Chapter 67 (1/2)

The next day, just like the previous day, I ate the breakfast that Minnalis had cooked, made preparations and we both left the inn.

There had been no need to wake up early today, so I’d gotten out of bed quite some time after the sun had risen, and by the time we left the inn, the city had already begun moving.

In that city, in which people from all regions of the kingdom gathered, many stores were open once the sun had climbed its way into the sky, and around noon, many people were conducting business – suspicious hawkers with unknown merchandise, novice merchants and people selling secondhand goods at a bargain.

This was a world without any precise clocks like those in Japan, so there were no methods of telling the time other than my biological clock and how high the sun was in the sky, but looking at the whole city, I found it mysterious how the number of open stores and the times they opened remained the same day after day.

Well, I didn’t have a clock myself and was only making guesses, so I didn’t know for sure, either.

The meeting place for today’s competition was at the city’s east gate.

It wasn’t that far from the inn to the east gate, but even walking that short distance, we had to walk past many stalls. There were all kinds of things that did draw my interest, but today, I had to put them all off until later.

Without getting sidetracked, we headed for the meeting place that had been agreed upon.

“Hmm, we weren’t the first to arrive,” I said,

There was already a silhouette at the east gate as we approached it.

We were still quite some distance away, so it seemed that he hadn’t noticed us, but I could see the boy from yesterday standing there by himself. It looked like he was talking to soldiers who were working gatekeepers of the east gate.

This was a world where brightly-colored hair that seemed to celebrate the existence of isekais was normal, but it was easy to spot the boy’s vivid, golden hair among the crowd.

“Did you want us to be first to arrive?” Minnalis asked.

“Hmm? No, not really,” I said. “It’s just that I feel like we left quite early, and I hadn’t thought that anyone would have left earlier. His enthusiasm is a bit, you know…”

Huh, come to think of it, I hadn’t even learned his name. Well, I probably wouldn’t see him after today, so it wouldn’t matter if I thought of him as ‘boy’ until we parted.

“Well, whatever, it doesn’t matter. Let’s go,” I said.

“Yes, Goshujin-sama.”

Once we had closed some of the distance, the boy noticed us and approached us with a somewhat relieved look on his face.

“Good morning, aren’t you late? I thought I’d gotten the meeting place wrong,” he said.

“Late? No, I believe we have arrived quite early,” said Minnalis.

She was right. Compared to most times that adventurers went out to hunt, now could be considered a little early. In fact, we hadn’t decided on a time other than ‘before noon,’ so there was no such thing as early or late.

“What are you saying, it’s much later than yesterday, isn’t it? And don’t speak to me so familiarly when you’re just a slave. And judging from your appearance, you’re a beast-person as well. Don’t come too close to me; your beast stink will get on my clothes.”

These angry words came smoothly from the boy’s mouth.

He was scowling at Minnalis; he had separated the world into ranks as he had seen fit and was looking at her with contempt.

The countless eyes that looked at me after deciding that I was an enemy to the world.

The eyes of the villagers that had looked at Minnalis with contempt because she was a beast-person.

The exact same unpleasant feeling in the chest, these eyes that you could find anywhere.

At that point, this boy was already confirmed to be scum, but the scary thing was that he didn’t stop there.

“That’s right, more importantly, I was talking about today. Why did you go back early yesterday? Because of that, we couldn’t train our coordination!” he said.

“I’m sorry?” I said.

What was he saying all of a sudden? I couldn’t understand.

“Train our coordination. We can’t just work as a party together without knowing each other’s abilities,” the boy said, wearing an expression as if to say, “Good grief.”

The first thing I couldn’t understand is why we had to work together as a party. What was this guy thinking? The inside of his head was even more of a field of flowers than I’d thought.

I was so dumbfounded and stayed silent, and the boy continued speaking, seeming to have made some kind of misunderstanding.

“Well, it’s fine if you can just stick out as much as you can to draw the enemies’ attention; as long as you hold them back so that they don’t get to me, I’ll finish them off for you with my magic. Ah, you, don’t stick out too much, alright? I’m not very good at adjusting my spells’ power, and unlike the slave, I’d feel sorry if you got caught up in them.”

… So, what is he saying? That he wants to use us as a meat shield? This guy.

Not only that, but he wanted us to stick out and act as bait, and on top of that, he would use spells without caring if Minnalis got caught in them?

… I’d thought that my opinion on the boy had reached the lowest point, but then the floor dropped further down.

It was a little surprising; I hadn’t expected that I would think so lowly of this boy that I hadn’t cared about at all.

“…”

The expression vanished from Minnalis’s face.

It was likely that she had activated her skill because she was unable to control her expression on her own any longer; sometimes it seems that she’s over-reliant on this skill. Perhaps it was best if I warned her about it later.

Still, ah, maybe I should have asked the boy’s name… No, maybe there was no reason to learn his name; it would immediately become meaningless information.

“It’s alright to kill him,” I whispered to Minnalis.

“Are you alright with that?” she whispered back.

“Yeah, use poison so that he can’t be identified, and make sure to take into account how long it takes to act, yeah? It seems that we won’t have much time to enjoy it, so don’t forget about that.”

The boy’s attitude could be described as ordinary for a nobleman. He probably hadn’t left home yet, and it’s not like I couldn’t understand his attitude of looking down on slaves and beast-people, but that didn’t matter.

I had enough of thinking about what was right and what was wrong during my first time through this world. Morals and people’s circumstances, I don’t care about those. The important thing was what I thought.