. Do you know senpai’s scent? Are you a police dog? A Doberman-Man?”

“Hey now…”

While putting his canteen to his mouth, Touya wiped his sweat.

“They probably don’t think that we’re chasing after them.”

“In that case, we have a chance.”

“I wonder about that.”

In other words, they had that much confidence in their running speed.

Touya looked at the path ahead anxiously.

“They’re getting further and further away…”

At first, the tracks had seemed to be heading southwest, but then they had suddenly switched to southeast. After that, they had turned straight east, apparently taking a path with few rises or falls that generally weaved through the fringes of hills.

The wolves continued to move without resting. The two of them could vaguely guess where they were heading. They hadn’t mentioned it out loud, as they despaired it might lead to the worst possible course.

The wolves seemed to be heading towards the unexplored area which wasn’t mapped.

The northern hills finally turned into mountain ridges, towering high above with snow-covered tall peaks.

During Homura’s first mission, they had taken a wide detour around the mountain ranges that surrounding the unexplored area on either side, planning to instead proceed from the south. It was a much longer detour than through the east, but the mountains that appeared along the path that way were lower in height.

And then—

The two of them had miraculously managed to follow the tracks of the wolves, but they finally lost sight of any traces. They looked around everywhere in the woods around them for around an hour, but they couldn’t find the wolves’ path.

Not only Homura, but even Touya wasn’t confident at what route to take next. The fact that they were practically at the edge of the territory that the map covered further fanned their anxiousness.

At the foot of the mountain range that towered ominously to the north, they found animal footprints.

“These aren’t from wolves…”

Touya shook his head despondently.

“These are broken hoof prints. They’re probably from some species of deer or mountain ox.”

The footprints seemed to head in the direction of the mountain range.

“Did they run away because the wolves came? In that case—”

Touya couldn’t think so optimistically like Homura.

“I don’t think so, but I’m an amateur anyway. What should we do? Should we go back and try looking around again?”

“…Go forward or back, huh?”

Or they could do an emergency withdrawal here—

If they continued forward, they would be stepping straight into the unexplored area, and in the middle of clearly treacherous mountains at that.

Until now, they had barely been able to keep track of their location through the map and the markings left behind by Exploration Club members on the mountain ridge, but they would lose those a.s.surances after this.

“Is it all right if I decide…? You won’t hold a grudge no matter what?”

“Yeah. I’m going to bet on your good luck, Hinooka.”

Touya nodded with a humble face.

That made Homura fired up at first, but then she suddenly tilted her head in confusion.

“Ah, you’re not relying on my actual judgement then?”

In the end, Homura made the reckless choice to keep going as far as they could, and in accordance, the two of them groped their way through the mountains. They found hoof tracks every once in a while, but they weren’t very reliable as clues.

After they crossed over a small stream and ascended further, they finally broke out of the trees and arrived at an area with broken crags scattered everywhere, apparently having lain there for a long time.

A scree slope filled with shattered fragments of white stone served as footing, and they couldn’t see anything like footprints anywhere.

Touya calmly looked up at the bare surface of the mountain and pointed a finger.

The sources of the footprints they’d seen were striding over the precipitous rock surface as if clinging to it.

“—Those aren’t deer. Are they goats?”

“Probably, based on those horns. Where are they headed…?”

Ten-odd s.h.a.ggy goats were jumping up the rock wall that was completely impa.s.sable for Homura and Touya. Their regrown fur looked like a patchwork of different shades.

“There aren’t any meadows further up there… are they headed to a watering hole or something up there…?”

“We pa.s.sed tons of streams just a little while ago.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

While c.o.c.king her head in puzzlement, Homura took a step towards the slope.

Touya hurriedly came up next to Homura.

“Hey, are you actually planning on climbing this?”

“Doesn’t it bother you too? Maybe there’s a secret path up that way?”

Touya was completely reluctant, but on the other hand, he couldn’t refute that argument, so he took out a rope and prepared for the worst.

They ascended the pathless scree slope that was piled far and wide beneath the steep rock face.

As Touya went ahead, pebbles rolled out from under his feet and struck against Homura countless times.

She wanted to complain about it, but on the other hand, she didn’t have the confidence that she could stand ahead and cut their path through while being cautious of their surroundings and watching her footing.

“……?”

Just when she thought another pebble had fallen towards her, she felt something out of place and carefully stared at the fallen object.

She took a few steps forward to approach the object that had stopped along the gentle gravel slope.

The slope over there was even and easy to walk on, making Homura wonder why both Touya and the goats earlier had chosen to walk on this rough slope.

—Homura’s left leg sank down to the ankle in the slope without any resistance.

She frantically tried to pull her foot back up and braced her right leg, but then that one sank down to the knee as well.

She lost her balance and put her hand on the ground behind her to crouch there, but it too sank down.

The more she struggled to get out, the more she was sucked into the scree slope.

“……”

Homura stiffened in place on her hands and legs with her face pointed upwards, as if she were playing Twister.

Cold sweat ran down her back as she saw Touya getting further and further away at the edge of her vision.

Was it her imagination that there were raptor-like shadows flying in the sky above her?

“T-Touya-saaa~n.”

“What? Don’t say my name so creepily.”

“Umm. I thought going this way… would be easier, but…”

When Touya turned around at the sound of Homura’s weak voice, his expression stiffened for an instant, but after a few seconds, he burst out laughing.

“Buhaha… Yeah, you definitely slipped1 there.”

“Hey, it’s cruel to laugh.”

“Sorry. I’ll take out some rope right now, so be patient.”

After approaching cautiously, Touya fixed the rope to a st.u.r.dy rock right behind Homura, and then threw the end of the double-looped rope towards Homura.

“Can you pick it up? If you can’t, I’ll come over.”

“No… There’s no need… There we go.”

By twisting her body, she sunk down to her waist, but she still somehow managed to grab hold of the rope.

Homura stopped Touya when he tried to pull her up, and instead slid her body horizontally through the ground by using the rope as leverage.

“Hey, what are you trying to do? If you play around, you’ll seriously be in danger, you know?”

“Sorry… Just another ten centimeters…”

She stretched out her hand with all her might and managed to grab the fallen object from earlier.

Soon after, Homura was pulled out of the drift of gravel.

The item that she’d first mistaken for a dried leaf was in fact a small square piece of paper. And when Homura sniffed it, she could tell that there was a faint sweet scent lingering on it.

She thrust the paper in front of Touya’s nose right after he’d finished carefully repacking the rope.

“Touya-kun, look! Look at this!”

“……?”

Though he made a dubious face at first, Touya also soon noticed the paper’s true ident.i.ty.

“….This… is taffy wrapper from our snack supplies…!”

“Yeah, it’s from a piece of candy! That girl and the wolves must have pa.s.sed through here! Right!?”

If this were a well-traveled area, it would be weak as proof, but there was no mistake in this situation.

Most likely, that wolf girl had eaten a piece of candy and thrown away the wrapper here. An Exploration Club member would never carelessly throw garbage on the ground in the first place.

Touya widened his eyes, impressed.

“Amazing… Hinooka, you’re seriously amazing. I would never have noticed this.”