Chapter 101 Considerations and Return

Many days had passed since the annual Midsummer Festival, but traces of the celebration still lingered all over Rivervale Town.

Miss Molly, the association receptionist who usually looked as though nothing in the world could interest her, now wore a pair of pure silver earrings she had picked up during a store promotion.

Edwina of the Verdant Crucible had unveiled a new hangover remedy that became wildly popular over Midsummer. Word was, she was already considering mass production.

The enormous bonfire in the town’s central square had long since been cleared away with the help of the staff.

Even so, faint scorch marks and traces of ash still clung to the cracks between a few inconspicuous paving stones near the edge of the square.

The adventurers at the White Chickadee Tavern, however, seemed to have missed the fact that the festival was over.

The official celebrations had ended, but the tavern remained as lively as ever.

From sunset and deepening dusk until dawn broke and morning light spilled across the streets, the music, shouting, cheering, and wildly off-key singing never stopped.

For adventurers who lived with their heads tied to their belts and spent their lives walking a tightrope, Midsummer was little more than an excuse to celebrate.

After surviving a mission, every day was a festival.

Every breath was worth celebrating.

“Hey, there was quite a commotion over in Kalanfor a couple of days ago. You know what really happened?”

At one of the tables, an adventurer in crude leather armor deliberately raised his voice as he turned to the teammate beside him.

The two knew each other well enough to understand exactly what the other was doing.

They had already discussed the matter countless times in private, but the teammate still put on an exaggerated show of hearing it for the first time.

“Good grief, that ball of light was so bright that when I stepped outside to take a piss, I thought the sun had come up!”

“I asked everyone about it the next day, but nobody could explain a thing. I’m still wondering what happened myself!”

Sure enough, the bait worked.

The moment he finished speaking, a voice thick with drunkenness drifted over from the neighboring table, every word slightly slurred.

“Wasn’t it just that little business? Nothing worth making a fuss over!”

A red-bearded dwarf was already flushed and reeking of alcohol despite it being broad daylight. His stocky, stump-like body swayed as he leaned back in his chair, pretending to be completely unconcerned.

The slight upward curl of his mustache and the sidelong glances he kept casting at the people around him told a different story.

“Oh? Then what happened? Tell us.”

Seeing that the dwarf had taken the bait, the first adventurer immediately followed up, injecting just the right amount of exaggerated curiosity into his voice.

He even slid over the bottle of ale he had been drinking, though only a third remained.

The dwarf was clearly pleased by the gesture.

He grabbed the bottle, tipped back his head, and drained the rest in one gulp.

Then he gave a long, satisfied burp.

Without bothering to keep anyone in suspense, he launched straight into the “specific details” he supposedly knew.

“According to a buddy of mine who happened to be restocking in Kalanfor a few days ago, hic…”

“Some crazed cultist used an evil ritual right under the church’s nose and summoned a powerful monster from deep within the Misty Forest to Kalanfor.”

“Even one of the priests from the Church of the Sun God got ‘blown up.'”

“Boom!”

The dwarf pulled both hands toward his chest, spread his thick, radish-like fingers, then flung them outward in an exaggerated explosion.

There was nothing but amusement on his face. He clearly had no sympathy whatsoever for the dead priest.

“That power… tsk, tsk.”

“You lot had it easy. You were here in Rivervale Town. All you had to do was hear the noise and enjoy the show.”

“My brother had it rough. He only had time to run for his life. An entire wagon of cargo got burned to charcoal.”

“Half a year’s work, gone!”

The dwarf sounded so convincing that even the adventurer who had only been fishing for gossip began to look genuinely surprised.

He leaned over and refilled the dwarf’s empty cup himself.

“It was powerful enough for us to see it from Rivervale Town? Then what about Kalanfor? Don’t tell me the whole town is gone.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” The red-bearded dwarf waved dismissively. With his other hand, he rubbed his round belly and narrowed his eyes in contentment.

“Only half the town.”

“But I heard that cultist was a high-tier spellcaster from the School of Conjuration. Not just the air, even the nearby water sources were contaminated. Even if the commoners in town survived, they probably won’t be able to live there again anytime soon.”

They had made no effort to keep their voices down, and dwarves were naturally loud to begin with.

After only a few exchanges, nearly half the tavern had heard the dwarf’s version of the “truth.”

“Isn’t anyone going to do something about it?” A young-looking adventurer lowered his voice, as if afraid the wrong person might overhear. “What about those noble ‘lords’ in the castle? Even our association… they’re just going to let people run wild like this?”

“Of course someone did something!”

The red-bearded dwarf bristled, his eyes going wide as his drunken emotions surged.

“That night, I even saw…”

He stopped dead.

Only halfway through the sentence did he realize he had said too much.

No matter how the others baited or provoked him afterward, he refused to say another word. He simply lowered his head and drank.

When they pushed too hard, he shoved them away, cursed a few times, then started rambling about completely unrelated subjects.

Behind the bar, Chapton quietly withdrew his gaze.

A soft cloth pinched between his fingers, he continued polishing a glass with meticulous care.

He had naturally seen the dazzling golden radiance that erupted from the horizon several nights earlier.

As the owner of the tavern most frequented by adventurers in all of Rivervale Town, Chapton rarely joined their conversations. Most of the time, he simply worked in silence and listened.

Still, after running the place for so many years, he had built up a few connections.

Unfortunately, the moment he asked about the incident in Kalanfor, nearly all of those “connections” clammed up.

In the end, he knew little more than the red-bearded dwarf did.

But if he truly wanted to dig for information…

Chapton’s hands paused.

His gaze drifted instinctively toward the left side of the bar, where a black-haired young man sat with a spoon in hand.

The scene from the morning before last flashed through his mind.

Chapton had just finished dealing with patrons who had caused a racket all night. He had been yawning and preparing to change shifts when a figure carrying two swords walked straight through the tavern doors.

The young man did not look especially exhausted.

But the dried blood on his battered armor and the dust of hard travel clinging to him made one thing obvious.

He had just come back from something dangerous.

Cautious adventurers who rested outside town for a night, then returned at dawn, were common enough.

So were adventurers who came back without bothering to repair their equipment and headed straight for an inn to recover.

Yet for some reason, the intuition Chapton had developed over years of running a tavern kept linking that young adventurer, Xia Nan, to the eruption of golden light several nights earlier.

Translated by Bcatranslations. Read it at bcatranslation.com

Perhaps…

“Boss, another serving of mushroom soup.”

The voice from in front of him pulled Chapton back to reality.

“Coming right up!”

He instinctively gave the glass in his hands two more vigorous wipes before putting it away and heading toward the kitchen.

Xia Nan naturally had no idea what Chapton was thinking.

Even if Chapton asked him directly, Xia Nan could only dodge the subject.

After all, he himself did not fully understand what had happened in Kalanfor.

At best, he could guess that it had something to do with Forgan, the barbarian, and some powerful being Forgan had been pursuing.

The terrifying scene from that night surfaced in Xia Nan’s mind again.

A blast like a high-yield missile strike.

A mushroom cloud rising into the sky.

Just remembering it made him mutter inwardly.

Because he knew deities truly existed, Xia Nan had already expected the upper limits of power in this world to be terrifying.

Now, it seemed he had still underestimated them by far.

From everything he had learned while traveling and speaking with Forgan, the barbarian had not yet reached the Legendary rank at the top of this world’s power structure.

He was still within the Transcendent Tier.

And yet the aftermath of that battle alone had destroyed nearly half a town.

If they went even higher…

If Legendary powerhouses fought…

Or gods…

[Wouldn’t that be comparable to nuclear war?]

Thump.

A steaming bowl of cream of mushroom soup landed on the table.

Xia Nan gave his head a small shake and stopped thinking about things still far beyond his reach.

He gripped his spoon, scooped up some soup, and brought it to his mouth.

The fresh, savory sweetness spread across his tongue.

Little by little, the tension and emotional whiplash of the past several days began to ease.

And as his mind settled, the worry that had lingered there ever since he returned to Rivervale Town two days ago rose again.

He saw Forgan in his mind, wrapped in a wolfskin cloak, walking alone toward Kalanfor.

After returning, Xia Nan had spent a great deal of time considering whether he should report what he had encountered to the association.

It was not simply paranoia.

The situation was far more complicated than it appeared.

First, one thing had to be made clear.

The Adventurers’ Association was a colossal organization spanning countless kingdoms. Its branches covered the entire Aifala Continent and continued expanding into even more distant lands.

It was made up of countless adventurers and belonged, completely and utterly, to the neutral camp.

It was not some righteous organization that would immediately dispatch investigators just because someone reported cultist activity.

To use an extreme example, even if all of Kalanfor had already been occupied by cultists and turned into a nest for breeding monsters, the Adventurers’ Association branch in Rivervale Town might not move so much as a finger unless its core interests were threatened.

Of course, that was only an extreme example.

In reality, there were plenty of adventurers in the association with ties to Kalanfor, and the Kingdom of Servia could issue bounties through the association. With those and other factors involved, things would never truly be allowed to reach that point.

But with that as the premise, another problem appeared.

Forgan had only told Xia Nan to run toward Rivervale Town.

He had left no other instructions.

If Xia Nan rashly contacted the association and revealed information connected to Forgan, could that interfere with the barbarian?

Could it somehow put him at a disadvantage?

Xia Nan even had to consider the one-in-ten-thousand possibility that Forgan and the association were on bad terms.

What if the association learned about the situation and, instead of helping Forgan, decided to aid the “enemy” he was currently fighting?

After all, Xia Nan did not even know the identity of the target Forgan had been pursuing.

He and Forgan had not become particularly close over the past several days.

But Xia Nan could tell one thing.

The barbarian had taken the commission seriously and genuinely taught him the combat technique.

That much was obvious.

So even if Xia Nan could not help Forgan, he at least did not want to make trouble for him.

On the other hand, what if Xia Nan hid Forgan’s identity and only reported what he had seen happen in Kalanfor?

There still would not be much point.

Three nights ago, before Xia Nan had even returned to Rivervale Town, while he was still running for his life, he had already seen large groups of adventurers leaving Rivervale Town and heading toward Kalanfor.

Even among the ones he could recognize at a glance, there had been plenty of class holders.

Clearly, the Adventurers’ Association had reacted much faster than he expected.

Putting everything together, the safest choice was obvious.

Do less, make fewer mistakes.

Stay quietly in Rivervale Town.

Wait for news.

That was what Xia Nan should be doing now.

“Heh. Don’t know where you heard that fake story, but you’re really showing off over it.”

A mocking sneer suddenly came from a corner of the tavern.

The target was obviously the red-bearded dwarf who had claimed to know what happened in Kalanfor through a friend.

Xia Nan looked over.

A man with yellowish-brown skin and curly black hair came into view.

A Calishite.

He looked familiar.

Then Xia Nan noticed the gemstone rings on his fingers, each the size of a pigeon egg, and the metal rings at the ends of his hair.

His gaze slid toward the dwarf on the other side.

An odd expression crossed his face.

Weren’t these the same two men who caused trouble in the tavern during Midsummer, right before he left town?

What kind of rotten luck was this?

Xia Nan had only just returned to Rivervale Town, and somehow these two had ended up in the same place again.

The dwarf had already drunk himself into a stupor. Red-faced, he turned around and stared with huge, round eyes for several long seconds.

Only then did recognition finally dawn.

“Y-You damned Calishite maggot… hic. Didn’t your daddy beat you hard enough last time?”

The Calishite had clearly come prepared.

Unlike the previous time, when he had been alone, two other men in similar robes sat beside him.

Judging from their clothing, they were probably desert folk as well.

The red-bearded dwarf was drunk, and dwarves were hardly timid to begin with.

He immediately puffed up his beard and waved one thick arm.

“What, you think… hic… bringing two more sand rats is enough to back you up?”

“Go lick the crack of your djinni master’s ass!”

Years of haunting taverns had given the dwarf an impressive vocabulary of racial slurs.

It took him only a few sentences to make all three Calishites flush red with rage.

Off to one side, Xia Nan watched with obvious anticipation while leisurely spooning mushroom soup into his mouth.

The insults escalated.

Hands started shoving.

A fight was seconds away.

Creak!

The tavern door suddenly flew open.

Dazzling sunlight poured in from outside.

Along with it came an icy wind as bitter as a Northlands blizzard.

A familiar, towering figure appeared before Xia Nan.