Journey to the Capital

The rank 4 adventurer party, Mercenary of Dawn.

The members that formed it are a rank 4 warrior, Dagget. Male, 31 years old. Blue eyes and red hair.

Rank 3 heavy warrior, Randy. Male, 29 years old. Brown eyes and thinning blonde hair.

Ran 3 scout, former hunter Dankan. Male, 30 years old. Blue eyes and black hair.

Ran 3 sorcerer, Grinda. Light and water elements. Female, 26 years old. Black eyes and brown hair. Dagget’s lover.

They are my targets. They embezzled the requested item that they should collect and ran away with a necklace that is a family heirloom. The noble that they tricked requested the assassin guild to assassinate them and recover the necklace.

「Family heirloom huh……」

I unconsciously touched my mother’s memento inside the amulet pouch on my chest.

If I’m in opposition against the assassin guild, there is no need for me to do this work, but with a contact of the guild coming to keep watch, I can’t slack off.

……I’m glad that they are scoundrels.

The Mercenary of Dawn headed to the large scale dungeon near the capital because although their party has few members for their rank, they have good balance and depending on their equipment, it will be possible for them to stay in the dungeon for a long period.

It will be difficult for me to chase after them alone if they dived until the deep floor. To deal with them safely, I should deal with them in the capital or in the city at the south where the dungeon is located, but if I can’t catch up to them there, then my only choice is to aim when they return for resupply.

Even so as expected, the most solid plan will be to do it inside the dungeon.

The public order in the capital is too good, so it will be dangerous in a different sense there. But if it’s in the dungeon, my life will also be at risk, but the same will also apply to my targets. An opening will show more often the more dangerous it is.

It’s my bad habit to think too much about a lot of things. But, if I imagine various situations and prepare countermeasure beforehand, I’ll be able to take action immediately when things actually happen.

Even so right now I should take action first rather than thinking too much about things that are still far off in the future.

My assumption and hypothesis will change completely depending on the environment and situation at the actual site. I need detailed information in order to heighten the precision of my thinking and assumption too.

.

I stayed in the neighboring city of the northern frontier district’s branch for three days to prepare using the adventurer guild and the shops in the city before departing to the capital.

I couldn’t find out who my contact will be even after investigating during those three days. I think they will contact me at the actual site but, what I wanted to know is “how many contacts there will be”.

As long as they are there, I won’t be able to take any strange action. Even if I dispose the contact, but if there is more than one contacts and I let them get away, my betrayal will be exposed. I can only pray that at the very least the contact is someone who I can defeat easily…….

There are two routes to go to the capital from this territory of Count Heydale.

First is passing through the main route along the sea from the territory of Count Sentrea where I worked last time. It’s the relatively safer road that Elena used before. And then the other route is going straight to the south from Dandall, through the valley of a mountain district. It’s dangerous but I can arrive faster with this path.

If I used exclusive high speed carriage like Elena, I might be able to arrive faster using the main road along the sea. But, I will take one month by walking and riding the stagecoach stationed along the way. It’s not like carriage can’t pass through valley but, even so ordinary carriage and traveler doesn’t pass there because of the bird type monsters’ frequent appearance in the valley.

Only a major company guarded by Dandall’s garrison guards will pass through there once a month. Even commoner can come along if they buy the ticket that is issued by the merchant guild, but it’s really expensive. If one doesn’t care about the required time, normal traveler usually will use the safe route.

But, the route I’ll use is the dangerous valley. I intentionally choose the dangerous path in order to become stronger in short time.

After that I spent another ten days and passed through several territories of nobles who are the dependents of Margrave Dandall and went south. Then I arrived at a territory of a baron that is close to the mountain district.

Even a free person like me won’t need to pay that much money to enter a city unless it’s a big city. Even so I paid one silver coin as the passing fee at the last city and entered inside. There I purchased food and other necessities.

After that I asked for information of monsters in the adventurer guild of that city. The guild here is a desolate place where there are only hunters bringing in monster material when they defeated monster by some chance. The staff who taught me a lot about the monsters here also grieved that this city only has few dedicated adventurers.

There are several types of monsters that appeared in the valley, but as expected a subjugation force will be dispatched right away if high ranked monster like griffon appeared, so its appearance hasn’t been seen for these ten years. In the first place griffon will target horse. It should prefer to hunt something like deer rather attacking walking traveler.

When passing through that valley by food, the small and medium sized monster will become the problem. There are falcon type monster named Wind Bird that tore apart its prey with outrageous speed before preying on it, and crow type monster Giant Crow that like to catch traveler and bring them back to its nest for food. Those two types of monsters frequently appeared.

The small Wind Bird is a rank 1 monster, while the medium sized Giant Crow is rank 2, but according to the adventurer guild’s hypothetical difficulty level, the Wind Bird is categorized as rank 2 while Giant Crow is rank 3.

The reason for that is simple. That’s because the location is at the valley where there are a lot of obstacles and open sky.

It’s difficult even for adventurer with rank 1 or 2 bow skill to hit them. Even rank 2 or 3 warrior can’t attack unless the monster come down. To have a proper hunt, sorcerer who can use offensive wind sorcery is necessary, and even then it’s difficult to hunt the monsters unless with a party that can prepare shield for protecting the sorcerer.

……”Normally” that is.

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Early morning in the next day, I avoided people’s gaze and stepped into the valley while the sky is still dark.

I’m passing the bottom of the valley, but its width is only around ten meters at best. The steep cliffs at both sides are around fifty meter high. The place is a bit dark even when it’s afternoon.

But, it‘s safer to walk here when it’s dark as long as you have a way to conquer the darkness. The enemy are monsters so they will attack if they feel my presence, even so perhaps because of their bird eye, their search range narrowed when it get dark.

On my way until here, I travelled while training my darkness magic, but it’s still difficult to activate it and I’m still training even now while I’m walking through the valley. A monster finally found me when it became noon and the sun shined down on the valley from directly above me.

「……It came.」

I heard a faint sound of something slicing through wind, then an instant after that my Search skill caught the presence of something small approaching.

I reflexively twisted my body backward and dodged while swinging my black knife as the thing passed me, but that presence’s owner also rotated to dodge the blade and swiveled to the sky mockingly.

The falcon type monster──Wind Bird attacked human not on its own by in swarm.

As expected it’s hard to hit flying opponent with knife……. If it can move like that, then hitting it even by throwing knife will depend on luck.

While I’m thinking that, the second Wind Bird attacked from the side. Its speed is like arrow. It will be hard to sense them with sight if I fight them properly, but Wind Bird’s speed will drop only for an instant when they attack.

I focused my Search so that I won’t miss that instant and threw my “blade” to the Wind Bird when it attacked again.

The Wind Bird rotated in the air to dodge that blade, but I matched its movement and controlled the string of the pendulum that I threw.

『Gugyah!』

The Wind Bird whose wing is cut by the pendulum’s blade crashed on the ground like arrow. I didn’t inflict a lethal blow, but it won’t be safe after falling to the ground with that speed.

I also threw a pendulum from my left hand in a curving trajectory instead of straight. It cut apart the wing of another Wind Bird that attacked me.

I don’t stay in one spot and dodged the Wind Birds’ attacks with complicated footwork and taking them down with the pendulums drawing an arc through the air.

I paid no mind even when my aim missed. It’s good enough if my blade’s hit accuracy reached thirty percent. But, even if the blade is dodged it’s meaningless if they also don’t dodge the string I controlled. The Giant Spider string that I strengthened with my mana can’t be cut even by the Wind Bird’s claws.

I cut their wings or entangled them with string. I took down nearly ten Wind Birds in several minutes. With that the rest stopped approaching me and circled around on the sky. One of them fired “wind colored” magic particles at me.

The name Wind Bird isn’t just for show. These things can use level 1 wind sorcery Wind Cutter.

Wind type sorcery has good speed and they are also invisible, so it’s hard to dodge, but my “eyes” that can see the color of magic particle can dodge as long as there is enough distance.

With the magic power value of Wind Bird, they can only fire once or twice at best. If they fired twice, they will run out of mana and their speed will drop drastically, so Wind Cutter can be said as the Wind Bird’s trump card.

One Wind Bird ran out of patience seeing me continuously evading and attacked me while firing wind sorcery from close range.

「──Shield──」

A shield of light around thirty centimeter in size is created on my left hand. I made the Shield came into contact with the thickest part of the approaching green colored magic particles and parried it by holding the Shield diagonally.

Without pause I cut the wing of the Wind Bird that came straight at me with my black knife. Then the remaining Wind Bird flew away to the sky to escape.

『GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!』

The next moment, as though to replace the Wind Birds, a piercing cry reverberated through the valley.

It’s unknown whether the Wind Bird escaped from me or got scared because “this” came. I heard the cry together with the sound of wings flapping. A black bird with huge body that reached four meters with its wings spread out swooped down as though to cut through the darkness of the sky.

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▼ Giant Crow Race : Large Bird – Difficulty Rank 2

【Magic Power : 69/73】【Stamina : 212/215】

【Overall Combat Strength : 145】

The Giant Crow caused a gust of wind with its wings while heading straight at me.

I threw the pendulums in my hands in order to meet its charge. But, the pendulums’ blade only grazed its black wings a little. The intelligent Giant Crow saw that and directed its sharp talons toward me in ridicule.

『Gua!?』

In that instant, I took out a new pendulum on my palm and dodged the talon while winding the pendulum around the Giant Crow’s wing.

The Giant Crow flew to the sky in panic. I controlled the string with String Control and hindered it.

『KUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!』

The Giant Crow shrieked angrily and flapped its wings to drag me to the sky along with the pendulum’s string.

But, I don’t let it. I pulled the string even stronger to hinder its wing’s flap. I also quickly knocked the heel of my boots together so that blade shot out from it. Then I kicked it on the ground like a wedge.

The boots that I received from master is something that she used in the past. It has a mechanism in them. If they got impacted from a certain direction, small blades will come out from its front tips and the heel.

I fixed myself on the ground with the heel blades and pulled the string with my body reinforcement in full power throughout my whole body.

My rank on the whole is still rank 2, but several of my support skills has reached level 3. Using Magic Power Control level 3, I circulated mana through my whole body, and with Pressure level 2 I stopped the Giant Crow’s movement for just a moment──

「TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!」

『KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!』

Even though I got dragged across the ground through the inertia that left the ground gouged, I used all my strength and slammed the fearfully screeching Giant Crow on the ground head first.